"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
“Today U.S. District Court Judge Richard Martinez ordered the federal government to release an immigrant detained at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), AKA Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), who is at high risk of serious illness or death if he contracts COVID-19. The Court ordered the release of Mr. Pimentel, a 65-year old man who has been a lawful permanent resident in the United States since 1996, but was placed in removal proceedings after pleading guilty to a drug offense. After completing his sentence, Mr. Pimentel returned to live with his family in Salt Lake City, Utah, but was subsequently arrested by ICE in May of 2019 after he appeared for an appointment. ICE ultimately transferred Mr. Pimentel to the detention center in Tacoma, Washington.
Judge Martinez found that federal immigration authorities “detain Petitioner at the NWIPC in conditions that create a substantial risk he will be exposed to the coronavirus and contract COVID-19.”
Judge Martinez relied on declarations from public health experts stating that once COVID-19 reaches the detention center it will spread like “wildfire.” The Court noted that experts have attributed a mortality rate as high as 15% for high risk individuals who contract COVID-19. Judge Martinez ultimately concluded that “Petitioner has made a clear showing that he faces a substantial risk of serious harm due to the conditions of his present confinement and the fact that he is at higher risk for serious illness or death from COVID-19.”
Judge Martinez ordered that Mr. Pimentel be immediately released. He will now be permitted to return to live with his son and daughter-in-law in Salt Lake City while he waits for his immigration case to be completed.
Wonder how many more “Mr. Pimentels” are out there in the Gulag but in the wrong jurisdiction or without the good fortune to get the legal representation necessary to secure release?
What if we had a functional, impartial, expert U.S. Immigration Court that could order release of folks like this without protracted litigation in the U.S. District Courts? Indeed, what’s the purpose of a so-called “court system” that’s incapable of doing much of anything except “rubber stamping” the unconstitutional actions and extraordinarily poor judgments of DHS officials and their contractors?
President Trump recently said that there were two reasons for virtually halting all immigration to the United States in response to COVID-19. The first was to prevent the spread of the disease domestically. The second was to save American jobs for American citizens. We’ve already analyzedthefirst claim, this post will look at whether reducing immigration further will help save jobs for Americans. The answer is no.
First, immigrants come to the United States primarily because of economic opportunity. Even those coming today on green cards intended for family‐ reunification are primarily coming to reunite with family members who, at one point in the chain, came for economic reasons. If the benefits of coming to the United States are greater than the costs (psychological costs, cost of moving, opportunity cost, danger of migrating, etc.), then many people will do so.
The biggest benefit of coming to the United States is higher wages, which are higher here because immigrant workers have a greater marginal value product (MVP=the number of goods produced by a worker multiplied by the market price for those goods). That means that immigrants are more productive here than in their home countries, so they supply more goods and services that are sold at higher prices. The amazing thing about demand for labor is that it is entirely determined by the worker’s MVP.
Economists Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett estimate the place premium, which is the estimated wage benefit of moving to the United States adjusting for the cost of living through a measurement called purchasing power parity (PPP). For example, they estimate that a working age Mexican male with 9–12 years of education who was educated in his home country can expect a 2.6-fold increase in his wages. That’s an enormous gain.
Immigration slows during a recession because the number of jobs decreases and, oftentimes, wages also adjust or their growth slows. Thus, the big benefit of immigrating to the United States evaporates for many immigrants during a recession. Immigration falls during recessions because immigrants benefit less from coming here, but natives benefit less too so the government also typically responds by increasingimmigration enforcement. Less commonly, the government restricts legal immigration like President Herbert Hoover did in 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression. The flow of illegal immigrants into the United States changes most dramatically during a recession as they’re the most economically sensitive immigrants.
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Read the complete article at the link.
For what it’s worth, Alex’s findings match my “anecdotal observations” over more than a decade at the U.S. Immigration Court. During the earlier recession and its aftermath, other than asylum applicants, more migrantsappearing at my “Master Calendar” told me that they did not want to fight their cases and just wanted to “go home,” either voluntarily or at USG expense under a “final order.” As the US economy improved, the number of non-detained individuals agreeing to voluntary departure or “taking a final order” appeared to decrease.
While, as Alex acknowledges, immigration is not “totally market driven,” particularly for those fleeing persecution, we certainly would do better as a nation to design a robust legal immigration system that worked in harmony with market forces, rather than directly against them as has too often been the case.
Generally, markets are going to be a more effective and efficient regulators of immigration than expensive, coercive, and often ineffective, “maximum enforcement.”
Indeed, when our economy was “booming,” unemployment was low, and most of the estimated 10-11 million “undocumented individuals” in the U.S. were staying out of trouble, minding their own business, employed or studying, and contributing to our economic success. The trouble was not “failed enforcement,” as the White Nationalists like to claim, but rather a failed legal immigration system that should have found ways that these individuals who form an important part of our society could have been pre-screened and admitted legally in the first place. That also would have diminished the allure of human smugglers and facilitated even greater contributions to our tax base. The answer to a clearly failed and counterproductive policy is not to double down on its cruelest and most futile aspects — unfocused enforcement,
Even in cases where immediate immigraton isn’t possible, if there is a “real line” for legal immigration (not the bogus one invented by the nativists) and it progressed reasonably and predictably, most individuals would use it. In my experience, most immigrants and employers would much prefer to use the legal system, even if it has some delays and costs, if it presents a realistic and not-cost-prohibitive alternative to “extralegal” or “black market” migration.
If we are to continue to succeed as a nation, at some point, we must stop listening to the voices of the Trumps, Millers, Sessionses, Cuccinellis, Barrs and other White Nationalist bigots urging us to “return to the failed policies of the past” and instead develop a forward looking immigration and refugee system that sees migrants for what they are: an important and necessary element of our nation and our world. It’s the right and smart thing for a “nation of immigrants” to do.
So, expect the ban to last indefinitely and to increase in scope regardless of what happens with COVID-19. Xenophobia, racism, and appeals to White Nationalism are once likely to be the centerpiece of Trump’s reelection strategy, particularly with the economy in ruins.
While corporations are going on life support thanks to this huge government bailout, undocumented immigrants and their families, among them US citizens, are being allowed to suffer, to starve, and, without access to health care, perhaps even to die. As things already stood, undocumented immigrants were ineligible for any federally funded public health insurance programs. On top of that, the millions who have tax IDs, so that they can work without formal authorization, are now denied help in the form of unemployment benefits—they are the only US taxpayers excluded from the coronavirus stimulus package.
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It’s also troubling to single out immigrants because of the historic scapegoating of immigrants during other health crises. The historian Alan M. Kraut writes that in the 1830s, Irish immigrants were stigmatized as bearers of cholera, and at the end of the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was dubbed the “Jewish disease.” Scapegoating also obscures a longer thread in a bigger pattern, regardless of which party or administration is in power. According to Professor Viladrich, the American government’s denying assistance to this group of working immigrants is the historic norm.
“A lot of this is related to a labor force that is disposable,” she said. “There is no contradiction here; it is very consistent with ACA, with welfare reform, all of that. The systematic exclusion of immigrants is parallel with the systematic exploitation of immigrants.”
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, lobbied hard to ensure that people without work authorization would be excluded from the CARES Act. On the Senate floor, he spoke against child tax credit going to people without social security numbers:
If you want to apply for money from the government through the child tax credit program, then you have to be a legitimate person… It has nothing to do with not liking immigrants. It has to do with saying, taxpayer money shouldn’t go to non-people.
His office later said he was referring to people who fraudulently claimed a child in order to reap the federal benefit. Whatever he meant by “legitimate person” and “non-people,” the effect was the same: in the eyes of the law, undocumented immigrants would be non-people.
Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher, used the term “bare life” to describe a life reduced to plain biological facts, the robbing of a person’s political existence by those who have the power to define who is included as a worthy human being and who is excluded. While the labor of undocumented people is gladly accepted, their humanity has been tidily erased by lawmakers in Washington, D.C.
The immigration and legal historian Daniel Kanstroom reminds us that in times of trouble, like wars or national emergencies, immigrants are the first to get thrown overboard. It was in part due to the ban on Chinese immigrants back in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century that the demand for Mexican workers increased dramatically. In his 2007 book Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History, Kanstroom explained how this ban combined with wartime labor needs in 1917 led to the US government’s systematic recruitment of Mexican workers: “From 1917 through 1921, an estimated 50,000–80,000 Mexican farm workers entered the United States under this program, establishing a legal model and cultural mindset that endured for decades to come.”
Kanstroom cites a line from the 1911 Dillingham Commission, an extensive bipartisan investigation into immigration, that “The Mexican… is less desirable as a citizen than as a laborer.” The precedent was set, and what followed was a cycle of recruitment, restriction, and expulsion. More than one million people of Mexican ancestry were forcibly removed from the United States during the Depression years. Some of the people deported by the government to Mexico were US citizens, but then as now, because of their undocumented relatives, they were subject to the same brutal treatment.
In 1942, as a wartime labor shortage loomed, the US worked out an agreement with Mexico for short-term, low-wage workers to fill in the gap. The Bracero Program, as it was known, continued until 1964, with some 4.5 million Mexican workers legally entering the country during those years. There were enormous contradictions in the way those workers were treated: ad hoc legalization programs designed to help big farmers took place at some times; then, at others, there were huge deportation drives when the demand for labor fell off—most notoriously, the terrifying round-ups of 1954’s so-called Operation Wetback.
According to the scholar of migration Nicholas De Genova, “It is precisely their distinctive legal vulnerability, their putative ‘illegality’ and official ‘exclusion,’ that inflames the irrepressible desire and demand for undocumented migrants as a highly exploitable workforce—and thus ensures their enthusiastic importation and subordinate incorporation.” It is no mistake that there remain millions of “illegal” workers of Latino ethnicity contributing their labor, taxes, and humanity to this country; it suits America very well in the good times, and always has.
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Read the rest of Maev’s outstanding analysis of our sordid history of abusing essential immigrant workers, from enslaved African Americans, to Chinese laborers, to Latino workers who have been propping up our economy and keeping us alive during the time of pandemic. Their reward: dehumanization, degradation, deportation without due process, and sometimes death.
I speak often at Courtside about how Trump’s self-righteous, immoral, scofflaw White Nationalist cabal — folks like Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Barr, Cuccinelli, Paul — have been engineering a vile “Dred Scottification” program to dehumanize, abuse, and exploit the most vulnerable, yet often most essential, among us.
I have also highlighted how the Trump kakistocracy’s efforts to create an extralegal, unconstitutional “Reincarnation of Jim Crow” too often have been supported and encouraged by some of those highly privileged Supreme Court Justices whose job was supposed to be protecting all of us, and particularly the most vulnerable persons, from invidious Executive abuses: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.
The latest example: In the middle of humanitarian trauma, the “socially distant Justices” managed to find time for a little gratuitous cruelty: denying an application to stay the regime’s irrational, racist, and unlawful “public charge rules” that threaten the lives and safety of immigrants, their U.S. citizen families, and U.S. society as a whole. https://apple.news/ABNL4e_DtRPS4eN5m5gx1ug
Amy Howe writes at Scotusblog:
Under federal immigration law, noncitizens cannot receive a green card if the government believes that they are likely to become reliant on government assistance. The dispute now before the court arose last year, after the Trump administration defined “public charge” to refer to noncitizens who receive various government benefits, such as health care, for more than 12 months over a three-year period. The challengers had argued that the rule is “impeding efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, preserve scarce hospital capacity and medical supplies, and protect the lives of everyone in the community” because it deters immigrants from seeking testing and treatment for the virus out of fear that it will endanger their ability to obtain a green card. The federal government countered that it has made clear that the use of publicly funded health care related to COVID-19 “will not be considered in making predictions about whether” immigrants are likely to become a public charge.
The Government’s argument doesn’t pass the “straight face” test. The monetary savings from this rule are minuscule; its overriding purpose was to dump on immigrant families and intimidate ethnic, primarily Hispanic, communities. It was the “brainchild” of neo-Nazi Stephen Miller. What greater proof could there be of its White Nationalist purpose? Given the regime’s well-established record of lies and unbridled hostility toward immigrants and communities of color, why would anyone have confidence in the regime’s often hollow or disingenuous “promises?”
Those of us who believe in honoring our immigrant heritage, making our constitutional guarantees reality rather than unfulfilled promises, that human values, empathy, and kindness matter, and that we can and must do better than shallow, often outright evil, folks like Trump, Miller, Cuccinelli, Roberts, Barr, et al. need to retake our Government at the ballot box this November and build a better, fairer, more humane future for America and all persons in our country.
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
The use of executive branch power to wage a war on immigrants is one of the defining legacies of President Trump. He went on the offensive under the disguise of the coronavirus pandemic to advance his policy priority to significantly restrict legal immigration to the United States. This politically motivated maneuver violates federal and international law, and this is also morally reprehensible and disastrous for the domestic economy at home.
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It is not just health care that needs immigrants. A recent study found that the majority of economic growth between 2011 and 2016 is due to greater labor supply due to immigration. Immigrants also assist the country with innovation. They are twice as likely to start a business, to receive a Nobel Prize or Academy Award, or to receive a patent than native born workers.
Denying protection to individuals fleeing persecution based on potential public health grounds sends dangerous signals to oppressors and rogue nations that they are free to act with impunity because powerful nations are unwilling to protect their victims. Refugees searching for protection are built in the collective responsibility of the international community, even in any period of public crisis. Efforts by the president to renounce these duties are morally wrong and politically dangerous for the world.
Waging a war on immigrants will not protect us from the coronavirus. It instead puts individuals fleeing harm in further danger and weakens the economy of the United States. Immigrants are part of the solution to the challenges we face today and should be welcomed rather than banned.
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Read the rest of Erin’s article at the link.
The Clown Prince’s 🤡 “maliciously incompetent” ☠️ response to the coronavirus pandemic 🤮 continues to be one of the most stunning failures of Presidential leadership in U.S. history — one that will continue to put American lives at risk well into the future.
Unhappily, cowardly bashing of immigrants and constantly sending out racist “dog whistles” helped this charlatan get elected and remains one of the few things he’s good at (grifting, lying, and avoiding responsibility are others).
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration was again violating a longstanding agreement that compels the government to release migrant children detained at the border within 20 days and ordered the minors be released.
Plaintiffs represented by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law have been challenging the child detention policies of the administration of President Donald Trump in Los Angeles federal court, where they’ve alleged the coronavirus crisis has caused further delays in the mandated release of migrant children.
The challenges are being waged under a 1997 settlement between immigrant advocates and the government known as the Flores agreement. It generally requires children detained at the border and kept in nonlicensed facilities to be released within weeks.
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee oversees the settlement and issued a mixed ruling to enforce the Flores agreement and again ordered the government to “expedite the release” of children in its custody.
“This court order could very well prevent hundreds of children from becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 infection, and may even save some children’s lives,” longtime plaintiffs’ attorney Peter Schey said by email. “On behalf of the 5,000 detained children we represent, we are deeply grateful for the court’s humane order.”
The Flores agreement has faced multiple challenges since the Trump administration in 2018 enacted a policy of separating family members at the border as a means of dissuading illegal crossings. The administration backed down but was slow to reunite children when their parents.
Plaintiffs alleged the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement stopped releasing children to parents, relatives or potential guardians in New York, California and Washington to avoid becoming entangled in those states’ stay-at-home rules during the pandemic.
They also argued the government was dragging its feet by halting the release process for some children because parents, relatives and potential guardians couldn’t easily be fingerprinted for background checks.
Plaintiffs said delays endangered children as the virus could spread in detention facilities, citing a nonprofit facility in Texas “placed under a 14-day quarantine order,” according to Friday’s ruling.
They also alleged that a teen turned 18 during “quarantine” and was released to ICE rather than going to a family placement program “already secured for him.”
Gee did not agree with all those claims. But she concluded: “ORR and ICE shall continue to make every effort to promptly and safely release” children represented by plaintiffs.
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The solution is obvious: 1) release the kids👍; 2) jail Stephen ☠️🤮Miller👍👍👍.
Here’s a copy of Judge Gee’s latest order in Flores v. Barr:
So yes, McConnell’s position is stupid. But it’s also vile.
Think of who would be hurt if state and local governments are forced to make drastic cuts. A lot of state money goes to Medicaid, a program that should be expanding, not shrinking, as millions of Americans are losing their health insurance along with their jobs.
As for the state and local government workers who may be either losing their jobs or facing pay cuts, most are employed in education, policing, firefighting and highways. So if McConnell gets his way, America’s de facto policy will be one of bailing out the owners of giant restaurant chains while firing schoolteachers and police officers.
Last but not least, let’s talk about McConnell’s hypocrisy, which like his stupidity comes on multiple levels.
At one level, it’s really something to see a man who helped ram through a giant tax cut for corporations — which they mainly used to buy back their own stock — now pretend to be deeply concerned about borrowing money to help states facing a fiscal crisis that isn’t their fault.
At another level, it’s also really something to see McConnell, whose state is heavily subsidized by the federal government, give lectures on self-reliance to states like New York that pay much more in federal taxes than they get back.
We’re not talking about small numbers here. According to estimates by the Rockefeller Institute, from 2015 to 2018 Kentucky — which pays relatively little in federal taxes, because it’s fairly poor, but gets major benefits from programs like Medicare and Social Security — received net transfers from Washington averaging more than $33,000 per person. That was 18.6 percent of the state’s G.D.P.
True, relatively rich states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut probably should be helping out their poorer neighbors — but those neighbors don’t then get the right to complain about “blue state bailouts” in the face of a national disaster.
Of course, McConnell has an agenda here: He’s hoping to use the pandemic to force afflicted states to shrink their governments. We can only hope both that this shameless exploitation of tragedy fails and that McConnell and his allies pay a heavy political price.
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Read the rest of Krugman’s article at the link.
Have we all just been transported to “Jonestown 1978” ☠︎⚰️☠️⚰️?” Is our “Clown Prince” 🤡 actually the reincarnation of Rev. Jim Jones 🏴☠️?
Tired of being in the “Blue Majority” supporting “Red America” while excluded from control of our National Government? Tired of a Government of self-centered grifters — incapable of governing responsibly and in the public interest, but great at lining their pockets and those of their fat cat backers? Tired of an “Amateur Night at the Bijou” foreign policy that diminishes our nation and makes us the laughingstock the world? Tired of dealing with dirty water, polluted air, and crumbling bridges while the “Chief Clown” 🤡 sharpens his golf game? Tired of a kakistocracy that’s also a kelptocracy 💸 and practices nepotism? Tired of expensive health care that too often doesn’t improve the health of our nation? Tired of wages stagnating and benefits disappearing while the stock market goes bonkers and execs and shareholders get big payouts? Tired of lousy, anti-democracy judges 👨⚖️ who advance the interests of corporations, guns, and the GOP over the rights and dignity of individuals under our laws? Tired of paying the salaries of Neo-Nazi bigots like Stephen Miller? Tired of funding the “Afternoon Clown Show” 🤡 from the White House every day and dealing with its never-ending stream of dangerous ☠️ lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications?
Vote ‘Em Out, Vote ‘Em Out!
This November, send the “Clown Prince” 🤡, MM 🤮, and the rest of their anti-American party of disunity, incompetence, disorder, cruelty, stupidity, racism, and grift packing! Vote like your life depends on it! Because, it does!
Malathi Nayak Reporter Bloomberg NewsHon. A. Ashley Tabaddor President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges
As President Donald Trump prepares to pause immigration into the U.S., the court system that handles the removal of immigrants is projected to issue nearly 60% more deportation orders than last year.
With the rest of the U.S. legal system grinding to a near halt amid the pandemic, at the nation’s 69 federal immigration courts cleaning crews clad in hazmat suits are regularly used to make sure in-person hearings can continue. The courts are moving at speed to reduce a massive backlog of cases despite outdated technology and criticism from advocacy groups and a union representing most of the nation’s 460 immigration judges, who say the pace is putting people at risk of infection.
“The deportation machine has not stopped,” said Florida immigration lawyer Ira Kurzban. “It’s somewhat outrageous given the current circumstances.”
While the number of people deported from the U.S. fell in March, one research group predicts that the total number of deportation orders will rise for the 2020 fiscal year, despite the pandemic. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University group that tracks government enforcement actions, estimates there will be 340,500 deportation orders in the year ending Sept. 30, 2020, up from 215,535 for the prior year. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, declined to comment on the projection, saying it doesn’t certify third-party statistics.
The National Association of Immigration Judges says the continued operation of the courts is unsafe and has called for them to be closed. The Trump administration in 2018 set a quota for each immigration judge to close 700 cases a year, a requirement that remains in force during the pandemic, said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the union.
‘Hobbesian Choice’
U.S. immigration judges are “being forced into this Hobbesian choice of risking their health and having to keep their jobs,” said Tabaddor. She cites a colleague who is trying to meet his quota while minimizing his health risk as a throat cancer survivor.
Along with the judges, 1,200 support staff work in the nation’s immigration courts. Those courts are taking precautionary steps similar to those elsewhere in the federal system “to reduce the likelihood of exposure to Covid-19,” including holding hearings via phone or video conference whenever possible, according to Kathryn Mattingly, a Justice Department spokeswoman. Hearings involving people not in custody have also been suspended until May 15.
But judges and lawyers said it is harder for the immigration courts to operate remotely than other federal courts. While electronic document filing is routine in other federal courts, the immigration courts have struggled to introduce it, leaving most documents in paper form. Though some filings are now accepted by email, the many court employees without laptops need to come into the office to access them.
“The immigration courts are probably 20 years behind federal courts in terms of technology,” said Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge. Moreover, some immigration courts have rules where opting for a phone hearing means giving up the right to object to documents submitted by ICE, he said.
The current situation has immigration lawyers choosing between their personal well-being and a client’s future, Chase said. “Lawyers should not be put in this position.”
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Nice quotes from Judges Tabaddor and Chase!
Actually, when the “off docket”cases are factored in, the backlog exceeds 1.4 million cases. Even with artificially accelerated production, and if no new cases were filed by DHS (reality check — receipts have been exceeding completions for years) it would take until 2024 to “clear” the existing backlog. But, the reality is that even by speeding up the “Deportation Railroad,” adding new often inadequately trained judges largely from the ranks of prosecutors, eliminating Due Process, demeaning their own employees, and unethically skewing the law against migrants, EOIR has been unable to reduce the backlog by even one case under the Trump regime!
Indeed, when all of the pending and “off docket” cases are considered, the already large backlog left behind by the Obama Administration has more than doubled, and is well on its way to tripling, under the Trump regime’s “malicious incompetence” and pattern of often illegal and irrational behavior. Many of the “final orders of deportation” being cranked out by EOIR are either legally wrong or counterproductive — deporting harmless individuals who actually are productive members of our society, often with U.S. citizen family members. This system, including the mindless abuse of docket space by DHS Enforcement and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by EOIR, is broken! Yet, it’s allowed to continue grinding away, putting lives in danger in more ways than one.
And, speaking of incompetence, whether malicious or not, I was on the initial “E-Filing Group” that submitted comprehensive recommendations and a detailed plan for implementing e-filing to ”EOIR management” back in 2001 or 2002. Since then, successive waves of EOIR “management” have squandered time, money, and public trust without producing a usable product. Meanwhile, almost every other court in America has designed and implemented e-filing systems. This catastrophic failure in and of itself would more than justify eliminating EOIR and replacing it with a judicially-managed, independent, professionally administered court system that would guarantee due process, efficiency, and fundamental fairness for all.
But, that’s by no means the only problem at EOIR. It’s unconstitutional, unfair, dysfunctional, unprofessional, and downright dangerous. I have posted recently about how Courts of Appeals continue to find that the BIA has grossly misinterpreted, distorted, and/or misapplied both law and facts in “life or death cases.” Is “good enough for government work” really OK for human lives? That neither Congress nor the Article III Courts have had the guts and decency to put an end to this life-threatening farce staining our justice system is an unforgivable national disgrace.
Those of us who understand exactly what’s happening at EOIR under the Trump kakistocracy might at the moment be powerless to change it. But, we’re continuing to challenge the unacceptable status quo and making a public record of this grotesque malfeasance and of those in all three branches of Government who are “papering over” (and by doing so enabling) EOIR’s abuses. Eventually, positive change will come. The only question is how many lives and futures will unnecessarily be lost before it does?
Due Process Forever! Deadly ☠️ Clown Courts, 🤡 Never!
Jennifer M. Chacon and Ervin Chemerinsky in The New York Times:
A president has broad powers over immigration under the Constitution and federal laws, but they are not unlimited. At the very least, there must be a reasonable basis for restrictions on immigration. None exists for President Trump’s threat to temporarily ban all immigrant visa admissions to the United States.
As with earlier, problematic immigration policies like the entry ban aimed at several predominantly Muslim countries, this proposal started out with a remarkably broad promise by the president: a ban on all immigration. That sweeping rhetoric has a cost of its own. Among other things, it may discourage international students from enrolling in American universities this fall, and otherwise signal “keep out” to visitors who would actually boost the economy. But beyond the rhetorical overkill, there are other problems with this ban. The actual policy proposal is much less than promised by tweet, but even in its whittled down form, it is still unlawful.
A ban on the entry of individuals who have been granted immigrant visas would not affect as many people as you might think. Although there are usually more than 180 million entries into the United States every year, most of that traffic is by people holding temporary visas. This policy would affect only those immigrants who have been authorized for permanent residency. That involves less than a million people — a number that has declined in recent years because of other entry bans, new requirements on immigrants and slow visa processing. The answer to the crushing domestic unemployment crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak is clearly not going to be found in a ban on these immigrants.
On the other hand, the ban would cause enormous hardships for those who have been granted immigrant visas. Denial of green cards could keep parents and children and other family members from being together. Critical industries — including the overwhelmed medical industry — will lose out on vitally needed expertise just when it is needed most.
More on the Trump administration immigration policy.
Opinion | The Editorial Board
Coronavirus Doesn’t Care Where You Come From. Trump Still Does.March 31, 2020
One would think that such a draconian measure would have a strong justification. If nothing else, under the law, there has to be a legitimate basis for such an order. In upholding President Trump’s travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court stressed that it was based on a “DHS and other agencies … conduct[ing] a comprehensive evaluation” and “extensive findings.” The court found it constitutional because it served the legitimate purpose of national security.
In other words, even the court’s very deferential approach to presidential decisions concerning immigration in Trump v. Hawaii demanded that the actions be reasonable. The proposed ban on immigration cannot meet that test.
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Read the rest of the op-ed at the link.
WISHIN’ & HOPIN’ WON’T MAKE IT SO: THE LAW IS NO LONGER SUPREME IN AMERICA — Obviously, Trump Has Placed Himself Above It, With Little Pushback From Congress Or A Compromised Supremes
But, I take issue with their characterization of Trump v. Hawaii, the so-called “Travel Ban Case,” as requiring a “reasonable justification” for Executive action in the area of immigration.
That’s what the rule should be; but, it isn’t. And, that’s unlikely to change as long as the “J.R. Five” rule the Supremes.
Even some of their “Brethren,” on the left side of the Court but the right side of history, gamely but vainly plugging away for our Constitution and some intellectual honesty from their righty colleagues, are struggling to process the obvious tilt taking place on what should be a “level plaything field.”
On the record in Hawaii, there was nothing approaching “reasonable” about the bogus “national security” grounds for the ban. The record made it clear that the real reason was invidious discrimination against Muslims to fulfill a vile White Nationalist driven campaign promise.
Almost every lower Federal Court to consider the issue realized and articulated this obvious controlling fact. It wasn’t “rocket science.” Just the courage, integrity, and decency to speak truth to power — what life tenure is supposed to be all about.
The “national security” ground was pure pretext that contravened the consensus of the Government’s own internal professional experts, as shown by the record. The “after the fact,” obviously contrived “letter” from Sessions and Kelly asking the President to act was as phony as a three-dollar bill. Indeed, the idea that either of these hacks was acting out of some genuine expertise and legitimate concern for the national security rather than just following “orders from on high” (Sessions also out of a lifelong embrace of racism and xenophobia) is preposterous.
The real message of Hawaii is that Trump can throw up any old fabricated or fraudulent rationale for xenophobia, racism, and religious bigotry designed purely for improper political purposes and the GOP Supremes’ majority will happily look the other way.
That’s apparently because the ideologues who control the Supremes truly believe the GOP far right dogma that some people are more equal than others and that only the rich and powerful truly deserve the protections of the law. That’s why corporations, guns, and Trump generally win before today’s Supremes while voters, African Americans, Hispanics, Democrats, immigrants, and unions generally lose. And, Trump “got” the “encouraging permissive message” of the “J.R. Five” (with Kavanaugh now substituting for Kennedy) loud and clear. He’s acted accordingly.
Trump is no legal scholar. But, he has spent a career using the courts as a battering ram to smash the rule of law to smithereens. This allows him to punish his enemies, reward his cronies, line his pockets, welch on his debts, stiff his creditors, and otherwise lie, cheat, and steal all the while escaping both legal and moral accountability.
If there is one thing that he can smell a mile away, it’s a toady judge. And, in Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, & Kavanaugh, the stench of cowardly complicity with tyranny is overwhelming.
Trump and his “Blitzkrieg” have simply outflanked and overwhelmed it. They have pushed decades of refugee, asylum, human rights, and immigration laws into a “mass grave” without any Congressional approval and, when expedient, have just ignored or directly contravened the clear intent of Congress. Any judge worth his or her salt would see this as an obvious existential assault on our Constitution and our fundamental values and act accordingly. But, not this Supremes’ majority. Certainly, the “J.R. Five” would have been right at home serving Henri Petain and the Vichy regime.
The “J.R. Five” employs all sorts of obtuse legal jargon and gobbledygook to cover up their immorality and intellectual dishonesty. It would be a mistake, however, to expect them to stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and human decency where immigration policy is concerned.
Expect them instead to buy Trump’s bogus public safety and economic emergency rationales hook, line, and sinker. Heck, this might even be a great opportunity for them to intervene at the U.S. District Court level to facilitate the abuse, further demoralize District Court Judges, reinforce xenophobia, suck up to Trump, and do away with nationwide injunctions except where the regime requests them. The lives of the vulnerable are dispensable to this group of privileged ivory tower jurists.
Trump and the GOP can eventually be voted out of power. But, the problems of a Supremes’ majority that has life-tenure and has lost its way, legally, intellectually, and morally, will be with us for the indefinite future.
Until that’s changed, expecting help from the Supremes in protecting democracy from tyranny is like expecting honesty, reasonableness, and leadership from Trump. Not likely!
Academic analyses, no matter how brilliant or cogent, that fail to account for the partisan bias and political realities at work at the Supremes’ today won’t help us much in predicting the bleak future of the rule of law and individual rights in America if change and reform doesn’t come to all levels of our Federal Judiciary. Sadly, what’s happening today has little to do with what we all learned in law school.
We need to be prepared to meet and deal with today’s reality, no matter how unpalatable it might be. More important, once we retake control of our country and our destiny, we need vastly improved Federal Judges at all levels, particularly the Supremes. The “J.R. Five” are the anthesis of what we should be seeking and demanding in a future, better Federal Judiciary. Never again!
They arrive 24 hours a day in the Mexican border city of Reynosa, groups of men, women and children deported by the United States. Each time, at the edge of the international bridge, Ricardo Calderón Macias and his team get ready.
They put on masks and gloves. They prepare their thermometers and health forms. They wonder, sometimes aloud: Will anyone in this group test positive?
“We’re worried that eventually, with these deportations, we’re all going to get infected,” said Calderón, the regional director of the Tamaulipas state immigration institute.
Since the coronavirus struck the United States, immigration authorities have deported dozens of infected migrants, leaving governments and nonprofits across Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean struggling to respond.
[[Public health experts: Coronavirus could overwhelm the developing world]]
When some countries resisted continued deportations, U.S. officials said they would screen migrants slated for removal. But they did not commit to administering coronavirus tests. In many instances, the screenings, which consist primarily of taking a person’s temperature, have failed to detect cases. Even though overall deportations declined this month, the United States has returned thousands of people across the Western Hemisphere in April.
President Trump said late Monday he would “suspend immigration” to the United States. Even before that announcement, officials in the region were concerned about the deportations. Guatemala’s health minister spoke this month of the worrying number of infected deportees sent from the United States — the “Wuhan of the Americas,” he said.
[[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]]
Mexicans just deported from the United States walk toward a repatriation building in Matamoros. (Veronica Cardenas/Reuters)
Mexico’s Tamaulipas state, across the Rio Grande from the southern tip of Texas, is receiving roughly 100 deportees per day, officials there say. In some cases, repatriation workers have noticed that deportees are visibly sick as they arrive. Those deportations are blamed for at least one new outbreak in a Mexican migrant shelter.
On Monday, the Mexican government asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to test deportees for the virus, but DHS has not committed to doing so, according to a Mexican official with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe diplomatic talks.
In Guatemala, at least 50 deportees have tested positive, about 17 percent of the country’s total confirmed cases. Three-quarters of passengers on a deportation flight to Guatemala City last month were infected, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Guatemalan officials said last week they would suspend returns from the United States.
[[Coronavirus outbreaks at Mexico’s hospitals raise alarm, protests]]
In Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, three people sent back from the United States in early April have tested positive, officials said. The country has 62 ventilators for 11 million people. The Trump administration reportedly was planning another deportation flight to Haiti this week.
“Rather than be deported where they face serious harm if they fall ill and risk infecting thousands of others, they should be released from detention into the care of their friends and families so that they may safely quarantine,” a coalition of 164 human rights and religious organizations said in an open letter pleading for suspension of deportations.
Health workers carry supplies delivered by family members to a temporary shelter for Guatemalan citizens deported from the United States in Guatemala City. (Moises Castillo/AP)
In Mexico over the past week, two deportees tested positive for the virus. Calderón’s team spotted a deportee in Reynosa who was visibly ill, with a dry cough, red eyes and a fever. They wondered how the man, who arrived from Atlanta, had made it through U.S. health screenings.
A second man was deported to Nuevo Laredo from Houston “without knowing he was a carrier of the virus,” the Tamaulipas state government said in a statement, and was sent to a migrant shelter in the city.
That case apparently prompted an outbreak in the shelter, Casa del Migrante Nazareth; 14 others have since tested positive.
“The risk we face is bringing a massive contagion into our own country,” said Raúl Cardenas, the city manager of Nuevo Laredo. “We’re mortified that these deportations are continuing.”
. . . .
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Not only are Trump’s immigration diversions racist and inappropriate, they are dangerous and threaten unnecessarily to spread the pandemic. Unwilling and unable to address the real needs of the American people during the pandemic (see, e.g., tests, aid to states, speaking truth, encouraging compliance with “best practices”) Trump diverts our resources on controversial and counterproductive measures while diminishing our national humanity and surrendering our world leadership.
This November, Vote ‘Em Out. End The Deadly ☠️ Trump/GOP Clown Show 🤡!
“A federal judge today ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to promptly revisit custody determinations, including consideration of release for all persons in ICE detention whose age or health conditions place them at increased risk due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The order comes weeks after the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Orrick LLP and Willkie Farr and Gallagher LLP filed for an emergency preliminary injunction on March 25.
In his blistering rebuke of the government’s response to Covid-19 in detention centers, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal wrote, “As a result of these deficiencies, many of which persist more than a month into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Court concludes Defendants have likely exhibited callous indifference to the safety and wellbeing of the Subclass members [detained immigrants at risk]. The evidence suggests systemwide inaction that goes beyond a mere ‘difference of medical opinion or negligence.’” “
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Go on over to LexisNexis above for a link to the SPLC report and copy of Judge Bernal’s order.
Thanks and congrats to SPLC and all the pro bono all-stars involved for taking this on. Will there eventually be accountability and liability for what appears to be intentional, life threatening misconduct, or at best criminal negligence, among officials of the Trump regime?
There is a single, overarching reality that President Trump cannot make disappear: Due to his pathological unwillingness to take coronavirus seriously, Trump catastrophically squandered numerous early weeks that could have been used to develop a much more robust federal response, and right now we’re living through the horrible consequences.
Trump’s new suspension on immigration, which he “announced” on Twitter late last night, should be seen through this prism.
The new suspension has two rationales, according to Trump and White House officials: To continue combating coronavirus and to protect U.S. workers amid a crushing economic downturn.
It will do neither of those things in any meaningful sense — which means that it won’t have the impact that Trump himself says it’s designed to.
According to the New York Times, Trump will sign an executive order that temporarily bars “the provision of new green cards and work visas,” which means the administration will “no longer approve any applications from foreigners to live and work in the United States for an undetermined period of time.”
It’s hard to say how much of an impact this will have. As the Wall Street Journal points out:
Administration officials said the order wouldn’t make substantial changes to current U.S. policy. Even without an executive order, the administration has already all but ceased nearly every form of immigration. Most visa processing has been halted, meaning almost no one can apply for a visa to visit or move to the U.S. Visa interviews and citizenship ceremonies have been postponed and the refugee program paused.
Immigration analyst Sarah Pierce notes that a lot will turn on details, such as whether this suspension applies to foreign nationals already here and applying for green cards or trying to renew visas, or if it only applies to people outside the country who want to come here, which is effectively no longer possible already.
“If they want to make official what’s already in place, it would make a flashy statement while having minimal impact,” Pierce told me, adding that if they did apply it to people who are already here as well, it could be a lot worse.
President Trump on April 20 said he will issue an executive order temporarily suspending all immigration into the country. (Reuters)
We’ll see soon enough. But we can say right now that this isn’t a solution to the current problems we face on coronavirus, because those problems are rooted in the spread that already took place here. We are starting to bend the curve through social distancing — which Trump long resisted, and which he then tried to undo prematurely before backing off.
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Yup! You can read the rest of Greg’s article at the link.
Now, in a real democracy, with an independent judiciary, we’d expect immediate and forceful repudiation and perhaps sanctions against the Executive for this latest racist scam.
But, as I have pointed out many times, the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes has a never-ending appetite for putting the law, our Constitution, and simple human decency aside and blindly supporting, enabling, and encouraging the White Nationalist regime in its various immigration scams and shenanigans. They are all as transparently bogus as this one. Trump makes an off the wall political statement out of the White Nationalist playbook and the minions run around trying to engineer and fabricate a legal pretext. The lower Federal Courts often immediately see through the fraud; but, the Supremes step in to rescue the racist agenda, sweep it under the carpet, and in doing so “greenlight” the next extreme step.
Sadly, even regime change won’t be enough to immediately restore courage, integrity, and human decency to our failed highest court. But, it will be a start. Sometimes, “internal rebellion from below” can force change, or at least some integrity and accountability, back into a failing judicial system.
Due Process Forever! White Nationalist Scams Never!
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
This article appears in the Special Preview: June 2020 issue.
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.
Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.
Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?
This is the third major crisis of the short 21st century. The first, on September 11, 2001, came when Americans were still living mentally in the previous century, and the memory of depression, world war, and cold war remained strong. On that day, people in the rural heartland did not see New York as an alien stew of immigrants and liberals that deserved its fate, but as a great American city that had taken a hit for the whole country. Firefighters from Indiana drove 800 miles to help the rescue effort at Ground Zero. Our civic reflex was to mourn and mobilize together.
Partisan politics and terrible policies, especially the Iraq War, erased the sense of national unity and fed a bitterness toward the political class that never really faded. The second crisis, in 2008, intensified it. At the top, the financial crash could almost be considered a success. Congress passed a bipartisan bailout bill that saved the financial system. Outgoing Bush-administration officials cooperated with incoming Obama administration officials. The experts at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department used monetary and fiscal policy to prevent a second Great Depression. Leading bankers were shamed but not prosecuted; most of them kept their fortunes and some their jobs. Before long they were back in business. A Wall Street trader told me that the financial crisis had been a “speed bump.”
All of the lasting pain was felt in the middle and at the bottom, by Americans who had taken on debt and lost their jobs, homes, and retirement savings. Many of them never recovered, and young people who came of age in the Great Recession are doomed to be poorer than their parents. Inequality—the fundamental, relentless force in American life since the late 1970s—grew worse.
This second crisis drove a profound wedge between Americans: between the upper and lower classes, Republicans and Democrats, metropolitan and rural people, the native-born and immigrants, ordinary Americans and their leaders. Social bonds had been under growing strain for several decades, and now they began to tear. The reforms of the Obama years, important as they were—in health care, financial regulation, green energy—had only palliative effects. The long recovery over the past decade enriched corporations and investors, lulled professionals, and left the working class further behind. The lasting effect of the slump was to increase polarization and to discredit authority, especially government’s.
Both parties were slow to grasp how much credibility they’d lost. The coming politics was populist. Its harbinger wasn’t Barack Obama but Sarah Palin, the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trump’s John the Baptist.
Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an understanding. Whatever their differences on issues like trade and immigration, they shared a basic goal: to strip-mine public assets for the benefit of private interests. Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves Trump’s footmen.
Like a wanton boy throwing matches in a parched field, Trump began to immolate what was left of national civic life. He never even pretended to be president of the whole country, but pitted us against one another along lines of race, sex, religion, citizenship, education, region, and—every day of his presidency—political party. His main tool of governance was to lie. A third of the country locked itself in a hall of mirrors that it believed to be reality; a third drove itself mad with the effort to hold on to the idea of knowable truth; and a third gave up even trying.
Trump acquired a federal government crippled by years of right-wing ideological assault, politicization by both parties, and steady defunding. He set about finishing off the job and destroying the professional civil service. He drove out some of the most talented and experienced career officials, left essential positions unfilled, and installed loyalists as commissars over the cowed survivors, with one purpose: to serve his own interests. His major legislative accomplishment, one of the largest tax cuts in history, sent hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and the rich. The beneficiaries flocked to patronize his resorts and line his reelection pockets. If lying was his means for using power, corruption was his end.
This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: in prosperous cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.
. . . .
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Read the rest of Packer’s article at the link.
Very discouraging. But, it’s not too late, yet. We have a chance in November to throw out the Trump/GOP Kakistocracy and start rebuilding America with a vision of the common good, common sense, and human dignity! Be the best, rather than running a “race to the bottom.”
Let’s consign Trump and his toadies to the same “dustbin of history” as Pétain and his collaborators!
This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!
Immigration judges and employees at the Executive Office of Immigration Review said the agency’s informal policy to keep offices and courts open puts deportations over workers’ safety.
APRIL 20, 2020 05:31 PM ET
For weeks, employees at the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s immigration courts and offices have noticed a trend: whenever someone exhibits coronavirus symptoms, the agency quietly shuts the facility down for a day or two, cleans the office, and then reopens.
The frequency of these incidents, combined with the apparent refusal by management to take more proactive steps, like temporarily closing immigration courts altogether or instituting telework for EOIR support staff, have employees and judges fearing that the Trump administration is more concerned with keeping up the volume of immigration case decisions than the health of its own workforce.
Since Government Executive first reported on an instance of an employee with COVID-19 symptoms at a Falls Church, Virginia, EOIR office last week, there have been three additional incidents at that facility, including one where the person eventually tested positive for coronavirus. An office in the Dallas-Fort Worth area also was closed for two days in March after someone exhibited symptoms of the virus.
Additionally, the agency has announced on its official Twitter account more than 30 immigration court closures, most only for one or two days, across the country. Although in most instances officials do not explain the closures, National Association of Immigration Judges President Ashley Tabaddor said that if there is no reason listed, “you can be sure” it is a result of coronavirus exposure.
“Everything is reactive,” Tabbador said. “They put everyone at risk, and then when there’s an incident reported, they shut down the court for a day and then force people to come back to work. At Otay Mesa [in San Diego] there’s a huge outbreak, but they still haven’t shared that information . . . Sometimes we get the info and sometimes we don’t, so we don’t know how accurate or complete it is. There’s no faith that everyone who needs to be notified has been notified.”
Nancy Sykes, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2525, which represents staff at EOIR’s office in Falls Church said the amount of information provided to employees about coronavirus-related incidents has actually decreased in recent weeks. Although after the first incident, EOIR Director James McHenry emailed staff and provided information about when the employee was symptomatic and in the office, subsequent notifications were sent out by Acting Board of Immigration Appeals Chairman Garry Malphrus and omitted key information about when symptomatic individuals were in the building.
“Employees are scared, they’re concerned,” Sykes said. “They don’t really trust what’s coming from management just because of the lack of details being shared. There’s a lag in information: by the time something is revealed, so much time has passed, so nobody’s clear how that process works and why it takes so long to get notice out to employees.”
In a statement, EOIR spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said that the agency “takes the safety, health and well-being of employees very seriously,” but that the workforce is critical to ensuring the due process of detained suspected undocumented immigrants.
“Accordingly, EOIR’s current operational status is largely in line with that of most courts across the country, which have continued to receive and process filings and to hold critical hearings, while deferring others as appropriate,” Mattingly wrote. “Recognizing that cases of detained individuals may implicate unique constitutional concerns and raise particular issues of public safety, personal liberty, and due process, few courts have closed completely.”
A Series of Half Measures
Agency management has taken some steps to mitigate employees’ exposure to COVID-19. On March 30, the agency postponed all hearings related to individuals who are not being detained while they await adjudication. The agency is also encouraging the use of teleconferencing, video-teleconferencing and the filing of documents by mail or electronically, and some attorneys, paralegals and judges have been able to make use of telework to reduce the amount of time they spend in the office.
But thus far, the agency has refused to postpone hearings for detained individuals, a matter that is now the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by immigration advocates and attorney groups. And the agency has denied telework opportunities to support staff in EOIR offices and immigration courts across the country.
Sykes said the lack of telework is in part a capacity issue—the agency does not have the amount of laptops on hand to distribute to employees. But she suggested that local management may be prohibited from encouraging workplace flexibilities by agency or department leadership.
“We’ve asked management about doing something where you could have employees come in shifts every other day, or over a week’s time in rotation to pick up and drop off work materials, so that there’s less exposure when coming into the office,” she said. “But they said they have not been authorized to make those types of changes to our business. When my board management says they don’t have the authority, that means it’s over their heads.”
Tabaddor said she has heard similar stories that everything judges and supervisors authorize regarding coronavirus response must be “cleared” by someone up the chain of command.
“Supervisory judges, our first line of supervisory contact, they were told that they cannot put anything in writing about the pandemic or COVID,” she said. “Anything they want to do related to that has to be cleared by HQ and, essentially, the White House. So, to date, they haven’t been told what standards and protocols are to be used. The only thing they’ve been told is if there’s a report of any incident, they are to kick it up to HQ and wait for instructions.”
On Monday, McHenry sent an email to EOIR employees announcing that the agency has ordered face masks for employees to wear when they report to the office, and said they would be available “next week.”
“Once delivered, supervisors will provide their staff with information regarding distribution to employees who are not telework eligible and are working in the office,” McHenry wrote. “Even while using face coverings, however, please continue to be vigilant in maintaining social distancing measures to the maximum extent practicable and in following CDC guidance.”
Production Over People
Agency employees said what they have seen over the last month suggests that the agency is prioritizing working on its more than 1 million case backlog, and enabling the Homeland Security Department to continue to apprehend suspected undocumented immigrants, at the expense of the wellbeing of its workforce.
“Everything is designed under the rubric that the show must go on,” Tabbador said. “While we’ve been focused on public health first . . . the department says, ‘Nope, we need to make sure that the machinery continues. To the extent that we can acknowledge social distancing as long as business continues, we can do it. But between business and health considerations, business as usual supersedes health.”
Sykes said the agency’s resistance to making basic changes to protect its employees is troubling.
“To me, the only other explanation is the immense backlog that we have of immigration appellate cases building up, and the need to continue working on that backlog even in light of the current pandemic,” she said. “It’s very unnerving, because I believe this will continue, and I don’t have any other indication that we’re not going to just continue operations as is. We now finally have a confirmed case [in the building] and there’s still no change.”
In an affidavit filed in response to the lawsuit seeking to postpone immigration court hearings for detained individuals, McHenry said he has given individual immigration courts leeway to respond as needed to the COVID-19 outbreak in their communities.
“Because COVID-19 has not affected all communities nationwide in the same manner and because EOIR’s dockets vary considerably from court to court, the challenges presented by COVID-19 are not the same for every immigration court,” McHenry wrote. “In recognition of these variances and of the fact that local immigration judges and court staff are often in the best position to address challenges tailored to the specifics of their court’s practices, EOIR has not adopted a ‘one size fits all’ policy for every immigration court, though it has issued generally-applicable guidance regarding access to EOIR space, the promotion of practices that reduce the need for hearings, and the maximization of the use of telephonic and means through which to hold hearings.”
But he also suggested it could hamper the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the ability of the Border Patrol to keep arresting suspected undocumented immigrants.
“The blanket postponement of all detained cases in removal proceedings, including initial master calendar hearings for aliens recently detained by DHS, would make it extremely difficult for DHS to arrest and detain aliens prospectively, even aliens with significant criminal histories or national security concerns, because of the uncertainty of how long an alien would have to remain in custody before being able to obtain a hearing in front of an [immigration judge] that may lead to the alien’s release,” he wrote.
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Thanks, Laura, for “packaging” this so neatly for further distribution! And many thanks to Erich Wagner over at Government Executive for “keeping on” this story he originally reported and that I also posted @ Courtside. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-5mO
Nice to know that someone is looking out for the public interest here, even if EOIR isn’t.
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Wow, these self-serving “GrimGrams” ☠️⚰️ from McHenry must be very comforting to the EOIR employees 😰🧫 whose health 🤮 and safety ☠️ is on the line, not to mention the possibility that they will eventually infect their own families.😰
Deportations over safety, sanity and public health at EOIR. It’s just “business as usual” in the Clown Courts! 🤡
April 21, 2020. Migrants didn’t bring coronavirus to the U.S. Inevitable as its arrival was, U.S. travelers returning from abroad hastened the infection. The Trump regime ignored advanced warnings, wasted time, failed to prepare, and intentionally misled the public into believing that the problem was minor and under control. As we know, it was neither. No wonderthe “Chief Clown” needs to shift attention to “the usual suspects.”
Rather than being a threat, courageous, talented, hard-working migrants of all types have been at the forefront of our battle against coronavirus. They put their own lives at risk to provide health care, medical research, food, sanitation, delivery, stocking, transportation, cleaning, technology, and other essential services. Their reward from Trump, Miller, and the other regime racists: to be scapegoated and further dehumanized by those whose “malicious incompetence” actually threatens the health and safety of all Americans.
Nobody knows what the U.S. economy will look like post-COVID-19. But, we can be sure that migrants will play a key role in our future. And, of course, permanent legal immigrants are carefully screened and required to undergo health examination before being admitted.
Meanwhile, Democrats complain, but show show no sign of actually using their leverage to halt the regime’s invidious assault on migrants. They weren’t even to get all taxpaying immigrant families included in the initial stimulus payments nor have they been able to require immigration authorities to comply with best health practices for detained migrants. Nor does it look like the needs of migrants will be addressed by the latest proposed legislation, although exact details are still pending. So, their bluster is just that —bluster.
Undoubtedly, the brave lawyers of the New Due Process Army will mount legal challenges to this latest assault on the rule of law. While some challenges might succeed in the lower Federal Courts, to date the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes have shown no inclination to look critically at any of the regime’s many misuses and abuses of so-called “emergency” and “national security” rationales, even when they are transparently bogus “pretexts” for xenophobia, religious bigotry, and racism.
Perhaps it’s largely a moot point right now. Market forces affect immigration. With worldwide travel restrictions, borders closed, and 22 million out of work in the U.S., the allure of migration to the U.S. should be sharply reduced.
The Trump regime’s open hostility to immigrants plus our chaotic response to COVID-19, perhaps the world’s worst overall at this point, might make the U.S. a less attractive place for future immigration, particularly for legal migrants who have other choices. Demand for migration is normally a sign of economic and social health. As America fades into disorder under the kakistocracy, so might our ability to attract migrants, particularly those we claim to prize.
According to James Hohmann at the Washington Post, senior officials at the DHS were surprised by Trump’s late night tweet announcing the impending action. As Hohmann noted, that’s an indication of the deep thought, analysis, and preparation that went into this action. Trump has normalized incompetence and dumb decisions made based on a racist political agenda to the point where they barley cause a ripple in our distorted national discussion anymore. I’d say it was like being “goverened” by a five-year-old, but that would be a supreme insult to most five-year-olds I know.
While the “Chief Clown” can’t move fast enough to reopen the economy, even in the face of solid evidence that the it’s premature in most areas, don’t expect the bogus “immigration emergency” to end as long as this regime is in power. Crisis becomes yet another opportunity for the “worst of the worst among us” — the kakistocracy — to act on their biases and prejudices and get away with it.
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats slammed President Donald Trump after he announced that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, arguing that such a move does nothing to protect Americans from the coronavirus and deflects attention away from his handling of the outbreak.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., tweeted that Trump is the “xenophobe. In. chief.”
“This action is not only an attempt to divert attention away from Trump’s failure to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, but an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda. We must come together to reject his division,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Shortly after 10 p.m. ET on Monday, Trump announced in a tweet, “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
There were no additional details. A senior administration official said Trump could sign the executive order as early as this week.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee, called it a “pathetic attempt to shift blame from his Visible Incompetence to an Invisible Enemy.”
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Read Rebecca’s full article at the link.
Due Process Forever. The White Nationalist Kakistocracy Never!
On Thursday night, perhaps having been zapped with some sort of taser that sent a momentary current of sense through his body, Donald Trump announced that despite previously, falsely claiming he had “total” authority to force states to reopen far sooner than experts say is safe, the decision would be left to the individual governors. “If they need to remain closed,” he said, “we will allow them to do that.” Then he went to bed and woke up the exact same lunatic we’ve come to know and fear over the last three-plus years, and decided to spend a portion of his day whipping anti-social distancing protesters into a frenzy, contradicting everything he had said less than 24 hours prior.
The three states Trump all-caps called out have the distinction of being run by Democratic governors who’ve had the temerity to insist that logic and science will dictate when and how they will get people back to everyday life, a plan that has been met by mobs of angryprotesters who’d prefer to congregate in large groups ASAP, wildly contagious coronavirus be damned. While some of them, like Virginia’s Ralph Northam, dismissed Trump’s tweets as the ravings of an online troll, saying at a press conference that he’s “fighting a biological war” and “[does] not have time” to involve himself in “Twitter wars,” others were less inclined to let them slide.
The president’s statements this morning encourage illegal and dangerous acts,” Washington governor Jay Inslee wrote on Twitter. “He is putting millions of people in danger of contracting COVID-19. His unhinged rantings and calls for people to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before.” He continued: “The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies—even while his own administration says the virus is real, it is deadly and we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted…. The president’s actions threaten his own goal of recovery. His words will likely cause a spike in infections where distancing is working. That will further postpose the 14 days of decline his own guidance says is necessary to ease restrictions…. I hope someday we can look at today’s meltdown as something to be pitied, rather than condemned. But we don’t have that luxury today. There is too much at stake.”
Meanwhile, in a Friday call with Mike Pence, Senate Democrats questioned the vice president re: what the hell Trump is doing and if they can expect someone in the administration to sit him down and tell him to cut the shit. To which the answer was obviously no:
Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pressed Pence on Trump’s Twitter feed at the end of the call, asking why the president was trying to incite division by tweeting “LIBERATE” Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan and aligning himself with protests in those states over their lockdowns. Pence said the administration is working with governors but that the president will continue to communicate with the American people as he always has.
So that’s something to look forward to.
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Trump sends an additional half a billion dollars to states to fight COVID-19
No, just kidding. That money’s actually going to his completely useless wall, per the Daily Beast:
In the middle of a pandemic that has killed 27,000 Americans and counting, the Army this week gave a politically connected Montana firm half a billion dollars—not to manufacture ventilators or protective gear to fight the novel coronavirus, but to build 17 miles of President Trump’s southern border wall. On Tuesday, the Army Corps of Engineers announced it awarded BFBC, an affiliate of Barnard Construction, $569 million in contract modifications for building “17.17 miles” of the wall in two California locations, El Centro and San Diego. That works out to over $33 million per mile—steeply above the $20 million-per-mile average that the Trump administration is already doling out for the wall. Construction is supposed to be completed by the end of June 2021.
On the bright side, it’s not like the money is effectively being lit on fire except, oh wait, that’s exactly what it’s like:
Smugglers sawed into new sections of President Trump’s border wall 18 times in the San Diego area during a single one-month span late last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection records obtained by the Washington Post via a Freedom of Information Act request…. The records do not indicate whether the one-month span last year is a representative sample of how frequently people are trying to breach new sections of Trump’s border barrier, which are made of tall steel bollards partially filled with concrete and rebar. The Post reported last November that smuggling crews armed with common battery-operated power tools—including reciprocating saws that retail for as little as $100 at home improvement stores—can cut through the bollards using inexpensive blades designed for slicing through metal and stone.
On Wednesday, a group of 66 representatives and 25 senators sent a letter to the administration calling for the halting of construction on the wall until the coronavirus crisis is tackled. “We should be using all resources and funding to combat this virus and protect Americans, instead of using critical funding and resources to continue the construction of a border wall,” the lawmakers wrote. “The construction of a wall puts workers, law enforcement personnel, and border residents in immediate danger.” Said letter will presumably be used as toilet paper in the West Wing washroom, but it was a valiant effort nevertheless.
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You can read the rest of the “Levin Report” at the above link.
James Downie Digital Opinions Editor Washington Post
Meanwhile, over at the WashPost, James Downie weighs in on our spineless Veep:
When Donald Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate in 2016, the obvious political benefit was that Pence, a former governor and House member who is famously Christian, could boost evangelical and conservative turnout to help Republicans up and down the ballot. But for the egomaniacal Trump, Pence had another key qualification: “He says nice things about me.”
Since being named to the ticket, Pence has repeatedly put his obsequiousness on display: Few on Team Trump are better at deploying up-is-down reasoning to spin news to Trump’s benefit. But during the vice president’s appearances on NBC’s and Fox News’s Sunday morning talk shows, it was clear that even Pence could not bootlick his way out of the lurch the president’s actions leave the rest of us in.
On Friday, Trump spoke out in support of protests against stay-at-home orders imposed by Democratic governors in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia. It’s disturbing enough that the president would undermine the fight against the pandemic. Worse was his provocative call on Twitter to “LIBERATE” those states — and, in Virginia’s case, “save your great 2nd Amendment” — which caught the attention of far-right extremists. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) rightly observed Friday, “The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies — even while his own administration says the virus is real.”
Protests with honking horns, anti-shutdown signs and angry Americans continued in Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin on April 18. (The Washington Post)
[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]
Naturally, hosts on both NBC and Fox asked the vice president to explain the president’s comments. After all, as Fox host Chris Wallace pointed out, “they’re protesting your own guidelines to stop the spread.” On Fox, Pence focused on bragging about the White House coronavirus task force. When pressed, he assured viewers that “no one in America wants to reopen this country more than President Donald Trump” — a line he repeated on NBC. In both interviews, he then turned to touting guidelines that Trump issued Thursday for reopening states. Pence omitted that the guidance leaves key decisions up to governors, who Trump has said should call the shots on reopening. Both are in keeping with this president’s refusal to take responsibility for the pandemic crisis or a national response.
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The simple truth is that Pence dodged because the president’s actions were indefensible. But Pence can’t say that, both because the protests are being cheered by Fox News and like-minded outlets and because Pence wants to stay in the good graces of a president who values loyalty to him above all else. So long as conservative media and egomania mean more to the president than Americans’ lives, the rest of the country suffers.
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Read the rest of Downie’s op-ed at the link.
Actually, Pence is the only person in the Trump regime that the Clown-in-Chief can’t arbitrarily remove from office for speaking truth. Sure, Trump can toss him off the ticket for November. But, there are other factors here:
In the best case scenario, it won’t make any difference because Biden will win;
Trump might still remove Pence from the ticket on a whim, no matter how much he sucks up;
At some point is being a coward/toady/apologist for the most corrupt President in U.S. history really worth sacrificing the health and welfare of our nation as well as your human dignity?
I guess for someone like Pence, toadyism has no limits. But, America needs and deserves better from its #2.
This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does! Throw the Clowns out!🤡
