CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/top-homeland-security-officials-urge-criminal-prosecution-of-parents-who-cross-border-with-children/2018/04/26/a0bdcee0-4964-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

The nation’s top immigration and border officials are urging Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to detain and prosecute all parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children, a stark change in policy that would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together.

If approved, the zero-tolerance measure could split up thousands of families, although officials say they would not prosecute those who turn themselves in at legal ports of entry and claim asylum. More than 20,000 of the 30,000 migrants who sought asylum during the first quarter — the period from October-December — of the current fiscal year crossed the border illegally.

In a memorandum that outlines the proposal and was obtained by The Washington Post, officials say that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the steadily rising number of attempted crossings. Most parents now caught crossing the border illegally with their children are quickly released to await civil deportation hearings.

The memo sent to Nielsen on Monday — and signed by acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services L. Francis Cissna and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan — said attempted crossings by parents with children increased to nearly 700 a day last week, the highest level since 2016. The officials predicted that the number will continue to rise if Nielsen does not act.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has filed a federal lawsuit in California over earlier instances of family separations at the border, said the proposal would make “children as young as 2 and 3 years old pawns in a cruel public policy experiment.”

. . . .

Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown law professor and asylum expert, said that expanding the forced separation of parents and children could cause severe psychological harm to families that ultimately might have legal grounds under federal asylum law to remain in the United States permanently.

“I think it’s absolutely wrenching psychologically and terrible for both the children and the parents,” he said. “What are we doing to those children psychologically that will haunt us years down the road if they become Americans?”

Federal officials say asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, raising concerns about fraud. Advocates for immigrants say those seeking asylum have legitimate claims under federal law and are fleeing some of the world’s most dangerous countries.

***************************************

Read Maria’s complete article at the link.

I associate myself completely with the remarks of my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag. Cruelty to children is stupid, counterproductive — children are our future — and morally wrong. It will definitely haunt us as a country for generations to come. It’s largely what I said before about the misguided policies of the Obama Administration. But, as with many things, the Trump Administration takes every dumb and wrong immigration policy of the past and multiplies it.

PWS

04-27-18

JUSTICE ON ICE – SESSIONS DOJ’S “AMNESTY FOR WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS” — BEATING UP UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS IN CRIMINAL COURT WHILE DOING A LOUSY JOB ON REAL CRIME – “NUMBERS GAME” CONCEALS WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS @ DOJ — “If you’re working on a misdemeanor illegal entry case, as a matter of fact, you are not working on something more serious,” Purdon, who left office in 2015, told HuffPost. “It is a net drain on the scarce resources of U.S. attorneys. Full stop.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-wants-to-make-the-justice-department-more-like-ice_us_5ae0f3d3e4b02baed1b60aff

Roque Planas reports for HuffPost:

When Tim Purdon became U.S. attorney for North Da kota in 2010, he had a priority: improving public safety on the state’s four Indian reservations. Prosecuting violent crimes on Indian reservations falls to the Justice Department, and Purdon himself had worked similar cases as a public defender before taking on the U.S. attorney job.

But when Purdon took office, he found that more than a third of his criminal caseload consisted of immigration prosecutions, even though North Dakota lies more than 1,000 miles from the border with Mexico. Despite the state’s proximity to Canada, the defendants were by and large Latin Americans who’d been caught in the U.S. after getting deported. The cases were easy to win. All prosecutors needed was to present paperwork proving the prior deportation. But the cases sapped time away from Purdon’s prosecutors, whom he’d have rather tasked with crimes on the reservations or white-collar cases.

That all happened under the Obama administration. But President Donald Trump has doubled down on immigration prosecutions, seeing it as a way to draft the Justice Department into his immigration crackdown. Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced what he called a “zero tolerance” policy on immigration crime, directing all U.S. attorneys in the four Southwestern border states to prosecute every misdemeanor illegal border-crossing case “to the extent practicable.”

Purdon was livid.

“If you’re working on a misdemeanor illegal entry case, as a matter of fact, you are not working on something more serious,” Purdon, who left office in 2015, told HuffPost. “It is a net drain on the scarce resources of U.S. attorneys. Full stop.”

Despite Trump’s insistence that the border is in “crisis,” illegal entries from Mexico have hit their lowest level since 1971. But illegal entry prosecutions are still taking up half of the federal criminal courts’ workload. If Sessions gets his way, that percentage will continue to increase: Every U.S. attorney in the country will be doing more of the same work that Purdon complained about, and the five U.S. attorneys whose districts touch the southwest border will take on increasingly petty cases to keep the numbers up.

“We want to achieve this zero tolerance across the border and we are redirecting resources,” Sessions told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday.

. . . .

“Isn’t the reality of the situation that the Justice Department is ICE?” Erendira Castillo, an attorney who has represented defendants facing immigration prosecutions for two decades in Tucson, told HuffPost. “Let’s call a spade a spade.”

. . . .

Doubling down on such small potatoes cases might make sense if the Justice Department did an effective job confronting more serious crimes. But its track record on more complex investigations doesn’t always inspire confidence.

Some 9 million Americans lost their homes in the aftermath of the 2007 housing and financial crisis. Despite widespread allegations that fraudulent and predatory behavior on the part of banks and peddlers of predatory mortgages drove that crisis, the Justice Department secured a conviction in only one major case against an investment banker.

That institutional failure wasn’t a fluke — it’s also a reflection of the Justice Department’s priorities. As the number of immigration prosecutions grew by a factor of 11 over the last two decades, the number of prosecutions for white-collar crime in federal court plummeted by 41 percent, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The steady decline continued in 2017, Sessions’ first year as attorney general.

“DOJ’s real amnesty policy,” said Matt Stoller, a fellow with anti-monopolization nonprofit Open Markets Institute, “was for white-collar executives.”

Yes, DOJ under Sessions very clearly has become ICE, or more accurately DHS. That makes it a totally inappropriate place for the supposedly impartial U.S. Immigration Courts.
As the article points out, this trend stretches back over a number of Administrations of both parties.  Certainly, the Obama DOJ misused EOIR as part of its futile “Border Surge Enforcement Strategy” setting off a flurry of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) that if not the immediate cause of the unmanageable backlogs certainly was a primary contributor and aggravator of the problem. DOJ simply doesn’t belong in the Immigration Court business — in all honesty, it probably never has.
PWS
04-27-18

SESSIONS’S ATTACK ON DUE PROCESS IN THE CRUMBLING U.S. IMMIGRATON COURT SYSTEM FRONT PAGE NEWS IN LA TIMES — Joseph Tanfani’s Article Makes Page One Headlines As Session’s Outrageous Actions Deepen, Aggravate Court Crisis!

I had already posted the online version of Joseph’s article, which quoted me, among other sources:  http://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/04/07/joseph-tanfani-la-times-more-critical-reaction-to-sessionss-immigration-court-quotas-if-youve-got-a-system-that-is-producing-defective-cars-making-the-system-run-fas/

Today, it’s on the front page of the “hard copy” edition of the LA Times where it belongs.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=99ce5eb1-0b1e-4e1a-9afd-5bf75d1

Thanks to great reporting from Joseph and others like him, Session’s outrageous war on the rights of the most vulnerable among us and his evil plan to destroy Due Process in the United States Immigration Courts is getting the nationwide attention it deserves. Whether the Immigration Courts will be saved and Sessions held accountable for his abusive behavior and mocking of our Constitution and the rule of law remains to be seen. But, it’s critically important to publicly record his invidious motivations and the corrupt misuse of Government authority that’s really going on here.

 

PWS

04-18-18

 

GONZO’S WORLD — Dem Congressmen Accuse Sessions Of Illegal Ideological Hiring At EOIR, Demand Answers!

Check out this letter outlining continuing corruption, cover-ups, and undermining of Due Process in the Immigration Courts by the highly politicized Sessions DOJ & EOIR:

***************************************
For those of us who served in the DOJ during the Bush II Administration, this is deja vu.
First, the “Ashcroft Purge” at the BIA effectively destroyed judicial independence and impartiality within the Immigration Courts and sent them into a tailspin from which the  system never fully recovered. Then, the “Monica Goodling era”  resulted in political hiring of “carer officials,” including U.S. Immigration Judges.
The Obama Administration did nothing to correct these abuses and in some cases actually ratified them through their inaction and their “cover up ” of the truth. Now, under Gonzo, the Trump Administration is taking improper political and ideological influence on the U.S. Immigration Courts to a new level of abuse.
It’s highly unlikely that a group of Democratic Congressmen will get much “satisfaction” out of this inquiry. But, hopefully Sessions and his corrupt crew eventually will be held accountable for their lawlessness, bias, and gross misconduct in public office — by history if not by the law.
Just another of the many, many reasons why we need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court now!
PWS
04-18-18

GONZO’S WORLD: “Apocalypto” & “Mikey P” Headline SNL “Cold Opening” Featuring “Michael ‘The Fixer’ Cohen” & “Bob Mueller”

Here’s the link:

https://apple.news/AkZhe3YpoQsOHijc1PgzkZQ

*************************

I’m betting that when the time comes that our poor nation finally is relieved of Gonzo’s “services” as AG, unlike the late Janet Reno he won’t be showing up for any live appearances on SNL. Perhaps, he’ll be out on bond awaiting trial. At least he’s smart enough to hire “Chuckie” Cooper as his mouthpiece rather than “The Fixer!”

 

PWS

054-15-18

 

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: Scott Pruitt Isn’t As Bad As You Might Think He Is – He’s 10X Worse! – GOP Takes an “Ethics Vacation” On Totally Corrupt EPA Sec!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/scott-pruitt-is-an-even-bigger-monster-than-you-thought

Bess writes:

Earlier this month, in the wake of revelations about his pricey travel habits and sweetheart deal on rent courtesy of a high-powered lobbyist, Scott Pruitt sat down with a series of reporters to clear the air and explain what was happening. The negative headlines and stories painting him as one of the most corrupt Cabinet members in the Trump administration were the result of one thing and one thing only, he said: a liberal plot against him. The real issue, Pruitt and his defenders insist, is not his preference for flying first class when coach would suffice, or the $50 a night he was shelling out for part of a D.C. townhouse in a neighborhood where the market rate was several multiples of that, but that the left simply doesn’t appreciate his hydrocarbon-happy dismantling of Barack Obama’sregulatory regime. Which makes fresh accusations against Pruitt, by one of Donald Trump’s favorite staffers, somewhat awkward!

In a six-page letter addressed to Pruitt but circulated much more widely than his pair of very fancy desks, two senators and three House representatives detailed allegations that were brought to their attention this week by Kevin Chmielewski, who served as the president’s body man during the campaign—Trump called him a “star” and a “gem”—before going on to work as the E.P.A.’s deputy chief of staff. (Chmielewski was placed on administrative leave without pay after objecting to Pruitt’s spending policies, which can be loosely summed up as: F–k you, I do what I want.) Among the most damning allegations:

  • Pruitt demanded the agency “enter into a $100,000 per month contract to rent a private jet, which would have cost more than the administrator’s annual travel budget of approximately $450,000,” a situation Chmielewski says he prevented from happening, probably to the detriment of his employment;
  • Pruitt made travel decisions based on his “desire to visit particular cities or countries rather than official business” and then told staff to “‘find me something to do [in those locations]’ to justify the use of taxpayer funds,” which might explain his trip to Morocco to promote U.S. natural gas exports, despite the fact that said exports are not part of the E.P.A.’s mission to “protect human health and the environment”;
  • Pruitt booked his flights through Delta, despite the airline not being the federal government’s contract carrier for the route, “because [he] want[ed] to accrue more frequent flier miles,” just in case his private jet didn’t pan out;
  • Pruitt directed his staff to “find reasons for [him] to travel to Oklahoma, so [he] could be in his home state for long weekends at taxpayers’ expense,” where he has seemingly been laying the groundwork for a run for office;
  • Pruitt stayed in hotels that far exceeded the U.S. government per diem, sometimes by 300 percent. Exhibit A: when he traveled to Australia and Italy and refused to stay in hotels recommended by the U.S. Embassy, choosing fancier but less secure ones, which you think would concern someone who wanted a bullet-proof desk;
  • Pruitt blew through the $5,000 limit allowed by law to redecorate his office with items that included a $43,000 soundproof phone booth, art leased from the Smithsonian Institution, and a desk (one of two) that alone cost $2,075;
  • Pruitt insisted, as previously reported, on “the use of lights and sirens to transport [him] more quickly through traffic to the airport, meetings, and social events on numerous occasions” and required his drivers to “speed through residential neighborhoods and red lights, far in excess of posted speed limits,” because Scott Pruitt’s got places to be, people!
  • Pruitt insisted the E.P.A.’s director of scheduling “act as his personal real estate representative, spending weeks improperly using federal government resources and time to contact rental and seller’s agents, and touring numerous properties in which [he] might wish to reside”;
  • Pruitt gave two favored aides giant salaries after they were denied by the White House (which Pruitt claimed in recent interviews to not know anything about);
  • And that Pruitt did not even pay the $50 per night he owed lobbyist J. Steven Hart, who complained during a phone call Chmielewski heard on speakerphone that Pruitt “had never paid any rent to him” and that Pruitt’s daughter “had damaged his hardwood floors by repeatedly rolling her luggage across the unit when she was staying there.”

According to the letter, Chmielewski’s employment with the E.P.A. ultimately ended thanks to his refusal to “retroactively approve [a favored staffer’s] first-class return flight from Morocco.” That Chmielewski, contends, caused Pruitt to remove him from his post. But naturally Pruitt did not do the dirty work himself, allegedly relying instead on the head of his security detail, Nino Perrotta, who Chmielewski says threatened him in such a way that he reported it to the local police, E.P.A. officials, and the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. (Speaking of Perrotta, i.e. the guy who deemed it too risky for Pruitt to sit in coach, we highly suggest checking out his self-published memoir, Dual Mission, which includes lines like, “I cannot tell how many women in those days held [my] gun during very passionate late-night moments. It was, in some ways, like a dangerous, forbidden sex toy to some, and I played right along. Although never loaded, I am certain to have broken a rule or two in terms of allowing unauthorized access to and use of a federal firearm.”)

While the lawmakers concluded that the information left them “certain that [Pruitt’s] leadership at E.P.A. has been fraught with numerous and repeated unethical and potentially illegal actions on a wide range of consequential matters,” it’s not clear that Trump will have him removed. On the one hand, the guy is on a roll when it comes to firing people. On the other, Pruitt has done such a stellar job dismantling Obama’s environmental legacy in his short time on the job, and good work is truly hard to find. While Trump has said nothing about the matter on social media, during a speech today ostensibly about tax reform, he told the crowd that that he plans to sign a “presidential memorandum directing the E.P.A to cut” even more regulations on manufacturers.

For their part, Pruitt’s handlers appear to be on the offensive: just hours after the letter detailing the E.P.A. head’s ethically challenged habits was released, word leaked that Chmielewski “never filed required financial disclosure forms during his year in the Trump administration.” That, combined with Pruitt’s stellar work turning the environment into an ashtray, should help him hang on little while longer.

On the other other hand . . .

Bloomberg reports that Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, has been confirmed by the Senate to serve as the E.P.A.’s deputy administrator, which means he would lead the agency should Pruitt suddenly be told to clean out his desk. Many Democrats were opposed to the nomination, given Wheeler’s push to roll back regulations while working on behalf of his clients, among them one of America’s largest coal-mining companies. That may not be as impressive as Pruitt’s credentials for leading the agency—suing it 14 times—but it’s something.

********************************

Go on over to Vanity Fair at the link to get the full “Levin Report.”

In an Administration loaded with ethically challenged individuals, starting with the “Big Boss,” Pruitt stands out. Nevertheless, because he is deconstructing the EPA and dismantling critical environmental protections — “turning the environment into an ashtray” —  nobody in today’s GOP dares to agitate for his removal. Could you imagine how apoplectic the GOP would have been if Hillary Clinton or anyone else in the Obama Administration were fingered for doing this type of stuff?

PWS

04-15-18

 

WASHPOST: SEN DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA) HITS A “HOME RUN” WITH OP-ED — NO, RIGHTS OF CHILD ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE NOT “LOOPHOLES” IN OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS! — What’s Happened To Our Common Sense & Humanity?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/protecting-defenseless-children-is-not-an-immigration-loophole/2018/04/13/11bf9012-3e64-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.8c9ed9210908

Sen. Feinstein writes:

Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, represents California in the U.S. Senate.

I remember watching the nightly television news in the 1990s and seeing a 15-year-old Chinese girl trembling before a U.S. immigration judge. Despite having committed no crime, she was shackled and sobbing. She couldn’t speak English, and it was clear she had no understanding of what the judge was saying or what would happen to her.

Her parents had sent her to the United States in the cargo hold of a container ship because she had been born in violation of China’s rigid family-planning laws — and was therefore denied citizenship, access to health care and education.

By the time the girl appeared before the immigration judge, she had already been detained for eight months. Even more shocking: After she was granted political asylum, she was detained for four more months before she was released.

This situation would not be allowed to occur today because Congress has enacted laws to provide basic humanitarian protections to unaccompanied immigrant children.

The Trump administration recently reignited its attacks on these protections, with the president going so far as to call laws that protect helpless children “loopholes.

The administration says these laws prevent immigrant children from being removed from the country, when in fact the goal is to ensure that these children are detained for as little time as possible and only in an appropriate setting, they receive adequate food and water, and that they are given the opportunity to apply for asylum.

Under these laws, each child has a right to make their case before a trained asylum officer. If the hearing demonstrates the need for protection by admission to the United States, we’re obligated to provide it. And in cases where a child does not qualify for asylum or other forms of relief, they’re returned safely to their home country.

I know the intent of these laws because I authored two of them. They are not loopholes.

It’s important to understand why Congress acted to thus ensure basic human dignity for children.

The story of the Chinese girl I saw on television was not unique — mistreatment of child immigrants was widespread. Another young girl who fled China was detained in a facility that also held minors who had been convicted of murder and rape. Despite never having violated criminal law or been accused of a crime, she was routinely handcuffed and strip-searched.

A young boy who fled Colombia after being targeted for recruitment by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas was held in the same detention facility for six months.

Children as young as 4 were held in secure prisons, isolated and forced to wear prison uniforms and shackles. Some were even placed in solitary confinement, even though they weren’t accused of any crime.

These stories, which were detailed by Human Rights Watch, illustrate decades of government mistreatment of children, and they were the genesis of laws Congress passed to guarantee minimum requirements for treating children humanely.

A key first step toward reform came in 1997, after years of litigation over treatment of unaccompanied minors, with a settlement called the Flores agreement. Among its provisions were requirements that the government release detained children to an adult as soon as possible, hold children who can’t be released in appropriate facilities and ensure that all facilities meet humane standard

Three years later, I introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act and was able to get portions of the bill included in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

The two laws, combined with the Flores agreement, are intended to ensure children don’t fall through the cracks of a system that processes thousands of them each year.

They require that children under 18 be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interests. Rather than holding children in detention facilities that also hold adults or criminal juvenile offenders, preference is given to releasing them to family members or appropriate sponsors, such as a family friend.

Such placements ensure that children aren’t held in indefinite detention pending resolution of their cases, which can sometimes take years. They also mean that taxpayers aren’t paying for that detention.

These aren’t loopholes, they are basic principles of common human decency. And to demonize and politicize these children is appalling.

Contrary to the picture painted by this administration, current policies don’t guarantee a child will be able to remain in the United States. Nor do these policies mean dangerous individuals are being released onto our streets.

The Trump administration’s efforts to repeal protections for children are based on an ignorance of history. The only effect of repeal would be more children held in unsafe conditions at exorbitant costs to the taxpayer.

I will oppose any efforts to change these laws, and I call upon my colleagues in Congress to join me in resisting efforts to roll back protections for immigrant children.

****************************************

Of all the depraved xenophobic, White Nationalist, racist ravings of Trump, Sessions, Homan, Neilsen, Kelly, Miller, Goodlatte, Cotton,  and other GOP restrictionists, the war on defenseless children has to be the most totally despicable! Most of these kids are fleeing genuine dangers in their home countries. The real problem is that the US has intentionally, for political reasons, twisted refugee law so as to not recognize their legitimate status as refugees and asylees.

As someone said at an Asylum Conference I recently attended, the BIA must be the only 15 so-called “asylum experts” in the world who don’t recognize that those fleeing gang recruitment in the Northern Triangle fit squarely within the “particular social group” classification for asylum protection.

Even if they weren’t a direct fit, these children qualify for relief under the Convention Against Torture or should be given another type of humanitarian relief such as TPS or Deferred Enforced Departure. Screening them for background and rapidly admitting them into the U.S. in some status would prevent them from becoming part of the current politically created  Immigration Court “backlog,” actually caused primarily by gross mismanagement, intentionally skewed anti-asylum legal interpretations, and political manipulation by this and past Administrations.

Of course the US could absorb them all, and prosper by doing so! Indeed, we’ve absorbed approximately 11 million individuals outside the system who have largely been a boon to our economy and our society. The real problem here is the White Nationalists who deny the reality of human migration and the inevitability of changing demographics, not the migrants themselves.

PWS

04-14-18

 

 

GONZO’S WORLD: LATEST DUE PROCESS OUTRAGE: ATTACK ON LEGAL RIGHTS PROGRAM IN IMMIGRATION COURT — Dumping On The Most Vulnerable & Those Trying To Help Them Is A Gonzo Specialty! — “This is a blatant attempt by the administration to strip detained immigrants of even the pretense of due-process rights,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the organizations that offers the legal services with Vera.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/justice-dept-to-halt-legal-advice-program-for-immigrants-in-detention/2018/04/10/40b668aa-3cfc-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?utm_term=.c604b3ff4532

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

The U.S. immigration courts will temporarily halt a program that offers legal assistance to detained foreign nationals facing deportation while it audits the program’s cost-effectiveness, a federal official said Tuesday.

Officials informed the Vera Institute of Justice that starting this month it will pause the nonprofit’s Legal Orientation Program, which last year held information sessions for 53,000 immigrants in more than a dozen states, including California and Texas.

The federal government will also evaluate Vera’s “help desk,” which offers tips to non-detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings in the Chicago, Miami, New York, Los Angeles and San Antonio courts.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the Justice Department’s immigration courts, said the government wants to “conduct efficiency reviews which have not taken place in six years.” An immigration court official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the audit has not been formally announced, said the review will examine the cost-effectiveness of the federally funded programs and whether they duplicate efforts within the court system. He noted, for example, that immigration judges are already required to inform immigrants of their rights before a hearing, including their right to find a lawyer at their own expense.

But advocates said the programs administered by Vera and a network of 18 other nonprofits are a legal lifeline for undocumented immigrants.

“This is a blatant attempt by the administration to strip detained immigrants of even the pretense of due-process rights,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the organizations that offers the legal services with Vera.

In a statement, the Vera Institute said a 2012 study by the Justice Department concluded that the program was “a cost-effective and efficient way to promote due process” that saved the government nearly $18 million over one year.

The Trump administration has also clashed with the Vera Institute over whether its subcontractors were informing undocumented immigrant girls in Department of Health and Human Services custody about their right to an abortion. The issue was later resolved.

The Justice Department is ramping up efforts to cut an immigration court backlog of 650,000 cases in half by 2020. Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week imposed production quotas on immigration judges to spur them to clear cases more quickly.

Immigration courts are separate from U.S. criminal courts, where defendants are entitled to a government-appointed lawyer if they cannot pay for their own legal counsel.

The Vera Institute said approximately 8 in 10 detainees in immigration court face a government prosecutor without a lawyer.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review says on its website that it launched the legal-aid program in 2003, during the administration of George W. Bush, to orient immigrants so that court ­proceedings would move more quickly.

“Experience has shown that the LOP has had positive effects on the immigration court process: detained individuals make wiser, more informed, decisions and are more likely to obtain representation; non-profit organizations reach a wider audience of people with minimal resources; and, cases are more likely to be completed faster, resulting in fewer court hearings and less time spent in detention,” the agency’s website says.

The help desk answers questions and provides similar information to immigrants who are not detained but are facing deportation.

Maria Sacchetti covers immigration for The Washington Post. She previously reported for the Boston Globe.

****************************************

The idea expressed by an “anonymous” DOJ official that the brief, often rote “in court” warnings given by Immigration Judges in open court can take the place of a “Know Your Rights” session being conducted in advance, out of court by Vera is preposterous.  The “average” initial hearing or “Master Calendar” takes fewer than 10 minutes.  My former Arlington Immigration Court colleague Judge Lawrence O. Burman was once “clocked” by a reporter at seven minutes per case, and he is probably more thorough than most Immigration Judges. Moreover, with Immigration Judges being pressured to churn out more final orders of removal faster, required warnings are just one of the aspects of Due Process that are likely to be truncated as Sessions’s “haste makes waste” initiative continues to destroy even the appearance of justice in our U.S. Immigration Courts.

In other words this totally bogus “audit” couldn’t come at a worse time for the beleaguered Immigration Judges of the U.S. Immigration Courts and particularly the often defenseless immigrants who come before them seeking (but far too often not finding) the justice supposedly “guaranteed” to them by our Constitution.

In my long experience, “Know Your Rights” presentations, which often allowed individuals to assess their cases and retain lawyers before their first Immigration Court appearance were one of the best “bang for the buck” programs ever undertaken by EOIR. Immigration Judges relied heavily on them to “keep the line moving” without denying due process.

Sessions methodically is stripping U.S. Immigration Judges of the tools that allow them to do their jobs fairly and efficiently: administrative closing, continuances, ability to control their own court schedules, time and resources to do research and write opinions, and now the assistance of the “Know Your Rights” Programs.

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions is a coward who consistently uses bogus narratives and specious reasons to pick on the most vulnerable in our legal system. Join the New Due Process Army and stand up to Gonzo and his anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-human agenda! Today, Gonzo is eliminating immigrants’ rights. Tomorrow it will be YOUR RIGHTS. Who will stand up for YOU if you remain silent while the weak and dispossessed are attacked by Gonzo and his ilk!

PWS

04-11-18

 

 

DON’T BELIEVE ANY OF THE “CROCODILE TEARS” BEING SHED BY TRUMP & HIS ADMINISTRATION ABOUT THE LATEST ASSAD ATROCITY IN SYRIA – THE ADMINISTRATION’S INHUMANE POLICIES HELP KILL SYRIAN REFUGEES IN AND OUT OF CAMPS ON A REGULAR BASIS – Bombs & Bluster Will Never Replace Humanitarian Assistance & Robust Refugee Resettlement

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/there-are-more-than-5-million-syrian-refugees-the-trump-administration-has-admitted-2-of-them/

There Are More Than 5 Million Syrian Refugees. The Trump Administration Has Admitted 2 of Them.

State Department data shows that many nations’ refugees are still effectively banned.

Women from Syria walk with their children in a refugee camp in Cyprus in September.Petros Karadjias/AP

The United Nations estimates that there are 5.5 million Syrian refugees. In the past three months, the United States has allowed two of them to enter the country—down from about 3,600 in the last three months of the Obama administration.

After kicking off his presidency by temporarily banning refugees, Donald Trump lifted the ban in late October. But at the same time, he increased scrutiny of refugees from 11 countries, requiring that they be admitted only if doing so fulfills “critical foreign policy interests.” Refugee advocates said that the language would effectively ban refugees from a group of mostly Muslim-majority nations. Data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center reviewed by Mother Jones confirms their prediction.

The United States has taken in 44 refugees from the targeted countries since Trump issued his executive order, compared to about 12,000 during the same period last year. The countries are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The heightened vetting of people from those countries has driven down the total number of Muslim refugees coming to the United States. About 550 Muslim refugees have been admitted to the United States since the executive order. More than 11,000 arrived during the same period last year. The share of admitted refugees who are Muslim has dropped from 48 percent at the end of the Obama administration to 11 percent in recent months.

Under Trump’s October executive order, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would conduct a 90-day “in-depth threat assessment of each [targeted] country.” During that period, DHS said in a memo to Trump, it would only take refugees from the 11 countries “whose admission is deemed to be in the national interest and poses no threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

The 90-day mark passed last week. But Sean Piazza, a spokesman for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee resettlement agency, says the organization has not received any updates about the status of the temporary review now that the 90-day period has passed. It is unclear if it is still in effect, and DHS did not respond to a request for comment. DHS’ October memo stated that refugee admissions from the targeted countries are likely to “occur at a slower pace” beyond the 90-day deadline.

The Trump administration has tried to undermine support for accepting refugees by casting them as an economic burden. In September, the New York Times reported that White House officials had killed a draft report from the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees have increased government revenue by $63 billion over the past decade. The report that was ultimately published had a different calculus, documenting how much it costs to provide services to refugees but not how much they pay in taxes.

Overall, the United States in on track to resettle about 21,000 refugees this year, according to the IRC. That would be fewer than in any year since at least 1980—including 2002, when refugee admissions plummeted in the wake of 9/11. It is also less than half of the annual 45,000-refugee cap that the Trump administration set in September, which was the lowest cap ever. Historically, the United States has been considered a world leader in resettling refugees.

Before Trump assumed the presidency, it already took up to two years for refugees to be vetted and resettled, not including the time people spent fleeing their country for refugee camps. Henrike Dessaules, the communications director at the International Refugee Assistance Project, says the group has had clients who “were ready to travel, that had their medical checks, security checks, and interviews done.” Instead, “they have been completely stalled in the process,” she says.*

In 2016, the Obama administration placed its refugee limit at 85,000 people and used all but five of those slots. This year’s drop comes even though there were about 22.5 million refugees across the world in 2016, more than at any time since the United Nations’ refugee agency was founded in 1950.

********************************************

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/middleeast/syria-refugees-lebanon-winter-intl/index.html

Syrian refugees escape the war, but die from the cold

Refugees freeze to death in Lebanon 02:48

Editor’s Note: This story contains extremely graphic images of dead and wounded people.

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon (CNN) — The rocky, plowed hillside is scattered with clues of what happened that January night. A woman’s scarf. A diaper. Empty cans of tuna fish. A plastic bag of sugar. An empty box of Turkish chocolate biscuits. A single cheap Syrian-made woman’s shoe. Several white, mud-spattered rubber gloves.
It was here, last month, that 17 Syrians froze to death in a night-time snowstorm while trying to cross the mountains into Lebanon.
Three-year-old Sarah is one of the few who survived. She now lies in a bed in the Bekaa Hospital in nearby Zahleh, two intravenous tubes taped to her small right arm. Frostbite left a large dark scab on her forehead. A thick bandage covers her right cheek. Another bandage is wound around her head to cover her frostbitten right ear.
Sarah doesn’t speak. She doesn’t make a sound. Her brown eyes dart around the room — curious, perhaps confused. Her father, Mishaan al Abed, sits by her bed, trying to distract her with his cell phone.

Sarah, 3, suffers from frostbite after smugglers abandoned her and her family as they were crossing into Lebanon.

No one has told Sarah that her mother Manal, her five-year-old sister Hiba, her grandmother, her aunt and two cousins died on the mountain.
“Sometimes she says, ‘I want to eat.’ That’s all,” Abed says. Sarah hasn’t mentioned anything about her ordeal, and he is hesitant to ask her.

An unfortunate reunion

Until now, Sarah hadn’t seen her father for two and a half years. He left Syria for Lebanon and found work as a house painter, leaving his family behind.
Mishaan al Abed sent money back to his wife and kids, who stayed outside the town of Abu Kamal, on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
ISIS controlled Abu Kamal from the summer of 2014 until last November, when it was retaken by Syrian government forces. Fighting still rages in the countryside around it, where Al Abed’s family lived.
After their house was damaged, Abed’s brother and his family, along with Abed’s wife and two children, fled to Damascus. There they paid $4,000 — a fortune for a poor family — to a Syrian lawyer who they were told had the right connections with the army, intelligence and smugglers.
The plan was for them to be driven to the border in private cars on military-only roads. From there, says Abed, they were to walk with the smugglers for half an hour into Lebanon, where they would be met by other cars.
The plan started to fall apart when snow began to fall. The smugglers abandoned the group. The family lost their way and became separated. In the dark and the cold, most of them died. It’s not clear how Sarah and a few others survived.
The only thing that is clear, says hospital director Dr. Antoine Cortas, is that “it is a miracle Sarah is still alive.”
Hidden by the darkness and the snow was a house just a few hundred steps down the mountain.

In January, a group of Syrians froze to death trying to cross into Lebanon during a snowstorm.

Abed was expecting his family to cross over, but became concerned when he didn’t hear from them. “I was told the army had arrested people trying to cross into Lebanon. I thought it must be them. Then the intelligence services sent me a picture. I identified her as my wife.”
He opens the picture on his cell phone. It shows a lifeless woman curled up on the snow amidst thorn bushes, a red woolen cap on her head.

A struggle to cross over, a struggle to remain

More than a million Syrians have taken refuge in Lebanon, straining the resources of a country with a population of around six million. The Lebanese authorities have, to some extent, turned a blind eye to those entering the country illegally. But they have refused to allow relief groups to establish proper refugee camps, unlike Jordan and Turkey, for fear they will become permanent.
What pass for camps — officially called “informal tented settlements” — are ramshackle affairs. Syrians typically pay $100 to a landowner to build drafty, uninsulated breezeblock shelters with flimsy plastic tarpaulins as roofs.
Abu Farhan, a man in his sixties from Hama, in central Syria, lives in one of those shelters in a muddy camp outside the town of Rait, just a few kilometers from the Syrian border. His wife Fatima is ill. She is huddled next to a kerosene stove under a pile of blankets. Between coughing fits, she moans loudly. Farhan has had to borrow more than two million Lebanese pounds — around $1,300 — for her medical treatment.

Denied proper refugee camps, many Syrian refugees live in informal tented settlements.

Illness is just one of the perils here. Vermin, he says, is another. “There’s everything here,” he chuckles bitterly, “even things I’ve never seen before. Rats. Mice. Everything!”
The dilemma that Syrians in Lebanon face is glaringly clear. They’re not welcome here, and it’s difficult to scrape by. According to a recent report by the Norwegian Refugee Council, 71% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty.

Point of no return

Some Syrians have returned home, but many, like Abu Musa, a man in his forties who lives in the same settlement as Farhan, insist that returning would be nothing short of suicidal. He comes from Maarat al-Numan, in Idlib province, where Syrian forces, backed by Russian warplanes, are waging an offensive against government opponents.
“Of course, I’d like to go back to Syria!” Musa exclaims, gesturing around his damp, cold hut as if that were reason enough to return home. “But Syria isn’t safe. They’re fighting in my town. My house has been destroyed.”
And thus, Syrians continue to try to make their way to Lebanon, despite the very real risks.

Over 70% of Lebanon's 1 million Syrian refugees live in poverty

“The people who are walking across the mountains, and taking days to cross the mountains in the middle of winter, are a testament to the fact that Syria is not safe,” said Mike Bruce of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“Until Syria is safe, until there is a lasting peace, people should not be going back to Syria.”

*************************************

With the election of the staunchly anti-American, White Nationalist, xenophobic, religiously bigoted Trump Administration, the United States forfeited any claim to moral leadership and humanitarianism on the world stage. Our anti-refugee policies also harm our allies in the region by forcing them to bear the entire responsibility for sheltering refugees.

Only the electoral removal of this truly un-American Administration and its GOP fellow travelers from power will allow us to begin the healing process. Selfishness and inhumanity are not policies — they are diseases that will consume us all if we don’t exercise our Constitutional and political rights by voting to remove the toxic leaders spreading them!

PWS

04-10-18

LAST WEEK TONIGHT: John Oliver “Shreds The Feds” — Exposes Parody Of Justice & Due Process In U.S. Immigration Courts – With Guest Appearances By Retired Judges John Gossart & Me & Judge Dana Marks – Also Featuring “Gonzo Apocalypto “ As “The Fourth Horseman Of The Apocalypse” & “Tot Court” As Perhaps The Second Worst Court In America After The US Immigration Courts — Listen To An Actual Recording Of An Immigration Judge Misapplying Protection Law in A 4-Question, 1 Min. 43 Sec. “Kangaroo Court” Hearing Resulting In An Assault At Gunpoint!

Here’s the video:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-oliver-immigration-court_us_5ac1c6c7e4b0f112dc9d6582

The tragedy is that bad as this sounds, the reality of what’s going on every day in this broken, failed, and disingenuous system is probably much worse than what’s portrayed here.

Yup, we can all chuckle at others’ misfortune. But, if Trump, Sessions, and the White Nationalist restrictionist crowd aren’t removed from office, this will be how all of our rights are treated. Someday, all of us are going to need to rely on our Constitutional rights. And, if Trump & Sessions have their way, you’ll be longing for the “Kiddie Court” rather than the travesty that’s being called “Due Process” in our Immigration Courts.

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the real America! Due Process Forever! Trump & Sessions Never!

PWS

04-02-18

 

FEDERAL COURTS DELIVER ANOTHER BIG HIT TO ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS ON IMMIGRATION: Attempt To Violate Detainee’s Constitutional Right To Abortion Thwarted!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-judge-orders-government-to-allow-abortion-access-to-detained-immigrant-teens/2018/03/30/19e9fcf8-3128-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

A federal judge issued a nationwide order temporarily preventing the government from blocking access to abortion services and counseling for teens detained in immigration custody, saying current administration policy and practices probably are unconstitutional.

The order came in a case brought last fall on behalf of a Central American girl in a ­government-funded shelter that set off a national debate over the constitutional rights of such undocumented teens to terminate their pregnancies.

The late Friday ruling, by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of Washington, allowed the case to proceed as a class action on behalf of any other teens who have crossed the border illegally and while in federal custody may want to seek abortion services. In filings, the U.S. government acknowledged there were at least 420 pregnant unaccompanied minors in custody in 2017, including 18 who requested abortions.

The Trump administration has refused to “facilitate” such procedures for pregnant teenagers traveling alone on the grounds that they had the option to voluntarily return to their home countries or to find private sponsors in the United States to assist them in obtaining procedures.

The policy position marked a departure from that of the Obama administration, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement did not block immigrants in U.S. custody from having abortions at their own expense, and paid for services for teens in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s life.

In her 28-page opinion, Chutkan, a 2014 Obama appointee, said the change in policy posed irreparable harm to pregnant teens, writing that “ORR’s absolute veto nullifies a UC’s right to make her own reproductive choices,” referring to unaccompanied children.

“The court concludes that ORR’s policies and practices infringe on female UC’s constitutional rights by effectively prohibiting them from ‘making the ultimate decision’ on whether or not to continue their pregnancy prior to viability — a quintessential undue burden,” the judge wrote.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately comment on the ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the teens, expressed relief at the court action.

“The Trump administration’s cruel policy of blocking young immigrant women in federal custody from accessing abortion is a blatant abuse of power,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “With today’s rulings, we are one step closer to ending this extreme policy once and for all and securing justice for all of these young women.”

In all, four pregnant teens in custody have asked Chutkan to force the administration to stop blocking access to abortion services. The initial case involving the teen in Texas is still pending in the Supreme Court after the Justice Department took the unusual step of asking the justices to consider disciplining the teen’s lawyers.

Abortion rights advocates and some Democrats in Congress have called for the firing of E. Scott Lloyd, the head of the refu­gee resettlement office within the Department of Health and Human Services. Court records show that Lloyd has personally intervened to try to block abortion services.

*****************************************

Read the full article at the above link.

Hard to figure out why guys like E. Scott Lloyd and Jeff Sessions shouldn’t be both 1) fired, and 2) held personally liable under Bivens for knowing and intentional violations of constitutional rights.

PWS

03-31-18

 

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Sessions’s Abuses Of “Certification Power” Show Why It’s Past Time To End This Unfair, Unethical, & (Probably) Unconstitutional Mockery of Justice!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/3/29/the-ags-certifying-of-bia-decisions

The AG’s Certifying of BIA Decisions

The recent flurry of case certifications by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (he has certified four BIA decisions to himself since January) raises the question of the continued appropriateness of the practice.  Certification allows a political appointee who heads an enforcement agency, and is subject to the policy agenda of the administration he or she serves, absolute authority to overrule or completely rewrite the decisions of an ostensibly neutral and independent tribunal comprised of judges possessing greater subject matter expertise.

The issue has only become a matter of legitimate concern under the two most recent Republican administrations.  In her eight years as Attorney General during the Clinton Administration, Janet Reno decided a total of three cases pursuant to certification.  Under the Obama administration, AGs  Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder decided a comparable number of cases (four). The number is artificially inflated by the fact that two of those consisted of Holder vacating late-term decisions by his predecessor, Michael Mukasey.  In one of the vacated decisions, Mukasey’s reasoning had been rejected by five separate U.S. circuit courts of appeal.

In contrast, during the eight year administration of George W. Bush, his three Attorneys General issued 16 precedent decisions through the certification process.  Sessions so far seems to be on a similar pace.

One of Bush’s AGs, Alberto Gonzales, co-authored an article in 2016 defending the use of certification.1  As part of his argument, Gonzales traced the history of the practice to the BIA’s origins as an advisory-only panel in the Department of Labor in the 1920s and 30s.  When the Board was transferred to the Department of Justice in 1940, it was provided only limited decision-making authority, but was required to refer to the AG certain categories of cases, including those “in which a dissent has been recorded” or where “a question of difficulty is involved.”

I will add that the early appointees to the BIA were career bureaucrats with no prior expertise or experience in the field of immigration law.  To me, such history seems to provide no real justification for the continued practice. The BIA has for decades enjoyed the authority to independently decide a broad class of cases.  It’s members all come to the Board with far more expertise and experience in the field of immigration law than the AG possesses (although since the 2003 purge by then-AG John Ashcroft, its make-up is far more conservative).  Furthermore, whereas in the past, it was the BIA itself, and later, the Commissioner of INS, requesting certification, at present, the AG is handpicking the cases and certifying them to himself, sometimes in order to decide an issue that wasn’t part of the decision below.

Law Professor Margaret H. Taylor has noted that the practice of AG certification “might be seen as objectionable because it conflicts with a core value of our legal system: that disputes are resolved by an impartial adjudicator who has no interest in the outcome.”2  Taylor further points out that many such decisions were issued in the final days of an AG’s term, meaning that the AG “refers a controversial issue to himself and renders a decision upending agency precedent on his way out the door.”3

In an article calling for the implementation of procedural safeguards on the AG’s certification power, the author accurately notes that the practice of “agency head review” is common and non-controversial.4  However, Professor Stephen Legomsky has pointed out that the strongest arguments for agency head review – inter-decisional consistency, and agency control (by politically-accountable officials) over policy – don’t translate well to the process of deciding asylum applications, for example.5  This harks back to a point I made in an earlier article – that immigration judges (including BIA Board member) are the only judges in the otherwise enforcement-minded Department of Justice, and that the Department has never really grasped the concept of independent decision-makers existing under its jurisdiction.

Legomsky pointed out in the same article that the BIA, as an appellate authority, “can yield the same consistency as agency head review” through the issuance of en banc decisions; adding that the AG could require the Board to decide certain cases en banc.6  Interestingly, the BIA has given up the use of en banc decisions in recent years. It has not decided a precedent decision en banc even in cases of major import, or following remands from the AG or circuit courts.

Sessions’ use of certification thus far is unique in his redetermination of what the case he chooses is even about.  In Matter of Castro-Tum, the DHS appealed an immigration judge’s decision to administratively close proceedings in which an unaccompanied minor did not appear on the grounds that it had met its burden of establishing proper notice of the hearing on the minor respondent.  The BIA actually agreed with DHS and remanded the matter. However, Sessions has now turned the case into a referendum on whether any IJ or the BIA has the legal authority to administratively close any case, an argument that was never raised below. In Matter of A-B-, an immigration judge, in defiance of the BIA’s order to grant asylum on remand, refused to calendar the case for a hearing for an excessive length of time, and then disobeyed the Board’s order by denying asylum again for spurious reasons.  Somehow, Sessions decided to certify this case to decide whether anyone seeking asylum based on membership in a particular social group relating to being a victim of private criminal activity merits such relief. His ultimate decision could curtail asylum eligibility for victims of domestic violence, members of the LGBTQ community, targets of gang violence, and victims of human trafficking.

Furthermore, two of the cases certified by Sessions involve tools of docket management, i.e. administrative closure and continuances.  As immigration judges are the only judges within the Department, and as the BIA has set out uniform procedures for the proper use of these tools, how can the AG justify his need to weigh in on these issues, which clearly do not involve the need for intra-department consistency (as no other component of the department employs such tools), or for control by a politically-accountable official to ensure the coherent expression of agency policy?

Once again, the solution is to create an independent, Article I immigration court, allowing IJs to continue to decide cases with fairness and neutrality free from such policy-driven interference.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. Alberto Gonzales and Patrick Glen, Advancing Executive Branch Immigration Policy Through the Attorney General’s Review Authority, 101 Iowa L.Rev. 841 (2016).
  2. Margaret H. Taylor, Midnight Agency Adjudication: Attorney General Review of Board of Immigration Appeals Decisions, 102 Iowa L. Rev. 18 (2016).
  3. Id.
  4. Laura S. Trice, Adjudication by Fiat: The Need for Procedural Safeguards in Attorney General Review of Board of Immigration Appeals Decisions, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1766 (2010).
  5. Stephen H. Legomsky, Learning to Live with Unequal Justice: Asylum and the Limits to Consistency, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 413, 458 (2007).

6.  Id.

 

fullsizeoutput_40da.jpeg

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First.  He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

BlogArchiveContact

*************************************************

Obviously, we need a truly independent Article I U.S. immigration Court as Jeffrey suggests.

Additionally, it’s well past time for the Supremes to take a close look at the constitutionality of this practice under the Due Process Clause. Those conservative leaning justices who have expressed reservations about “Chevron deference” should have major problems with this arcane procedure that allows a political official of the Executive Branch to overrule supposedly “expert” quasi-judicial officials on questions of law which the Attorney General would be decidedly less qualified to answer than an Article III judge or justice.

The whole “certification” process appears to be a facial violation of fundamental fairness and due process under the Fifth Amendment as well as a clear violation of judicial ethics by having a political official, the Attorney General, purport to act in a quasi-judicial capacity on a question or case on which he has already expressed an opinion or a clear hostility to foreign nationals as a group.

PWS

03-30-18

 

HERE’S AN INFO PACKED “TRIPLE HEADER” FROM TAL @ CNN: Trump Administration Moves To Undermine American Values On Three Fronts: Detention Of Pregnant Women, Targeting U.S. Citizen Children In Need, & Extreme Vetting!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/ice-immigration-pregnant-women/index.html

ICE rolls back pregnant detainee release policy

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Trump administration will no longer seek to automatically release pregnant immigrants from detention — a move in line with the overall efforts by the administration to hold far more immigrants in custody than its predecessors.

The change in policy was sent by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to Congress on Thursday morning and obtained by CNN.

According to the new directive, immigration officers will no longer default to trying to release pregnant women who fall into immigration custody, either because they are undocumented or otherwise subject to deportation. The Obama administration policy urged officers to presume a pregnant woman could be released except for extreme circumstances.

But a FAQ sent with the directive makes clear that ICE is not going to detain all pregnant immigrants. The policy will require a case-by-case evaluation, the FAQ explains, and will keep in custody “only those whose detention is necessary to effectuate removal, as well as those deemed a flight risk or danger to the community.”

ICE will also lean towards releasing pregnant women if they are in their third trimester, and will also make an effort for detention facilities to provide services to pregnant women and parents.

The move follows controversial efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services to keep unaccompanied minor immigrants in custody rather than releasing them to obtain abortions, a policy that has been the subject of intense litigation.

**********************************************

http://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/immigrants-rejected-government-benefits/index.html

White House reviewing plan to restrict immigrants’ use of government programs

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

The White House is reviewing a proposal that could penalize immigrants who use certain government programs, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday.

The proposed rule change would substantially expand the type of benefits that could be considered as grounds to reject any immigrants’ application to extend their stay in the US or become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen.

The move continues efforts by the Trump administration to overhaul the US immigration system and the changes could have the effect of substantially tipping the scales in favor of high-income immigrants — all without requiring an act of Congress. The changes could amount to an effective income test of immigrants to the US, critics say.

The expansion would going forward include programs like children’s health insurance, tax credits and some forms of Medicaid as black marks against immigrants seeking to change their status to stay.

By including benefits used by family members of the immigrants, the proposal could also apply to benefits being used by US citizens, who may be the spouse or child of the immigrant applying for status

DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton said the proposed rule had been sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget — the final step of the approval process before it’s released.

Houlton would not comment on the specifics of the proposal, but did said that DHS is “committed to enforcing existing immigration law … and part of that is respecting taxpayer dollars.”

CNN first reported on the changes as they were in development last month. The Washington Post obtained a more recent version of the proposal on Wednesday.

Why the change matters

US law authorizes authorities to reject immigrants if they are likely to become a “public charge” — or dependent on government.

Since the 1990s, that has meant that immigrants shouldn’t use so-called “cash benefits,” but a large number of programs were exempt from consideration.

But the new rule would include programs such as some forms of Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, subsidized health care under Obamacare and the Earned Income Tax Credit, according to the latest draft obtained by the Post.

In one change from the earlier draft obtained by CNN, educational programs that benefit children, including Head Start, will not be included under the administration’s plan. Programs like veteran’s benefits that individuals earn would also be excluded.

The rule would not explicitly prohibit immigrants or their families from accepting the benefits. Rather, it authorizes the officers who evaluate their applications for things like green cards and residency visas to count the use of these programs against the immigrant, and gives them authority to deny the immigrants visas on these grounds — even if the program was used by a family member.

The decision sets up a difficult scenario for immigrants who hope to stay in the US. If they accept any public benefits — or their family members do — they could potentially be denied future abilities to stay. That includes decisions about whether to use health insurance subsidies for them or their children, or tax credits they qualify for otherwise.

Immigrants are no more likely to qualify for these programs than the native US population, according to tables included in the documents, the Post reported. There is no substantial difference in the rate between the two groups — in some cases foreign-born residents are slightly more likely to use a program, but in some cases the native-born population is, according to the tabulations.

*****************************************************

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/immigrants-social-media-information/index.html

US to require immigrants to turn over social media handles

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Trump administration plans to require immigrants applying to come to the United States to submit five years of social media history, it announced Thursday, setting up a potential scouring of their Twitter and Facebook histories.

The move follows the administration’s emphasis on “extreme vetting” of would-be immigrants to the US, and is an extension of efforts by the previous administration to more closely scrutinize social media after the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

According to notices submitted by the State Department on Thursday, set for formal publication on Friday, the government plans to require nearly all visa applicants to the US to submit five years of social media handles for specific platforms identified by the government — and with an option to list handles for other platforms not explicitly required.

The administration expects the move to affect nearly 15 million would-be immigrants to the United States, according to the documents. That would include applicants for legal permanent residency. There are exemptions for diplomatic and official visas, the State Department said.

The decision will not take effect immediately — the publication of the planned change to visa applications on Friday will start a 60-day clock for the public to comment on the move.

The potential scouring of social media postings by potential immigrants is sure to rankle privacy and civil liberties advocates, who have been vocal in opposing such moves going back to efforts by the Obama administration to collect such information on a more selective and voluntary basis.

Critics complain the moves, amid broader efforts by the administration, are not only invasive on privacy grounds, but also effectively limit legal immigration to the US by slowing the process down, making it more burdensome and making it more difficult to be accepted for a visa.

Federal authorities argue the moves are necessary for national security.

In addition to requiring the five years of social media history, the application will also ask for previous telephone numbers, email addresses, prior immigration violations and any family history of involvement in terrorist activities, according to the notice.

Since its early days, the administration has been telegraphing a desire to more closely dig through the backgrounds and social media histories of foreign travelers, but Thursday’s move is the first time that it will formally require virtually all applicants to come to the US to disclose that information.

After the San Bernardino terrorist attack in 2015, greater attention was placed on immigrants’ social media use, when it was revealed that one of the attackers had advocated jihad in posts on a private social media account under a pseudonym that authorities did not find before allowing her to come to the US.

The move by the Trump administration stops short of requiring passwords or access to those social media accounts, although then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly suggested last year that it was being considered.

The administration has been pursuing “extreme vetting” of foreigners as a centerpiece of its immigration and national security policy, including through the contentious travel ban that remains the subject of heavy litigation.

****************************************************

The Administration’s war on immigrants, America, and American values continues!

PWS

03-30-18

 

THE “BIG NAME” CLIENT NO LAWYER WANTS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-another-blow-to-trumps-efforts-to-combat-russia-probe-digenova-will-no-longer-join-legal-team/2018/03/25/8ac8c8d2-3038-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman report in WashPost:

President Trump’s legal team reversed course Sunday, announcing that a lawyer slated to join the attorneys handling the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation will not come on board after all, the latest sign of disarray for Trump’s legal strategy.

The development came three days after John Dowd, who had been Trump’s top attorney handling the Russia inquiry, resigned amid strategy disputes with the president.

Trump is now left, at least temporarily, without a traditional criminal defense attorney as Mueller’s team appears to be entering a critical phase in its investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the president’s campaign cooperated with Russia in this effort.

Joseph diGenova, the lawyer Trump wanted to replace Dowd, has often stridently defended the president on Fox News Channel and cast the Mueller probe as a conspiracy against him. Trump enjoyed the TV appearances and wanted diGenova on his team even though he did not know him, officials say.

But in a statement on Sunday, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team said both diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, who is also a lawyer, would not be working on the Russia probe because clients they are representing in connection with the investigation posed conflicts of interest.

One of President Trump’s personal attorneys, John Dowd, resigned on March 22, amid a shake-up of the president’s legal team for the Russia investigation.

“The President is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining his Special Counsel legal team,” Jay Sekulow, counsel to Trump, said in the statement. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the President in other legal matters. The President looks forward to working with them.”

The unraveling of the president’s legal team has left his advisers concerned. People familiar with the situation said the president has been counseled by friends that he needs to find a new lawyer to quarterback his team, and efforts are underway by people close to Trump to hire a new lawyer.

Before his resignation Thursday, Dowd had been Trump’s main point of contact with Mueller’s office and had been helping to negotiate the terms for an interview between the president and the special counsel’s team as it examines whether Trump obstructed justice by allegedly seeking to shut down the investigation, which was being conducted by the FBI until Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May. Mueller was then appointed special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Trump’s legal effort is now led by Sekulow, a conservative attorney and radio host who has concentrated on constitutional issues, and assisted by Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer paid by taxpayers to represent the institution of the presidency rather than Trump personally. Cobb, too, has occasionally drawn the president’s ire, people familiar with the team have said.

A number of white-collar attorneys in Washington said the president has been unable to attract top-flight talent as he looks to overhaul his legal team, with major firms fearful that an affiliation with Trump and the Russia case could impact their ability to attract other clients and hire new lawyers.

Trump has recently been relying on Marc E. Kasowitz, who led his legal team until this summer and has represented Trump in several cases over the years. Kasowitz and Trump clashed over a number of issues, including Kasowitz’s belief that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top White House aide, needed to leave the administration because of the potential legal problems he faced due to the probe and the potential problems they could cause Trump. After Dowd’s hiring, Kasowitz took a diminished role in handling the case.

Ultimately, said one person close to Trump’s legal team, “He’s his own lawyer. Always has been and always will be.”

The person added: “You know what they say about a ‘lawyer’ who has himself as a client.”

**************************************

Read the entire article at the link.

“A lawyer who represents him or herself has a fool for a client.”

PWS

03-26-18

 

JUDGE EDWARD C. PRADO DISSENTS FROM 5TH CIRCUIT’S ABANDONMENT OF CONSTITUTION IN BIVENS CASE — HERNANDEZ V. MESA

Hernandezv.Mesa,Bivens,5th

Hernandez v. Mesa, 5th Cir., 03-20-18, published

On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court

BEFORE 5TH CIRCUIT EN BANC:  STEWART, Chief Judge, and JOLLY, DAVIS, JONES, SMITH, DENNIS, CLEMENT, PRADO, OWEN, ELROD, SOUTHWICK, HAYNES, GRAVES, HIGGINSON, and COSTA, Circuit Judges.

MAJORITY OPINION: EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge, joined by STEWART, Chief Judge, JOLLY, DAVIS, SMITH, DENNIS,** CLEMENT, OWEN, ELROD, SOUTHWICK, HAYNES,*** HIGGINSON, and COSTA, Circuit Judges.

** Judge Dennis concurs in the judgment.
*** Judge Haynes concurs in the judgment and with the majority opinion’s conclusion that Bivens should not extend to the circumstances of this case.

DISSENTING OPINION: EDWARD C. PRADO, Circuit Judge, joined by GRAVES, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

EXCEPTS FROM JUDGE PRADO’S DISSENT:

“Today’s en banc majority denies Sergio Hernandez’s parents a Bivens remedy for the loss of their son at the hands of a United States Border Patrol agent. The majority asserts that the transnational nature of this case presents a new context under Bivens and that special factors counsel against this Court’s interference. While I agree that this case presents a new context, I would find that no special factors counsel hesitation in recognizing a Bivens remedy because this case centers on an individual federal officer acting in his law enforcement capacity. I respectfully dissent.

. . . .

In sum, this Court is more than qualified to consider and weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed. This case simply involves a federal official engaged in his law enforcement duties acting on United States soil who shot and killed an unarmed fifteen-year-old boy standing a few feet away. I would elect to recognize a damages remedy for this tragic injury. As Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, “[t]he very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 163 (1803). In this case, I would recognize a Bivens remedy for this senseless cross-border shooting at the hands of a federal law enforcement officer. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.”

****************************************************

Judge Edward C. Prado is nor just “any” U.S. Circuit Judge. Among other things in his long and distinguished career, Judge Prado was the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas during the Reagan Administration. I dealt with him on some immigration issues during my as the Deputy General Counsel in the “Legacy INS” during that time.  He is a gentleman and a scholar.

Perhaps appropriately, this is likely to be Judge Prado’s last major published opinion. On March 22, 2018, he was confirmed by the Senate as the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina. Congratulations Ambassador Prado; thanks for leaving us this great dissent as a reminder of how the law should be interpreted and applied!

PWS

03-25-18