Health – Page 9 – immigrationcourtside.com

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ @ CNN EXPOSES BIDEN’S SECRET, DUE-PROCESS-FREE, DEPORTATIONS OF VENEZUELANS TO COLOMBIA! ☠️🤮 — Venezuela’s Repressive Left-Wing Dictatorship — So Horrible It’s Not Even Recognized By The US — Has Sent Millions Of Refugees Fleeing — That Hasn’t Stopped Biden From Arbitrarily Rejecting Them!

Priscilla’s latest:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/politics/border-venezuela-colombia/index.html

US begins quietly flying Venezuelan migrants to Colombia under controversial border policy

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

Updated 12:27 PM ET, Mon January 31, 2022

(CNN)The Biden administration, unable to return an increasing number of Venezuelans arrested at the US-Mexico border to their home country, is now sending those migrants to Colombia if they previously resided there, according to two Homeland Security officials.

White House officials have grown increasingly concerned about the large numbers of single adults continuing to cross the US southern border, particularly from countries that Mexico won’t accept under a controversial Trump-era policy, two sources familiar with discussions said.

The flights of Venezuelans to Colombia, which have not been previously reported, marks another effort by the administration to try to stem the flow of migrants, pushing those who arrive further away from the US-Mexico border including those seeking asylum.

In December, US Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 13,000 single adults from Venezuela on the US southern border, compared with 96 in December 2020, according to agency data.

A humanitarian crisis and political instability have taken hold of Venezuela in recent years. Around 6 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations, usually fleeing to other parts of Latin America which have also struggled during the pandemic.

There’s been bipartisan acknowledgment of the deteriorating situation in Venezuela. Last year, Sens. Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Bob Menendez, a Democrat, introduced a Senate resolution expressing alarm over the situation in the country.

Colombia also granted temporary legal status to Venezuelans who had fled there, allowing them to legally work in the country. But for those who opted to journey to the US-Mexico border to seek protections in the US, expulsion to Colombia now puts them thousands of miles away from the possibility of claiming asylum in the US.

The handling of the US-Mexico border has dogged the Biden administration since the early days of Joe Biden’s presidency as a growing number of migrants journey to the United States, fleeing deteriorating conditions in the western hemisphere. Republicans have recently seized on the releases of migrants — some of whom can’t be expelled because of their nationality — citing it as another example of what they describe as the administration’s poor management of the border.

Under a public health authority, known as Title 42, authorities can swiftly remove migrants encountered at the US southern border, effectively barring those seeking asylum from doing so and marking an unprecedented departure from previous protocol. The authority was invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, despite suspicions among officials that it was politically motivated.

The White House has repeatedly referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the future of the policy, saying the agency deems it necessary given the Delta and Omicron variants.

Last Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security returned two Venezuelan nationals to Colombia, where they had previously resided, the department told CNN, adding that flights to Colombia are expected to take place “on a regular basis.”

“As part of the United States COVID-19 mitigation efforts, DHS continues to enforce CDC’s Title 42 public health authority with all individuals encountered at the Southwest border. However, DHS’s ability to expel individuals may be limited for several reasons, including Mexico’s ability and capacity to receive individuals of certain nationalities,” DHS said in a statement, adding that the department has removed migrants to third countries in the region where they had lived or had status.

DHS has also acknowledged the precarious situation in Venezuela by granting a form of humanitarian relief for Venezuelans already in the United States.

Still, the Biden administration has continued to rely on the public health authority and recently defended it in court — a move that received criticism from immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers. The latest decision to expel migrants from Venezuela — a country in crisis — to Colombia reveals a further dependence on the public health authority amid a growing number of Venezuelans arriving at the US-Mexico border.

In December, US Customs and Border Protection encountered 24,819 Venezuelans at the US southern border including single adults, families and minors, up from the previous month and continuing an increasing trend. As a point of comparison, in December 2020, CBP encountered only around 200 Venezuelan migrants, according to agency data.

While tens of thousands of migrants have been turned away at the US-Mexico border, some, like South Americans, aren’t accepted by Mexico and therefore those nationals largely can’t be expelled. Under the public health authority, DHS has removed migrants to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Brazil.

Some migrants from Venezuela crossed the border in Yuma, Arizona — often flying to an airport in Mexico and then crossing at a gap along the Colorado River, cutting the journey down to just days. It’s the most viable option for many Venezuelans and Brazilians, for example, who can’t obtain a visa that allows them to work in the US — or can’t afford the years-long wait for the legal immigration process. Mexico recently put new visa restrictions in place for Venezuelans traveling to Mexico.

The US has previously taken measures to try to lower the number of migrants at the US-Mexico border. Last year, the administration started flying migrants apprehended at the southern border and subject to the Trump-era border policy linked to the pandemic to the interior of Mexico.

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

Let’s see. Colombia, a country of approximately 50 million, has taken in about 1.7 million Venezuelans. https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2021/10/31/supporting-colombian-host-communities-and-venezuelan-migrants-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

The US, a far larger and more prosperous country with approximately 7x the population of Colombia, has taken fewer than 350,000. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/09/us-temporary-protection-venezuelans

Forced migration is real, no matter what fictions and myths Administrations of both parties use to deny it.

Pretending otherwise, and that lawless deportations and “deterrence” will materially change the forces that drive it, is both immoral and ultimately futile.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-03-22

🤯👎🏽MORE CIRCUIT REJECTS FOR GARLAND & PRELOGAR — 1st & 3rd Cirs “Just Say No” To DOJ’s Ill-Advised Positions On “Theft Offense” & Derivative Citizenship! — It’s Part Of A Larger Leadership Failure @ Garland’s Broken DOJ!

From Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-on-categorical-approach-da-graca-v-garland

CA1 on Categorical Approach: Da Graca v. Garland

Da Graca v. Garland

“Aires Daniel Benros Da Graca petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the “Board”) affirming his order of removal and denying his requests for cancellation of removal and voluntary departure. Because we find that a conviction under Rhode Island General Laws (“RIGL”) § 31-9-1 is not categorically a theft offense, we grant the petition for review, vacate the decision below, and remand for further proceedings.”

[Hats off to Randy Olen and Robert F. Weber!]

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

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-derivative-citizenship-victory-jaffal-v-director

CA3 Derivative Citizenship Victory: Jaffal v. Director

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203148p.pdf

“Appellant Imad Jaffal, born in Jordan, seeks a declaration that he is entitled to derivative U.S. citizenship under former 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a). That statute provides that “a child born outside the United States automatically acquires United States citizenship if, while the child is under the age of eighteen, the parent with legal custody of the child is naturalized while that child’s parents are legally separated.” Jaffal’s father was naturalized when Jaffal was seventeen years old, and Jaffal presented evidence to the District Court that he was in the sole legal custody of his father when his father was naturalized and his parents were separated. The District Court, however, declined to accept Jaffal’s evidence of his parents’ divorce. Because we conclude that was error, we will reverse the order of the District Court and remand the matter with instructions to issue a judgment declaring Jaffal to be a national of the United States.”

[Hats way off to Alexandra Tseitlin!]

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

Here’s my favorite quote from Judge Torresen’s decision in Da Garcia v. Garland:

Despite this apparent disconnect between RIGL § 31-9-1 and the Board’s definition of theft offense, the Board in Da Graca’s case determined that to prove the statute’s overbreadth, the Petitioner was required to identify actual cases in which Rhode Island had enforced the statute against de minimis deprivations of ownership interests. Da Graca contests the Board’s imposition of an actual case requirement and argues that he “need not necessarily proffer specific examples of Rhode Island prosecutions in order to establish a ‘realistic probability’ that the state would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of a crime.” We agree with Da Graca.

Essentially, Garland’s BIA “makes it up as it goes along” to reach a denial, then Prelogar’s DOJ attorneys defend the illegal result. Sounds like a really bad system, lacking accountability, expertise, common sense, and, sometimes, professional responsibility.

Lest you think that the legal nonsense being produced by Garland’s BIA and the USCIS is “below Prelogar’s radar screen” in her exulted position, that’s NOT true! Every adverse decision suffered by the USG must be reported to the SG’s Office with an analysis and recommendations from the agency’s attorneys, the litigators who handled the case, the appellate section of litigating division (here the Civil Division), and the SG’s staff. No appeal, petition for rehearing en banc, or petition for cert. can be filed without the express authorization of the SG’s Office.

So, Prelogar is well aware of the bad positions, unfairness, and poor work product DOJ attorneys are defending (sometimes with a lack of candor or misleading the courts) and their abuses of the time of the Article IIIs.

Even with the “real” (Article III) Federal Courts moving markedly to the right (following four years of Trump-McConnell appointments and eight years of lackadaisical performance by the Obama Administration), and rules that strongly favor the Government on judicial review, DOJ’s haphazard performance under Garland and Prelogar continues to earn a stream of avoidable “kickbacks” from the Article IIIs. The DOJ system is broken in many places — EOIR is just the most obvious, most pressing, and most easily addressed area of failure.

There is a tendency of immigration advocates, perhaps still hoping to curry favor with an Administration that largely ignores and despises them, to overemphasize the largely cosmetic and low impact “positive” changes made by the Biden Administration. See, e.g., https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/biden-at-the-one-year-mark-a-greater-change-in-direction-on-immigration-than-is-recognized;

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2022/01/biden-keeps-trump-immigration-policiesand-stephen-miller-is-loving-it.html

At the same time they acknowledge but downplay the existential crippling effects of Garland’s failure to bring progressive reforms to EOIR, his defense of disgraceful, immoral, and inhumane “Miller Lite” positions in Federal Court, his intentional indifference to human suffering and the complete breakdown of the rule of law at our borders, and his disdain for removing the Trump enablers, deadwood, and poor lawyers from DOJ — at all levels.

I have a radically different perspective on the future of meaningful progressive immigration reforms, based on my nearly 50 years of involvement with the system on both sides and at all levels — more than most folks.

There will be no meaningful, sustainable immigration reforms without a radically reformed, remade, Immigration Court system with a judiciary of due-process-oriented progressive experts who have the courage to “speak truth to power,” stand up for the legal, constitutional, and human right of the most vulnerable, and put integrity, humanity, and the best interests of our nation above career advancement, survival, or “ingratiation with the powers that be.” That’s NOT Garland’s DOJ — which remains largely the out of control, often ethically challenged morass that he inherited from his predecessors.

Let’s not forget that through intentional misuse of precedents, weaponization of EOIR, and White Nationalist litigation strategies, Jeff Sessions was able to largely disable the entire asylum system, including USCIS Asylum Offices, and shift USCIS Adjudications from service to “enforcement only,” in preparation for the “final eradication” of asylum and crippling of our entire legal immigration system by his crony and former subordinate, Stephen Miller. And, the folks who helped him do that and “went along to go along” with abuses are still largely on board and in key positions in Garland’s DOJ — actually operating with his apparent “stamp of approval.” Outrageous!

From a due process, human rights, progressive, good government, equal justice, racial equality standpoint, as well as from any aspect of moral leadership on fundamental values, Garland’s performance at DOJ has been unacceptable. Has Garland visited any of the camps in Mexico or gone to the “New American Gulag” to witness first-hand the human carnage for which he is responsible? Heck no! That’s a job for progressive experts whose input and advice he then shuns, ignores, and “tunes out!”

For progressive advocates to downplay the Biden Administration’s gross failures or “over-cheer” incremental progress that means little without fundamental reforms at EOIR and the DOJ only deepens the fecklessness of their own positions and furthers the disrespect and under-appreciation of their efforts, potential power, and value that has become an endemic feature of the Democratic Party.

The Biden Administration might talk a good game, particularly around election time; but, in reality, they are governing largely in fear of and like nativist Republicans — but getting no “political return” whatsoever for betraying their supposed values and their base (see, Catherine Rampell). Advocates reward and tolerate such disgraceful and intellectually dishonest conduct at their own peril!

Meanwhile, Suzanne Clark, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, certainly no “progressive shill,” speaks truth about the need for and our ability to accept more immigrants:

Allowing more immigrants into the US would help mitigate both soaring inflation and the current labor shortage, the CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce said.

“We need more workers,” Suzanne Clark told reporters Tuesday, per CNN. “We should welcome people who want to come here, go to school, and stay.”

“That is a place the government could be particularly helpful and we do believe it would be anti-inflationary,” she said, per CNN.

https://apple.news/AT8YmOLhiTOCuUFZijTLJCQ

Those immigrants are right in front of us: rotting in camps at the border, being returned to danger or death with no process — both as a result of Garland’s failure to re-establish our legal asylum system at the border — or languishing in Garland’s mushrooming 1.6 million Immigration Court backlog! It doesn’t take a “rocket scientist” to see that instead of wasting time, money, and resources on mindless “enforcement” intended to deter and discourage those who might help us by helping themselves, we should have set up fair and timely processing systems, staffed by experts, that would identify the many individuals at the border and already in the U.S. who can qualify to remain under fair and properly generous interpretations of asylum law, withholding, CAT, U & T visas, “stateside processing waivers,” cancellation of removal” (for those already here), TPS, and other possibilities.

This is just as much”law enforcement” and “maintaining the integrity of our system” as are the efforts to increase deportations, terrorize communities, or close borders to “deter” migrants (primarily those of color) that has been practiced to some degree by every Administration. It also makes sense, economically, practically, and ethically.

It starts with an Attorney General and DOJ with the courage and vision to end the “deterrence only” misconstruction of our laws and stand up for the legal and human rights of migrants, regardless of race, color, creed, or manner of entry. That’s not what Garland has been doing to date! Too bad, because there will be no resolution of immigration issues — nor will there be racial justice in America — without an AG who will stand up for the real rule of law rather than the parody of the law and justice purveyed by Miller and his White Nationalists and still being parroted and too often defended by Garland and his minions.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever.

PWS

01-21-22

🗽⚖️HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S SHAMEFUL 🤮☠️ FIRST YEAR — Biden, Garland, Mayorkas Fail To Enforce Human Rights At The Border Or In The Federal Courts — Garland’s Abject Failure To Bring Progressive Humans Rights Reformers Into EOIR & Resulting Legal & Human Rights Disaster In His Courts A Critical Part Of Bad Governance!

Grim Reaper — A year ago, who would have thought that Biden and Garland share this guy’s vision of “justice” for migrants at the border and at EOIR?
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

Dear Paul:

In this week’s First Page, we focus on the one-year anniversary of the Biden presidency — with a particular focus on policies that impact migrants and asylum seekers.

Our recently published report makes clear that the administration’s continuing use of Trump-era restrictions has led to escalating human rights violations and needless disorder.

We believe that the United States must welcome people seeking refuge with dignity, not deliver them to danger.

REPORTING THE RECORD

On Thursday, Human Rights First released a new report finding that after a year in office, the Biden administration’s continued implementation of Trump-era restrictions is sending to danger thousands of families and individuals who seek asylum protection in the United States.

The data assembled in our report, “A Shameful Record: Biden Administration’s Use of Trump Policies Endangers People Seeking Asylum,” is a damning indictment of the U.S. government’s border policies.

Courtesy Adrees Latif/Reuters

Between January 2019 and January 2022, our research identified more than 10,000 reported kidnappings, rapes, acts of torture, and other grievous acts of violence against migrants and asylum seekers blocked in, returned to, or expelled to Mexico under the U.S. government’s “Remain in Mexico” and “Title 42” policies.

At least 8,705, or 85%, of these attacks occurred during the first year of the Biden presidency.

“President Biden’s first year in office has set a shameful new record on human rights as his administration continues to deliver asylum seekers to danger in Mexico,” said Kennji Kizuka, associate director for refugee protection research at Human Rights First and co-author of the report. “The Biden administration is well aware of the grave harm asylum seekers suffer when sent to Mexico and yet it has continued to use a policy condemned by public health experts, international authorities, civil rights leaders, and even departing members of President Biden’s administration.”

Courtesy ReuterS

Our report makes clear that kidnappings and rapes of returned migrants – including of children – are common.

Cartels and other organized criminal groups in Mexico have turned torturing asylum seekers and extorting their U.S. family members into a new and lucrative illicit enterprise. At least three asylum seekers sent to Mexico by DHS under these policies were murdered.

Equally frightening, our research shows that Mexican police, immigration officers, and other authorities are often complicit in – if not directly responsible for – these attacks.

Courtesy Getty

As the Biden administration restarts the inherently flawed “Remain in Mexico” program in the wake of court rulings, they have already sent asylum seekers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries to “wait” for their day in immigration court in danger in Mexico.

In addition to inflicting grave and systematic suffering, these policies continue to perpetuate disorder, encourage repeat entries, inflate apprehension statistics, cause family separations, and fuel cartels by putting a bullseye on the backs of people seeking U.S. asylum who are blocked in Mexico.

Despite the Biden administration’s earlier efforts to terminate “Remain in Mexico,” when it was ordered by a federal court to re-implement the program, the administration has now chosen to expand its scope.

Today the administration is defending the expulsion policy in federal court, with a hearing in a lawsuit challenging expulsions of families at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

HIRING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Reports like A Shameful Record are just one element of our critical efforts to defend the dignity of all people.

Human Rights First seeks passionate team members who are interested in legal, communications, development, finance, and innovation work that can change lives, impact policy, and move public opinion.

Please check out our careers page and apply to join us today.

* * * * *

Watch for more news as our work for human rights continues. And please stay in touch on social media:

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You can read the full version of “A Shameful Record” at the above link.

Not to mention that the extreme lack of expertise, humanity, and quality control in Garland’s wholly-owned Immigration Courts is corroding American justice from the “retail level” up. So unnecessary! So divisive! Such a missed opportunity for Dems to actually govern with values and in the public interest!

Wow! Think of the incredible waste: So much talent, energy, creativity, and manpower that could be working with the Administration to solve problems and make things better for everyone. Instead they are engaged in an all-out war to stop the Biden Administration’s cruel, spineless, and highly ineffective immigration and human rights blunders and, once again, be the last line of defense for American democracy against the Dems’ self-destructive policies and actions.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-2.0-21

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: “Biden has delivered the worst of all worlds: inhumane, immoral, potentially illegal policy — and bad-faith political blowback about “open borders” all the same.”☠️🏴‍☠️🤮🤯👎🏽⚰️🆘

Catherine writes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/17/year-into-his-presidency-biden-has-kept-some-trumps-worst-immigration-policies-place-why/

. . . .

But these are, mostly, obscure policy changes or unrealized proposals. When Miller et al. condemn Biden’s “immigration record,” they zero in on his decisions at the Southern border.

Which is, frankly, odd. You’d never know it from the right-wing hysteria about Biden’s supposedly “open borders,” or Biden’s own campaign promise to “end Trump’s detrimental asylum policies.” But Biden has continued Trump’s most restrictionist, inhumane and possibly illegal border policies.

In some cases Biden has even expanded them.

As evidence of Biden’s supposedly lax border policies, Republicans sometimes cite his attempt, on Day One of his presidency, to end the program informally known as “Remain in Mexico.” This Trump-created program forced asylum seekers to wait in dangerous camps in Mexico while their U.S. cases were processed; there, vulnerable immigrants have been frequent targets for rape, kidnappings, torture and murder.

If Biden had terminated the program, that would have been a good thing, from a human rights perspective (not a Republican priority, apparently). But Biden did not succeed. After a legal challenge, a federal judge ordered the program to be resurrected — and the Biden administration not only obeyed but also expanded the program’s scope to cover even more categories of immigrants.

[Catherine Rampell: Joe Biden is president. Why is he maintaining Trump’s immigration agenda?]

Worse, Biden has maintained Trump’s Title 42 order. This likely illegal order involves automatically expelling hundreds of thousands of people encountered at the border without ever allowing them to apply for asylum, in contravention of rights guaranteed under both U.S. and international law. Both Trump and Biden have cited a little-used public health provision as pretext for this policy, even though legions of public health experts have argued that it doesn’t protect public health.

Perversely, continuing this Trump policy has also given ammunition to the hard-right nativists, because it has the unintended consequence of inflating the count of U.S. border crossings. Many of those expelled immediately turn around and attempt another crossing; in fiscal 2021, 27 percent of individuals were apprehended multiple times by Border Patrol, nearly quadruple the share in 2019.

The disconnect between GOP claims about “open borders” and Biden’s actually-quite-Trumpy border policies, is enormous. Two of Biden’s own political appointees who resigned last fall lambasted his actions as “inhumane” on their way out the door; six other high-level immigration officials have recently announced they were leaving the administration, without much public explanation.

It’s unclear why Biden has maintained his predecessor’s policies. One possibility is politics — that these choices were intended to stave off right-wing attacks about lax enforcement. If that was the motivation, though, it failed. Instead, Biden has delivered the worst of all worlds: inhumane, immoral, potentially illegal policy — and bad-faith political blowback about “open borders” all the same.

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Yup! It’s what “Courtside” has been saying all along! Read her complete article at the link!

Catherine sees much more clearly than any member of the Biden Administration the ridiculous failings of their so-called “immigration policies” (actually a series of disjointed, often self-contradictory, knee-jerk responses that sometimes undermine each other and reflect a total lack of thoughtful, morally courageous, informed leadership).

And, Catherine doesn’t even highlight the single biggest failure — one that cuts across every failure she mentions and also goes to the heart of our legal system!

That’s, of course, the abject failure of Biden AG Merrick Garland to bring due process reforms and better judges to his totally dysfunctional, grotesquely unfair, wholly-owned U.S. Immigration Courts. These “courts” — that function more like 21st Century Star Chambers than anyone’s concept of a “real court” — were “weaponized” by Garland’s Trumpy predecessors, Sessions and Barr.

They filled the courts at all levels with less than well qualified judges, many with no immigration experience or prosecutorial experience only, who were intended to help carry out the White Nationalist, anti-asylum, anti-immigrant policies developed by Gauleiter Stephen Miller. Garland has not replaced these unqualified judges with better talent, selected in a open, transparent, merit-based process with “outside input.” He has failed to make the substantive and procedural reforms necessary to bring order and some semblance of efficiency to his hopelessly backlogged “courts.”

He has declined to remove poor leaders appointed by his predecessors; nor has he tapped the large supply of progressive, expert human rights/immigration talent who could begin the process of restoring due process. He has continued to promote enforcement “gimmicks” — like “Dedicated Dockets” and the illegal use of Title 42 — that accelerate “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and have led to even higher backlogs.

His refusal to bring common sense, achievable reforms, and better judges to the Immigration Courts has demoralized lawyers and made pro bono representation even more difficult.

He has ignored the pressing need for better judicial training implemented by qualified outside experts. He hasn’t bothered to engage with those like the VIISTA Villanova program turning out exceptionally well-trained potential “accredited representatives” who could help reduce the staggering representation gap in his courts. Worse yet, he has allowed EOIR bureaucrats to create entirely new backlogs in the agency process for recognizing pro bono organizations and accrediting their representatives.

Garland’s horrible failure to energize and attract the progressive leadership and judicial talent who know how to begin solving these problems (rather than aggravating them) might eventually go down as one of the biggest “blown opportunities” for due process reforms in modern American legal history! This is the “low hanging fruit” that Garland and the Biden Administration has allowed to “rot on the tree.” What a (needless and deadly) tragedy!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-18-22

👎🏽⚖️☠️🤮 SUPREMES’ GOP MAJORITY TAKES A PAGE FROM BIA! — WANTING A PREDETERMINED RESULT, & LACKING A LEGAL BASIS, THE RIGHTY JUDGES SIMPLY FABRICATED ONE! — Mark Joseph Stern Reports For Slate On GOP High Court Judges’ Latest Disingenuous Assault On The Health & Safety Of Americans!

https://apple.news/Am7a_m_gxSpeJnAVpoMr-UA

The Supreme Court Had No Legal Reason to Block Biden’s Workplace Vaccine Rules

So it made one up.

JANUARY 13 2022 10:34 PM

The Supreme Court significantly hobbled—but did not obliterate—President Joe Biden’s efforts to protect Americans from COVID in the face of congressional inaction. By a 6–3 vote, the justices blocked his vaccinate-or-test mandate for large employers, accusing the administration of exceeding its authority. But by a 5–4 vote, the court upheld the administration’s vaccine mandate for health care workers, a decision that will compel more than 10 million people to get the jab. This split double header is a crushing defeat for Biden’s efforts to curb the pandemic by protecting American workers from catching COVID in the workplace. SCOTUS’ decision is not, however, a knockout blow to the administrative state. The Republican-appointed justices may yet enfeeble the executive branch’s ability to implement federal law. But a majority of them declined to seize on these cases as their vehicle.

By far the more important case, NFIB v. Department of Labor involves an “emergency temporary standard” issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This rule required employers with 100 or more workers to give their staff a choice: either get the COVID-19 vaccine or test weekly and mask in the office. The policy would have covered roughly 84 million people. To justify this mandate, OSHA drew on a federal law that allows the agency to protect employees from a “grave danger” resulting from “physically harmful” “agents” or “new hazards.” A coalition of red states filed a lawsuit to halt OSHA’s mandate, and by a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court took their side.

SCOTUS’ unsigned majority opinion rests on several dubious claims. The court declared that “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” So even though COVID is undoubtedly a “grave danger” and a “new hazard” to workers, this broad language is not enough, because it does not “plainly authorize” the mandate. Why not? The majority invented a distinction between hazards that occur solely in the workplace and hazards that occur in and out of the workplace. Because the pandemic exists outside the workplace, it is not the kind of “grave danger” envisioned by the statute, and “falls outside OSHA’s sphere of expertise.” The majority also raised the “anti-novelty principle,” stating: “It is telling that OSHA, in its half century of existence, has never before adopted a broad public health regulation of this kind.”

Notice something unusual about this analysis? The dissenters certainly did: It is utterly untethered to the plain text of the law, which obviously encompasses OSHA’s rule. In a rare joint dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan shredded this anti-textual approach to statutory interpretation. By dismantling OSHA’s authority over hazards found in and out of the workplace, they wrote, the majority imposed “a limit found no place in the governing statute.” This limit is not even supported by history: The agency has long regulated risks “beyond the workplace walls,” including fires, excessive noise, unsafe drinking water, and faulty electrical installations. And if the vaccinate-or-test policy is unprecedented, that is because it is in response to an unprecedented event: the deadliest pandemic in American history.

If that weren’t enough, OSHA put forth uncontested evidence that COVID–19 “poses special risks in most workplaces, across the country and across industries.” The virus “spreads more widely in workplaces than in other venues because more people spend more time together there,” the dissenters noted. OSHA “backed up its conclusions with hundreds of reports of workplace COVID– 19 outbreaks.” And it issued a rule designed to protect workers from these kinds of superspreader events. By “overturning that action,” the dissenters wrote, the majority “substitutes judicial diktat for reasoned policymaking.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Immigration practitioners are used to result-oriented, anti-immigrant, racially, ethnically, and religiously driven results from Federal Judges. After all, fewer than four years ago a somewhat different Supremes’ right-wing majority “green-lighted” Trump’s bogus invidious, unprecedented “Muslim ban” by accepting clearly pretextual and contrived rationales that actually were refuted by the lower court records.

Here, with the facts, science, and history, as well as the statute supporting the Biden Administration’s reasonable program, the GOP Justices simply invented a reason to bar Biden from taking action to protect our health and safety. Talk about a double standard!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-13-21

🤮🤯🏴‍☠️👎🏽GARLAND’S DOJ GOES “FULL MILLER LITE” ON TRAUMATIZED REFUGEE FAMILIES! — Some Dem “Strategists” Like New Policy: Dis Progressives, Abandon Campaign Promises, Trash Vulnerable Migrant Families Of Color In Hopes Of Appeasing White Nationalist GOP Nativists!

Maria Sacchetti & Sean Sullivan report for WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/biden-separated-families-court-migrants/2022/01/12/5c592f74-725a-11ec-8b0a-bcfab800c430_story.html

Two months after President Biden said migrant families separated at the border under the Trump administration deserve compensation, his administration’s lawyers are arguing in federal court that they are not in fact entitled to financial damages and their cases should be dismissed.

The Justice Department outlined its position in the government’s first court filings since settlement negotiations that could have awarded the families hundreds of thousands of dollars broke down in mid-December.

Government lawyers emphasized in the court documents that they do not condone the Trump administration’s policy of separating the children of undocumented migrants from their parents. But they said the U.S. government has a good deal of leeway when it comes to managing immigration and is immune from such legal challenges.

“At issue in this case is whether adults who entered the country without authorization can challenge the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration laws” under federal tort claims laws, the Justice Department said in a Jan. 7 brief in a lawsuit in Pennsylvania. “They cannot.”

The legal strategy reflects the Biden administration’s awkward position as it shifts from championing the migrant families politically to fighting them in court. Migrant families have filed approximately 20 lawsuits and hundreds of administrative claims seeking compensation for the emotional and sometimes physical abuse they allege they suffered during the separations.

. . . .

But while immigrant advocates and liberals are likely to be furious at the administration’s position in court, some Democrats say privately that it has a political upside. The image of the administration fighting against the large payments, they say, could blunt GOP arguments that the administration is too soft on immigration.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

“Awkward” seems like a “sanitized term” for “duplicitous and immoral!”

So, I assume that the Dems who are unwilling to stand up for progressive values and the human rights of migrants will look to their GOP nativist, White Nationalist buddies for contributions and votes come election time. Contrary to DOJ’s misrepresentation to the courts, individuals regardless of status had a statutory and treaty right to seek protection in the U.S. regardless of manner of entry. The unconstitutional Sessions/Miller scofflaw conduct was intended to punish and deter individuals from asserting and vindicating their legal rights.

Additionally, so-called “illegal entries” are to a large extent fueled by illegal policies by both the Biden and Trump Administrations of not having an operating, fair, timely asylum system at legal ports of entry. This has been compounded by failure of both Administrations to establish robust, fair refugee processing systems for Latin America in the regions where the refugee situations are generated.

I have a different perspective: A party afraid to stand up for the values of its core constituency stands for nothing at all! And we already have a major “party of no values.” So, the “competition” for the “no values voters” might already be over.

Disgusting as the anti-democracy, White Nationalist GOP is, I must say that they know who their supporters are and aren’t afraid to act accordingly. Just who are the Dems representing in this disgraceful and cowardly race to the bottom being led by Garland and Mayorkas (with an assist from Vice President “Die in Place” Harris)?

The Biden Administration’s “policy” of abandoning asylum seekers and allowing the Immigration Courts to operate dysfunctionally with mostly “holdover judges” and ever-mushrooming backlogs hasn’t proved to be a “political winner” to date. So, why do the tone-deaf Dems pushing it believe it will help them in November?

Hopefully, at least some Federal Courts will see through Garland’s disingenuous smokescreen and stick the DOJ & DHS with judgements much larger than the ones they were afraid to agree to in settlement.

The Garland DOJ continues to squander time, resources, and goodwill by filling the Article IIIs with ill-advised “Stephen Miller Lite” litigation positions. And, these are the folks progressives are depending on to vindicate voting rights and hold the leaders of the insurrection accountable? Good luck with that! Garland appears to be too busy defending Stephen Miller’s policies to effectively push progressive, due-process-oriented positions in the Article IIIs or reform his wholly owned, totally dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-13-22

💸🤑SCAM CITY USA! — Feds Paid Bad Cal Jail $1.4 Million For Nothing! — Now They Are Placing Immigration Detainees In These Dangerous, ☠️ Substandard ⚠️ Conditions! — Administrations Change, But The American Gulag 🤮 Remains!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/Northern-California-jail-reopens-to-immigrant-16765144.php

Deepa Fernandes for the SF Chron:

. . . .

Court orders in the class-action lawsuit caused Yuba’s detainee population to steadily decline, from 127 in May 2020 to zero on Oct. 27, 2021, when the last incarcerated noncitizen was released. Activists briefly celebrated and hoped to use the momentum to prevent the jail from accepting future detainees.

But ICE and Yuba County had quietly extended their contract indefinitely in 2018. The contract stipulates that Yuba County receive a minimum of $24,000 a day whether any detainees are in its jail or not. In the two months the jail was without detainees, the federal government paid Yuba County almost $1.4 million.

As word trickled out that the Northern California jail might begin accepting new detainees, formerly incarcerated men and community supporters protested outside the federal immigration court in San Francisco last month.

A report by the team overseeing the jail’s compliance with the court-ordered consent decree found that a “severe breakdown of the Jail’s mental health system” contributed to the suicide last month of a man who had been in the jail for only a few days. It also found that officials had failed to fix previously cited suicide risks, and that there was inadequate medical and mental health staffing and treatment.

“We’ve known for decades that Yuba County Jail has a horrific record of mental and medical care that has unfortunately resulted in tragic deaths and lots of pain for lots of families,” said Laura Duarte Bateman, communications director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which organized last month’s protest against Yuba accepting new detainees.

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

Read the full article at the link.

Fraud, waste, and abuse. No need for the GAO “hotline” on this one. It’s all hanging out in public view as Mayorkas & Garland bury their respective heads in the sand.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-11-21

☹️THEY WORKED DANGEROUS JOBS, PUT FOOD ON OUR TABLES DURING THE PANDEMIC, & ARE MEMBERS OF A GROUP WHO PAID $9 BILLION IN U.S. TAXES — Their “Reward” Has Been A Short-Sighted “Slap In The Face” That Also Penalizes More Than 1 Million U.S. Citizen Children! — Julia Preston Reports For The Marshall Project

Julia Preston
American Journalist
The Marshall Project

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/12/15/essential-but-excluded

https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-12-15/esenciales-pero-excluidos.html

Essential but Excluded

Immigrants put seafood on America’s tables. But many have been shut out of pandemic aid — and so have their U.S. citizen children.

By JULIA PRESTON and ARIEL GOODMAN

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

Somewhat reminiscent of how the Chinese workers who were key to building the transcontinental railroad were “rewarded” with the Chinese Exclusion Act and more than a century of anti-Asian bias and hate that continues today.

See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/05/31/history-chinese-workers-made-america-great-by-building-the-transcontinental-railway-their-reward-from-a-racist-nation-deportation-exclusion-bias/

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/05/10/courtside-history-beyond-trumps-mythical-white-nationalist-nation-lets-see-who-besides-enslaved-african-american-forced-migrants-did-the-work-that-made-america-gre/

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/31/%f0%9f%a4%ae%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%9a%b0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%8e%f0%9f%8f%bbhistory-of-hate-misogyny-vilification-racist-hate-directed-at-asian-women-has-deep-roots-in-u-s-law-jessica/

☹️Unfortunately, America has a long unhappy history of mistreating, exploiting, and demonizing immigrants whose hard work, courage, and perserverance against the odds built our nation into what it is today! Old habits of bias, ingratitude, false racial supremacy, and vilification of “the other” — or at least the “perceived other,” since in truth we’re all important parts of the real America — are hard to break. But, it would be a real boost for our nation and humanity if we could overcome the darker part of our past and move forward as one.

Thanks for sending this important piece my way, Julia!

🇺🇸🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-17-21

☠️NEW KIND REPORT SHOWS CRISIS OF PERSECUTION OF WOMEN & CHILDREN IN NORTHERN TRIANGLE EXACERBATED BY PANDEMIC — More Evidence Of Legal, Factual, & Moral Bankruptcy Of Administration’s Bogus “Deterrence Policies” As Well As Grotesque Failure Of U.S. Courts At All Levels To Uniformly Require Granting Of Asylum To Qualified Refugee Women & Children!

*Cover photo by photojournalist Guillermo Martinez shows a boy in El Salvador wearing a protective mask from his home during a COVID-19 lockdown. Photo credit: Guillermo Martinez/APHOTOGRAFIA/ Getty Images

New Report: Dual Crises

Gender-Based Violence and Inequality Facing Children and Women During the COVID-19 Pandemic in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras

Gender-based violence has long been one of the main drivers of migration from Central America to the United States. Widespread violence, including sexual abuse, human trafficking, and violence in the home and family, combined with a lack of access to protection and justice forces children and women to flee in search of safety. Drawing on existing research and interviews with children’s and women’s rights experts, this report lays out how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated already pervasive forms of violence against children and women in Central America, as well as the deeply entrenched gender inequality that leaves children and women even more vulnerable to violence.

Here’s a link to the full report: http://us.engagingnetworks.app/page/email/click/10097/1093096?email=C9P0Zhj6QQc0L7Si0LDouAN%2BRR2ul1GhmZAK81VjEpg=&campid=z6owwwxd2r6ZkArzVWMSmA==

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

Successful implementation of the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America must start by acknowledging that gender-based violence is a primary driver of migration and includes most violence against children.

Obviously, mindless, failed enforcement and deterrence-only policies that tell women and children to “suffer and die in place” rather than flee and seek asylum are absurdly out of touch with the realities of both human migration and the real situation in the Northern Triangle. This report shows that increased flight from the Northern Triangle probably has more to do with the aggravating effects of the pandemic on the already untenable situation of many women and children in the Northern Triangle than it does on any policy pronouncements, real or imagined, on the part of the Biden Administration.

An honest policy that recognizes the reality that gender-based persecution is a major driver of forced migration in the Northern Triangle would go a long way toward addressing the largely self-created situation at our Southern Border.

As many of us keep saying, to no visible avail, asylum isn’t a “policy option” for politicos and wonks to “discuss and debate.” It’s a legal and moral requirement, domestically and internationally, that we are currently defaulting upon!

Wonder why “democracy is on the ropes” throughout the world right now? Perhaps, we need look no further than our own horrible example!

A robust overseas refugee program in the region and a uniform, consistent, timely policy of granting asylum to qualified applicants applying at ports of entry at our borders would be a vast improvement.

Sure, it would undoubtedly result in the legal immigration of more refugees and asylum seekers. That’s actually what refugee and asylum laws are all about — an important and robust component of our legal immigration system.

Although our needs are not actually part of the “legal test for asylum,” the fact is, we need more legal immigrants of all types in America right now.

It should be a win-win for the refugees and for America. So why not make it happen, rather than continuing failed policy approaches that serve nobody’s interest except nativist zealots trying to inflame xenophobia for political gain?

An additional point: On February 2, 2021, to great ballyhoo, President Biden issued Executive Order 14010. A key provision of that order required that:

(ii) within 270 days of the date of this order, promulgate joint regulations, consistent with applicable law, addressing the circumstances in which a person should be considered a member of a “particular social group,” as that term is used in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)(A), as derived from the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.

270 days have long passed. In fact, its been more than 300 days since that order. Yet, these regulations are nowhere in sight. Perhaps, that’s a good thing.

This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to “us old timers” who have “hands on” experience with the unsuitability of the DOJ regulation drafting process for this assignment. Indeed, this assignment is actually several decades “overdue,” having originally been handed out by the late former Attorney General Janet Reno prior to her departure from office in January 2020!

The problem remains lack of expertise. With the possible exception of Lucas Guttentag, I know of nobody at today’s DOJ who actually has the necessary experience, expertise, perspective, and historical knowledge to draft a proper regulation on the topic. Past drafts and proposals have been disastrous, actually seeking to diminish, rather than increase and regularize, protections for vulnerable women and others facing persecution on account of gender-based particular social groups.

Indeed, one proposal was even used by OIL as an avenue in attempting to “water down” the all-important, life saving “regulatory presumption of future persecution arising out of past persecution!” Talk about perversions of justice at Justice! Why? Because OIL had suffered a series of embarrassing, ego-deflating setbacks from Article III Courts calling out the frequent failure of the BIA and IJs to properly apply the basics of the presumption. Sound familiar?

At DOJ, the “normal solution to lack of expertise and competence” is to simply eliminate expertise and competence as requirements! In many ways, “good enough for government work” has replaced “who prosecutes on behalf of Lady Justice” as the DOJ’s motto!

It’s also yet another reason why the DOJ is a horribly inappropriate “home” for the U.S. Immigration Courts!

😎Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-16-21

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

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

BY KAREN MUSALO

NOV. 24, 2021 3:10 AM PT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

Read Karen’s full op-ed at the link.

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

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

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

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-26-21

🤮POLITICS: REBECCA SOLNIT: DEMS NEED TO STOP “TRYING TO UNDERSTAND” THE NEO NAZI GOP RIGHT WING & FIGHT IT LIKE THE THREAT TO HUMAN DECENCY, TRUTH, & ETHICAL BEHAVIOR THAT IT IS! — “And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?”

https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-on-not-meeting-nazis-halfway/

From Literary Hub:

Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting

Nazis Halfway

Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

By Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results.

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

As Rebecca points out, “understanding,” “compromising,” and “engaging in productive dialogue” with the disingenuously disgruntled and “uber angry” far right turns out to be a “one way street” (surprised?). A “fools errand” if you will.

I dealt with transgender youth on a number of occasions during my career on the bench of the Arlington Immigration Court. All of they had suffered severe mental trauma and/or physical mistreatment from peers and adults who should have known better. Most had attempted suicide one or more times.

How is it acceptable for them and their fundamental identities to be “abused” and “dehumanized” by out of control, irresponsible “adults” and “parents” at school board meetings and other events? The GOP should be ashamed for giving in and seeking “political capital” from these reprehensible and cowardly attacks on students, teachers, and public officials trying to do the right thing on accommodating the needs of LBGTQ+ students and African American and other minority students and immigrants whose histories, humanity, and contributions for many generations continuing into the present have not been dealt with honestly, fairly, and humanely by our society. How will appeasing or meeting halfway those peddling lies and hate make things better for future generations?

Just how much “understanding,” “compassion,” “courtesy,” or “compromise” did George Floyd’s family, vulnerable transgender youth, or black students suffering from generations of systemic societal racism and anti gay laws, policies, and social institutions (and “false denial”) get from these folks on the right?

Stunning examples of Dems failures to stand up for their principles, and the disastrous consequences for humanity, are the continuation of Stephen Miller’s grotesque misuse of Title 42 at the border and AG Garland’s failure to clean house and institute common sense reforms at his dysfunctional, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, anti-due process, intentionally dehumanizing Immigration Courts known as EOIR! His “tolerance” for gross abuses by so-called “courts” that he controls and for the dehumanization and mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants on a daily basis is not “compromise” or “understanding!” It’s an ongoing national disgrace!

Did Stephen Miller really win the last election? Garland & Mayorkas are acting like he did!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-09-21

🏈COURTSIDE SPORTS — THE AARON RODGERS SELF-CREATED DEBACLE: Taking One For The “I in Team!”

Jerry Brewer @ WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/11/05/aaron-rodgers-vaccines-ivermectin-ego/

By Jerry Brewer

November 5 at 6:30 PM ET

You can trust Aaron Rodgers only to do what’s good for Aaron Rodgers. On a football field, his independence can be tolerated, and often preferred, because few quarterbacks have ever played the game as divinely as he can. For 17 seasons, the Green Bay Packers have benefited from Rodgers doing things his way because his way keeps them at a level hard to maintain in the parity-driven NFL.

This does not make him trustworthy, however. The Packers can trust his talent and stretch the definition of team to accommodate a player so stubborn and extraordinary. But they cannot trust him, not on matters that require deference or social responsibility or faith in anything other than his big ol’ ego.

No one can trust Rodgers to be more than what we have allowed him to become: a superstar in love with himself. Greatness has long been his shield. Now, as he uses it to plow through the saddest controversy of his career, it should be clear why Green Bay is wary of riding on his back for much longer.

[Aaron Rodgers lashes out against NFL, ‘woke mob’ in defense of vaccination status]

Rodgers — sometimes charming, often patronizing, always selfish — has caved to expectation for a change. On Friday, he provided what many had demanded all week after he was exposed for misleading the public about his coronavirus vaccination status: an explanation.

He should have kept his mouth shut.

“I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now,” Rodgers said during his regular appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “So before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I think I would like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself.”

When a preamble uses “woke mob” and “cancel culture” as a throat-clearing exercise, buckle up.

Rodgers proceeded to paint himself as a victim. Instead of limiting his argument to a legitimate concern — he said he could not take either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine because he is allergic to an ingredient in them and also shared concerns that many have about the Johnson & Johnson shot — Rodgers drifted into conspiracy theories and tired, facile anti-vaccine opinions.

[Sally Jenkins: Aaron Rodgers is entitled to stay unvaccinated. He is not entitled to lie about it.]

“I go back to these two questions for the woke mob,” Rodgers said. “If the vaccine is so great, how come people are still getting covid and spreading covid and unfortunately dying from covid? If the vax is safe, how come the manufacturers of the vaccine have full immunity?”

His comments included a revelation that he had taken ivermectin, an anti-parasitic widely used in large animals and dismissed as an ineffective covid-19 treatment by the Food and Drug Administration. So the former guest host of “Jeopardy!” is now mangling facts.

. . . .

In a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans, Rodgers is unwilling to abandon his recalcitrance and think about the team. He didn’t care enough about the Packers to follow the NFL protocols for unvaccinated personnel because he didn’t believe in them. He doesn’t care enough about everyone else to trust facts because he doesn’t agree with them.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Rodgers had largely redeemed himself from an embarrassingly bad opening performance in a loss to the Saints by helping lead the Pack to seven straight victories. Now, his leadership, integrity, and reputation are in tatters, probably irredeemably.

Without Rodgers, the Pack lost a potentially winnable game to the KC Chiefs on Sunday afternoon behind rookie QB Jordan Love, who frankly didn’t look ready to replace a three-time MVP.

Sure, it’s only one game, and the start was on short notice. But, performing at a reasonably high level on short notice is what being an NFL backup is all about. That’s particularly true for someone who is the “designated heir apparent.” I would have expected more from Love, even under difficult circumstances.

Some have opined that Love’s lackluster performance gives Rodgers more “leverage” in his relationship with the Packers. Assuming he recovers from COVID and isn’t suspended as a result of a league investigations into the incident, Rodgers is likely to be back on the field soon and might well get his team in the the post-season again.

But, his leadership and integrity will probably never recover from his gutless, selfish, and inexcusable self-victimization, as well as spreading of lies and conspiracy theories (not surprisingly, Prevea Health abruptly severed its relationship with “Mr. Ivermecton.”)

For better or worse, the public, particularly young athletes, do listen to what superstars like AR say. In no way is getting vaccinated against COVID “just about one’s personal choices.” No, it’s about building trust, setting good examples, social responsibility and creating a safer society for everyone. On those counts, the “sure-fire Hall of Famer” has forever established himself as a “Hall of Shamer.”

PWS

11-08-21

⚖️🗽TIRED OF BUREAUCRATIC DOUBLESPEAK & BS ON ASYLUM FROM EOIR & DHS? — Get The “Real Skinny” On How U.S. Asylum Should Operate From This Free ABA Seminar Featuring Round Table 🛡⚔️ Experts Judge Joan Churchill, Judge Paul Grussendorf, & Judge Jeffrey Chase On Wednesday, Nov. 10! (Registration Required)

Judge Joan Churchill — Honorable Joan Churchill
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Member Round Table of Retired Judges

Hon. Paul Grussendorf
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member, Round Table of Former IJs
Author
Source: Amazon.com

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

American Bar Association International Law Section

Program Spotlight: Refugees and Asylum in the U.S.

&

Review of Domestic Interpretations at Odds with International Guidance

Presented by the American Bar Association International Law Section, Immigration & Naturalization Committee, and the International Refugee Law Committee

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

12:00pm ET – 1:00pm ET

Register Today for this Free Program:

This program will review the differences between the Refugee and Asylum processes (which includes Withholding of Removal) in order to provide clarity to new practitioners about the stark contrasts between the two U.S. refugee programs and to inform on international law compliance.

Topic 1: Contrast and compare Refugees and Asylum law and process, and

Topic 2: Compare U.S. domestic interpretations of the legal criteria of Refugees and Asylum seekers with international law and policy.

Moderator and Chair: Joan Churchill (Former Immigration Judge)

Speakers:

Topic 1: The Hon. Paul Grussendorf

Paul Grussendorf has worked with both the refugee and asylum programs in the United States and abroad. He headed a law school legal clinic at the The George Washington University Law School representing asylum seekers, served as an Immigration Judge handling asylum cases, worked as a Supervisory Asylum Officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services [CIS], as a refugee officer with Refugee Affairs Division of USCIS, and as a refugee officer and supervisor with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Topic 2: The Hon. Jeffrey Chase

Jeffrey Chase is a retired Immigration judge for New York City. He has written extensively about the inter relationship of international law sources with the U.S. national law when administering cases involving asylum and refugee applications.

He has a blog entitled Opinions/Analysis on Immigration Law. He coordinates The Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges, an informal group of Retired Immigration Judges from both the trial and appellate level, who weigh in on topics relating to the administration of justice by the Immigration Court. The Round Table files amici briefs, and has issued position papers and testimony on issues affecting due process and the administration of justice by the Immigration Courts.

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

Many thanks to my round table friends and colleagues for putting this fantastic free program together and to the ABA International Law Section for sponsoring it!

In 1980, Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 to bring the U.S. into compliance with the U.N. Convention & Protocol on The Status of Refugees, to which we are a signatory through the Protocol.

After some steady progress over the first two decades, today, as a result of actions taken by the last four Administrations since 2001, we are further away than ever from the goal of compliance. Bungling bureaucrats at DHS and DOJ wrongfully view large numbers of refugees and asylees as a “threat” to be “deterred,” rather than as the legal obligation and undeniable assets to our nation that they in truth are.

They fail miserably to fix systemic problems, to properly welcome refugees and asylees, and to adjudicate their claims in a fair and timely manner consistent with due process and racial justice. With stunning tone deafness, they eschew the advice of experts like Judges Churchill, Grussendorf, and Chase in favor of cruel, inept, and “bad faith” gimmicks, like gross misuse of Title 42 to suspend the asylum system indefinitely without Congressional approval.

One only has to look at the evening news to see firsthand what a horrible failure these “Stephen Miller Lite” policies have been and how they ruin lives and trash the reputation of our nation. The failure of the Biden Administration to make good on its campaign promises to migrants and refugees is nothing short of a national disgrace!

The first step in holding Mayorkas, Garland, and the others responsible for this ongoing mess accountable and restoring the rule of law is to understand how the system should and could work.

Then, you will have the tools to sue the hell out of the irresponsible public officials and their bumbling bureaucrats, lobby Congress for better protections for asylum seekers, and generate outraged public opinion until the rule of law, common sense, and human decency are restored to our land! And, we can save some lives that are well worth saving in the process!

Knowledge is power! The Biden Administration’s knowledge of how to implement an efficient, practical, legal, successful asylum system would fit in a thimble with room left over! Get the “upper hand” by listening to these Round Experts!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-02-21

⚠️🚸🆘☠️☹️THE GIBSON REPORT —10-25-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Posts Show How USG’s Scofflaw Asylum Policies Generate Unnecessary Irregular Entries, Misleading Statistics, More Unnecessary CBP “Apprehensions,” More CBP Abuses, No Accountability For Abusers, & No Plans By Biden Administration To Rectify Situation — Lack Of Principled, Realistic, Legally Compliant Border Policy Undermines Democracy!

Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

NEWS

9th Circ. nixes order mandating more COVID protections for ICE detainees

Reuters: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling said the preliminary injunction issued last year improperly placed ICE’s entire network of detention facilities under the direction of a single federal judge, an error because the plaintiffs failed to show systemic nationwide shortfalls in detainee health protections.

DOJ lifts Trump-era case quotas for immigration judges

ABA: Immigration judges will no longer be required to close 700 cases per year to get a “satisfactory” rating.

Border Patrol apprehensions hit a record high. But that’s only part of the story

NPR: The Border Patrol recorded nearly 1.7 million migrant apprehensions at the Southern border over the past year — the highest number ever, eclipsing the record set more than two decades ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s the biggest number of individual migrants who’ve illegally crossed from Mexico into the U.S. in a single year. In fact, it’s probably not even close. See also Tired of waiting for asylum in southern Mexico, thousands of migrants march north.

New York Set Aside $2.1 Billion for Undocumented Workers. It Isn’t Enough.

NYT: A demand for aid has depleted the Excluded Workers Fund in New York, and thousands of those who qualify could miss out on payments. See also Immigrant families struggle to access child tax credit payments.

A Leaked US Government Report Documents How People With Medical Conditions And Disabilities Were Forced Into The “Remain In Mexico” Program

BuzzFeed: The report offers a rare window into the behind-the-scenes dysfunction and confusion surrounding the so-called Remain in Mexico program, which is set to come back.

‘It Should Not Have Happened’: Asylum Officers Detail Migrants’ Accounts of Abuse

NYT: More than 160 reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, reveal details of mistreatment that asylum seekers described experiencing from border officials and while in U.S. custody.

Border agents who made violent, lewd Facebook posts faced flawed disciplinary process at CBP, House investigation finds

WaPo: A U.S. Customs and Border Protection discipline board found that 60 agents “committed misconduct” by sharing violent and obscene posts in secret Facebook groups but fired only two — far fewer than an internal discipline board had recommended, according to a House Oversight and Reform Committee report released Monday.

ICE Review Of Immigrant’s Suicide Finds Falsified Documents, Neglect, And Improper Confinement

Intercept: An internal review of Efraín Romero de la Rosa’s death in ICE custody found almost two dozen policy violations during his stint in detention.

Biden’s Pick To Lead CBP Supports Two Of Trump’s Most Controversial Border Initiatives

Intercept: In a confirmation hearing, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus signaled support for Title 42 and border wall construction.

Biden’s Embrace Of Border Tech Raises Privacy Concerns

Law360: President Joe Biden hasn’t shied away from using controversial technologies for immigration enforcement, raising concerns that his predecessor’s pet project to build a border wall is being replaced with a “virtual wall” rife with privacy and civil liberties problems.

California Hires Border Wall Contractors to Screen, Vaccinate Migrants

Newsweek: SLS was previously assigned to build the border wall under the Donald Trump administration, but now it is expected to work with the health department to also offer migrants prescription services and transportation for “safe onward travel.”

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Justices Revive Citizenship Suit After Feds Yield Ground

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated a Third Circuit ruling in a deportation case that barred a Yemeni man from acquiring citizenship through his naturalized but divorced parents, after the Biden administration said the lower court overlooked precedent.

Anti-Immigration Group Asks Justices To Nix Bond Hearings

Law360: Advocates of drastically reduced immigration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn decisions in the Third and Ninth circuits that said migrants who have been detained more than six months should get a bond review hearing.

High Court Urged To Reverse ‘Impossible’ Review Standard

Law360: A coalition of conservationists and ranchers has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Ninth Circuit ruling that the federal government need not subject immigration policies to environmental review, saying it created an “impossible” standard for challenging immigration programs.

1st Circ. Orders BIA To Weigh Honduran Man’s Testimony

Law360: The First Circuit revived a Honduran man’s bid for protection from a deportation order, ruling that immigration authorities saw discrepancies in his testimony that he faced persecution as an HIV-positive gay man where there were none.

CA2 Finds Connecticut Convictions for Possession of Narcotics with Intent to Sell Were Aggravated Felony Drug Trafficking Offenses

AILA: The court held that the petitioners’ convictions under Connecticut General Statute §21a-277(a) were controlled substance offenses and aggravated felony drug trafficking crimes, and that the jurisdictional holding of Banegas Gomez v. Barr remained good law. (Chery v. Garland, 10/15/21)

CA3 Finds BIA Misapprehended Applicable Law by Not Considering Religious Persecution Against Chinese Petitioner Cumulatively

AILA: Granting the petition for review and remanding, the court held that while the BIA was correct in finding that the petitioner had not suffered political persecution in China, its reasons for rejecting religious persecution were flawed. (Liang v. Att’y Gen., 10/12/21)

CA4 Strikes Down Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-

AILA: The court abrogated Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-, holding that 8 CFR §§1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii) unambiguously grant IJs and the BIA the general power to terminate removal proceedings. (Chavez Gonzalez v. Garland, 10/20/21)

5th Circ. Wants DOJ Input On Full Court Review Of ICE Policy

Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday asked the federal government to respond to Texas and Louisiana’s petition for the full appellate court to review a panel’s decision allowing the Biden administration’s policy curbing immigration enforcement operations to remain in place.

Feds Can’t Put DACA Challenge On Hold For Rulemaking

Law360: The Fifth Circuit refused to freeze the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court order stopping the federal government from approving new applications under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while it inks a replacement rule.

CA9 (2-1) Reverses Fraihat Preliminary Injunction

LexisNexis: Fraihat v. ICE Maj. – “COVID-19 presents inherent challenges in institutional settings, and it has without question imposed greater risks on persons in custody. But plaintiffs had to demonstrate considerably more than that to warrant the extraordinary, system-wide relief that they sought.

District Court Orders Government to Begin Processing 9,905 FY2020 Diversity Visas as Soon as Is Feasible

AILA: The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the defendants to commence processing the 9,905 DV-2020 visas as soon as is feasible, and to conclude such processing no later than the end of FY2022, or September 30, 2022. (Gomez, et al. v. Biden, et al., 10/13/21)

Feds Say DC Court Wrong To Narrow Power To Expel Migrants

Law360: The federal government urged the D.C. Circuit to erase a lower court’s injunction blocking its use of a public health law to expel migrant families, arguing that the lower court interpreted its powers under the authority too narrowly.

Judge Scolds CBP In Partial Win For Press Freedom Group

Law360: A D.C. federal judge ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Monday to release previously withheld documents related to the government’s 2017 attempt to unmask a Trump administration critic’s Twitter account, while scolding the agency for its “lackluster efforts” to comply with Freedom of Information Act requirements.

Mich. Judge Drops DACA Holders’ Travel Permit Suit

Law360: A Michigan federal judge rejected two brothers’ claims that their due process and religious freedom rights were violated when they were denied travel authorization to Mexico for their grandfather’s funeral, saying that they had no recourse against the officials involved.

Documents Related to Lawsuit Seeking to Make Unpublished BIA Decisions Publicly Available

AILA: DOJ provided a status update to the court, which states that the BIA and NYLAG are in discussions regarding the possibility of posting certain unpublished BIA decisions online, both prospectively and retrospectively. (NYLAG v. BIA, 10/15/21)

DOD Denies Flouting Immigrant Soldier Citizenship Order

Law360: The Pentagon denied foreign-born soldiers’ contention that it was flouting an injunction to process their citizenship requests, telling a Washington, D.C., court that it was complying and close to doubling the number of requests that are processed annually.

IJ Finds Respondent Merits Favorable Exercise of Discretion for Fraud Waiver Under INA §237(a)(1)(H)

AILA: In balancing respondent’s desirability as a permanent resident with social and humane considerations, the IJ found that respondent was entitled to a waiver of removability for fraud or misrepresentation under INA §237(a)(1)(H). Courtesy of Christopher Helt. (Matter of Mohammed, 9/13/21)

CBP Notification of Continuation of Travel Restrictions from Mexico and Intent to Lift Restrictions for Vaccinated Individuals

AILA: CBP notification of the continuation of travel restrictions limiting non-essential travel from Mexico into the U.S. at land ports of entry through 1/21/22, while also announcing the intent to lift these restrictions for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (86 FR 58216, 10/21/21)

DHS Notice on Implementation of Employment Authorization for Individuals Covered by DED for Hong Kong

AILA: DHS notice establishing procedures for individuals covered by Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Hong Kong to apply for employment authorization through 2/5/23. (86 FR 58296, 10/21/21)

RESOURCES

AILA: Attorney Obligations When Posting on Social Media

AILA: Practice Pointer: Best Practices for Preparing and Filing Form I-912, Request for Fee Waiver

AILA: Practice Pointer: Liaison Assistance for VAWA, Us, and Ts

AILA: Use of Video Teleconferences During Immigration Hearings

AILA: Practice Alert: Biden Administration Plans to Rescind COVID-19 Travel Bans and Instead Require Proof of Vaccination

AILA: Position on the Use of Virtual Hearings in Removal Proceedings

AILA: Sample Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief Under the APA in a Claim Against CBP

CLINIC: Central American Family Law Codes

CLINIC: Current Updates on USCIS Processing Times

NIP/NLG: Explainer: Budget Reconciliation and the Filibuster

Suffolk County DA: Newly created Immigrant Affairs unit. The Chief of the unit is Leslie Anderson and Deputy Chief is Imran Ahmed. Their hotline is 631-852-2950 and the dedicated email address is immigrantaffairsDA@suffolkcountyny.gov.

USCIS: Immigration Benefits for Noncitizen Crime Victims

USCIS: Updated T & U Information for Law Enforcement Agencies and Judges

USCIS: Questions and Answers: Victims of Human Trafficking, T Nonimmigrant Status

USCIS: T Visa Law Enforcement Resource Guide

USCIS: I-601A, Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver, Starting 12/20/21, we will only accept the 08/31/21 edition

VIISTA — Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies Training For Advocates

White House: Report On The Impact Of Climate Change On Migration

EVENTS

10/26/21 Emerging Issues in Asylum Law

10/26/21 Legal Trends in Consular Adjudications: Updates to the Foreign Affairs Manual

10/27/21 Challenging Expedited Removal and Reinstatement Orders

10/28/21 What’s Old Is New Again: “Hail Mary” Relief and Creative Lawyering Options That Are Back!

11/3/21 U Visa Adjustment

11/3/21 Unaccompanied Minors: Changing the Narrative & Taking Action

11/4/21 USCIS Data Listening Session

11/4/21 IDP Training: ICE Detainers in NYC: The Impact on State Criminal Cases

11/7/21 Together We Welcome: A National Faith Gathering to Strengthen Support for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants

11/9/21, 11/16/21 Two-Part Introduction to Asylum Law and Procedure

11/10/21 Remedies for Surviving Relatives

11/11/21 Inadmissibility: A Look at Common Grounds and Red Flags

11/12/21 Haitian People at the Border: Historical and Current Push Factors and the Role of U.S. Foreign Policy

11/16/21 Advocating for Prosecutorial Discretion Under the Current Enforcement Priorities

11/16/21 Considerations for I-601A Waivers and I-212

11/18/21 Dealing with Post-Consular Interview Nightmares for Immigrant Visas

11/18/21 Ethical Representation: Serving Clients with Criminal Contacts on November 18, 2021 at 3-4:30pm

11/22/21-12/13/21 Webinar Series: Selected Issues in Family-Based Immigration

11/23/21 Establishing Social Group in Asylum Claims

11/23/21 But I’m Not an Expert! What You Need to Know About Common Non-Immigration Questions Your Clients Expect You to Know

11/29/21-12/3/21 Partial to Full Accredited Representative Initiative 2021

12/1/21 54th Annual Immigration and Naturalization Institute

12/2/21 Post-Conviction Relief For Immigrants: New Laws, New Developments, New Advice

12/7/21 Hardship in Non-LPR Cancellation Cases

12/9/21 December Immigration Update

12/15/21 FOIA

12/16/21 Ethical Scenarios for Removal Defense

02/03/22 Basic Immigration Law 2022: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas

02/04/22 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Immigration Relief 2022

ImmProf

Monday, October 25, 2021

VIISTA online certificate training to represent asylees/refugees

Immigrant of the Day: Karine Jean-Pierre (Martinique)

Biden Asylum Rule Spurs Criticism, Even From Supporters

Immigration Article of the Day: Refugee Responsibility Sharing or Responsibility Dumping?” by Katerina Linos & Elena Chachko, California Law Review

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Poetry Break: The Unwritten Letter from my Immigrant Parent by Muna Abdulahi

Immigrants in the United States

Belonging Begins With Us

Advocates say US immigration is rooted in anti-Blackness. Here’s how policies puts Black migrants at risk

Immigration Article of the Day: Labor Citizenship for the Twenty-First Century by Michael Sullivan, Seattle Journal for Social Justice

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Your Playlist: El Tri

House Democrats press Senate leaders to override parliamentarian on immigration

Immigration Article of the Day: Children as Bargaining Chips by Clare Ryan, UCLA Law Review

Friday, October 22, 2021

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Issues a Ruling in Fraihat v. US ICE

Thursday, October 21, 2021

“I Want to be a Border Patrol Agent When I Grow Up!”

Conference: Detention, Incarceration, and Administrative Law

Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Despite Promises, Biden Looks a Lot Like Trump on Border Issues

Human Rights Watch Report: US Records Show Physical, Sexual Abuse at Border

DOJ Walks Back Immigration Judge Case Quotas

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

CFP: Business Accountability for Human Rights: Addressing Human Rights Issues in Global Supply Chains

Strategy Conference on Climate-Induced Displacement (Virtual Conference – Oct 25, 2021)

Case update: Citizenship for children of naturalized divorced parents

Facebook Settles With DOJ Over Discrimination in H1-B Hiring

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

The Climate Migration: Testing point of Human Sensitivity

2d Amendment Rights of Undocumented Migrants

Comprehensive Immigration Reform is Long Overdue

Remove the Bureaucratic Red Tape for Afghan Nationals

Detention or Punishment?

Afghanistan: Broken Promises or Hopeful Futures

Miru Alcana – Auschwitz Survivor

University of San Francisco Immigration Clinic Attorney Position Opening

Changing Demographics in Long Island City

At the Movies: Themes of immigration and family dominate Nigerian film Eyemofe

“Fake heiress” Anna Sorokin has been jailed by ICE for 7 months

Supreme Court Sends Derivative Citizenship Case Back to Third Circuit

Monday, October 18, 2021

Job Announcement: Cardozo Clinical Immigration Fellowship

Chinese immigrant contributions on display in Yosemite

Kidnapping on Rise in Haiti

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

Sadly, more than eight months in, the Biden Administration lacks:

A coherent vision for the border;
A cogent plan to restore the refugee system and the legal asylum system (the poorly conceived “proposed asylum regs” — mostly opposed by our Round Table and other asylum experts — don’t make it);
The tough, courageous, well-informed leadership to make the necessary border enforcement and Immigration Court reforms and to stand up to the entirely predictable, well-organized nativist opposition, led by Stephen “Gauleiter” Miller and his accomplices.

Not a “recipe for success,” in my view!

Another item worthy of note: The pending settlement between NYLAG and EOIR on making unpublished decisions readily accessible to the public could open new avenues for advocates.

For example, the 1st Circuit recently cited an unpublished BIA decision in reversing the BIA on “equitable tolling.” https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-equitable-tolling-remand-james-v-garland#

BIA panel decisions favorable to respondents are almost never published as precedents by an organization where judicial independence and due process have long taken a back seat to “job preservation” within the DOJ. Politicos @ DOJ are normally much more interested in supporting enforcement and “false deterrence” goals than with enhancing due process, enforcing immigrants’ rights, and achieving racial justice when it comes to immigrants.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

1-26-21

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️HAITI IS NOT “SAFE,” & THE PERVASIVE GANG VIOLENCE APPEARS TO BE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED! — “They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs. . . . It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption!” — So, Why Are Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, & Garland Illegally Returning Refugees There Without Hearing Their Asylum Claims? 👎🏽🤮

Catherine Porter
Toronto Bureau Chief
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times website

Natalie Kitroeff
Foreign Correspondent
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/world/americas/haiti-gangs-kidnapping.html?referringSource=articleShare

By Catherine Porter and Natalie Kitroeff

They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs.The gruesome massacre three years ago, considered the worst in Haiti in decades, was more than the work of rival gangs fighting over territory. It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department announced last year.

Since then, Haiti’s gang members have grown so strong that they rule swaths of the country. The most notorious of them, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, fashions himself as a political leader, holding news conferences, leading marches and, this week, even parading around as a replacement for the prime minister in the violent capital.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of this gruesome, yet telling, report at the link.

Over 21 years on the Immigration Bench as both a trial and appellate judge, I adjudicated thousands of asylum claims. The circumstances described on this article undoubtedly would give rise to many potentially valid asylum and withholding claims, based on actual or implied political opinion and/or family or gender-based “particular social groups” and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) grants based on torture with government acquiescence or actual connivance!

So, how do Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland, who to my knowledge have never represented an asylum applicant or adjudicated an individual asylum case among them, “get away” with simply suspending the rule of law, under false pretenses, for those entitled to seek asylum?

Stephen Miller must be on “Cloud Nine” as Biden & Co. carry out his White Nationalist plans to eradicate asylum, particularly when it protects women and people of color! This is even as Miller and his neo-Nazi cohorts (a/k/a “America First Legal”) are gearing up to sue the Biden Administration to block every measure that might aid immigrants, particularly those of color.

He’s delighted with Biden’s abuse of asylum seekers of color! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

By contrast with Miller’s delight, human rights NGOs have “had it” with the Biden Administration’s grotesque anti-asylum agenda! See, e.g.,https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/18/2058777/–We-refuse-to-be-complicit-Advocates-leave-Biden-admin-meeting-in-protest-of-Remain-in-Mexico-plan?detail=emaildkre

Haiti Corpses — NGOs don’t share the Biden Administration’s vision of what a “safe” Haiti looks like. Neither do kidnapped American missionaries!
PHOTO: Marcelo Casal, Jr., Creative Commons License

Angering and alienating your potential allies and supporters to aid the far-right program of your enemies who are determined to do whatever it takes to undermine, discredit, and destroy your Presidency! Obviously, I’m no political expert. But, sure sounds like an incredibly stupid, “designed to fail” strategy to me!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

1-23-21

Priscilla’s latest:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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From Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis:

CA1 on Categorical Approach: Da Graca v. Garland

CA3 Derivative Citizenship Victory: Jaffal v. Director

🇺🇸Due Process Forever.

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