Coronavirus – Page 9 – immigrationcourtside.com

☠️⚰️POLITICOS, MEDIA CONTINUE TO GET THE BORDER WRONG — By Mary Giovagnoli In MS — “For the present, we must stop pretending that the U.S. can pick and choose when people will leave their countries and ask for asylum at our border.”👎🏻

Mary Giovagnoli · Senior Legal Counsel, Strategy and Special Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)
PHOTO: Medium.com

The Misery Trump Left at the Border Is Finally Being Revealed – Ms. Magazine
. . . .

Trump supporters and hangers-on boast the “success” of Trump’s immigration policies, demonstrated by the supposed drop in illegal entries. But this is merely an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to managing a very real problem. It was a giant sleight of hand which hid the actual number of people seeking entry into the U.S. Biden’s policies have pulled back the curtain and like so many other aspects of Trump’s administration, it is clear that the claims of success are nothing more than fantasies.

And yet the Biden administration is not off the hook. While it did agree to permit unaccompanied children to enter the U.S. despite the Title 42 ban, it did so following a preliminary injunction issued by a federal court last November. DHS continues to expel families, as well as single men and women, under the existing Title 42 order.

. . . .

Despite the clear moral and legal imperatives to stop Title 42 expulsions, the Biden administration is clearly worried that returning to pre-pandemic processing of asylum seekers will overwhelm the system. It is also clear that they fear a political backlash if critics are able to characterize the border as out of control.

Taking these final steps takes courage and political will. Those of us who support the rights of asylum seekers have to let the administration know that doing the right thing will not tarnish its reputation and that we will work even harder to ensure that making good on humane immigration policy is not political suicide.

Protecting asylum seekers is a woman’s issue of the first order. We must encourage and challenge both the administration and Congress to live up to U.S. obligations. We must turn out at the voting booth to support candidates and elected officials who act on behalf of asylum seekers. And we must push back, every way we can, against those who hope to weaponize the border in a callous effort to turn following the law into a political liability.

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

Read Mary’s complete article at the link. Many thanks to Judge Alex Manuel of the ABA’s National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary for passing this along.

Surprisingly, “forced migration,” is exactly what it says it is: “FORCED migration” — not optional! As I have pointed out before: “We can diminish ourselves as nation (and are doing so), but it won’t stop human migration.”

Refugees come, because that’s what refugees do. They often come when the world is in crisis, because that’s one of the primary reasons why refugees flee. They seldom come in an orderly manner because flight to save your life doesn’t lend itself to “regularity.” How many Jews perished in Nazi-controlled areas before and during WWII waiting for visas that were never going to come?

And, what brings refugees to our borders actually has little to do with inane statements of politicos, bureaucrats, border cops, and the media. One of the main consequences of illegally “closing the border to asylum seekers” is that large numbers simply enter between ports of entry. Those who used to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol are encouraged by our short-sighted policies and unwillingness to follow our own laws just to keep on going.

We’d certainly do much better if we “canned” all the Trump-era illegal, racist nonsense, reopened border ports to asylum seekers, and encouraged them to apply there or in locations abroad. But, to make that happen we would also have to review their claims in a timely, fair, and humane manner — not “rocket science,” yet something that largely has eluded our nation, particularly since 2014.

It’s achievable. But not without much better leadership coming from experts who actually know how to deal with refugee situations in a humane and effective manner. Failed bureaucrats and grandstanding politicos, those who usually “drive the train heading for a wreck,” can’t do the job! That’s been proved time and again! Why do we insist on repeating all our mistakes? Cruelty and threats simply aren’t effective.

To emphasize Mary’s concluding point about women’s concerns, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller made misogyny a focus of their vicious attack on people of color seeking asylum. It started with Sessions’s atrocious decision ignorantly and unlawfully targeting women refugees in Matter of A-B- and continued through Miller’s now-enjoined effort to unlawfully eradicate gender-based asylum grants. Never mind that women form the largest group of clearly identifiable refugees in the world and that femicide and violence against them driven by sexual antipathy and issues of control are rampant worldwide, particularly in the Northern Triangle.

But, a large problem here is that more than two months into the Biden Administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to repudiate Matter of A-B- and the other debilitating racist and misogynist “precedents” and grotesquely illegal anti-asylum policies of Sessions and Barr. Worse yet, he has neither stood up for the reinstatement of asylum laws and compliance with Constitutionally-required due process at the border, nor has he removed and replaced “his” Board of Immigration Appeals and taken steps to curb those of “his” Immigration “Judges” who are still engaged in furthering the Sessions/Barr White Nationalist, misogynist, anti-asylum agenda!

Interesting lack of action from a distinguished former Federal Judge who several months ago claimed great gratitude that his ancestors were given refuge from harm by the U.S. Is there some reason that those people of color and others now arriving at our borders and claiming legal protections under our laws are less deserving of fair, generous, and humane treatment?

Woman Tortured — Judge Garland’s View Of Proper Treatment of Women Seeking Asylum?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-21

🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/24/border-crisis-migrants-media-biden/

Leon Krauze in the WashPost tells us what’s really happening at the border. WARNING: It has little to do with the myths and false narratives being peddled by the GOP, the Administration, and the media.

The current emergency at the border has found the U. S. media at its most solipsistic. Coverage seems more focused on whether the emergency should be called “a crisis” (it should) and what the political fallout for the Biden administration will be. With few exceptions — like the remarkable work of MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff or Politico’s Sabrina Rodriguez — many news outlets seem utterly uninterested in the stories of the migrants themselves.

This is wrong because it fails to provide one crucial piece of the puzzle: the very concrete context of human suffering.

. . . .

This by no means excuses the stories of anguish and confinement that have emerged over the last few weeks from within the facilities set up by the Biden administration to deal with the number of young migrants crossing the border, nor does it absolve the president himself from delivering on his promise of a humane immigration system, diametrically opposed to Trump’s cruel policies, designed in collaboration with unapologetic racist xenophobes like Stephen Miller.

The Biden administration can and should do better. But the current debate cannot ignore the very concrete despair facing thousands of immigrant families who, under the direct threat of violence or abuse, chose to push their young children to the United States, in search of safety.

If the alternative was famine, gang violence, kidnapping, rape or sexual slavery, wouldn’t you bet it all on the journey north? If more people understood this, the political debate and the coverage surrounding the crisis would be much more empathetic and we would get closer at delivering concrete, humane solutions.

Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/americas-immigration-impasse-self-inflicted-doesnt-rcna485

America’s immigration impasse — an endless loop across different administrations — is largely self-inflicted, because Congress has repeatedly failed to acknowledge one simple thing: Immigration happens.

Accordingly, immigration laws must be continually adjusted, reformed and revised, experts say.

“People will always want to come to the U.S., and the U.S. will always need people,” said former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who was a top immigration adviser to President George W. Bush.

Until there is a system that allows enough legal immigration to meet the economy’s needs, there will be illegal immigration, Gutierrez said.

“That’s just part of how our economy is set up. It’s part of demographics,” Gutierrez said. “Our birthrate is not high enough to be able to fill the needs of our economy.”

The coronavirus pandemic reinforced the importance of immigrant labor to the American economy, including labor by the undocumented.

It opened many Americans’ eyes to the precariousness of the U.S. food supply, which depends on immigrant and undocumented farmworkers and meat plant workers, as well as to other immigrants’ roles as essential workers, such as home health care aides, nurses and paramedics.

All of those people and many other immigrants, including young immigrants — often called “Dreamers” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — will play a key role in helping the economy recover from its pandemic bust.

But immigration requires periodic calibration, and the economics and the changing patterns are lost in the politics.

“People are going to move — as they are all around the world — where they think they can find places to better feed their children. That’s the bottom line, and that’s the history of migration to the United States,” said Luis Fraga, director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

. . . .

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Everyone should read the rest of the stories at the above link.

Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration

By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt

“Courtside” Exclusive

March 26, 2021

Notwithstanding the endlessly disingenuous and self-centered alarmist rhetoric coming from all directions on the border mess, often mindlessly regurgitated by the press (not just Fox News), the real “crisis” involves the human lives at stake and the unnecessary human misery we are causing by failing to establish, professionally staff, and fairly and competently operate the legal refugee and particularly asylum systems required by law. This “due process crisis” actually has devastating and debilitating practical effects, starting with the dysfunctional immigration, refugee, and asylum system and the beyond dysfunctional Immigration Courts.

Heck, we don’t even pretend to comply with Constitutionally-required due process of law for asylum seekers who present themselves to us seeking life-saving refuge. Most of those who show up at legally-established border ports are told that the border is “closed” and that there is no way for them to apply. OK, so they attempt to cross between ports and immediately present themselves to the Border Patrol. But, they also are told there is no way to apply and are orbited back to some of the most dangerous countries in the world without any process whatsoever, let alone due process of law. Who are we kidding with all our dishonest pontificating about “the rule of law?”

It’s a strange way to implement the statutory command that any foreign national “irrespective of . . . status, may apply for asylum,” along with a constitutional guarantee that “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Gee, you don’t even need one of those fancy Ivy League law degrees to understand that language. You just have to be able to read, comprehend, and act.

What you do have to do to get where we are today is to view asylum seekers and other migrants (predominantly people of color) as less than human — “non-persons” in a constitutional sense. It’s what some of us call “Dred Scottification of the other” and it has accelerated over the past four years — not just in immigration.

The whole idea of a “court system” being run by the Executive who also is the chief of enforcement is beyond constitutionally preposterous. It’s a “negative tribute” to the Supremes and other Article III life-tenured judges who have grown so distant from their own humanity and immigration stories as to become willfully blind to the ongoing farce that constitutes “justice” and “due process of law” for asylum seekers and other immigrants in the U.S.

Today’s nearly non-existent “asylum system” is a deadly and illegal “catch 22,” with the Supremes sitting in their marble palace refusing to do the primary task that justifies their continued existence: enforce the Constitution against Government misbehavior and in favor of the “little guys” and the “vulnerable.” No thanks, not up to the job!

The real tragedy is that there are plenty of folks out here with the knowledge, integrity, courage, and ability to establish a legal system that would actually comply with out laws, our Constitution, and further offer the hope of constructively addressing some problems before refugees arrive at our borders. But, they remain “benched,” even by the Biden Team. So the “good guys”are going to keep attacking the corrupt and broken system in court and at the polls for as long as it takes to get some course correction — years, decades, centuries — ask most African Americans how long it takes to achieve the true justice that America promises to all, but historically has only delivered to some.

In the long run, a fair system would undoubtedly accept many more legal refugees and asylum seekers. That’s what happens in refugee situations — it’s the core of what we call “forced migration” — when you sign on to international conventions intended to prevent the “next holocaust,” and you fairly and humanely apply the rules meant to protect refugees and those who face torture. And, as they have in the past, the overwhelming number of refugees and asylees, like the overwhelming majority of immigrants (essentially all of us, except Native Americans) will adapt, fit in, and contribute to the health, wealth, and future of our nation. They will change, but so will we — ultimately for the better!

Sure, America wouldn’t be as white, “Christian” (to the extent that adherence to a nominal Christian denomination, rather than actually performing Christ’s extremely difficult, self-sacrificing, risky, compassionate mission, defines Christianity), and nominally heterosexual as it was when White Nationalist myths and whitewashed history ruled the roost. But, it would be a better nation — one that actually has a chance of prospering, realizing the full potential of all its residents, and leading the world in the 21st century. A nation that could devote more human, natural, and monetary resources to building and exporting greatness, rather than to an endless stream of cruel, inhuman, stupid, and wasteful enforcement and deterrence gimmicks.

Bottom line, folks are going to come to America, as they have throughout history. Some will stay, some won’t. But, come they will, unless and until those like Trump and the GOP create such a mess that our own people start fleeing to foreign shores. Immigration, regardless of status, is a sign of strength. Xenophobia a sign of fatal weakness.

Our real choice isn’t whether we want to “close” borders, bar refugees, and abuse children as the Cottons, Cruzes, Millers, and Hawleys advocate. It’s whether we create a robust, orderly, rational legal system to screen, regulate, and distribute the inevitable flow or whether, as we have for the past decades, we force millions to reside and work underground — part of an “extralegal” or “black market” system that pols of both parties and those who profit from that underground system have created.

Sprawling mismanaged enforcement bureaucracies, dysfunctional “courts,” armies of publicly-paid lawyers defending the indefensible, for-profit civil prisons, big agriculture, hospitality giants, loads of upwardly mobile professionals who need child care to pursue careers, communities that live off of marketing ethnic culture, meat packing conglomerates, architects and construction firms who are “building America,” even news media fixated on hyping the problem rather than fixing it (see, e.g., yesterday’s Biden press conference), the list of those who profit from a talented, hard working, reliable, loyal, yet politically and socially disenfranchised, workforce is endless.

Even the GOP’s “Cotton-Cruz crowd” benefits from having an imaginary enemy to rant and rail and gin up hate against — safe in the knowledge that the tanking of our economy, upheaval of society, and possible threat to their privilege that would result from realizing their disingenuous call to boot the entire undocumented population will never happen. Their kids and grandkids can continue to reap the privilege that comes from exploiting an essential, yet politically neutered, workforce. It’s really more about institutionalizing racism to maintain economic and political power over the eventual non-white majority that drives their bogus and ugly narratives.

We can degrade ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! It’s a vision based on a written promise, not a “pipe dream!”

PWS

03-26-21

☠️⚰️DEATH BY BUREAUCRACY: A System Based On Myths, Deadly Policies, Toxic, Often Incompetent, Leadership, & Right Wing Political Pandering Is Much Worse Than It Should Be!🤮

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/23/holtville-crash-migrant-deaths-carolina-ramirez-perez?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Vivian Ho in The Guardian:

. . . .

The number of people seeking to enter the US has risen in recent months. Joe Biden has kept in place a restrictive Trump-era public health order that barred entry to migrants arriving at the border without prior authorization, essentially ensuring that no new asylum claims have been processed at points of entry for more than a year. But the pandemic, cartels and extreme climate events have created conditions so desperate that many migrants are willing to take grave risks.

“Our border policy is set to create really dangerous situations for people to deter people from migrating,” said Erika Pinheiro, the litigation and policy director at the immigrant legal aid organization Al Otro Lado. “But it doesn’t deter migration, it just leads to more deaths, whether it’s an overheated tractor trailer or an SUV crash.”

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the above link.

What if rather than recycling and mindlessly doubling down on proven to fail “enforcement only” policies (that also happen to be expensive), we ran an honest legal system that fairly, timely, and orderly granted refuge to those who qualify under correct, generous interpretations of protection laws and dealt in a fair and humane manner with those who don’t qualify?

I’m not saying we don’t need more comprehensive immigration reform. In particular, we need the legalization program, a much larger and more rational legal immigration system, and an independent, Article I Immigration Court, staffed by real, expert judges, for starters.

But, in the meantime, since the GOP has shown no interest whatsoever in reasonable legislative changes, we could do a much, much better job of administering the current laws in an efficient, reasonable, and humane way that would further the national interest, rather than undermining it.

It won’t happen, however, without bringing in a better team from outside the existing bureaucracy. The longer the Biden Administration waits to replace the dysfunctional bureaucracy with experts who can solve problems and rationalize this system, the more difficult the task becomes.

For example, there are only a handful of folks in the current bureaucracy who understand the problems and the potential solutions as well as Erika Pinheiro. As long as folks like Erika are on the “outside” fighting to block misguided policies and get the attention of those in charge, our border and immigration policies generally will remain a mess as they been for decades before launching into “free fall” under the malicious incompetence of the past four years!

Erika Pinheiro, Litigation & Policy Director, Al Otro Lado, speaks at TEDSalon: Border Stories, September 10, 2019 at the TED World Theater, New York, NY Photo: Ryan Lash / TED

It’s possible to view today’s announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris has been put in charge of the Biden Administration’s “border strategy” as a bright spot. But, unfortunately, not necessarily.

Vice President Elect Kamala Harris — Vice President Kamala Harris
Official Senate Photo
Public Realm

Talk about a “strategic alliance” with sending countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, even Mexico, all with exceptionally poor human rights records and huge official corruption problems, sounds like it could be more “Trump Lite,” inhumane and ultimately ineffective enforcement, rather than an innovative, enlightened humanitarian response.

In other words, Harris and Biden could well repeat, in some manner, the Trump “policy” of trying to insure that asylum seekers die in their home countries, die on the way, or get held in cages somewhere south of the border outside the “normal interest zone” of the American media and grandstanding US politicos. Disturbingly, there was no initial recognition that “wooden cliches” like “enforcing the law” actually means recognizing the legal right of individuals to leave their countries and seek asylum elsewhere, as well as a fair, humane, timely, and competent system for processing asylum claims that respects human dignity.

We don’t meet any of those criteria right now (nor do any of the “partner countries” listed above). Worse yet, the folks who understand and have ideas on how we might get to where we need to be are consigned to the “outside” — trying to correct errors through litigation and the media — rather than being actively engaged in solving problems. Not a good approach for an Administration that claims to believe, as I do, that good government can and should serve the public interest by relying on experts and the “best and brightest” to solve problems.

So, anyone in the NDFPA who has connections to the Harris camp had better use them in attempting to insert some truth and enlightened thinking into what is typically a grim, tone deaf, and ineffective USG response. Otherwise, we’re likely to see a variation of “same old, same old,” which is why we continue to fail to deal with a pressing, recurring human issue in a legal, humane, informed, and courageous way. I/O/W, “business as usual” in a bankrupt system, just with a different “spin.”

⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-24-21

🗽🙏🏼CLINIC’S ANNA GALLAGHER WITH LENTEN REFLECTION — Despite The “Open Border” Blather, Our Border Remains Closed, The Rule Of Law Suspended, Refugees Are Denied Their Legal Right To Apply For Asylum, & The Cruelty & Human Suffering Occurs South Of The Border Where It Is “Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind!”

Anna Marie Gallagher, Esquire
Executive Director
CLINIC
PHOTO: CLINIC website

I wake every morning to follow news of our sisters and brothers, thinking especially of the children, who have set out from places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti–even as far as Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo–to seek protection at our doorstep. My heart aches for them and I pray for their safety.

Today’s readings remind us of our obligation, as followers of Christ, to speak the truth and follow the light. The truth is that people are suffering, both young and old, and desperately seeking safety and welcome in our country. Yet U.S. authorities and policies are often hostile to receiving them. Their arrival at our doors is deemed a “crisis.” As followers of Christ, we must and we will stand up, act bravely and generously, to speak the truth and welcome them.

The real crisis is not at the border, but within the families forced to make the difficult decision to leave, and in the hearts of those who refuse to follow Jesus’ light. We, as Christians, must walk in the path of light as Jesus instructs, and do the right thing. We must make room at our table and remember that we all belong to each other. We must take Jesus’ words to heart and remember to love the mother, the father and the child at the border as if they were our own.

This is not a crisis for us, although it certainly is for the men, women, and children who are fleeing. For us it is an opportunity to act out our faith precisely as Jesus taught.

As these sojourners leave their homes in search of safety, they may repeat a prayer similar to this: “Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side.” The rhythm of the words and their meaning must comfort them, knowing that God is their companion. What happens when they arrive here is up to us. We could look to God and ask what He would do, but we already know the answer.

Anna Gallagher is Executive Director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC).

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Unfortunately, too many folks promote a bogus picture of what’s at stake at our border. The “alternatives” they trumpet are basically increasing family separation and suffering in Mexico or somewhere else as pointed out in this Politico article by Jack Herrera:

The result is a new form of family separation — but instead of happening at the hands of federal agents in American government facilities, it’s taking place, family by family, in camps like the one Janiana lives in. The fact that minors won’t be expelled like everyone else has rapidly spread by word of mouth across the length of the border. And while many families choose to stick together, the pressure to separate weighs heaviest on the most vulnerable — families who fear death, whether from persecutors who have followed them to the border, or from extreme hunger.

For Janiana, the possibility of being sent back to Honduras reads as a death sentence. She shows me the scars from her torture at the hands of a powerful gang back home that her family got on the wrong side of. Fearing further reprisals, Janiana fled with her sister’s children, a teenage nephew and teenage niece as well as the niece’s several-month-old son. The children haven’t been reconnected with their mother yet, who successfully entered the U.S. to begin the process of claiming asylum in 2019, before the pandemic. Staying in Mexico, Janiana says, was never an adequate long-term solution and increasingly feels intolerable. She says the family already tried to make a new life in the southern state of Oaxaca, but danger pursued them there, where her nephew was murdered.

Today, Janiana says her only hope is that the U.S. will begin to accept asylum seekers again, especially as the country gets a better hold over the pandemic. At the moment, she says with resignation, “all we can do is wait.” Though there is one painful exception on her mind: If she were somehow able send the baby across alone, he might be allowed to stay.

“It breaks my heart to even think about it,” she says.

https://apple.news/A6sIRr9CpTwSl9_0bmN7rJA

Here’s an idea!

Why not get the trained Refugee Officers, Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, ORR child services officers, and pro bono lawyers in place to comply with our legal obligations in a robust, timely, fair, and efficient manner?

Why not put experts, like Wendy Young of Kids in Needs of Defense, who understand how our system should work in charge of the welfare of the children? Why not put someone who understands the practical and legal needs at the border, like former Immigration Judge Ilyce Shugall, in charge of the Immigration Court response? Why not put someone like retired Judge Paul Grussendorf, who has also been an Asylum Officer and a UNHCR representative, in charge of the Asylum Office response? Why not put retired Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Robert Weisel, who worked with the UNHCR after retirement, in charge of coordinating the response with NGOs and the private sector?

Yes, the Trump regime definitely left a dismantled and dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and structure behind. But, just repeating that time after time sounds more like an excuse than a plan or a solution.

Sure, it won’t happen overnight. But, it won’t happen at all without different folks in charge at the “retail level.” I see little evidence of any progress on a real long-term plan and the short-term response is also an unnecessary mess, given that the Biden Team has had more than four months since the election to get a new structure and new personnel in place.

While there are a few “bright spots,” like Michelle Brané and Katie Tobin, I sincerely doubt that the group in charge right now is capable of solving the practical problems in rebuilding and improving our asylum and immigration systems. Nowhere is that more obvious than at EOIR, where the dysfunctional “clown show” 🤡 stumbles on, for no apparent reason.

Many of us keep trying, to no avail, to warn Judge Garland that he literally is sitting on a powder keg with the fuse lit and burning.💣 I guarantee that the next “manufactured crisis” will be when the current group of asylum cases coming from the border hit the broken, dysfunctional, ridiculously and unnecessarily backlogged, grotesquely mismanaged, ill-prepared, and anti-asylum-biased “Immigration Courts.” Waiting for the inevitable disaster, rather than bringing in a new “A Team” from the NDPA to start solving the problems now, is a monumental mistake by Judge G.

Why not fix the system to run the way it should, rather than spreading myths, throwing spitballs, and ignoring the unfolding human tragedy that can’t be solved with draconian enforcement and lame “don’t come” messages directed at forced migrants fleeing for their lives?

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-23-21

WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!

“Floaters” — “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

Gabe Gutierrez reports for NBC Nightly News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/on-the-ground-along-the-texas-border-amid-surge-108780101899

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Reminds me of the essay I recently posted from my friend, Don Kerwin at CMS:

The number of unaccompanied children and asylum-seekers crossing the US-Mexico border in search of protection has increased in recent weeks. The former president, his acolytes, and both extremist and mainstream media have characterized this situation as a “border crisis,” a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration, and even a failure of US asylum policy. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a response to compounding pressures, most prominently the previous administration’s evisceration of US asylum and anti-trafficking policies and procedures, and the failure to address the conditions that are displacing residents of the Northern Triangle states of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as well as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries…

The real immigration crisis is not at the border, but in the failure to respond effectively to the conditions driving forced migration, to establish orderly and viable legal immigration policies, to legalize the increasingly long-tenured undocumented population, and to reform and invest sufficiently in the US asylum and immigration court systems.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/18/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%97%bdmore-truth-about-the-southern-border-from-one-of-americas-%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%b8-leading-human-rights-experts-real-needs-not-fictitious-crises-accou/

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

It also echoes the words of veteran journalist Marc Cooper, posted by my friend Dan Kowalski over on LexisNexis Immigration Community:

When I was in Mexico reporting on the exodus, I would talk with dozens of migrants who were just a an hour or two away from starting their trek and, to a person, not one of them said they paid any attention to new US laws and regs as they were determined to cross no matter what. And no matter the sacrifices.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/the-border-news-is-not-new

Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

Even the WashPost editorial page writers “get” the reality of human migration in a way the nativist fear-mongers never will:

Yet despite fearmongering by Republicans, the current influx is neither a public health emergency nor a national security threat. The vast majority of those allowed to enter the country will join relatives here while their asylum claims plod along. That wait is too long — it can stretch to three years or more — and the administration insists it will shrink the backlog. It has also earmarked $4 billion in aid from the pandemic relief bill for Central America — with strings attached to prevent its misuse — to attack the conditions that make life miserable there and drive migrants to seek refuge in this country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-influx-of-migrants-isnt-a-crisis-but-it-could-become-one-without-careful-management/2021/03/19/bced56ba-874d-11eb-8a8b-5cf82c3dffe4_story.html

Trump Dumping Asylum Seekers in Hondiras — Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras
Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license

Still, sadly, facts and reality seem largely irrelevant here.

Despite denials from Secretary Mayorkas, the Biden Administration appears to be believing Kevin McCarthy’s BS on some level.

Thursday, the Administration basically negotiated a “lite version” of Trump’s “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” — essentially trading AstroZenica vaccine (which wasn’t approved for use in the U.S. anyway) for Mexico’s agreement to step up harsh enforcement measures against migrants crossing their Southern Border and to warehouse families arbitrarily rejected without due process by the U.S. under our bogus CDC directive. We already have seen how well that works out!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/daily-202-big-idea/biden-will-send-mexico-surplus-vaccine-as-us-seeks-help-on-immigration-enforcement/

Remain in Mexico — A girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. / Photo by David Maung

Any way you cut it, the realities of human migration, the lives of the desperate individuals involved, the views of human rights experts and advocates, and our supposed commitment to international conventions, the rule of law, and Constitutional Due Process take a back seat when the “bogus border debate” shifts into high gear.

There is actually a very simple truth here: “Forced migration” is not “optional!” In fact, a number of forced migrants prefer “death in the attempt” to “death in place.”

Therefore, all the “deterrents,” “border militarization,” “Baby Jails,” and “stay home statements” won’t ultimately stop the inexorable flow (although they might temporarily divert, modulate, or vary it — usually just enough for the “powers that be” to declare “victory at sea” as a result of their failed policies while ignoring the human carnage and lost opportunities they leave behind).

Professor Philip G. Schrag
Georgetown Law
Co-Director, CALS Asylum Clinic, Author of “Baby Jails”

Sure, there is a timing factor. Weather, the “business plans” and propaganda of smugglers (Trump’s “enforcement only” policies have been a boon for them in more ways than one, not only boosting their fees, but diverting enforcement resources away from the “real” law enforcement problems at the border involving drugs and human exploitation), and Biden’s pledge to restore humanity and the rule of law to America all factor into the equation in some way.

But, they are not the the primary causes of forced migration, except to the extent that climate change (ignored and worsened by Trump and the GOP) has aggravated the poverty and economic disorder in the Northern Triangle by destroying the livelihoods of many farmers and making their land essentially worthless.

Tone-deaf GOP politicos like McCarthy and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) apparently think the solution is to continue to mock the rule of law, violate the Constitution, and simply declare the Southern Border closed forever, al a Stephen Miller. Let families and children “die in place” in their home countries, die on the journey at the hands of other governments, or rot forever in Mexico — “Out of sight, out of mind.” As long as it isn’t happening in our country and being covered by our news outlets, who cares about human lives? That was certainly the Trump approach!

That’s hardly a “solution,” except in neo-Nazi or Soviet-era terms. The harshest and most inhuman approaches will, as they have in the past and continue to do, fail to stop desperate humans who want to survive from doing what’s necessary to save their lives and preserve their families’ futures, even when that interferes with the GOP’s “whitewashed” version of “American greatness.”

The solution involves following Constitutional due process, re-establishing the rule of law (including a radical “reform and replace” of our dysfunctional Immigration Courts), and adhering to our international obligations, both in letter and spirit. It also requires an expanded, much more robust, legal immigration system that reflects the demands of our economy, the needs of migrants, and the realities of human migration, particularly from Latin America. Like it or not, there will be more immigration.

As I have said before: “There are many ways in which we can diminish our own humanity, but none of them will stop human migration.”

Grim Reaper — Will G. Reaper Become The Lasting Image of America’s 21st Century Human Rights & Racial Justice Failures In The Eyes Of The Rest Of Humanity & Future Generations?
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

Contrary to the GOP blather, immigration, voluntary, forced, coerced, legal, extra-legal, white, non-white, Christian, non-Christian, is what the real America is all about, for better or worse. Overall, immigration is a positive force for America.

Here’s a great essay on the positive nature of immigration by Pedro Gerson on Slate. Pedro is the director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the Louisiana State University Law Center, and a former immigration staff attorney at the Bronx Defenders. The latter organization has been home to a number of notable members of the NDPA.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/border-immigration-crisis-laws-citizenship.html

As Pedro says, human migration to America will continue notwithstanding GOP xenophobes. The only question is whether we will have the wisdom and courage to work with and take advantage of its power in constructive, creative, forward looking ways, rather than trying to “recreate Jim Crow!”

Or, will we continue, as GOP restrictionists urge, to squander resources, goodwill, and human potential on futile efforts to eradicate what is perhaps the oldest and most fundamental phenomenon of human existence?

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Restore the rule of law! Fix The Disgraceful, Dysfunctional Immigration Courts, Judge Garland! End White Nationalist racism!

PWS

03-19-21

⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies

In a new essay for the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), CMS’s Executive Director Donald Kerwin writes:

The number of unaccompanied children and asylum-seekers crossing the US-Mexico border in search of protection has increased in recent weeks. The former president, his acolytes, and both extremist and mainstream media have characterized this situation as a “border crisis,” a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration, and even a failure of US asylum policy. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a response to compounding pressures, most prominently the previous administration’s evisceration of US asylum and anti-trafficking policies and procedures, and the failure to address the conditions that are displacing residents of the Northern Triangle states of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), as well as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries…

The real immigration crisis is not at the border, but in the failure to respond effectively to the conditions driving forced migration, to establish orderly and viable legal immigration policies, to legalize the increasingly long-tenured undocumented population, and to reform and invest sufficiently in the US asylum and immigration court systems.

READ MORE

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

Thanks Don for speaking out against the scandalous GOP complete “border BS,” all too often parroted by the so-called “mainstream press.” Read the rest of Don’s essay at the link.

Don has spent his entire career solving migration and human rights problems. The Biden Administration and everyone who believes in American democracy should listen to “practical experts” like Don, rather than ignorant, racially-motivated GOP politicos and White Nationalist nativists spouting the “same old, same old” myths, fear-mongering, and unhelpful “non-solutions.”

If xenophobic rhetoric, cruelty, officially-sanctioned child abuse, evading our own legal and humanitarian responsibilities, and “enforcement only” were the “solutions,” the “problem at the Southern Border” — which has existed in one form or another for over a half century, would long ago have been solved. We can’t solve humanitarian situations that create forced migration with unilateral law enforcement gimmicks and cruelty toward the humans fighting for their lives. Human migration long pre-existed the formation of nation states and establishment of national boundaries.

Administration after administration, of both parties, have squandered time and taxpayer money on unsuccessful efforts to “enforce their way” out of forced migration situations. Contrary to GOP blather, Democratic Administrations have been almost as fixated as the GOP with unsuccessfully “detaining, deterring, and enforcing” their way out of human problems that demand more thoughtful human solutions.

All Administrations at some point prematurely claim that their efforts have “succeeded.” None actually have succeeded in addressing the causes of the migration. Therefore, none of these “false solutions” proves “durable.”

Significantly, Don is one of the few commentators to fully grasp the integral connection between the Trump regime’s complete destruction of the integrity of the Immigration Courts and its lawless, yet highly ineffective, border policies.

Real solutions don’t kill, harm, and maim refugees and forced migrants, encourage criminal cartels and corrupt foreign officials to prey on them, and stack up desperate humans in dangerous conditions just across the border because US Government officials were too biased and incompetent to operate under any semblance of the rule of law.

We can abide by our own laws, international norms, our Constitution, human decency, and common sense. It isn’t rocket science.

But, it does require a combination of expertise, courage, humanity, and practical problem solving that has been conspicuously absent from our governing structure since 2017, and severely undervalued before that.

Also, it’s certainly not that the Biden Administration has suddenly re-established due process and the rule of law at the border. Far from it!

The vast majority of those arriving at the border, even those who are applying at legal ports of entry, are unceremoniously and summarily removed without any process at all, let alone due process of law. This is all based on a largely bogus Trump-initiated exercise of authority by the CDC to use COVID-19 as a pretext to suspend the rule of law and constitutional due process at the border.

Moreover, we shouldn’t forget that even with the Biden Administration’s gradual efforts to re-establish a legal process for asylum seekers, unaccompanied children are still being held in Government detention for far longer than the 72-hours permitted under law. This problem won’t be solved, as some GOP nativists incredibly suggest, by dumping kids back across the Mexican Border, returning them to danger in their home countries without regard to their individual situations, or forcing them to turn to smugglers to make their way to relative safety in the interior of the U.S.

Nor will it be solved by long-term detention in disgraceful and inhumane “Baby Jails!” Ask my Georgetown Law colleague and author Professor Phil Schrag of the CALS Asylum Clinic about that!

Interestingly, some of the biggest complainers spreading the “open borders myth” are Greg Abbott and other Texas GOP politicos who have prematurely “reopened their state” in the middle of a pandemic in blatant contravention of best medical and public health advice. So, you can summarily dismiss their “crocodile tears” and bogus “hand wringing” about public health and safety.

That’s particularly true since the GOP is just coming off a massive example of how their incompetent mis-governance of Texas caused unnecessary misery and loss of life among Texas residents as a result of a highly predictable and long-foreseen “weather emergency.” Why does the mainstream media often continue to treat these “political hacks,” who couldn’t “govern” their way out of a paper bag, as credible spokespersons on anything, let alone human rights situations of which they have no expertise whatsoever?

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Re-Establish The Rule Of Law, Including Full, Robust Humanitarian Protections At The Border & In Our Disgracefully Dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”

PWS

03-18-21

☹️MEDIA SHOULD STOP GIVING GOP TOTALLY UNWARRANTED “FREE PASS” ON “BORDER BS!” — “The situation under former president Donald Trump was substantially worse from a humanitarian and a pragmatic governing perspective: worse for the migrants, worse for the rule of law and worse for our country.” — Greg Sargent @ WashPost sets the record straight!

Greg Sargent
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

https://apple.news/Axz03Bes6T3ODoCivCDQ96g

Republicans are convinced that attacking President Biden’s border policies will win them the midterms. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has gleefully labeled the situation there “Biden’s border crisis.”

In this, Republicans are benefiting from a media debate that has gone off the rails.

There’s a huge hole in this GOP attack, but it’s rarely described clearly in news reports and commentary. You can read endless headlines warning of a “crisis.” But even if that’s so, a crisis relative to what, exactly ?

What’s missing is a serious comparison with the pre-Biden status quo. It’s as if the current situation exists in a vacuum: Before there was no crisis, and now there’s a crisis .

That’s absurd. The situation under former president Donald Trump was substantially worse from a humanitarian and a pragmatic governing perspective: worse for the migrants, worse for the rule of law and worse for our country.

Biden is cleaning up Trump’s mess

It’s true that child and teenage migrants are overwhelming our facilities.

Because they can’t get released alone, they must be held at Border Patrol facilities for 72 hours before getting transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places them with relatives or guardians. The ORR facilities are jammed, backlogging border facilities.

This is a terrible situation. But it’s happening in large part because Biden is undoing a Trump policy that should be undone.

Due to covid-19, the previous administration turned away most asylum seekers — without hearings — under a legal provision allowing a temporary block on noncitizens from entering to protect public health.

Biden is no longer applying this provision to unaccompanied children and teenagers (while keeping it for adults), helping fuel child backlogs. But that’s a move in the right direction, both from a humanitarian and rule-of-law perspective.

Coronavirus will be tamed before long, and we have a legal obligation to allow migrants to exercise their right to seek asylum. And as David Bier notes, that provision is not for controlling migrant flows outside a genuine public health rationale. If anything, expelling adults abuses it.

So continuing to use this tool is not a tenable long-term solution to the humanitarian problem, and it’s not in keeping with the rule of law. That requires letting in the kids, and we will have to allow more adults to apply for asylum. The question is how we manage it.

. . . .

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

Read Greg’s full op-ed at the link.

I understand why Fox News, Breitbart, and the rest of the “truth averse” right wing media shills promote the GOP’s racist, xenophobic “border crisis” myths.

What I don’t get is why the so-called “mainstream media” doesn’t do its homework on the real situation on the border and the Trump-created mess facing Biden in restoring some sense of order and lawful behavior to an intentionally broken and dysfunctional system.

A few journalists like Greg, his WashPost colleague Arelis Hernandez, Cindy Carcamo (LA Times), Nicole Narea (Vox News), and Priscilla Alvarez (CNN), to name some, have taken the time to get it right (or close to right). But, far too many reporters who should know better just repeat the Abbott, McCarthy, GOP disingenuous nonsense without critical analysis or pushback.

And, what’s sorely missing is the perspective of those at the heart of this situation: the kids and families faced with such a desperate situation in their home countries that they are willing to seek mercy and refuge in a country that proudly advertises its lack of respect for their humanity, our own laws, and international norms that are supposed to insure fair and humane treatment.

They aren’t numbers, stats, bar graphs, and trend lines — they are human beings. They assert rights to apply for refuge under international norms that the U.S. has written into laws – laws we have unilaterally decided not to follow.

The overwhelming majority seek not to “evade” authorities, but to turn themselves in to our legal system: A system that functionally no longer exists at our Southern Border thanks to Trump and, to some extent, the Supremes. This is neither a “law enforcement” nor a “national security” crisis — it’s a fundamental breakdown in our legal system and a betrayal of humane values.

That’s the real problem here. It originated long before the Biden Administration. To date, no GOP politico has offered any type of constructive solution. And, too few journalists have held the GOP nativists accountable for their racist-inspired lies, misrepresentations, myths, and lack of any semblance of constructive proposals for rational, lawful, governance — real solutions for problems aggravated by their own toxic, inhumane, and often illegal policies!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-17-21

⚖️🗽U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE SUSAN ILLSTON (ND CA) SHREDS, ENJOINS EOIR’S ANTI-DUE-PROCESS ☠️🤮“MIDNIGHT RULES” — Judge Praises, Cites Round Table’s 🛡⚔️ Amicus Brief!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-likely-to-block-trump-era-changes-to-immigration-court/

Here’s an excerpt from a report by Nichols Iovino @ Courthouse News:

. . . .

The judge added that she found an amicus brief submitted by 37 former immigration law judges particularly illuminating because it helped illustrate some of “real-life consequences” of the rule.

The former immigration judges wrote that the rule “makes it more difficult for applicants and defense counsel to brief relevant issues and present evidence, creates new challenges for immigration judges to consider extraordinary changes in circumstances and to control the timing of their own docket, and severely limits the [Board of Immigration Appeals’] authority to make legally sound decisions and remain an apolitical rung in the immigration system.”

A motion for a preliminary injunction is also pending in separate lawsuit challenging the same Trump-era rule in the District of Columbia.

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

Yesterday, Judge Illston issued a blistering 73-page order enjoining EOIR’S illegal rules: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.372189/gov.uscourts.cand.372189.59.0.pdf

The case is CENTRO LEGAL DE LA RAZA v. EOIR.

“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports:

Judge Illston referenced our brief four times throughout the opinion (p.5, n.2, and pp. 39, 52, and 55).

Jeffrey also added:

The brief (drafted by Steven Schulman and his team at Akin Gump) was based on our Round Table’s comments to the proposed regs. [Judge] Ilyce [Shugall] organized and filed the comments, and the drafting committee was made up of [Judges] Ilyce [Shugall], Rebecca [Jamil], Joan [Churchill], Cecelia [Espenoza] and myself.

So proud to be part of this team that is “making a difference for the NDPA,” and more importantly, for the vulnerable human lives at stake in the EOIR Star Chambers. 🏴‍☠️ And thanks so much to Steven Schulman and his pro bono team at Akin Gump for making this happen.

So, here’s my question: Why is the Biden Administration defending this totally illegal, disingenuous, not to mention stupid, attempt by EOIR to deny due process and fundamental fairness while implementing the “worst practices imaginable?”

Judge Garland must get a handle on the awful, festering mess 🤮🤡☠️ at EOIR sooner rather than later!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-11-21

🇺🇸🗽NEW VISION: Biden Administration Reportedly Plans To Turn Gulags Into “Rapid Processing Centers!”

https://apple.news/A_66ulAuzRTeEZzT59d_vTw

Celine Castronuovo reports in The Hill:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is reportedly drafting plans to transform family migrant detention centers in South Texas into screening hubs as the Biden administration faces a growing number of migrants at the southern border.

The Washington Post, which obtained internal DHS draft documents outlining the plans, reported Thursday that senior ICE official Russell Hott informed staff in an email this week that the number of unaccompanied minors and families arriving in the U.S. in 2021 is “expected to be the highest” recorded “in over 20 years.”

According to the Post, Hott added that with more than 500 family members arriving per day, the shift from detention to Ellis Island-style processing centers “may not be sufficient to keep pace with apprehensions,” with the potential for some migrants to be housed in hotels.

DHS officials, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the transition to rapid processing and release centers has already begun.

The reported change comes as the latest move in President Biden’s efforts to reform the U.S. immigration system and keep up with the rising number of migrants crossing into the country amid shortages of bed space and personnel at detention centers.

The reported plans also mark a shift from policies under the Obama and Trump administrations, when most migrant families were quickly released or deported upon arriving in the U.S., with some being held in dormitory-style centers for extended periods of time as they awaited immigration proceedings.

The Biden administration has publicly said it is reviewing how family detention facilities are used, though the Post noted that the administration last week told a federal judge that the policies had not yet changed.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

The three keys are: 1) screening for COVID, background, and credible fear of persecution; 2) matching asylum applicants with representation, which promotes nearly “perfect attendance,” at hearings; 3) radically and rapidly reforming the Immigration Court system so that the Immigration Judges are “practical experts” on asylum law and eliminating the huge number of “deadwood” cases clogging dockets so Immigration Judges can conduct asylum hearings for recent arrivals on a timely, consistent, predictable basis, with an emphasis on due process and getting the result correct at the initial merits hearing.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-05-21

🛡🗽PROTECTING THE WORKERS WHO PROTECT US: Immigrants, Documented & Undocumented, Are The Core Of Our “Essential Workforce” That Has Carried Us Through The Pandemic — We Should Help Those Who Have Helped Us!

https://apple.news/A2LsyASukRaOXDQDOABC9cA

Jeremy Robbins writes in The Hill:

Before the inauguration, President Biden pledged a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Then, hours after he entered the Oval Office, he introduced an immigration bill, The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which aims to put millions of undocumented immigrants on a pathway to citizenship. At first glance, these initiatives seem unrelated; in fact, they are deeply connected. Combining them is the best way to help us battle the COVID-19 pandemic and recover from the recession. Here’s why.

In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States and the world over learned a lesson about who was truly essential to the economy: the home health aides and nurses who care for the sick, the grocery and delivery workers who keep our stores and kitchens stocked, and the workers at our farms and food processing plants who keep our food supply chain from collapsing. These and so many other overlooked jobs — classified as “essential and critical” by the Department of Homeland Security — hold our society together, protect us, and make our economy work.

Large numbers of these essential workers are also undocumented immigrants. Over 78 percent of immigrants without legal status work in these fields, according to a report by UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. They’re not just risking their lives to keep American citizens safe and help rebuild our economy, but they do so without legal protections and under the constant fear of deportation. That’s inhumane. But it’s also dangerous for Americans. With hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients surpassing 52,000, Congress must follow the lead of countries like France and give these essential workers a fast track to the citizenship they deserve.

It’s no secret that immigrants are helping to keep us all afloat. Despite being just 13 percent of the population, immigrants make up 37 percent of all home health aides and almost one third of all physicians and psychiatrists. With a very real threat of meat and poultry shortages at the beginning of the pandemic, immigrants filled more than a third of the tough food processing jobs and nearly half of all farm jobs picking our fruits and vegetables. And as parents across the country are placed in the impossible situation of balancing full-time work and parenting during a pandemic, once again immigrants help shoulder the burden, making up more than 20 percent of all childcare workers in day care centers.

And yet, despite all of this, our federal government acted as though we didn’t need these workers. As the pandemic raged, millions of immigrants were explicitly left out of the CARES Act relief efforts, as were millions of their U.S. born children and spouses who were penalized for having an unauthorized immigrant in the family. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration sought to shut the border to immigrant workers and students, all but stopped processing citizenship applications and ended asylum for people fleeing horrific violence. It also fought unsuccessfully all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to end protections for Dreamers, tens of thousands of whom are essential health care workers.

So what would an effective federal response look like?

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Jeremy’s article at the link for his ideas on how to join immigration reform with economic expansion.

Makes sense to me!

PWS

02-28-21

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH @ DHS: ICE DEPORTS BLACKS TO DANGER & POTENTIAL DEATH, MANY WITH NO DUE PROCESS!🏴‍☠️ — Legislators Call On Biden Administration To End Racist Enforcement Policies!

Colfax

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/black-immigrants-deportations-biden/2021/02/12/5f395932-6d54-11eb-ba56-d7e2c8defa31_story.html

Arelis R. Hernandez
Southern Border Reporter
Washington Post, Photo: WashPost

By Maria Sacchetti and Arelis R. Hernández in WashPost:

Prominent Black lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to stop expelling migrants to nations such as Haiti that are engulfed in political turmoil, fearing that they could be harmed or killed.

Hundreds of immigrants have been swept out of the United States in recent days, a blow to groups that had been counting on President Biden and Vice President Harris, the daughter of immigrants and the first Black vice president, to halt deportations and overturn the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies.

Biden attempted to pause most deportations on Jan. 20, but a federal judge temporarily blocked the move. Immigration officials say the recent removals match Biden’s new enforcement priorities — such as people who recently crossed the border or who were convicted of serious crimes — but advocates say immigrants are being sent to nations where they could face danger.

“The community should not still be in panic across this nation when we have an administration that is willing to do the work of stopping these deportations,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said Friday in a call with reporters. “They have the authority to say no more flights will leave the United States.”

Migrants who cross the border are still being removed under a Trump administration order that allowed the expulsion of recently arrived people under Title 42, Section 265, of the public health law that aims to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Advocates for immigrants tracking the flights say Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expelled approximately 900 Haitians, including dozens of children, in the past two weeks.

Advocates for immigrants say the situation is urgent, as Haiti and nations in Africa are facing varying threats. Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, has seen its democracy plunge into a constitutional crisis with allegations of a coup attempt and conflicting claims to the presidency.

. . . .

ICE deported New York resident Paul Pierrilus to Haiti on Feb. 2, even though he has never been to that country and has lived 35 of his 40 years in the United States.

He had fought deportation since 2004 after a drug conviction. His parents are of Haitian descent, but they are U.S. citizens and Pierrilus was born on the Caribbean island of St. Martin.

Haiti had never recognized him as a citizen, he said, but an immigration judge ordered him deported more than 16 years ago and he lost his appeals.

In an interview, Pierrilus described how he had to be dragged off the airplane. He wore the parka he used to wear in New York into the tropical 85-degree air. He said he is stunned and defeated.

“I’m not a Haitian citizen! I’m not a Haitian citizen!” Pierrilus recalled yelling as local officials pushed him onto a bus. “I felt helpless because it’s a situation out of my control. It’s a situation I can’t do anything about. No one is hearing what I’m saying.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

The Pierrilus story is particularly indicative of ICE’s attitude toward people of color: If he’s black send him to Haiti, ask questions later!

Courtside was “on top” of Ed Pilkington’s recent Guardian article on deporting babies and children to total disorder and danger in Haiti.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/02/08/%f0%9f%96%95ice-continues-to-give-biden-administration-humanity-the-big-middle-finger-racism-also-on-display-as-haitian-kids-babies-deported-to-burning-house/

Remember, creating an atmosphere of fear and terror in ethnic communities throughout the United States was a key priority of the Trump White Nationalist kakistocracy — with a some help from the Supremes’ majority. It has been very successful. In fact, as noted by Vice President Harris, hate crimes directed against Asian Americans are up astronomically.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjxhrifm-fuAhU4MVkFHTW0BywQ0PADegQIGRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2021%2F02%2F12%2Fvp-harris-responds-to-surge-in-violent-attacks-against-asian-americans.html&usg=AOvVaw2FZQYF9caSSckRsqU9fO58

But, of course, there aren’t any Asian American Justices, are there? So, out of sight out of mind for perhaps Ameria’s “least representative” court (with the possible exception of the EOIR “courts”).

I’ve consistently been making several points that others are finally starting to pick up on and that will be essential for Biden Administration policy makers to keep in mind:

The issues of racial justice and immigrant justice are deeply intertwined — one can’t be solved without addressing the other;
Dehumanization of “the other” (Black, Latino, Asian-American, women, immigrants, asylum seekers, etc.) — “Dred Scottification” — has been promoted over the past four years and essentially endorsed and furthered by a tone-deaf Supremes’ majority;
Racist attitudes and misogyny are deeply ingrained in the current DHS and EOIR (now operating as an adjunct of DHS Enforcement) enforcement mechanisms and in some of the personnel carrying out enforcement policies, including some EOIR judges;
An aura of impunity and unaccountability infects both DHS and DOJ;
Racial justice and equal justice under law will not be achieved without significant personnel and attitude changes at the “retail level” of both DHS and EOIR.

Finally, complaining is a start. But, it won’t result in the necessary systemic changes.

The only way that African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and female lawmakers are going to get durable change is by prevailing on their colleagues to recognize the humanity of all persons in the United States and to make the necessary statutory changes in the immigration laws, beginning, but not ending, with an independent Article I Immigration Court.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-13-21

👍🏼🗽⚖️🙂🇺🇸BREAKING: IN A STUNNING REVERSAL, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL BEGIN DISMANTLING “REMAIN IN MEXICO” PROGRAM BY SCREENING & ADMITTING THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN AWAITING ASYLUM HEARINGS! — Processing To Begin On Feb. 19!

Elliott Spagat — Elliot Spagat
Reporter
Associated Press

https://madison.com/news/national/tens-of-thousands-of-asylum-seekers-waiting-in-mexico-to-be-allowed-in-us/article_088fd344-7315-55f4-9ade-ceb555035a79.html?utm_source=BadgerBeat&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Breaking%20News

By ELLIOT SPAGAT Associated Press

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday announced plans for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico for their next immigration court hearings to be allowed into the United States while their cases proceed.

The first of an estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers in Mexico with active cases will be allowed in the United States on Feb. 19, authorities said. They plan to start slowly with two border crossings each processing up to 300 people a day and a third crossing taking fewer. Administration officials declined to name them out of fear they may encourage a rush of people to those locations.

See photos from Mexico as the US immigration debate continues in a gallery at the end of this story

The move is a major step toward dismantling one of former President Donald Trump’s most consequential policies to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. About 70,000 asylum-seekers were enrolled in “Remain in Mexico,” officially called “Migrant Protection Protocols,” since it was introduced in January 2019.

On Biden’s first day in office, the Homeland Security Department suspended the policy for new arrivals. Since then, some asylum-seekers picked up at the border have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article and view the photo gallery of the “human side” of “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico”) at the link.

Earlier this week, Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared to say it would take weeks if not months for the Administration to develop a plan to dismantle “Remain in Mexico.”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/02/11/%f0%9f%98%a2different-tone-but-the-same-old-song-bottom-line-biden-administration-will-continue-stephen-millers-bogus-border-closing-policy-refugees-told-that-u-s/

These are all individuals who have been previously screened and found to have a “credible fear” of persecution by a USCIS Asylum Officer. Many have been waiting for hearings for more than one year and have had their hearings postponed by EOIR time after time.

Additionally, many of the Immigration Judges assigned to the “Remain in Mexico” Program have notoriously high asylum denial rates, some approaching 100% denials.

I sure hope that the Pro Bono Bar is working with USCIS and EOIR to insure that all of these individuals are represented. As we know, that’s the key not only to insuring court appearances, but also to increasing the chances for success on the asylum application.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/01/29/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽outing-the-big-nativist-lie-eoir-dhs-claim-that-migrants-dont-show-up-for-hearings-refuted-by-usgs-own-data-professor-ingrid-eagly-steven-s/

Vigorous representation of asylum seekers will also be the key to dismantling the aggressive anti-asylum, anti-due-process “jurisprudence” that the defeated regime attempted to implement at a “weaponized” EOIR. Where necessary, these cases must be litigated to the Courts of Appeals and used as examples of the pressing need for reform of the broken, unfair, and dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts.

For now, it remains unclear what will happen to newly arriving asylum applicants. Will they receive the “credible fear” screening to which they are legally entitled? (It appears that some families applying for asylum have been screened and released to await hearings in the U.S.) Or, will they be arbitrarily returned to harm’s way with no process at all, pursuant to Stephen Miller’s bogus “CDC border closing order” that has yet to be repealed?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/11/asylum-seekers-stuck-mexico-are-frustrated-angry-over-family-releases/

Progress! But still lots of confusion at the border as a result of the defeated regime’s extralegal shenanigans!

Still, dismantling the mess Miller left behind shouldn’t be rocket science. Just common sense and using the existing legal tools to solve human problems, rather than intentionally aggravating them. But, it will take different folks (experts) in charge to make it happen!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-12-21

😢DIFFERENT TONE, BUT THE SAME OLD SONG — BOTTOM LINE: BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL CONTINUE STEPHEN MILLER’S BOGUS BORDER CLOSING POLICY — Refugees Told That U.S. Will Continue To Violate Asylum Laws, Due Process “Until Further Notice” ☠️

Death On The Rio Grande — Supremes Sign Death Warrants For Vulnerable Refugees, Trash Refugee Act of 1980

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/biden-turning-away-immigrants-border-policy

by Adolfo Flores and Hamed Aleaziz in BuzzFeed News:

After days of confusion about changes along the southern border, the Biden administration on Wednesday said immigrants should not try to enter the US because most will still be turned away under a Trump-era policy that has recently come under legal scrutiny.

. . . .

Confusion about who was being allowed into the US in recent days forced the administration to issue a stronger warning. Last week, reports of some families being allowed into the US after being apprehended at the border resulted in speculation that immigrants would no longer be immediately expelled and instead be allowed to fight their immigration cases from within the United States. In the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, immigration advocates have reported seeing about 100 people a day released by Customs and Border Protection. In other parts of Texas, shelters have also seen increasing numbers of immigrant families, but it is not clear why.

Attorneys and advocates who work with immigrants along the border have been bombarded with phone calls and texts about whether they should try their luck at getting into the US. Erika Pinheiro, policy and litigation director with the immigrant advocacy group Al Otro Lado, said it was “incredibly disappointing” that the Biden administration has continued to expel immigrants under the CDC order.

“We know now that the CDC order prohibiting asylum processing at the border did not arise from public health concerns but rather was part of Stephen Miller’s efforts to dismantle the US asylum system and was implemented despite opposition from CDC leadership,” Pinheiro said, referring to one of Trump’s former senior advisers. “US expulsions of asylum-seekers, including infants, constitute plain violations of domestic and international laws meant to protect vulnerable refugees. CBP absolutely has the resources to process asylum-seekers in a safe and humane way.”

The turnbacks, known as expulsions, are legally different from deportations, which would mean an immigrant had actually undergone the immigration process and found to not be legally allowed to stay in the US. Critics say the government is using the public health orders as an excuse to turn back immigrants at the border.

. . . .

“While we recognize that the Biden administration has been saddled with a lot of bad policy and structural problems, it cannot continue the Trump administration practice of turning away people in danger based on illegal policies, such as the notorious and pretextual Title 42 policy,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the ACLU.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

“Go suffer and die somewhere else, out of our sight,” might not be the best message for an Administration trying to re-establish its human rights and humanitarian leadership and credentials. Ever hear of the “St. Louis Incident?” It’s always easy to find a way to “just say no” to refugees — and the consequences are seldom pretty.

Those who won’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. Refugee and forced migration situations happen in the “here and now;” they can’t be “back burnered” — no matter how much policy officials might wish otherwise. In a forced migration situation, “doing nothing” is an action that produces consequences for both the forced migrant and those who ignore their plight.

There are many daily potentially deadly and dehumanizing consequences of continuing to ignore asylum laws and Constitutional due process for asylum seekers at our Southern Border.

One predictable one: Instead of turning themselves in at the border or to the Border Patrol shortly after entry, as had been happening until Miller & co. intervened, those seeking refuge apparently have gotten the message that our legal system is and remains a sham for them. Consequently, increasingly they are simply evading the Border Patrol and disappearing into the interior with no screening whatsoever — health, legal, or background. Also, by intentionally driving people out of the legal system, the Administration is totally blowing a chance to harness and build upon one of the most powerful known facts — represented individuals with asylum hearings scheduled show up for their hearings!

⚖️🗽OUTING THE BIG NATIVIST LIE: EOIR/DHS CLAIM THAT MIGRANTS DON’T SHOW UP FOR HEARINGS REFUTED BY USG’S OWN DATA — Professor Ingrid Eagly & Steven Schafer Analyzed Millions Of Records To Show How False Narratives Drive Draconian Policies — Eagley, Shafer, Reichlin-Melnick, Schmidt Set Record Straight @ Press Conference!

According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the estimated number of so-called “get always” — actually human beings seeking refuge — hit 1,000 on Sunday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/border-arrests-increased-in-january/2021/02/10/8604f714-6bc0-11eb-9f80-3d7646ce1bc0_story.html

Sure, there are many aspects of this problem. But, it has been “out there” for nearly a year!

Sure seems to me that with the right experts in charge, including folks like Lee Gelernt and Erika Pinhero, this issue could and should have been addressed more constructively and with much more urgency by the Biden Administration by now. Why not harness the expertise and proven problem solving abilities of folks like Lee, Erika, and many other members of the New Due Process Army rather than fighting with and resisting them?

Instead, it looks like time and resources will continue to be wasted on forcing policy changes through litigation. Meanwhile, vulnerable asylum seekers and their families will continue to suffer as illustrated by this recent article from HuffPost about the human consequences for those caught up in the Government’s scofflaw border policies.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-trump-migrant-asylum-seekers_n_60219e61c5b6c56a89a39a32

NOTE TO PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SECRETARY JEN PSAKI: Sorry, Jen, but those fleeing for their lives don’t generally respond well to “don’t come right now, we don’t want you” messages, particularly from folks who have never been in that situation themselves. It’s actually pretty insulting to think that folks fleeing to the U.S. 1) aren’t smart enough to know the dangers involved; 2) don’t realize that the the U.S. Government doesn’t want them; and/or 3) have choices about their travel as Jen and her buddies might have when planning a summer vacation.

As one of my esteemed colleagues once told me: “Desperate people do desperate things.” What about people who keep repeating the same policy mistakes over and over while expecting different results and failing to grasp either the absolute urgency or the human side of forced migration issues? It’s sort of like going to the emergency room with a burst appendix and being told, “Why don’t you just sit in the waiting room until we doctors figure out what to do? Get back to you later!”

Somewhere out there, Stephen Miller must be gloating about how he totally outsmarted and outflanked the Biden Team!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Oh, when will they ever learn, when will they learn?

PWS

02-11-21

UPDATE: THE CONTINUING REAL TRAUMA CAUSED BY THE “REMAIN IN MEXICO PROGRAM” (A/K/A “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO”) WHILE THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “STUDIES” THEIR NEXT MOVE:

Emily Green writes in Vice, as reposted in ImmigrationProf Blog:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/02/the-trauma-of-being-stuck-at-the-us-mexico-border.html

PWS

02-11-21

🗽⚖️STACEY ABRAMS @ WASHPOST: The GOP Is Out To Gut Democracy! — Here’s What It Will Take To Save It! — “No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/07/stacey-abrams-democracy-test-future/

. . . .

Make no mistake: Democracy may have survived this year, but President Biden and Vice President Harris were elected despite, not thanks to, weakened electoral systems. Together with the Democratic Congress, they now have the opportunity to implement reforms that reaffirm our nation’s promises that our country represents and works for everyone. We as Democrats must act before it is too late.

Our democratic system faces extraordinary threats today because of sustained attacks from Republican leaders who throw up roadblocks to voting and, among the worst actors, stoke the flames of white supremacy and hyper-nationalism to cling to power. There can be no clearer example than the covid-19 pandemic. The deaths of more than 450,000 people in the richest country in the world are symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and a political system that rewards cronyism over competence. Despite strong public support for the Centers for Disease Control’s work, the Affordable Care Act, and other economic justice and safety-net policies that could save lives, millions nevertheless continue to contract the disease without adequate access to health care.

No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.

The pandemic has been a collision of tragedy and corroded institutions, and the challenge is in how we respond. We can either engage in collective amnesia about what we have just lived through, and leave an unaccountable government in place, or we can rise to meet this moment by fixing the broken social compact. Defeating Trump was not enough. Meaningful progress on health care, racial justice and the economy requires aggressive action on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance.

One of the first steps must be an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, which has long been wielded as a cudgel against the needs of millions who struggle. Today, the parliamentary trick creates a more sinister threat to our nation: the ability of a minority of senators, who represent 41.5 million fewer people than the Senate majority, to block progress favored by most Americans.

Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system. This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.

The agenda to restore democracy also includes passing the For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights, fight gerrymandering and reduce the influence of money in politics; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the corruption of future presidents who deem themselves above the law. These landmark bills have broad-based support, and would have passed long ago were it not for obstructionist leaders who fear losing their own influence if the American people have more power of their own.

. . . .

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

The Trump GOP lies, insurrections, and blatantly false claims attempting to undermine the very clear Biden-Harris victory have been a smokescreen for the real voting problems — the unrelenting efforts of the GOP — “The Party of the New Jim Crow” — to suppress the votes of Americans of color. Read the rest of Abrams’s op-ed at the link.

And, as Abrams cogently points out, one reason for the denial, downplaying, and maliciously incompetent mishandling of the pandemic by the Trump regime was that so many of the victims were among communities of color — those they never cared about and whose humanity they continuously tried to deny and disparage. Death is a great way of disenfranchising minority voters. Not to mention a little fear and intimidation thrown in for a good measure.

There is a very clear connection between the dehumanization of asylum seekers and other migrants and the disenfranchisement of voters of color. It’s all part of “Dred Scottification” — a disgraceful practice sanctioned by none other than the GOP’s Supremes’ majority!

Our future as a nation depends on Judge Garland, Vanita Gupta, and their incoming team at DOJ “connecting the dots” — beginning with dismantling and replacing the White Nationalist nativist kakistocracy at EOIR. Immigrants’ rights are civil rights are human rights! The GOP actually “gets” that (in a purely negative way)! Will the Dems finally show that they do too!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-09-21

☹️BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DELIVERS FAMILIAR MESSAGE TO ASYLUM SEEKERS STUCK IN MEXICO: “Wait, While We Study & Think, Hope You’re Still Alive By The Time We Figure It Out!” — Lots Of Talk, Not Much Action Marks Latest Executive Orders Looking To Revisit The Chaos & Dysfunction Left By Four Years Of Miller’s White Nationalist Agenda!

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-02-02/biden-immigration-executive-orders-trump

Molly O’Toole reports for the LA Times:

. . . .

Tuesday’s directives mandate a review, but do not end, the Remain in Mexico policy, which Biden had said he would rescind on his first day in office. Officially termed the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, it has forced roughly 70,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait in some of the world’s most dangerous cities for immigration court hearings in the U.S. that have been largely suspended since the Trump administration effectively closed the border last March, citing COVID-19.

Human Rights First has recorded at least 1,134 public reports of murder, torture, rape and kidnapping against asylum seekers returned to Mexico under MPP. Thousands have given up.

On Jan. 20, the Homeland Security Department announced that no new asylum seekers would be subjected to MPP, telling some 30,000 migrants left in limbo at the border by Trump that they should “remain where they are, pending further official information from government officials.”

Tuesday’s directives, as described by the officials, provide little additional clarity as to how the Biden administration will process those already subjected to MPP, along with thousands of others waiting.

Ensuring that MPP and other cases are processed “humanely” while safeguarding public health amid a pandemic is “fairly complicated,” one senior official said.

“I can’t tell you exactly how long it will take to have an alternative to that policy,” the other senior official said. Those under MPP will “certainly be taken into account because of the length of time they’ve waited and the conditions they are waiting in.”

On Monday, the administration effectively dropped appeals by the Trump administration in lawsuits against MPP and the diversion of billions in federal funds for border barrier construction. The acting Homeland Security head asked the Supreme Court to remove both cases, scheduled for oral arguments later this month, from its docket.

The Biden administration has not yet said what it will do with the effective closure of the border by the Trump administration under Title 42, which Tuesday’s directives do not address. The officials Monday cited ongoing litigation over the policy for the lack of action.

Under Title 42, Trump officials rapidly expelled hundreds of thousands of migrants, including asylum seekers and unaccompanied children, without due process. Whistleblowers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the Trump White House pushed the order for political, not public health, reasons.

On Tuesday, Biden also will take steps to restore Obama-era pathways allowing vulnerable groups in Central American to apply for admission to the U.S. from within the region, officials said.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Molly’s detailed analysis of President Biden’s latest executive actions on immigration at the link.

Wonder how many more will be murdered, raped, tortured, kidnapped, robbed, extorted, get sick, or give up while their fate is being studied? Out of sight, (somewhat) out of mind. Just ask the Supremes’ majority! As long as the bodies aren’t on OUR doorsteps and we don’t have to listen to the moans, groans, and screams of the abused.

Five things that could be done immediately, without study:

Vacate all the anti-asylum precedents from the AG and the BIA since 2016;
Assign some Immigration Judges whose “TRAC Record” shows that they understand asylum law and aren’t afraid to grant protection to hear any scheduled MPP cases;
Replace the BIA (or at least create an “MPP Appeals Panel”) with judges who have demonstrated excellence and expertise in asylum law;
Do not go forward with any MPP case involving an unrepresented applicant;
Bar the issuance of “in absentia orders” in MPP cases.

⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-02-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:

Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration

By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt

“Courtside” Exclusive

March 26, 2021

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⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Restore the rule of law! Fix The Disgraceful, Dysfunctional Immigration Courts, Judge Garland! End White Nationalist racism!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! Re-Establish The Rule Of Law, Including Full, Robust Humanitarian Protections At The Border & In Our Disgracefully Dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Oh, when will they ever learn, when will they learn?

UPDATE: THE CONTINUING REAL TRAUMA CAUSED BY THE “REMAIN IN MEXICO PROGRAM” (A/K/A “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO”) WHILE THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “STUDIES” THEIR NEXT MOVE:

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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