Category: GOP subversion

⚖️🗽 US JUDGE IN SAN DIEGO EVISCERATES TRUMP’S ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL “TURNBACKS” OF ASYLUM APPLICANTS; MAYORKAS TERMINATES REMAIN IN MEXICO (AGAIN) EVEN AS RED RESTRICTIONIST AGs FILE MORE FRIVOLOUS OBJECTIONS! 🤮

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12R1mt07Z4S7R7xiieRUznueR9DRXrBdq/view?usp=sharing

Al Otro Lado v. Mayorkas

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant minces no words in blasting both the unlawful, cruel, and unconstitutional policy and the Supreme’s toxic decision to look the other way as immigration enforcement runs roughshod over legal, constitutional, and human rights. 

In its September 2, 2021 decision, this Court held the right to access the U.S. asylum

process conferred vis a vis § 1158(a)(1) applies extraterritorially to noncitizens who are

arriving at Class A POEs along the U.S.-Mexico border, but who are not yet within the

jurisdiction of the United States, and is of a constitutional dimension. (Op. Granting in

Part and Denying in Part Parties’ Cross-Mots. for Summ. J. (“MSJ Opinion”), ECF No.

742.) It further held that Defendants’ systematic turnbacks of asylum seekers arriving at

Class A POEs (the “Turnback Policy”) amounted to an unlawful withholding by

immigration officials of their mandatory ministerial “inspection and referral duties”

detailed in 8 U.S.C. § 1225 (“§ 1225”), in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,

5 U.S.C. § 706(1) et seq., and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause. (MSJ Opinion at

33–34, 37–38); see 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225(a)(3) (mapping out immigration officials’ duty to

inspect asylum seekers), 1225(b)(1)(A)(ii) (mapping out immigration officials’ duty to

refer asylum seekers to the U.S-asylum process).

In casting appropriate equitable relief to rectify the irreparable injury Defendants’

unauthorized and constitutionally violative Turnback Policy has inflicted upon members

of the Plaintiff class,2 this Court ordinarily would be guided by the fundamental principle

that an equitable remedy should be commensurate with the violations it is designed to

vindicate. See Columbus Bd. of Educ. v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 465 (1979) (“[It is an]

accepted rule that the remedy imposed by a court of equity should be commensurate with

the violation ascertained.”). Equitable relief should leave no stone unturned: it should

correct entirely the violations it is aimed at vindicating. That cornerstone of Article III

courts’ equitable powers generally is unfaltering, whether the party against whom an

injunction is sought is a private entity, a state actor, or, as here, a federal official. Thus, in

2 Plaintiffs consist of the named Plaintiffs listed in the case caption, along with a certified class

consisting of “all noncitizens who seek or will seek to access the U.S. asylum process by presenting

themselves at a Class A [POE] on the U.S.-Mexico border, and were or will be denied access to the U.S.

asylum process by or at the instruction of [Customs and Border Protection] officials on or after January 1,

2016.” (Class Certification Order at 18, ECF No. 513.) The Court also certified a subclass consisting of

“all noncitizens who were or will be denied access to the U.S. asylum process at a Class A POE on the

U.S.-Mexico border as a result of Defendants’ metering policy on or after January 1, 2016.” (Id.)

– 3 – 17cv2366

the ordinary course of things, this Court would not hesitate to issue broad, programmatic

relief enjoining Defendants from now, or in the future, turning back asylum seekers in the

process of arriving at Class A POEs, absent a valid statutory basis for doing so.

Yet the circumstances with which this Court is presented are not ordinary because

of the extraordinary, intervening decision of the United States Supreme Court in Garland

v. Aleman Gonzalez, 142 S. Ct. 2057 (2022). That decision takes a sledgehammer to the

premise that immigration enforcement agencies are bound to implement their mandatory

ministerial duties prescribed by Congress, including their obligation to inspect and refer

arriving noncitizens for asylum, and that, when immigration enforcement agencies deviate

from those duties, lower courts have authority to issue equitable relief to enjoin the

resulting violations. It does so through unprecedented expansion of a provision of the

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1989 (“IIRIRA”), 8

U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) et seq. (“§ 1252(f)(1)”), which for years the Ninth Circuit has

interpreted as placing a relatively narrow limit on injunctive relief. In essence, Aleman

Gonzalez holds that § 1252(f)(1) prohibits lower courts from issuing class-wide injunctions

that “require officials to take actions that (in the Government’s view) are not required” by

certain removal statutes, including § 1225, or “to refrain from actions that (again in the

Government’s view) are allowed” by those same provisions. Id., 142 S. Ct. at 2065.

Federal courts (except for the Supreme Court) now may only issue injunctions enjoining

federal officials’ unauthorized implementation of the removal statutes in the individual

cases of noncitizens against whom removal proceedings have been initiated. See id.

In no uncertain terms, the logical extension of Aleman Gonzalez appears to bestow

immigration enforcement agencies carte blanche to implement immigration enforcement

policies that clearly are unauthorized by the statutes under which they operate because the

Government need only claim authority to implement to immunize itself from the federal

judiciary’s oversight.

With acknowledgment that its decision will further contribute to the human suffering

of asylum seekers enduring squalid and dangerous conditions in Mexican border

– 4 – 17cv2366

communities as they await entry to POEs, this Court finds the shadow of Aleman Gonzalez

inescapable in this case. Even the most narrow, meaningful equitable relief would have

the effect of interfering with the “operation” of § 1225, as that term is construed by the

Aleman Gonzalez Court, and, thus, would clash with § 1252(f)(1)’s remedy bar. Aleman

Gonzalez not only renders uneconomical vindication of Plaintiff class members’

statutorily- and constitutionally-protected right to apply for asylum, those inefficiencies

inevitably will lead to innumerable instances in which Plaintiff class members will be

unable to vindicate their rights at all. Thus, while the majority and dissent in Aleman

Gonzalez hash out their textual disagreements concerning § 1252(f)(1)’s scope in terms of

remedies, make no mistake, Aleman Gonzalez leaves largely unrestrained immigration

enforcement agencies to rapaciously scale back rights. See Tracy A. Thomas, Ubi Jus, Ibi

Remedium: The Fundamental Right to a Remedy Under Due Process, 41 San Diego L.

Rev. 1633, 1634 (2004) (“Disputes over remedies provide a convenient way for dissenters

to resist conformance to legal guarantees. Courts can declare rights, but then default in the

remedy to avoid a politically unpopular result.” (footnote omitted)).

Although it is no substitute for a permanent injunction, class-wide declaratory relief

is both available and warranted here. In lieu of even a circumscribed injunction enjoining

Defendants from again implementing a policy under which they turn back asylum seekers

presenting themselves at POEs along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Court enters a

declaration in accordance with its MSJ Opinion that turning back asylum seekers

constitutes both an unlawful withholding of Defendants’ mandatory ministerial inspection

and referral duties under § 1158 and § 1225 in violation of both the APA and the Fifth

Amendment Due Process Clause. The Court also issues relief as necessary to named

Plaintiff Beatrice Doe.

. . . .

You can read Judge Bashant’s full opinion at the link.

Meanwhile, Secretary Mayorkas exercised the authority recognized by the Supremes in Biden v. Texas to terminate the reprehensible and illegal “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”) program engineered by Trump and Miller. Predictably, the same scofflaw, restrictionist “Red AG’s” who had instituted frivolous litigation to block this long overdue action filed more specious objections with the Trump-appointed US District Judge, as advocacy groups like Justice Action Center (“JAC”) pledged to fight the racist right until this vile (and highly ineffective) program is finally ended.

JAC Responds to Official Termination of Remain in Mexico, Attempts by Texas to Delay Wind-Down

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 9, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a victory for immigrants’ rights movement, the Remain in Mexico program has been officially terminated after court proceedings following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Biden v. Texas on June 30. Below is a statement from Justice Action Center founder and director Karen Tumlin:

“The official end to shameful Remain in Mexico program is a victory for the immigrants’ rights movement and the right to asylum. RMX is a stain on the country’s history, having harmed tens of thousands of people fleeing for their lives since the Trump Administration instituted the unlawful and immoral program in 2019.

“Since the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming the authority of the Biden Administration to end the RMX program, the #SafeNotStranded campaign has called on the President and DHS to implement a swift and humane wind-down, including halting all new enrollments and allowing everyone in RMX to safely pursue their asylum claims in the U.S. Yesterday, DHS stated its wind-down has begun and new people will not be enrolled in the program, and that it would disenroll individuals with upcoming RMX hearings. These are important first steps to finally redress just some of the immense harm inflicted by the program.

“This commitment by DHS, following such a significant SCOTUS victory, illustrates the strength and resilience of the immigrants’ rights movement. But even after a clear loss, Texas is continuing its hateful attempts to keep this deadly program in place for as long as possible: After the District Court rightfully vacated its injunction of the RMX wind-down yesterday, Texas unfortunately—yet unsurprisingly—filed an amended complaint challenging the second DHS memo rescinding RMX, as well as a motion asking the District Court to stay the memo’s effective date.

“But we will not be deterred: advocates will continue to fight back against ongoing red state efforts to continue Trump’s racist and xenophobic agenda and work towards a world where all people fleeing danger can be safe, not stranded.”

# # #

Contact:  Tasha Moro; 323-450-7269; tasha.moro@justiceactioncenter.org

Justice Action Center (JAC) is a new nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting for greater justice for immigrant communities by combining litigation and storytelling. JAC is committed to bringing additional litigation resources to address unmet needs, empower clients, and change the corrosive narrative around immigrants in the U.S. Learn more at justiceactioncenter.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

 

Related:

8/1/22: JAC Responds to Supreme Court’s Certification of Decision on Remain in Mexico; Encourages Swift and Humane Wind-Down of Deadly Program

6/30/22: Justice Action Center Welcomes Positive Supreme Court Decision on Remain in Mexico in Biden v. Texas

3/21/22: #SafeNotStranded Campaign Launches Ahead of April Supreme Court Arguments in Biden v. Texas

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

We should remember that the Trumpest GOP’s insurrectionist war on American democracy and attack on truth and human decency began with overt lies and racist attacks on migrants of color and non-Christians. It has escalated to become an all out assault on our future as a nation of laws and values.

We can’t go back to a time when liberals and progressives viewed immigration as a tangental or secondary issue. It is THE all-encompassing issue now in preserving American democracy from GOP efforts to destabilize and destroy our nation’s fabric from bottom to top!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-11-22 

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️LOSING FAITH IN THEIR OWN COMMITMENTS & COMPETENCE: Restoring The Rule Of Law At The Border Should Result In A Fairer, More Humane, More Realistic Asylum System, Encouraging Applicants To Apply Through Legal Channels, While Resulting In More Legal Immigration, Which America Needs, & Allowing CBP To Focus On Real Law Enforcement — Unfortunately, The Biden Administration Doubts Its Own Campaign Promises, As Well As Its Competence To Govern  — Administration Apparently Hopes Righty Courts Will Continue To “Force” Them To Carry Out “Miller Lite” Cruelty & Futility While Absolving Them Of Moral & Political Responsibility For The Ongoing Human Carnage!
  3. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  4. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies

🏴‍☠️☠️DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST:  THE JIM CROW GOP WAS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY LONG BEFORE TRUMP — Today’s Absurdist & Corrupt GOP Reaction TO DOJ’s Long Overdue Investigation Of Trump’s Treason & Criminality Is The Predictable Result Of Many Years Of Corrupt, Racist, Authoritarianism!

Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

\https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/

. . . .

Much has been made of the ensuing polarization in our politics, and it’s true that moderates are a vanishing breed. But the problem isn’t primarily polarization. The problem is that one of our two major political parties has ceased good-faith participation in the democratic process. Of course, there are instances of violence, disinformation, racism and corruption among Democrats and the political left, but the scale isn’t at all comparable. Only one party fomented a bloody insurrection and even after that voted in large numbers (139 House Republicans, a two-thirds majority) to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Only one party promotes a web of conspiracy theories in place of facts. Only one party is trying to restrict voting and discredit elections. Only one party is stoking fear of minorities and immigrants.

Admittedly, I’m partisan — not for Democrats but for democrats. Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy — and there’s a perfectly logical reason for this: Democracy is working against Republicans. In the eight presidential contests since 1988, the GOP candidate has won a majority of the popular vote only once, in 2004. As the United States approaches majority-minority status (the White population, 76 percent of the country in 1990, is now 58 percent and will drop below 50 percent around 2045), Republicans have become the voice of White people, particularly those without college degrees, who fear the loss of their way of life in a multicultural America. White grievance and White fear drive Republican identity more than any other factor — and in turn drive the tribalism and dysfunction in the U.S. political system.

Other factors sped the party’s turn toward nihilism: Concurrent with the rise of Gingrich was the ascent of conservative talk radio, followed by the triumph of Fox News, followed by the advent of social media. Combined, they created a media environment that allows Republican politicians and their voters to seal themselves in an echo chamber of “alternative facts.” Globally, south-to-north migration has ignited nationalist movements around the world and created a new era of autocrats. The disappearance of the Greatest Generation, tempered by war, brought to power a new generation of culture warriors.

Dana Milbank: In the GOP, the paranoid fringe is becoming the establishment

But the biggest cause is race. The parties re-sorted themselves after the epochal changes of the 1960s, which expanded civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” began an appeal to White voters alienated by racial progress, and, in the years that followed, a new generation of Republicans took that racist undertone and made it the melody.

It is crucial to understand that Donald Trump didn’t create this noxious environment. He isn’t some hideous, orange Venus emerging from the half-shell. Rather, he is a brilliant opportunist; he saw the direction the Republican Party was taking and the appetites it was stoking. The onetime pro-choice advocate of universal health care reinvented himself to give Republicans what they wanted. Because Trump is merely a reflection of the sickness in the GOP, the problem won’t go away when he does.

. . . .

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

Read the full excerpt from “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party” by Dana Milbank at the link.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, racially charged lies, myths, knowingly false narratives, and bogus attempts to tie migrants to all the ills of society are a key part of the GOP’s toxic narrative! The continuing campaign of hate and misinformation began with immigrants — but as this article suggests, it won’t end until either the GOP is thrown out of office at all levels or our nation’s constitutional structure and democratic republic are in tatters!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-09-22

Related posts:

  1. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  2. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  3. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?
  4. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻: Victims Of Trump, Miller, Sessions Child Abuse May Suffer Lifelong Damage Similar To That Of Holocaust Survivors! — “My mom and I have learned along the way that nothing seems to make it go away. Not her prayers. Not my ‘American Dream’ success. Not any logical explanation of how governments work or don’t work. My mother’s touch will always feel foreign to me.” — PLUS: BREAKING UPDATE: Just Released House Report Documents Regime’s Massive Human Rights Criminal Conspiracy Against CHILDREN!

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️ TITLE 42 CAUSES DEATH @ THE BORDER: Rachel Monroe @ The New Yorker Sums Up The Jim Crow Cruelty, Stupidity, & Futility Of Title 42 In One Paragraph! — Title 42 “has increased business for smuggling cartels and spurred people to cross in more dangerous places.”

RACHEL MONROE
Rachel Monroe
Contributing Writer
The New Yorker
PHOTO: Twitter

https://apple.news/AX5E8qIWlQYOauANHEV2g3w

. . . .

Between 2015 and 2020, about fifty bodies were recovered each year in Brooks County, according to an S.T.H.R.C. report. Then came Title 42, a policy enacted by the Trump Administration at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that closed ports of entry and blocked most avenues for asylum claims, ostensibly for public-health reasons. The policy, which is still in place in a modified form, has increased business for smuggling cartels and spurred people to cross in more dangerous places. “Before Title 42, the calls we got used to be, like, eighty-per-cent apprehended, twenty-per-cent missing,” Canales said. “Now it’s flipped—it’s more like twenty-per-cent apprehended, eighty-per-cent missing.” So far this year, there have been nearly seventy recoveries of remains in Brooks County, putting 2022 on track to be the deadliest year on record.

. . . .

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

Read Rachel’s entire report, directly from the border, at the link.

So, before the Trump Administration’s bogus, racist “invocation” of Title 42, 80% of migrants came to the border or were easily apprehended close thereto — most probably because they turned themselves in to seek asylum through the legal system. And, lets not forget, this was with an already badly broken, fundamentally unfair, asylum legal adjudication system intentionally biased and “loaded” against legitimate refugees seeking protection!

Smart, honest public policy would have improved asylum adjudication at USCIS and at EOIR to quickly recognize and grant, with the assistance of NGOs and legal assistance groups, the many cases of legitimate refugees so that they could take their rightful, legal places in our society.

Additionally, by taking refugees seeking legal determinations “out of the equation,” enforcement against those seeking to evade legal processing — certainly a much, much smaller “universe” than is “out there now” — would have been enhanced. Business would have declined for smugglers, as those seeking protection would have been motivated to use a humane, fair, functioning legal system rather than being forced into “do it yourself” refuge!

You don’t have a genius to figure this out — just not be motivated solely by racism like Stephen Miller and his Trump regime cronies! Better qualified — non-Jim Crow righty — Federal Judges would also produce more humane, honest, and rational results.

Additionally, by running a legitimate asylum system, and complementing it with an honest, robust, legal refugee system for Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, we would finally have sound data on how many of those seeking to enter at the Southern Border are entitled to immigrate as legal refugees and how many are non-refugees. That’s something on which we now have no reliable information  — just myths and anecdotes, many provided by racist restrictionists and nativists with neither expertise in asylum law nor any real interest in the rule of law at the border.

As a result of Title 42, and the unqualified “Jim Crow” Federal Judges, GOP nativist AGs, and their apologists (including some in the media who repeat or republish, without critical examination, GOP racist lies about the border), we now have a deadlier than ever border; the legal immigration system at the border has been functionally abolished and replaced with an underground, extralegal system; the U.S. Government has ceded control of border migration policy to cartels and smugglers; and the job of the Border Patrol — forced to spend time apprehending legal refugees who seek only the protection to which they are legally entitled — has become impossible.

That’s what happens when we let GOP nativist pols, overt racists, and bad, right wing Federal Judges take over the immigration policies that were actually enacted by Congress — a key part of which are legitimate refugee and asylum systems and a fair, functioning, expert Immigration Court. Right now, we have NONE of the foregoing. And, innocent migrants at the border are too often paying the price — with their lives!

Border Death
This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

“Enforcing the law” does NOT mean unfairly, unwisely, and illegally abrogating the legal asylum system and fair adjudications in Immigration Court at the border. It means fixing the legal asylum system including USCIS Asylum Offices. Perhaps most of all, it means reforming and replacing where necessary the broken, dysfunctional, leaderless, and non-expert Immigration Courts and a BIA that continues to misinterpret asylum and protection laws on a daily basis. We need a BIA of real judges with the expertise and guts to establish fair, humane, correct, positive precedents and to rein in or remove from asylum cases those Immigration Judges who are “programmed to reject, not protect!”

I, along with many others, watched the Brittney Griner travesty unfold. I saw the irony. President Biden was rightfully blasting the outrageous “kangaroo court” show trial that passes for justice in Russia. But, at the same time, he, Harris, and Garland are basically running a farcical “Russian style” dysfunctional immigrant “justice” system at EOIR and calling it a “court!”

Kangaroos
Perhaps, in addition to blasting the Griner farce, President Biden, VP Harris, and AG Garland need to take a closer look at the “Russian-style” justice being inflicted on migrants in their wholly-owned Immigration “Courts”  — which particularly target women, children, and migrants of color seeking justice under US laws. Indeed, many are still being arbitrarily returned without ANY process at all! Others get “off the wall” denials of their valid claims. Its this REALLY any way for a self-proclaimed “nation of laws” to operate?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever

PWS

08-05-22

Related posts:

  1. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  4. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!

MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS: “NEW Reuters project on the rising numbers of deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border” — Death Is Just “Collateral Damage” From Bad Border & Immigration Policies! — As The Desert Gets Hotter, Expect The Human Toll To Rise! ☠️⚰️

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters
Border Death
This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

 

 

Hi there again,

 

I also wanted to share a multi media project we published yesterday about the rising number of deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-border-deaths/

 

Through our reporting, we exclusively learned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection quietly changed last year how they count deaths on the border to only include deaths in custody, during arrests or when agents were nearby and there were 151 such “CBP-related” deaths in the 2021 fiscal year.

 

We are still reporting on this and other issues of course, so please keep in touch with tips and story ideas!

 

All the best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

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

Thanks, Mica. “Tune in” to the full “multimedia report” referenced by Mica at the above link to Reuters.

No amount of statistical hocus-pocus or nativist BS can hide the stain of these deadly, yet ultimately ineffective, border enforcement policies. It’s important that the names and actions of the politicos, bureaucrats, and bad judges who promote and encourage deadly violations of human rights, and their media apologists, be preserved and documented for history!

As we can see, there are, and will continue to be, concerted efforts to “cover up,” deny, and misrepresent the deadly effects of bad border policies! “Dehumanization of the other,” actively promoted by Trumpists and other White Nationalist GOP pols and their hand picked Federal Judges is a crucial first step!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-27-22

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  4. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸

📦OUTSIDE THE BOX: THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SHOULD USE REFUGEE ADMISSIONS + NON-GOV SPONSORSHIPS TO START BREAKING THE LOGJAM @ OUR SOUTHERN BORDER — & THE RESULTING BOON TO SMUGGLERS & HUMAN TRAFFICKERS — CAUSED BY SCOFFLAW RIGHTY FEDERAL JUDGES & CORRUPT GOP NATIVIST AGs!

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/18/refugee-sponsored-ukraine/

Americans should be able to sponsor refugees who can stay permanently

The U.S. does too little for too few, but Canada has a program worth adopting and improving

Perspective by l

July 18, 2022 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

The war in Ukraine has created one of the biggest refugee crises since World War II, with about 7 million people fleeing the country. While some have since returned, and some have settled elsewhere in Europe, there are still many in need of a permanent haven. Unfortunately, the American refugee system is proving to be of comparatively little help.

Even before President Donald Trump, the refugee resettlement process was slow and cumbersome, but Trump made things much worse by slashing the annual refugee quotas to a low of 18,000 for fiscal 2020 and 15,000 for fiscal 2021, before Biden increased it, which in turn led many resettlement organizations to shut down or scale back. President Biden raised the 2021 cap to 62,500 in May of that year — and set a cap of 125,000 for 2022 — but has not been able to restore the resettlement infrastructure that Trump undercut. As a result, the higher quotas remain largely unfilled, with a record-low 11,411 refugees admitted in 2021, even though many more would love to come. Even in the current fiscal year, the administration expects to fall far short of its target, Axios reports.

The Biden administration has tried to ease the logjam — at least for Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression — by creating the Uniting for Ukraine program, under which private citizens can sponsor Ukrainian refugees. Ukrainians wishing to enter must first get a U.S.-citizen sponsor, who has to prove that they can financially support the new arrival for two years; they must also pass certain health and security checks. The Ukrainians can seek permission to work but may stay for only two years. U.S. sponsors have filed applications on behalf of some 60,000 Ukrainians under this policy. The administration has pledged to help at least 100,000 Ukrainians relocate overall.

The war in Ukraine is on track to be among modern history’s bloodiest

The program is a decent start, but it could be improved by adapting a similar, better-run Canadian program.

Since 1979 — inspired by the massive numbers of people displaced by the Vietnam War and its aftermath — Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees program has allowed ordinary people and community groups to support refugees financially and otherwise for 12 months (or until the refugee is self-sufficient, whichever comes first). Sponsors can include private citizens working together (a “Group of Five”) or a group that holds a sponsorship agreement with the Canadian government, such as a religious institution or cultural organization. In an important contrast with the U.S. program, the refugees can stay permanently after the sponsorship period, and the program is not limited to people from specific nations. The combination of monetary assistance with more personal support, such as helping refugees find language classes or sign their children up for schools, gives the refugees a chance to hit the ground running. The recipients of private aid must be a refugee as defined by the United Nations (or according to a few other criteria). In 2022, Canada’s target number for privately sponsored refugees is 31,255, while the goal for government-sponsored refugees is 19,790. Relative to Canada’s population size — just over a tenth that of the United States — these figures are several times higher per capita than Biden’s unmet quota of 125,000.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link. 

Creative “out of the box” thinking, innovation, practical solutions, expertise, bold moves, and moral courage have been largely lacking in the Biden Administration’s approach to refugees and asylees.

While the authors seem largely focused on the plight of Ukrainian refugees, there is no reason why their proposal couldn’t be used for many refugees of color from Haiti, Latin America, and elsewhere at the Southern border.

Additionally, there are no known legal avenues for racist GOP AGs and GOP scofflaw Federal Judges to successfully challenge refugee admissions. Doesn’t mean they won’t try.  But,  the DOJ should be able to fend off the effort.

Undoubtedly, out of control righty judges have helped GOP states with ugly White Nationalist xenophobic agendas to improperly seize control of  immigration policy from Congress and the Executive. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-biden-republican-states-lawsuits/. Their target — individuals of color and women — is clear.

The result — an ungodly mess that empowers cartels and smugglers while putting “life or death” decisions in the hands of lower level bureaucrats  who can act arbitrarily and without effective guidance — is totally unacceptable and a mockery of the rule of law. The Administration must use every tool at its disposal to resist this dangerous right-wing judicial overreach that undermines democracy.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-24-22

Related posts:

  1. 🤯PROGRAMMED TO FAIL:  LACK OF LEADERSHIP, EXPERTISE, COURAGE, COMMITMENT TO RULE OF LAW, RACIAL AWARENESS, & AN ATTORNEY GENERAL “ON VACATION” PLAGUES BIDEN’S BUNGLED BORDER POLICY! — Is Appeasing GOP White Nationalists With Racist Policies While Scorning The Rule of Law & Dissing Progressive Supporters REALLY A Great “Strategy” For Biden & Harris?  🤮 — NY Times Reports
  2. WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!
  3. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”
  4. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 07-11-22 —  Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Glimpses Of Some Failing Righty Federal Judges & An Administration That Lacks A Bold Plan For Improving Immigration, Human Rights, & Racial Justice, Particularly @ EOIR!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

See More from Elizabeth Gibson

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

PRACTICE UPDATES

 

Federal Office Mask Requirements Fluctuate Day-to-Day

USCIS: Where community levels are high, all federal employees and contractors—as well as visitors two years old or older—must wear a mask inside USCIS offices and physically distance regardless of vaccination status. Chicago is no longer listed as High. NYC is now listed as High. Check CDC Level for Your Region.

 

DHS Announces Extension of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela

DHS: The 18-month extension of TPS for Venezuela will be effective from September 10, 2022, through March 10, 2024. Only beneficiaries under Venezuela’s existing designation, and who were already residing in the United States as of March 8, 2021, are eligible to re-register for TPS under this extension.

 

NEWS

 

Abbott tests feds by urging Texas troopers to return migrants to border

WaPo: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state National Guard soldiers and law enforcement officers Thursday to apprehend and return migrants suspected of crossing illegally back to the U.S.-Mexico border, testing how far his state can go in trying to enforce immigration law — a federal responsibility.

 

Children separated from relatives at the border could be reunited under new Biden program

LATimes: The new effort, called the Trusted Adult Relative Program, is being tested at a Border Patrol station in Texas, according to three sources who were not authorized to speak publicly. A Department of Homeland Security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a few dozen children have been reunified with family members since the program began in May. Agency officials said the program utilizes existing procedures to unify families in an efficient way.

 

Detention Transfers Separate Immigrants from Legal Representation

Documented: ICE is moving New Jersey immigrants like Hercules Aleman – who face charges in criminal or family court – to out-of-state immigration detention facilities. But the agency is usually not notifying the group of immigration legal providers funded by the state to represent these detained immigrants.

 

Biden administration asks Supreme Court to stay court order blocking it from setting immigration enforcement priorities

CNN: The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to stay a court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from implementing immigration enforcement priorities — potentially setting up Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first vote since joining the court.

 

Patrol agents on horseback did not whip migrants, but used force and inappropriate language, investigators say

Politico: The nine-month investigation, which culminated in a 511-page report by the department, found no evidence that agents used horse reins to strike people during an “unprecedented surge in migration” of about 15,000 Haitians near the international bridge. However, agents acted in unprofessional and dangerous ways, including an instance in which an agent “maneuvered his horse unsafely near a child,” investigators wrote.

 

ICE Currently Holds 23,156 Immigrants in Detention, Alternatives to Detention Growth Slows

TRAC: According to the latest data released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency held 23,156 immigrants in detention on July 5, 2022. Of these, 17,116 were arrested by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) while 6,040 were arrested by ICE agents. Detention numbers have increased slightly from about 20,000 in early 2022 to now hovering around 24,000, but have not otherwise seen significant growth that would lead to the large numbers of immigrants that were detained prior to the pandemic when the detained population topped out at more than 60,000.

 

Criminal Immigration Referrals Up from the Border Patrol

TRAC: The number of criminal referrals sent by the Border Patrol and other Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have recently begun to rise. Detailed case-by-case government records obtained by TRAC after successful litigation show that during April 2022, CBP referred 2,015 individuals for criminal prosecution to federal prosecutors. This is the first time referrals topped the 2,000 mark since the pandemic began slightly more than two years ago. Levels in April 2022 were up 31 percent from one year earlier when in April 2021 there were a total of 1,537 criminal referrals from CBP.

 

He Had a Dark Secret. It Changed His Best Friend’s Life.

NYT: Extensive details of their years together were also left behind in grainy snapshots, police reports, immigration forms, nonprofit records, court transcripts and old emails. See also The Story of 2 Homeless Men and the Meaning of Friendship.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

5th Circ. Won’t Reinstate Biden’s Bid To Narrow ICE Ops

Law360: The Fifth Circuit refused to reinstate the Biden administration’s attempt to narrow the number of immigrants prioritized for removal, splitting sharply from the Sixth Circuit to find that the effort likely violated federal immigration law.

 

Unpub. CA2 CAT Remand (El Salvador)

LexisNexis: [T]he agency failed to consider and explain the impact of evidence that the Salvadoran government’s efforts in the “war on the gangs” had not been successful, such that gang members operate with impunity and security forces commit extrajudicial killings of suspected gang members, both of which pose threats to Giron.

 

CA9, En Banc: Bastide-Hernandez II (Immigration Court Subject Matter Jurisdiction)

LexisNexis: Consistent with our own precedent and that of every other circuit to consider this issue, we hold that the failure of an NTA to include time and date information does not deprive the immigration court of subject matter jurisdiction, and thus Bastide-Hernandez’s removal was not “void ab initio,” as the district court determined.

 

9th Circ. Says Man’s Residency Bid Nixed By Retroactive Law

Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Friday declined to review a Mexican man’s bid to vacate a deportation order, saying he should have applied for a green card before a law preventing inadmissible individuals from becoming lawful permanent residents took effect.

 

CA9 on Credibility: Barseghyan v. Garland

LexisNexis: The BIA affirmed based upon the IJ’s adverse credibility determination. We grant Barseghyan’s petition for review because three out of four inconsistencies relied upon by the BIA are not supported by the record.

 

Unpub. BIA AgFel/COV Victory: TX Penal Code

LexisNexis: [W]e find that the respondent’s conviction for injury to a child in violation of Texas Penal Code § 22.04(a)(3), does not require “physical force” as defined in 18 U.S.C. § l6(a), and interpreted in Johnson and Stokeling. Thus, the respondent has not been convicted of a crime of violence aggravated felony and is not barred from establishing her eligibility for cancellation of removal.

 

ICE Agrees To Stop Use Of Contractors In California Arrests

Law360: Private contractors will no longer be used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make immigration arrests at California jails and prisons, as part of a settlement ICE reached with a detainee represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

 

ICE Agent Charged In Scheme To Harass China’s Critics

Law360: A 15-year U.S. Department of Homeland Security veteran and an agent who retired from the agency gave secret information to Chinese spies engaged in a harassment and repression campaign against U.S.-based critics of the Chinese government, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.

 

USCIS 30-Day Notice of Comment Period for Form I-765

AILA: USCIS notice of additional period for comment on revision of Form I-765. Comments will be accepted until 8/8/22.

 

CIS Ombudsman Provides Tips for Form I-130 to Avoid Delays and Extra Fees

AILA: The CIS Ombudsman’s Office provides a reminder that USCIS updated the special instructions on its Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative page to help filers ensure that USCIS sends their form to the correct location after it is approved.

 

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Federal Courts at all levels continue to lose credibility because of their adherence to a biased far-right agenda that is bad for American democracy. 

Let’s see, the BIA manufactures inconsistencies to reach a bogus “adverse credibility” ruling in an asylum case (9th Cir.). They also ignore clear evidence of the complicity/total ineptitude of the Salvadoran Government in a CAT case (2d Cir.).

Folks, these aren’t contract cases, property disputes, commercial squabbles, or minor misdemeanors. They are life or death matters — persecution and/or torture can result in extreme pain, suffering, permanent damage, and death. Serious matters require serious judging by qualified exert judges!

Meanwhile, a righty panel of poorly qualified 5th Circuit  judges drives over established law on Executive prosecutorial discretion to uphold Trump toady Judge Drew Tipton’s clearly wrong-headed attempt to wrest control of ICE enforcement away from the Biden Administration. This gross judicial malpractice is nothing short of a national disgrace that impugns the integrity of the entire Article III Judiciary.

There are still far too many examples of how Garland is contributing to the problem by failing to root out the deadwood (and worse) at EOIR. He should be bringing in new judicial talent committed to due process, scholarship, and best practices. 

A “Better EOIR” would not only begin fixing many of the legal and practical problems plaguing our immigration, human rights, and racial justice systems in America, but also could “model” a better American judiciary for the future. It would be a training ground for future, better qualified, Article III judicial appointments: Folks who actually understand and respect delivering justice at the “retail level” and are committed to serving humanity, not kowtowing to party bosses or wooden, perverse, retrograde ideologies.

It is possible for good judges to solve problems rather than creating them or making them infinitely worse. But, you sure wouldn’t say that is happening with today’s out of touch, ivory tower, and poorly performing Federal Judiciary. A better EOIR could keep cases out of the Circuits, thereby eliminating the opportunity for right-wing ideologues to screw up immigration and human rights laws in their White nationalist restrictionist crusade!

This is a judiciary now dominated by far too many right wing judges who got their jobs by demonstrating a commitment to far righty ideology and furthering the GOP’s political agenda rather than by distinguished legal careers that exemplified courage and improving humanity by insuring fair and reasonable applications and interpretations of the law.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-13-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC: Stephen Miller Was Even More Of A Disreputable Scofflaw! — 9th Halts BIA’s “Rote Formula” For Improperly Denying CAT W/O Meaningful Analysis — EOIR In Louisiana Continues To Be “Death Valley” ☠️⚰️  For Asylum Seekers:  “‘I feel that the big problem we face today is that there is a real dehumanization of the entire process,’ said Mich Gonzalez, Associate Director of Advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  4. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮

🇺🇸⚖️INDEPENDENCE = FREEDOM FROM THE FOUNDING FATHERS & THE GROTESQUE RIGHT WING “ORIGINALIST” BS 💩 THAT THREATENS OUR NATION’S FUTURE! — Paul Waldman @ WashPost

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/04/july-4-declare-independence-founding-fathers/

. . . .

We saw it in the recent Supreme Court decisions that supercharged the legal philosophy of “originalism” on abortion and guns. Reproductive rights, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., are neither found in the explicit words of the Constitution nor “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” so they don’t exist as rights. As for states that want to regulate guns, said Justice Clarence Thomas, only regulations that have “a distinctly similar historical regulation” from the 18th century will be allowed. The America of 1789 becomes a prison the conservative justices can lock us all in whenever it suits them.

Originalism was a scam from the start, a foolproof methodology for conservatives to arrive at whatever judicial result matches their policy preferences: Cherry-pick a few quotes from the Federalist Papers, cite an obscure 1740 ordinance from the Virginia colony one of your clerks dug up, then claim that scripture leads us inexorably to only one outcome.

By happy coincidence, that outcome is always the one Republicans seek. Anyone who disagrees, or who shows how absurd the right’s historical analysis is even on its own terms, simply isn’t respecting the divine will of the framers.

. . . .

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

The “immigration/human rights/racial justice” community was one of the first to see the unconscionable human carnage and grotesque legal perversions produced by right-wing restrictionist/nativist politicos and judges. 

The “founding fathers” were, of course, folks who, for all their vision and achievements, recognized slavery was wrong but continued to exploit a slave society, enshrined slavery in our original Constitution, and even went so far as to define slaves as 3/5 of a person to insure their White owners could exercise disproportionate and unjustified political power while giving those whose labor and humanity they stole no political or legal rights whatsoever. 

In other words, these were complex, brilliant, yet deeply flawed and morally challenged individuals, who institutionalized and enshrined “dehumanization” or “de-personification” of “the other” because it was expedient and served their purposes. There was a limit to their vision, creativity, wisdom, and courage. It mostly extended only so far as “free, White men who owned property (including, of course, human property).”

The rest of society has been slow on the uptake and even slower on taking effective concerted action against the perils of far-right “originalism” and other bogus right-wing dogmas which have somehow obtained “fake legitimacy” and now threaten our nation and our world.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-05-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  2. ⚖️🗽SOCIAL JUSTICE SUNDAY @ COURTSIDE WITH PROF/REV CRAIG MOUSIN OF DEPAUL LAW — 1) Restore The Refugee Act Of 1980 To Functionality; 2) Let Young People Read — Enforce the 1st Amendment Against Far-Right Book Burners!🔥📚👩‍🚒
  3. PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”
  4. JULY 4, 2020: Colbert I. King @ WashPost With a “Declaration of  Independence” For Our Time! 🗽👍🏼⚖️💥 — DUMP TRUMP! ☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻

🇺🇸🗽⚖️DAN RATHER: FIGHT THE ANTI-DEMOCRACY, ANTI-INDIVIDUAL-RIGHTS FAR RIGHT MINORITY 🏴‍☠️  — BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE:  “To all who feel bereft of hope, I offer the lessons of social movements of the past. Perseverance is power. Organizing inspires optimism. Resilience breeds results.”

 

Dan Rather
Dan Rather
American Journalist
PHOTO: Creative Courtside

FROM “STEADY” FOR July 1, 2022:

A HARD RIGHT TURN

By Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner

As the United States Supreme Court wrapped up its spring term today, its marbled halls risked representing the setup to an ironic joke — albeit one not funny but rather cruel, dangerous, and foreboding.

The building is supposed to symbolize stability, fairness, and temperance. Instead, it has become headquarters for a majority group of highly partisan, reactionary players who make clear that they are uninhibited by history, precedent, or the will of the majority of the American people.

Their black robes are meant to convey modesty, humility, and wisdom. Yet this collection of politicians demonstrates the direct opposite.

This Supreme Court term will be remembered as the moment a cynical and anti-democratic movement, decades in the making, reached its zenith, empowered by bad faith and opportunism. Now the cabal lords its power over a broken political system from a perch of increased influence and lack of accountability.

This is power politics by unelected actors, appointed largely by men who lost the popular vote for president. Its path was paved by Mitch McConnell’s Machiavellian exploitation of the deaths of two justices. He was a master of shamelessness with a single purpose — to accomplish via judicial appointment what he could never have achieved through democratic means.

The damage he and his hard-right radicals have wrought touches all aspects of society, from abortion rights to commonsense gun control to the environment to what I believe is an overlooked evisceration of the separation of church and state. What we have are the ruins of what many took for granted as our constitutional rights. And nothing suggests these justices are anywhere near sated.

We have now firmly left behind the realm of the theoretical. This is real, and it will get only more so. For years there were those who warned that Roe wasn’t safe, and neither was anything else, that these justices were licking their chops to devour a modern America and spit out a distorted version of the past. Too many of these prophets were dismissed as hysterical, their fears histrionic and overblown. Surely, they were lectured, precedent matters. Certainly there would have to be some legal basis to rewrite America’s social contract and decades of settled rights.

Wrong.

All of you who spoke up, who tried to get others to pay attention, you deserve an apology.

There can be no hiding from it now. All of this is out in the open. The justices aren’t even trying to obscure what they are doing and where they intend to go. But in their transparent power plays, there are still faint glimmers of hope.

I hear from people who in the past had rarely talked about the court. Now, they are suddenly enraged. Many are focused on how, just today, the justices accepted a case for next year that could allow state legislatures to take a torch to fair elections. How many people in the past got so riled up about an upcoming court docket?

The Supreme Court relies on its reputation, and these days, its reputation for humility, fairness, and wisdom is in tatters. Its rulings increasingly seem to be far outside where most Americans are. Wait until they tackle contraception and the privacy of one’s bedroom.

To all who feel bereft of hope, I offer the lessons of social movements of the past. Perseverance is power. Organizing inspires optimism. Resilience breeds results.

In order to solve a problem, you first have to see it, name it, contend with its truth. That is the stage many are in now. But many others have already been there for a long time. This is a movement that already has leadership. Now it has momentum born from a desire to ensure that America goes forward, toward progress, and true to the Constitution and the will of its people.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

pastedGraphic.png

Like

pastedGraphic_1.png

Comment

pastedGraphic_2.png

Share

You’re on the free list for Steady. For those who are able, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to support our efforts.

Subscribe now

© 2022 Dan Rather
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Unsubscribe

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

The righty Supremes: “an ironic joke — albeit one not funny but rather cruel, dangerous, and foreboding.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Take Back Our America From The Far Right Minority That Seeks To Suppress Human Rights & Individual Rights!

PWS

07-01-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️HON. SHIRA SCHEINDLIN👩🏻‍⚖️ @ THE GUARDIAN: Barrett Nomination Part & Parcel Of GOP Destruction Of American Democracy! 🏴‍☠️ – The Continued Erosion Of The Supremes & The Federal Judiciary Is Destroying Our Nation!👎
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻 “PERP NATION” — DHS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” IS A DEATH TRAP FOR MIGRANTS SEEKING JUSTICE — So Why Haven’t Congress & The Federal Courts Required DHS To Comply With The Constitution? — Because We Have The Wrong Folks In Congress & The Federal Courts!
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻THE TRUMP REGIME & A CORRUPT SOLICITOR GENERAL HAVE CONDUCTED A WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST AMERICAN LAWYERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY — John Roberts & His GOP Buddies On The Supremes Have Aided, Abetted, & Encouraged It! — Constant Improper & Ethically Questionable Interference With Thoughtful, Legally Correct Lower Court Rulings Holding The Regime Accountable Have Demoralized The Profession’s Best & Bravest! — The Answer Is Better Judges For A Better America!
  4. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻: Victims Of Trump, Miller, Sessions Child Abuse May Suffer Lifelong Damage Similar To That Of Holocaust Survivors! — “My mom and I have learned along the way that nothing seems to make it go away. Not her prayers. Not my ‘American Dream’ success. Not any logical explanation of how governments work or don’t work. My mother’s touch will always feel foreign to me.” — PLUS: BREAKING UPDATE: Just Released House Report Documents Regime’s Massive Human Rights Criminal Conspiracy Against CHILDREN!

WENDY YOUNG @ KIND ON SAN ANTONIO TRAGEDY

Wendy Young
Wendy Young
President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)

 

pastedGraphic.png

 

 

 

Dear Paul –

 

The entire team at Kids In Need of Defense is devastated by the news that at least 46 people were found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas and more than a dozen others in the truck, including children, were taken to local hospitals for treatment. While we wait for more details to emerge, we wanted to share the following statement from our President, Wendy Young.

 

“As rising violence, natural disasters, and other threats force migrants to make impossible choices in their quest to find safety, our nation’s response cannot be to place families and children in further harm by indefinitely closing our borders to people seeking protection and ignoring the dangers they face in their home countries. This most recent tragedy and the disturbing rise in migrant deaths globally underscore the need to create safer pathways to protection for refugees. The Biden Administration should see this heartbreaking tragedy for what it is, a clarion call to abandon deeply flawed and dangerous immigration policies. It must reinstate humane and orderly processing, including reopening official ports of entry, hiring child welfare experts to care for and screen children, and provide fair adjudication of protection claims. It is time for the United States to regain its footing as a leader in the protection of migrant families and children.”

 

– The KIND Team

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

The key part of Wendy’s statement: “including reopening official ports of entry, hiring child welfare experts to care for and screen children, and provide fair adjudication of protection claims.” 

Denial rates for recent arrivals who manage to get hearings (see, e.g., Garland’s bogus “dedicated dockets,” — actually “dedicated to denial” and nothing else), many of them children and unrepresented, hover around 100%. They are “guided” by a “largely holdover,” anti-asylum BIA that lacks true asylum expertise and issues no positive precedents instructing judges on how to consistently and legally grant asylum. Consequently, there is no “fair adjudication” of asylum claims. That feeds the toxic nativist myth that nobody at the Southern Border is a “legitimate” asylum seeker. 

Unless and until Garland tosses the unqualified jurists at EOIR and replaces them with experts committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and correct, generous, practical precedents and proper applications of asylum law, the system will remain in failure. It’s a monumental mistake by the Biden Administration not to fix that which they absolutely control — starting with the Immigration Courts at EOIR.  

Refugees will continue to die at the hands of smugglers who were given control of our immigration system by the Trump Administration and remain empowered by Garland’s & Mayorkas’s  poor performance combined with biased, White Nationalist, Federal Judges appointed by Trump at all levels of our failing justice system!  

Today’s WashPost editorial described how far-right nativists have basically turned our immigration system over to smugglers:

The absence of any workable legal system that would admit migrants systematically, in numbers that would meet the U.S. labor market’s demand, is the original sin of the chaos at the border. That is Congress’s bipartisan failure, a symptom of systemic paralysis for many years. More recently, a public health rule has had the effect of incentivizing unauthorized migrants to make multiple attempts to cross the border. The rule, imposed by the Trump administration, retained for more than a year by the Biden administration, and now frozen in place by Republican judges, allows border authorities to swiftly expel migrants, but with no asylum hearings or criminal consequences for repeated attempts to cross the border. That has been a boon to migrant smuggling networks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/san-antonio-migrants-deaths-solutions/

I take issue with the term “bipartisan failure” in the legislative context. It’s true that the Dems inexplicably squandered a golden chance to fix many immigration problems when they had 60 votes in the Senate in Obama’s first two years. But, before and after that time, the failure to achieve realistic, humane, robust legal immigration reform legislation has been on the nativist right of the GOP that now dominates the party. Pretending otherwise is useless and dishonest.

Democrats have made numerous reasonable legislative proposals to bring Dreamers and other long-term productive residents of America out of the underground and into the legal mainstream of our society. Additionally, Veteran Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) has introduced the Refugee Protection Act. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/11/24/professor-karen-musalo-la-times-we-can-restore-legality-humanity-to-u-s-asylum-law-thats-why-the-refugee-protection-act-deserves-everyones-support/ Also, Chairman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has sponsored the “Real Courts Rule of Law Act of 2022.” https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/05/16/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fimmigration-courts-article-i-bill-passes-out-of-house-judiciary-on-party-line-vote/.

All of these proposals would have made long-overdue, common sense reforms to eliminate hopeless backlogs, benefit our economy, strengthen our legal system, and facilitate better allocation of Government resources. Yet, there has been scant GOP interest in improving the system. The GOP appears to believe that promoting a dysfunctional immigration system, denying human rights, and guaranteeing a large “extralegal population” available as scapegoats and exploitable labor best serves their parochial political interests.

And, speaking of useless and dishonest, here’s Leon Krausze, WashPost Global Opinions Contributor, on how the disingenuous performance of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has helped fuel both resurgent Mexican migration and unnecessary deaths at or near the border. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/san-antonio-migrant-deaths-trailer-mexico-amlo/.

 The “good guys” — those committed to due process, fundamental fairness, individual rights, equal justice, scholarship, and human dignity — need to fight back at every level of our political and judicial systems — while they still exist! Because if the GOP has its way, that won’t be for long!🏴‍☠️

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-30-22

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”

COURTSIDE HISTORY: WHO KNEW? — NDPA Maven Deb Sanders’s Late Father, Donald G. Sanders, Was A Watergate Hero!🦸🏻‍♂️

 

From NY Times, 09-29-1999:

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/29/us/donald-g-sanders-dies-at-69-brought-nixon-taping-to-light.html

  • Give this article

By William H. Honan

  • Sept. 29, 1999

Donald G. Sanders, a former Senate lawyer who uncovered the White House tapes that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, died on Sunday at a hospital in Columbia, Mo. He was 69.

Mr. Sanders, who lived in Columbia, died of cancer, said his wife, Dolores.

A former F.B.I. agent, Mr. Sanders was a Republican staff lawyer for the Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in when he brought to light ”the smoking gun” that eventually pointed to Nixon’s complicity in a cover-up of the break-in.

It was in a closed-door preliminary interrogation that Mr. Sanders’s curiosity was aroused by seemingly apprehensive answers from Alexander P. Butterfield, Nixon’s former appointments secretary.

Mr. Sanders dug deeper and asked if it were possible that some sort of recording system had been used in the White House.

Mr. Butterfield answered, ”I wish you hadn’t asked that question, but, yes, there is.”

Mr. Sanders then hurried to tell Fred D. Thompson, the lead minority counsel who is now a Republican senator from Tennessee.

”We both knew then it was important,” Mr. Sanders recalled in a 1997 interview.

Then, in nationally televised hearings, Mr. Thompson asked Mr. Butterfield about the recording system.

”It was actually Don who discovered the existence of the White House taping system, but he was too unassuming to ever mention it,” Mr. Thompson said on Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Mr. Sanders had returned to his home state in the 1980’s after more than two decades of Federal Government service as a lawyer for Congressional committees, an F.B.I. agent and an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Gerald R. Ford.

Editors’ Picks

How Bad Are the Germs in Public Restrooms, Really?

John Grisham Is Still Battling His Southern Demons

You’re Still on Mute

Continue reading the main story

PAID POST: AURA

Cybercrime Is Surging. How Easily Could You Be Hacked?

Donald Gilbert Sanders was born on April 26, 1930, in St. Louis. He graduated from the law school of the University of Missouri and then spent two years in the Marines. From 1956 to 1959, he was city attorney for Columbia.

From 1959 to 1969, Mr. Sanders worked for the F.B.I.

In 1969, he started working as a lawyer for Congressional committees.

After returning to Missouri, Mr. Sanders served as a commissioner in Boone County in 1989 and 1990, but he did not seek re-election. He had a private law practice in Columbia until his death.

In 1997, Mr. Sanders, while battling cancer, tried to start a national campaign to draft Senator Thompson for the 2000 Republican Presidential nomination, but Mr. Thompson declined to enter the race.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Sanders is survived by two sons, Michael, of Dallas, and Matthew, of Monrovia, Calif.; a daughter, Deborah Sanders, of Arlington, Va., and his mother, Ann Sanders of Columbia.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 29, 1999, Section A, Page 25 of the National edition with the headline: Donald G. Sanders Dies at 69; Brought Nixon Taping to Light. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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

Well, my friend Deb knew, of course!

What an important role! And, one that is antithetical to most of today’s GOP, with a few exceptions. It’s an interesting (discouraging) contrast with the total lack of integrity among most GOP politicos and “parallel universe” supporters whose corrupt willingness to face truth about Trump’s criminal conspiracy to overthrow our Constitution and our duly elected Government still threatens our American democracy!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-22

Related posts:

  1. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Will Judge Emmet Sullivan Become The Judge John Sirica of “Trumpgate?”  — “No Nincompoops!”
  2. 🏴‍☠️AMERICA THE CHILD ABUSER: Trump Regime ☠️ Uses Pandemic As Pretext To Violate Migrant Children’s Legal & Human Rights As Feckless Congress & Complicit Federal Courts Fail To Act! — Disintegration Of Nation’s Values & Humanity 🦹🏿‍♂️ Continues Unabated!
  3. 🏴‍☠️BILLY BARR ERADICATES AMERICAN JUSTICE👎– So Far, He’s On A Roll: Weaponized Immigration Courts, Protecting a Corrupt President by Undermining Prosecutors, Mischaracterizing The Mueller Report, “Stonewalling” Congress (The Dems, Anyway), Investigating “Enemies,” Misleading Representations to Courts, Treating the Supremes Like Trump’s Toadies, It’s All a “Walk In The Park” For Arguably The Worst & Most Dangerous ☠️ AG In Modern U.S. History! — “I’ve lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese,” Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. “Those guys were choir boys 😇 next to Barr.”
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-15-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — 06-06-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Racist GOP Policies, Biased Judges Can’t Stem Refugee Flow; Surprise (Not): Foreign Corruption Hinders Biden/Harris Plan For Improving Conditions in “Sending” Countries; ICE PD Program Can’t Solve Garland’s Failure To Make Necessary, Progressive, Common-Sense Reforms @ His Hopelessly Backlogged & Disturbingly Dysfunctional EOIR, Among “Headliners!”

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

 

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

 

NEWS

 

CBP Completes Expansion of Facial Recognition at All US Airports

CBP: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced today it has completed the expansion of biometric facial comparison technology at all international airports across the United States to further secure and streamline international travel. This innovation effort is a critical milestone for the biometric Entry/Exit program and complements biometric boarding, which is currently at select departure locations.

 

ICE Urged To Probe ‘Inadequate’ Detainee Mental Health Care

Law360: An advocacy group and a trio of formerly detained migrants asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights office on Thursday to investigate “system-wide abuses and deficiencies” in mental health care provided to those in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

 

Up to 15,000 may join largest ever migrant caravan to walk through Mexico to US

Guardian: The largest number of migrants in the caravan come from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – three countries whose authoritarian rulers Joe Biden has conspicuously refused to invite to the summit. But there are also Haitians, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and even citizens of India, Bangladesh, and several African countries.

 

Immigrants are suing the U.S. government over delays in citizenship process

NPR: We wanted to know more about what’s going on here, so we called Kate Melloy Goettel. She is the legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Council.

 

U.S. in talks with Spain, Canada about taking more refugees -sources

Reuters: The Biden administration is in talks with Spain and Canada about taking more Western Hemisphere refugees for resettlement, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, signaling possible commitments that could be announced at next week’s Summit of the Americas.

 

Analysis: Corruption in Central America frustrates U.S. plan to tackle migration ‘root causes’

Reuters: More than a year into U.S. President Joe Biden’s sweeping effort to tackle the “root causes” of migration with aid to Central America, projects likely worth millions of dollars have been canceled or put on hold due to corruption and governance concerns, U.S. officials and others tracking the issue said. See also Harris’ tough task addressing migration to the southern border not getting any easier one year later.

 

GOP lawsuit halts most migration from Mexico. Yet, desperate people continue to cross

NPR: People seeking asylum are still crossing and at least one shelter for them in Arizona is seeing record numbers. Seventy miles to the north of Nogales, the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in Tucson is taking in 375 people in a day, just a few days after the judge kept the closures in place at official southern ports of entry. See also How Asylum Seekers Cross the Border.

 

They Fled Danger for New York. When Will Their New Lives Start?

NYT: While countries like Germany and Canada have streamlined programs for asylum seekers and refugees — offering housing, food, work authorization and a monthly stipend to asylum seekers — the United States has strengthened enforcement at the border, while processing times for asylum applications have increased from weeks to months to years.

 

ICE Prosecution Revamp Unlikely To Clear Court Backlogs

Law360: Recent guidance instructing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to drop nonpriority cases has brought welcome relief to some migrants, but the new policy seems unlikely to put a significant dent in immigration court backlogs.

 

Consulates Don’t Trust DOL, DHS Visa Vetting, Cato Says

Law360: U.S. consulates deny a majority of employer-sponsored visas for individuals hoping to obtain green cards, pointing to a lack of trust by the U.S. Department of State in its counterparts at Homeland Security and Labor, according to libertarian think tank The Cato Institute.

 

Passage of Court Notification Bill

IDP: New York’s legislation follows the example of 15 other states that provide a remedy when notification is not given, which will help prevent unlawful deportation based on unfair and unknowing pleas.

 

These cell phones can’t make calls or access the internet. ICE is using them to track migrants

CNN: It’s not clear how many migrants have been loaned phones as part of the program. ICE hasn’t released that data in its regular public updates about the program, and the agency didn’t respond to CNN’s questions about it. But lawyers and advocates who work with migrants told CNN the government-issued phones — which can only be used with the SmartLINK app and can’t make calls or access the internet — are becoming increasingly common.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

CA5 on Unable/Unwilling to Protect

Justia: The Fifth Circuit denied Petitioner’s petition, citing the efforts of the Haitian government following the attacks against Petitioner. Based on the government’s response, Petitioner could not show that the Haitian government was unable or unwilling to protect him.

 

Unpub. CA5 Credibility Remand: Yahm v. Garland

LexisNexis: Because Yahm offered nontestimonial evidence of country conditions in Cameroon, the BIA erred by not considering it in the context of his CAT claim and instead treating Yahm’s lack of credibility as dispositive.

 

9th Circ. Upholds Class Cert. In ICE Forced Labor Suit

Law360: A Ninth Circuit panel on Friday upheld three class certifications in an action brought by immigrant detainees who said they were forced to work against their will and without adequate pay while in private U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-contracted detention facilities.

 

SPLC’s Right-To-Counsel Claim For Immigrants Is Tossed

Law360: A D.C. federal judge tossed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s claim that confinement conditions at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities impeded its clients’ access to attorneys, saying the issue arose from immigration removal proceedings the district court could not hear.

 

Demanding Civil Rights Investigation Into Inadequate Mental Health Care And Abusive Solitary Confinement Practices In ICE Detention

NIJC: The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and three people previously detained at different U.S. immigrant detention centers filed a federal civil rights complaint today demanding a system-wide investigation into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) failures to provide adequate mental health care for people in its custody and its abusive use of solitary confinement. Included with the complaint are declarations from three physicians with extensive experience working with individuals in ICE custody and documenting their conditions.

 

ACLU Says States Have Power Over Immigrant Detainee Pay

Law360: The federal government’s immigration powers don’t supersede a state’s power to enforce wage laws, the American Civil Liberties Union said when asking the Ninth Circuit to affirm that a private prison owes immigrant detainees $23.2 million in back pay.

 

J.O.P. v. DHS: and Call for Information

NIPNLG: J.O.P. class counsel encourages practitioners to reach out promptly if you represent a J.O.P. class member who: (1) is facing an upcoming asylum merits hearing in immigration court; (2) has a pending BIA appeal of an asylum merits denial in immigration court; or (3) has a pending petition for review of an EOIR asylum merits denial in a U.S. court of appeals. Please contact Wendy Wylegala (wwylegala@supportkind.org) and Michelle Mendez (michelle@nipnlg.org) if you have a client in one of these situations.

 

CBP Issues Guidance on Processing of Noncitizens Manifesting Fear of Expulsion Under Title 42

AILA: CBP issued a memo that clarifies previous guidance implementing the CDC Order to ensure that it is consistent with Huisha Huisha v. Mayorkas decision, which found that the government may expel family units but only to places where they are “not likely to be persecuted or tortured.” See also CBP Clarifies Guidance Regarding Expulsion of Family Units Under Title 42.

 

USCIS Updates Public Charge Resources Webpage

AILA: USCIS updated its public charge resources webpage. The updates clarify that relatively few noncitizens are both subject to the public charge ground of inadmissibility and eligible for public benefits under the 1999 Interim Field Guidance. An updated question-and-answer section is also available.

 

USCIS Issues Guidance on Parole Requests in Response to the Shooting in Uvalde, Texas

AILA: Per USCIS, those seeking parole into the United States to attend a funeral or provide emergency assistance to a family member affected by the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, can request urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit parole by filing Form I-131.

 

DHS Announces Registration Process for Temporary Protected Status for Cameroon

USCIS: The Department of Homeland Security posted for public inspection a Federal Register notice on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Cameroon.

 

RESOURCES

 

NIJC RESOURCES

 

GENERAL RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

NIJC EVENTS

 

GENERAL EVENTS

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

A key quote from the NPR report (Liz’s “Item 6” under “news”):

Shelter staff says what’s being left out of the bitter partisan immigration battles in Congress is the fact that so many people are fleeing dangerous situations right now, as violence and global instability has risen, especially in Latin America during the pandemic.

So, as more and more legitimate claims for protection arise abroad (completely contrary to nativist myths and also some of the Biden Administration’s blather), the U.S. continues to defy its own laws and international agreements, while using poor interpretations of law and “holdover” adjudicators to artificially “force down” asylum grants to dishonestly low levels. Meanwhile, refugee programs, which, if properly robust and competently administered, could alleviate both the need for journeys to the U.S. border and the danger that can involve, continue to languish — as if nobody in the Biden Administration has ever read the Refugee Act of 1980!  

At the same time, there are jobs in our economy that asylum seekers could fill that would help everyone. Talk about dumb policies driven by fear, hate, and resentment!

“Gimmicks,” mindless “deterrents,” and false “silver bullet solutions” don’t cut it! They just waste money, deprive our nation of credibility, destroy lives, and increase human suffering.

No surprise:  The Round Table, NAIJ, AILA, CGRS, HRF, HRW, ACLU, and many other experts have been “spot on” in their assessment of what it will take to restore order to the border, due process and fundamental fairness to the Immigration Courts (and also the failing Article III Federal Courts), and rational self-interest to immigration, human rights, and civil rights policies.

The GOP nativists and the Biden Administration — not so much. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-07-22 

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  3. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  4. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!

🏴‍☠️ATROCITY RULES! — SCOFFLAW GOP JUDGES ON 5TH CIR. RUN OVER LAW, CHEVRON, BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS, CONSTITUTION TO INFLICT GRATUITOUS ABUSE ON ALREADY ABUSED REFUGEE WOMEN OF COLOR!⚖️👎🏽 — Her Ex-Partner  in El Salvador “grabbed her by the hair, threw her on the sofa, and hit her.” But, Judge Leslie H. Southwick and his misogynist buddies had more abuse and dehumanization in store for her when she asked for legal protection!

Woman Tortured
“Tough noogies, ladies, suck it up and accept your fate,” say Federal Judges Southwick, Jones, and Oldham of the 5th Cir!
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Trial By Ordeal
No “particular social group” here says 5th Circuit Judge Southwick and his buddies Jones and Oldham. Just a little “good old fashioned trial by ordeal.” 
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

 

Toxic Trio of “America’s Worst & Most Cowardly Judges” sticks it to Salvadoran refugee woman who survived domestic violence in country where femicide is rampant and uncontrolled by corrupt and inept government.

Lopez Perez v. Garland, 5th Cir., 06-02-22, published

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-60131-CV0.pdf

BEFORE:  Edith Jones (Reagan), Andrew Oldham (Trump), and Leslie H. Southwick (Bush II) Circuit Judges

OPINION: Judge Southwick

Lopez-Perez argues here that the IJ erred under Matter of A-R-C-G- by concluding that she had not established a nexus between her persecution and her social group. Further, she argues that the IJ incorrectly decided that the government of El Salvador was willing and able to protect her.2 These issues were identified in her Notice of Appeal and are preserved for our review here.

It is true that the IJ concluded that Lopez-Perez had not demonstrated the requisite nexus and further that she had not shown that the government was unable or unwilling to help her. Although the IJ’s analysis was cursory, we nonetheless conclude that his decision must be upheld because remand would be futile. Jaco, 24 F.4th at 406. The IJ intimated that Lopez-Perez’s proffered social groups — “Salvadoran women in domestic relationships who are unable to leave; or Salvadoran women who are viewed as property by virtue of their position in a domestic relationship” — were cognizable.

2 Lopez-Perez also argues for the first time that we should remand to the IJ for consideration in light of intervening decisions in Matter of A-B-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316 (Att’y Gen. 2018) and Grace v. Whitaker, 344 F. Supp. 3d 96 (D.D.C. 2018), aff’d in part, rev’d in part sub nom. Grace v. Barr, 965 F.3d 883 (D.C. Cir. 2020). We decline this invitation. In addition to the fact that this argument was not raised in her Notice of Appeal, Matter of A- B- has been overruled, see A-B- III, 28 I. &. N Dec. 307 (Att’y Gen. 2021), and this court specifically rejected Grace in Gonzales-Veliz, 938 F.3d at 233–34. See also Meza Benitez v. Garland, No. 19-60819, 2021 WL 4998678, at *4 (5th Cir. Oct. 27, 2021) (explaining this Circuit’s rejection of Grace).

7

Case: 20-60131 Document: 00516340524 Page: 8 Date Filed: 06/01/2022

No. 20-60131

We have disagreed, holding that circularly defined social groups are not cognizable. See id. at 405; accord Gonzales-Veliz, 938 F.3d at 226. Indeed, the social groups identified in Jaco are nearly identical to those claimed by Lopez- Perez: “Honduran women who are unable to leave their domestic relationships . . . and Honduran women viewed as property because of their position in a familial relationship.” Jaco, 24 F.4th at 399. Because the IJ is bound to follow the law of this circuit on remand, he would be forced to conclude that Lopez-Perez’s social groups were not cognizable, thus ending the analysis. See In re Ramos, 23 I. & N. Dec. 336, 341 (BIA 2002) (noting that the BIA is “unquestionably bound” to follow circuit court rulings).

We DENY the petition for review.

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

It’s worthy of note that neither party challenged the propriety of the “particular social group!” So, this panel actually went beyond the issues before them to “stick it to” this abused refugee woman by gratuitously rejecting a well-established formulation of a “particular group” that has been the basis for granting protection in literally thousands of cases going back over two decades. (I note that even before A-R-C-G-, in Arlington the DHS Counsel routinely accepted this formulation of a “PSG” based on the so-called “Martin Memo” from DHS.)

Perhaps, that’s because even this panel acknowledged that the IJ’s “nexus analysis,” the actual ground of denial was “cursory.” In other words, this vulnerable women sought legal protection only to be shafted by poorly qualified Federal Judges at every level — the Immigration Court, the BIA, and the Fifth Circuit!

  • Here’s what Wade Henderson, then President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights had to say about Judge Leslie H. Southwick in opposition to his confirmation:

Given the tremendous impact that federal judges have on civil rights and liberties, and because of the lifetime nature of federal judgeships, no judge should be confirmed unless he or she demonstrates a solid commitment to protecting the rights of all Americans. Because Judge Southwick has failed to meet this burden, we must oppose his confirmation.

https://civilrights.org/resource/opposition-to-the-nomination-of-judge-leslie-h-southwick/

  • Here’s what Michael Barajas of the Texas Observer had to say about Judge Edith Jones:

JONES HAS COMPARED ANYONE WHO BUYS THE ARGUMENT THAT TEXAS LAWMAKERS INTENTIONALLY PASSED A RACIST LAW TO “AREA 51 ALIEN ENTHUSIASTS.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/fifth-circuit-appeals-judge-edith-jones/

  • Here’s what the progressive group “Suit Up Maine” had to say about Judge Andrew Oldham at the time of his confirmation:

ANDREW OLDHAM: Confirmed by the Senate on July 18, 2018. Collins voted YES; King voted NO. Nominated to be federal judge for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Oldham is young, aggressively conservative, and has been involved in controversial litigation that emphasized ideology over the law. Oldham has worked on cases aimed at limiting reproductive rights, challenging the Affordable Care Act, challenging California’s law requiring good cause for concealed carry of firearms, and challenging habeas rights, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful. He defended Texas laws that limited women’s access to abortions that were ultimately determined by the Supreme Court to put “undue burden” on women’s right to choose. His challenge to the Affordable Care Act based on the “Origination Clause” of the Constitution was dismissed by the 5th Circuit for lack of standing. He attempted to barr the use of habeas corpus claims by two plaintiffs, but appeals courts allowed the claims. He also filed an amicus brief on behalf of multiple states (including Maine) using the Second Amendment to challenge a California law requiring good cause for concealed carry of firearms. The 9th Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment does not protect a right to concealed carry of firearms. Additionally, Oldham was involved in challenging the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules under the Clean Air Act, and he defended Texas campaign finance laws that were being challenged by multiple nonprofits and political committees under the First Amendment. His record of unsuccessful attempts to shape the law according to his own conservative ideology suggests that this bias is likely to accompany him to the federal bench.

https://www.suitupmaine.org/extremist-judicial-appointments/

All these fears, criticisms, and predictions of bias have proved to be all too well-founded in the mal-performance of this “Toxic Trio” of far right ideologues.

“Heard (not Amber) on the street:

  • “So the one BIA precedent in the past 20 years that actually recognized a PSG as valid isn’t worthy of Chevron deference, but A-B- was?!!”
  • “No more judicial restraint? Why is DOJ not changing position and or dropping these cases?”
  • “The 5th Circuit decision claims to direct all IJs in the 5th NOT to apply ARCG. And, most 5th Circuit IJs are high deniers anyway, so they don’t exactly need encouragement.”
  • “Perhaps better IJs could think of creative ways to work around the 5th’s decision. But, they don’t exist in the 5th Circuit in Garland’s EOIR.”
  • “It also shows the problems caused by Garland’s failure to “redo” the BIA and the IJ corps on “Day 1.” By now, it’s too late.”

Unqualified, far-right Federal Judges, egged on and supported by Stephen Miller and GOP State AGs, have basically usurped the power of Congress and the Executive to set immigration policies. There is lots of contempt for humanity, racism, misogyny, religious intolerance, and disrespect for true individual liberty driving their vile and illegal agenda.

The Constitutional rights of all Americans and the future of our democracy is at stake here. Will enough folks wake up and resist this takeover before it ‘s too late? TBD!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-03-22

 

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. ‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  4. NDPA STALWART JASON “THE ASYLUMIST” DZUBOW 🌟 QUOTED IN AP ARTICLE ABOUT REPEAL OF A-B- & L-E-A-!

🔫WELL, ACTUALLY, TOTALLY CONTRARY TO THE GOP BS, GUN CONTROL LAWS DO SAVE LIVES! — “The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e8e45d47-c3b3-4b69-862f-6cc848e9bb43

David Lauter in the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Time was — not that long ago — that after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates would nod to the possibility of compromise before waiting for memories to fade and opposing any new legislation to regulate firearms.

This time, they skipped the preliminaries and jumped directly to opposition.

“The most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said to MSNBC a few hours after a shooter killed at least 21 people in Uvalde, Texas. “Inevitably, when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it. You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work.”

The speed of that negative reaction provides the latest example of how, on one issue after another, the gap between blue America and red America has widened so much that even the idea of national agreement appears far-fetched. Many political figures no longer bother pretending to look for it.

Broad agreement

on some measures

And yet, significant agreement does exist.

Poll after poll has shown for years that large majorities of the public agree on at least some limited steps to further regulate firearms.

A survey last year by the Pew Research Center, for example, showed that, by 87% to 12%, Americans supported “preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.” By 81% to 18% they backed “making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.” And by a smaller but still healthy 64% to 36% they favored “banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”

The gunman in Uvalde appears to have carried seven 30-round magazines, authorities in Texas have said.

So why, in the face of such large majorities, does Congress repeatedly do nothing?

One powerful factor is the belief among many Americans that nothing lawmakers do will help the problem.

Asked in that same Pew survey whether mass shootings would decline if guns were harder to obtain, about half of Americans said they would go down, but 42% said it would make no difference. Other surveys have found much the same feeling among a large swath of Americans.

The argument about futility is one that opponents of change quickly turn to after a catastrophe. It’s a powerful rhetorical weapon against action.

“It wouldn’t prevent these shootings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN on Wednesday when asked about banning the sort of semiautomatic weapons used by the killer in Uvalde and by a gunman who killed 10 at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket 10 days earlier. “The truth of the matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes — whether they have to use another weapon to do it, they’re going to figure out a way to do it.”

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”

The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.

Go back 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Since then, California repeatedly has tightened its gun laws, while Florida and Texas have moved in the opposite direction.

California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.

Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.

Equally clearly, no law stops all shootings.

California’s strict laws didn’t stop the shooting at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods this month, and there’s no question that Chicago suffers from a large number of gun-related homicides despite strict gun control laws in Illinois. A large percentage of the guns used in those crimes come across the border from neighboring states with loose gun laws, research has shown.

The overall pattern is clear, and it reinforces the lesson from other countries, including Canada, Britain and Australia, which have tightened gun laws after horrific mass shootings: The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.

Fear of futility isn’t the only barrier to passage of national gun legislation.

Gun law opponents harden positions

Hard-core opponents of gun regulation have become more entrenched in their positions over the last decade.

Mostly conservative and Republican and especially prevalent in rural parts of the U.S., staunch opponents of any new legislation restricting firearms generally don’t see gun violence as a major problem but do see the weapons as a major part of their identity. In the Pew survey last year, just 18% of Republicans rated gun violence as one of the top problems facing the country, compared with 73% of Democrats. Other surveys have found much the same.

Strong opponents of gun control turn out in large numbers in Republican primaries, and they make any vote in favor of new restrictions politically toxic for Republican officeholders. In American politics today, where most congressional districts are gerrymandered to be safe for one party and only a few states swing back and forth politically, primaries matter far more to most lawmakers than do general elections.

Even in general elections, gun issues aren’t the top priority for most voters. Background checks and similar measures have wide support, but not necessarily urgent support.

. . . .

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

Read David’s complete article at the link.

Unfortunately, the much ballyhooed polls on this issue turn out to be highly misleading. The polls showing widespread support for gun control suggest that there should be a heavy political price to pay for GOP gun zealots who mock the need for rational measures to protect kids, worshippers, shoppers, and others from mass firearms’ assaults.

However, the exact opposite is true. As Chuck Todd recently pointed out on NBC News, even in the “post-Sandy-Hook” era, no incumbent politician has lost his or her position for opposing reasonable firearms controls. The converse is not true. 

Todd also pointed out that we now have more guns than people in the U.S., a situation that didn’t exist a decade ago. The irrational response to more gun deaths, lead by the NRA and GOP politicos, has been more guns — NOT common sense, concern for the common good, or courageous bipartisan problem solving.

That perhaps explains how sleazy immoral characters like Gov. Greg Abbott, Sen. Ted Cruz, VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and a host of other corrupt “guns are the answer to all problems” GOP politicos remain in office as innocent kids and others die and the problem gets worse.

As the article suggests, lack of urgency and priority also might be a reason why the polls are so completely misleading on this issue. For the “guns trump human lives crowd,” adhering to positions promoting irresponsible “absolutist” firearms agendas are a “litmus test.” Apparently, for too many of those in the “majority,” saving some kids and other human lives is in the “nice to have, but not essential” category. 

So, despite their immoral and irrational stand on guns, the GOP controls a majority of state and local Governments. Nationally, thanks to the electoral college, gerrymandering, and local control of national voting, the GOP appears poised to sweep back into power on the national level and impose their anti-individual-liberty, anti-democracy, anti-humanity, pro-guns and big corporations agenda on all until the last shadow of American liberal democracy is wiped out.

It’s clear from the “in your face” reactions of Cruz and other GOP pols that they expect no fallout from their latest, deadly policy failures. Indeed, I think they fully anticipate a political boost from their ridiculous and widely-panned suggestions and their ever more outrageous fact-free “shoot ‘em up — ignore the real problem” proposals. Kid deaths and grieving parents who can be fobbed off or ignored have become a “gold mine” for valueless GOP politicos to exploit and demean.

Sadly, they probably are correct. Despite the perhaps “over coverage” by the media obsessed with public demonstrations, the GOP has little to fear politically from outraged parents of dead kids, students walking out of classes, newspaper editorials, or demonstrators outside the NRA Convention. 

Unless and until gun control proponents can find a way to make arrogant GOP pols on all levels “pay a price” for their immoral actions and horrible positions, the latest “surge in public sentiment” will be just as meaningless as the polls they engender. That means reaching out to the rural Americans who drive the GOP’s pro-gun agenda and changing at least some minds with facts. That’s something that Dems as a whole have failed to do over decades, as the GOP developed a stranglehold over rural America. 

While GOP politicos like Abbott and Cruz (who, let’s remember, fled with his family to a resort in Mexico while ordinary Texans suffered through Abbott’s mismanagement of the power grid) babble nonsense, parents who have lost children understand exactly who is to blame for preventable mass murders:

“There’s no reason for just an average citizen to have these types of weapons,” she said. Adding, “What for? What do you need them for? Is it worth my kid? These kids?”

https://apple.news/ABvfx3I_pRjubQAjtOz4c-A

Of course, as the article acknowledges, gun control won’t solve all problems or prevent all mass shootings. But, contrary to widely promoted GOP myths, such laws would be a major step in the right direction that demonstrably would preserve some human lives.

The GOP gun lobby’s outrageous “expand the universe of gun ownership and military-style firepower” agenda clearly results in more unnecessary deaths. Even more significantly, there is no case for the proposition that reasonable firearms restrictions and limitations on military assault-type weapons place any unreasonable burden on sportsmen, target shooters, or other types of legitimate gun owners. 

No private citizen in America needs an assault weapon for self defense or sporting purposes! Pro-gun commercials suggesting that assault weapons are necessary for self-defense at home or to “protect America” are the pure BS! But, they apparently are much more effective than angry demonstrations, school walkouts, or tearful testimonials from those deprived of their loved ones and colleagues by preventable mass gun violence.

Tougher laws might, however, stop at least a few kids or angry folks from getting their hands on military-grade weapons of mass destruction and murder. 

Significantly, it now appears that about the only folks who “did the right thing at the right time” during the Uvalde mass murder were the unarmed kids who, risking their lives, called, sometimes repeatedly, those authorized to use deadly force and assault-style weapons for public protection. But, it was largely to no avail, as the so-called “good guys with guns” stood around as kids died — they were afraid they might get shot by an 18-year-old kid armed like a combat soldier. Their teachers, not the “good guys with guns” were the ones willing to sacrifice their lives in an attempt to save others.

Also, while Texas seems to revel in “anti-Federalism,” it’s worth noting that the slaughter only stopped when Federal Border Patrol Officers ignored local police leaders and confronted the shooter.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-29-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🇺🇸🗽👍🏼😎MAKING AMERICA BETTER, FINALLY: “Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.” (WashPost) — No Wonder GOP Anti-American White Nationalists Like Tom Cotton Are Apoplectic & Spouting Their Racist, White Elitist Nonsense!
  4. FINALLY, LEADING DEMS IN CONGRESS DEMAND END TO BIDEN’S TITLE 42 CHARADE! — NDPA  All-Star 🌟🦸🏻‍♀️ Blaine Bookey Speaks Out For Ukrainians & Other Legal Asylum Seekers Being Abused 🤮  By Biden Administration @ The Southern Border!

☠️👎🏽DEM’S CATASTROPHIC DUE PROCESS FAILURE:  AS PREDICTED, GARLAND’S “DEDICATED DOCKETS” ARE “ASYLUM FREE ZONES” TARGETING CHILDREN!🤮

“Floaters”
Garland’s vision of “justice” for refugee children appears to be little different from that of Stephen Miller and his White Nationalist predecessors at DOJ!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Cindy Carcamo
Cindy Carcamo
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

Cindy Carcamo reports for the LA Times: 

BY CINDY CARCAMO STAFF WRITER

MAY 25, 2022 11:56 AM PT

After drug traffickers killed his little brother, William and his 6-year-old son, Santiago, fled Colombia last September to seek asylum in the United States.

Unbeknownst to William, who ended up in Los Angeles with a friend, he and his son immediately became part of a cohort of thousands of families in a “dedicated docket” program that the Biden administration established in 11 cities, including Los Angeles, in May 2021.

In response to a sudden rise of apprehensions last spring of families and children at the Southwest border, Biden promised the accelerated docket would resolve cases “more expeditiously and fairly.” These sorts of programs have existed in various forms under previous administrations; Biden’s program pushes immigration judges to resolve cases in 300 days, significantly shorter than the 4.5-year average of asylum cases in immigration court.

But according to a new Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA Law report, the docket’s fast-track timeline has imposed new hardships on many asylum seekers and created additional obstacles that ultimately lead to higher rates of deportation orders, sometimes based on legal technicalities.

For William — who didn’t want his last name published, fearing reprisal against his family still living in Colombia — the docket’s expeditious nature meant he had only six weeks to secure legal representation before his first court hearing, leaving him to navigate a complex and often confusing system without an attorney. Immigration officials provided him with documents heavy with legal jargon in English. He could read only in Spanish.

In addition, those on the docket are released with “alternatives to detention,” which means they are monitored, either with an ankle bracelet or via a phone application. Immigration officials shackled William with a GPS monitor on his ankle before releasing him and his son.

Ultimately, an immigration judge ordered William and his 6-year-old to be deported in “absentia” when they didn’t show up for their court hearing at U.S. Immigration Court in downtown Los Angeles. In fact, at the time the judge gave the order, William was in the building, but was three floors below the courtroom in a waiting area at the direction of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. By the time William was told he was in the wrong place, the judge had already ordered the father and son’s removal from the U.S.

In Los Angeles, an estimated 99% of the 449 cases completed on the dedicated docket as of February of this year resulted in removal orders and about 72% of those cases were issued to people who missed their court hearing — “in absentia” — according to a report released Wednesday by the Center for Immigration Law and Policy and Immigrants’ Rights Policy Clinic at UCLA School of Law

Perhaps most striking, the report shows that almost half of those in absentia removal orders are for children, many 6 and younger.

In addition, court data analyzed in the report show that an estimated 70% of people on this particular docket don’t have legal counsel. In contrast, an estimated 33% of those on the Los Angeles court’s non-accelerated docket lack legal counsel.

The nature of the accelerated dockets made it nearly impossible for asylum-seekers to get a fair hearing, the report’s authors concluded. The high absentia rate, the report concluded, is a red flag that the dedicated docket isn’t working as it should.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Cindy’s totally disturbing article at the link!

Sadly, this news will come as no surprise to readers of “Courtside.” Having watched these types of  efforts to co-opt the Immigration Courts as a vehicle of unfair, racially motivated “deterrence” and “enforcement,” I could see that this program was going to be an unmitigated disaster at EOIR, given Garland’s failure to install progressive judicial leadership and human rights and due process expertise into the broken and biased system he inherited from Sessions and Barr.

The NDPA is going to have to “dig in” and fight Garland and Mayorkas every step of the way, at every level of the system, to save as many lives as possible from their disgraceful continuation of a “Miller Lite” White Nationalist, anti-immigrant program of abusing and dehumanizing asylum seekers — most individuals of color and many of them children or other “vulnerable individuals.” 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever! Garland’s dysfunctional, biased, leaderless, soul-less, ethically challenged EOIR, never!

PWS

05-26-22

Related posts:

  1. 🤮👎🏽WASHPOST SLAMS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FOR ABANDONING NEGOTIATIONS WITH FAMILIES WHO SUFFERED CHILD ABUSE BY SESSIONS & MILLER! — “Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.”
  2. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🤮👎🏽ULTIMATE HIPOCRACY: EVEN AS AMERICA FINALLY CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH HOLIDAY, DRED SCOTT & INSTITUTIONALIZED RACIST DEHUMANIZATION REMAIN REALITIES FOR BLACKS & OTHER MIGRANTS OF COLOR AT EOIR & DHS — Imprisonment Without Trial, Bogus Bonds, Mistreatment In The New American Gulag, Jim Crow “Courts,” No Rule Of Law,  Still Realities For Those Of Color Exercising Legal Rights In Broken System!

🤮WHITE REPLACEMENT THEORY (“WRT”) IS SIMPLY FASCISM “REBRANDED!” — “In terms of propaganda, it is a rebranding of the same thing, namely longstanding fascist paranoias and lies about invasion and racial and political replacement.” 

 

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=34dc9d2d-a5e6-4795-a504-e742e1148d06

Jason Stanley and Fredrico Finchelstein write in the LA Times:

. . . .

Democracy is essentially a system based around two values — freedom and equality. Fascists promoted the idea of replacement as a way of arguing that democracy and its ideals were incompatible with the nation. The very first chapter of Grant’s book is “Race and Democracy,” in which he contends that democracy is a threat to Nordic supremacy, because democracy leads inevitably to greater immigration and equality between races.

In fascist ideology, true national consciousness is pitted against domestic “enemies,” who are against national forms that are racially, ethnically or religiously homogeneous. These domestic “enemies” are invariably institutions and individuals who champion democracy and its ideals.

The Indian nationalist ideologue M.S. Golwalkar, the ideological founding father of BJP, the right-wing Hindu party of Narendra Modi, argued against the idea that a nation was composed of all of its inhabitants and rejected the idea that every citizen of India had equal rights to freedom. Like Grant, Golwalkar regarded democratic ideals as a clear threat to his vision of the nation.

If enemies are people who either look, think or behave differently, and if their mere existence poses a threat to the imagined homogeneity of the nation, it is not surprising that the most radicalized believer would carry out mass murders, as has happened in the U.S., Europe and New Zealand, and pogroms as in India.

And, of course, we see it in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ideas of replacement are central to Russian extremist, nationalist, antisemitic and fascist traditions. They motivate the nature of its attack in Ukraine, such as wiping out Ukrainian identity culturally and physically. Vladimir Putin also considers liberal democracy as an existential threat to Russian cultural greatness, and by extension, to the Russian nation.

The link between WRT and fascism is not accidental. WRT is a relatively recent label for old fascism. In terms of propaganda, it is a rebranding of the same thing, namely longstanding fascist paranoias and lies about invasion and racial and political replacement. WRT’s logic justifies mass violence. When it is normalized, it poses an existential threat to democracy and its ideals. It targets the very idea of common humanity that underlies them.

Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale University. His most recent book is “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.”Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Fascist Mythologies.”

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

Read the complete article at the link.

“Targeting the idea of common humanity” is central to today’s far-right political activism — from legislatures to the courts.

As I have frequently pointed out, anti-immigrant myths and fear mongering are the “heart and soul” of modern White Nationalist fascism.

Trump’s degrading of migrants from Haiti and Africa and his wish for more Norwegian immigrants is a classic example of the “myth of Nordic supremacy” that is a staple of some fascist movements. See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946.

That’s why Dems failure to take strong pro-immigrants’-rights actions and to aggressively undue the nativist anti-immigrant agenda of the Trump regime is so problematic and short-sighted!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-26-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻⚰️☠️BIDEN, HARRIS, GARLAND, MAYORKAS CONTINUE THE ILLEGAL, RACIST TRUMP/MILLER ANTI-ASLUM POLICIES @ THE BORDER — It Must Stop, Say Advocates! —  “The policy has disproportionately affected Black migrants, who are often Haitian.”
  4. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?