"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
PRESIDENT TRUMP likens the struggle against the pandemic to a war that will yield a colossal toll in human lives, but refuses to urge states uniformly to issue stay-at-home orders. The president’s equivocations have produced an uncoordinated jumble of policy subverted by foot-dragging governors who treat the coronavirus less as a national emergency and more as a political annoyance. They are guilty of an abdication of leadership whose consequences will be measured in body bags.
Messaging is critical in this crisis. By telling people in the strongest terms to stay at home, even with certain exceptions, most governors have conveyed the gravity of the spreading threat; that is likely to save many lives. By failing to do that, and treating a plague as one interest to be balanced among many, other governors treat the peril with a nod and a wink. Their message, sotto voce, is: Let’s not all get our knickers in a twist.
[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]
The nod-and-a-wink governors — in the Dakotas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas and elsewhere — pose as powerless to order a lockdown, or note they have already closed schools, restaurants, gyms and other establishments, but won’t order blanket edicts to individuals. They point at other states’ exceptions that allow people to carry on with essential work, or get groceries and pharmaceuticals. In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson says staying at home is a matter of “individual responsibilities”; in Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson scoffs there is nothing “magical” about stay-at-home directives; in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds protests that “I can’t lock everybody in their home.”
Those governors, all Republicans, have been enabled by Mr. Trump, who points to states that don’t yet “have the problem,” and remarks that it’s “awfully tough to say, ‘Close it down.’ ” He favors flexibility and is seconded by Vice President Pence, who says the federal government “will defer to state and local health authorities on any measures that they deem appropriate.”
As the White House leads from behind, the effect is to endorse and induce complacency. Faced with a stealthy pathogen that can spread from asymptomatic individuals, or incubate for weeks before a victim falls ill with fever, states are free to delude themselves into thinking the virus has passed them by — until, having bidden its time, it erupts inside their cities and towns. Governors of those states can entertain the illusion of alternative facts, imagining their borders are impermeable. They can, like Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, resist a stay-at-home order for weeks until discovering just this week — surprise! — that the virus is “transmitting before people see signs.”
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Their magical thinking endangers the nation. It gives people license to minimize the threat — a threat the White House says could kill up to 240,000 people even with effective social distancing. It allows state-to-state gaps in the firewall that will likely encourage a raging disease to erupt in a series of rolling blazes across the country. As many states get tough, even deploying the police to encourage people to stay indoors, their odds of impeding the pandemic’s path of destruction are undercut by their neighbors’ selfishness.
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Steps for survival:
Tune out Trump & his political hack/toadies (the GOP Govs listed in this editorial are prime examples);
Listen to and follow advice from our health professionals;
Stay home unless you are actually performing “essential functions;”
Vote Trump and the GOP out of office, on every level, in November (but you have to survive the Trump/GOP kakistocracy to get to November).
NOTE:Not all GOP Governors are in the “Trump Kakistocracy.” Larry Hogan (MD), Mike DeWine (OH), and Charlie Baker (MA) and others are among those who have heeded public health advice.
Vote Like You Life Depends On It In November! Because Four More Years Of Trump & His GOP Toadies Could Kill Us All!☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The National Incompetence Stockpiles, the federal reserves of inanity and ineptitude to be drawn upon in times of crisis, are at “full capacity,” the Government Accountability Office announced on Saturday.
According to the G.A.O., the Incompetence Stockpiles are so well stocked at the moment that they are in danger of overflowing.
“The sheer tonnage of failure and impotence that is being dumped into the stockpiles on a daily basis is straining their ability to contain it,” the G.A.O. statement read.
Davis Logsdon, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has written the definitive book about the National Incompetence Stockpiles, said that the nation’s futility reserves stand at their highest levels ever, eclipsing the record stockpiles established during the tenure of President George W. Bush.
“The Bush Administration tapped the National Incompetence Stockpiles when it invaded Iraq and responded to Hurricane Katrina,” Logsdon said. “At the time, it seemed as though the stockpiles would never be fully replenished, and that makes the Trump Administration’s achievement all the more striking.”
According to the statutes governing the National Incompetence Stockpiles, individual states may draw on the federal reserves of idiocy in times of emergency, but so far the governors of states like Georgia, Texas, and Florida have been able to rely on vast stockpiles of their own.
Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.
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I can hardly wait for Jared to get the “Medal of Freedom” from “Big Daddy!”🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged a non-essential employee of the White House Coronavirus Task Force to go home immediately, Fauci confirmed on Friday.
Speaking to reporters, the esteemed virologist said that he made the decision to expel the worker for “the health and safety of others.”
“He said that he felt fine coming to work every day,” Fauci said. “I told him, ‘You may feel fine, but by coming into work you are endangering the lives of countless others.’ ”
Fauci said that his decision to send the non-essential worker home was based on the most recent scientific findings.
“What we’re learning is that breathing and talking can put lives in jeopardy, and this one worker did more breathing and talking than anyone else on the team,” he said.
The employee is expected to spend fourteen hours a day in isolation watching television, a two-hour increase from his normal routine.
One government lawyer who appeared in a crowded Newark, New Jersey, immigration court last month is in a medically induced coma. A New York immigration lawyer and her client are both sick. Immigration judges are being denied sick leave when they use anxiety or safety as reasons. Migrant children are asking their lawyers if they will fall ill if they go to court, and whether they’ll be deported if they don’t show up.
Sickness, panic, and confusion in the midst of a pandemic: These are the acute side effects of immigration courts continuing to operate as the novel coronavirus races across the country. Despite three weeks of intense pleading to close all 69 courts—across a united front of immigration lawyers, the union representing lawyers for ICE, and the immigration judges’ union—more than two-thirds of them remain open.
The courts that have been closed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the federal agency that runs them, have often only been shuttered in reaction to a confirmed case of COVID-19 or suspected exposure. The closures are often last-minute, and not clearly communicated, except on Twitter. This week, several immigration legal associations filed two separate federal lawsuits to close the courts because they fear that the government has put their lives in danger.
“I think it’s about time the American people woke up to the fact that EOIR’s willingness to perpetuate and extend this pandemic will inevitably bring the virus to their hometown,” Rebecca Press, the legal director at UnLocal in New York, said Thursday via email. She contracted coronavirus two weeks ago and at least one of her clients is sick. “The longer courts remain open even for filing, and the longer the courts require attorneys and immigrants to engage in the work of preparing evidence, the more likely it becomes that the virus will be brought right back to another community.”
Government lawyers are affected, too. Fanny Behar-Ostrow, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 511, the union representing ICE lawyers, is getting calls at all hours of the day from members who worry they have been exposed to the virus. “They are panicked, frightened, desperate, upset,” she said.
In addition to the 36,000 adults in ICE detention facilities, there are some 3,500 migrant children in government custody who are affected by the disarray in the courts. In most courts, children must still attend in-person hearings, putting them at exposure risk. In New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic, lawyers from Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) have not been told whether EOIR will reschedule cases for next week. They are also unclear about whether the minors even need to come to court at a time when state and city officials have issued stay-at-home orders.
“We are receiving phone calls from children who had their safety net shaken,” said Maria Odom, vice president for legal services for KIND, which is a nonprofit organization contracted to represent unaccompanied minors. “For us serving vulnerable children, there are so many moving pieces and at a time when we should be able to look to the government, they are just contributing to the chaos.”
“I hope that it won’t take a death, but I worry that it will,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer and policy counsel for the American Immigration Council. His organization is one of the groups behind a lawsuit filed Monday by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Read the rest of Liz’s article at the link.
Looks like the dead bodies will have to pile up before the Article IIIs and EOIR will take action. As the rest of us know, but to which U.S District Judges & EOIR appear willfully blind, by the time individuals show symptoms and begin dying, it’s too late to stop the spread. The larger community has already been infected.
I wonder what it is that gives both EOIR officials and Article III Judges such great confidence that they and their families will escape the consequences of their irresponsible behavior? Maybe, it’s that both EOIR Senior Execs and Article III Judges manage to studiously avoid “direct exposure” to Immigration Courts. “Below their pay grade,” so to speak.
But, according to folks like Dr. Fauci, who possibly knows even more about infectious diseases than EOIRDirectorMcHenry and the Federal Judges who continue to defer to the irresponsible EOIR “guidance,” nobody will be immune.
So far, the U.S. has done the worst job of any developed country in the world of “flattening the curve.” Inevitably, we eventually will become the “world leader” in coronavirus deaths. After observing the inept response of EOIR and the failure of the U.S. District Courts to promptly intervene on the side of medical knowledge, common sense, and preserving human lives, I can now see why we are failing as a nation to take the extreme measures necessary for self-preservation.
I would think that as lawyers, judges, and other members of the legal community start dying as a result of EOIR’s policies, that the officials responsible eventually will face legal actions brought by surviving family members and colleagues. Life tenure and the judicial doctrine of “absolute immunity” will protect the feckless Federal Judges from legal accountability. But, it won’t protect them and their reputations from moral accountability and the “judgements of history” which are likely to be harsh and as unforgiving as the Trump Immigration Kakistocracy’s treatment of the most vulnerable among us and their brave lawyers.
Due Process Forever! Trump’s Immigration Kakistocracy & Feckless Federal Courts, Never!
White House adviser Jared Kushner broke the irony meter as he — not someone qualified, such as Anthony S. Fauci — took over the daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday to inform us: “What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody … think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis.”
Yes, President Trump’s voters, along with those who elected the similarly ignorant and slothful Republican governors in Florida and Georgia who failed to act promptly to stem the coronavirus, should remember that next time. Better to elect someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) or Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) rather than someone continually pandering to Trump, resisting readily available scientific advice and attacking the media.
One has the sinking feeling that things are going from bad to worse. Trump and the feds declined to act swiftly, in particular failing to get widespread testing up and running. Now they are failing to remedy the dire medical crisis that their negligence brought on. Kushner said the federal stockpile of medical equipment is for the feds to use, not the states. His father-in-law seems allergic to implementing fully the Defense Production Act, so the bidding war among the states for critical equipment continues.
Republican governors in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama declined to issue prompt stay-at-home orders. Now? Trump refuses to issue one nationally despite Fauci’s advice. “I don’t understand why that’s not happening,” he said in a CNN interview. “As you said, the tension between federally mandated vs. states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into. But if you look at what is going on in this country, I do not understand why we are not doing that. We really should be.” The answer: We have a total lack of federal leadership and competence.
Congress set up a $350 billion fund for small-business loans. Beginning Friday, many banks promptly announced that they could accept applications in the absence of clear federal guidance. The chaos, confusion and delays surrounding the Small Business Administration loans might make the unemployment insurance process seem like a fine-tuned machine. (Thousands, if not millions, of unemployment claims remain unprocessed due to overwhelming demand.)
The Defense Department is no better. Trump jettisoned a career professional serving as defense secretary (James Mattis) for a meek, subservient aerospace executive. The result is predictable. Politico reports: “Defense Secretary Mark Esper is under fire for the Pentagon’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as lawmakers, national security experts and people throughout the Defense Department’s ranks fault him for a slow and uneven approach to the outbreak.” His most notable action: Supporting the firing of the Navy commander whose letter pleading to allow his sailors to disembark from a floating petri dish, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was leaked. The military under Trump can forgive war crimes, just not pleas to save men and women in uniform from incompetent superiors.
This is as exasperating as it is frightening. Governors, if you are lucky enough to live in a state with a competent one, can do only so much when, for example, there are no ventilators to be had. The Democratic-led House can only churn out its version of remedial legislation, but it cannot withstand Senate and White House efforts to scuttle anti-fraud, anti-cronyism measures. (“Most big companies that take advantage of the $500 billion corporate bailout in last week’s coronavirus relief bill are unlikely to face restrictions against firing workers or giving bonuses to executives, according to officials familiar with the program.”) And while the House can bird-dog the executive branch as it distributes money, the House cannot do the executive branch’s job for it.
The chaos, confusion and incompetence at the federal level magnify our daily anxiety and uncertainty. We have lost control of our lives, and those supposed to lead us through this ordeal are deepening our national trauma. Years of contempt for expertise, for competent government and for truth itself on the right now haunt us all. God help us.
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Right on, Jennifer!
As if on cue, about the time I was reading Jennifer’s op-ed, the Blathering Boor was on TV demonstrating his “malicious incompetence” by telling American that we should wear face masks, but then immediately contradicting the message by emphasizing that it was voluntary, not required, and he wouldn’t be doing it. Because he has to meet with dictators, kings, queens, emperors, tyrants, princes, fairy godmothers, etc. Even life or death matters become mere sick jokes under the “Clown Kakistocracy,” where ignorance and lies reign.
Here’smy favorite “Theater of the Absurd” quote from Jennifer’s article: “The military under Trump can forgive war crimes, just not pleas to save men and women in uniform from incompetent superiors.”
So much for the mythical “Gang of Generals” who were supposed to save us from Trump’s “malicious incompetence.” Nope. They all “went long to get along” for awhile and then took cover in vain attempts to save what was left of their shredded reputations. Write a “tell nothing” book, give a few disingenuous interviews, hide on the board of directors of a company profiting from child abuse, whatever! Trump corrupts and destroys everything he touches, including our country!
Unlike those guys, I think there is actually gainful employment out there in the real world for someone like Captain Brett Crozier who puts human lives before a maliciously incompetent “chain of command” looking to cover up its malfeasance.
It’s not like our military hasn’t always had a certain penchant for punishing those who “speak truth to incompetent power!” Just ask the ghost of “Milwaukee Hero” Gen. Billy Mitchell who got court-martialed for being smarter, more creative, and more courageous than his superiors. Who would ever have ever believed that air power, not horse drawn caissons, would win the next World War? Duh! Certainly none of his immediate superiors in the Army after WW I!
Due Process Forever! Vote The Kakistocracy Out In November!
Vote Like Your Life Depends On It! Because It Does!
Citing little-known power given to the CDC to ban entry of people who might spread disease and ignoring the Refugee Act of 1980, an internal memo has ordered Border Patrol agents to push the overwhelming majority of migrants back into Mexico.
For the first time since the enactment of the Refugee Act in 1980, people who come to the U.S. saying they fear persecution in their home countries are being turned away by Border Patrol agents with no chance to make a legal case for asylum.
The shift, confirmed in internal Border Patrol guidance obtained by ProPublica, is the upshot of the Trump administration’s hasty emergency action to largely shut down the U.S.-Mexico border over coronavirus fears. It’s the biggest step the administration has taken to limit humanitarian protection for people entering the U.S. without papers.
The Trump administration has created numerous obstacles over recent years for migrants to claim asylum and stay in the United States. But it had not — until now — allowed Border Patrol agents to simply expel migrants with no process whatsoever for hearing their claims.
The administration gave the Border Patrol unchallengeable authority over migrants seeking asylum by invoking a little-known power given to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. public health agency, to ban the entry of people or things that might spread “infectious disease” in the U.S. The CDC on March 20 barred entry of people without proper documentation, on the logic that they could be unexamined carriers of the disease and out of concern about the effects if the novel coronavirus swept through Customs and Border Protection holding facilities.
U.S. immigration law requires the government to allow people expressing a “well-founded” fear of persecution or torture to be allowed to pursue legal status in the United States. The law also requires the government to grant status to anyone who shows they likely face persecution if returned to their homeland.
“The Trump administration’s new rule and CDC order do not trump U.S. laws passed by Congress and U.S. legal obligations under refugee and human rights treaties,” Eleanor Acer, of the legal advocacy group Human Rights First, told ProPublica. “But the Trump administration is wielding them as the ultimate tool to shut the border to people seeking refuge.”
Two weeks ago, the Trump administration hastily put in place a policy, which the internal guidance calls Operation Capio, to push the overwhelming majority of unauthorized migrants into Mexico within hours of their apprehension in the U.S.
The Trump administration has been publicly vague on what happens under the new policy to migrants expressing a fear of persecution or torture, the grounds for asylum. But the guidance provided to Border Patrol agents makes clear that asylum-seekers are being turned away unless they can persuade both a Border Patrol agent — as well as a higher-ranking Border Patrol official — that they will be tortured if sent home. There is no exception for those who seek protection on the basis of their identities, such as race or religion.
Over 7,000 people have been expelled to Mexico under the order, according to sources briefed by Customs and Border Protection officials.
The guidance, shared with ProPublica by a source within the Border Patrol, instructs agents that any migrant caught entering without documentation must be processed for “expulsion,” citing the CDC order. When possible, migrants are to be driven to the nearest official border crossing and “expelled” into Mexico or Canada. (The Mexican government has agreed to allow the U.S. to push back not only Mexican migrants, but also those from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador; the four countries account for about 85% of all unauthorized border crossings.)
Under the Refugee Convention, which the U.S. signed onto in 1968, countries are barred from sending someone back to a country in which they could be persecuted based on their identity (specifically, their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group”).
The Trump administration has taken several steps to restrict the ability of migrants to seek asylum, a form of legal status that allows someone to eventually become a permanent U.S. resident. Until now, however, it has acknowledged that U.S. and international law prevents the U.S. from sending people back to a place where they will be harmed. And it has still allowed people who claim a fear of persecution to seek a less permanent form of legal status in the U.S. (In the last two weeks of February, 2,915 people were screened for humanitarian protection, according to the most recent statistics provided by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.)
The Border Patrol guidance provided to ProPublica shows that the U.S. is acting as if that obligation no longer applies.
Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, said it would not comment on the document provided to ProPublica. Asked whether any guidance had been provided regarding people who expressed a fear of persecution of torture, an agency spokesperson said in a statement, “The order does not apply where a CBP officer determines, based on consideration of significant law enforcement, officer and public safety, humanitarian, or public health interests, that the order should not be applied to a particular person.”
That language does not appear in the guidance ProPublica received. Instead, it specifies that any exception must be approved by the chief patrol agent of a given Border Patrol sector. One former senior CBP official, who reviewed the guidance at ProPublica’s request, said that because there are so many levels of hierarchy between a chief patrol agent and a line agent, agents would be unlikely to ask for an exemption to be made.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Shows how fragile our legal system and our democratic institutions are. Contrary to “popular liberal myth” they have not “been holding up well” in the age of Trump.A GOP Senate, of course, deserves much of the blame. But, it’s not like the Democrats have exactly put protecting the rule of law and Constitutional Due Process for the most vulnerable among us at the forefront.
We can also trace the disintegration of the legal system under Trump directly to the the failure of Roberts and the GOP majority on the Supremes to stand up for separation of powers, racial and religious justice, and Executive accountability. By ignoring a very clear record of invidious racial, religious, and political bias behind Trump’s Executive actions, and allowing a transparently contrived “national security” rationale to be used, in the so-called “Travel Ban Case” the Supremes’ majority basically signaled they had no intention of halting a White Nationalist assault on our Constitution and the rights of vulnerable minorities, particularly migrants. In other words, Roberts & Co. said: “It’s OK to ‘Dred Scottify’ away, we’ll never stand in your way.” And, true to their word, the “J.R. Five” have been more than happy to ignore the law and “green light” the White Nationalist nativist immigration agenda.
So, four decades of painstakingly hard cooperative work by “good government” advocates, NGOs, the private sector, and the international community to reach an imperfect, yet basically workable, consensus that saved countless lives and helped fuel our economic success, the Refugee Act of 1980 lies in tatters. Decades of progress destroyed in a little over three years. That’s “institutional failure” on a massive scale!
Don’t look for the Refugee Act or the rule of law to be resurrected any time soon. Under Trump and his would-be authoritarian kakistocracy, the “emergencies,” real and fabricated, will never end until democracy and human decency are dead and buried. And, don’t count on Mitch McConnell or John Roberts to stand in the way.
This is exactly how democracies die. But, we do have the remaining power to remove the kakistocracy at all levels of our government and start rebuilding America. Yes, Roberts and his gang have life tenure. But, with “regime change,” we can start appointing better judges who will aggressively push back against the far-right, anti-democracy judicial agenda! Folks who believe in Due Process, fundamental fairness, the rule of law, racial equality, human decency, and equal justice for all! Vote to save our nation in November!
In a country ground to a standstill by the coronavirus pandemic, there is one place normalcy reigns: immigration courts.
Overburdened judges oversee packed proceedings; attorneys shuttle clients and paperwork from room to room, often with interpreters in tow; aspiring legal citizens, or at least residents, follow closely, sitting through hearings famously described as death-penalty cases held in a traffic court.
The courts, along with visa applications, detention hearings and other immigration related bureaucracy, are seemingly the lone part of the federal government still expected to function as if a global pandemic hasn’t upended nearly every facet of American life. But those tasked with keeping the machine running say that they have received little guidance about how to keep the system running in the era of social isolation, and even less protection despite fears that immigration proceedings put some of the most vulnerable people in the country in the impossible position of choosing between their health or their home.
The Trump administration has refused to allow immigration courts and visa hearings to comply with the same social isolation standards followed by nearly every other civil aspect of government, and has not allowed for previously scheduled hearings to be postponed. The administration has also issued little in the way of guidance for judges, immigration attorneys or immigrants, whose hearings—which often take years to schedule—directly conflict with stay-at-home orders across the county.
“The immigration court’s refusal to adopt policies that protect the health of respondents, lawyers, judges and immigration court staff during the current pandemic forces immigrant families and their lawyers to make an impossible decision: endanger public health or risk being deported,” said Nadia Dahab, senior litigation attorney at Innovation Law Lab, one of half a dozen immigrants-rights groups that on Friday filed an emergency order challenging the operation of immigration courts despite the crisis.
“We are in the middle of a global pandemic, but the immigration court system is continuing to operate as if it’s business as usual,” said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. “The government has turned the court system into a public health hazard.”
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
With very few exceptions, deportations are hardly “essential” during a worldwide pandemic. Indeed, given that even asymptomatic individuals can and have spread the disease, deportation will certainly spread the risk to other countries that likely won’t be able to control it.
There is currently no cure, no vaccine, and no known way of controlling the coronavirus other than staying home. While this well-known information might have gone over the heads of EOIR and Article III Judges, you really wouldn’t need a law degree of even be very smart to figure out that Immigration Courts and the DHS Gulag need to be shut down. Now! No Article III Judge would actually want to trust his or her life to operating under the messed up “guidelines” issued by EOIR! So why is it OK for others?
Statistics show that the longer we wait to keep everyone home, the more individuals who will die! Why is that such a hard concept for EOIR officials and Article III Judges to grasp?
This is a time for “radical prudence” not “criminal recklessness.” The Government should have to demonstrate “clear and convincing” reasons and “best health practices” to go forward with any individual removal case during the pandemic.
Because so many Federal Judges have little understanding of what it means to appear in the Immigration “Courts” (which are not “courts” in any sense of the word) and because they use exceptionallypoor judgement in believing regime bureaucrats who have no credibility on issues of public health or anything else, over experts in the field, individuals will unnecessarily suffer and die.
At some point in the future, there will have to be an accounting for the whole mess that has been allowed to unfold as a result of Trump’s biased and irrational immigration policies. Examination of the unconscionably poor response by the Article III Judiciary must be part of that process. They are a key part of unnecessarily “endangering public health” as described in this article.
The Article III Judges we have now are what we have — they have life tenure. But, going forward we can do better — much better. And, our lives and the future of humanity will depend on it.
Due Process Forever! Better Judges For A Better Future! Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!
WASHINGTON, DC—In a lawsuit filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, several immigration lawyer groups and individuals with pending immigration cases demanded that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) take immediate necessary actions to prioritize the health and safety of attorneys and clients at risk in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the Immigration Justice Campaign— a joint initiative of the American Immigration Council and AILA—represented by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG) call for the government to take the following measures:
suspend in-person immigration hearings for detained individuals and provide robust remote access alternatives for detained individuals who wish to proceed with their hearings for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic;
guarantee secure and reliable remote communication between noncitizens in detention and their legal representatives;
provide Personal Protective Equipment for detained noncitizens and legal representatives who need to meet in person in facilities where PPE is required for entry;
alternatively, release detained immigrants who have inadequate access to alternative means of remote communication with legal representatives or with the immigration court.
The global pandemic of COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, has been characterized as the worst the world has seen since 1918. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has specifically highlighted in-person court appearances as a risk factor for coronavirus outbreaks. Federal courts and the Bureau of Prisons via the Attorney General have taken measures to minimize the health risk. Yet, EOIR, a component of DOJ which oversees immigration courts, has not taken the same protective measures and most immigration courts remain open for business, putting the health and safety of attorneys and clients at risk. The CDC has also highlighted the particularly acute dangers of COVID-19 outbreaks in detention, and more than 3,000 public health experts have called for the release of immigrants from detention. However, ICE has refused to take measures to release or protect immigration detainees from harm and continues to transport them back and forth from courthouses while denying them critical access to counsel during this crisis.
AILA Director of Federal Litigation Jesse Bless stated, “Simply put, EOIR and ICE need to adopt flexible measures to ensure safety for respondents and ensure access of counsel is not denied. Access to counsel is integral to the fundamental constitutional right to due process and recent incoherent and contradictory policies from EOIR and ICE are endangering the health and constitutional rights of countless individuals, including members of their own staff.”
Immigration Justice Campaign Director at the American Immigration Council Karen Siciliano Lucas said, “Through our Immigration Justice Campaign, we have seen what the COVID-19 pandemic means for our volunteer attorneys and their clients in detention. They struggle to communicate with each other and have real concerns about how they can fairly present their immigration cases. The government must immediately close immigration courts and utilize remote opportunities until the coronavirus is under control to protect the health of immigrants, immigration judges, court staff, and surrounding communities alike. Our nation is only as healthy as its people. We must call on our leaders to do all they can to protect and care for everyone—regardless of immigration status.”
“EOIR and ICE have failed to take critical actions necessary to protect the health and safety of detained immigrants and their attorneys, creating disastrous public health conditions in detention centers and at immigration courts,” said Sirine Shebaya, Executive Director of the National Immigration Project. “Instead of releasing immigrants who do not need to be detained, ICE is choosing to keep them detained and deprive them of access to counsel, while EOIR proceeds with their hearings as though nothing has changed. The agencies must take the necessary measures to provide access to counsel and ensure the availability of robust alternatives for detained immigrants and attorneys who cannot proceed with in-person hearings at this time.”
The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG) is a national non-profit organization that provides technical assistance and support to community-based immigrant organizations, legal practitioners, and all advocates seeking and working to advance the rights of noncitizens. NIPNLG utilizes impact litigation, advocacy, and public education to pursue its mission. Follow NIPNLG on social media: National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild on Facebook, @NIPNLG on Twitter.
The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. Follow the latest Council news and information on ImmigrationImpact.com and Twitter @immcouncil.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members. Follow AILA on Twitter @AILANational.
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As the Trump regime intentionally puts the public at risk in Immigraton Court and DHS’s “New American Gulag,” the public officials supposedly in charge of protecting the pubic and insuring the integrity of justice continue to operate with “malicious incompetence” and “criminal negligence.” Kakistocracy is bad! But, it becomes life-threatening in the time of true (rather than the regime’s usual bogus) emergency!
In the days leading up to the coronavirus shutdown I journeyed into a shadow part of our justice system, a courtroom rarely seen by the public.
Detained immigration court is a place where lawyers aren’t provided for the defense, where judges and prosecutors are on the same team, where guilty is presumed and the all-too-often verdict a different kind of death.
Who are these immigration judges? What exactly is detained court? And how is it able to get away with operating outside of what we might call normal law?
Get ready because you’re about to go there, to see the injustice that isn’t being shut down.
This is American Refugee.
Written, Engineered & Produced: Sam Graber
Music: Rare Medium, Punk Funk Metropolis, New Sound Underground
Recorded: Minneapolis, MN
Original Release: March 2020
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Disturbing and infuriating as Sam’s podcast is, I urge everyone to listen, even if you think you know what “really happens” in this godforsaken and deadly “darkest corner of the American ‘justice’ system.”Is this really the way we want to be remembered by generations that follow? As a country with so little collective courage and integrity that we allowed our fellow human beings to be treated this way? Think about it!
Even in this grimmest of worlds, their are true heroes. First and foremost, of course, arethe dedicated attorneys of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”), many working pro bono or “low bono” to vindicate essential legal, constitutional, and human rights in a system designed to grind them into dust and “dehumanize and demonize the other.”
Sound familiar? It should to anyone who studied Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. By and large, it wasn’t the “Brown Shirts” and the party faithful who enabled his rule. It was judges, lawyers, ministers, priests, businessmen, doctors, corporate moguls, and the average German who “facilitated” his annihilation of millions.
And, it started gradually, with laws stripping Jews of citizenship, property, and all legal rights and judges who enthusiastically enforced them, even against their own former judicial colleagues. Once people aren’t “humans” any more (Hitler liked the term “subhumans”) or “persons” before the law, there is no limit to what can be done, particularly when complicit judges join in the “fun and games.”
Among the other heroes are two “Courtside regulars:” Round TableMemberJudge (Ret.) Ilyce Shugall and NAIJ PresidentJudge A. Ashley Tabaddor.
Hon. Ilyce Shugall U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired) Director, Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.Hon. A. Ashley Tabaddor President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)
At a time when too many with knowledge of the travesty of what’s going on in our “Star Chambers” have chosen to look the other way or “go along to get along,” Ilyce and Ashley have consistently “spoken truth to power” in the face of a regime that often abuses its authority by punishing truth, honesty, and decency. Indeed, Billy Barr’s highly unethical move to “decertify” the NAIJ is a blatant attempt to punish and silence Ashley for revealing the truth.
One minor correction. Sam says that the Immigration Judges and the prosecutors both work for the DOJ. Actually, the prosecutors work for DHS. But, it’s largely a “distinction without difference” because the agenda at both DOJ and DHS is set by Trump, Miller, and the rest of the White Nationalist nativist cabal.
Indeed, former AG Sessions told Immigration Judges they were “partners” with the DHS prosecutors in enforcing immigration laws. So, the observation that in many Immigration Courtrooms migrants, including the unrepresented and children, face “two prosecutors” — the “judge” and the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel is accurate. The podcast relates how in some courts the “judge speaks for the prosecution,” the Assistant Chief Counsel is a “potted plant,” and nobody speaks for justice or the rights of the migrants. What’s missing: The impartial “neutral decisionmaker” required by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.
Thanks Ashley and Ilyce for all you do! You are true superstars!
As my friend, Professor Ayo Gansallo says on her e-mail profile:
Vote like your rights depend upon it!
“A country is not only what it does…it is also what it tolerates.”
On March 23, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a sua sponte order in a case pending before it, ordering the Petitioner’s immediate release from detention “in light of the rapidly escalating health crisis, which public health authorities predict will especially impact immigration detention centers.” In taking such action, the court used its authority to protect those under its jurisdiction.This is what judges and courts are supposed to do.
In contrast, the leadership of EOIR, the agency which oversees our nation’s immigration courts, sees its mission quite differently. With shocking indifference to those subject to its authority, including its own employees as well as members of the public, EOIR’s present leadership seeks only to please its Department of Justice masters, much like a dog rolling over or playing dead to earn a pat on the head from its owner.
As we all began to comprehend the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic weeks ago, EOIR refused to close immigration courts out of fear of sending a message contrary to Trump’s statements that the health crisis was a “hoax.” Christopher Santoro, the coward holding the title of Acting Chief Immigration Judge, ordered court staff to remove CDC-issued advisories on ways to help stop the spread (i.e. by not shaking hands) on the grounds that the immigration judges lacked the authority to hang such notices in their own courtrooms. In defense of his stupidity, Santoro offered the age-old excuse of the weak: that he was only following orders.
As the virus spread, and people began dying, EOIR kept its courts open far longer than it should have. An ICE attorney who represented the government throughout a crowded Master Calendar hearing in Newark, NJ on March 13 is presently in a coma in intensive care with COVID-19 fighting for his life. I’ve heard that an immigration judge in one of NYC’s immigration courts is presently ill with COVID-19 and pneumonia.There have been additional reports of others at immigration detention centers testing positive.
As cities locked down and sheltered in place, EOIR finally agreed to postpone non-detained hearings, but only until April 10. Hearings in detained courts continue to go forward.And for some reason, non-detained courts that were closed and should have remained so were reopened for the filing of documents only, with such openings announced by nighttime tweets. On Wednesday night, EOIR tweeted that several courts would “open” the next morning, without explaining whether that meant hearings that had previously been announced as postponed would instead go forward the following morning.As this occurred after business hours, there was no one to call for clarification. In fact, the opening was only to file documents.EOIR’s leadership (for want of a better term) has decided that all court filings due during the court closings are now due on March 30.Many lawyers in NYC have no way to meet this deadline, as their office buildings have been locked in compliance with the state’s shutdown order.
In order to accept these filings, EOIR is forcing court clerical staff to leave the safety of their homes, disobey the state PAUSE directive and expose themselves and their family members to possible infection in order to report to work. In NYC, traveling to work for most employees requires riding trains and buses, further increasing the risk of exposure.As schools are closed, how those court staff with child care needs will manage in a time requiring social isolation is unknown.
Furthermore, not all judges hearing detained cases are granting continuances despite the crisis. EOIR has not informed judges that the present crisis exempts them from meeting their performance metrics, which requires all judges to complete 700 cases per year, and to finish 95 percent of cases on the day of their first-scheduled individual hearing. Newly hired judges, who are on probation for two years, are therefore being forced to choose between their own job security and the health and welfare of all those who appear in their courts.
In recent days, EOIR has been besieged with letters from health care professionals, law professors, and various legal and advocacy organizations containing strong arguments to do what the Ninth Circuit had done instinctively and without having to be asked. In one of these letters, attorney George Terezakis, writing on behalf of the New York-based Association of Deportation Defense Attorneys (on whose Board of Directors I sit), described how the mother of a detained respondent who traveled from her home in Long Island to the court in Lower Manhattan by commuter train and subway to file a document for her son’s hearing was later diagnosed with the coronavirus. Terezakis continued: “Just as someone firing randomly into a crowd of Immigration Judges, court staff, attorneys, interpreters and detainees’ family members will foreseeably and inevitably kill someone…keeping the courts open ensures continued, needless infection, serious illness and death…”The letter continued: “This is a real crisis requiring real leadership to take decisive action that will place the safety of those under its jurisdiction ahead of other concerns. There is no escaping the inevitable consequences of inaction.”
As for Santoro, “I was only following orders” has historically fared poorly as a defense. Someone whose name is preceded by the title “Chief Immigration Judge” is required to stand up and take appropriate action in a time of crisis, and accept the consequences of such action. And for those in EOIR’s leadership chain who refuse to do so, it is incumbent on all of us to do everything in our power to ensure that they will be held fully accountable for their inaction under the next administration.
Copyright 2020 by Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
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Jason Dzubow The AsylumistHon. Susan G. Roy Law Office of Susan G. Roy, LLC Princeton Junction, NJ Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
The coronavirus is causing unprecedented disruptions to nearly every area of life, and the Immigration Courts are no exception. The courts were already in a post-apocalyptic era, with over one million cases in the backlog, and now the situation has been thrown into near total chaos. The fundamental problem is that EOIR–the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the office that oversees Immigration Courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals–is determined to continue adjudicating cases, even if that means risking the lives of its own employees; not to mention the lives of respondents, witnesses, and lawyers (and anyone who comes into contact with them).
EOIR is closing and re-opening various courts seemingly at random, often times with an after-hours Tweet, such as one last night at 9:23 PM, declaring that the Newark and Seattle Immigration Courts will reopen today for purposes of accepting filings and litigating detained cases (non-detained cases through April 10, 2020 have been postponed). In reaction to this latest news, Susan G. Roy, an attorney and former Immigration Judge (and my friend from law school – Hi Sue!) wrote last night–
NJ has the second highest number of corona virus cases in the nation, second only to NY. The Newark Immigration Court was closed because someone tested positive for the virus. Now a DHS attorney is fighting for his life in ICU, another attorney is very ill, and an interpreter has tested positive. These are the ones we know about. The Court was set to reopen on April 12. That is a reasonable time to ensure that everyone is safe and that the risk of transmission is limited. How is it even remotely reasonable to decide to open TOMORROW? Even if it is only for filings, court staff and others will be forced to violate the Governor’s Executive Order [directing all residents to stay at home], put themselves at great risk, and risk contaminating others, while many people who work in the same building remain under mandatory quarantine. You are ruthlessly jeopardizing the lives of your own employees, not to mention the public, for no legitimate reason.
And it’s not just advocates who are upset about EOIR’s decision-making. The National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ” – the judges’ union) and ICE attorneys are also reacting with anger. In response to EOIR’s tweet reopening the courts in Seattle and Newark, NAIJ responds, “Putting our lives at risk, one Tweet at a time.” And Fanny Behar-Ostrow, an ICE prosecutor and president of AFGE Local 511, says of EOIR: “It’s like insanity has taken over the agency,“
One of our members recently had a detained master calendar hearing scheduled for this past Friday, March 20, at the Varick St. Court. In order to prepare the bond application and for the master, the attorney and his staff met with the client‘s mother. A request for a bond hearing, together with the required relief applications, and a request for a telephonic hearing, were hand delivered to the Court at noon on Wednesday March 18th, 2020. The attorney did not receive any response to the motion for a telephonic hearing, and repeated calls to the court that day and the next went unanswered. To ensure that the Court was aware of the request, the client‘s mother retrieved from the attorney‘s office, Thursday evening, a letter to the court confirming the request for a telephonic hearing. She traveled to the court in Manhattan, from Long Island, and delivered the letter to the Clerk, and thereafter waited in the waiting area with family members of other detainees and other attorneys who were compelled to appear.
Today we received confirmation the client‘s mother has been diagnosed with COVID–19 virus, through medical testing. Can you imagine the number of people she came into contact with as the result of the decision to keep this court open? In addition to exposing the attorney and office staff, she traveled from her home on Long Island, on the Long Island Railroad, to Penn Station, from there to the subway and ultimately to the Court. Undoubtedly she came into contact with, and exposed, countless numbers of people, who in turn exposed countless others.
Anyone with a basic grasp of the fundamental principles of epidemiology – easily garnered from watching CNN or the local evening news – understands how easily this virus spreads. Given this, the decision to continue to keep the courts open can only be construed as a conscious decision on the part of EOIR to subject our Immigration Judges, court staff, interpreters, DHS attorneys, institutional defenders, members of the private bar, our clients, their families, and all whom they come into contact with, to an unreasonable risk of infection, serious illness and death.
NAIJ echoes this sentiment: “With [New York] the epicenter of the virus, DOJ is failing to protect its employees and the public we serve.”
The appropriate path forward is painfully obvious. EOIR should immediately close all courts for all cases. Staff should work remotely when possible to re-set dates and adjudicate bond decisions (so non-criminal aliens who do not pose a danger to the community can be released from detention). That is the best way to protect everyone involved with the Immigration Court system and the public at large.
Finally, I think it is important to name names. The Director of EOIR is James McHenry. I have never been a fan. Mr. McHenry was profoundly unqualified for his job, having gone from supervising maybe half a dozen people in a prior position to overseeing thousands at EOIR. However, he was politically aligned with the goals of the Trump Administration and he got the job. I have previously described the functioning of the agency during Mr. McHenry’s tenure as maliciousness tempered by incompetence. But these days, it is more like maliciousness exacerbated by incompetence. And in the current crisis, incompetence can be deadly. It’s time for Mr. McHenry and EOIR to do the right thing: Close the courts now.
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Thanks, Jeffrey, Jason, and Sue, my friends, for “telling it like it is!” Now is not the time for “go along to get along” bureaucratic responses.
Unfortunately, attorneys and court staff might now start paying with their lives for EOIR’s inexcusable two-decade failure to implement a functional e-filing system.
As one of my Round Table colleagues said, “Since when is a late night tweet ‘official notice?’” Don’t remember anything about “notice by tweet” in 8 CFR!
As I noted previously, J.R. and his tone-deaf, complicit Supremes effectively repealed the “Bivensdoctrine,” holding Federal officials responsible for “Constitutional torts” committed outside the scope of their official duties. They thereby essentially gave rogue Federal officials a “license to kill,” at least where the victim was merely an unarmed Mexican teenager. It appears that Barr, McHenry, and others in the “chain of command” are trying out their new “licenses.” They had better hope that J.R. & Co’s “willful blindness” andunwillingness to stand up for lives and Constitutional rights extend even when American citizen lawyers and court clerks are among the casualties.
Not surprisingly, EOIR’s contempt for due process and the lives of asylum seekers, families, children, and other migrants has expanded to include the lives of their own employees and members of the public forced to deal with this godawful, unconstitutional mess.
When the reckoning comes, we should not forget the negligent complicity of Congress as well as the Article III Courts for allowing the life-threatening, dysfunctional, unconstitutional mess that EOIR has become continue to operate and to threaten the health, safety, and welfare of all Americans.
Willie Nelson Country Music “Hall of Famer” & American Icon
“Vote ‘Em Out”
By Willie Nelson
If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out
That’s what Election Day is all about
The biggest gun we’ve got
Is called “the ballot box”
So if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out
Vote ’em out (vote ’em out)
Vote ’em out (vote ’em out)
And when they’re gone we’ll sing and dance and shout
Bring some new ones in
And we’ll start that show again
And if you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out
If it’s a bunch of clowns you voted in
Election Day is comin’ ’round again
If you don’t like it now
If it’s more than you’ll allow
If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out
Conservatives gutted the social safety net. Now, in a crisis, they’re embracing it.
By Tracy Jan
March 25 at 10:00 AM ET
Throughout his term, President Trump has chipped away at the social safety net, proposing budgets that gutted housing assistance, food stamps and health insurance for the poorest Americans. When Congress rejected those cuts, the Trump administration enacted rules to make it harder to access federal benefits, such as requiring recipients to work.
Now, with businesses shuttered, workers laid off, and scores more worrying about buying groceries, being evicted and getting sick, the swelling need for federal assistance has forced even conservative lawmakers to embrace government protections in a series of sweeping stimulus bills.
Under the $2 trillion stimulus deal reached in the Senate early Wednesday, Republicans are proposing sending direct cash payments of $1,200 to individual Americans, an idea that, on the surface, echoes former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s universal basic income platform. They want to bolster the unemployment insurance system after many GOP-led states spent years enacting restrictive criteria and reducing benefits.
“Anybody who is a moderate-wage worker who just experienced an economic lockdown in their state is in distress. Most people don’t have savings,” said Robert Rector, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that guides much of the Trump administration’s policymaking.
[Facing eviction as millions shelter in place]
Rector, an architect of the 1996 federal welfare overhaul that instituted work requirements under President Bill Clinton, generally opposes safety net measures that do not promote work and marriage. But he would like to see more-generous benefits for individuals and cities in crisis in response to the coronavirus — for a finite period of time.
“Quite frankly, I’m willing to spend more money right now,” he said. “It’s a very different thing in an emergency.”
[[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]]
The $100-billion-plus Families First coronavirus response package Trump signed last week dramatically expands paid sick leave and family medical leave for tens of millions of workers, provisions aimed at blunting the economic impact of the pandemic.
The United States lags behind other developed countries when it comes to providing universal health care as well as paid leave for sick workers and those who have to care for family members.
“Here we had this ‘strong economy’ and all of a sudden the bubble has burst, and policymakers are scrambling to put into place basic protections other societies have,” said Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.
[As layoffs skyrocket, the holes in America’s safety net are becoming apparent]
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Read Tracy’s full article at the link.
We recently went through a period of sustained economic growth and high employment that started under Obama and continued under Trump, until now. A wise nation might have used increased tax revenues to shore up the safety net, repair infrastructure, reduce spending on futile wars and defense overruns, invest for the future, and/or reduce deficit. Instead, the GOP frittered away the opportunity by mindless Government shutdowns and unnecessary tax cuts that lined the pockets of the already well-off while doing little to help the long term situation of the average American family. Indeed companies were encouraged to cut benefits to workers to pay out more to shareholders and to their executives, without much regard to the competence or value to the company of the latter.
Now, the embarrassing inadequacies and gaps of our safety net are being exposed every day. Even the GOP has turned, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to throwing several trillion into the breach, as long as it all doesn’t all go to those who need it most. Natural disasters have become the “new normal.” But, under Trump and his kakistocracy, America has consistently been underprepared to meet them.
That the hardest hit Americans get a substantial chunk of this emergency funding is a tribute to Pelosi, Schumer, and the Dems. Left to their own devices, Trump, Mitch, and the GOP would have basically mailed a modest check (or checks) to most Americans (other than the poorest) and funneled the rest into the pockets of their businesses buddies and state cronies with little oversight or accountability. Can you imagine the Grifter-in-Chief and his toadies being allowed to divvy up the loot, in secret, no less?
This emergency is unusual in nature. But, emergencies come and emergencies go. Presidents come and they (thankfully) go. What doesn’t go away is the need for a strong well-developed safety net that covers basic health care, unemployment, income assistance, and retirement benefits for all Americans, not just the wealthy. History has shown that’s not likely to happen as long as the GOP grifters remain in power.
We have a chance to save America and put ourselves on a better course for the future. Vote Trump and his GOP out in November. Your future and that of future generations will depend on it.
President Donald Trump’s insistence on downplaying the coronavirus risks reached dangerous levels Monday as he scoffed at medical advice and threatened to open up the economy despite skyrocketing case numbers.
At the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing, the president focused on wanting to reopen businesses very soon despite global guidance to essentially shut down societies and encourage people to stay home.
“It’s bad, and obviously the numbers are going to increase with time, and they’re going to start to decrease, and we’re going to be opening our country up for business because our country was meant to be open,” Trump said, despite the rising COVID-19 death toll.
The U.S. saw confirmed cases rise to more than 41,000 on Monday, with nearly 600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins medical school’s coronavirus resource center. World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that the pandemic is actually accelerating ― stressing that it took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000 cases and just four days for the third 100,000 cases.
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Yeah, that corrupt GOP vote to acquit could turn out to seal the fate of millions of Americans. With no plan, no brains, and no coherent strategy, you just have to hope you and those you love won’t be among Trump’s victims.
The markets should love chaos and death. But the problem is in Italy other places, they can’t even have funerals. So even “death stocks” might not be a good investment.
Wow! Talk about “malicious incompetence.”Trump is certainly leading the charge!
Until Monday morning, President Trump’s most horrifying utterance with regard to the coronavirus was his sarcastic reaction to news that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), whose wife has multiple sclerosis and therefore is in the high-risk category for infection, was self-isolating due to potential exposure to the coronavirus. “Gee, that’s too bad,” Trump snarked about his political rival. As bad as that was — mocking the possible life-threatening illness of others — he managed to top that with a truly horrifying tweet:
The cure — social distancing — has been imposed to save thousands of lives. But in Trump’s mind, the resulting economic slowdown and bear market from those measures are worse than a potentially catastrophic death toll. That’s the only reasonable interpretation of his outburst, which coincides with reporting from the New York Times that, “at the White House, in recent days, there has been a growing sentiment that medical experts were allowed to set policy that has hurt the economy, and there has been a push to find ways to let people start returning to work.”
For Trump and many in his party, what matters most is money. (“Some Republican lawmakers have also pleaded with the White House to find ways to restart the economy, as financial markets continue to slide and job losses for April could be in the millions.”) To them, letting medical experts set policy to combat a pandemic is a serious error. “Worse” than the deaths of thousands of Americans, in the minds of the narcissistic president, is the chance that his reelection could be impaired by bad economic numbers. Does it dawn on him that thousands of dead Americans might reflect poorly on him as well?
[More coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
Trump’s latest spasm of indifference to other humans comes at a time when one of those experts, Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, warns that the situation is about to get much worse. In a CBS interview, Adams said: “I didn’t expect to be starting off my week with such a dire message for America, but the numbers are going to get worse this week.” He reiterated, “Things are going to get worse before they get better. And we really need everyone to understand this is serious, to lean into what they can do to flatten the curve.”
Here we see the gap between Trump’s pecuniary and political interests (which he thinks depend entirely on the stock market) and the experts trying to get us to do things that would prevent greater loss of life. Trump’s behavior — denying the crisis, painting it as a threat from foreigners (when community spread is already well underway), constantly lying about progress being made, attacking political rivals and congratulating himself on his response (and forcing recitals of praise from advisers) — tells us that even a pandemic, in his mind, is all about him.
Trump may think he can sugarcoat coronavirus, but media critic Erik Wemple says it is time for the government to speak with one clear voice about public health. (Erik Wemple/The Washington Post)
With thousands of families facing a health crisis and millions suffering economic tragedy, Trump whines that he has not received sufficient credit for his actions (which mayors, governors and scientists say were grossly negligent and insufficient). All the while, he remains poised to thrust his hand into the cookie jar of government bailout money.
The experts must be heeded. The governors and mayors must be supported. Trump must be ignored or must delegate all significant decision-making to someone competent and conscientious of the human suffering unfolding before us. Otherwise, we are in grave trouble.
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With Trump, the goalposts are continually moving; what we might once have thought of as the “rock bottom” in the “race to the bottom” suddenly becomes just another milepost.
We are already in “grave trouble,” Jennifer! With a dim-witted narcissist sociopath in charge, a party of elitist grifters running the Senate, an irresponsible minority of the electorate mindlessly committed to Trump’s insanity, and a system that facilitates minority rule, the majority of us who are interested in saving lives (including those of the foregoing group) and preserving our democratic republic are, indeed, in dire straits.
Let’s flip Steven’s warped thinking around: Instead of giving a $500 billion bailout to America’s fat cat corporations, why not give a mere $1 billiondirectly to each of America’s335 million people. They could decide how best to spend it to “pump up” the economy: their own health care, investing in corporations, buying bonds, endowing universities, building houses, starting small businesses, going to the racetrack, taking cruises, philanthropy, or just spending it all wildly on rampant consumerism. Much cheaper than the bailout. Hell, Trump supporters could even choose to spend a night at every Trump property in the world!
And, better yet, neither Moore, “Munchkin,” Kudlow, Kushner, nor any of the other grifter/kakistocrats surrounding Trump could tell “average Americans” how to spend their money. After all, forgotten to Trump and his GOP, it actually is the people’s money with which they are lining their pockets and the those of their fat cat corporate buddies while tuning out our health care concerns. Heck, what’s a human life compared with a dollar?
Federal immigration courts that handle cases of detained immigrants are still open, despite a growing number of states and cities issuing “stay at home” mandates to combat COVID-19. On Sunday night, the organizations representing immigration judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers jointly demanded—for the second time in a week—that the courts be closed.
Meanwhile, detained immigrants are staging hunger strikes at three New Jersey jails to protest the lack of sanitary conditions they fear could lead to outbreaks. Their protests come after confirmation of positive tests from two staff members connected with two other jails in the state that house immigrants.
The pipeline to feed those jails remains open. Although immigration enforcement officers have scaled back operations, they say they will continue to focus their enforcement on “public safety risks” and people subject to “mandatory detention on criminal grounds.”
“Their recklessness towards immigrant community well-being and immigrant lives is particularly disturbing—and even more dangerous in this moment because a virus doesn’t ask you for your legal status before it decides what to do,” said Camille Mackler, a New York immigration lawyer who is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a left-leaning think tank for national security issues. “This could get everyone sick.”
The Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies are intersecting with a highly contagious disease at a time when New York State leads the nation with at least 20,875 confirmed coronavirus cases. In New York on Friday, Attorney General Letitia James joined Bitta Mostofi, New York City’s commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, in calling for a shutdown of all immigration courts. They agreed with the judge’s union and lawyer organizations in urging for bond to be filed electronically.
The Legal Aid Society and the Bronx Defenders—two New York legal providers—sued in federal court on Friday to have clients who are susceptible to coronavirus released from ICE detention, including those with diabetes, heart disease, neurocognitive disorder, kidney disease, and lung and liver problems.
Officials with ICE said on Monday that there had been no detainees with confirmed cases of coronavirus of individuals in the agency’s custody. They said that they were testing detainees according to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but would not say how many. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “The health, welfare and safety” of ICE detainees “is one of the agency’s highest priorities.”
. . . .
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Read the rest of Liz’s report at the link.
And, here’s the full text of the letter from NY AG Letitia James:
VIA EMAIL
The Honorable William Barr Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20530
Administrative Chief Immigration Judge Kevin Mart, Acting Court Administrator Paul Friedman
Varick Immigration Court
201 Varick Street, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10014
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Philip J. Montante, Jr. Batavia Immigration Court
4250 Federal Drive, Room F108
Batavia, NY 14020
(212) 416-8050
STATE OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 28 LIBERTY ST.
NEW YORK, NY 10005
March 20, 2020
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Carrie C. Johnson-Papillo Ulster Immigration Court
750 Berme Road, PO Box 800
Napanoch, NY 12458
Re: New York Immigration Court Operations During COVID-19 Outbreak
Dear Attorney General Barr, Honorable Judges, and Mr. Friedman:
I write to support efforts to protect practitioners, staff, and the public at New York State immigration courts amid the expanding COVID-19 outbreak. Organizations that provide free legal representation to indigent non-citizens at these courts, including those that make up the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, and the ECBA Volunteer Lawyers Project, have reported that some of its members have COVID-19 symptoms or have been exposed to an individual with COVID-19. These organizations requested measures to reduce the risk of exposure to the virus, and while EOIR has
taken some steps to reduce hearings and court traffic for non-detained cases, current policies still require extensive in-person interaction in cases involving detained individuals.
During this national public health emergency, it is incumbent upon us all to mitigate the spread of this novel virus. Court administrations at the state and federal level have instituted protocols that allow court business to continue but also safeguard the public health, including closing non-essential parts of the court and adjourning new trials. A similar approach is appropriate and warranted in immigration courts.
I therefore ask that you at a minimum adopt the proposals put forth by NYIFUP providers at all immigration courts in New York State. These proposals include adjourning master calendar hearings, presumptively permitting telephonic appearances for bond and individual hearings, and presumptively permitting extensions and continuance requests. Especially in courts where respondents appear in person and where witnesses must travel from out of town, these measures are necessary to minimize human contact. I also request that you institute a means for practitioners to submit these motions electronically. Currently, practitioners are required to submit these motions in person at the court or through the mail via post offices. Requiring these in-person or by mail submissions not only causes delays in submitting these important requests, it also unnecessarily jeopardizes the health of those involved.
These are unprecedented times. It is imperative that all agencies adjust policies and practices to protect the health and welfare of our community. I implore you to take these critical steps here.
Sincerely,
Letitia James
New York State Attorney General
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Don’t expect much to happen until folks start dropping and dying. By then, it will be too late! But, perhaps that’s just “business as usual” in a system that has made rationality and concern for humanity non-factors. And, to date, there has been no accountability, by Congress or the Article IIIs for any of the outrageous, life-threatening, scofflaw, unconstitutional actions of the Trump regime in the immigration area. Indeed, the Supremes and other U.S. appellate courts have actually “rubber stamped” their “seal of judicial approval” one some of the most outrageous conduct employed by Miller and the White Nationalist cabal.
While the lives and human dignity of migrants has been of little visible concern to the Congress, the Supremes, and many Circuit Courts of Appeals (that’s actually what the regime’s program of “Dred Scottifying” and “maximum dehumanization” aims to achieve) perhaps the illness and even death of judges, lawyers, and court personnelwill finally get the attention of the “exalted ones” in their rarified, risk-free air. On the other hand, the Senate GOP doesn’t seem to have “gotten the message” even as their own colleagues start to drop.
Interviews with 10 workers at immigration courts around the country reveal fear, contradictory messages and continuing perils for the employees.
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On Tuesday night — over a day after several Bay Area counties issued shelter-in-place orders barring most people from leaving their homes — the San Francisco immigration court sent an email to staff: Hearings were being postponed nationwide for most immigrants, so the court would be closed starting Wednesday. (The text of the email was provided to ProPublica.)
On Wednesday, however, employees were directed to get onto a conference call, according to two participants. There they were told the Tuesday night email was wrong. The court wasn’t closed. They would have to come into the office — or use their vacation time to stay home. When staff asked about the shelter-in-place orders, the response was that the Department of Justice, which runs immigration courts, took the position that those were local laws and didn’t apply to federal employees.
The Trump administration has reduced immigration court operations in the past week, by postponing hearings for non-detained immigrants and closing a handful of courts to the public. Those actions came after the unions representing immigration prosecutors and judges issued a rare public call for courts to close.
The reduced court operations came after weeks of employees raising concerns privately and, they say, receiving few and unhelpful answers. And because the closures are determined solely by whether a court is hearing cases of detained immigrants, rather than by the level of health peril, employees still feel they’re putting their health at risk every time they come into the office as instructed.
That’s the picture that emerges from interviews with 10 federal employees who work at immigration courts across the country. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity. Many said they had raised concerns internally about their exposure to COVID-19 to their managers or hadn’t been informed of potential exposures.
“When I signed up for this job, I thought it might be morally compromising at times,” one immigration court employee told ProPublica, “but I never thought it would be compromising of my health and safety.”
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the DOJ agency that oversees immigration courts, told ProPublica that agency headquarters was responsible for deciding when courts closed, but it did not confirm or deny specifics of the employees’ allegations, saying, “We do not comment on internal communications or internal personnel operations.”
In Denver, one prosecutor interviewed by ProPublica was alarmed by a judge’s frequent coughs during a hearing last Friday. “Don’t mind my coughing,” the judge said, according to the prosecutor. “I don’t think it’s coronavirus.” The following Tuesday, the prosecutor noticed that the judge was out for the rest of the week and emailed a court staffer in concern: Was it the coronavirus? Should she be taking precautions? The staffer’s reply: For privacy reasons, the prosecutor’s questions couldn’t be answered.
Only after news broke to the public on Tuesday night that a judge at the Denver immigration court had been diagnosed with COVID-19 (the disease caused by the new coronavirus) did court officials follow up with the prosecutor and confirm her suspicions. Other attorneys the judge had been in close contact with were notified the next day. The court remained open through Thursday, when the entire building it was housed in was shut down for deep cleaning by the General Services Administration. (It’s currently set to reopen Monday.)
In New York, legal aid groups sent a letter to immigration court officials saying that two of their attorneys had symptoms of COVID-19 and a third had been exposed to someone who’d tested positive. All three attorneys had appeared in court the past week, and all had hearings scheduled the following day. The courts didn’t say anything to their employees about the letter, according to multiple sources.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has pressured the immigration courts to process as many immigrants as quickly as possible — pressuring judges to hear more cases and complete them within a year, and making it harder for immigrants or attorneys to postpone hearings. Now, they face a public health crisis that requires everyone to reduce person-to-person contact.
Immigration court workers have two concerns. The first is that the courts are often crowded and require close contact with members of the public. The second is that, like most employees of any type, especially those who take public transit, they are exposed every time they leave their homes to work.
Employees remain concerned about their exposure over the past few weeks, while courts were running as usual. Employees in New York and California — the states hardest hit by the pandemic to date — told ProPublica that their requests for “deep cleaning” were rejected by managers, and that they were bringing their own Clorox wipes and disinfectant spray to the office.
Most immigration court business happens in person. Even trying to postpone an immigration hearing (for example, due to illness) requires an attorney to file a paper form with a clerk. And if an immigrant doesn’t show up for a hearing, they’re at risk of getting ordered deported in absentia. In at least one New York court, according to two people who work there, the chief judge told employees Monday to issue absentia deportation orders if immigrants weren’t showing up, even if the coronavirus was the suspected cause.
Policies the Trump administration introduced before the COVID-19 pandemic put considerable pressure on judges and prosecutors not to allow immigrants to postpone their hearings. Judges face a “performance standard” of completing 80% of their cases within a year — a standard over 90% of judges don’t meet, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges. But the more than 150 judges who have been hired in the past two years are still in their probationary period, where they could be fired for failing to meet performance standards.
While many judges have been lenient in granting coronavirus-related postponements, others have not. Last week, according to one California immigration court employee, a judge took a break from a hearing to tell colleagues that the immigrant’s attorney claimed to be sick, but because he wasn’t coughing, the hearing would move forward.
One email sent by the chief prosecutor at the Miami court Tuesday, read to ProPublica, told prosecutors that if an immigrant or her attorney claimed to be sick, any postponement should be counted against the immigrant (preventing them from requesting another postponement). If the immigrant didn’t want to postpone, and the judge wasn’t willing to hold the hearing by phone, the prosecutor was instructed to contact her manager — who would assess the claim of illness himself before deciding what to do. (A call to the chief prosecutor in Miami was not immediately returned.)
Most communication, though, has been oral. In at least two courts, chief judges were asked to put policies in writing and declined.
Employees have been in the dark about who, exactly, is making the decisions about which courts are open and when employees are allowed to work from home or take leave to stay home. “The word is that it’s out of their hands. Everything is out of everybody’s hands,” Fanny Behar-Ostrow, president of the union representing immigration prosecutors, told ProPublica Wednesday. “I don’t know who’s making the calls, but they’re wrong.”
An email obtained by the Miami Herald, written by the assistant chief immigration judge in charge of the Miami immigration court on Wednesday, said that closure decisions were ultimately being made by “the White House” — something that employees at other courts also said their managers had suggested. But chief judges gave conflicting explanations about which decisions were subject to White House approval; one chief judge told employees that the White House had to be involved in decisions about remote work, while other chief judges made those decisions themselves.
It’s not clear who at the White House is involved or how. Immigration officials told the Herald that the ultimate decision was made by the Office of Management and Budget. However, according to the employees ProPublica spoke to, some immigration court officials used “White House” to refer to policies set by the Office of Personnel Management. The assistant chief immigration judge (the judge in charge of a given immigration court location) for one California court told employees on March 12 that they’d had a phone call with staff for Vice President Mike Pence, who’s running the official coronavirus task force.
But to many employees, the specter of “White House” involvement raised concerns that the administration’s immigration policy priorities were getting in the way of its public health obligations.
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Read Dara’s full article at the link.
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The confusion engendered by politicized immigration enforcement in support of a White Nationalist agenda doesn’t end with the Immigration Courts. Despite, or perhaps because of, a number of public statements by DHS political hacks, there’s still plenty of uncertainty and angst about DHS’s enforcement and detention policies. Chloe Hadavas over at Slate sets out what happens when politicos take over law enforcement and justice.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced on Wednesday that it will halt most arrests and deportations, focusing only on individuals who are “public safety risks” and who are “subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds,” as the coronavirus sweeps across the U.S. and public health officials scramble to limit the virus’ spread.
Undocumented immigrants are often afraid to seek medical care for fear of deportation. And even as state and local officials encouraged anyone who needed medical treatment to seek help, ICE officers continued to make arrests, including in areas hit hard by the virus. But in the temporary change in enforcement, ICE also said that it won’t carry out operations near health care facilities, including hospitals, doctors’ offices, and urgent care facilities, “except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” the agency said in a statement. “Individuals should not avoid seeking medical care because they fear civil immigration enforcement.”
Immigration experts said ICE’s decision was somewhat unexpected, though they remain cautious about how to interpret it. “I’m always surprised to hear that they’re going to scale back on their efforts,” said Jennifer M. Chacón, a UCLA law professor who focuses on immigration. ICE’s statement marks a distinct shift from the agency’s operations under the Trump administration. Both Chacón and Karla McKanders, a law professor who directs the Immigration Practice Clinic at Vanderbilt University, said that it reminded them of the “felons, not families” immigration policy of the Obama administration. “You read it and it basically looks like the Obama-era enforcement priority statement, and you just wonder why it takes a pandemic to get ICE to think about prioritizing resources and focusing efforts on public safety,” said Chacón.
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You can read the rest of Chloe’s article at the link.
“I don’t know who’s making the calls, but they’re wrong.” Kind of “says it all” about how the regime treats its own employees and the public good.
Meanwhile, Article III Courts, which have had more than ample opportunity to put an end to the constitutional farce taking place in Immigration Court and also to direct the DHS to take overdue steps to release non-dangerous (that is, most) immigration detainees before the epidemic sweeps chronically health-endangering immigration prisons in their New American Gulag (“NAG”), have once again “swallowed the whistle.” The Gulag, where kids are caged and put in “iceboxes,” families separated, and folks sometimes left to die, all for no reason other than “we can do it and nobody’s going to stop us” will haunt not only those corrupt public servants who established and operated it, but also those like legislators, judges, and public health officials who failed in their duties to end the human rights abuses.
Perhaps the Article IIIs are “running scared” because without the ongoing clown show in the U.S. Immigration Courts, the Article IIIs would be in line for the title of “Americas’s Most Dysfunctional Courts.”
Also, I think it’s time for Slate to take “Intern” off Chloe Hadavas’s title and ink this “up and coming talent” to a full time contract covering immigration and justice issues.
Due Process Forever. Dysfunctional Courts That Endanger The Public, Never!
🤡☠️
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
PWS
03-21-20
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UPDATE: Gullible, complicit U.S. Judges in their ivory tower bubbles with plenty of hand sanitizers might be willing to believe DHS’s claims that everything is “hunky dory” in the New American Gulag, but the truth is stark, ugly, and predictable for anyone familiar with the regime’s immigration antics, lies, and cover-ups:
“The cells stink. The toilets don’t flush. There’s never enough soap. They give out soap once a week. One bar of soap a week. How does that make any sense?”
Read the latest from Vice News, as hunger strikes break out in three New Jersey detention facilities:
Meanwhile, Courtside has been receiving reports from multiple sources in New Jersey about rapidly deteriorating conditions in Immigration Courts and the Gulag, failure to follow Federal health guidelines, possible positive coronavirus tests among ICE employees, and efforts by the the regime to keep the truth about about the growing health risks for detainees, judges, lawyers, and other personnel forced to deal with this dangerous, broken, and totally dysfunctional system “under wraps.”
I have also received disturbing, yet credible, reports of continuances for “at risk” attorneys being denied by some Immigration Judges, while other judges have received “no assurances” from their management “handlers” that the regime’s due-process-mocking “production quotas” will be waived during the health emergency! ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
