"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
BILL BARR – Unqualified For Office – Unfit To Act In A Quasi-Judicial Capacity
There have been many articles pointing out that Bill Barr unethically has acted as Trump’s defense counsel rather than fulfilled his oath to uphold the Constitution and be the Attorney General of all of the American people. There have also been some absurdist “apologias” for Barr some written by once-respected lawyers who should know better, and others written by the normal Trump hacks.
Here are my choices for four of the best articles explaining why Barr should not be the Attorney General. It goes without saying that he shouldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be running the Immigration Court system. His intervention into individual cases in a quasi-judicial capacity is a clear violation of judicial ethics requiring avoidance of even the “appearance” of a conflict of interest. There is no “appearance” here. Barr has a clear conflict in any matter dealing with immigration.
Attorney General William Barr. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
House Democrats are going to face a difficult decision about launching an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Balanced against the president’s impressive array of misconduct is the fact that several more criminal investigations that may add to the indictment are already underway, and that impeaching the president might jeopardize the reelection of red-state Democratic members. But in the meantime, Attorney General William Barr presents them with a much easier decision. Barr has so thoroughly betrayed the values of his office that voting to impeach and remove him is almost obvious.
On March 24, Barr released a short letter summarizing the main findings of the Mueller investigation, as he saw them. News accounts treated Barr’s interpretation as definitive, and the media — even outlets that had spent two years uncovering a wide swath of suspicious and compromising links between the Trump campaign and Russia — dutifully engaged in self-flagellation for having had the temerity to raise questions about the whole affair.
Barr had done very little to that point to earn such a broad benefit of the doubt. In the same role in 1992, he had supported mass pardons of senior officials that enabled a cover-up of the Iran–Contra scandal. Less famously, in 1989 he issued a redacted version of a highly controversial administration legal opinion that, as Ryan Goodman explained, “omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion” for “no justifiable reason.”
And while many members of the old Republican political Establishment had recoiled against Trump’s contempt for the rule of law, Barr has shown no signs of having joined them. He met with Trump to discuss serving as his defense lawyer, publicly attacked the Mueller investigation (which risked “taking on the look of an entirely political operation to overthrow the president”), called for more investigations of Hillary Clinton, and circulated a lengthy memo strongly defending Trump against obstruction charges.
The events since Barr’s letter have incinerated whatever remains of his credibility. The famously tight-lipped Mueller team told several news outlets the letter had minimized Trump’s culpability; Barr gave congressional testimony hyping up Trump’s charges of “spying,” even prejudging the outcome of an investigation (“I think there was a failure among a group of leaders [at the FBI] at the upper echelon”); evaded questions as to whether he had shared the Mueller report with the White House; and, it turns out, he’s “had numerous conversations with White House lawyers which aided the president’s legal team,” the New York Times reports. Then he broke precedent by scheduling a press conference to spin the report in advance of its redacted publication.
It is not much of a mystery to determine which officials have offered their full loyalty to the president. Trump has reportedly “praised Barr privately for his handling of the report and compared him favorably to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions” —whose sole offense in Trump’s eyes was following Department of Justice ethical protocol. Trump urged his Twitter followers to tune in to Barr’s conference, promotional treatment he normally reserves for his Fox News sycophants.
The press conference was the final disqualifying performance. Barr acted like Trump’s defense lawyer, the job he had initially sought, rather than as an attorney general. His aggressive spin seemed designed to work in the maximal number of repetitions of the “no collusion” mantra, in accordance with his boss’s talking points, at the expense of any faithful transmission of the special counsel’s report.
Barr’s letter had made it sound as though Trump’s campaign spurned Russia’s offers of help: “The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign,” he wrote. In fact, Mueller’s report concluded, “In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer,” but that the cooperation fell short of criminal conduct.
Where Mueller intended to leave the job of judging Trump’s obstructive conduct to Congress, Barr interposed his own judgment. Barr offered this incredible statement for why Trump’s behavior was excusable: “[T]here is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” Barr said. “Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation,” and credited him further with taking “no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.”
Sincere? How can Barr use that word to describe the mentality of a man whose own staffers routinely describe him in the media as a pathological liar? Trump repeatedly lied about Russia’s involvement in the campaign, and his own dealings with Russia. And he also, contra Barr, repeatedly denied the special counsel access to witnesses by dangling pardons to persuade them to withhold cooperation.
It is true that many of Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice failed. As Mueller wrote, the president’s “efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
This is a rather different gloss on the facts than the happy story Barr offered the press. What’s more, it is a pressing argument for Barr’s own removal. Next to the president himself, the attorney general is the most crucial actor in the safeguarding of the rule of law. The Justice Department is an awesome force that holds the power to enable the ruling party to commit crimes with impunity, or to intimidate and smear the opposing party with the taint of criminality.
There is no other department in government in which mere norms, not laws, are all that stand between democracy as we know it and a banana republic. Barr has revealed his complete unfitness for this awesome task. Nearly two more years of this Trumpian henchman wielding power over federal law enforcement is more weight than the rickety Constitution can bear.
In the years after Watergate, Justice Department officials — from both parties — worked hard to banish partisan cronyism from the department. Their goal was to make it the least political, most independent part of the executive branch.
“Our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose,” Edward Levi, Gerald Ford’s attorney general, said at the time. Griffin Bell, later appointed to the same job by Jimmy Carter, described the department as “a neutral zone in the government, because the law has to be neutral.”
Attorney General William Barr clearly rejects this principle. He’s repeatedly put a higher priority on protecting his boss, President Trump, than on upholding the law in a neutral way. He did so in his letter last month summarizing Robert Mueller’s investigation and then again in a bizarre prebuttal news conference yesterday. As The Times editorial board wrote, Barr yesterday “behaved more like the president’s defense attorney than the nation’s top law-enforcement officer.”
Throughout his tenure, Barr has downplayed or ignored the voluminous evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing — his lies to the American people, his willingness to work with a hostile foreign country during a presidenial campaign, his tolerance of extensive criminal behavior among his staff and his repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation. Barr even claimed that Trump “fully cooperated” with that investigation, which Vox’s Ezra Klein notes is “an outright lie.”
Since he took office, Trump has made clear that he wants an attorney general who acts as first an enforcer of raw power and only second as an enforcer of federal law. In Barr, Trump has found his man. Together, they have cast aside more than four decades worth of Justice Department ideals and instead adopted the approach of Richard Nixon.
President Donald Trump has long wished for an attorney general who would act as his own private lawyer, protecting him from any potential legal damage. He finally found his man in William Barr.
Barr could have released special counsel Robert Mueller’s report from the beginning. Instead, the attorney general chose to twice present his own interpretation of the special counsel’s findings on foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. election ― before allowing members of the public to see the report and decide for themselves whether Trump and his associates did anything improper.
The first time the public received a glimpse of what was in the Mueller report was on March 24, when Barr sent a four-page letter to congressional leaders summarizing his conclusions from the report the special counsel team had submitted to Barr two days earlier.
The second time the public heard about the report’s content was in a Thursday morning press conference when Barr went out of his way to echo Trump talking points, attacking the media and the president’s “political opponents.”
To the Justice Department’s credit, the redactions in the Mueller report were relatively light ― allowing the public to see a substantial amount of the content.
But still, in his public comments, Barr made sure to paint as positive a picture of Trump before the report became widely available.
Here’s how the attorney general misled the public:
He left out the Trump campaign’s expectation of benefiting from hacked material.
In his letter to Congress on March 24, Barr wrote:
The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: ”[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election inference activities.”
While it’s true that the Mueller report did reach that conclusion, that quote is incomplete. Barr left out the first part, which was less complimentary to the Trump campaign.
Below is the full quote from the Mueller report, with the part Barr omitted in bold:
Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
He said it was up to him to make a decision on obstruction of justice.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Attorney General William Barr went to bat for Trump in a Thursday morning press conference.
In his March 24 letter, Barr said Mueller’s team did not come to a conclusion on whether Trump had obstructed justice in the course of the investigation. Therefore, Barr claimed, it was now up to him to make that determination.
“The Special Counsel’s decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime,” he wrote.
Barr said he concluded that the evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
But Barr never had to make that legal conclusion, as Matt Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department under President Barack Obama, pointed out. And Mueller never asked Barr to so.
Indeed, the report said the special counsel’s team couldn’t come to such a conclusion:
[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.
The report also said that ultimately, the obstruction call wasn’t for Mueller to make. The special counsel decided not to make a decision on whether to prosecute Trump because the Justice Department’s position, according to an Office of Legal Counsel memo, is that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
“Given the role of the Special Counsel as an attorney in the Department of Justice and the framework of the Special Counsel regulations … this Office accepted OLC’s legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction,” the report states.
Furthermore, it seems clear that Mueller and his team expected that ultimately, Congress would make the decision on obstruction of justice.
NBC News reported earlier that some in Mueller’s office had said “their intent was to leave the legal question open for Congress and the public to examine the evidence.”
“[W]e concluded that Congress can validly regulate the President’s exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice,” the report says.
In other words, Congress can impeach the president if it wants to do so.
He gave an incomplete picture of Trump’s actions that could be construed as obstruction of justice.
“In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct,” Barr wrote in his March 24 letter.
The report doesn’t let Trump off the hook quite so easily. It says Trump tried to obstruct justice ― but he didn’t succeed because his staff refused to follow his orders.
“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the report reads.
The report detailed 10 acts by Trump that could amount to obstruction of justice.
He said Mueller found “no collusion.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been called to testify before Congress about his report.
One of Trump’s favorite phrases is that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 elections. He has tweeted it 84 times.
Barr used the phrase four times in his 18-minute remarks in Thursday’s press conference:
“Put another way, the special counsel found no ‘collusion’ by any Americans in the IRA’s illegal activity.”
“But again, the special counsel’s report did not find any evidence that members of the Trump campaign or anyone associated with the campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its hacking operations. In other words, there was no evidence of Trump campaign ‘collusion’ with the Russian government’s hacking.”
“After finding no underlying collusion with Russia, the special counsel’s report goes on to consider whether certain actions of the president could amount to obstruction of the special counsel’s investigation.”
“At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was, in fact, no collusion.”
But the Mueller report never actually said the investigation found no collusion. In fact, the report explains specifically why it doesn’t use the term “collusion.” The word only appears in the report as part of this explanation or in quoting someone else.
MUELLER REPORT
The Mueller report avoided using the term “collusion,” and explains why here.
Therefore, Barr repeatedly saying Mueller found “no collusion” was simply the attorney general adopting a Trump talking point.
He said Trump fully cooperated with the investigation.
Barr was extremely sympathetic to Trump in Thursday’s press conference. He tried to paint a picture of a president under extreme ― and unfair ― pressure, telling reporters, “As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates.”
He said Trump was “frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” so it’s not surprising if he may have lashed out a bit. And, he added, Trump deserved credit for “fully cooperat[ing]” with the special counsel at all:
Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims.
Trump, however, didn’t fully cooperate. He refused repeated requests to give an interview to Mueller and his team. The report said the special counsel’s team considered issuing a subpoena for Trump to testify but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it:
MUELLER REPORT
The Mueller report says Trump refused to be interviewed by the special counsel and his team.
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Finally, this editorial form the SF Chronicle really “hammers home” Barr’s patent unfitness to continue serving.
Editorial: Attorney General Barr’s misplaced loyalties
Chronicle Editorial Board
Updated
Photo: Tom Brenner / New York Times
Attorney General William Barr has been acting as if he is Presisdent Trump’s personal attorney.
President Trump has never made any secret of his desire to have an attorney general whose first loyalty was to him. Regrettably for the nation and the honest administration of justice, Trump unquestionably now has one in William Barr.
The attorney general has lost all credibility with his disgraceful handling of the rollout of the Mueller report into Russian interference into the 2016 election. Barr left the American people for more than a month with a seriously skewed characterization of the “principal conclusions” from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings from the two-year investigation.
His four-page summary of those conclusions amounted to “nothing much to see here, folks.” While he was correct that the Mueller team could not make a case that anyone in Trump’s campaign broke the law by conspiring with Russians, the Barr summary was downright deceptive in its portrayal of the special counsel’s findings on possible obstruction of justice by the president.
Barr’s summary suggested that “difficult questions of law and fact” left it difficult for Mueller to determine whether Trump had obstructed the probe. Barr and his deputy took it upon themselves to conclude that “the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient” to establish obstruction.
Americans who have now read the Mueller’s team’s own words in the 448-page report discovered that Barr’s account was highly misleading. In fact, Mueller’s hesitation was not based on an inability to decide; it was guided in part by a Department of Justice policy that a sitting president could not be indicted. Given that, Mueller suggested it would be unfair to accuse Trump of a crime when the president could not have a chance to defend himself in a “speedy and public trial” with the constitutional protections.
Barr also suggested that Trump could not have obstructed justice into an investigation of a crime he did not commit.
Mueller’s report clearly stated otherwise.
“The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong,” it stated. Mueller’s investigation detailed “multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”
Rather than punting the obstruction decision to Barr, Mueller very clearly noted that a decision on what to do with the substantial evidence of wrongdoing he collected should be made by Congress, which has the power of impeachment.
Barr never bothered to correct Trump’s exhortation of “complete and total exoneration.” Barr might as well have been on a Trump spokesman, rather than the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, at a bizarre Thursday news conference (before the report’s release) in which he offered a sympathetic explanation for Trump’s repeated efforts to stymie the investigation. Barr chalked it up to Trump’s anger and frustration.
Justice has been frustrated. Americans are justifiably angry. Barr has proved himself unfit for the high office he holds.
This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
Undoubtedly, Trump is unfit for office as many of us have been saying for some time now. The Mueller report confirmed what most thinking people already knew: the guy is dishonest, immoral, pathological, and a not very bright “con man.” (He’s also a racist and a White Nationalist would be authoritarian, although those admittedly were not points of emphasis in the Mueller report which focused on other aspects of his totally disgraceful conduct.)
But, I’ll concede that Trump’s removal is unlikely to happen except at the ballot box. Even that is uncertain with about 40% of American voters apparently wedded to a “beggar thy neighbor, who cares about the majority, country be damned” worldview. Trump is already focused on a “race-baiting” strategy of leveraging the most problematic aspects of our electoral college system while treating the interests of majority of Americans with mockery and disdain.
It remains to be seen whether any Democratic candidate can unite the diverse majority of Americans for at least long enough to save our country by removing Trump and, hopefully, his GOP enablers along with him. It also remains to be seen whether any country where 40% of the voters are so out of touch with reality and the common interests of the rest of us can actually be governed, once majority rule is restored.
But, Barr is a different matter. He’s not elected, he’s not President, and we don’t have to enable his continued unethical misuse of authority at the DOJ, at least not in the the all important area of the U.S. Immigraton Court.
If Congress won’t do the job by creating an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, it’s time for the Article III courts to invalidate precedents produced by Barr’s and Sessions’s unethical participation in individual quasi-judicial decision-making and to start invalidating removal orders entered by “courts” controlled by political enforcement officials, in clear contradiction to the Due Process requirement that individuals facing the life or death authority of the Federal Government are entitled to have fair and impartial decision makers and reasoned decisions. That can’t happen in a system controlled and directed by biased political “enforcement only” officials like Barr (and Sessions before him). Barr has made it crystal clear that he always will put the selfish interests of Trump above truthfulness, the law, due process, fundamental fairness, and the common good.
Letting this farce of a “judicial system” continue unfairly endangering individual lives and deferring to officials who are neither subject matter experts nor fair and impartial quasi-judicial decision makers is unconstitutional. By letting it continue, life-tenured Federal Judges both tarnish their reputations and fail to fulfill their oaths of office.
As a young attorney in the Department of Justice during the Watergate Era, I, along with many others, were indelibly impressed and inspired when then Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his Deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s illegal order to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor (a/k/a/ “The Saturday Night Massacre”). Obviously, Barr has dragged the Department and its reputation down to new depths — back to the days of Nixon and disgraced (and convicted) Attorney General “John the Con” Mitchell, who actually planned criminal conspiracies in his fifth floor office at the DOJ.
Obviously, there are systemic problems that have allowed unqualified individuals like Barr and Sessions to serve in and co-opt the system of justice, and denigrate the Department of Justice. (I spoke to some recently retired DOJ officials who characterized the morale among career professionals at the DOJ as “below the floor”). Some of those can be traced to the lack of backbone and integrity in the “Trump GOP” which controls the Senate and refuses to enforce even minimal standards of professionalism, meaningful oversight, and independent decision making in Trump appointees. That’s what a “kakistocracy” is. It’s up to the rest of us to do what is necessary under the law to replace the kakistocracy with a functioning democracy.
CORQUÍN, Honduras — The farmer stood in his patch of forlorn coffee plants, their leaves sick and wilted, the next harvest in doubt.
Last year, two of his brothers and a sister, desperate to find a better way to survive, abandoned their small coffee farms in this mountainous part of Honduras and migrated north, eventually sneaking into the United States.
Then in February, the farmer’s 16-year-old son also headed north, ignoring the family’s pleas to stay.
The challenges of agricultural life in Honduras have always been mighty, from poverty and a neglectful government to the swings of international commodity prices.
But farmers, agricultural scientists and industry officials say a new threat has been ruining harvests, upending lives and adding to the surge of families migrating to the United States: climate change.
And their worries are increasingly shared by climate scientists as well.
Gradually rising temperatures, more extreme weather events and increasingly unpredictable patterns — like rain not falling when it should, or pouring when it shouldn’t — have disrupted growing cycles and promoted the relentless spread of pests.
Guatemalans harvesting coffee in Honduras, where there is a shortage of workers.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
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Guatemalans harvesting coffee in Honduras, where there is a shortage of workers.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
The obstacles have cut crop production or wiped out entire harvests, leaving already poor families destitute.
Central America is among the regions most vulnerable to climate change, scientists say. And because agriculture employs much of the labor force — about 28 percent in Honduras alone, according to the World Bank — the livelihoods of millions of people are at stake.
Last year, the bank reported that climate change could lead at least 1.4 million people to flee their homes in Mexico and Central America and migrate during the next three decades.
The United States has allocated tens of millions of dollars in aid in recent years for farmers across Central America, including efforts to help them adapt to the changing climate.
But President Trump has vowed to cut off all foreign aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador because of what he calls their failure to curb the flow of migrants north.
Critics contend the punishment is misguided, though, because it could undermine efforts to address the very problems that are driving people to abandon their farms and head to the United States.
“If Donald Trump withdraws all the funds for Honduras, it’s going to generate more unemployment, and that’s going to generate more migration,” said María Esperanza López, the general manager of Copranil, a coffee-growers cooperative here in western Honduras. “And that’s going to result in more abandoned farms.”
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“Climate change is destroying some farms,” said a coffee farmer, Fredi Onan Vicen Peña, right, shown with his father, Juan José Vicen.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
Coffee cultivators in the region are at particular risk of disruption because the crop is highly sensitive to weather variations.
Fredi Onan Vicen Peña, the coffee farmer whose brothers, sister and teenage son have already given up and joined the exodus north, reached over and tore a leaf off one of his plants.
It was a mottled yellow and brown: signs of coffee rust, a disease whose spread has been influenced by climate variability. As much as 70 percent of his crop, planted across five acres in a pine forest, had been affected, he estimated, and there was little chance he could salvage it.
“Climate change is destroying some farms,” said Mr. Vicen, 41.
Beyond that, some of his healthier plants had begun to blossom nearly two months ahead of schedule because of a heavy unseasonable downpour, throwing the entire growing cycle into doubt.
“This is not something we predicted,” Mr. Vicen said.
Average temperatures have risen by about two degrees Fahrenheit in Central America over the past several decades, making the cultivation of coffee difficult, if not untenable, at lower altitudes that were once suitable.
That has forced some farmers to search for land at higher altitudes, switch to other crops, change professions — or migrate.
“Some very fine families that have been producing quality coffee for a long time are now facing the decision of whether to stay in coffee,” said Catherine M. Tucker, a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida who has done research in Honduras for more than two decades.
Signs of coffee rust, a disease that devastated Honduran crops in 2012-13 and whose recent outbreaks may have been influenced by climate change.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
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Signs of coffee rust, a disease that devastated Honduran crops in 2012-13 and whose recent outbreaks may have been influenced by climate change.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
Some climate scientists say that in the absence of long-term meteorological data, it is hard for them to say with certainty whether the increasing variability is caused by long-term changes in the region’s climate. But, they say, they are leaning in that direction.
“It’s becoming so unusual, it’s almost certainly climate change,” said Dr. Edwin J. Castellanos, dean of the Research Institute at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, a university in Guatemala City, and one of Central America’s leading scientists in the field of climate change.
Climate change is rarely the sole factor in the decision to migrate. Violence and poverty are prime drivers, but climate change can be a tipping point, farmers and experts say.
“Small farmers are already living in poverty; they’re already at the threshold of not being able to survive,” Mr. Castellanos said. “So any changes in the situation may push them to have enough incentives to leave.”
The outlook for the region seems bleak. Reduced yields of coffee and subsistence crops like corn and beans could significantly increase food insecurity and malnutrition. By some predictions, the amount of land suitable for growing coffee in Central America could drop by more than 40 percent by 2050.
The number of coffee producers in the area where Mr. Vicen lives has dropped by a quarter in the past decade — to about 9,000 from about 12,000 — partly because of pressure from climate change, said Marlon Danilo Mejía, the regional coordinator for the Honduran Coffee Institute, an industry trade group.
A vast majority are small producers, managing less than about nine acres each, he said.
José Edgardo Vicen, 37, one of Mr. Vicen’s brothers, had weighed migrating for years. He had worked in the coffee fields since he was a boy, continuing the family tradition. In this part of Honduras, coffee is a major crop, with an increasing amount bound for North America, Europe and Asia.
Analyzing coffee samples at a cooperative in Las Capucas, Honduras. Cooperatives provide support to farmers and can negotiate better international contracts.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
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Analyzing coffee samples at a cooperative in Las Capucas, Honduras. Cooperatives provide support to farmers and can negotiate better international contracts.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
But after a rust outbreak and other pressures in recent years, including plunging commodity prices, the younger Mr. Vicen said he could no longer earn enough from his harvest to cover production costs.
He headed north with his 14-year-old son last August, crossed the border illegally and settled in Texas. A brother and a sister, driven by similar circumstances, left Honduras soon afterward and also sneaked into the United States.
“For the small producer, I promise you, there’s no way to get ahead,” said Mr. Vicen, who now works in construction and sends remittances home to support his wife and daughter.
When he was younger, harvest time “was like a party,” he recalled. Now, “there are only losses, no profits.”
Fifteen producers from the Vicens’ coffee cooperative — more than 10 percent of its members — have migrated to the United States in the past year, said Ms. Esperanza López, the general manager of the cooperative. They have joined thousands of others from villages in Honduras’s western highlands.
Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, said that government statistics on apprehension of migrants at the southwest border of the United States in recent years reflect a sharp increase in people from western Honduras.
After large caravans of migrants arrived last fall in Tijuana, Mexico, a United Nations survey found that 72 percent of those surveyed were from Honduras — and 28 percent of the respondents had worked in the agricultural sector.
Carlos Peña Orellana growing greenhouse tomatoes, which he produces to supplement his income from coffee crops.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
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Carlos Peña Orellana growing greenhouse tomatoes, which he produces to supplement his income from coffee crops.CreditCésar Rodríguez for The New York Times
The exodus of farm workers has worsened already serious labor shortages in western Honduras. Some industry leaders in the region joke that if the caravans in recent months were “the laborer caravans,” the next wave will be “the grower caravans.”
Coffee farmers have been scrambling to adjust to the changes, learning which species are more resistant to plague and drought, and branching out into other crops — like cacao, avocados or trees that produce construction-grade wood.
Nongovernmental and public-private initiatives have also taken root in coffee-growing regions of Central America and around the world to help guide farmers. Some have received the backing of the world’s biggest coffee sellers — like Starbucks, Tim Horton’s and Lavazza — trying to ensure their future supply.
Yet even the application of best practices is no guarantee that everything will be fine.
“The weather is crazy,” said Carlos Peña Orellana, 58, a farmer and member of a local coffee cooperative. “Everything’s out of control.”
He owns 12 acres of land but can afford to farm only about five. He gets by with income from a tomato greenhouse he built with the cooperative’s help, and with remittances from two sons who migrated to the United States after struggling through the rust crisis of 2012-13.
“They’re helping to revive the farm,” he said at his ramshackle ranch one recent afternoon. “It’s really difficult now.”
He turned to his youngest son, Carlos, 12, and saw a future migrant. Pointing a leathery finger, he said: “You’re next, right?” Mr. Peña chuckled. The boy squirmed, saying nothing.
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Can the “good guys” oust the Trump Kakistocracy at the ballot box before it’s too late? I was optimistic after my two-week Scarff Distinguished Professorship at Lawrence University that the upcoming generation understands these issues and is committed to action, not just talk, and certainly will work hard to undo the damage done by the current Administration’s intentionally ignorant and ill-intended approaches to both migration and climate issues.
Accusing the Trump administration of being motivated by politics and not facts, a second U.S. federal judge is blocking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from forcing tens of thousands of Haitians to return to Haiti by ending their temporary legal protection.
In a 145-page federal ruling, U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz of the Eastern District of New York issued a nationwide temporary injunction preventing DHS from terminating Temporary Protected Status, TPS, for Haitians. Kuntz said 50,000 to 60,000 Haitians and their U.S.-born children would suffer “irreparable harm” if the legal protection ended and they were forced to return to a country that is not safe.
Kuntz’s detailed ruling came out of a lawsuit filed by Haitians in Florida and New York, challenging the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS granted to Haiti by the Obama administration after its 2010 devastating earthquake. The administration has rescinded the protection for Central America and some African nations as well, sparking several lawsuits around the country.
“It’s a sweeping indictment of the political manner in which the Trump administration at the very highest levels of the government illegally terminated Protected Status for Haitians,” said Miami immigration attorney Ira Kurzban, one of several lawyers who filed the lawsuit.
In October, a federal judge in California granted a temporary injunction blocking the administration from deporting Haitian TPS holders and others as their termination deadlines approach. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen granted the temporary injunction as part of a California lawsuit filed by lawyers on behalf of TPS recipients from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan who have U.S.-born children. The decision is being appealed by the government.
Kurzban noted that unlike the California case, which had not yet gone to trial when Chen issued his decision, Kuntz’s decision is the result of a full-blown trial. The New York lawsuit was the first of the five to go to trial.
“It’s far more detailed in its reasoning in respect to why what the government did was completely illegal,” Kurzban said of Kuntz’s decision. “It found findings on discrimination. … It found very clearly that the government’s decision was not only an arbitrary decision, but they violated their own procedures in reaching the conclusion that they reached.
“This is a direct and very detailed account of how the government acted in a completely arbitrary way,” he added.
During the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that then-Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke violated procedures and TPS holders’ due process when she ended the program for Haiti. They also cited emails and other internal government documents, including Duke’s handwritten November 2017 notes, to bolster the plaintiffs’ argument: that the White House was not interested in the facts about conditions in Haiti as DHS officials mulled over whether to continue to shield up to 60,000 Haitians from deportations, and Duke was under repeated pressure to terminate the program.
The decision, the suit alleged, was also rooted in the president’s “racially discriminatory attitude toward all brown and black people.”
“Clearly political motivations influenced Secretary Duke’s decision to terminate TPS for Haiti,” Kuntz said in his findings. “A TPS termination should not be a political decision made to carry out political motivations. Ultimately, the potential political ramifications should not have factored into the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS.”
Kuntz said he could not issue a final injunction, only a temporary one, because Haiti’s TPS designation, which was supposed to end on July 22 but was recently extended by DHS until January 2020 due to the legal challenges, has not yet expired.
Steve Forester, an immigration advocate who has been championing the rights of Haitians enrolled in the TPS program, said it was “a victory demonstrating the government’s unlawful and unconstitutional behavior in reaching its decision to terminate Haiti TPS.”
“It’s a resounding condemnation of unlawful government behavior,” added Forester, who works as policy coordinator for the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.
The government is expected to appeal.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article229151574.html#storylink=cpy
The Trump Administration plans to tie up the Federal Courts with more frivolous litigation based on their knowingly and intentionally unlawful actions. That’s even as today, Trump refuted reports that he had discarded the idea of unlawfully “dumping” asylum applicants on so-called “sanctuary cities” as punishment to Democrats who have opposed his lawless regime. The Administration’s own lawyers say what Trump wants to do is illegal.
The lies come so fast and furious from Trump and his cronies that the White House “flacks” can’t even keep their fictional “cover stories” straight.
Michael D. Shear, Miriam Jordan, and Manny Fernandez report for the NY Times:
. . . .
American diplomats say the best way to confront that kind of lawlessness is with the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that has been flowing to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras for several years, designed to bolster the rule of law and improve the economy.
Image
At the Good Neighbor Settlement House in Brownsville, migrants rest, exhausted, after a meal.CreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Last week, Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned those efforts, ordering the State Department to scrap about $500 million in aid to the three countries. Mr. Trump’s decision has been criticized by members of both parties, who call it shortsighted.
Likewise, critics say that Mr. Trump’s repeated denigration of Mexico over the years — including his insistence on building a border wall — risks undermining Mexico’s willingness to help to keep Central American migrants from traveling to the United States.
“This is the first Mexican administration that has even been oriented toward doing that,” Ms. Meissner, the Clinton administration immigration commissioner, said.
But blaming other countries and painting those coming across the border from Mexico as a national security threat has never failed to animate Mr. Trump’s core supporters — the ones who helped deliver him the White House in 2016.
“It’s an invasion,” Mr. Trump declared in February, after Congress denied him money to build a wall. “We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.”
In fact, the migrants are mostly victims of the broken immigration system. They are not, by and large, killers, rapists or gang members. Most do not carry drugs. They have learned how to make asylum claims, just as the law allows them to do. And nearly all of them are scared — of being shipped off to Mexico, separated from their children, sent to prison. Scared, especially, of going home.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Caitlin Dickerson contributed reporting.
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This is just the conclusion of the much longer article that you can read at the above link.
Unless and until the U.S. recognizes the situation for what it is — Forced Migration —- there can be no effective solutions.
Tone-deaf (and worse) legislators and policy makers (mostly in the GOP) refuse to recognize the fundamental truth — Forced Migrants are Forced Migrants — they ultimately won’t be deterred by harsh laws, malicious prosecutions, biased judges, unfair “expeditious returns,” inhumane imprisonments, racist rhetoric, or any of the other often tried always failed enforcement policies that this Administration and its supporters so love.
The other fundamental truth that Trump ignores is that refugees, asylees, and other forced migrants overall have a positive impact on receiving countries. They are a human force that should be regulated but not generally avoided. Indeed, that’s a “win-win” formula for success that should replace our current Administration’s insistence on intentionally turning migration situations from opportunities for success into otherwise avoidable “lose-lose” situations.
What will work is dealing with the root causes of forced migration; providing feasible alternatives to coming to the U.S.; fairly and timely adjudicating applications for protection; assimilation; and in some cases truly voluntary, interest-based decisions to return to a country of origin after conditions improve (not expulsion or forced returns).
Targeting human smugglers, drug smugglers, persecutors, and other types of criminals through sophisticated, intelligence-biased undercover-type operations could also be effective.
International cooperation and involvement of the UNHCR and other humanitarian NGOs is also essential.
Better government produces better results; that’s not “rocket science.”
‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’ Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images
Media outlets and politicians routinely refer to the “flood” of Central American migrants, the “wave” of asylum seekers, the “deluge” of children, despite the fact that unauthorized migration across the US borders is at record lows in recent years. Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing, but perhaps this tendency to lean on environmental language when describing migration is an unconscious acknowledgement of a deeper truth: much migration from Central America and, for that matter, around the world, is fueled by climate change.
Yes, today’s Central American migrants – most of them asylum seekers fearing for their lives – are fleeing gangs, deep economic instability (if not abject poverty), and either neglect or outright persecution at the hands of their government. But these things are all complicated and further compounded by the fact that the northern triangle of Central America – a region comprising Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and the largest sources of asylum seekers crossing our border in recent years – is deeply affected by environmental degradation and the impacts of a changing global climate.
‘Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration.’ Photograph: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images
The average temperature in Central America has increased by 0.5C since 1950; it is projected to rise another 1-2 degrees before 2050. This has a dramatic impact on weather patterns, on rainfall, on soil quality, on crops’ susceptibility to disease, and thus on farmers and local economies. Meanwhile, incidences of storms, floods and droughts on are the rise in the region. In coming years, according to the US Agency for International Development, countries in the northern triangle will see decreased rainfall and prolonged drought, writ large. In Honduras, rainfall will be sparse in areas where it is needed, yet in other areas, floods will increase by 60%. In Guatemala, the arid regions will creep further and further into current agricultural areas, leaving farmers out to dry. And El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?
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This September, I travelled to El Salvador to report on the impacts of the US government’s family separation policy. I’d been to El Salvador many times before, but never to the Jiquilisco Bay, a stunning, shimmering and once abundant peninsula populated by mangroves and fishing communities and uncountable species of marine life. It is also one that, like many places in El Salvador, and like many places in the world, is also imperiled by climate change. Rising sea levels are destroying the mangrove forests, the marine life that relies on them, and thus the fishermen who rely on that marine life to feed themselves and eke out a meager economy.
I met a man there named Arnovis Guidos Portillo, a 26-year-old single dad. Many people in his family were fishermen, but they were able to catch fewer and fewer fish. The country’s drought and devastating rainfall meant that the area’s farming economy, too, was suffering. The land was stressed, the ocean was stressed, and so were the people. Arnovis got into a scuffle one day at a soccer game, which placed him on a hitlist with a local gang. He had been working as a day laborer here and there, but the drought meant there was less work, and it was hard to find work that didn’t require crossing into rival gang territory. If he did, he would be killed. So he took his daughter north to the United States, where border patrol agents separated them for two months, locking them up in different states and with zero contact.
‘People really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land.’ Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images
Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration. An unstable planet and ecosystem lends itself to an unstable society, to divisions, to economic insecurity, to human brutality. When someone’s home becomes less and less livable, they move elsewhere. Wouldn’t each and every one of us do the same?
This week, the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer published a series of pieces about the impacts of climate change in the Guatemalan highlands, where farmers are struggling to grow crops that they have been farming there for centuries. “In most of the western highlands,” Blitzer wrote, “the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when.” A few years ago, I reported from Guatemala’s dry corridor, several hours away from where Blitzer was reporting, where persistent drought had decimated the region’s agriculture, and particularly the coffee crop, on which roughly 90% of local farmers relied. It was a wildly different landscape from the one Blitzer described, but it faced the same problem: if you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?
It’s abundantly clear that climate change is a driver of migration to the US – we have the data, we have the facts, we have the human stories. Still, the Trump administration has done nothing to intervene in this root cause. In fact, the US government has systematically denied the existence of climate change, rolled back domestic regulations that would mitigate US carbon emissions and thumbed its nose at international attempts – such as the Paris accords – to curb global warming.
Now, in his latest futile, small-minded and cruel attempt to cut migration off at the neck (something we know is not possible – an unhealthy societal dynamic must be addressed at the root, just like with a struggling tree or crop), Donald Trump announced last week that he would cut all foreign aid to the northern triangle. It’s a punitive move, and one that – just like building a wall, separating families, locking people up indefinitely, and refusing asylum seekers entry across the border – is a petty intimidation tactic that will do nothing to actually curb forced migration.
In fact, cutting aid to Central America will do quite the opposite, for as much waste and imperfections as there are in international aid, aid in Central America has been vital for creating community safety programs, job skills development and government accountability standards. It has also helped with drought mitigation and supporting climate-resilient agricultural practices. In other words, foreign aid to Central America – a place unduly hit by climate change – is supporting the kind of climate change resiliency that will keep people from having to leave in the first place.
Because people really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land, particularly when that land proves itself again and again to be hostile to migrants’ very existence. People don’t want to be raped along the route north, or die in the desert, or have their child ripped away from them by the border patrol, or be locked up indefinitely without legal counsel, without adequate medical care, with no idea what will happen to them and when. Who would risk this if things were OK back home? People like Arnovis leave because they feel like they have to.
Eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials convinced Arnovis to sign deportation papers with the promise that, if he did, he would be reunited with his daughter and returned to El Salvador. But he was shooed on to a plane back home without her. It took a tremendous amount of advocacy, but, after months locked up in the US, she, too was returned home. They are now back together, which is a good thing, but the fundamental problem hasn’t changed: he can’t find work. His society is ill. So is the planet, and the land and sea all around him.
Today, there are 64 million forced migrants around the world, more than ever before. They are fleeing war, persecution, disaster and, yes, climate change. The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone.
Migration is a natural human phenomenon and, many argue, should be a fundamental right, but forced migration – being run out of home against one’s will and with threat to one’s life – is not natural at all. Today, whether we choose to see it or not, climate change is one of the largest drivers of migration, and will continue to be for years to come – unless we do something about it. If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.
Quote of the Day: “Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.”
One week ago, I was a guest participant in an Environmental Justice Seminar here at Lawrence University taught by Professor Jason Brozek of the Government Department. I was inspired by the students’ collective degree of knowledge, thoughtfulness, informed dialogue, and commitment to addressing this pressing problem. “Environmental Due Process” is certainly an important facet of the mission of the “New Due Process Army.”
TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
United States Immigration Judges (Retired)
In short, families are coming to ports of entry and crossing the border to turn themselves in to be screened for credible fear and apply for asylum under our existing laws. That’s not a “border crisis;” it’s a humanitarian tragedy. It won’t be solved by more law enforcement or harsher measures; we’re actually quite fortunate that folks still believe in the system enough to voluntarily subject themselves to it.
Most don’t present any particular “danger” to the U.S. They are just trying to apply for legal protection under our laws. That’s something that has been denied them abroad because we don’t have a refugee program for the Northern Triangle. This Administration actually eliminated the already inadequate one we had under Obama.
Certainly, we have enough intelligence to know that these flows were coming. They aren’t secret. There was plenty of time to plan.
What could and should have been done is to increase the number of Asylum Officers and POE Inspectors by hiring retired Asylum Officers, Inspectors, adjudicators, and temps from the NGO sector who worked in the refugee field, but no longer have anything to do overseas since this Administration has basically dismantled the overseas refugee program.
A more competent DOJ could also have developed a corps of retired Immigration Judges (and perhaps other types of retired judges who could do bond setting and other functions common to many judicial systems) who already “know the ropes” and could have volunteered to go to the border and other places with overloads.
Also, working closely with and coordinating with the NGOs and the pro bono bar would have helped the credible fear process to go faster, be fairer, the Immigration Courts to function more fairly and efficiently, and would have screened out some of the “non viable” cases.
For some, staying in Mexico is probably a better and safer option, but folks don’t understand. Pro bono counsel can, and do, explain that.
By treating it as a humanitarian tragedy, which it is, rather than a “fake law enforcement crisis,” the Administration could have united the private sector, border states, communities, and Congress in supporting the effort; instead they sowed division, opposition, and unnecessary litigation. I’m actually sure that most of the teams of brilliant “Big Law” lawyers helping “Our Gang of Retired Judges” and other to file amicus briefs pro bono would just as soon be working on helping individuals through the system.
A timely, orderly, and fair system for screening, adjudicating, and recognizing refugee rights under our existing laws would have allowed the Administration to channel arrivals to various ports of entry.
I think that the result of such a system would have been that most families would have passed credible fear and the majority of those would have been granted asylum, withholding, or CAT.
Certainly, others think the result would have been mostly rejections (But, I note even in the “Trump Era” merits approval rates for Northern Triangle countries are in the 18-23% range — by no means an insignificant success rate). But, assuming “the rejectionists” are right, then they have the “timely rejection deterrent” that they so desire without stomping on anyone’s rights. (Although my experience over decades has been that rejections, detention, prosecutions, and harsh rhetoric are ineffective as deterrents).
No matter who is right about the ultimate results of fair asylum adjudication, under my system the Border Patrol could go back to their job of tracking down smugglers, drug traffickers, criminals, and the few suspected terrorists who seek to cross the border. While this might not satisfy anyone’s political agenda, it would be an effective and efficient use of law enforcement resources and sound administration of migrant protection and immigration laws. That’s certainly not what’s happening now.
President Trump reiterated a threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border after a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, saying he stands ready to take drastic action if the country doesn’t do more to curb illegal immigration. He also railed against the U.S. immigration system and said he wants to “get rid” of immigration judges who hear migrants’ cases.
“Security is more important to me than trade,” Mr. Trump said when asked about the severe economic impact of closing the border. “We’ll have a strong border or we’ll have a closed border.”
The president spoke after meeting in the Oval Office with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Last week, Mr. Trump tweeted threats to close the border if Mexico doesn’t do more to cooperate with the U.S. and slow the flow of migrants. But the commander-in-chief appeared to shift that timeline Tuesday, saying Mexico is assisting the U.S. more than it was even a few days ago. The president said he’s still “totally prepared” to close the border if necessary.
Along with a list of frustrations over immigration, however, Mr. Trump included immigration judges. U.S. immigration court backlogs are at all-time highs, with not enough judges to adjudicate the cases. That problem was exacerbated by the government shutdown earlier this year.
“We need to get rid of chain migration, we need to get rid of catch and release and visa lottery, and we have to do something about asylum. And to be honest with you, have to get rid of judges,” Mr. Trump said in his laundry list of frustrations with the U.S. immigration system.
Mr. Trump also walked back his insistence that the Republican Party will imminently introduce a new health care plan. Overnight, the president tweeted he would wait to hold a vote on his yet-to-be-envisioned health care plan until after the 2020 election. On Tuesday, the president said he will bring forth a plan “at the appropriate time.”
“We don’t have the House,” Mr. Trump said about the delay, which came after he said the Republican Party will become the “party of health care.”
Republicans failed to repeal and replace Obamacare in the two years they held the House and Senate.
Stoltenberg’s visit came as Mr. Trump tries to decrease the U.S. footprint abroad with his “America First” foreign policy. Mr. Trump has urged other NATO nations to increase their defense spending to agreed-upon levels, a stance many see as positive, but on Tuesday the president said defense spending will need to go higher than 2 percent. Currently NATO members agree to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense, but Mr. Trump, in a meeting alongside the secretary general, said that figure “may have to go up.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s close relationships with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin while criticizing U.S. allies has made some ally NATO nations distance themselves from the U.S. Last year, for instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany can’t rely “on the superpower of the U.S.” any longer to bring order to the world.
Before he became president, Mr. Trump declared NATO “obsolete.” He later revised that statement, saying he no longer believes that to be the case.
When NATO was founded in 1949, there were 12 ally nations. Now there are 29. Last month, Mr. Trump suggested perhaps Brazil could be a part of NATO, though Brazil is largely in the southern hemisphere.
Trump simply doesn’t care about the Constitution or Due Process of law (except where he, his family, and their corrupt cronies are involved). Migrants seeking to apply for legal protections under our laws aren’t a security problem; Trump is! And, the idea that closing the border wouldn’t cause both an economic catastrophe and threaten our security just shows what an absurdist presidency Trump has foisted on the majority of Americans who did not want him in office in the first place.
Last week I traveled with colleagues to Central America’s Northern Triangle — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — where we spent five days meeting with heads of state, law enforcement, business leaders, U.S. ambassadors and diplomatic staff, USAID officials, and working people.
The trip, organized by Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, was highly informative, particularly given the ongoing debate over immigration policy, temporary protected status (TPS), trade, and other related issues.
I think my fellow travelers – Sens. Carper and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester (Del.), Lou Correa (Calif.), and Donald Norcross (N.J.) – would agree that what we saw and heard was both depressing and encouraging.
It is clear that the top mission of our U.S. presence in these countries is changing the conditions which drive irregular migration attempts to the United States. We are attacking the corruption, especially within the governments, which undermines citizen confidence that their countries will progress. We are training police forces to deal with both gang violence and narcotics trafficking, with significant reductions in the murder rates in all three countries. And we are investing in the conditions necessary for economic growth, especially the training of young people for jobs that pay much more than the minimum wage.
Our top concern was the decline in presidential support for U.S. initiatives to support economic growth and improved security in the region, and the naive idea that a wall on a border more than a thousand miles north will be any disincentive for jobless people living in fear of violence. The notion that a wall would magically solve the complex problems which cause people to flee to the United States was not borne out by what we saw.
Instead, we saw again and again that when we help create conditions of the most modest prosperity, when we reduce the fear of imminent violence, and when folks believe things will get better, it greatly reduces people’s desire to emigrate to the United States.
The most effective way for us to deal with unwanted immigration is to address the root causes in the developing economies of the Northern Triangle. We have already made a significant difference, but there is so much more we can and must do.
We should begin by shifting the useless waste of taxpayer funds in a silly border wall into greater investment into the Alliance for Prosperity, into our law enforcement efforts, and into diplomacy which will ensure ever less corrupt and more responsive governments.
My colleagues and I will be sharing these lessons with our colleagues this week, as Congress takes up a measure to reject the president’s fake national emergency, and beyond it as we look for humane, practical solutions to improve our immigration system and our relationships with these nations.
Beyer represents Virginia’s 8th District.
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There are many other things that we could do, both internationally and domestically, to address the current humanitarian situation in the Northern Triangle. The money that the Trump Administration is happy to waste on a wall, unnecessary and inhumane detention, and the unneeded stationing of troops on the border could actually support much more reasonable and effective approaches that would comply with the law, rather stretching and often breaking it.
We need a better government by better people. Join the New Due Process Army and help end the Trump Kakistocracy.
Gallup scientist, Frank Newport, says that President Donald Trump’s wall has become an “RPPI” — a Rigidly Partisan Policy Issue. Opinions “are highly entrenched and largely based on underlying partisan identity.”
Pew Research Center’s recent poll found that 82 percent of Republicans favor expanding the border wall, compared to only 6 percent of Democrats. Pew analysts noted that “partisan differences [on the wall] are now wider than they have ever been.”
The resolution was cosponsored by 232 Democrats and one Republican. It passed on a roll call vote of 245 yeas and 182 nays. All of the nay votes were from Republicans.
Situation is worse than Trump is indicating
The failure to secure the border has resulted in a population of undocumented aliens so large that effective immigration enforcement in the interior of the country is no longer possible.
According to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Report for fiscal 2018, the number of aliens deported from the interior of the country rose from 65,332 in fiscal 2016, to 95,360 in fiscal 2018.
A study by MIT and Yale professors, however, indicates that the number of undocumented aliens in the United States could actually be as high as 22.1 million. If interior removals continue at the fiscal 2018 rate, it would take more than 200 years to remove them all.
Go on over to The Hill for Nolan’s complete article. I appreciate his “nifty summaries!”
No matter how one views the numbers, removal of everyone here in undocumented status is impossible, not to mention unnecessary. Serious immigration enforcement and control would start with a recognition of the fact that our system has been out of whack for decades and that removing folks who are overwhelmingly contributing members of our society is counterproductive and a waste of time and resources that could be directed elsewhere, at real law enforcement issues.
If anything, we should be asking why our system wasn’t designed to let these folks immigrate legally in the first place.
Additionally, treating asylum applicants who apply at the border or turn themselves in immediately after entering as a “law enforcement issue” is a misnomer. People who voluntarily submit themselves for screening and apply for legal status are not law enforcement issues.
Those individuals who, in fact, are coming solely for jobs can be “screened out” during the “credible fear” process, and summarily removed without placing them in the Immigration Courts for full “removal hearings.” The never get into the “interior.”
The idea that recent arrivals who are applying for asylum won’t show up for their hearings is clearly bogus — most hearings would be months, if not years in the future, so we don’t actually know at this point! If the Government ran a rational system working with NGOs and private bar groups to find placements and pro bono lawyers for asylum seekers, experience and past studies show that the vast majority would show up for hearings. A fairer, more generous, and more realistic interpretation of asylum law would also help.
Use of TPS to both register individuals and keep them out of Immigration Court for the time being would also be a good option for an Administration truly interested in addressing the humanitarian issues.
Rather than a “law enforcement emergency,” these folks present administrative processing, humanitarian relief, and foreign policy issues that this Administration has shown little or no interest in resolving in a constructive manner by using mechanisms available under current law and spending money prudently rather than wasting it on a wall that will take years, if not decades, to build and won’t address today’s concerns.
WASHINGTON — Undocumented immigrants are increasingly choosing to cross the U.S. border illegally rather than waiting in line to claim asylum at legal ports of entry, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data obtained by NBC News.
Immigration lawyers and rights advocates say asylum seekers are opting for illegal crossing because they are growing frustrated with waiting lines caused by Trump administration policies. Advocates say immigrants who might otherwise have presented themselves at legal ports are now going between entry points where, if caught, they can remain in the country while awaiting an asylum hearing.
In recent months, CBP has restricted the number of immigrants who can be processed for asylum at ports of entry and has begun turning back asylum seekers, who must now wait in Mexico while their cases are decided.
CBP data shows that at the same time, the proportion of immigrants caught crossing illegally rather than through legal ports of entry has been rising.
It climbed from 73 percent of border crossings between October 2017 and January to 2018 to 83 percent for the same period ending this January 31. The percentage reporting to legal ports of entry, meanwhile, dropped from 27 percent to 17 percent, even as the overall number of border crossings rose sharply, according to the data.
An official from the Department of Homeland Security, of which CBP is a part, said those abandoning legal entry points may not have legitimate asylum claims.
“The fact that illegitimate asylum seekers may be abandoning efforts at our [ports of entry] means that legitimate asylum seekers at the [ports of entry] can receive protections far more quickly — which has been our goal from the start,” said the DHS official. The department declined to comment on the record.
WAITING IN TIJUANA
In January, U.S. officials finalized a deal with Mexico that forces asylum seekers who present themselves at the legal port of entry in San Diego back across the border to Tijuana. There they must wait months or years, often in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, while an American immigration judge determines whether asylum can be granted. The policy, known as Remain in Mexico, may soon spread to other ports of entry if Mexico agrees to shelter the immigrants at other locations.
Illegal crossers, meanwhile, do not have to wait in Mexico, even if they are caught. Two DHS officials told NBC News that there are no plans to send asylum seekers back across the border if they are caught crossing illegally, primarily because the Mexican government lacks the infrastructure to shelter them at what are often remote points.
If they are caught and do not claim asylum or pass the initial asylum screening, procedure requires that they are flown back to their home countries. Most current border crossers are not from Mexico but from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Immigration advocates and lawyers say immigrants are being warned about the conditions in cities like Tijuana and are increasingly choosing to risk apprehension by the Border Patrol while crossing into the U.S. illegally instead of waiting in Mexico.
Michelle Brané, director of the Women’s Refugee Commission, said 9 out of 10 immigrants she spoke to in CBP custody would tell her and her staff they made the choice to cross illegally after other migrants told them the line to enter legally would mean a long wait in a dangerous place.
“They would say, ‘There was a line and they told me I would get turned away,’ or, ‘People told me it’s too dangerous and you can’t get in that way,'” Brané said.
The most notorious line is in Tijuana, where thousands of immigrants have waited in shelters and tent camps since last fall, hoping to claim asylum to enter San Diego.
The government of Mexico closed a large migrant shelter there in December due to unsanitary conditions and another was shut down last month, forcing families to disperse and often to live on the streets. Also in December, two migrant boys were lured out of their shelter and murdered.
Immigrants in Tijuana keep what is known as “la lista,” or the list, to decide who can approach the U.S. border each day to claim asylum, according to affidavits by immigration lawyers. Due to a U.S. policy known as metering, only about 40 to 100 immigrants per day are permitted to enter. CBP is only permitting a maximum of 20 migrants per day to cross into Eagle Pass, Texas, where another group of about 1,800 immigrants has recently arrived.
DHS says metering is a result of only being able to process so many asylum seekers per day, due to limited resources. However, the Trump administration has not increased its manpower for processing asylum claims at the border, though it has increased border enforcement officers and numbers of military troops.
A CALCULATED RISK
The number of undocumented immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico is not near levels seen in the early 2000s. But the overall number of undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border has risen since a year ago. From October 2017 to January 2018, according to CBP figures, 150,346 crossed the border, a number that surged to 242,667 in the same four-month period ending in January 2019.
The biggest surge has come in the numbers who are crossing illegally. CBP apprehended more than 200,000 crossing illegally between October 2018 and this January, compared to 109,543 a year earlier — nearly doubling the total of illegal crossings.
Working with asylum seekers in Tijuana in December, Kennji Kizuka, senior researcher and policy analyst at Human Rights First, said he saw some immigrants grow frustrated with the wait and try their luck at crossing illegally.
“People were leaving and saying they were about to cross. They had just given up on waiting their turn to get on the list after finding out how long it was and how many months they would be there and how horrible the conditions were,” Kizuka said.
But crossing between legal ports of entry also comes with dangers.
Late last year, two children who crossed with their parents died in CBP custody after being picked up in remote areas after making long journeys, where access to water and other basic needs are severely limited.
Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost told Congress on Tuesday that for the first time in U.S. history, families and unaccompanied children make up 60 percent of those arrested between ports of entry. Also, Provost said border patrol is noticing that families and unaccompanied children are traveling in larger numbers: Nearly 68 groups ranging from 100-350 so far in 2019, compared to 13 last year and two the year prior.
Immigration advocates say the large groups are due in part to a “safety in numbers” strategy as families and children are being warned about the dangers not only on the journey but as they await entry to the U.S. in northern Mexico.
Julia Ainsley
Julia Ainsley is a national security reporter for NBC News.
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They AREN’T “illegitimate” asylum seekers! They are individuals seeking to exercise their legal rights under U.S. and international law to be granted protection as refugees. They are entitled to fair and humane treatment.
What IS “ILLEGITIMATE” is the scofflaw Trump Administration’s failure to recognize these legal rights and their intentional mistreatment of those seeking asylum. What is also “illegitimate” is having Government employees lie about asylum seekers. The folks putting out these bogus and pejorative statements about asylum seekers should be fired!
In enacting the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress recognized, as had the international community in the Refugee Convention, that manner of entry into a signatory country has little if anything do with whether or not one qualifies under the “refugee.” Desperate people do desperate things. And refugees are the very definition of “desperate people.”
The claim that this Administration is fairly processing asylum seekers is absurd. As this article points out: 1) conditions in Mexico are known to be dangerous for asylum seekers; and 2) although willing to spend money on bogus “stunts” like “the Wall,” unnecessary troops, and cruel and mindless detention, this Administration has totally failed to do the obvious things to facilitate asylum processing: work with the private bar and NGOs to get lawyers involved for the applicants; increase the numbers of Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, Port of Entry Inspectors; use sensible “prosecutorial discretion” to clear the hundreds of thousands of “low priority cases” that should be administratively closed off the Immigration Court docket so that judges can deal fairly and efficiently with newly arrived asylum seekers in accordance with the constitutional requirement of Due Process; and perhaps most important, revoke incorrect and misguided precedents so that asylum law can be applied and interpreted in the generous manner originally intended by the Refugee Act and reinforced by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca.
If that were done, many of these individuals could be granted asylum, receive legal status, and commence working, paying taxes, and contributing the full measure of their skills to the common good of our country. We’d actually be generating revenue rather than wasting it on misplaced and dishonest “enforcement initiatives” aimed at individuals who mean us no harm and could do us much good if we would let them.
Actually, this Administration’s toxic border policy operates much like Sessions’s program to destroy the U.S. Immigration Courts to promote extreme nativist “solutions.” Rather than working diligently to process asylum seekers fairly under the law, the Administration chooses to “break” the system and then declare a bogus “emergency” that supposedly justifies draconian (yet actually unnecessary and counterproductive) enforcement actions.
I predict that the Administration’s lawless and mindless approach to border enforcement and asylum adjudication will eventually convince asylum applicants (and the professional smugglers that the Trump Administration promotes, enriches, and enables) to simply avoid the border all together. There are lots of ways of getting folks into the interior without having them turn themselves in at ports of entry or to the nearest Border Patrol Agents, particularly when legitimate law enforcement has been diverted by Trump to concentrating (and promoting with false narratives and scenarios) on a “crisis that isn’t.”
Trump’s diversion of resources and attention should also be a boon for realcriminal activity crossing the border. In other words, the Trump Administration has been great for the business of cartels, druggies, human trafffickers, and other “bad guys” taking advantage of incompetent leadership and lack of concern for protecting America from real crime.
Sure it will cost more, probably kill some more asylum applicants, and make enforcement and administration of our immigration laws more difficult and less effective. But, that’s pretty much what Trump’s “dumb” White Nationalist agenda is about anyway. Doubling down on failed policies to stoke racism, hate, and “fake” rule of law arguments for the benefit of those either too biased or ill-informed to grasp the realities of human migration and basic human rights.
Back to Julia’s article, I’ve always enjoyed her timely and very clear reporting. It’s also great to see her on NBC TV more these days. Her previous stint on the “immigration beat” at Reuters its a perfect “tie-in” to her current national security beat.
Looking at deportation from south of the border, I saw our own flawed attitudes about migration more clearly
February 25, 2019
While reporting on deported Mexicans in that country’s capital, I saw the human cost of our failure to develop a thoughtful immigration policy.
By
By Tyrone Beason
Times staff reporter
MEXICO CITY — For the thousands of Mexicans who’ve been deported from the United States and who’ve chosen to rebuild their lives in this massive capital city, America represents “el otro lado,” Spanish for “the other side.”
On our side of the U.S./Mexico border, from Florida to Washington state, these repatriated Mexicans left behind jobs, loved ones and community ties.
On our side, they experienced the chaos and coldness of America’s immigration and deportation system, one that has shown little interest in broken families and the loss of economic viability, or the relative unsafety and cultural hostility toward migrants of all kinds that deported people face after returning to their native country.
Earlier this month, two of my Times colleagues and I traveled here, to the other side of America’s border crisis, to learn about life after deportation. The stories we heard, the hardships we came to understand and the grass roots efforts we learned about will all be presented soon in a special package in The Times.
But before I write about that, I wanted to write about the strange context in which we did our reporting.
There we were covering the real-life experience of being kicked out of the United States, during the same week that our president declared a state of emergency to prevent an imaginary army of Mexican and Central American migrants from barging in.
The way President Donald Trump describes it, we are at war with craven invaders who don’t want to play by America’s immigration rules.
From the vantage point of Mexico City, though, it seemed as if America had plunged deeper into a war with itself, in part because it can’t come up with sensible rules for a nation that has been built and sustained by immigrants and migrant workers — both free and captive.
People who live and work in the United States without legal documents do represent a special category of migrant, and they certainly know the risks.
But as I sat and listened to returnees in Mexico City — who had migrated to the United States with their families when they were minors, or who started their own families while on American soil in the years before being deported — the trauma of deportation and the complexity of the rebuilding process seemed more real.
We are good at sending people “back where they came from” for the crime of being here without papers and sometimes for committing other offenses that result in being considered unfit for legal residency. What we are not so good at is considering the possible injustice of forcing people back into countries that may not be equipped to reintegrate them, that may not even want to welcome them home, and that for all intents and purposes may not feel like “home” anymore.
Mexico City — a teetering metropolis that sits at an elevation of 7,300 feet and that’s more than 20 million people strong — is a hard place to navigate even for those who were born here and never left. It’s especially challenging for those who left years ago in search of a better life in America and now find themselves back here and needing to start over, in a city dealing with issues like poverty and corruption.
We met repatriated Mexicans who spoke like homies from around the way, who shook my hand with the soul-brother salute, who talked about the United States as if they had been born wrapped in red, white and blue, who are proudly making it work in the land of their ancestors while also displaying the spirit of their adoptive motherland up north.
In deportation cases, the decision can seem pretty cut-and-dry: Should they stay or should they go?
On the ground in the beautiful cacophony that is Mexico City, the overcrowded and smoggy incubator of dreams big and small, everything was a blur and there were nothing but gray areas.
It’s so easy in our society to portray immigrants who carry proper documentation as “good” and those who don’t have those documents as “bad,” but when our government behaves as if it doesn’t care about the aftereffects of the decision to expel someone from our soil — which seems to be the case right now — it is our character that’s in question.
Trump’s wall is not the only story. And immigration isn’t our only crisis.
We have a responsibility to be careful about who we let into this country, to be sure. But we also have to find a way to more humanely manage the detention, departure and reintegration of those we send away — to see them as human beings even when they have violated the integrity of our borders.
We can act as if the fate of undocumented migrants isn’t our problem, that they shouldn’t have come here under those circumstances in the first place.
But if we deal with the original sin of entering the United States illegally in such a clinical way, we will be committing the equal sin of heartlessness when humanity is due.
Justice is never truly blind.
Because of that, as we think about deportation, we should view this tough journey with our eyes wide open.
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Callous treatment of those who might once have thought of our country as “home” is never a good idea. Not fully considering the human and political consequences of our own actions is the height of arrogance. It says to the world “who cares about others and what they think — we can do as we please because we’re the biggest and richest bullies on the block.”
Under Trump, the U.S. is faltering on most foreign policy fronts, unnecessarily alienating our potential friends and allies and “sucking up” to the worst and most dangerous strongmen in the world while getting little of verifiable value in return (notably, one of the worst among them, Putin, helped install Trump in his current position).
No country remains “on the top of the heap” forever. And, as our power and influence begin to wane under Trump’s erratic and incompetent hand, we might someday soon find that we need all the friends we can get, even outside our border, to maintain and regain our position and prestige in the world. Just ask the Brits about the perils of “going it alone” — or letting national policies be driven by irrational and self-defeating nativist sentiment.
A bipartisan group of 58 former senior national security officials issued a statement Monday saying that “there is no factual basis” for President Trump’s proclamation of a national emergency to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The joint statement, whose signatories include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former defense secretary Chuck Hagel, comes a day before the House is expected to vote on a resolution to block Trump’s Feb. 15 declaration.
The former officials’ statement, which will be entered into the Congressional Record, is intended to support lawsuitsand other actions challenging the national emergency proclamation and to force the administration to set forth the legal and factual basis for it.
“Under no plausible assessment of the evidence is there a national emergency today that entitles the president to tap into funds appropriated for other purposes to build a wall at the southern border,” the group said.
Albright served under President Bill Clinton, and Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, served under President Barack Obama.
Lawmakers argue over Trump’s national emergency declaration
Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he supported President Trump’s national emergency declaration to build the wall Feb. 17.(Reuters)
Also signing were Eliot A. Cohen, State Department counselor under President George W. Bush; Thomas R. Pickering, President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations; John F. Kerry, Obama’s second secretary of state; Susan E. Rice, Obama’s national security adviser; Leon E. Panetta, Obama’s CIA director and defense secretary; as well as former intelligence and security officials who served under Republican and Democratic administrations.
Trump’s national emergency declaration followed a 35-day partial government shutdown, which came after Congress did not approve the $5.7 billion he sought to build a wall.
In announcing his declaration, Trump predicted lawsuits and “possibly . . . a bad ruling, and then we’ll get another bad ruling” before winning at the Supreme Court.
Trump’s actions are also drawing criticism from at least two dozen former Republican congressmen, who have signed an open letter urging passage of a joint resolution to terminate the emergency declaration. The letter argues that Trump is circumventing congressional authority.
A secondary border wall is under construction in Otay Mesa, Calif. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
The former security officials’ 11-page declaration sets out their argument disputing the factual basis for the president’s emergency.
Among other things, they said, illegal border crossings are at nearly 40-year lows. Undetected unlawful entries at the U.S.-Mexico border decreased from 851,000 to nearly 62,000 between 2006 and 2016, they said, citing Department of Homeland Security statistics.
Contrary to the president’s assertion, there is no documented emergency at the southern border related to terrorism or violent crime, they said, citing administration reports and independent think tank analyses.
Similarly, they state that there is no drug trafficking emergency that can be addressed by a wall along the southern border, noting that “the overwhelming majority of opioids” that enter the United States are brought in through legal ports of entry, citing the Justice Department.
They also argue that redirecting money pursuant to the national emergency declaration “will undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.” And, they assert, “a wall is unnecessary to support the use of the armed forces,” as the administration has said.
Some of the same former officials wrote a joint declaration disputing the factual basis for the president’s order shortly after he took office in January 2017 barring entry to foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The former officials asserted that the order was not based on a bona fide national security assessment but on “a deliberate political decision to discriminate against a religious minority.”
Their views were filed as a joint declaration and later as a friend-of-the court brief in lawsuits challenging the original order and subsequent revisions, and it was cited by almost every federal judge who enjoined the ban. By the time the challenges reached the Supreme Court, the administration had significantly narrowed the ban, which the high court upheld on a 5-to-4 vote.
With respect to the declared national emergency, plaintiffs have filed two cases in the District of Columbia, two in California and one in Texas.
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It definitely will be worth noting for posterity those in the GOP who vote to sell out America by failing to stand up to Trump’s bogus national emergency ploy.
We also shouldn’t forget that if the GOP weren’t willing to sell out America because of fear of the “Off-base Trump Base” the vote to overturn his national emergency would be overwhelming and thereby “veto-proof.” A body that won’t stand up for its own Constitutional prerogatives, isn’t likely to strand up for the rights of anyone else.
MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Magdalene Menyongar’s day starts with a 5:30 a.m. conference call with women from her church. They pray together as Menyongar makes breakfast and drives to work, reflecting on everything they are thankful for.
But lately, the prayers have turned to matters of politics and immigration. They pray with increasing urgency for Congress or President Trump to act before Menyongar, 48, faces deportation to her native Liberia, where she fled civil war nearly 25 years ago.
In less than six weeks, the order that has allowed her and more than 800 other immigrants from the former American colony in West Africa to live in the United States for decades will end, the result of Trump’s decision last year to terminate a program that every other president since George H.W. Bush supported. Come March 31, Menyongar will face a choice: Return to Liberia and leave behind her 17-year-old daughter, an American citizen, or stay in the United States, losing her work authorization and becoming an undocumented immigrant.
“It’s hard to think about because you have built a life,” said Menyongar, who works as a certified nursing assistant. “Maybe it’s part of my brain that I try to block out. When I think about it, all I do is pray.”
A portrait of Menyongar outside her home in Maple Grove, Minn., on Feb. 3. She faces a decision: Leave her daughter in the United States and return to Liberia or stay and become an undocumented immigrant. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
Menyongar is among thousands of Liberian immigrants who were given temporary permission to stay in the United States in 1999, when President Bill Clinton implemented “deferred enforced departure.” DED was routinely extended by previous administrations but is set to end under Trump’s effort to terminate programs for immigrants without permanent status, which also has endangered Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and temporary protected status for immigrants from 10 other countries.
Temporary protected status, or TPS, was established by Congress in 1990 for citizens of countries suffering from war, environmental disaster, health epidemics or other unsafe conditions. They are given temporary permission to work in the United States and travel abroad without fear of deportation.
A class-action lawsuit filed Feb. 12 in a federal court in California seeks to block the Trump administration from ending TPS for immigrants from Honduras and Nepal. In October, a federal judge in the same court issued an injunction that stalled the end of TPS for citizens of four other countries.
But that court action does not apply to the smaller and lesser-known DED program, which operates purely at the president’s discretion and gives no statutory basis on which to sue.
Without a change of heart from the president — or new legislation from Congress — Liberians living in the United States under DED will lose their work authorization and become subject to deportation. Instead of self-deporting, many are expected to stay in the United States in hopes of getting a hearing in immigration courts, a process that could take years.
Trump has made curtailing illegal immigration a central tenet of his agenda, saying in his State of the Union address this month that immigrants should come to the United States “in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.”
But critics say his move to end protection for Liberians, leaving them undocumented after decades in the country legally, reflects an immigration policy that is capricious and, at worst, driven by racial bias.
Menyongar gets ready for work. Her paychecks from two nursing homes help support relatives in Liberia. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
Family photos at Menyongar’s home. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
Menyongar and her daughter, Gabby, at home. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
“There comes a point where even if relief started as temporary, it needs to end with some possibility for permanence,” said Royce Murray, managing director of programs at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group. “These are people who have built their lives here, have invested in their communities and are raising American citizens.”
Last week, a group of DED holders from Minnesota traveled to Washington to lobby representatives, and Democrats have responded with legislative efforts. Rep. Dean Phillips, a freshman Democrat who represents Menyongar’s Minnesota district, pushed unsuccessfully for a DED provision to be included in the spending bill Trump signed.
In addition, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) reintroduced a narrow bill he has pushed in every session of Congress since 1999 to offer Liberians with DED a chance to apply for permanent residency. A spokesman for Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez told The Washington Post the New York Democrat is working to include similar provisions in a broader immigration bill to be unveiled in the coming weeks.
Opponents of the programs say they have outlasted their original intent, to provide temporary protection, and represent a misuse of executive authority.
RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors reduced immigration and greater enforcement, calls DED and TPS “flagrant abuses of our immigration system.”
“Both of these ‘temporary’ designations have been on autopilot for years, with one unmerited, open-ended extension after another,” Hauman said. “These individuals should return to their homeland, which has since recovered, and use their skills to enrich Liberian society.”
Like many Liberians who fled their country’s back-to-back civil wars between 1989 and 2003, Menyongar applied for asylum when she arrived in America in 1994. Her request was denied when she was unable to reach relatives in Liberia to get proof of her family ties to a politician there, whose prominence she feared would make her a target should she return. She was able to remain in the United States under TPS until 1999, when the program expired for Liberians and DED was created to extend protection to about 10,000 people at the time.
Liberians don’t have to register with the federal government to qualify for DED, so there’s no reliable count of how many people depend on the program. But as of March 2018, approximately 840 had work authorization under DED, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Liberians must have lived in the United States continuously since 2002 or earlier to qualify.
Most of the original DED beneficiaries have since left the country, died or gained permanent status, Murray said. She estimates as many as “a few thousand” may remain in the country but have not renewed their optional work permits, which cost a total of $495 in annual fees.
Permanent residency can come through political asylum, marriage to a U.S. citizen, family ties or an employer’s sponsorship. Menyongar’s husband, also a Liberian immigrant, died in 2011. Her attorney has advised that her surest option for a green card would be sponsorship by their daughter, Gabby Gworlekaju — something the teenager can’t provide until she is 21.
Gabby’s primary focus these days is preparing for college, possibly in Atlanta to be close to her father’s family and escape the frigid Midwest winters. She said she didn’t understand that her mother could have to leave until last March, when Trump declared a one-year “wind-down period” for DED. She has told her best friend how worried she is about the situation but avoids talking about it otherwise.
“It’d be a life-changing choice,” Gabby said. “That would mean that my mother would have to physically be removed out of my life, and I’d have to continue on. I can’t even explain how I would react.”
Some members of Bethel Robbinsdale’s congregation may face deportation when deferred enforced departure ends. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
Pastor Natt J. Friday preaches at Bethel Robbinsdale on Feb. 3. “These people, if you grant them permanent residence, they are going to be so patriotic,” he said. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
The choir sings at Bethel Robbinsdale on Feb. 3. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
A second family, a second home
Minnesota is home to the nation’s largest Liberian community, concentrated in the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis. A few times each week, Menyongar makes a 20-minute drive to Bethel Robbinsdale — one of several Liberian churches in the Twin Cities area — where she serves as president of the women’s ministry.
After communion during a recent Sunday service, the band and choir struck up a euphoric tune while Menyongar joined the congregation in dancing through the pews. Dressed in a brightly colored jumpsuit and a turquoise head wrap, she exchanged handshakes and hugs along the way.
“The church is my second family,” Menyongar said. “It’s like a support system that we have for each other.”
At one point during the two-hour service, the worship paused so a church member could announce an upcoming rally at the state capitol to raise the alarm about the end of DED. Later, Pastor Natt J. Friday led a prayer for those affected.
Friday knows Menyongar isn’t the only member of his church who could face deportation, but he can’t say for sure how many will. Many keep their immigration status secret.
“These people, if you grant them permanent residence, they are going to be so patriotic,” Friday said. “The burden would be lifted off their shoulders to know that they can finally live a normal life.”
Liberian immigrants have taken prominent positions in Minneapolis and its suburbs, such as Brooklyn Center, which recently elected its first Liberian-born mayor. They moved in part for the job market — a shortage of nurses and other health-care workers drew many, like Menyongar, to work in hospitals and assisted-living facilities.
Mary Tjosvold, who owns group homes for seniors and people with disabilities, employs more than 150 Liberians. Although she does not track how many of her employees are protected by DED, she said losing even a few workers would have wide ripple effects.
“People have had these jobs for a long time. They’re important parts of businesses,” said Tjosvold. “On an economic basis, it doesn’t make any sense, no matter what you think politically.”
An end to the policy also has economic implications abroad. Remittances sent from those working in the United States to their relatives in Liberia act as “a source of de facto foreign aid,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a former immigration judge and current adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School.
Menyongar works a combined 60-plus hours each week at two nursing homes, and her paychecks support her 97-year-old mother and other relatives in Liberia.
Schmidt said the idea that Liberians losing DED will self-deport is unrealistic.
“My experience is that most people go home not because they’re threatened, but because they deem it in their overall best socioeconomic interest,” he said. “A lot depends on what faces you at home, which is why this administration’s policy doesn’t work.”
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that supports sharp immigration restrictions, argues that a president should not be able to prolong temporary programs like DED without congressional approval. Even so, he said, “When we’ve permitted people to lawfully reside here for decades, it’s practically and politically and morally problematic to say, ‘Okay, now time is up.’ ”
Liberia has been emerging from war during the past 15 years and last year saw its first peaceful transfer of power since 1944. In a memorandum announcing the end of the temporary status, Trump wrote, “I find that conditions in Liberia no longer warrant a further extension of DED.”
Menyongar strongly disagrees with that assessment, citing violent crime, poor health care and infrastructure, and a lack of jobs in explaining why she could not return to her country of birth.
“The Liberia that I knew and grew up in is not the Liberia of today,” she said.
Menyongar worships at Bethel Robbinsdale. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
This article was produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, where Donovan-Smith is a student.
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ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: There Is Nothing Inherently Wrong With TPS Or DED — But, There Is Plenty Wrong With The Trump Administration’s Mistreatment Of 800 Long-Term Residents From Liberia
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
United States Immigration Judge (Retired)
Far from being a “problem,” as Trump and his restrictionist “naysayers” like to falsely claim, the TPS/DED program for Liberians has been a tremendous success! With a little “Congressional tinkering,” it could easily become a model for resolving future humanitarian situations without overburdening the US asylum system and adding to the huge existing U.S. Immigration Court backlog.
The US was able to provide humanitarian assistance to at least 10,000 Liberians during the darkest time for their country. This was accomplished without the time, expense, and often inconsistent and unsatisfactory results of forcing them into the formal US asylum system.
While in TPS/DED, Liberians were able to work legally, pay taxes, raise their families, live in peace, and otherwise contribute to American society. Over the years, many were over able to fit within our legal immigration system. Some died. Others found that with changes in Liberia, it made socio-economic sense for them to return there. A very few violated the rules of our hospitality and were duly arrested and removed after receiving Immigration Court hearings (most before the Trump Administration “trashed” due process in Immigration Court). The Government might even have turned a slight profit on the routine renewals of work authorization for which a fee was charged that probably exceeded the actual time it took to adjudicate them.
Now, we have approximately 800 long-term residents remaining who would like to stay here with their families, jobs, and communities. Passing the necessary legislative fix to allow them to get green cards should be a “bipartisan no brainer” — indeed if the Administration introduced and supported such a fix, it almost certainly would pass by huge margins and be signed into law. Presto — problem fixed and everyone wins! At a minimum, a rational Administration would exercise “prosecutorial discretion” (“PD”) to maintain the status quo and allow the few remaining Liberians to reside in the US and work legally pending good behavior and a legislative solution.
The law might or might not have been specifically designed for this outcome. But, wiser Administrations in the past used the available legal mechanisms along with Executive authority and common sense to solve human problems in a practical, efficient manner. Thanks exactly what “good government” is supposed to do.
That the Trump Administration chooses to use laws selectively to create “bogus emergencies” and “engineer problems” where none existed, rather than solving problems in a way that promotes the common good, should be of concern to all of us who favor good government and humane solutions to humanitarian issues.
Amelia Frank-Vitale is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Michigan. She writes in the Washington Post:
Since I moved to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in September 2017 to do research for my doctoral dissertation, I’ve accompanied a 16-year-old with three bullet holes in his body to the hospital, only to find that there was no blood for transfusions. I’ve looked in the face of a young mother, anguished over whether she should try to make it the United States, because the gang that she used to be a part of but had left behind wanted to pull her back in. I’ve gotten tearful phone calls from a single mother and her two children, who have been told by a gang that they want her house — and she has nowhere else to go. I’ve talked to many families whose teenagers have been taken away by police, never to be seen again. And I’ve also talked to police officers who have given up on law enforcement here, as their superiors undermine honest work and reward corruption.
On Friday, President Trump declared a national emergency as a pretext to allow him to begin construction of a border wall. But the real national emergency is here, in Honduras.
I arrived shortly before a likely fraudulent election installed Juan Orlando Hernández in a second, unconstitutional term as president. Rather than protest irregularities in the vote-counting process, the Trump administration congratulated Hernández on his victory.
Honduras was already in bad shape: a devastating hurricane in 1998; a coup d’etat in 2009; becoming the world’s most homicidal nation in 2010; and a long history of U.S. intervention. In 2015, the ruling National party was implicated in stealing millions of dollars from the nation’s social security fund. Honduras is also on the primary route for cocaine trafficking to the United States. The Drug Enforcement Administration has arrested many alleged narcotraffickers, among them the president’s brother, Tony Hernández. The country ranks high in corruption, impunity, poverty and inequality. It ranks low for literacy, employment and life expectancy.
The 2017 election, though, brought things to a head. There were massive protests, the country was shut down for more than a month, and at least 31 protesters were killed. Honduras has erupted in moments of insurrection since then, though the most visible aftereffects of the election have been a crackdown on dissidents, especially the young and students, and the caravans heading for the United States. People had staked their hope for a better future in a different electoral outcome. When that was taken from them, they went back to leaving the country.
Honduran migration isn’t new; what is new is that they are doing it publicly, in large groups, and asking, collectively, for protection. The real humanitarian crisis is that, mostly, Hondurans are denied this protection and deported.
So many young Hondurans — especially the urban poor — feel like they have no future here. Eight out of 10 violent deaths here are of young people. A young man told me, at 21 years old, that he once had a dream but it’s over. He has no dreams now. He was recently deported from the United States after losing an asylum claim. Yet, back in Honduras, he has to hide in the trunk of a car to be able to visit his mother. The gang there would kill him if they saw him enter her house.
At least he came back alive.
A week ago, I went with a family to receive the remains of their 16-year-old son, who had been murdered in Mexico. He had traveled as part of a caravan and was killed in Tijuana. We picked up the small coffin at the San Pedro Sula airport and loaded the slight white box into the back of a borrowed, barely running pickup truck. As I drove to the airport with his grandmother that day, her eyes had filled with tears as she told me how his father used to paint his face and take him on the bus, performing simple clown routines, hoping to be given a few lempiras. She also told me how two of her three sons were murdered in their early 20s. The third one was disappeared. An unasked question hung in the air: whether her grandson would have lived to adulthood had he stayed in Honduras.
Human history is one of migration; we are exceptionally good at moving around when the conditions for life become tenuous. Neither walls nor deserts nor oceans have ever deterred us from seeking safer horizons and better opportunities for survival.
Under these circumstances, Hondurans’ drive to seek safety elsewhere is not an emergency; that there may be no place in the world where they are allowed to find refuge is the real crisis.
I used to get folks from San Pedro Sula in Immigration Court. Horrible place! Most of them qualified for asylum, withholding of removal, or some other form of relief from removal. Or the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel, having better things to do, and actually not wanting to see decent folks get hurt, offered them prosecutorial discretion (“PD”).
Of course that was in the “pre-Trump days” when Immigration Judges were generally free to properly apply asylum law (if they chose to do so, which, sadly, not all did) and the ICE Chief Counsel in Arlington was taking a stab at working with the courts and the private bar to make the system operate as reasonably and humanely as it could under the circumstances. Not perfect by any means; but, a world away from the intentional cruelty, irrationality, lawlessness, and intentional bias that the Trump regime has used to destroy any semblance of justice, due process, and functionality in the Immigration Courts.
We found her in a ditch a few steps away from the rusted border fence on the east side of Nogales, Ariz., an inch-and-a-half laceration on her swollen forehead. She came from Guerrero, one of the most violent states in Mexico, and could not remember how she landed on the rugged surface after her grip on the top of the barrier failed and she fell.
Six firefighters carried her to the ambulance, which took her to a helicopter bound for the regional trauma center in Tucson. Captain Lopez recorded the incident in the logbook when we returned to the firehouse: “1107 Medic 2, Engine 2: Dead End Freeport — Jumper/Head Injury.” This was two lines below an entry logged earlier that morning, for a teenage boy who had come down with a 102-degree fever while locked in a cell at the Border Patrol station after agents apprehended him in the desert: “0951 Medic 2: 1500 West La Quinta Rd — High Fever.”
Emergency responders are the first on the scene in any life-threatening situation: car accidents, drug overdoses, heart attacks, shootings. In the southern United States, the list of routine trauma scenarios includes border-related injuries.
For more than a year, while I was volunteering as an EMT and paramedic in Arizona, I witnessed ambulances pick up wounded border crossers so frequently that some of my peers were casually referring to the cement ledge abutting the fence as “the ankle alley.”
Such reinforcements don’t contribute to national security. Instead, they erode the foundations of public safety in communities on both sides of the border.
From EMTs to emergency room doctors, medical professionals see firsthand how, as the design of the barrier changes, so do the patterns of injury: While the previous, shorter fence, built in the 1990s and made of sharp corrugated sheet metal, amputated the fingers of those who tried to scale it, the current 20-foot-tall bollard barrier causes orthopedic fractures and multi-system trauma.
Emergency responders also see that, no matter its design, the fence does not deter unauthorized migrants. Even more often than ambulances are dispatched to “the ankle alley,” they are sent to help those choosing the dangerous journey across what the Border Patrol calls “hostile terrain,” where enforcement is outsourced to the extreme environment.
Migrants rescued in the desert are often severely dehydrated and face a life with permanent kidney damage. Lucky ones, nevertheless: In the last two decades, more than 7,000 people have died crossing the increasingly militarized Southwest border region, some of them from head trauma suffered when they fell off the fence in Nogales.
The border fence, now enhanced by spools of concertina wire, is a key component of “tactical infrastructure,” a term Customs and Border Protection uses to refer to the assemblage of materials and technologies that regulate movement in the name of national security. CBP doesn’t have metrics to assess whether fencing contributes to their border enforcement operations, as the Government Accountability Office noted in a report released last year.
The ineffectiveness of current fences has nothing to do with their size or their length. Barriers along the border have doubled in height since the 1990s and now cover nearly 700 miles, or about one-third of the length of the U.S. Southwest border. But they have failed to stop unauthorized migrants or illegal drugs.
Still, as we can see from the ongoing debate on border security among lawmakers, there are no plans to abandon this brutal and ineffective enforcement strategy.
The stubborn focus on barriers is shortsighted, and it obscures how the deployment of tactical infrastructure harms and threatens the safety of communities that straddle the international boundary, such as Nogales. The same emergency responders who splint broken legs and give IV fluids to wounded border crossers depend on partnerships with fire departments in Mexico. Wildfires and flash floods, air pollution and toxic spills spread from one country to another without regard for borders. Walls don’t stop them.
Arizona is downhill, downwind and downstream from the Mexican state of Sonora. Towns on both sides have their public utilities and transportation systems intermeshed. In Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora — together known as Ambos Nogales — an arroyo and a sewage pipeline cross the border through a drainage tunnel underneath the port of entry, where residents line up for passport control steps away from railcars carrying sulphuric acid. Aware of this intertwining, emergency managers and first responders have developed binational partnerships.
The U.S. Forest Service and Mexico’s National Forestry Commission jointly fight wildfires within 10 miles of the border. Sister cities have mutual aid agreements, which allow them to share resources in cases of emergency on either side. While Americans push fire hoses through the gaps in the fence, supplying their peers in Mexico with water, Mexican volunteers come to the U.S. side to provide manpower in large structure fires and search-and-rescue operations. Such cooperation is more than a century old. It precedes the fence that divides the communities.
Building barriers undermines these achievements and imperils border residents. To speed up the construction of the wall after Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was authorized to waive more than 30 environmental and other federal laws, including regulations preserving clean air and clean water. Tactical infrastructure, deployed at any human, social or ecological cost, exacerbates the potentially disastrous consequences of natural phenomena.
We saw it happen a decade ago, when the CBP installed a 5-foot concrete barrier inside the drainage tunnel under Nogales. The barrier formed a bottleneck. With heavy rain, water pressure kept rising, until about 1,000 feet of the tunnel collapsed and inundated the city. Mexican authorities declared the area a disaster zone, citing damage to hundreds of homes, while the CBP recovered two bodies, suspecting the drowned were unauthorized migrants. Despite calls for investigations and reparations, the U.S. government’s only concession was an offer to lower the barrier by a foot and a half.
Such reinforcements don’t contribute to national security. Instead, they erode the foundations of public safety in communities on both sides of the border. As U.S. soldiers added more concertina wire to the fence in Nogales earlier this month, an EMT told me he dreads the day he may be called to help someone entangled in its razor-sharp coils.
Ieva Jusionyte is an assistant professor of anthropology and social studies at Harvard University and the author of “Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border.” She has volunteered as an emergency medical technician, paramedic and firefighter in Florida, Arizona and Massachusetts.
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On the “real border,” Trump’s lies and White Nationalist nonsense don’t just waste money and create artificial barrier to international cooperation; they actually harm folks on both sides every day. And, they most certainly bring us no closer to the rational solutions needed to manage a shared border and reasonably control and channel human migration.
