STUFFED AGAIN: Trump’s Attempt To Use Health Insurance As A Way To Cut Legal Immigration Temporarily Stopped By U.S. District Judge In Oregon – Administration That Works Tirelessly To Increase Number Of Uninsured Or Underinsured Americans Saw Bogus Health Insurance Requirement For Immigrants As Device To Circumvent Statute & Unlawfully Slash Legal Immigration!

 

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=0e59f13d-9a82-4908-9249-75e7fe5b281d

 

The AP reports:

 

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge on Saturday put on hold a Trump administration rule requiring that immigrants prove they will have health insurance or can pay for medical care before they can receive visas.

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon granted a preliminary injunction that prevents the rule from going into effect Sunday. It’s not clear when he will rule on the merits of the case.

Seven U.S. citizens and a nonprofit organization filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday contending the rule would block nearly two-thirds of all prospective immigrants coming to the U.S. legally.

The lawsuit also said the rule would greatly reduce or eliminate the number of immigrants who enter the United States with family-sponsored visas. “We’re very grateful that the court recognized the need to block the healthcare ban immediately,” said Justice Action Center senior litigator Esther Sung, who argued at Saturday’s hearing on behalf of the plaintiffs. “The ban would separate families and cut two-thirds of green-card-based immigration starting tonight, were the ban not stopped.”

The proclamation signed by President Trump in early October applies to people seeking visas from abroad — not those in the U.S. already. It does not affect lawful permanent residents. It does not apply to asylum seekers, refugees or children.

The proclamation says immigrants will be barred from entering the country unless they will be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs.

The rule is the Trump administration’s latest effort to limit immigrant access to public programs while trying to move the country away from a family-based immigration system to a merit-based system.

The White House said in a statement at the time the proclamation was issued that too many noncitizens were taking advantage of the country’s “generous public health programs” and that immigrants contribute to the problem of “uncompensated healthcare costs.”

Under the government’s visa rule, the required insurance can be bought individually or provided by an employer and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.

Medicaid doesn’t count, and an immigrant can’t get a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies, which the federal government pays for. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank, 57% of U.S. immigrants had private health insurance in 2017, compared with 69% of U.S.-born, and 30% had public health insurance coverage, compared with 36% of native-born.

The uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32% to 20% from 2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to Migration Policy.

About 1.1 million people obtain green cards each year.

“Countless thousands across the country can breathe a sigh of relief today because the court recognized the urgent and irreparable harm that would have been inflicted” without the hold, said Jesse Bless, director of federal litigation at the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Earlier this year, the administration made sweeping changes to regulations that would deny green cards to immigrants who use some forms of public assistance, but the courts have blocked that measure.

 

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

Trump continues to abuse the legal system and the Federal Courts with impunity to carry out his White Nationalist agenda. Unless and until the Circuits and the Supremes stand up to Trump’s racist-inspired lawlessness in clear and authoritative terms, the abuse will continue.

Appellate judicial wimpiness breeds contempt!

 

PWS

 

11-04-19

 

 

SECONDARY TRAUMA: Defenders & Advocates Also Suffer From Trump’s Constant Attacks On Migrants’ Humanity

From theAmerican Psychological Association

Compassion Fatigue: A Side Effect of the Immigration Crisis

The immigration crisis is taking a toll on professionals who are trying to help. By Rebecca Raney October 15, 2019

pastedGraphic.png

APA has been closely following the recent and ongoing threats to immigrants and refugees living in the United States. These groups are “at risk of psychological harm due to factors including the stress of starting a new life away from family and culture, as well as prejudice and discrimination.”

This article series takes a look at some of the ways psychologists are working to help immigrants, the communities where they live and the resources that are available to clinicians who want to help these at risk groups.

pastedGraphic_1.png pastedGraphic_2.png pastedGraphic_3.png pastedGraphic_4.png pastedGraphic_5.png pastedGraphic_6.png pastedGraphic_4.png pastedGraphic_7.png pastedGraphic_8.png

1

Several years ago, immigration attorney Nora Phillips was chatting with a friend. She told her that she was sick, exhausted and couldn’t stop thinking about work.

Her friend, Annabel Raymond, is a licensed marriage and family counselor.

“I thought, ‘This isn’t burnout,’ ” Raymond said. “ ‘This is secondary post- traumatic stress disorder.’ “

At that moment, Raymond identified a little-talked-about component of the nation’s immigration crisis: Compassion fatigue among professionals who are trying to help.

The work with the victims of terrorism, war and domestic violence among immigrants is different from the challenges of, say, working with victims of a natural disaster.

“This trauma treatment is different because there’s no end in sight,” Raymond said.

She and Phillips started a therapy group for immigration attorneys in Los Angeles. Six attorneys routinely attend.

Phillips, the legal director of Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit legal services organization, has been doing legal work at the border since 2011. The work was never easy, she said. But policies enacted since 2017 have left attorneys — and judges — with no wiggle room to help people. In the past, deportation cases could be terminated. The government could apply prosecutorial discretion as to whether to proceed. People who were brought to the United States as children could apply for citizenship. But now, those tools are gone or are under threat by

an administration that wants to curtail immigration.

Because she has lost so many legal tools to help clients, Phillips’ sense of powerlessness can be overwhelming. She said she throws up in the shower before work. She’s never free of the sense that when she loses immigration cases, her clients could face violence or death when they return to their home nations.

“I refer to myself a lot as a depository of human sadness,” said Phillips, who sobbed throughout the interview and then joked that she cries through every interview.

2

It was clear to her friend Raymond that Phillips was going to need more than a few days off.

“You’re not getting the right support, because you’re treating it as a burnout issue,” she said.

Treating attorneys, Raymond said, presents its own challenges.

“You’re looking at a population that’s already vulnerable, but they don’t want to tell you they’re vulnerable.”

Raymond said that the monthly group in Los Angeles works on trauma resolution skills and mindfulness.

The goal of the therapy, she said, is “keeping you upright, because you’re on the front line of an international humanitarian crisis….The best we can do is to trust that our bodies and brains can keep going.”

“You’re not going to be able to dictate how these events land on your nervous system,” she added.

The attorneys who attend the group, she said, are doing well. They’ve gone from feeling overburdened to managing their boundaries. They decide how heavy a caseload to take, depending on the levels of other stresses in their lives.

“Some of these people were talking about getting out of the field,” Raymond said, “and now they’re staying.”

Keeping attorneys in the field is a big achievement.

A strong feeling of helplessness is common among professionals who advocate for immigrants, said Gabriela Livas Stein, a psychologist and associate professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

“Compassion fatigue is very real,” Stein said. “In talking personally with providers, it is clear that they feel helpless advocating for folks and knowing the unpredictability that they face.”

Seeing ever-more-restrictive national policies and an oppressive political climate for immigrants exacerbates the sense of helplessness, she said.

3

“A lot of folks who are doing this work are also identified as immigrants or Latinx,” Stein said. “Folks that have this profile are showing heightened symptomology,” she said, particularly if they or members of their families are at risk of detention or deportation.

She recommends two types of action for frontline immigration professionals: Build social support.
Engage in social justice activities.

Stein herself has gotten involved; she stepped up to present data on the psychological effects of deportation on families to the Governor’s Council on Latino Affairs in North Carolina.

State and local officials are divided over whether local law enforcement agencies should work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on raids and deportations.

Stein reviewed literature and reported findings to the governor’s council, including a 2017 study in the International Journal of Epidemiology that found that Latina women, one year after a massive immigration raid in Iowa, had a 24 percent greater risk of having babies with low birth weight, compared with the same date one year earlier. Stein also drew on a survey (PDF, 483KB) of research in Social Policy Report on how the “chronic uncertainty” surrounding families’ stability compromises immigrants’ physical and mental health.

Stein said that many immigration officials believe the best policy change would be to make health-care services accessible for immigrants.

“It’s hard for people to even pay for services,” she said. “As a society, we benefit a lot from the work of undocumented workers. Policies need to help people not live in the shadows.”

For Phillips, recruiting young attorneys to immigration law has lifted her spirits.

“God, we need reinforcements,” she said. “So many people have closed their practices.”

She has recently spoken to law schools at Loyola, DePaul and Northwestern Universities to encourage students to consider immigration law.

4

“Through this chaos, we have gotten incredibly good at organizing people,” she said. “Once we come out of this, we’re going to have tools that would only have come out if we had been at war.”

Phillips tries to stay strong as an example to her own staff of 25 people. Also, she prepares them for the work.

She said that she tells them that “the pain is never going to stop. There will never be a shortage of clients. You need to take care of yourself.”

The attorneys who are least prepared to handle the trauma of the job, Phillips said, are solo practitioners who have no support or preparation from an organization.

Elizabeth Carll, a trauma and health psychologist and chair of the Refugee Mental Health Resource Network, said that professionals who work with immigrants and refugees need training before tackling the job.

“I see the long-term effects,” she said. “First responders, they’re under chronic stress…The worst thing you can do is have no training.”

At a minimum, she said, organizations should talk about trauma with the workers before they go to detention centers or conduct evaluations.

The Refugee Mental Health Resource Network, which is partially subsidized by APA, maintains a database of psychologists and other mental health professionals who want to volunteer to help with evaluations and support services for refugees and asylum seekers. The organization has also produced a series of webinars for volunteers.

Carll, who has trained workers who respond to disasters for many years, recommended that professionals who work with immigrants receive strong mentoring. A mentor, she said, can help them limit their vicarious trauma.

“Someone new should be mentored,” Carll said.

She gave an example of how a mentor can help. In 1996, after the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, she led a team of psychologists to help families. In mentoring the group, she recommended that the psychologists not accompany families into the room where people were identifying bodies, but to

5

stay in the back of the room or outside the door to offer support, if the families requested it.

Unlike other emergency personnel, mental health counselors do not typically have the ongoing experience and training for viewing bodies, she said. Without training, that process may trigger trauma from the past.

By sparing themselves that trauma, she said, counselors would be in a better position personally to help families.

Because of the scope, the technical nature and the never-ending timeframe of the immigration crisis, Carll made a bold prediction: that immigration psychology would become a new specialty in the field.

“Immigration psychology will be another specialty,” she said, “just like trauma psychology division became after it started.”

That prediction is worth noting. Carll was a founding member of APA’s Division of Trauma Psychology.

APA Immigration Coverage (links only active on APA website) APA Policy and Advocacy Efforts

APA Calls on Government to Ensure Immigrants and Refugees Can Access Health, Mental Health Services | Official Statement (PDF, 169KB)

APA CEO: Administration Decision to Penalize Immigrants Who Rely on Public Programs Will Harm Vulnerable Populations | History of ‘Public Charge’ Determination

APA Calls for Action on Border Crisis | Letter to President Trump (PDF, 937KB) APA Letter to Congressional Leaders Supports Dreamers (PDF, 141KB)
APA’s Advocacy on Immigration
Recently Published Research

Middle-School Latino Children Report More Depressive Symptoms After Family Member Arrested, Study Finds

Psychological Research on Immigrants and Refugees Further Reading and Resources

6

Oct. 9, 2019 Webinar: The Effects of Separating Families at the Border Podcast: On the Front Lines of the Immigration Crisis
Psychologists Partner to Tackle the Escalating Immigration Crisis
The Dire Consequences of Family Separation for Refugee Mental Health LGBTQ Asylum Seekers: How Clinicians Can Help (PDF, 534KB)

Div. 43 Presidential Initiative on Social Justice
Psychologists Help Youth Who Return to Mexico Because of Deportation Threats Immigration Topic Page

© 2019 American Psychological Association
750 First St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242 | Contact Support Telephone: (800) 374-2721; (202) 336-5500 | TDD/TTY: (202) 336-6123

https://www.apa.org/members/content/compassion- fatigue?fbclid=IwAR0mmXpfqenA1T5QSNxva5ZUX8_va4XdqZziDS0kh0CpGEufbwz5THP7G4I

7

hygi9

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

A sobering reminder that the Trump Administration’s unrelenting attack on the rights and humanity of migrants is also directed at those fighting to uphold the Constitution, the rule of law, and American values. No aspect of humanity is safe from the intentional cruelty and misconduct of the Trump Administration and their enablers (some, sadly, judges and other so-called “professionals” who refuse to acknowledge what’s really happening and try to “normalize” or disingenuously “overlook” — in the guise of bogus “deference” to a lawless Executive —  Trump’s obvious misconduct, racism, and lies.)

PWS

10-26-19

REFUGEES FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES UNLIKELY TO BE DETERRED BY TRUMP’S & FEDERAL COURTS’ ILLEGAL & UNETHICAL “DETERRENCE THROUGH EXTREME CRUELTY” PROGRAM! — “The bleak reality is that, to deter people from seeking safety in our country, we would have to do so much worse than locking them up with their children indefinitely. Unless we are willing to be more cruel than what they are fleeing, deterrence is not an option.”

Dr. Eleanor Emery
Dr. Eleanor Emery
Indian Health Services
New Mexico

https://apple.news/ARH8b07vVRPqkUzmRMrNNlw

Dr. Eleanor Emery writes in USA Today:

opinion

Asylum seekers I meet flee something even worse than Trump’s unethical immigration agenda

Our immigration policies seek to discourage border crossings by making life difficult for migrants. But almost nothing could be worse than going home.

Updated 8:38 am EDT Sep. 24, 2019

The Trump administration recently announced it intends to end the Flores settlement, an agreement that has been in place since 1997 and sets minimum standards for the treatment of children in detention. Under Flores, the detainment of children is restricted to a maximum of 20 days in order to limit their exposure to the harsh conditions and negative health impacts of detention. Overturning this agreement would allow children to be detained with their families indefinitely.

As a physician who works with adults seeking asylum in the United States, part of my role is to understand the magnitude of violence that a person has experienced and that has motivated their journey to our country. The stories I hear, and the physical and psychological scars that these asylum seekers bear, are a vivid portrayal of the forces driving migration.

The Trump administration has rationalized their decision to overturn Flores using the concept of deterrence. Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, explained the decision this way:

“This is a deterrent, because they know that instead of rushing the border, which is what’s been going on for a number of years now, by using the massive numbers coming to the border and overwhelming our facilities and our capacity to hold folks and our court rulings, which is what the Flores rule was, that now they can and will to the extent we’re able to do so, hold them until those hearings happen.”

In other words, if migrant families know they face prolonged detainment in the United States, they might reconsider making the journey at all. This flawed logic exemplifies a fundamental misunderstanding of the context of migration to our southern border today.

‘Push’ and ‘pull’ — but especially ‘push’

Migration is driven by a combination of “push” and “pull” factors. In economic migration, migrants are being pulled to the USA by promises of better jobs or educational opportunities in the destination country.

But much of the record level of migration from Central America here has been driven, not by the allure of better opportunities, but by an epidemic of violence in the home countries — by push factors. In fact, a recent Doctors Without Borders report found that nearly 40% of migrants cited direct attacks or threats to themselves or their families as the main reason for fleeing their countries. The majority of these people originate from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — the Northern Triangle — one of the most violent parts of the world today.

Latinos have no excuse: I asked Latinos why they joined immigration law enforcement. Now I’m urging them to leave.

The principle of deterrence is based on the idea that any act has associated positive and negative outcomes. If you are able to increase the associated negative outcomes, then you may ultimately reach a tipping point where it is no longer in the actor’s best interests to perform the act.

In the case of migration, if you can increase the negative consequences of crossing the border without legal status, then at some point the harm of doing so outweighs the potential benefit. But as I listen to the histories of asylum seekers — to the accounts of torture, of gang rape, of family members, including children, being murdered in front of you — deterrence seems not only morally dubious but futile. When this is the push, is there anything in the world that could deter you from running?

How cruel are we willing to be?

I recently met one asylum seeker fleeing years of imprisonment and brutal sexual violence by a gang in her home country in the Northern Triangle. After a harrowing escape and journey leading to our border, she presented herself to Customs and Border Patrol Protection agents and requested asylum. She was taken into custody and sent to a detention facility in California, where she had been awaiting her asylum hearing for months.

After sitting with her for hours, hearing her story and examining her scars, I asked her how she felt about being in detention. She shrugged. When she arrived at the U.S. border seeking safety, she certainly hadn’t expected to be put in jail. But she also told me that the detention center wasn’t all that bad — no one rapes her there.

Our immigration policies hurt Americans: An illegal immigrant killed my daughter. Trump’s right — we must complete the border wall.

Many of the asylum seekers I have met give a similar, stark assessment of the pros and cons of migrating to the USA. I have led clinics in New York, Massachusetts and California that conduct forensic medical evaluations for people seeking asylum, and the terror that they are fleeing is consistent.

Through my work with the Los Angeles Human Rights Initiative, I met another young woman who had been imprisoned by a gang and subjected to torture and gang rape before escaping and coming to the United States. She told me she would rather die in detention than be deported home to the Northern Triangle to face her former captors who awaited her there.

A third woman in California, who was applying for asylum on the grounds of domestic violence, was resolute when she spoke with me about her heart-breaking decision to leave her son behind with family when she fled her ruthless husband, a police officer in her town. When I asked whether she ever regretted her decision, she said no. Leaving her son had felt like dying, but the abuse her husband had subjected her to was worse than death.

Apart from being unethical, the human rights abuses generated by the Trump administration’s immigration policies will simply not accomplish their objective of stemming the tide of migration. The bleak reality is that, to deter people from seeking safety in our country, we would have to do so much worse than locking them up with their children indefinitely. Unless we are willing to be more cruel than what they are fleeing, deterrence is not an option.

Dr. Eleanor Emery is a member of the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network and a program officer at the Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy at Cambridge Health Alliance. She lives and practices internal medicine with the Indian Health Service in New Mexico. Her views do not reflect the views of her employer.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

get our free app

Originally Published 6:00 am EDT Sep. 24, 2019

**Updated 8:38 am EDT Sep. 24, 2019**

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

Unfortunately, I think that Dr. Emery has underestimated the racism-fueled intentional cruelty of the Trump Administration as well as the cowardice and fecklessness of many Federal Judges, particularly at the appellate level.

Sending asylum applicants to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, some of the most dangerous country in the world, plagued by corruption, and without functional asylum systems takes lawlessness, cruelty, complicity, and open mockery of our justice system to a new level! 

I agree with her that it probably won’t be enough to stop refugees from coming. But, it might well be enough to stop them from using our legal system and to just take their chances with the smugglers and the extralegal immigration system that Trump and his courts have been working so hard to expand and enable.  

As I have said numerous times, Trump and his immoral scofflaw DHS & DOJ sycophants are the “best friends” of professional smugglers, cartels, gangs, rapists, kidnappers, and extortionists. By diverting attention and resources from real law enforcement to punishing individuals who are trying to use our legal system, Trump and his cronies and enablers have been an amazing boon and “profit center” for criminals.

PWS

09-25-19

BILL McKIBBEN @ TIME: Imagine A World Not Led By Trump & His Fellow GOP Climate Change Deniers! — Humanity Would Have At Least A “Fighting Chance” For Survival!

Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben
American Environmentalist, Author, Journalist, Educator

https://time.com/5669022/climate-change-2050/

BY BILL MCKIBBEN SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

IDEAS

McKibben is the author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? and a co-founder of 350.org

Let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice.

There was a point after 2020 when we began to collectively realize a few basic things.

One, we weren’t getting out of this unscathed. Climate change, even in its early stages, had begun to hurt: watching a California city literally called Paradise turn into hell inside of two hours made it clear that all Americans were at risk. When you breathe wildfire smoke half the summer in your Silicon Valley fortress, or struggle to find insurance for your Florida beach house, doubt creeps in even for those who imagined they were immune.

Two, there were actually some solutions. By 2020, renewable energy was the cheapest way to generate electricity around the planet—in fact, the cheapest way there ever had been. The engineers had done their job, taking sun and wind from quirky backyard DIY projects to cutting-edge technology. Batteries had plummeted down the same cost curve as renewable energy, so the fact that the sun went down at night no longer mattered quite so much—you could store its rays to use later.

And the third realization? People began to understand that the biggest reason we weren’t making full, fast use of these new technologies was the political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Investigative journalists had exposed its three-decade campaign of denial and disinformation, and attorneys general and plaintiffs’ lawyers were beginning to pick them apart. And just in time.

These trends first intersected powerfully on Election Day in 2020. The Halloween hurricane that crashed into the Gulf didn’t just take hundreds of lives and thousands of homes; it revealed a political seam that had begun to show up in polling data a year or two before. Of all the issues that made suburban Americans—women especially—­uneasy about President Trump, his stance on climate change was near the top. What had seemed a modest lead for the Democratic challenger widened during the last week of the campaign as damage reports from Louisiana and Mississippi rolled in; on election night it turned into a rout, and the analysts insisted that an under­appreciated “green vote” had played a vital part—after all, actual green parties in Canada, the U.K. and much of continental Europe were also outperforming expectations. Young voters were turning out in record numbers: the Greta Generation, as punsters were calling them, made climate change their No. 1 issue.

And when the new President took the oath of office, she didn’t disappoint. In her Inaugural Address, she pledged to immediately put America back in the Paris Agreement—but then she added, “We know by now that Paris is nowhere near enough. Even if all the countries followed all the promises made in that accord, the temperature would still rise more than 3°C (5°F or 6°F). If we let the planet warm that much, we won’t be able to have civilizations like the ones we’re used to. So we’re going to make the change we need to make, and we’re going to make them fast.”

Fast, of course, is a word that doesn’t really apply to Capitol Hill or most of the world’s other Congresses, Parliaments and Central Committees. It took constant demonstrations from ever larger groups like Extinction Rebellion, and led by young activists especially from the communities suffering the most, to ensure that politicians feared an angry electorate more than an angry carbon lobby. But America, which historically had poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other nation, did cease blocking progress. With the filibuster removed, the Senate passed—by the narrowest of margins—one bill after another to end subsidies for coal and gas and oil companies, began to tax the carbon they produced, and acted on the basic principles of the Green New Deal: funding the rapid deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, guaranteeing federal jobs for anyone who wanted that work, and putting an end to drilling and mining on federal lands.

Since those public lands trailed only China, the U.S., India and Russia as a source of carbon, that was a big deal. Its biggest impact was on Wall Street, where investors began to treat fossil-fuel stocks with increasing disdain. When BlackRock, the biggest money manager in the world, cleaned its basic passive index fund of coal, oil and gas stocks, the companies were essentially rendered off-limits to normal investors. As protesters began cutting up their Chase bank cards, the biggest lender to the fossil-fuel industry suddenly decided green investments made more sense. Even the staid insurance industry began refusing to underwrite new oil and gas pipelines—and shorn of its easy access to capital, the industry was also shorn of much of its political influence. Every quarter meant fewer voters who mined coal and more who installed solar panels, and that made political change even easier.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of McKibben’s essay at the link.

The 2020 election might be America’s and the world’s last, best chance for salvation from Trump and his anti-science, climate denying GOP cabal that is bent on destroying our air, water, resources, and health. 

PWS

09-13-19

RUTH ELLEN WASEM @ THE HILL: When Child Abuse Becomes Our Nation’s Official Policy, We All Share The Shame!

Ruth Ellen Wasem
Ruth Ellen Wasem
Professor of Public Policy
UT-Austin

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/460349-report-on-migrant-children-documents-the-painfully-obvious

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s new report found the Trump administration’s policy changes in 2018 exacerbated the mental health needs of “unaccompanied alien children” in their custody. The unaccompanied alien children in this study are overwhelmingly asylum seekers from Central America. No one should be surprised that the OIG found two particular policies — separating children from their parents and prolonging the time children are in custody — are especially harmful to the children’s mental health.

Researchers, mental health professionals and policymakers have known for years that refugee children are likely to have experienced traumas that challenge their mental health. Studies in the United States and in Europe have established that asylum-seeking children and adolescents are likely to have post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression and externalizing behaviors.  Given that the escape of many of these Central American children was prompted by violence and deprivation in their home countries, they certainly are at high risk of developing mental disorders.

Last year I wrote that the Trump administration “knew it would cause lasting harm, and still took children from parents.” In July 2018, Jonathan White, the former deputy director of children’s programs in the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), testified to Congress that he had warned administration officials, early in the discussions to ramp up the zero tolerance toward asylum seekers, about the harm such policies pose to children. White argued that the separation of children from parents entails “significant risk of harm to children” as well as “psychological injury.” But administration officials overruled White.

The policy of family separation happens less frequently now; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that 911 children were taken from their asylum-seeking parents in the year after the June 26, 2018, court order to stop the practice. About 30 children whom DHS took from their parents during the peak of the policy in 2018 still remain separated from their parents. The new OIG report documents the deleterious effects this policy has had on the mental health of these children.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform in July released a report of their investigation of the child-separation policy. The committee’s set of findings on how long children were held in custody is among the deeply troubling results — and not just because they found evidence the administration violated federal law on how long DHS can hold a child in detention. After DHS transferred custody to ORR, the committee reports that “records show that children of all ages were held in ORR custody for extensive periods of time.” The average was 90 days, with some children in ORR custody for more than 18 months.

When the committee’s findings are overlaid on the OIG study, the picture of the extensive damage to children’s mental health becomes even sharper. More precisely, the other policy the OIG found that was especially damaging to asylum-seeking children is the practice of prolonging the time children are in custody. “Facilities reported that children with longer stays experienced more stress, anxiety, and behavioral issues, which staff had to manage. Some children who did not initially exhibit mental health or behavioral issues began reacting negatively as their stays grew longer.”

If you are thinking that these compelling, thorough reports are prompting an end to this human tragedy — enter stage right the new DHS rule for the “Apprehension, Processing, Care and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children.” This regulation takes aim at the 1997 court-ordered consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, that limits the detention of children and set standards for their care. Among other things, the new rule would allow DHS to indefinitely detain migrant families, including those arriving to seek asylum. Administration officials assured that they would provide high standards for the care of children. The official press release stated “all children in the Government’s care will be universally treated with dignity, respect and special concern, in concert with American values and faithful to the intent of the settlement.”

However, the new rule eliminates the requirement that facilities holding families with children be state-licensed facilities. DHS would be responsible for licensing the family detention centers. Given the reports this summer of squalid conditions at facilities overseen by DHS, including a scathing “management alert” report by DHS’s Office of Inspector General, a new policy of prolonged detention of families and children seeking asylum is frightful. Attorneys general representing 20 states have sued to stop the policy change.

Two wrongs don’t make a right — but they do make a place in this administration’s immigration policies.

Ruth Ellen Wasem is a professor of policy practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. Follow her on Twitter @rewasem.

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

Yup!

And, it’s only going to get worse, Ruth, as the Federal Courts have now joined in furthering and justifying the abuses of children, women, gays, and all migrants. 

Astoundingly, we’re seeing an institutional failure of our democratic republic that took more than two centuries to build in a little more than two years of Trump’s lawless authoritarian rule.  

Trump might not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but he has proved to have amazing talent for exploiting democracy’s weaknesses and co-opting and “weaponizing” supposedly democratic institutions to further his plan of destroying them completely. Lots of supposedly smart guys out there these days sucking up and doing his bidding.

PWS

09-12-19

IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART CROUCH SYMBOLIZES AMERICA’S GROSS DISREGARD OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS & WELFARE!

Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/opinion/child-poverty-democratic-debate.html

Nicholas Kristof writes in The NY Times:

When a 2-year-old Guatemalan boy had trouble staying silent in an immigration courtroom, the judge pointed his finger at him.

“I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you,” the judge, V. Stuart Couch, a former Marine, yelled at the toddler in a 2016 hearing, according to a formal complaint shared by the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy and first reported this week by Mother Jones.

“Do you want him to bite you?” Couch asked.

The boy, his mom and their advocate were all soon sobbing. Couch later acknowledged that he “did not handle the situation properly,” according to the judge who investigated the complaint, Deepali Nadkarni.

Clearly, Couch didn’t have a child’s well-being in mind on that day. But ignoring the welfare of our young is a day-to-day problem in America, where our children are falling behind those in other wealthy countries.

On Thursday, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will debate. It would be a natural opportunity to provoke a national conversation on the subject. But a question about child poverty hasn’t been asked at a presidential debate in 20 years, not since a Republican primary debate in 1999, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.

Presidential candidates have been asked about the World Series, about cursing in movies, even about flag lapel pins more recently than they have been questioned about child poverty. We’ve had 147 presidential debates in a row without a single question on the topic (here’s a petition calling for more questions on the issue). I hope Thursday’s debate won’t be the 148th.

UNICEF says America ranks No. 37 among countries in well-being of children, and Save the Children puts the United States at No. 36. European countries dominate the top places.

American infants at last count were 76 percent more likely to die in their first year than children in other advanced countries, according to an article last year in the journal Health Affairs. We would save the lives of 20,000 American children each year if we could just achieve the same child mortality rates as the rest of the rich world.

. . . .

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

Read Kristof’s complete op-ed at the link.

Couch is one of America’s worst judges. One might therefore fairly ask why he recently was “rewarded” for his bias, unprofessionalism, and documented poor performance when Trump Sycophant Barr “elevated” him to the appellate bench? Perhaps, so he can abuse more women and children across the country?

But, as the Supremes and the GOP have decided to endorse and encourage child abuse, the question is whether the Dems can get it together to end the abuse before it’s too late for America and the world.

Child abusers like Trump, Couch, Barr, and the gang over at DHS are used to getting away with it. They are encouraged by a do nothing Congress, complicit Federal Judges, and a Trump base that has declared war on traditional American values and human decency. But, the consequences of their misconduct, and the unwillingness of the US political and legal system to stand up for children, won’t end well in the long run.

In the meantime, remember the names of the abusers and their enablers, some of them serving in our highest court and as GOP Senators and Representatives.

Child abuse is wrong!

PWS

09-12-19

18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

https://apple.news/ATepJTbYUSAaVGl8T7Cqh6Q

Maria Pitofsky
Maria Pitofsky
American Journalist

Marina Pitofsky reports in The Hill:

Immigration judge told 2-year-old to be quiet or a dog would ‘bite you’: report

An immigration judge reportedly threatened a Guatemalan child who was making some noise that a “very big dog” would “come out and bite you” if the undocumented immigrant did not quiet down, according to a report by Mother Jones.

The boy was in the courtroom with his mother for an immigration hearing in March 2016 when the threat happened, Mother Jones reported, citing testimony from an independent observer present at the court.

“I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you,” Judge V. Stuart Couch reportedly told the child, according to an affidavit signed by Kathryn Coiner-Collier.

Coiner-Collier was a coordinator for a Charlotte, N.C.-area legal advocacy group that assisted migrants who could not afford attorneys.

 “Want me to go get the dog? If you don’t stop talking, I will bring the dog out. Do you want him to bite you?” the judge continued to tell the boy during the hearing, according to Mother Jones.

Couch later asked Coiner-Collier to carry the boy out of the courtroom and sit with him, she told Mother Jones.

The judge reportedly told Coiner-Collier that he had threatened other children but that it appeared not to be working with this particular child.

Coiner-Collier said she immediately wrote the affidavit after the case, and in a message to the mother’s attorney in 2017, she wrote “I have never lost my composure like I did that day. … I was … red in the face sobbing along with [the boy’s mother.]”

Coiner-Collier also accused Couch of turning off the courtroom’s recording device as he threatened the child, whom she described as being 2 years old even though the judge said he was 5.

The child and her mother appeared again in front of Couch in August 2017, but the case was eventually reassigned. The new judge denied their asylum claim, according to Mother Jones. They are appealing the case.

Couch and five other judges were promoted in August to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals.

The Hill has reached out to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review for comment.

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

https://apple.news/AnmnbegntRTqguvX-bYCn8g

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

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, NBC News/AP Reports:

Rollout of ‘soul crushing’ Trump immigration policy has ‘broken the courts’

On the day she was set to see a U.S. immigration judge in San Diego last month, Katia took every precaution.

After waiting two months in Mexico to press her case for U.S. asylum, the 20-year-old student from Nicaragua arrived at the border near Tijuana three hours before the critical hearing was scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m.

But border agents didn’t even escort her into the U.S. port of entry until after 9 a.m., she said, and then she was left stranded there with a group of more than a dozen other migrants who also missed their hearings.

“We kept asking what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell us anything,” said Katia, who asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of jeopardizing her immigration case.

Bashir Ghazialam, a lawyer paid for by Katia’s aunt in the United States, convinced the judge to reschedule her case because of the transportation snafu. Later, staff at the lawyer’s office learned that at least two families in the group were ordered deported for not showing up to court.

Since it started in January, the rollout of one of the most dramatic changes to U.S. immigration policy under the Trump administration has been marked by unpredictability and created chaos in immigration courts, according to dozens of interviews with judges and attorneys, former federal officials and migrants.

The program – known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) – has forced tens of thousands of people to wait in Mexico for U.S. court dates, swamping the dockets and leading to delays and confusion as judges and staff struggle to handle the influx of cases.

In June, a U.S. immigration official told a group of congressional staffers that the program had “broken the courts,” according to two participants and contemporaneous notes taken by one of them. The official said that the court in El Paso at that point was close to running out of space for paper files, according to the attendees, who requested anonymity because the meeting was confidential.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Department of Homeland Security official under presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said the problems are “symptomatic of a system that’s not coordinating well.”

“It’s a volume problem, it’s a planning problem, it’s a systems problem and it’s an operational problem on the ground,” said Brown, now a director at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “They’re figuring everything out on the fly.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) estimated that 42,000 migrants had been sent to wait in Mexico through early September. That agency and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs the nation’s immigration courts, referred questions about the program’s implementation to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which did not respond to requests for comment.

Huge surge, few courts

The disarray is the result of a surge in migrants, most of them Central Americans, at the U.S. southern border, combined with the need for intricate legal and logistical arrangements for MPP proceedings in a limited number of courts – only in San Diego and El Paso, initially. Rather than being released into the United States to coordinate their own transportation and legal appearances, migrants in MPP must come and go across the border strictly under U.S. custody.

Some migrants have turned up in court only to find that their cases are not the system or that the information on them is wrong, several attorneys told Reuters. Others, like Katia, have received conflicting instructions.

According to court documents seen by Reuters, Katia’s notice to appear stated that her hearing was at 7:30 a.m., while another paper she received said she should arrive at the border at 9 a.m., well after her hearing was set to start. She decided to show up at the border before dawn, according to staff in her lawyer’s office. Still, she wasn’t allowed into the border facility until hours later. Ultimately she was never bussed to the San Diego court and was told her case was closed – a fate she was able to avoid only after frantically summoning her lawyer, Ghazialam, to the border.

Most migrants in MPP – including the two families who were deported from her group at the port of entry – do not have lawyers.

In open court, judges have raised concerns that migrants in Mexico – often with no permanent address – cannot be properly notified of their hearings. On many documents, the address listed is simply the city and state in Mexico to which the migrant has been returned.

Lawyers say they fear for the safety of their clients in high-crime border cities.

A Guatemalan father and daughter were being held by kidnappers in Ciudad Juarez at the time of their U.S. hearings in early July but were ordered deported because they didn’t show up to court, according to court documents filed by their lawyer, Bridget Cambria, who said she was able to get their case reopened.

Adding to uncertainty surrounding the program, the legality of MPP is being challenged by migrant advocates. An appellate court ruled here in May that the policy could continue during the legal battle, but if it is found ultimately to be unlawful, the fate of the thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico is unclear. A hearing on the merits of the case is set for next month.

‘Unrealistic’ numbers

When the MPP program was announced on December 20, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said one of its “anticipated benefits” would be cutting backlogs in immigration courts.

In the announcement, the agency said sending migrants to wait in Mexico would dissuade “fraudsters” from seeking asylum since they would no longer be released into the United States “where they often disappear” before their hearing dates.

But the immediate impact has been to further strain the immigration courts.

A Reuters analysis of immigration court data through Aug. 1 found judges hearing MPP cases in El Paso and San Diego were scheduled for an average of 32 cases per day between January and July this year. One judge was booked for 174 cases in one day.

“These numbers are unrealistic, and they are not sustainable on a long-term basis,” said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the national immigration judge’s union.

To reduce the backlog, DHS estimates the government would need to reassign more than 100 immigration judges from around the country to hear MPP cases via video conferencing systems, according to the attendees of the June meeting with congressional staff.

Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for EOIR, said that the rescheduling was necessary to deal with the substantial volume of recent cases.

All told, the courts are now struggling with more than 930,000 pending cases of all types, according to EOIR.

As of August 1, 39% of the backlog in the San Diego court and 44% of the backlog in the El Paso court was due to MPP case loads, Reuters analysis of immigration court data showed.

Despite concerns over the system’s capacity, the government is doubling down on the program.

In a July 26 notification to Congress, DHS said it would shift $155 million from disaster relief to expand facilities for MPP hearings, and would need $4.8 million more for transportation costs. DHS said that without the funding “MPP court docket backlogs will continue to grow.”

Tent courts are set to open this month in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, and so far more than 4,600 cases have been scheduled there to be heard by 20 judges, according to court data.

In Laredo, 20 to 27 tent courtrooms will provide video conferencing equipment so judges not based at the border can hear cases remotely, said city spokesman Rafael Benavides.

Brownsville’s mayor Trey Mendez said last month that about 60 such courtrooms were likely to be opened, though he had few details. City manager Noel Bernal told Reuters that communication with the federal government about the plans has been “less than ideal.”

‘Desperate people’

At her next hearing in San Diego in mid-September, Katia hopes to tell a judge how her participation in student demonstrations made her a target of government supporters.

Meanwhile, she said, she is living with her parents and 10-year-old brother in a fly-infested apartment with broken plumbing outside Tijuana.

The whole group is seeking asylum because of their support for the protests, according to Katia, her mother Simona, her lawyers, as well as court documents.

Recently, family members said they witnessed a shootout on their corner and Katia’s brother is now waking up with night terrors.

“They are playing games with the needs of desperate people,” said Simona, 46, who like Katia requested the family’s last names be withheld to avoid harming their case. “It’s soul crushing.”

Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

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

Of course, Judge Couch is already well-known for his bias and hostility toward asylum seekers, particularly abused women. Why else would he have been “promoted” to the position of “Appellate Immigration Judge” by “Billy the Sycophant” Barr? Obviously, the idea is to promote bias and “worst practices” as the “nationwide norm.”

And we never should forget the spineless ineptness and complicity of Congress and the Article III Courts who are watching this travesty unfold every day while essentially looking the other way. Guess that as long as it’s somebody else “in the woodshed” these dudes can “tune out” the screams of the dehumanized. But, chances are when it’s finally their rights (or the rights of someone they “care about”) at stake, there will be nothing left of our legal and Constitutional system to protect them. 

Indeed, the lawless and unconstitutional “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico Program” described here is largely the responsibility of the “above the fray” Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who have permitted this intentionally abusive and dehumanizing program to torment refugees and their representatives with impunity.

Disgustingly, these life-tenured judges and elected representatives are lining themselves up squarely with the forces of White Nationalism and overt racism, folks like Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller.

The judicial and Congressional complicity in the abuse and torment of the most vulnerable among us and their wanton disregard for the Constitution they swore to uphold will not go unnoticed by history. This, indeed, is how democracies die and the “bad guys of the world” win. 

PWS

09-11-19

RETIRED MILITARY LEADERS SPEAK OUT AGAINST TRUMP’S WANTON DESTRUCTION OF U.S. RFUGEE PROGRAM — “When we slam the door on refugees, we encourage other nations to do the same, contributing to a less compassionate and more dangerous world, one in which our military will increasingly be called to provide stability.”

Admiral Robert J. Natter
United States Navy Official photo of ADM (Line) [Now Retired] Robert J. Natter, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy and Operations N3/N5. As of August 1999.
Lt. Gen. Mark P. Hertling
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Mark P. Hertling
U.S. Army

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/08/cutting-refugee-admissions-will-have-severe-consequences-us-military/

Admiral (Ret.) Robert J. Natter & Lt. General (Ret.) Mark P. Hertling write in WashPost:

Robert J. Natter is a retired U.S. Navy admiral who served as commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet and U.S. Fleet Forces from 2000 to 2003. Mark P. Hertling is a retired lieutenant general who served as commanding general of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012.

America was founded as a safe haven to persecuted people and a beacon of hope, liberty and freedom to people around the world. Those themes reflect our values, and the welcoming of refugees to our shores is one of our proudest legacies and a fundamental part of who we are as a nation.

As military leaders, we spent nearly four decades defending these values. But today, a core American legacy is at risk, as the Trump administration is reportedly considering issuing severe, unprecedented cuts — potentially even zeroing out — the bipartisan U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the established legal means of entry for these deserving people.

This week, we joined a group of 27 retired generals and admirals — all of whom have been operational leaders in military conflicts and exhibited courage in defending our values on the battlefield — in writing to President Trump expressing grave concerns about the direction of this vital program.

That’s because for many of us, welcoming refugees is not just a matter of smart policy and a reflection of our national values; it is also personal. Many of us know these refugees: They worked for and with us in our fight against terrorists and insurgents. The tangible and significant improvements we were able to make in the lives of millions as well as efforts to protect our own soldiers, sailors and Marines would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan interpreters, logisticians, engineers and others.

Many of those individuals were targeted because of their assistance to us. They and their families have often been threatened for working with coalition forces, yet they bravely continued in their service at every level from translating conversations at the infantry squad level to contributing to task-force-level diplomatic missions. They may claim different cultures and speak different languages, but they have all put their lives on the line along with our citizens as part of our team.

Many of our partners continue to live in fear, given the continued hazardous situations in various parts of the world. In Iraq alone, more than 100,000 await entry to the United States. We promised our Iraqi partners support and safety when they were shoulder to shoulder with us fighting a despicable enemy. If today we turn these people away, or reduce the numbers who are allowed entry, it will be extremely difficult to ask others to assist us in the future.

Providing safety to people who assist American troops is a core function of our refugee program, but it does not stop there. We are living in a moment of unprecedented global displacement. Of the nearly 26 million refugees across the globe, most are hosted by low- and middle-income countries bordering the unstable areas that people are fleeing. A small proportion of the most vulnerable — less than 5 percent — are selected for resettlement. In addition to humanitarian assistance, resettling refugees is a concrete way that the United States offers support to these countries, while also strengthening regional stability and reducing the risk that people will be forced to return to conflict zones.

We know firsthand that both the humanitarian and strategic consequences of conflicts in Iraq, Syria, the Balkans and East and West Africa would be much worse had neighboring countries closed their borders. We also know that conflicts can restart when refugees are sent home prematurely. Of the 15 largest returns of refugees since 1990, a third have resulted in the resumption of conflict and the slaughter of innocents.

When we slam the door on refugees, we encourage other nations to do the same, contributing to a less compassionate and more dangerous world, one in which our military will increasingly be called to provide stability.

Over the past 40 years, the United States has welcomed about 3 million refugees from around the world who have gone on to contribute to and strengthen this country in immeasurable ways. The average refugee admission level across both Republican and Democratic administrations is 95,000 annually. Yet in the last two years, admissions have plummeted 75 percent.

In the next two weeks, the president will decide how many refugees we will admit in 2020. That decision will determine whether we uphold America’s legacy as a haven for the persecuted, and it will send a powerful message to the world about who we are as a people. We strongly recommend that this lifesaving humanitarian program be restored to historic bipartisan-supported levels.

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

“We also know that conflicts can restart when refugees are sent home prematurely. Of the 15 largest returns of refugees since 1990, a third have resulted in the resumption of conflict and the slaughter of innocents.”

So much for the Trump Administration’s “solution” of returning refugees and other forced migrants to danger zones in their own countries or to countries that are equally or more dangerous. Killing and abusing forced migrants through improper returns and “deterrents” intended to make them “die in place” is reminiscent of other types of “final solutions” that were disastrous for humanity. Only, this time, the U.S. is the “leader of the pack” downward rather than one of those fighting to save humanity.  

A thoroughly cowardly performance by Trump and his White Nationalist gang.

Also, for the more than four decades I have been involved in immigration and refugee issues, overseas refugee admissions have received overwhelming bipartisan support. What has happened to the GOP which suddenly has “swallowed the whistle” in the face of Trump’s cowardly White Nationalism?

It appears that retired military leaders, like former U.S. Immigration Judges, can make a “full time job” out of speaking out against the stupid, counterproductive, and inhumane policies of the Trump Administration.

PWS

09-10-19

KIT JOHNSON & NOLAN RAPPAPORT UNITED IN CAUSE OF JUSTICE FOR MARIA ISABEL BUESO — Different Methods, But One Objective: Justice!

KIT JOHNSON & NOLAN RAPPAPORT UNITED IN CAUSE OF JUSTICE FOR MARIA ISABEL BUESO — Different Methods, But One Objective: Justice!

Kit Johnson
Kit Johnson
Associate Professor of Law
University of Oklahoma Law School
Nolan Rappaport
Family Pictures
Nolan Rappaport
Opinion Writer
The Hill
Kevin R. Johnson
Kevin R. Johnson
Dean
UC Davis School of Law

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/09/trumps-death-sentence-for-immigrant-who-followed-the-law-merits-private-bill.html

Summary from Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog:

Nolan Rappaport: Trump’s ‘death sentence’ for immigrant who followed the law merits private bill

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Kit Johnson has been blogging on the case of Maria Isabel Bueso, who at age 7 came to the United States for specialized health care for a life-threatening matter and now is threatened with removal — and possible death — by the Trump administration.

Nolan Rappaport on the Hill is more optimistic than Kit on the possibilities for a private bill allowing Bueso to gain lawful immigration status and remain in the United States.  He writes, “In 30-some years as an immigration lawyer, I have not seen a more compelling justification for a private bill than the way the administration has treated Maria `Isabel’ Bueso.”

KJ

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

Go on over to ImmigrationProf Blog at the link for all the links to the story highlighted by Nolan and Kit.

Sometimes Trump’s immigration policies bring folks together: in united opposition.

Thanks to Nolan and Kit for highlighting this case! Hopefully, unity and publicity will bring success and save lives in this and other cases

PWS

09-07

-19

LABOR DAY @ WASHPOST: The Toxic Hypocrisy Of Trump & The Restrictionists On The Labor Issue!

LABOR DAY @ WASHPOST:  The Toxic Hypocrisy Of Tru.mp & The Restrictionists On The Labor Issue!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-days-our-debate-over-labor-is-awash-in-hypocrisy/2019/09/01/d57e735c-c9a4-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html

By Editorial Board

September 1 at 5:47 PM

A CYNIC, says a character in one of Oscar Wilde’s novels, is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If that’s true, then the debate over the state of labor in the United States these days is awash in cynicism — or maybe it could just be called plain old hypocrisy. And in truth, it’s not so much a debate as a shouting match, largely over the inflamed issue of immigration.

Most of the noise comes from restrictionists, encouraged and shamelessly egged on, for the first time in memory, by a president of the United States. Such people recite figures they have assembled regarding the costs of immigration: its effects on wages, government spending and, of course, our “culture,” which some might take as a cover word for race or ethnicity or religion. But a lot of these compilations are questionable, both in their origins and their conclusions.

And beyond that, there is a great contradiction in such reasoning: It fails to take account of the work immigrants do in this country — the fruits of their labor, which are shared by the entire society. The skylines of metropolitan areas such as ours have been transformed over the past quarter-century by new construction, with immigrants providing a considerable share of the labor. Many of our hospitals, clinics, day-care centers, hotels, homes for the elderly and other institutions could not exist without immigrant employees, who made up about 17 percent of this country’s workforce in 2018, according to a government report.

A quarter of immigrants, in turn, are thought to be unauthorized. Although they are regularly slandered — by the president, among others — as a source of crime and as living off the dole, they are, for the most part, as law-abiding as the general population and are eligible for few government benefits. Not many people with personal knowledge of the matter would question their work ethic. Their labors in farm and field help feed the country; replacing them there would be a daunting task. They serve in some of the most demanding and often unpleasant jobs in our society: slaughtering animals, working long hours outdoors in punishing heat and cold, caring for the elderly, sick and mentally ill, cleaning four or five homes a day.

Strangely enough, this sort of thing is rarely discussed in any serious way on the cable outlets and social media. There is much in the way of insult and calumny toward impoverished immigrants (they “make our country poorer and dirtier,” said one popular TV opinionizer) but little constructive thought on how this country, with a static and aging native population and a tightening labor market, can continue to prosper without a reasonable amount of immigration.

Although unauthorized immigrants are routinely demonized by some in Congress and the media, there is a sizable part of the country, perhaps a majority, that does not consider their presence here to be criminal, that in fact sympathizes with them. There aren’t many other kinds of lawbreakers of whom that can be said. The recent immigration raid on agricultural processing plants in Mississippi, in which nearly 700 workers were rounded up, brought forth a wave of help and support for the workers and their families from people around the country, including churches and neighbors in Mississippi.

Practical and intelligent proposals are being made for dealing with the problems of immigration and work. But nothing can be done unless more of this country pays attention to the realities in working America in the coming election year and not to the dark maundering of demagogic doomsayers.

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

Yup.

Largely what I’ve been saying all along on “Courtside.” The solution to the largely manufactured “immigration crisis” is staring us in the face. 

Legalize those already in the labor force, so that they can be fully protected from exploitation by minimum wage, wage and hour, and OSHA laws, and reach their full economic potential in our society (which would also maximize tax revenues and Social Security contributions). 

Then, provide many more legal immigration opportunities for workers and families, both permanent and temporary, to keep America great and prevent us from suffering the type of economic stagnation that has hit Japan and other “low immigration” countries.

The main things standing in the way of such rational and practical solutions are Trump and the hard core GOP restrictionists who prop him up.

Sadly, it also appears that some, not all, within the massive DHS bureaucracy have become invested in cruel and futile immigration enforcement which requires endless taxpayer money and bodies to maintain its cycle of inevitable, yet sometimes politically advantageous, “enforcement-only” failures.

PWS

09-02-19

IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

 

https://apple.news/A3UINub7KSjuOLcKAHDJMLw

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

A Surge Of Immigration Judges Are Expected To Handle The Cases Of Thousands Forced To Wait In Mexico

“This will wreak havoc on court dockets across the country,” said one immigration court official.

Hamed Aleaziz

BuzzFeed News Reporter

A 10-month-old boy, whose family fled violence in El Salvador, waits in a tent in Tijuana, Mexico, for an immigration court hearing in the US.

Department of Homeland Security officials expect about 150 immigration judges from across the US will be selected to handle cases involving asylum-seekers forced to remain in Mexico while their cases proceed, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, a massive potential increase in assignments that threatens to overwhelm an already struggling court system.  

Around a dozen judges currently presiding over courts in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, handle the cases of people referred under Migration Protection Protocols, the controversial Trump administration policy forcing asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as their cases move through the immigration system. While the cases can take months or years to be scheduled, the number of individuals included in the program has expanded to more than 35,000, according to figures obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The Trump administration hopes to change that by soon opening facilities along the border to handle the cases. Officials plan to open two border courts in Texas — in Laredo and Brownsville — by the middle of September, in which they will hear up to 20 cases per day, according to a government briefing document obtained by BuzzFeed News. A DHS spokesperson said the date the facilities would open was still to be determined.

On Tuesday, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the House DHS Appropriations Subcommittee, revealed in a letter that the agency had plans to transfer $155 million in federal disaster funds to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help fund the new facilities.

The cases heard at the border are expected to be conducted primarily via video teleconferencing, allowing for more judges across the country to be brought into the process. Assistants, working on contract, will help organize the hearings by taking roll call, send case documents to judges in other locations, and operate the video systems, according to a separate DHS planning document obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Judges assigned these cases could be forced to delay other asylum and deportation hearings that had already been scheduled, causing a ripple effect and further growing an already bloated court backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases.

People wait inside an immigration court in Miami.

“Once again immigration judges from courts across the country will have to push their home court dockets aside to preside televideo at border courts,” said one immigration court official who could not speak publicly on the matter. “This will wreak havoc on court dockets across the country.”

At a San Diego court that has presided over many “Remain in Mexico” cases for months, judges have been told to prioritize the hearings over others, according to a source with knowledge of the change. As a result, some immigrants who have waited for months or years for their previously scheduled cases will likely have their hearings delayed.

“The prioritization of MPP cases will place a huge burden on the immigration courts,” said a DOJ official involved with immigration matters. “Additionally, the postponement of previously scheduled cases will cause the backlog to grow even more, as the completion of these cases will be further delayed for months or even years.”

Rebecca Jamil, a former immigration judge under the Trump administration, said that the cases on judge’s dockets don’t go away when they are assigned new cases.

“Those families have been waiting for years to have their cases heard, and now will wait another two or three years, and due process is denied by the delay — evidence becomes stale, witnesses die, country conditions change,” she said.

The Department of Justice, which oversees the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which manages the nation’s immigration courts, is prepared to meet the demands from the DHS on any hearings, an agency spokesperson said.

The potential changes come as data revealed by Syracuse University indicates that asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico rarely have legal representation; just 1% of individuals are accompanied by attorneys at their hearings.

The Remain in Mexico program is one of the few hardline Trump immigration policies that has thus far survived a court injunction. While a federal court judge in San Francisco blocked the policy earlier this year, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel allowed it to continue as a legal challenge works its way through the court process.

Asylum-seekers who were returned to Mexico under the Trump administration have faced consequences of remaining there, according to advocacy group Human Rights First. The group found more than 100 cases of people returned under the program alleging rapes, kidnappings, sexual exploitation, or assault, according to a report released this month.

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

This is the result of the complete abdication of duty by the Ninth Circuit in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan, that lifted a proper, life-saving U.S. District Court injunction and allowed the Administration’s patently illegal and immoral “Kill ‘Em in Mexico Program” to proceed.

The solution:  There is no such thing as a “fair” asylum denial under this program. Yes, not everyone meets the criteria. But, everyone is entitled to a fair chance to present a claim, free from duress, coercion, and biased judging, which is not happening. 

Advocates must flood the Ninth Circuit and the other border circuits with petitions for review and other types of court actions forcing these complicit Article III “Ivory Tower Judges,” who believe they have removed themselves from the fray, with the human carnage resulting from their gross dereliction of duty to enforce the statutory and Constitutional rights of asylum seekers.

The disgusting and spineless performance of the Article IIIs in light of the Administration’s bogus, illegal actions to “deter” legitimate asylum seekers is nothing short of a national disgrace. If not corrected, it will rightfully tarnish the reputation of the Federal Courts and the individual judges involved for generations to come.

PWS

08-30-19

MOLLY O’TOOLE @ LA TIMES: Trump & The 9th Circuit Carrying Out Illegal “Remain In Mexico Program” — And, They Are Are Getting Away With It!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=4451c711-f803-4861-ada0-9558eff71923

Molly O’Toole
Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

By Molly O’Toole reporting from mexicali, mexico

From the roadside, Oswaldo Ortiz-Luna offered a box of candy to the cars idling in the golden dust of northern Mexico. His wife hawked another box of sweets farther up the line of traffic, perching their 18-month-old daughter on one hip. Sticky fruit and tears smudged the baby’s cheeks.

As the sun went down, Oswaldo and his family of six hadn’t yet sold enough candy for the roughly $6 they needed to spend the night at a nearby shelter. They are among the thousands of asylum seekers trapped just beyond the border under the Trump administration’s signature policy — “Remain in Mexico.”

Under the Migrant Protection Protocols — better known as Remain in Mexico — Trump administration officials have pushed 37,578 asylum seekers back across the southern U.S. border in roughly seven months, according to Homeland Security Department reports reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. One-third of the migrants were returned to Mexico from California. The vast majority have been scattered throughout Mexico within the last 60 days.

While their cases wind through court in the United States, the asylum seekers are forced to wait in Mexico, in cities that the U.S. State Department considers some of the most dangerous in the world. They have been attacked, sexually assaulted, and extorted. A number have died.

In dozens of interviews and in court proceedings, current and former officials, judges, lawyers and advocates for asylum seekers have said that Homeland Security officials implementing Remain in Mexico appear to be violating U.S. law, and the human cost is rising.

Testimony from another dozen asylum seekers confirmed that they were being removed without the safeguards provided by U.S. law. The alleged legal violations include denying asylum seekers’ rights and knowingly putting them at risk of physical harm — against federal regulations and the Immigration and Nationality Act, the foundation of the U.S. immigration system. U.S. law grants migrants the right to seek protection in the United States.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are writing the phrase “domicilio conocido,” or “known address,” on asylum seekers’ paperwork instead of a legally required address, making it nearly impossible for applicants stuck in Mexico to be notified of any changes to their cases or upcoming court dates. By missing court hearings, applicants can be permanently barred from asylum in the U.S.

Meanwhile, some federal asylum officers who are convinced they are sending asylum seekers to their deaths told The Times that they have refused to implement the Remain in Mexico policy at risk of being fired. They say it violates the United States’ decades-long legal obligations to not return people to persecution.

Officials at Homeland Security headquarters as well as Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with primary enforcement of the policy, refused repeated requests for interviews or data on the policy, citing “law enforcement sensitivity.”

For President Trump, however, whose political priority is to restrict even legal immigration to the United States, the Remain in Mexico policy has been his single most successful effort: Just one asylum seeker subjected to the policy is known to have won the ability to stay in the U.S.

Oswaldo said his family fled their hometown outside Guatemala’s capital in February after his older sons refused to join the MS-13 gang and members threatened to kill them. While in Mexico, he said, police beat and robbed them, and local gangs tried to kidnap his 7-year-old daughter. They rode freight trains to the U.S. border, Oswaldo running for the trains with the baby on his chest in a bright-pink carrier.

The family claimed asylum in April with U.S. authorities in Calexico, a small agricultural city in southeastern California across from Mexicali. Officials sent them back to Mexico, telling them to report to the border again a month later and about 100 miles west, in Tijuana. There, they’d be brought into the U.S. for a court hearing in San Diego, then sent back to Tijuana. Officials separated the case of Oswaldo’s eldest son, 21, from the rest of the family’s case.

“Life was already so difficult,” Oswaldo said. When U.S. officials returned them to Mexico, he said, “it was hard to take.”

After unveiling the policy in December, Homeland Security officials did not push the first asylum seekers back to Mexico until Jan. 28, launching the program in San Ysidro, south of San Diego. By the end of March, they’d expanded the policy east to El Paso. In May, a federal appeals court ruled that the policy could continue until hearings on its legality in October. With the court’s blessing, the administration expanded the policy to the rest of the U.S.-Mexico border, and to any Spanish speaker, not just Central Americans. In less than three months, the number of removals quadrupled.

In July, U.S. officials began returning asylum seekers from the rest of Texas to Nuevo Laredo and then Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

The State Department gives Tamaulipas a level 4 “do not travel” warning — the same as Syria’s.

At least 141 migrants under the Remain in Mexico program have become victims of violence in that country, according to Human Rights First, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

At a media briefing earlier this month, Mark Morgan, the acting head of Customs and Border Protection, told The Times, “I would never participate in something I thought was illegal.” He added that the judicial system would ultimately “determine the legality” of the policy.

He said he was unaware of any incidents in which an asylum seeker was harmed under Remain in Mexico, but he said the U.S. didn’t track what happened to migrants once they were returned to Mexico. “That’s up to Mexico,” he said.

Roberto Velasco, spokesman for Mexico’s Foreign Ministry, said the policy was a “unilateral action” and that the U.S. was “solely responsible” for ensuring due process for asylum seekers returned to Mexico.

While saying the policy is for the migrants’ own protection, Morgan said it was also intended to deter asylum seekers. He claimed, as the president often does, that many asylum applicants had fraudulent cases.

“If you come here with a kid, it’s not going to be an automatic passport to the United States,” Morgan said. “I’m hoping that that message will get back.”

In November, the Trump administration was engaged in intense negotiations with Mexico to get them to agree to take asylum seekers headed for the U.S. During that time, administration officials drafted a pilot Remain in Mexico program in California. In email exchanges, the officials struck key protections for asylum seekers. But when plans were leaked, the policy was put on hold.

In late January, officials pushed back the first asylum seekers from San Ysidro, but it was short-lived — in April, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked Remain in Mexico.

Then, just a few weeks later, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Trump administration to resume the policy.

But two of the three judges raised concerns about its legality. One judge said the government’s legal argument to send migrants to Mexico was an “impossible” reading of the law.

“The government is wrong,” the judge wrote. “Not just arguably wrong, but clearly and flagrantly wrong.”

Diana Diaz, 19, is among the asylum seekers caught up in the policy’s complexities. She fled El Salvador last year after a Barrio 18 gang member threatened to kill her when she refused to become his girlfriend. A local police officer said he’d protect her but began to harass her instead, she said.

“He said, ‘I can rape you — I can do whatever I want to you — and make it look like the gangs did this, not me,’ ” she recounted the police officer saying.

She crossed alone from Guatemala into southern Mexico in November. In January, she arrived in Tijuana to join thousands of people waiting at the San Ysidro port of entry to register asylum claims.

In March, Diaz’s number finally came up. U.S. officials brought her into the San Ysidro entry, took her fingerprints, asked her a few questions and then sent her to the “icebox,” migrants’ term for U.S. immigration detention, she said. But shortly after, Customs and Border officials took her to the gate leading back to Tijuana and gave her a notice to come back the next month for a court hearing.

“I can’t go back there — my life is at risk,” she recounted telling them.

She said they told her: “That’s not my problem anymore.”

Now, U.S. officials are returning asylum seekers at a rate of nearly 3,300 a week.

Courtroom battles

Judge Lee O’Connor’s raised voice ricocheted through his near-empty courtroom in San Diego.

“If I were to issue an in absentia order, where would it even be served?” O’Connor asked a Trump administration lawyer.

“Your honor, on the address the court has.”

“The ‘general delivery,’ Baja California, Mexico?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“How is that an address?”

“Those are the addresses I was given,”the government lawyer responded. “I don’t know where they came from.”

Lawyers, advocates, U.S. asylum officers and judges see more than just bureaucratic dysfunction and sloppy policymaking — Trump officials, they say, intended to make it nearly impossible to win asylum in the United States under Remain in Mexico.

In the 9th Circuit ruling in May, one judge said Homeland Security’s procedures for implementing the policy were “so ill-suited to achieving that stated goal as to render them arbitrary and capricious.”

Remain in Mexico has added to a backlog of more than 975,000 pending immigration cases. In July, one out of every four new cases was assigned to the Remain in Mexico program.

Sitting behind piles of paper earlier this summer in San Diego, O’Connor weighed the government’s request to issue removal orders for a handful of asylum seekers who hadn’t shown up for their hearings that day. If O’Connor ruled in the administration’s favor, the decision could bar each applicant from the United States for at least a decade, if not permanently.

He launched into the administration lawyer, rattling off a list of legal violations.

The majority of asylum seekers returned to Mexico under the policy are originally from Central America, and a sizable number speak only indigenous languages. But Homeland Security officials routinely don’t provide translation or use phone interpreters in removal proceedings, according to internal communications obtained by the nonprofit American Oversight and shared with The Times.

The Times reviewed a number of asylum seekers’ paperwork on which Customs and Border Protection officers had put incomplete addresses or provided no translation. And the free phone number the government provided for applicants to call for updates on their cases was an 800 number, which can only be used from within the United States.

“There’s some things that we’re still working through,” said Sidney Aki, a CBP official in charge of the San Ysidro port. He conceded that officers had made mistakes implementing the policy, saying they were in uncharted territory.

As of the end of July, only 2,599 Remain in Mexico cases had been decided, with another 23,402 cases pending in immigration courts across the country — nearly double the number from one month earlier, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. At that point, not one person had won asylum.

O’Connor ordered that the government’s removal proceedings against the absent asylum seekers be terminated. He’s not the only one; overall, in roughly 60% of the decisions reached so far under Remain in Mexico, immigration judges have closed the government’s case against the asylum seekers, according to the clearinghouse data.

“If the government intends to carry out the program,” O’Connor ruled, “it must ensure due process is strictly complied with and statutory requirements are strictly adhered to. That has not been shown in any of these cases.”

Worse by the day

Nora Muñoz Vega watched her son kick a soccer ball at Buen Pastor shelter in Juarez. As 9-year-old Josue David played, his 29-year-old mother weighed a difficult decision: Keep waiting in Juarez on their asylum case or take a bus, sponsored by the Mexican government, back to Honduras.

Asylum seekers stuck in Juarez under Remain in Mexico have hearings scheduled into 2020. But unable to find work in Mexico without a permit, and too scared to venture out, Muñoz Vega said the few weeks until her second hearing seemed like an eternity.

In its May ruling allowing Remain in Mexico to resume, the 9th Circuit relied in part on assurances from the U.S. that Mexico was providing for the asylum seekers. Yet none of the migrants to whom The Times spoke had been able to obtain a work permit: All were staying in shelters run by churches or non-governmental organizations, or hotels when shelters filled up.

Through “voluntary return,” the Mexican government, along with the United Nations, is facilitating the Trump administration’s effort to get asylum seekers to give up on their cases. More than 2,000 Central Americans have taken free rides back to their home countries under the U.N. program, which is funded by the U.S. government.

Although it’s unclear exactly how many asylum seekers under Remain in Mexico have gone home, a number appear to be growing tired of waiting and are crossing the border illegally.

On the viaduct between Juarez and El Paso, Border Patrol Agent Mario Escalante watched from the U.S. side as Mexican National Guard units patrolled on theirs.

Escalante was born in El Paso but said he practically grew up in Juarez, with family on both sides of the bridge for generations. Grisly murders had become commonplace in Juarez, he added. “It’s the culture; you get used to it.”

But asked whether Juarez was safe for the asylum seekers U.S. officials had sent there, Escalante brushed off the question.

When his radio crackled, he sped toward a popular crossing just beyond the international bridge. A group of Central American women and children cowered in the shade.

“It’s difficult to watch,” Escalante said. “The need’s gotta be pretty great.”

One woman with her son raised her head. It was Muñoz Vega, the Honduran mother.

Across the country, a number of federal asylum officers have quit, and a handful are refusing to implement Remain in Mexico, half a dozen asylum officers and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel told The Times.

They say the Trump administration is forcing them to violate the law in implementing the policy, end-running standards set by Congress and intentionally putting vulnerable asylum seekers in harm’s way. Most requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation.

In June, the union representing federal asylum officers in the Washington, D.C., area filed a brief in support of the lawsuit against Remain in Mexico.

“Every day, it gets a little bit worse,” said one asylum officer in California who refused to screen migrants under the policy.

Generally, before Remain in Mexico, asylum seekers at the border would receive a “credible fear” interview. The asylum officers, many of whom are attorneys, screen for fear of persecution in the asylum seeker’s home country based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or being part of a particular social group. Congress set “credible fear” as an intentionally low bar to help ensure the U.S. did not violate the law by returning people to harm.

But according to administration guidelines under Remain in Mexico, only asylum seekers who proactively express a fear of returning to Mexico — not their home countries — are referred by CBP officials to asylum officers, and for an entirely new interview process. That process screens them for likelihood of persecution in Mexico.

In these interviews, asylum officers also have to use a much higher legal standard. Essentially, instead of proving a 10% likelihood of persecution in their home country, asylum seekers have to prove a 51% likelihood of persecution in Mexico. That standard is generally reserved for a full hearing before an immigration judge.

In reality, the standard being used under Remain in Mexico is nearly impossible, another asylum officer said: “No one can pass.”

According to interviews with asylum seekers and officers, as well as Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics shared with The Times, many asylum seekers under Remain in Mexico are being removed without any interview at all.

Against its own guidelines, those sources say, Homeland Security officials also are returning children, people with disabilities and other medical conditions, and pregnant women. Lawmakers have demanded an inspector general investigation of the alleged violations.

The second asylum officer said she recently sounded the alarm after seeing a spate of women in late stages of pregnancy being turned back to Mexico. She was told that Customs and Border Protection does not consider a late-stage pregnancy to be a serious medical condition.

“They don’t want them to drop any babies on U.S. soil,” the asylum officer said.

A third asylum officer said they’re required to conduct the more complex Remain in Mexico interviews — sometimes lasting more than five hours — with children too young to speak.

Four officers described cases of asylum seekers who said they had been kidnapped in Mexico, then beaten and raped. Once their families sent money, the kidnappers released them. But when the victims fled for the border, the asylum officers had to turn them back. Kidnappers are now waiting outside ports of entry for the U.S. returns, officers said.

“In 99% of the interviews, they said they faced harm in Mexico, and we sent them back,” the third asylum officer said.

One asylum officer said she routinely woke up in a sweat from nightmares.

“How long can I do this and live with myself?” she said. “I think about these people all the time … the ones that I sent back. I hope they’re alive.”

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

Molly’s article strongly suggests that the “myth” that U.S. institutions are successfully stranding up to Trump and his White Nationalist gang is just that — a myth.  

Actually, with the help of “go along to get along” Federal Courts, increasingly dominated by Trump’s hand-picked far right flunkies, and a GOP-controlled legislature that has abandoned any pretense of protecting the Constitution and acting in the common good, Trump appears to be successfully dismantling the U.S. legal system right before our eyes.

The Ninth Circuit Judges who knowingly engineered this human rights and legal disaster are immune from legal liability for their wrongdoing.  But, they shouldn’t be allowed to escape the judgment of history on their dereliction of duty, abandonment of fundamental human values, and the human carnage it has caused and continues to cause every day.

Thanks, Molly, for keeping us informed of what the 9th Circuit’s “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Policy” really means in human terms.

PWS

08-29-19

TRUMP END RUNS CONGRESS, DIVERTS DISASTER RELIEF AND LEGITIMATE SECURITY FUNDS FOR BOGUS DETENTION BED BUILDUP!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-pulling-millions-fema-disaster-relief-send-southern-border-n1046691

Julia Ainsley
Julia Edwards Ainsley
Investigative Reporter, NBC News
Frank Thorp V
Frank Thorp V
Producer
NBC News

Julia Edwards Ainsley & Frank Thorp report for NBC News:

Aug. 27, 2019, 2:48 PM EDT

By Julia Ainsley and Frank Thorp V

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is pulling $271 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, to pay for immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum-seekers who have been forced to wait in Mexico, according to department officials and a letter sent to the agency by a California congresswoman.

To fund temporary locations for court hearings for asylum-seekers along the southern border, ICE would gain $155 million, all from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, according to the letter from Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., which was seen by NBC News.

The allocations were sent to Congress as a notification rather than a request, because the administration believes it has the authority to repurpose these funds after Congress did not pass more funding for ICE detention beds as part of an emergency funding bill for the southwest border in June.

Click here to read the notification.

Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security will lose $116 million previously allocated for Coast Guard operations, aviation security and other components in order to fund nearly 6,800 more beds for immigrant detainees, the officials said.

“We would not say this is with no risk but we would say that we worked it in a way to…minimize the risk. This was a must pay bill that needed to be addressed,” said a DHS official, who noted that the funds would begin transfer immediately to fund ICE through Sept. 30.

 

New Trump admin rule to detain migrant families indefinitely

AUG. 21, 201910:19

Combined with existing space, the funding would allow ICE to detain nearly 50,000 immigrants at one time.

The Trump administration has claimed that the sudden rise in border crossings in 2019 has overwhelmed resources at the border, and that the lack of detention space at ICE has caused backlogs at border stations that offer migrants substandard conditions.

In July, there were 82,049 undocumented migrants who were apprehended or presented themselves at the southwest border, a sharp decline from over 144,000 in May, but still double the number seen the same month the previous year.

Recommended

The $155 million for court hearings was originally allocated to FEMA in 2006 and 2007, but would have been used in the current budget to prepare to respond to natural disasters, such as hurricanes.

The administration began sending Central American migrants back to Mexico to await their court hearings in the U.S. as a means of slowing down the number of asylum-seekers who present themselves for asylum and remain in the U.S. until their court hearing. The funding will allow those immigrants waiting in Mexico to have their cases heard at the border, rather than being transported to locations within the interior of the country.

“I object to the use of funds for that purpose because the Department has provided no substantiation for a claim that this transfer is necessary due to ‘extraordinary circumstances that imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property,’” Roybal-Allard said, referring to a provision that would allow DHS to repurpose funds at this point in the budget cycle without notifying Congress.

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, also expressed reservations about the administration’s plan.

“I have grave concerns about DHS’s proposed end-run around laws passed by Congress that would drain millions from agencies tasked with protecting the homeland from security threats and natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires — including CBP, TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard,” Tester said in a statement.

“Congress has already deliberated DHS’s request and appropriated the highest-ever funding for border security and immigration enforcement, which passed on a bipartisan basis and was signed by President Trump,” he added.

 

Julia Ainsley

Julia Ainsley is a correspondent covering the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

 

Frank Thorp V

Frank Thorp V is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the Senate.

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

So, this is how Trump “rewarded” those Democrats who voted for his emergency funding, ostensibly to help out children being held in substandard detention. (There is actually no hard evidence that I am aware of that this “emergency” money has been spent on improving conditions for children, rather than more mindless family detention.) More cruel, wasteful, and totally unnecessary detention in the face of Congress’s very specific refusal to increase detention funding.

Perhaps it’s time for the Democrats to wise up and play “hardball” with DHS funding. Much of the restrictionist “uber enforcement” nonsense on which Trump is squandering money has little or nothing to do with true “national security.” DHS detention could be cut to a small fraction of its current scope without any discernible harm to real national security.

 

PWS

08-27-19

 

 

 

 

NEXT TIME “BIG MAC” LIES ABOUT THE “FLORES SETTLEMENT,” HERE’S JACLYN KELLEY-WIDMER WITH THE TRUTH!

Jacklyn Kelley-Widmer
Jacklyn Kelley-Widmer
Assistant Clinical Professor
Cornell Law

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/24/new-trump-administration-rule-allows-children-be-detained-indefinitely-heres-what-you-need-know/

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer writes in WashPost:

By Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer

August 24

On Wednesday, the Trump administration released a regulation that would allow it to detain migrant children indefinitely. The new rule, which is not yet in effect, would end the 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, which put in place protections for migrant children who arrive at the border. The Flores agreement limits how long children can be detained and requires that they be placed in the least restrictive setting possible.

Many Americans first heard about the Flores agreement last summer, when the Trump administration began separating families at the border. The administration claimed that it had to separate children from their guardians because the Flores agreement would not let the government detain the families together long enough to resolve the parents’ immigration cases, which often takes months or years. Previous administrations usually released families until their cases were heard.

In response to public outrage, the Trump administration officially ended the family separation policy — but continued to separate hundreds of families under other rules. Meanwhile, the administration continued its efforts to do away with Flores altogether, culminating in this rule.

Here are four things to know about the new rule.

1. Long-term detention has lasting mental health effects on children

Acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan said that the rule sets guidelines for the care of detained families in “campus-like settings” where all needs are ostensibly met. These “family residential centers,” he said, will have “appropriate” facilities for “medical, educational, recreational, dining” and housing needs. However, there is good reason to doubt that detention conditions will be adequate, given recent reports of the lack of even basic necessities at some facilities.

Detention is likely to have a lasting detrimental impact on children’s mental health. A 2017 American Academy of Pediatrics report concluded that detained immigrant children experience high levels of mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder during and after detention. Detaining children with their families does not significantly mitigate the severe mental health impact. Any detention is especially traumatic for children; long-term detention only increases the likelihood of lasting effects.

ADVERTISEMENT

00:30

LEARN MORE

In the week I spent earlier this year in the family detention center in Dilley, Tex., law students and I observed that the environment created continuing trauma for the children and families. One child I met cried silent tears throughout the legal meeting I held with her mother. A detained teenager was entertaining thoughts of suicide and refusing food.

[Does separating families at the border deter immigration? Here’s what the research says.]

2. The United States already detains some children for far longer than permitted by Flores

Flores imposed a 20-day limit for detaining migrant children, unless the parent opts to waive the child’s right to be released. The government already flouts this limit.

Children are detained more than 20 days when bureaucratic hurdles block their release. For example, in December 2018, the average stay in the children’s detention facility at Tornillo, Tex., was 50 days. Such waits are caused by a Trump-era Department of Homeland Security policy that requires background checks of the relative waiting to take in the child and also of every person in that relative’s home. Cornell Law School faculty members have met children detained in Brownsville, Tex., for up to 10 months.

3. The rule will not deter desperate families

McAleenan claimed that the rule will discourage adults from bringing children to the United States, whether those adults are the children’s parents, other relatives or smugglers. But such deterrence policies rarely work, researchers find. Pushed out of dangerous home countries by poverty, crime or other threats, migrants simply look for other ways into the United States.

For example, the Trump administration’s new Migrant Protection Protocols require migrants who present themselves at an official border point of entry to wait in Mexico for their asylum hearing. Knowing this, many detained women I spoke to in Dilley had avoided the point of entry. Instead, they crossed the Rio Grande at night on inflatable rafts, clutching their toddlers. They asked for asylum when Border Patrol apprehended them.

[How deporting immigrants from the U.S. increases immigration to the U.S.]

4. The rule faces several potential legal challenges

The administration published the rule in the Federal Register on Friday. It could take effect in 60 days, but only if it’s approved by federal judge Dolly M. Gee, who oversees the Flores agreement. Once the rule is published, the government has seven days to file a brief to obtain her approval. Last year, she denied the government permission to modify Flores to permit indefinite child detention. If she denies this request as well, the government will probably appeal.

Even if Gee grants the government’s request, the rule will probably be delayed by legal challenges from advocacy groups such as the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which originally filed the Flores case and continues to litigate it today. Advocates are likely to argue that the new rule violates Flores, putting the government in contempt of the court’s order.

If the rule does go into effect, advocates will probably bring a new class-action suit under some of the principles of the original 1985 Flores complaint, arguing that indefinite detention is a violation of due process and equal protection under the Constitution. They may also argue that the policy violates certain provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Further, advocates could turn to international human rights law, arguing that the rule violates the right to personal liberty and security enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Lawyers for detained children may also file individual writs of habeas corpus, a legal term for petitions for release alleging that the detention is an unconstitutional deprivation of freedom. Immigration attorneys have increasingly been filing habeas corpus petitions for immigrants in prolonged detention — at times successfully obtaining their clients’ release.

Beyond legal action, the indefinite child detention policy may again spark public outrage, as happened last summer over family separation. Collective public action could also prompt policy change.

Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week.

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer is an assistant clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, where she teaches lawyering and directs the 1L Immigration Law and Advocacy Clinic

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

So, why are guys like Big Mac, “Cooch Cooch,” Barr, and Stephen Miller still on the “public dole” rather than in jail for abusing children, lying about it, and knowingly and intentionally abusing our legal system with frivolous false claims?

These aren’t legitimate legal and policy disputes. They are blatant attempts, fueled by outright lies and racist-inspired knowingly false narratives, calculated to “break” our legal system and improperly punish individuals for exercising their legal rights.

PWS

08-25-19

CRUEL & SELFISH TRUMP ENCOURAGES RACE TO THE BOTTOM: Mistreating The Younger Generation, Whether Or Not They Are “Ours,” Will Come Back To Haunt Us!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-how-we-treat-other-peoples-children-that-matters/2019/08/23/24fcf982-c4f8-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html

Nancy Gibbs
Nancy Gibbs
Professor, Harvard University
Former Editor, Time

Nancy Gibbs writes in WashPost:

Nancy Gibbs is director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and a former editor of Time.

It is not an act of particular virtue to love your children and treat them well; instinct and evolution privilege our own kids, and from the moment they blink into the world, we would risk anything for their safety, sacrifice anything for their happiness.

It’s how we treat other people’s children that measures and tests us today. And here, as we shudder at the impact of his immigration policies on families, I can’t help but think that President Trump is channeling parents on both the right and the left who’ve decided that other people’s children don’t matter, as long as their own get ahead.

Anyone asserting the existence of certain universal values could always default to this: No decent society would ever argue that it’s okay to torture children. Which made it all the more chilling when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Mississippi swept up about 680 undocumented workers, leaving some children to return from the first day of school to locked houses, missing parents and shattered families. The spectacle — and it was flaunted as a spectacle, the largest one-state immigration enforcement effort in U.S. history — does not just challenge us on how best to balance politics, economics and justice. It asks us, “When is it okay to torment other people’s kids?”

CONTENT FROM VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER

Treating America’s back pain problem

Doctors are finding new ways to address the condition, which impacts 80 percent of people in the U.S.

For Trump, the answer was clear and blithely callous: “This serves as a very good deterrent,” he declared. What parent watching the sobbing children would dare step foot across a border illegally? “I just hope to keep it up,” he said.

You don’t have to be an apologist for open borders to conclude that there are ways to promote security that stop short of emotional torture. Yes, children often suffer when parents commit crimes, but that is the collateral damage of enforcement, not its goal.

Still, the mentality that justifies harming children so long as they’re not your own is not unique to the president. From the beginning of this year to mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed more than 1,200 cases of measles, the most since 2000. Arrogance plus ignorance takes its toll: Parents who won’t “risk” vaccinating their own children discount the risk to others. If they think vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, they should hope other parents stop vaccinating, as well. But more likely they are counting on others to comply so that their own children can have the best of all worlds: no vaccine and little chance of exposure to disease.

CONTENT FROM SAFEWAY

Back-to-school lunch tips for parents

How to pack a simple, wholesome, school-approved lunch that your kids will love.

In a different way but in the same spirit, the psychotically ambitious parents of the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal did not care who they deprived of a spot at Stanford or the University of Southern California as long as their children succeeded. Unlike many things in life, college admissions is zero-sum; an unqualified student who bribes her way in takes a spot from someone who tried to earn it. Need extra time for the SAT? Get a doctor to diagnose a learning disability. Between 2009 and 2016, the number of students getting special accommodations more than doubled, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. At one school in affluent Westchester County, N.Y., nearly 1 in 5 students had special testing privileges, which was nearly 10 times the national average.

These are starling parents, like the birds that destroy other birds’ eggs to take their nests and protect their own. For if every parent puts his or her child first at all costs, communities degrade, schools can’t function, society becomes ungovernable. And while they are not natural objects of sympathy, the cheaters’ children suffer, as well. The most obvious victims are the ones who end up sick or disabled by infections that could have been avoided. But moral infection eats you from the inside, rots relationships, wounds self-worth. As the college admissions scandal unfolded, I kept wondering what scars the parents’ ambitions left on their children. “The ruin of a nation,” a Ghanian proverb warns, “begins in the homes of its people.”

Which brings us back to our larger family. America’s identity derives from ideals that set us apart from the places we left to come here: freedom and fairness, justice and mercy, where anyone with moxie and muscle can build a future. We care for our neighbors; we honor service and sacrifice. Soldiers died for these values; parents watched sons and daughters go to war, sacrifice that which was most precious, to defend something bigger than ourselves.

This president doesn’t seem to think very much of our national character. He discounts our instinctive generosity to those in need, our compassion not just for our own children but all children, our confidence that we can succeed together, not just at each other’s expense.

What happens when nothing is bigger than oneself, no value is worth sacrificing for and it’s every man for himself? We are finding out.

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

Trump constantly preaches a foul doctrine of “beggar thy neighbor.” 

PWS

O8-25-19