🗽⚖️PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO @ LA TIMES: BIDEN’S DISHONEST USE OF TITLE 42 TO SHAFT ASYLUM SEEKERS IS ILLEGAL, IMMORAL, AND BAD POLITICS! — “Actions speak louder than words, and this stated commitment simply cannot be squared with a policy that denies protection to desperate individuals fleeing grave violence. It is past time to put an end to the use of Title 42, and to restore asylum as required by domestic and international law.”

Karen Musalo
Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-24/continuing-trumps-pretext-to-block-asylum-claims-biden-defies-the-law-and-good-politicsOp-Ed: Continuing Trump’s pretext to block asylum claims, Biden defies the law and good politics

BY KAREN MUSALO

NOV. 24, 2021 3:10 AM PT

The so-called Title 42 border closure, which uses the COVID-19 pandemic to justify immediate expulsion or deportation of people fleeing persecution and torture, has always been heartless and illegal. So why is the Biden administration indefinitely continuing this most egregious and unlawful of Trump’s immigration policies? Recent reports confirm that it’s in part because the White House doesn’t want the political repercussions of ending it.

That craven position would be a flimsy defense in court. It’s also simply bad politics.

Biden continues to be accused of advocating open borders. It is likely that nothing he can do will placate those who supported Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. On the other hand, recent polling shows that a majority of Americans believe “immigration is a good thing” for the country, and American support for resettlement of Afghan refugees was at 81% in August. It is not necessarily true that harsh immigration policies are winning strategies.

Even if it were politically expedient to keep the border closed to those seeking safety, turning away these individuals without any opportunity to apply for protection is a violation of U.S. law, as well as of international treaties to which the U.S. is a party. The pretext of Title 42 does not make our actions any less a violation of law. This point was made quite clear by Harold Koh, a senior State Department legal advisor and former dean of Yale Law School, who has served in four presidential administrations. In a stern rebuke, Koh wrote that the use of Title 42 was “illegal” and “inhumane,” inconsistent with American values and not worthy of the Biden administration.

Just as the Trump administration invoked it in March 2020, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this summer that it would continue, the Biden administration could revoke Title 42 now, permitting asylum applications again in compliance with our legal obligations.

This misuse of Title 42 authority, a public health law, was the brainchild of former President Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller. Evidently not satisfied with the administration’s brutal “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced asylum seekers to await their hearings in Mexico, once COVID-19 struck Miller decided the pandemic could be used as a pretext to close the border, denying migrants the right to even seek asylum. Officials at the CDC maintained that this measure was not justified by public health considerations and only acceded as a result of sustained White House pressure.

The Title 42 policy has resulted in untold suffering. People refused entry are either expelled to Mexico, where they face kidnapping, rape and other brutal assaults, or they are forcibly returned to their home countries — regardless of the human rights violations they may encounter there. Since September, thousands of Haitians have been deported despite the U.S. government’s acknowledgement that Haiti is “grappling with a deteriorating political crisis, violence, and a staggering increase in human rights abuses.” The kidnapping for ransom of American missionaries in October highlighted the acute dangers that persist in the island nation.

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Read Karen’s full op-ed at the link. 

I’m thankful for Karen and other extraordinary leaders of the NDPA who continue to confront the “power structure” with “uncomfortable truth!” 

An orderly refugee processing system abroad and a properly staffed and run asylum system at the border that timely recognizes those needing protection and enlists and cooperates with NGOs to ensure representation and resettlement in locations where they can quickly contribute should actually be more “popular” than the current “scofflaw chaos” resulting from misguided and ultimately futile “maximum enforcement and deterrence” efforts by our Government.

This is not to suggest that “popularity” should be the “test” for whether we comply with our legal and moral obligations to refugees. Given the many documented contributions that refugees and immigrants make to America, there is no reason to assume that a viable asylum program can’t be part of a robust legal immigration program that benefits everyone.  

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-26-21

👍🏼PROGRESSIVE LEGAL ICON HAROLD KOH RIPS BIDEN’S BOGUS “STEPHEN MILLER LITE” XENOPHOBIC POLICIES, RESIGNS DOS POST, AMID A CRESENDO OF ADMINISTRATION LIES! — “I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti.”

Harold H. Koh
Harold H,. Koh
American Legal Scholar
PHOTO: Wikipedia

Here’s a report from Politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/04/top-state-adviser-leaves-post-title-42-515029

Here’s a key quote from Koh’s memo:

. . . .

I have spent much of my legal career, inside and outside the government, seeking to ensure that the United States abides by its non-refoulement obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”), and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Protocol”), which modifies and incorporates the terms of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”). Article 3 of the CAT categorically prohibits State Parties from expelling, returning, or extraditing any person, without exception, to any State where there are “substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Article 33 of the Refugee Convention, subject to certain narrow exceptions, flatly prohibits State Parties from expelling or returning (‘refouler’) refugees in any manner whatsoever to “the frontiers of territories” where their life or freedom would be threatened on one of [the designated grounds].

I write first, because I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti. Second, my concerns have only been heightened by recent tragic events in Haiti, which had led this Administration wisely to extend temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians already in the United States. Third, lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist, and there are approaching opportunities in the near future to substitute those alternatives in place of the current, badly flawed policy.

. . . .

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First, let me assure you that the DOS’s ridiculous claim that Koh’s departure was “long planned,” and its equally ludicrous suggestion that he would continue to play a meaningful role as a fake “consultant” is pure, unadulterated BS!💩 Indeed, I’d encourage the DOS Inspector General to investigate and report on just what are Koh’s new “consulting duties,” his compensation arrangements, and exactly what he produces after today!

You don’t hire high level Administration officials with “a long planned expectation” that they will depart in fewer than nine months. Come on, man, how dumb do you think we are?

Losing someone of Koh’s reputation and abilities is a huge, yet well deserved, “black eye” for an Administration that has ditched the progressive human right experts who helped them get into the dance in the first place! 

And, for what? It’s not that so-called “moderates,” fickle “independents,” and GOP nativists have been lining up to congratulate Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland on their continuation of bogus, racially charged restrictionist policies at the border. Abandoning your stated values, dissing campaign promises, pissing off your allies, while still earning slings and arrows from your opponents has to be the world’s dumbest policy!

Second, what’s also pure unadulterated BS 💩 is the Administration’s assertion, unethically defended by Garland’s DOJ, that misuse and gross abuse of Title 42 in a cowardly attempt to thwart asylum seekers of color has anything whatsoever to do with science or public health.

The truth is is stark as it is ugly:

There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus. “That was a Stephen Miller special. He was all over that,” a former Pence aide told the AP.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/10/02/%f0%9f%a4%%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8fgarlnd-doj-polishes-otherwise-lackluster-litigation-record-with-big-win-for-stephen-miller-his-neo-nazi-anti-asylum-policy/

Of course there wasn’t! Even Stephen Miller didn’t pretend very hard that there was.

He just counted on a complicit Supremes and enough right wing toady judges afraid to do their jobs to get away with it. He was dead wrong about District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

But, in the end, that didn’t make any difference. Although he probably hadn’t predicted it, Miller found a key ally in “what me worry, not my family, only some non-white asylum seekers” AG Merrick Garland.

Alfred E. Neumann
Merrick Garland’s ancestors were saved! Why should he worry about the  people of color he condemns without due process in his dysfunctional and biased Immigration “Courts” and  by defending Stephen Miller’s neo-Nazi anti-asylum, White Nationalist border policies?
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

Garland inexplicably and despicably took up Miller’s unethical, illegal, and immoral cause and found some bad judges on the DC Circuit willing to help trash Black Haitians and other migrants of color. This was certainly not one of American law’s better episodes, as history will eventually document.

There is no sugar coating it! When it comes to treatment of asylum seekers of color at our Southern Border, the Biden Administration is carrying out the “Miller Lite” version of neo-Nazi Stephen Miller’s deadly White Nationalism. Shame!🤮 We’re no closer to a coherent, practical, moral, legal asylum policy at our Southern Border today than we were on Jan. 20!

As Koh points out, there have been better alternatives on asylum seekers and the border since day one of the Administration! They have just refused to take them!

Also, a complicit AG Garland who has consistently failed to stand up for the human and legal rights of migrants of color and to  “just say no” to Stephen Miller’s illegal policies and contrived, clearly pretextual justifications, has been a major cause of this ongoing political, moral, legal, and humanitarian disaster. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-04-21