Liability of Government Officials – Page 76

BREAKING: FLYNN TO COP PLEA TO MAKING FALSE STATEMENT TO FBI! — FORMER “NATIONAL SECURITY” ADVISOR GOES DOWN!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-flynn-charged-russia_us_5a2163f8e4b03c44072d042c

Ryan J. Reilly reports for HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has been charged with lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian government, an extraordinary development in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Michael Flynn is scheduled to appear in federal court in D.C. at 10:30 a.m., where he’s expected to plead guilty to one count of making a false statement to FBI agents.

. . . .

In a criminal information filing from Mueller’s team, the government alleges that Flynn “willfully and knowingly made materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” in an interview with FBI agents on Jan. 24. It alleges he falsely told the FBI that he did not ask the Russian ambassador to refrain from retaliating to sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia in late December. Flynn also allegedly lied about asking the Russian ambassador on Dec. 22 to delay or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution.
Citing sources familiar with the investigation, NBC News reported in early November that Mueller’s team had enough evidence to charge Flynn, as well as his son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with him during Trump’s campaign and transition.
The report sparked speculation that investigators were trying to flip Flynn, a top target of the multiple probes into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia last year, and could reach an agreement for him to become a cooperating witness.
The New York Times reported later that month that Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, was no longer sharing information with Trump’s legal team, further raising the possibility that Flynn may be cooperating with Mueller’s probe. Kelner later met with the investigators, according to ABC News.
Flynn’s indictment follows Mueller’s team charging Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former aide Rick Gates with 12 counts, including allegations of conspiracy against the U.S. and money laundering. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges and are scheduled to face a federal trial in May.
In October, the investigators also reached a plea agreement with former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who lied to the FBI about being offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. Papadopoulos also reportedly suggested a meeting between then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last year.
But those indictments involved only Trump campaign officials. Flynn is the first former administration official to be charged, making it more difficult for the White House to distance the president from Mueller’s probe.
After Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey amid his investigation into the campaign, Comey testified that Trump had requested that he end the FBI’s investigation into Flynn.
Flynn, who stepped down as Trump’s national security adviser in February after lying to administration officials about the extent of his communications with Russian officials, had long faced scrutiny from the multiple investigations into Trump’s campaign.
Of particular interest was Flynn’s history of suspicious business dealings and financial ties to Russia, as well as his concealing that he worked as a foreign lobbyist for the Turkish government while advising Trump’s campaign.
In the fall of 2016, a businessman with close ties to Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid Flynn more than $500,000 to conduct research aimed at discrediting the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen. Flynn failed to disclose the work until March, after he had already stepped down as national security adviser.
Mueller’s team has reportedly investigated Flynn’s lobbying firm and its dealings with Turkey.
Flynn also hid multiple contacts with Russia during Trump’s transition, including discussing sanctions with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
He also attended a meeting with Kislyak to discuss creating a backchannel with Putin. Also in attendance was Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is now a senior White House adviser and also reportedly a subject of Mueller’s probe.
White House officials have repeatedly denied any collusion between Trump’s team and Russia, often by downplaying suspected officials’ involvement in the campaign or the administration. In March, then-press secretary Sean Spicer diminished Flynn as just “a volunteer.”

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What kind of Administration hires a criminal to be so-called “National Security Advisor?” An Administration that poses a “clear and present danger” to the national security of our country! And, it’s not that Gen. Flynn wasn’t a well-established slimy character even before embarking on his criminal enterprise!

Will “Jerry the K” be next? Stay tuned! No wonder Gonzo has “lawyered up!”

PWS

12-01-17

LA TIMES: ICE DRAGNET SNARES US CITIZENS — Quick To Arrest, Slow To Release — The “Crime” Of Being Latino & Born In Mexico — How Would YOU Prove U.S. Citizenship If The ICEMEN Cometh?

https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/-how-a-us-citizen-was-mistakenly-targete/f-f3ae242702%2Flatimes.com

Joel Rubin & Paige St. John report for the LA Times:

“Sergio Carrillo had already been handcuffed in the Home Depot parking lot when an officer wearing a Homeland Security uniform appeared.

“Homeland Security?” Carrillo asked. “What do you want with me?”

Ignoring Carrillo’s demands for an explanation, the officer ordered the 39-year-old taken to a federal detention facility in downtown Los Angeles for people believed to be in the country illegally.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Carrillo recalled saying from the back seat to the officers driving him. “I am a U.S. citizen.”

The arrest last year was the start of a perplexing and frightening ordeal for Carrillo, who said in an interview with The Times that immigration officials scoffed at his repeated claims of citizenship and instead opened a case against him in immigration court to have him deported. It would take four days for government officials to concede their mistake and release Carrillo.

The case, say civil rights attorneys and other critics of the country’s immigration enforcement system, highlights broader problems with how people are targeted for deportation. They argue databases used by immigration officials to determine who is and isn’t in the country legally are beset by outdated and inaccurate information that leads to an unknown number of U.S. citizens being detained each year.

Since 2002, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has wrongly identified at least 2,840 United States citizens as possibly eligible for deportation, and at least 214 of them were taken into custody for some period of time, according to ICE records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Because ICE in January stopped releasing data on those it takes into custody, it is impossible to know how many citizens have been caught up in the aggressive push to increase arrests and deportations being carried out under President Trump.

In one such case, Guadalupe Plascencia complained that she was transferred from San Bernardino County jail to ICE custody in March despite having become a citizen two decades earlier. The 59-year-old hairdresser said she was released only when her daughter showed ICE agents her passport.

On Wednesday, attorneys for Carrillo announced a settlement deal in which the government will pay him $20,000 to resolve a civil lawsuit he filed over the arrest.

ICE officials could not be immediately reached Wednesday.”

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Read the complete article at the link. Many thanks to Nolan Rappaport for sending this my way.

If you read the complete story, you will see that even after learning of their likely mistake, ICE was in no hurry to correct it. In fact, it appears that but for the intervention of his lawyer, this individual might well have remained in detention and been scheduled for a removal hearing before an Immigration Judge. At no point does in this article does it appear that ICE was in any way apologetic for its mistake. Indeed, it took a civil lawsuit and a $20,000 settlement to get any satisfaction.

What if this U.S. citizen had been an “Anglo” dressed in a business suit? Would he have been treated the same way by ICE? I doubt it.

As I have pointed out before, Trump, Sessions, Miller and their White Nationalist cronies are in the process of constructing an internal security police force using ICE as the spearhead. Today, their targets are mostly people of color — be they migrants, legal immigrants, refugees, or U.S. citizens — and most in the “Anglo Community” seem happy to ignore what’s really happening to their neighbors and in their communities.

But, the “Day of the Anglos” might still come. After all, there is a long list of Americans who are not entitled to full legal protections according to “Jeff’s Law:” LGBTQ individuals, reporters, liberal counter demonstrators, those who challenge police brutality, voters in gerrymandered districts, women who want to exercise their Constitutional right to an abortion, non-Christians, etc. Who is going to speak up for YOUR rights if your Government won’t?

According to DHS propaganda, the “hard-line” policies of the Trump Administration have resulted in spectacularly diminished illegal border crossings and are discouraging individuals from coming here or staying under our legal system. As I’ve observed, some immigration agents have so little “real” law enforcement work to do that they can take time to engage in such “enforcement overkill” as staking out a kid’s hospital room or arresting and deporting working parents of U.S. citizens and local soccer stars who have no serious criminal records.

So, with everything under control, why does the Trump Administration need 15,000 additional immigration agents, a Border Wall, and an expanded private immigration detention Gulag? What’s the “ultimate purpose” here? Who’s going to speak up for YOUR legal rights when the Trumpsters show up at your door to take them away?

PWS

11-30-17

GONZO’S WORLD: “MINISTRY OF INJUSTICE” — How Gonzo Is Successfully Draining Justice From The Department Of Justice

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/jeff-sessions-slowly-surely-undoing-america-s-criminal-justice-progress-ncna823126

James Braxton Peterson reports for NBC News:

“The Russia investigation may be undercutting Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ credibility, but it has not undermined his efforts to take the U.S. Justice Department back in time.

The time Sessions wants to go back to features an unforgiving system of mass incarceration that disproportionately targets people of color in a legal structure too often stacked against them.

To do this, the attorney general has issued a slew of policy rollbacks — unfortunate for a Justice Department that was only incrementally making progress toward equal justice under President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

In this sense, Sessions’ Justice Department might be the most effective unit of the Trump administration. If Trumpism’s goal is, at least in, part to destroy the progress achieved under the Obama administration, Sessions’ scorecard so far outstrips his GOP colleagues in the Cabinet and former colleagues in the Senate.

In March, for example, the nation’s top law enforcement officer visited St. Louis, next-door to Ferguson, ground zero for the Black Lives Matter movement. Sessions was in St. Louis talking about crime initiatives but also seeming to criticize one of the most useful tools for documenting police brutality: civilian cell phone videos. The choice of venue could not have been a coincidence. By focusing on “targeted police killings,” he deflected attention from the challenges now confronting law enforcement.

In fact, Sessions has had little to say on how the Justice Department might address matters of police brutality, much less on the matter of Black Lives Mattering. Instead, he has mostly showcased President Donald Trump’s belief that strong policing and incarceration are key to maintaining law and civil order.

. . . .

It is as if Sessions’ Justice Department is operating on a set of alternative facts. Because the statistics are well known: Whites and blacks use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates, and African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the U.S. population. Yet law enforcement records are remarkably different for each demographic. According to Human Rights Watch: “Black adults are more than two-and-a-half times as likely as white adults to be arrested for drug possession. In 2014, Black adults accounted for just 14 percent of those who used drugs in the previous year but close to a third of those arrested for drug possession.” In many states, a felony conviction also means losing the right to vote.

It is as if Sessions’ Justice Department is operating on a set of alternative facts.

Sessions looks eager to re-open the “war on drugs” — or, more appropriately, the war on poor people who use drugs. No available metric on this decades-long war shows any significant success in limiting access to drugs in the United States or in reducing addiction to controlled substances.

What the “war on drugs” has been good at is: stigmatizing poor people afflicted with the disease of addiction; profiling black and brown folks and arresting them at rates exponentially greater than their white counterparts; and creating revenue streams for the Prison Industrial Complex.

. . . .

Sessions’ success will be key if Trump wants to make good on his law-and-order promises.

Sadly, it is working. The Justice Department is slowly transforming into an injustice department right before our eyes.

Mass incarceration, its impact on families and communities and the often racially biased ways in which its policies operate is still one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time. It’s a shame that, in the era of Trump, we are unable to effectively address the challenges we face.

James Braxton Peterson is the author of three books, including “Prison Industrial Complex for Beginners.”

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Read Peterson’s full article at the link.

Peterson doesn’t even get into Gonzo’s brazen attacks on justice for Latinos, immigrants, Dreamers, refugees, LGBTQ individuals, so-called “Sanctuary Cities,” lawyers, reporters, Federal Judges, critics of the Administration, forensic science, private property, or users of legalized marijuana. And, he only mentions in passing Gonzo’s disingenuous statements on Russia and his lackadaisical handling of the real threats Russia poses to our national security. Grim as Peterson’s article is, it actually substantially understates the true carnage that Gonzo is inflicting on our Constitution and our system of justice. It could turn out to be irreparable!

Senator Liz Warren was right!

PWS

11-24-17

GONZO’S WORLD: Gonzo Smugly Mocks The “Rule Of Law” — But Will Mueller Get The Last Laugh?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/jeff-sessions-has-got-jokes.html

Christian Farias reports in NY Maggie:

“Since taking office as Donald Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions hasn’t missed a chance to remind the public that the North Star of his Department of Justice is the rule of law. Eliminating protections for Dreamers and exposing them to deportation; threatening to pull federal funding from sanctuary cities that refuse to do the administration’s bidding on immigration; asserting in court that gay workers aren’t protected by the letter of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; siding with a religious baker who declined to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple wishing to marry — all actions demanded by fidelity to the the rule of law.

Because the rule of law matters to Sessions, he decided to make it the centerpiece of his Friday remarks at the annual national lawyers’ gathering of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal brain trust that helped Trump handpick Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. About the president’s own disdain for the rule of law and so-called judges who rule against him, the group has largely turned a blind eye. Instead, they celebrate the parade of originalist judges he’s sent to the federal bench. For conservative legal thinkers, this covers a multitude of sins. “Attendees this year have an ebullience I haven’t seen before,” Ariane de Vogue, a longtime Supreme Court correspondent, observed on Twitter. The Federalist Society’s chairman, for his part, is already plotting how to turn the judicial map red.

Chalk it up to the electricity in the air, all this winning, that Sessions, after an introduction by Edwin Meese, his predecessor at the Justice Department during the Reagan administration, suddenly decided the rule of law was a joke. “Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room?” Sessions asked of the lawyerly audience, which greeted the question with laughter. “Before I get started here, any Russians? Anybody been to Russia? Got a cousin in Russia or something?” The audience was loving it. Meese was rolling.

Sessions must have thought of the Russia bit on the spot, as it wasn’t in his prepared remarks. There’s a reason he may have found the whole thing hilarious right there and then: He delivered the line at none other than the Mayflower Hotel, the same location where he and Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador, had an encounter during the presidential campaign that went undisclosed during his confirmation hearing. Sessions’s own shifting recollections and denials about his contacts with Russian officials in later Senate testimony are hard to keep up with. For all we know, he may have lied to Congress. Suffice it to say, the extent of those contacts played a significant role in Sessions’s recusal from all things Russia, a move that blindsided Trump and infuriated him. With a loyalist out of the way, it fell to Rod Rosenstein, Sessions’s deputy, to appoint Robert Mueller to lead the criminal and counterintelligence probes into the Kremlin’s disruption of last year’s election. Sessions came this close to resigning over Mueller’s appointment.

None of this is a laughing matter. That Sessions had the presence of mind to crack a joke about it makes a mockery of his self-professed commitment to the rule of law. The rule of law isn’t just rescinding Obama-era rules or steering the federal government toward more conservative outcomes. The rule of law, fragile as it is, is also a set of unwritten norms that stay the same no matter who’s in power — such as the nation’s top law-enforcement officer recognizing that he should not make light of an investigation in which he himself is implicated and may have committed perjury. One in which his own Justice Department has active, ongoing prosecutions of campaign officials that he once worked with. Sessions treating this as a joke undermines keepers of the constitutional order — Congress, the Executive branch, and now the courts — who are taking it very seriously.

“Recusals happen all the time throughout the Department of Justice … just because we follow the rules. That furthers confidence in justice,” Sessions declared near the end of his Federalist Society speech. Now that’s a good one. Desiree Fairooz, the activist who laughed at Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing and was prosecuted by his Justice Department over it, would be forgiven if she heard that zinger and laughed again.

Mueller, for his part, has his sights on another uproarious matter: ABC News reported Sunday that the special counsel is looking into the Justice Department’s role in the firing of James Comey. Sessions may have a hard time laughing that one off.”

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Sessions, who lives on and for the “wrong side of history and human decency,” should go down as the most lawless Attorney General since John Mitchell. Indeed, I think he has the potential to surpass Mitchell in terms of contempt for the American system, for the majority of Americans, and for the rule of law. Having lived through the “Watergate Era,” that’s saying something!

PWS

11-20-17

GONZO’S WORLD: Sessions Gives Congress The “Scarface Treatment” Again — Then He Jokes About Russia — Will Mueller Eventually Wipe The Smirk Off Gonzo’s Face?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/jeff-sessions-has-a-strangely-selective-memory.html

Eric Levitz writes in NY Maggie:

“Jeff Sessions’s memory works in mysterious ways. He has “no clear recollection” of the March 2016 meeting where George Papadopoulos offered to set up a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin — but the attorney general does remember shooting down the campaign aide’s unseemly suggestion.

Or, so Sessions tells the House Judiciary Committee.

In October, Sessions testified to the Senate that he did not have any “continuing exchange of information” with Russian operatives — and that he wasn’t “aware of anyone else [on the Trump campaign] that did.” Weeks later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed

“Papadopoulos’s confession to the crime of lying to the FBI. In that written statement, the former Trump campaign national security adviser claimed that he had told Sessions about “connections” he had that “could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin” in March of last year. In his testimony before Congress Tuesday, Sessions tried to account for this apparent discrepancy.

“I do now recall the March 2016 meeting at Trump Hotel that Mr. Papadopoulos attended, but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he said at that meeting,” Sessions explained. “After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government, for that matter.”

Later, Sessions said more firmly, “At the meeting, I pushed back.”

So, the attorney general has no clear memory of the meeting, but has a vivid recollection of behaving admirably during it.

This isn’t the first time that Sessions’s memories of last year have failed him. In January, the attorney general testified to the Senate that he had not “been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day.” Months later, the Washington Post revealed that Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador to the United States multiple times during the 2016 campaign. Sessions responded to these revelations by insisting that he’d met with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in his capacity as U.S. senator (not as a Trump surrogate), and that they did not discuss the 2016 election. Sessions later conceded that it was “possible” that Trump’s positions on U.S.-Russia relations came up in his discussions with Kislyak.

Some Democrats have suggested that Sessions’s multiple false statements to Congress this year were conscious lies. The former senator responded to such charges with indignation Tuesday.

“My answers have not changed,” Sessions said. “I have always told the truth, and I have answered every question as I understood them and to the best of my recollection, as I will continue to do today … I will not accept and reject accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie.”

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Meanwhile, speaking to a friendly audience over at the Heritage Foundation, Gonzo treated the Russia investigation as a joke. Mary Papenfuss reports for HuffPost:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions had lawyers rolling in the aisles with a surprising string of Russian quips at the start of a speech he gave Friday.

Sessions was the keynote speaker at the National Lawyers Convention at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel hosted by the conservative Federalist Society.

He thanked the applauding crowd for welcoming him. Then, smiling mischievously, he added: “But I just was thinking, you know, I should ― I want to ask you. Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room? Before I get started ― any Russians?” As the laughs grew louder, he continued: “Anybody been to Russia? Got a cousin in Russia?” The audience roared.

The jarring jokes came just three days after Sessions was pressed in Congress on apparent discrepancies in his previous testimony about Trump associates’ meetings with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., met with several members of Donald Trump’s campaign during the Republican National Convention, Kislyak and some Trump associates have revealed. Kislyak was widely believed a top spy recruiter.

Kislyak has said he discussed Trump’s policy positions during the campaign with Sessions, an early Trump supporter who was an Alabama senator at the time, The Washington Post reported.

But during his confirmation hearings to become attorney general ― before the Post report ― Sessions said he “never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election.”

Sessions later recused himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election.

Critics were stunned by Sessions’ attitude in the lawyers’ speech.

Sessions “still doesn’t get it” — he’s “in trouble,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) told Wolf Blitzer later on CNN.

“He’s not in trouble where he happened to be in places where there are Russians,” said Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who grilled Sessions this week. “He is in trouble because he had a nearly hour-long meeting with Ambassador Kislyak — also a spy — and then he failed to disclose the existence of that meeting under oath to the U.S. Senate. That’s why Jeff Sessions is in trouble.”

Blitzer noted that Kislyak “now says he spoke with so many Trump officials it would take him more than 20 minutes to name them all.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sessions-russian-lawyers_us_5a0fb5dee4b045cf43718e96?ncid=APPLENEWS00001

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To those of us who are familiar with his career, it’s probably no surprise that Jeff “Gonzo Apocalyoto” Sessions would make light of the real threat to our national security — Russia, Vladimir Putin, and his “easy marks” in the Trump Administration including Ol’ Gonzo — while trying to paint “Dreamers,” individuals with TPS status, refugees, asylum applicants, and other hard-working contributing members of the American community as a fake “security threat.”

It’s all part of the White Nationalist agenda to deflect attention from the “clear and present danger” they pose to our Constitution and our national security to a “dummied-up enemy” consisting mostly of persons who are here to help us as a country but, unfortunately for their sakes, aren’t straight, White Christians who vote GOP. In other words, they are outside Gonzo’s “zone of the chosen people” — those whom he considers “real” Americans. And, those whom Gonzo has determined to be “unworthy of protection” include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Democrats, Liberals, Muslims, women who seek abortions, immigration lawyers, those living in so-called “Sanctuary Cities,” and legal immigrants.

PWS

11-19-17

ROGUE U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGE IN CHARLOTTE, NC? — BIA TWICE ORDERS JUDGE TO FOLLOW PRECEDENT & GIVE DUE PROCESS TO ASYLUM SEEKER!

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/immigration-law-blog/archive/2017/11/10/unpub-bia-asylum-remand-insists-ij-follow-the-law-nov-6-2017.aspx?Redirected=true

Dan Kowalski reports at LexisNexis Immigration Community (quoting Respondent’s attorney Humza Kuzma):

“We appealed to the BIA, stating that the IJ was ignoring the law of the case and his direct instructions from a higher court. As Hassan noted in his FB post, we included redacted cases from a FOIA request another attorney had conducted, showing the various instances in the past two years where the IJ had been remanded in asylum proceedings. Yesterday, we got the remand, which reconfirmed that the prior rulings in the case were vacated and relying upon them was in judicial error, and instructed the IJ to grant our client a completely new hearing with an open record, and issue a new decision.”

BIA PANEL: Appellate Immigration Judges Guendelsberger, Kendall Clark, Grant

OPINION BY: Judge Edward R. Grant

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Read the full report and the BIA’s unpublished opinion at the link.

Why wasn’t this decision published?
Why wasn’t this Immigration Judge who is showing contempt for the BIA, precedent, asylum seekers, and Due Process named in the decision (a technique used by Article III Courts to deal with recalcitrant Judges)?
Why wasn’t this case remanded to a different Immigration Judge?
Why don’t we see more precedent decisions from appellate panels like this one which appears committed to a fair application of asylum law and reigning in rogue judges like this one?
How would an unrepresented individual ever be able to vindicate his or her statutory and constitutional rights before a biased and abusive judge like this?
What can be done to improve merit selection procedures for U.S. Immigration Judges so that individuals who are biased against migrants, unwilling comply with orders of higher tribunals, and uncommitted to Due Process will no longer be placed in judicial positions?

PWS

11-11-17

GONZO’S WORLD: His Own Credibility Has Become A Bad Joke — But, Under Gonzo The DOJ & The SG’s Office Rapidly Losing Credibility & Respect From The Federal Courts!

https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/sites/nationallawjournal/2017/11/09/justice-department-faces-questions-for-supreme-court-attack-on-aclu-ethics/

Marcia Coyle reports for the National Law Journal:

“The U.S. Justice Department’s request that the Supreme Court consider sanctions against lawyers who advocated for an immigrant teenager at the center of an abortion case has raised questions about the government’s motivation and threatened to jeopardize the reputation of the solicitor’s office before the justices. Former Justice Department attorneys called the government’s action in the Supreme Court “extraordinary” and said they had no memory of a similar Supreme Court petition.”

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You’ll need a full subscription to the NLJ to get beyond what I’ve quoted above. But, you get the idea.

And remember, you read first in some of my earlier blogs in immigrationcourtside.com about the DOJ’s and SG’s likely loss of years of hard earned respect and credibility by arguing the relatively “law free” politicized “Gonzo” positions forced on them by Sessions and the rest of the White Nationalist Trumpsters. Remember, the pro bono lawyers being smeared by Sessions’s DOJ were fighting to vindicate a migrant teenager‘s clear constitutional rights against an attempt by Government officials to substitute their own personal opinions for the constitutional rules and to misrepresent their true intentions (use delay and obfuscation tondefeat constitutional rights) in doing so. Sounds like it’s Sessions and his group whose law licenses should be re-examined.

The public and to some extent the media might have allowed the “Trump/Sessions Crowd” to “normalize” the presentation of lies, misrepresentations, intentional omissions, distortions, and political screeds as “facts” or “legal arguments.” But, most Article III Courts don’t like being played for fools, particularly by the USDOJ which traditionally has been expected to meet higher standards of integrity, fairness, and responsibility to accurately inform the tribunals before which they appear.

Ironically, although Gonzo tried to tag immigration lawyers fighting to preserve their clients’ statutory and constitutional rights as “dirty,” that tag is much more likely to stick to Gonzo and some of the ethically challenged DOJ lawyers doing his bidding. Not to mention that the DOJ is wasting the time of the Supremes with its basically frivolous request, intended largely as political grandstanding to satisfy Gonzo’s anti-abortion, anti-US Constitution political backers.

PWS

11-10-17

KELLY TRIED TO BULLY ACTING DHS DIRECTOR ELAINE DUKE INTO TERMINATING TPS FOR HONDURANS – SHE WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/politics/elaine-duke-hondurous-immigrants/index.html

“By: Tal Kopan, Abby Phillip and Miranda Green, CNN

White House chief of staff John Kelly pressured acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke to terminate protections for tens of thousands of Honduran immigrants currently living in the US, sources tell CNN.

Duke received multiple calls from Kelly pressuring her, in Duke’s perception, to end Temporary Protected Status for Honduran immigrants on Monday’s decision day, leaving Duke “distraught and disappointed” and ready to leave the department, according to a source familiar with Duke’s thinking.

The Trump administration characterized the call as Kelly weighing in through a normal process and said Duke was committed to remaining at her post.

The Washington Post first reported on the call.

TPS is an immigration status allowed by law for certain countries experiencing dire conditions, such as a natural disaster, epidemic or war, and protects individuals from deportation and authorizes them to work in the US.

Monday was the deadline for a decision on the protected status for the roughly 86,000 Hondurans. DHS instead announced that Duke had not found there was enough information to make a formal decision, a move that triggered a six-month extension of the protected status. The administration did terminate protections for Nicaraguans, about 5,300 of which live in the US. Both populations have lived in the US for nearly two decades.

According to the source familiar with Duke’s thinking, Kelly and the administration wanted Homeland Security secretary nominee Kirstjen Nielsen to avoid questions about the issue at her Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, and wanted to her confirmed quickly enough that she would be the one to make a decision on temporary protected status for Haitians, which is due at the end of the month and which will likely be ended.

According to the source familiar, Duke had decided over the weekend that she did not have enough information to end the protections for the Hondurans, which is what the department announced late Monday evening.

“I think she’s very distraught and disappointed at Kelly and the whole apparatus,” the source said. “She’s out there alone, you know? It’s like, ‘Why do I keep doing this if you guys are just going to beat me up?'”

The source confirmed that she made reference to resigning during the back-and-forth and is inclined to leave the job.

The source described the back-and-forth as a “forceful, directive conversation.”

“It was a loud conversation, it wasn’t a quiet conversation,” the source said.”

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Read the rest of the story from Tal & Co at the link. No wonder Gonzo’s DOJ is trying (unethically) to “retaliate” against CNN by abusing the anti-trust laws! Very “Third World” — a perfect term to describe the Trump Administration — corruptly using government power to reward cronies, intimidate the public, and punish opposition. Those of us who have had to deal with Third World dictatorships and kleptocracies and their carnage for decades know the characteristics all too well.

So, long time Honduran residents of the US (and their families, employers, employees, colleagues, friends, and neighbors) owe their “six month reprieve” from insane chaos totally to one career Senior Executive with the backbone and integrity (a word seldom heard in connection with the Trump Administration) to stand up to the “Trump Mafia.” Cheers for Elaine Duke!

Kelly sinks deeper into “The Swamp” every day with each new revelation of his sleazy conduct and reactionary views. I suspect that Duke’s DHS career will come to an end shortly. And, there is some reason to suspect that her permanent replacement, Kirstjen Nielsen, is being put over at DHS to be a “yes-woman” for the Trump, Sessions, Kelly, Miller, Bannon (in absentia) White Nationalist crew operating out of the White House and the DOJ. Whether she will live up to their “low expectations,” however, is another matter entirely.

PWS

11-10-17

EUGENE ROBINSON IN WASHPOST: The Master Of Racial Identity Politics & His GOP Stooges!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-trump-is-the-master-of-abhorrent-identity-politics/2017/11/02/e675bca8-c003-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.47797a94c8ea

Robinson writes:

“By now it should be clear that racism is a feature of the Trump administration, not a bug.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly’s hideous rewriting of Civil War history is merely the latest evidence. Can anyone really believe “the lack of an ability to compromise” caused that bloody war? Is it possible to become a four-star Marine general without knowing that the Constitution itself was structured around a compromise on slavery? Or that the first half of the 19th century saw a series of equally immoral compromises that let slavery continue?

How can a man whose son died in service of his country believe that “men . . . of good faith” is an acceptable description of military officers who committed treason and took up arms against the United States, as did Robert E. Lee and the rest of the Confederate generals? Do people of good faith hold others in cruel bondage, buy and sell them like chattel and forcibly compel their unpaid labor?

Kelly buys into the racist, revisionist, dripping-with-Spanish-moss version of history that white Southerners concocted as they were imposing the system of Jim Crow repression. Anyone ignorant enough to believe the war was about anything other than slavery should read the declarations issued by the Confederate states upon secession. Here is a quote from Mississippi’s proclamation, which is vile but at least forthright:

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

Those who profited handsomely from slavery — including the growing financial markets of Wall Street and the bustling textile mills of New England — knew full well that it was wrong. They just didn’t want to give it up.

Kelly’s “good faith” historical claptrap would be bad enough in a vacuum. But it alarmingly echoes President Trump’s “many sides” analysis of the Charlottesville incident — and continues a tone that Trump set at the outset of his campaign, when he vilified Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists.

. . . .

When Trump miscalibrates and strays into explicit racism, as he did in the case of Charlottesville, there are expressions of shock and horror from fellow Republicans and even members of his Cabinet. But nobody renounces him, except senators who are about to retire. Nobody quits his administration on principle. Trump’s enablers meekly go back to the all-important business of cutting rich people’s taxes.

Making whites feel embattled and aggrieved is central to the Trump presidency. It is what makes him different from all other recent presidents, perhaps going back as far as Woodrow Wilson, who imposed Jim Crow segregation on the federal workforce. It is what makes Trump so corrosive to the national fabric.

There is one master practitioner of identity politics in the United States today. Shamefully, he lives in the White House.”

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

Read Robinson’s entire op-ed at the link.

Yup! Hard to add much to this analysis! Kelly’s perverted account of the Civil War (although depressing) is not particularly surprising when you remember that this is a guy who bought into the Trump-Gonzo-Miller-Bannon racist and bogus “overrun by the immigrant hordes and Muslim terrorists” fear-mongering hook, line, and sinker, with no apparent reflection on its demonstrable falsity or stupidity.

PWS

11-05-17

GONZO’S WORLD: WARNING — GONZO ATTACKS LAWYERS WHO DARE TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/11/03/justice_department_declares_war_on_aclu_attorneys_who_oppose_trump.html Continue reading GONZO’S WORLD: WARNING — GONZO ATTACKS LAWYERS WHO DARE TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS!

MICA ROSENBERG ON REUTERS TV: TRUMP TARGETS KIDS!

http://reut.tv/2yqSFn6

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

Kids and other vulnerable individuals seem like a logical targets for bullies like Trump, Sessions, and the rest of the GOP White Nationalist Gang.

Good things aren’t going to happen to a country that picks on children and enables cowardly leaders.

But, after all, these Dudes are still defending the Confedracy, rebellion against the USA, and the fight to preserve slavery! I guess once on the wrong side of history, always on the wrong side of history. The real question is where to the rest of us stand, and what are we can do about the steady erosion of law, morality, and humane values by the Trump Administration and its supporters.

PWS

11-03-17

GOVERNMENT OF THE UNQUALIFIED, BY THE UNQUALIFIED, FOR THE UNCARING! — “Extreme Vetting” Doesn’t Apply To The Trump Administration! — Filling The USG With “Swamp Creatures” & Clowns! 🤡

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-other-huge-scandal-mueller-brought-to-light-this-week/2017/11/01/5e05a458-bf4c-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.e0400dfe3805

Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post:

“Robert Mueller brought to light a huge scandal this week, and it has nothing to do with Russia.

He has introduced the world to Sam Clovis.

Clovis, we now know, was the Trump campaign official who oversaw George Papadopoulos and encouraged his efforts to meet with Russian officials. But what’s more interesting than what Clovis is is what Clovis isn’t.

For those who had not heard of Clovis before (which is pretty much everybody), he has been nominated to be the chief scientist at the Agriculture Department, a position that by law must go to “distinguished scientists,” even though he is, well, not a scientist. He is a talk-radio host, economics professor (though not actually an economist, either) and, most importantly, a Trump campaign adviser.

President Trump promised to “hire the best people.” And, as scientists go, Clovis is an excellent talk-show host. Among his scientific breakthroughs: being “extremely skeptical” of climate change, calling homosexuality “a choice,” suggesting gay rights would lead to legalized pedophilia, pushing the Obama birther allegation, and calling Eric Holder a “racist bigot” and Tom Perez a “racist Latino.”

A group called American Oversight had the foresight to make records requests for résumés of those hired by the Trump administration, and the group searched for those who worked on the Trump campaign. Among the “best” Trump hires American Oversight found:

●Sid Bowdidge, assistant to the secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Before working for the Trump campaign, Bowdidge, from 2013 to 2015, was manager of the Meineke Car Care branch in Seabrook, N.H. He previously was service and branch manager for tire shops. I don’t know what qualified Bowdidge for his position, but I do know this: He is not going to pay a lot for that muffler. (He had to hit the road, losing his job after it was discovered he had called Muslims “maggots.”)

●Victoria Barton, congressional relations for Regions II, V and VI, Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to working for the Trump campaign, Barton was an office manager and, between 2013 and 2015, a “bartender/bar manager.” The expertise in housing policy possessed by Barton is no doubt invaluable to HUD Secretary Ben Carson, a retired brain surgeon.

●Christopher Hagan, a confidential assistant at the Agriculture Department. Before working on the Trump campaign, he was, between 2009 and 2015, a “cabana attendant” at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y. According to his résumé, he “identified and addressed customer’s needs in a timely and orderly manner.”

This is important, because you never know when somebody at the USDA is going to need a towel.

●Nick Brusky, also a confidential assistant at the USDA. The Trump campaign worker previously drove a truck. He was a trustee in Butler Township, Ohio, at the same time, and, as Politico noted, his résumé lists coursework but no degree.

●David Matthews, yet another confidential assistant at the Agriculture Department, developed scented candles while also serving as a “legal receptionist” before joining the Trump campaign.

Some of the other “best” people Trump has hired are well known. Lynne Patton, HUD regional administrator, previously arranged Trump golf tournaments and arranged Eric Trump’s wedding, among other things. Callista Gingrich, just confirmed as ambassador to the Vatican, prepared for this by writing children’s books, singing in a church choir — and being married to Trump ally Newt Gingrich.

Others now in high office are less known: an office page, the author of an anti-Clinton book, a Christian-school librarian, a couple of real estate brokers and a landscaper. Many don’t appear to meet the educational qualifications for their positions. But they did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

One can imagine the chairman of an interagency task force going around the table asking each department what should be in the infrastructure bill:

ith “Swamp Creatures” & Clowns!

“Transportation Department?”

“Don’t know, sir. I was an Uber driver before I joined the campaign.”

“Army Corps of Engineers?”

“Pass. I ran a coin-operated laundromat.”

“Surely somebody here knows something about infrastructure?”

(Silence.)

“I was a toll-taker on the New Jersey Turnpike before the campaign. Now I’m in charge of climate science at the EPA.”

Anybody else?

“I was a plumber. But they made me chief medical officer at NIH because I watched a lot of ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ ”

“What, they had no doctors for NIH?”

“We had one chiropractor on the campaign, sir, but they needed him to run NASA.”

“A chiropractor running NASA? What next, a musician at Strategic Command?”

“Actually, sir, the Stratcom commander was a hairdresser.”

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

And, this doesn’t even get into some of the spectacularly unqualified Cabinet Secretaries (“The Band of Sycophants”) already approved by a GOP Senate and serving. This morning Clovis withdrew as nominee.

But, Milbank’s point is still well-taken. Let’s assume for the time being that Mueller never links Manafort directly to Russia during the time he was Trump’s campaign Chairman. And yes, he’s innocent until proven guilty.

But, Mueller has just produced very substantial evidence that Manafort for years engaged in a scheme to shield income from the IRS, thus screwing U.S. taxpayers out of literally millions of dollars. In plain terms, he is allegedly a thief and a fraudster.

That a President who apparently avoided taxes himself for many years, is unwilling to disclose his tax returns, had the bad judgment to hire an apparent serious criminal to head his campaign is yet another colossal lapse in judgement and competence that would be disqualifying for any politician other than The Donald.

“And where are the clowns
Quick send in the clowns
Don’t bother they’re here.”🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡*

*Song and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

PWS

11-02-17

WASHPOST: TRUMP’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT WHITE NATIONALIST HYSTERIA & UNJUSTIFIED ATTACKS ON OTHERS DIMINISHES OUR COUNTRY AND MAKES US LESS SAFE!

Three Editorials in today’s Washington Post emphasize the extremely counterproductive nature of Trump’s response to the NY terrorist attack.

First, on his inappropriate attempt to blame immigrants for the incident:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-response-to-the-new-york-attack-was-downright-dispiriting/2017/11/01/00558930-bf43-11e7-8444-a0d4f04b89eb_story.html?utm_term=.133a8ef49c1b

“IN LOWER MANHATTAN on Tuesday, not far from the memorial to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, eight people were killed and 12 injured when a man espousing fidelity to the Islamic State drove a rented pickup down a busy bike path along the Hudson River. “It was gruesome. It was grisly. It was surreal,” one witness said of bicyclists and pedestrians being mowed down. The attack on innocent people enjoying a fine autumn day was a chilling reminder of the persistent threat posed to the United States by Islamist extremists — and their ingenuity in finding ways to commit murder.

Some small comfort can be taken in the fact that in the 16 years since the fall of the twin towers, improvements in protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism abroad have lessened the terrorists’ strength to strike and improved our ability to respond. The quick actions of police and other first responders during Tuesday’s tragedy should be applauded. So must the resilience and strength of the people of New York City, who made clear they will not be cowed by fear.

Far less inspiring — indeed, downright dispiriting — was the reaction of President Trump. In a series of tweets that apparently were informed (a word we use loosely) by his viewing of “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump went on a harangue about immigration and attacked Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). On Wednesday, Mr. Trump signaled he might upend the judicial process by declaring the suspected attacker an enemy combatant to be shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay prison; federal terrorism charges filed against him later in the day likely would foreclose that from happening. Note that the White House wouldn’t discuss gun control after last month’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, on the grounds that it would politicize a tragedy, but it had no problem launching partisan attacks following a terrorist strike that ought to unify all Americans. Note also, as The Post’s Philip Bump pointed out, that Mr. Trump is quick to jump to conclusions when there are incidents involving immigrants but is far more circumspect when nonimmigrants are involved.

What’s really needed from the Trump administration is not blame-shifting but a serious attempt to investigate and learn from this latest attack. Were others involved or aware of the alleged plans dating back a year that went into the attack? Are authorities right in their initial assessment that the suspect became “radicalized domestically” while living in the United States? Were signals missed when he appeared on the radar of law enforcement in connection with the investigations of other suspects? The 29-year-old, authorities said, allegedly “followed almost exactly to a T” instructions that the Islamic State has put out on its social-media channels on how to carry out attacks. So what can be done to detect and deter other would-be followers?

Among those killed Tuesday were five Argentines who were part of a group of school friends who traveled to New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation. It was their dream trip to a city known for being open and generous and diverse. Those are the traits that make America great; to undermine them in response to Tuesday’s attack only plays into the hands of terrorists.”

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

Second, the Editorial Board responds to Trump’s attempt to blame Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for the attack:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-trump-new-yorks-tragedy-means-a-new-attack-on-immigration/2017/11/01/8ffa0940-bf38-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.ead2a22ecd7d

“PRESIDENT TRUMP, ever prone to seek out scapegoats, fastened on a new target in the wake of the terrorist attack in New York: the state’s senior Democratic senator, along with a 27-year-old visa program that offers applicants from dozens of countries a shot at immigrating to the United States.

Mr. Trump singled out Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who, in 1990, sponsored the diversity visa program, through which the alleged attacker in New York, Sayfullo Saipov, is reported to have immigrated to the United States from his native Uzbekistan. In a tweet, the president derided the program as “a Chuck Schumer beauty.”

Never mind that Mr. Schumer’s legislation establishing the program attracted bipartisan support; or that it was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican; or even that Mr. Schumer himself unsuccessfully bargained to end the program, in 2013, in return for a bill granting legal residence to millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States. Neither the facts nor the normal political imperative to avoid partisanship in the wake of a terrorist attack appeared to move Mr. Trump.

His tweet made it appear that his overriding interest in an assault allegedly backed by the Islamic State is to use it to assail immigration — in this instance, a legal program whose beneficiaries represent a speck in the overall number of immigrants. Managed by the State Department since 1995, the program now grants up to 50,000 visas annually, via a random lottery, to citizens of dozens of countries who would otherwise be mostly overlooked in the annual influx of green-card recipients. In recent years, many of the winners have been from Africa and Eastern Europe.

Having reaped political advantage as a candidate in vilifying illegal immigrants, Mr. Trump has set his sights in office on legal migrants, including refugees, from a handful of mostly Muslim countries, whom he’d like Americans to see as an undifferentiated mass of potentially violent interlopers. Gradually, he is chipping away at what was once a national consensus that immigrants are a critical source of vitality, invention and international appeal.

Like almost any immigration program, the diversity visa lottery is imperfect and susceptible to abuse. The fortunate winners, who represent less than 1 percent of those who have applied annually in recent years, are not uniformly equipped to thrive in this country; many lack an education beyond high school. As Mr. Saipov may turn out to prove, even the extensive vetting required of all who immigrate through the program does not provide an ironclad guarantee that it is impervious to applicants who might seek to harm the United States.

The lottery program might be improved. Still, the fact that more than 11 million people applied for it in fiscal 2016 reflects the magnetic appeal the United States continues to exert around the world. Satisfying a small fraction of that demand, through the lottery or some other legal means, is a powerful tool of public diplomacy in countries whose citizens might otherwise have no hope of coming here.”

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

Third, Jennifer Rubin (“JRUBE”) comments on Trump’s “mindless,” totally inappropriate, attack on our justice system (in other words, on our Constitution):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/11/02/trumps-mindless-insult-to-the-american-judicial-system/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6be7fbcdabb0

“Asked about the suspect Wednesday, President Trump called him an “animal.” Prompted to say whether he thought Saipov should be sent to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Trump said, sure, he’d consider it. Later, at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said flatly that the White House considered the suspect an “enemy combatant.”

The president also said yesterday that the American justice system (presumably including his own Justice Department) is a “joke” and a “laughingstock.” He further opined, “We also have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now,” Trump said. (Terrorists are subject to the death penalty, so it’s unclear what he had in mind.) “They’ll go through court for years … We need quick justice, and we need strong justice,” he said.

Thankfully, the Justice Department, like the Pentagon, has learned when to ignore Trump. On Wednesday, Saipov was charged in federal court. By Thursday morning, Trump was backing off his support for sending Saipov to Guantanamo. Once again, the ignorant president shot from the hip and had to creep back to reality.

Just how harmful were Trump’s statements? It is reprehensible for the president to defame our justice system, which is not a “joke” nor a “laughingstock” but the envy of the world. Moreover, in the terrorist context, it has proved remarkably efficient in trying and convicting terrorists, and then handing out maximum punishments. The surviving Boston Marathon bombing defendant was convicted in just this way and sentenced to death.

. . . .

Based on today’s tweet, we were right to assume that neither Trump nor Sanders had any idea what he/she was talking about (always a good assumption). We will watch with pride as American justice takes its course — and with horror as Trump continues to wreck havoc from the Oval Office.”

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

Having spent a professional lifetime working on immigration and refugee issues, I can confirm that Trump and his GOP “restrictionist cronies” like Sessions, Miller, and Bannon have managed to transform what used to be “a national consensus that immigrants [and particularly refugees] are a critical source of vitality, invention and international appeal” into a highly partisan and racially-charged attack on the national origins and futures of some of our most productive citizens and residents — those who far more than Trump or his cronies are likely to help us in building a better, safer future for all Americans.

Having worked on all sides of our U.S. Justice System, served as an administrative judge on the trial and appellate levels for more than 21 years, listened to and/or read thousands of accounts of what made people leave their “home countries,” and studied in detail the reasons why some failing countries are “senders” of talented migrants and others, like the U.S., are fortunate enough to be on the “receiving” end, I can say unequivocally that the fairness of our justice system and the overall honsety and integrity of civil servants in the U.S. Government are the primary differences between the “sending” and “receiving” countries, like ours.

As I have observed before, Trump and his cronies are launching what is basically a “Third-World autocratic attack” on our Constitution and our democratic institutions. If they succeed, the immigration “problem” might eventually be “solved” because nobody will want to come here any more. How many people risked their lives trying to get into the former Soviet Union?

Donald Trump, his cronies, and his enablers are and will remain a much greater threat to our safety and Constitutional institutions than any foreign terrorist could ever be. We ignore his dangerous and fundamentally un-American rants at our own peril!

PWS

11-02-17

GONZO’S WORLD: THE HILL: Professor Lindsay Muir Harris — Using REAL Data & Facts — Rips Apart Sessions’s “Ignorant” (& TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE) Anti-Asylum Speech To EOIR!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/355734-sessions-fundamentally-misses-the-mark-on-the-asylum-system

Lindsay writes:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered remarks to the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) on Oct. 12, arguing that the U.S. asylum system is overburdened with fraud and abuse. Sessions misrepresented the system, relying on virtually no data to reach his, frankly, ignorant conclusions.

. . . .

Fifth, Sessions suggests that because some individuals who pass credible fear interviews fail to apply for asylum, they are fraudulently seeking asylum. This fails to recognize that individuals who pass a credible fear interview have been released with very little orientation as to what to expect next.

For example, asylum law requires that an official application be filed in immigration court within one year of the asylum seeker’s last entry into the United States. U.S. officials, however, fail to tell individuals who pass a credible fear interview about this deadline.

Having just articulated in detail, to a U.S. official, why they are afraid to return to their home country, many asylum seekers believe they have “applied” for asylum, and some even believe they have been granted upon release.

Several groups filed suit against DHS last June based on the lack of notice of the one year filing deadline given to asylum seekers and also the impossibility of filing because the immigration courts are so backlogged that an applicant often cannot file in open court within a year.

Sessions also neglects to mention that asylum seekers face a crisis in legal representation. According to a national study of cases from 2007-2012, only 37 percent of immigrants were represented in immigration court. Representation can make all the difference. Without representation, asylum seekers lack an understanding of what is happening in their case and may be too fearful to appear without an attorney. Their number one priority, remember, is to avoid being sent back to a place where they face persecution and/or torture or death.

Finally, the asylum process itself is complicated and the I-589 form to apply is only available in English. This is overwhelming for a pro se applicant who lacks the ability to read and write in English.

Attorney General Sessions’ remarks should not be surprising, certainly not to any who are familiar with his anti-immigrant track record. It remains disappointing, however, that the nation’s top law enforcement official should politicize and attempt to skew our vision of the asylum-seeking process. As a nation founded by immigrants fleeing religious persecution, it is profoundly disturbing that the current Attorney General sees fit to an attack on asylum seekers and to undermine America’s history of compassionate protection of refugees.

Professor Lindsay M. Harris is co-director of the Immigration & Human Rights Clinic at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law.”

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

Go on over to The Hill at the above link and read the rest of Lindsay’s article (containing her points 1-4, which I omitted in this excerpt).

I can confirm that those who have passed the “credible fear” process often mistakenly believe that they “applied for asylum” before the Asylum Office. I also found that few unrepresented respondents understood the difference between required reporting to the DHS Detention Office and reporting to Immigration Court.

Moreover, given the “haste makes waste” procedures applied to recent border arrivals, the addresses reported to EOIR by DHS or entered into the EOIR system were often inaccurate. Sometimes, I could tell they were inaccurate just from my own knowledge of the spelling and location of various streets and jurisdictions in Northern Virginia. Another time, one of the Arlington Immigration court’s “eagle eyed” Court Clerks spotted that a number of supposed “in absentias” charged to Arlington were really located in the state of “PA” rather than “VA” which had incorrectly been entered into our system. No wonder these were coming back as “undeliverable!”

Therefore, I would consider Sessions’s claim of a high “no show” rate to be largely bogus until proven otherwise. My experience was that recently arrived women, children, and families from the Northern Triangle appeared well over 90% of the time if they 1) actually understood the reporting requirements, and 2) actually got the Notice of Hearing. Those who were able to obtain lawyers appeared nearly 100% of the time.

This strongly suggests to me that if Sessions really wanted to address problems in Immigration Court he would ditch the knowingly false anti-asylum narratives and instead concentrate on: 1) insuring that everyone who “clears” the credible fear process has his or her Immigration Court hearing scheduled in a location and a manner that gives them the maximum possible access to pro bono legal representation; 2) insuring that appropriate explanations and warnings regarding failure to appear are given in English and Spanish, and 3) a “quality control initiative” with respect to entering addresses at both DHS and EOIR and serving Notices to Appear.

Jeff Sessions also acted totally inappropriately in delivering this highly biased, enforcement-oriented, political address to the EOIR. Although housed within the DOJ, EOIR’s only functions are quasi-judicial — fairly adjudicating cases. In the words of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent case the function of the Immigration Judiciary is “preserving the rule of law, safeguarding the impartiality of our adjudicatory processes, and ensuring that fairness and objectivity are not usurped by emotion, regardless of the nature of the allegations.” Alimbaev v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., 872 F.3d 188, 190 (3rd Cir. 2017).

Consequently, the only appropriate remarks for an Attorney General to make to EOIR and the Immigration Judiciary would be to acknowledge the difficulty of their judicial jobs; thank them for their service; encourage them to continue to render fair, impartial, objective, scholarly, and timely decisions; and explain how he plans to support them by providing more resources for them to do their important jobs. That’s it!!

What is totally inappropriate and probably unethical is for the Attorney General to deliver a “pep talk” to judges spouting the “party line” of one of the parties in interest (the DHS), setting forth inaccurate and unsupported statements of the law, and demeaning the other party to the judicial proceedings — the immigrant respondents and their attorneys.

Although I personally question their ultimate constitutionality under the Due Process Clause, the Attorney General does have two established channels for conveying his views on the law to the EOIR: 1) by incorporating them in regulations issued by the DOJ after public notice and comment; and 2) by “certifying” BIA decisions to himself and thereby establishing his own case precedents which the BIA and Immigration Judges must follow.

Troublesome as these two procedures might be, they do have some glaring differences from “AG speeches and memos.” First, public parties have a right to participate in both the regulatory and the precedent adjudication process, thus insuring that views opposed to those being advanced by the DHS and the Attorney General must be considered and addressed. Second, in both cases, private parties may challenge the results in the independent Article III Courts if they are dissatisfied with the Attorney General’s interpretations. By contrast, the “opposing views” to Session’s anti-asylum screed did not receive “equal time and access” to the judicial audience.

Sessions’s recent disingenuous speech to EOIR was a highly inappropriate effort to improperly influence and bias supposedly impartial quasi-judicial officials by setting forth a “party line” and not very subtilely implying that those who might disagree with him could soon find themselves “out of favor.” That is particularly true when the speech was combined with outrageous discussions of how “performance evaluations” for judges could be revised to contain numerical performance quotes which have little or nothing to do with fairness and due process.

Jeff Sessions quite obviously does not see the U.S. Immigration Courts as an independent judiciary charged with delivering fair and impartial justice to immigrants consistent with the Due Process clause of our Constitution. Rather, he sees Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges as “adjuncts” to DHS enforcement — there primarily to insure that those apprehended by DHS agents or who turn themselves in to the DHS to apply for statutory relief are quickly and unceremoniously removed from the U.S. with the mere veneer, but not the substance, of Due Process.

Due process will not be realized in the U.S. Immigration Courts until they are removed from the DOJ and established as a truly independent Article I court.

PWS

10-31-17

TRAC DATA: IMMIGRATION COURTS DISCRIMINATE AGAINST DETAINED INDIVIDUALS AND MEXICAN NATIONALS IN PROCEDING WITHOUT COUNSEL!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/10/20/mexican-detained-disadvantaged-immigration-court/

Katie Shepherd reports for Immigration Impact:

“Immigrants facing deportation fare far better if they have a competent attorney representing them. For example, studies show that for asylum seekers, representation generally doubles the likelihood of being granted asylum.

For many, the ability to secure competent representation in immigration court is truly a matter of life and death. Yet fewer than 30 percent of detained individuals and only two thirds of non-detained individuals are represented in their removal case.

Meanwhile, the government is represented by an attorney in every single case.

While immigrants have a right to counsel in deportation proceedings if they can afford one, they do not have a right to counsel at the government’s expense.

New data released this week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) confirms that a noncitizen’s ability to obtain a lawyer—and the opportunity to meaningfully defend him or herself against deportation—is determined primarily by nationality and whether or not he or she is detained.

The data analysis reflects what detained immigrants, their family members, and the very small number of attorneys who do detained work already know too well—detained immigrants who attempt to retain an attorney face substantial obstacles.

There are myriad reasons that detained immigrants cannot obtain representation.

Because they are detained, they are unable to travel to meet with an attorney in person and must rely on telephones in the facility to call potential attorneys. Phone calls can be prohibitively expensive and phones are often not easily accessible.

Attorney visitation rules vary by facility—many of which are located in rural areas, hours from the attorney’s office. Further, many detained immigrants are simply unable to afford a competent attorney.

. . .

The TRAC data also shows that Mexican immigrants are disproportionately disadvantaged in immigration court. They have the highest detention rate (78 percent), yet the lowest representation rate of all nationalities—only 33 percent according to the report.

More than anything, the recent TRAC numbers emphasize the dire need for increased access to counsel for all immigrants facing deportation, particularly those who are detained.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

The policies being followed by Sessions and the DHS — which encourage more detention in out of the way locations — are specifically designed to diminish representation, increase removals, and deny due process to the most vulnerable among us.

PWS

10-22-17

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