☠️END MISOGYNY 🤮@ EOIR, NOW! — Gorelick & Miller-Muro Are Right, But Abused Refugee Women’s Lives⚰️ Can’t Wait For Congress! — Judge Garland Must Bring Justice ⚖️ To Dysfunctional EOIR Now! — It’s Not Rocket Science! 🚀

Woman Tortured — Is this Judge Merrick Garland’s Vision Of Justice For Refugee Women @ EOIR? If not, what’s he doing about it?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Jamie Gorelick
American Lawyer & Public Servant
PHOTO: Creative Commons

Layli Miller-Muro
Founder & Executive Director, Tahirih Justice Center
PHOTO: Creative Commons

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/07/us-asylum-law-must-protect-women/

Jamie Gorelick is a partner at Wilmer Hale. Layli Miller-Muro is founder and CEO of the Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit that serves immigrant survivors of gender-based violence. Both were involved in Fauziya Kassindja’s asylum case in 1996: Gorelick was deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration and Miller-Muro was Kassindja’s student legal counsel, representing her in immigration court and at the Board of Immigration Appeals.

With the issue of migration in the news again, a glaring omission in U.S. asylum law should get more attention: The statute does not name gender as a possible ground for protection.

To be granted asylum in the United States, an applicant must be facing persecution by their government or someone that government cannot or will not control. The applicant must show that the persecution is on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in “a particular social group.” Persecution on account of gender is not included.

This makes sense when considering that the global treaty that obliges state parties to protect refugees was adopted 70 years ago, in 1951, when the legal rights of women were barely recognized. The treaty — called the Refugee Convention — says that countries have an obligation to protect those who have no choice but to flee or risk death in the face of injustice.

It is unsurprising that the needs of women facing persecution were not considered in 1951. It is also not surprising — though it is disappointing — that Congress wrote this outdated framework into the Refugee Act of 1980.

In the mid-1990s, some light was shined on this problem. Fauziya Kassindja, a 17-year-old from Togo, sought protection both from forced polygamous marriage to a much older man and from female genital mutilation. She was granted asylum after proving that she was a member of a “particular social group” — and thus covered by the Refugee Act. We were both involved in this case, which helped to crack open the door for women to argue that gender-based asylum claims should be granted under the “particular social group” category in the statute.

But progress for women has been slow and painful under a statute that does not explicitly recognize gender-based persecution. It took 14 years for the United States to grant asylum to a Guatemalan woman, Rodi Alvarado, who endured unspeakable brutalization by her husband, a former soldier. Regulations proffered by then-Attorney General Janet Reno in 2000 to protect women under the social-group category were never finalized, leaving women in the lurch. So much variance exists in the likelihood of success from court to court that filing a claim can feel like playing Russian roulette.

. . . .

This situation has been made much worse in recent years. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, decades of progress were nearly wiped out by the stroke of a pen. Because the highest immigration court is part of the Justice Department, he was able to single-handedly reverse key legal precedents favorable to women’s claims and issue guidance to judges limiting gender-based asylum. As a result of these changes, the safety of many immigrant women hangs by a thread. The Refugee Act urgently needs to be changed to clearly protect women who would otherwise meet the stringent requirements for asylum.

. . . .

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

Read the full op-ed at the link.

The Rest of the Story

I wrote the decision granting asylum in Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996). Jamie Gorelick was the Deputy Attorney General during part of my tenure (1995-2001) as Chair of the BIA. Layli Miller-Muro worked for me as a BIA Attorney-Advisor for a time.

Following Kasinga, some of my colleagues and I put our careers on the line to vindicate the statutory, constitutional, and human rights of refugee women who suffered egregious persecution in the form of domestic violence. One of those cases was Rodi Alvarado (a/k/a “Ms. R-A-“), where we dissented from our majority colleagues’ misguided denial of protection to her following grotesque, clearly gender-based persecution. Matter of R-A-, 22 I&N Dec. 906, 928 (BIA 1999) (Guendelsberger,Board Member, dissenting with Schmidt, Chair, Villageliu, Rosenberg, and Moscato, Board Members). Alvarado had properly been granted asylum by an Immigration Judge, building on Kasinga, before being unjustly stripped of protection by the majority of our colleagues.

The incorrect decision in R-A- was vacated by Attorney General Reno. Finally, after a 14-year struggle, Ms. Alvarado was granted asylum in an unpublished, unappealed decision based largely on the rationale of the dissenters. In the meantime, the “gang of four” dissenters (minus Moscato) had been exiled from the BIA by Attorney General John Ashcroft, assisted by his sidekick, Kris Kobach (the infamous “Ashcroft Purge” @ the BIA).

In 2014, in Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), the BIA finally recognized domestic violence based on gender as a form of persecution. They did so without acknowledging the pioneering work of the R-A- dissenters 15 years earlier. By this time, domestic violence as a basis for asylum had become so well established that it wasn’t even contested by the DHS (although, curiously, the case was remanded by the BIA for additional findings on issues that were beyond reasonable dispute)!

In the meantime, at the Arlington Immigration Court, my colleagues and I had consistently granted domestic violence asylum cases based on a DHS policy position known as the “Martin Memo,” after former INS General Counsel and later DHS Deputy General Counsel Professor David Martin (who, incidentally, argued the Kasinga case before the BIA in 1996 — famous gender-based asylum expert Professor Karen Musalo argued for Kasinga). Most of those grants were unappealed by DHS. Indeed, many were so compelling and well documented that DHS joined Respondents’ counsel in moving for asylum grants following brief testimony. These cases actually became staples on my “short docket,” promoting efficiency, fairness, and becoming one of the few “working parts” of the Immigration Courts.

Tahirih Justice Center, founded by, Layli Miller-Muro, was counsel in some of these cases and served as an essential resource and inspiration for attorneys preparing domestic violence cases. It also functioned as a training center for some of the “new all-stars” of the New Due Process Army. For a time, the progress in recognizing, documenting, and vindicating the rights and humanity of female asylum seekers, at least in the Arlington Immigration Court, was one of the few shining examples of the courts, DHS, and the private/NGO bar working cooperatively to improve the quality and efficiency of justice in Immigration Court. It should have been a model for all other courts!

Sadly, in 2018, Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, unilaterally intervened and undid two decades of progress for women refugees of color with his grossly incorrect and disingenuous decision in Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (BIA 2018), overruling Matter of A-R-C-G- on completely specious grounds while intentionally misconstruing the facts of record. Significantly, Sessions’s intervention was over the objection of DHS, which had expressed continuing agreement with the A-R-C-G- framework for deciding domestic violence cases.

“Hanging by a thread,” as stated by the op-ed, unfortunately vastly understates the war on the legal rights and humanity of asylum-seeking women, particularly targeting women at color, being carried out at EOIR today. This effort is led by a BIA that has long since lost its way, basically “weaponizing” the legal distortions and vicious, openly misogynist dicta set forth by Sessions in Matter of A-B- to dehumanize, degrade, and deport vulnerable refugee women.

In numerous cases, the BIA actually intervenes at ICE’s request to reverse proper grants by courageous and scholarly Immigration Judges below. It’s all about churning out final orders of removal as a deterrent – a vile, disgusting, perverted “philosophy” advanced by Sessions, Barr, and Whitaker, and not yet effectively rejected by Judge Garland.

Judge Merrick Garland — Judge Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

Yeah, I’ve read about the Judge’s “difficulties” in getting his “A-Team” on board at the DOJ. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/07/us-asylum-law-must-protect-women/. So what!

Judge Garland is in the job because he is not only an experienced DOJ senior executive, but a long-serving Federal Judge who was admired for his sense of justice. It shouldn’t take an army of “spear-carriers” and subordinates for a true leader of Judge Garland’s experience to seize control of the situation and start getting the “ship of justice” sailing in the right direction. Judge Garland’s political and bureaucratic travails are of no moment to, and pale in comparison with, the additional, unconscionable abuse and “Dred Scottification” being heaped on refugee women and their courageous representatives by his dysfunctional and unconstitutional “star chamber courts.”

“Refugee women get ‘special treatment’ in accordance with the ‘traditional values’ applied to their cases in Judge Garland’s Immigration Courts!”

Trial By Ordeal — Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Please, Pick Up The Phone & Your Pen, Judge Garland!

Not rocket science, Judge Garland! All it takes is six calls and a signature to start ending misogyny at EOIR and achieving racial justice in the America.

First three calls: Call Judge Dana Marks (SF), Judge Noel Brennan (NYC), Judge Amiena Khan (Newark) and tell them that they are detailed to the positions of Acting EOIR Director, Acting BIA Chair, and Acting Chief Immigration Judge, respectively. (The first position is vacant and the other two positions are filled by Senior Executives subject to transfer at the AG’s discretion. The current Acting Director already has an SES position to which she could return, or she could be re-installed as the
EOIR General Counsel, a job for which she is well-qualified.)

Fourth call: Call the the head of of the Justice Management Division (JMD). Ask her/him to find suitable DOJ placements for the two current incumbents mentioned above and all current members of the BIA (all of whom are either SES or “Management Officials” subject to transfer at the AG’s discretion) in other DOJ positions at the same pay level where they can do no further damage to our justice system. Ask him/her to arrange for the temporary appointment of former DOJ employees Jamie Gorelick and Layli Miller-Muro as Acting Appellate Judges at the BIA.

Calls five and six: Call Jamie Gorelick and Layli Miller-Muro. Thank them, tell them you agree with their Post op-ed, and ask (or beg) them to come to DOJ on a temporary basis to help Judges Marks, Brennan, and Khan solve the current problems with asylum adjudications and take the necessary actions to get EOIR functioning as a legitimate, independent, due-process-oriented court system. In other words, turn their cogent op-ed into a “real life action plan” for restoring due process, humanity, and common sense to the Immigration Courts, with a focus on the now totally unprofessional, wrong-headed mis-adjudication of asylum cases.

Finally, sign this order:

All precedent decisions issued to EOIR by former Attorneys General Sessions and Barr, and former Acting Attorneys General Whitaker and Wilkinson, and all their pending actions certifying cases to themselves are hereby vacated. All cases shall be returned to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) for reconsideration. In the reconsideration process, the BIA shall, among other things, honor the letter and spirit of these binding precedents:

INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987)

Matter of Mogharrabi, 19 I&N Dec. 439 (BIA 1987)

Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996)

In the reconsideration process the BIA shall also be guided by the principle of “through teamwork, innovation, and best practices, become the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

See, it’s not that complicated. By the end of this year, women will get the protection to which they legally are entitled from the Immigration Courts. We all will see dramatic changes that will lead the way toward “equal justice for all’” in America and become a blueprint for the Immigration Courts to fulfill the above-stated principle.

It would also be a far better legacy for Judge Garland to be viewed as the “father of the fair, independent, expert Immigration Courts,” than to be remembered as running the most dysfunctional, unfair, and misogynistic court system in America, his current path. And, as an extra added bonus, Judge Garland, you will have a great start on building a premier source of “battle tested,” due-process-oriented, progressive jurists for future Article III appointments!

It’s a “win-win-win” that you no longer can afford to ignore, Your Honor!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-09-21

⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J. MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!

https://www.justsecurity.org/75675/to-fix-the-immigration-system-we-need-to-start-with-immigration-courts/

Merrick Garland was recently confirmed as attorney general, bringing back a much-needed sense of impartiality and integrity to the Justice Department and the immigration court system it oversees. In this sense, his appointment is critical because, less than two months into his presidency, Joe Biden is already confronting the reality that meaningful immigration policies don’t always match up with wishful campaign promises. As thousands of migrants, especially unaccompanied minors, continue to seek safety and opportunity in the United States; as changes to interior enforcement and immigration prosecutions are slow to implement; and as advocates apprehensively watch detention facilities expand and COVID-related border closures continue, immigration remains the most divisive of all political conversations.

But rather than be overwhelmed by the challenge, perhaps there is another place to start, one that has only been alluded to in Biden’s plans and never taken up by Congress: If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts. In a Just Security piece published in November, Gregory Chen eloquently laid out the devastating harm caused by the Trump administration’s politicization of the immigration judiciary, pointedly describing the courts as “strained to the breaking point under a massive backlog of cases and a systemic inability to render consistent, fair decisions.”

Courts are the backstop of every legal system. Their most basic function is to ensure that applications of the law are fair, not arbitrary and capricious. In the U.S. immigration system, however, most of the oversight has fallen on administrative courts housed within the Department of Justice. As Chen argues, the courts “operate under the jurisdiction of a prosecutorial agency, the Department of Justice, whose aims and political interests often conflict with the fundamental mission of delivering impartial and fair decisions.” Further exacerbating the tension, beginning in 1996 Congress expanded the executive branch’s already far-reaching power on immigration by starting a 30-year trend of limiting the federal courts’ jurisdiction over immigration issues; efforts that were only reinforced by the 2002 Homeland Security Act and 2005 REAL ID Act. The recently introduced, White House-backed, U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 only slightly restores judicial oversight, allowing district courts to review allegations of violations of certain portions of the Act. For the foreseeable future, immigration courts remain under the direction of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), a small and chronically under-funded sub-agency of the Justice Department, operating out of an office building in Falls Church, Virginia, removed from DOJ leadership in Washington, D.C.

While they by no means caused the issues that plague the EOIR today, the Trump administration’s policies put the proverbial final nail in the coffin of a quasi-functioning system, decimating the daily functions of immigration courts and showing how they can be used as political tools. The overwhelming backlog of cases –nearly 1.3 million at last count across all courts– exacerbated by the enforcement-first agenda, means that immigration judges have enormous caseloads with few support staff to help them manage the work. In addition, policies by the Trump administration removed judicial discretion from judges, prevented them from using simple control tools to manage their dockets, tied performance reviews to how many cases they closed out within a year while making it harder to avoid entering deportation orders, and created new administrative law to further restrict benefits a judge can grant. When the immigration bench pushed back, leadership dismantled the union that represented them. Hiring and rewards practices have politicized the bench even more. As Chen noted in his piece, the Trump administration “stacked the courts with appointees who are biased toward enforcement, have histories of poor judicial conduct, hold anti-immigrant views, or are affiliated with organizations espousing such views.”

This is not the hallmark of a functional legal system, and its ripple effects undermine our immigration system as a whole.

. . . .

Otherwise, we will prolong a situation that would be comical were the implications not so devastating. Returning to the individuals stranded in Mexico due to the MPP, for example – as of the time of this writing, they are being registered into a database and given COVID tests by various international organizations. Once cleared to enter the United States, they will fill out a form, by hand, which is handed to the Customs and Border Protection official. The CBP officer, overwhelmed and under-resourced as they are at the border, will then transmit this paper form to the immigration court officials, who will enter it into their systems and change the case to the appropriate court. In New York, these courts do not even have sufficient staff to assign one clerk, who also doubles as an administrative assistant, to each judge. As a result, calls to the court frequently go unanswered and are rarely returned. Furthermore, increasingly, understaffing has led to misplaced evidence submissions for pending cases. The responsibility to ensure that all of these obstacles are overcome will lie on the individual who just, finally, entered the United States.

An independent immigration judiciary, with its own resources and free from political oversight, is the only long-lasting remedy to this dysfunction. In the meantime, the agency, much like the DOJ it depends on, is in desperate need of thoughtful, measured leadership that values due process and impartiality and supports existing staff as it continues to navigate the complex problems posed by our immigration laws. There must be trained, dedicated staff ensuring efficient management of the court’s dockets and administrative systems so that the individuals whose cases are going through the courts understand what is required of them. Only then will the immigration system reflect American notions of justice, and only then can we begin to rebuild a strong, sustainable immigration system that meets our goals for foreign policy, national security, and domestic prosperity.

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

Read Camille’s full article at the link.

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

Not rocket science! Just following the due process clause of the Constitution; implementing asylum laws in the fair, generous, and practical way they were intended; replacing today’s failed EOIR administrators, the entire BIA, and many Immigration Judges responsible for “asylum free zones” with competent, expert professionals; and treating migrants, regardless of race, color, creed, or gender, as human beings!

If you wonder why Judge Garland is continuing to run “star chambers” masquerading as “courts” @ DOJ, join the club!

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

As cogently described by my friend and fellow panelist at the Hispanic National Bar Association last night, Claudia Cubas, Litigation Director at the CAIR Coalition, in what other “court” system in America are you not entitled to a timely copy of your client’s file to prepare for litigation and file applications (often with artificially truncated “filing dates” to promote “summary denials”)? Making the Immgration Courts functional is neither impossible nor that complicated. All it takes is competent leadership with the guts to “clean house” at EOIR and “kick some tail” at an intransigent, contemptuous, and out of control DHS.

So why is Judge Garland investing in the continuing, deadly “Clown Show,”🤡🦹🏿‍♂️☠️⚰️ rather than getting going on bringing “his” courts into compliance with due process? It’s not even that hard to get the right experts who could do the job in place, at least on a temporary basis.

If Judge Garland won’t do his job, what can we do to force change and rationality into this totally dysfunctional, stunningly unfair, scofflaw system? Here are some ideas from last night’s panel at the Hispanic National Bar Association (“HNBA”):

Apply for jobs at EOIR (sure, they are hidden away on “USA Jobs,” there is no effort whatsoever on Judge Garland’s part to diversify or recruit real experts, and the selection process is opaque). But, better judges, with actual experience representing migrants (particularly asylum seekers) in court, and some compassion and human understanding along with expertise, are the key to fixing the system. It’s particularly critical for minority attorneys (now a relative rarity in the “Immigration Judiciary”) to apply in overwhelming numbers and get into the system to start forcing change from within (“bore from within,” as Dan Kowalski says). Can’t complain about who’s selected if you don’t apply and compete!
Raise hell with your legislative representatives! As long as Immigration Court reform is #27 on their radar screens, the problem won’t get addressed.
Get involved with educating the public about the ungodly, un-American disaster in the Immigration “Courts” that don’t fit any normal definition of “courts” (except “kangaroo courts”). Join and support advocacy and social service groups; write op-eds; write for blogs; speak at community and church meetings; run for political office!
Sue, sue, sue, sue! Make sure that the systemic mistreatment of migrants and people of color in Judge Garland’s Immigration Courts are front and center in the Article III Courts and that we are making an historical record of where Federal Judges and public officials stand on the most critical racial and social justice issue in America today. Argue the very obvious Constitutional violations present in a system run by prosecutors, where judges can be neither fair nor impartial, and where many lack even minimal competence and qualifications for their “judicial” positions. Take the fight to the broken and dysfunctional DOJ in the only way they understand, by whacking them down in court! Make Judge Garland face and “own” his disgracefully failed, unprofessional “courts” by making it the #1 issue occupying his time. Make how he deals with the Immigration Courts his overriding “legacy” for better or worse!
Remember, GOP politicos like to use immigration as a “prop” to spread their message of racial vilification and dehumanization of the “other” because it “fires up” their White Nationalist base! By contrast, Dem politicos want to make immigration go away and pretend like the mess in the Immigration Courts doesn’t exist, can’t be fixed, isn’t that important (as in lives of migrants and asylum seekers, mainly of color, don’t count), and isn’t killing people! Don’t let either party get away with their respective dishonest, “designed for failure,” approaches!

Humanity and the future of American democracy are at stake here! They might be “Clown Courts” 🤡 but the damage they daily inflict on human lives ☠️⚰️ and values 🤮 is no laughing matter!

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt — “EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Put an end to deadly “Clown Courts” 🤡 now!

PWS

04-08-21

🇺🇸⚖️STRAIGHT TALK FROM HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: “[F]or decades the BIA has enforced the offensive, outdated message to women seeking protection from such abuse that ‘this is not their world.’ The time has come to finally put an end to this sad substitute for true administrative appellate review.”

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/4/6/the-bias-mansplaining-of-gender-based-asylum

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

The BIA’s Mansplaining of Gender-Based Asylum

“Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me

On April 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a published decision in Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland. The opening sentences of the decision are heartbreaking:

Since the age of five, Petitioner has been told that men will beat her if she does not submit. Her mother demanded that she learn how to do housework, how to accept spousal abuse, and how “to obey everything that [her] husband would say.” She beat Petitioner with various objects almost daily, in part to prepare her for future beatings from her husband.

But along with the darkness there was also hope. The decision’s opening paragraph concludes: “Yet Petitioner came to believe that ‘there should be equality in opinions[] and in worth’ between men and women. She became a teacher.”

Remarkably, over all the years that followed, the Petitioner’s hope survived the most brutal attempts to crush her into silence and submission. As her mother had foreseen, she endured unspeakable and repeated forms of physical and psychological torture, including beatings and rape, at the hands of her husband. Yet she continued to express the belief in her rights as an equal, and was brutally punished each time she did so, in an attempt to destroy the part of her capable of forming such belief. Neither the police nor her own family offered her any possibility of protection.

When she finally succeeded in escaping to the U.S., her abuse continued, merely transferred to the hands of another domestic partner with whom she had three children in this country. In 2017, our government deported both her and her latest abuser. Facing the prospect of continued harm in her native Mexico, her still unbroken hope guided her to the U.S. once again, where she was placed into removal proceedings.

Her hope was briefly rewarded when an Immigration Judge granted the Petitioner asylum, ruling that her persecution was on account of her feminist political opinion. The Immigration Judge alternatively held that asylum was warranted on account of the Petitioner’s membership in the particular social group consisting of “Mexican females,” which formed at least one central reason for her persecution.

It isn’t clear why ICE appealed the IJ’s decision. On appeal, the BIA acknowledged the Petitioner’s honesty and the ongoing, systemic nightmare of violence she endured because of her gender and unbroken belief that she possessed rights. And yet the BIA chose to act like a rubber stamp for the administration it served, and found a way to reverse the IJ’s well-reasoned decision. According to a concurring opinion of the circuit court, the BIA managed this by suggesting that the Petitioner’s brutal suffering was motivated by her “personal relationship” with her abuser. According to the concurrence, the BIA supported this conclusion by relying on the decision of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-.

Of course, asylum applications require an individualized analysis of the facts of the specific case under consideration. Matter of A-B- involved a different asylum seeker from a different country who experienced different facts than this petitioner. So in citing A-B- to reach a conclusion so at odds with the facts of this case, the BIA’s judges were signaling their choice of a specific policy objective over their duty to neutrally apply law to specific facts.

Among the facts the BIA chose to ignore was the opinion of an expert who drew “on more than three decades of research, writing, legal representation, and lawmaking” in support of her conclusion. The expert, Prof. Nancy Lemon of the Univ. of Cal. – Berkeley Law School, explained how all of the weapons at abusers’ disposal are “tied to social belief systems that ‘men are entitled to dominate and control women because the male sex is considered superior.’” Prof. Lemon went into great detail in explaining the political nature of the mistreatment. Of course, it mattered not to the Board.

In discussing this case, an esteemed colleague pointed to a decision that the same court issued more than three decades ago. In 1987, in an opinion authored by Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., a conservative Reagan appointee, the Ninth Circuit concluded that a Salvadoran woman subjected to repeated sexual abuse and other violence by a sergeant in the Salvadoran military had been persecuted on account of her political opinion where the abuser threatened to falsely label her a “subversive if she refused to submit to his abuse.”1 In the words of Judge Noonan, the fact that the persecutor gave the asylum seeker “the choice of being subjected to physical injury and rape or being killed as a subversive does not alter the significance of political opinion…” The decision reversed the conclusion of the BIA that “the evidence attests to mistreatment of an individual, not persecution,” precisely the same finding the Board used more than three decades later in denying Ms. Rodriguez Tornes of her grant of asylum.

In 1993, Justice Samuel Alito, then sitting at the Third Circuit, wrote that “we have little doubt that feminism qualifies as a political opinion within the meaning of the relevant statutes.”2 28 years later, the Ninth Circuit cited Justice Alito’s words in Rodriguez Tornes, adding that it had reached the same conclusion in its own unpublished 1996 decision.3 These were obviously not the decisions of liberal judges forwarding a political agenda. To the contrary, these judges were able to transcend political ideology by neutrally applying law to facts; this is what judges do. As a result, the law of asylum has progressed to increasingly provide asylum protection to victims of domestic abuse. Immigration Judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic administrations have followed suit, authoring well-reasoned decisions granting asylum in numerous cases of domestic abuse, including this one.

Yet over the same period of time, the BIA has stubbornly refused to budge from its 1980s position that domestic abuse is simply a personal matter not linked to a political opinion within society. In the words of Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-, the vile abuse was simply due to the abuser’s “preexisting personal relationship with the victim.”4

When a mother feels compelled to begin abusing her five year old daughter to prepare her to obey her husband one day, can the inevitable spousal abuse that follows really be dismissed as just a personal matter? And when the record contained Prof. Lemon’s evidence (because expert testimony is evidence) of “a correlation between patriarchal norms that support male dominance and violence against women by intimate partners,” what unsupported overconfidence did the BIA’s judges rely on in explaining that they know better?

The BIA decided this case during the Trump Administration. For those hoping that the change in administration will usher in a change in the Board’s view, it bears noting that neither the Clinton nor Obama administrations brought about a sea change in the Board’s approach to domestic violence claims. Under Clinton, the BIA issued Matter of R-A-,5 a precedent that essentially precluded the granting of asylum to domestic violence victims based on their membership in a particular social group. The decision was vacated by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who promised more enlightened regulations on the issue that never arrived. Similar regulations were rumored to be in the works under Eric Holder, but again did not materialize. The BIA’s one grudging concession to the political climate of the Obama era, Matter of A-R-C-G-, was later vacated by Jeff Sessions. While the BIA discussed a second decision under Obama expanding on the narrow holding of A-R-C-G-, it too never came to be.

Based on that history, it seems safe to say that without drastic action by Attorney General Merrick Garland, the BIA will continue issuing the same denials for the same reasons as before. For every individual such as Ms. Rodriguez Tornes who is able to succeed on appeal, there are countless more who merely end up as stratistics, deported to face more of the horrendous abuse that drove them here in the first place. The Ninth Circuit recently had to correct the BIA’s determination that attempted gang rape did not constitute persecution,6 and last year, reversed the Board erroneous rejection of a domestic violence victim’s particular social group on the grounds that it contained a few too many words.7 The BIA continues to be composed of the exact same group of judges who issued each of those decisions.

It is the role of the BIA to reach fair decisions by applying the applicable law to the individual facts. Doing so in the domestic violence context would require the Board to finally recognize opposition to systemic male oppression as a political opinion warranting asylum. Instead, for decades the BIA has enforced the offensive, outdated message to women seeking protection from such abuse that “this is not their world.” The time has come to finally put an end to this sad substitute for true administrative appellate review.

Notes:

Lazo-Majano v. INS, 813 F.2d 1432 (9th Cir. 1987).

Fatin v. I.N.S., 12 F.3d 1233, 1242 (3rd Cir. 1993).

Moghaddam v. I.N.S., 95 F.3d 1158 (9th Cir. 1996) (unpublished).

Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316, 339 (A.G. 2018).

22 I&N Dec. 906 (BIA 1999).

Kaur v. Wilkinson, No. 18-73001, __ F.3d __ (9th Cir., Jan. 29, 2021).

Diaz-Reynoso v. Barr, 968 F.3d 1070 (9th Cir. 2020).

Copyright 2021, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Republished by permission.

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Different style, but the same message as I delivered yesterday about the BIA’s institutionalized racist misogyny and the strange tolerance that Attorney General Merrick Garland has exhibited to date for this type of grotesque judicial misconduct.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/04/06/%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8fbias-misogynistic-anti-asylum-ignore-the-experts-the-evidence-approach-%f0%9f%a4%ae-rebuked-again-9th-cir-slams-bia-big-time-in-rodriguez/

And, this is on top of the astounding, largely self-inflicted 1.3 million case backlog and total dysfunction generated by the BIA’s failures combined with the “maliciously incompetent” effort by DOJ politicos and EOIR bureaucrats to disguise a “deportation railroad” as “administrative review!” Leaving aside all the legal travesties, the mal-administration and waste of public resources alone would be more than enough to require the immediate replacement of EOIR “upper (mis)management” and the entire BIA with qualified judicial professionals and professional judicial administrators.

Jeffrey and I are hardly the first to expose the charade of “appellate review” at the BIA. Two decades ago, following the “Ashcroft Purge,” administrative scholar and former GOP House Counsel Peter Levinson published his seminal work “The Facade of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudications” documenting the mockery of due process and legitimate judicial practices being foisted off on the public by DOJ politicos.

COURTSIDE HISTORY: LEST WE FORGET: THE “ASHCROFT PURGE” AT THE BIA IN 2003 DESTROYED THE PRETEXT OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AT EOIR FOREVER – HERE’S HOW! — Read Peter Levinson’s 2004 Paper: “The Facade Of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudications”

In the two decades since, legislators, DOJ Officials, and Article III Judges have done their utmost to ignore and paper over the glaring constitutional and administrative disasters identified by Peter. Not surprisingly, during that time the BIA and the Immigration Courts have descended into a slimy mass of disastrous bias, injustice, and judicial and administrative incompetence unequaled in American Justice since the heyday of the First Era of Jim Crow. (We are now in the “New Era of Jim Crow.”)

Of course, we need an independent Article I Immigration Court as a matter of the highest national priority. But, it’s not on schedule to happen tomorrow, even though it should! In the interim, Judge Garland could fix lots of the festering problems in this system. I gotta wonder if and when he is going to wake up and pay attention to the “assembly line injustice” being cranked out by “his” Immigration Courts?

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-21

🏴‍☠️BIA’S MISOGYNISTIC, ANTI-ASYLUM, IGNORE THE EXPERTS & THE EVIDENCE APPROACH 🤮 REBUKED AGAIN — 9th Cir. Slams BIA Big Time In Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland! — “Concurring, Judge Paez wrote that in addition to ignoring evidence that Rodriguez was targeted on account of her feminist political opinion, the Board also ignored extensive record evidence from a leading authority on domestic violence that directly rejected the Board’s premise that domestic violence is presumed to be motivated by nothing more than the private dynamics of a ‘personal relationship.’”

Four Horsemen — BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kangaroos — “Expert, what expert? We’re the experts! That is, in misogyny, abuse of asylum seekers of color, and specious legal reasoning. And, Garland is letting us get away with it! Whew, for a moment I thought he might have been a ‘real’ judge, but seems he’s just like us. Think I’ll jump for joy! Four more years of unbridled abuse of the most vulnerable and helpless, and I’ll be eligible to retire! Shooting down female asylum seekers for no good reason is like shooting fish in a barrel, just like Jeffy Gonzo and Billy the Bigot taught us! Wonder how many we can kill this year? Happy hunting! But, let’s stay out of the 9th Circuit. It’s dangerous territory. I hear the 5th Circuit loves misogynists and White Nationalists!”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/04/05/19-71104.pdf

Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland, 9th Cir., 04-05-21

PANEL: Susan P. Graber, M. Margaret McKeown, and Richard A. Paez, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Graber

CONCURRING OPINION: Judge Paez

COUNSEL: Elaine J. Goldenberg (argued), Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, Washington, D.C.; Sara A. McDermott, Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, Los Angeles, California; Richard Caldarone, Julie Carpenter, and Rachel Sheridan, Tahirih Justice Center, Falls Church, Virginia; for Petitioner.

Timothy Bo Stanton (argued), Trial Attorney; Sabatino F. Leo, Senior Litigation Counsel; Office of Immigration

ROGRIGUEZ TORNES V. GARLAND 5

Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; for Respondent.

Blaine Bookey, Karen Musalo, Neela Chakravartula, and Anne Peterson, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, U.C. Hastings College of Law, San Francisco, California, for Amicus Curiae Center for Gender & Refugee Studies.

Betsey Boutelle, DLA Piper LLP (US), San Diego, California; Anthony Todaro, Jeffrey DeGroot, and Lianna Bash, DLA Piper LLP (US), Seattle, Washington; for Amicus Curiae National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project.

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

Immigration

The panel granted Maria Rodriguez Tornes’s petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision reversing an immigration judge’s grant of asylum and withholding of removal, and remanded, holding that the evidence compelled the conclusion that Rodriguez established a nexus between her mistreatment in Mexico and her feminist political opinion.

The panel noted that under the Attorney General’s recent decision in Matter of A-B-, 28 I. & N. Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) (“Matter of A-B- II”), in order to establish the requisite nexus for asylum relief, a protected ground (1) must be a but-for cause of the wrongdoer’s act; and (2) must play more than a minor role—in other words, it cannot be incidental or tangential to another reason for the act. The panel explained that this standard was substantively indistinguishable from this circuit’s precedent. The panel wrote that the fact that an unprotected ground, such as a personal dispute, also constitutes a central reason for persecution does not bar asylum. Rather, if a retributory motive exists alongside a protected motive, an applicant need show only that a protected ground is “one central reason” for his or her persecution.

Observing that this court has held repeatedly that political opinions encompass more than electoral politics or formal

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

ROGRIGUEZ TORNES V. GARLAND 3

political ideology or action, the panel wrote that it had little doubt that feminism qualifies as a political opinion within the meaning of the relevant statutes. The panel concluded that Rodriguez’s testimony concerning equality between the sexes, her work habits, and her insistence on autonomy compelled the conclusion that she has a feminist political opinion. The panel also held that the record compelled the conclusion that Rodriguez’s political opinion was at least one central reason for her past persecution. The panel explained that some of the worst acts of violence came immediately after Rodriguez asserted her rights as a woman, and that the fact that some incidents of abuse may also have reflected a dysfunctional relationship was beside the point, as Rodriguez did not need to show that her political opinion—rather than interpersonal dynamics—played the sole or predominant role in her abuse. By demonstrating that her political opinion was “one central reason” for her persecution, the panel concluded that Rodriguez likewise established that her political opinion was “a reason” for her persecution for purposes of withholding of removal.

Because in granting relief under the Convention Against Torture the agency necessarily determined that Rodriguez carried her burden to prove the other elements of her claims for asylum and withholding of removal, the panel concluded that Rodriguez’s petition presented a recognized exception to the ordinary remand rule under I.N.S. v. Ventura, 537 U.S. 12 (2002) (per curiam). The panel explained that because the agency concluded that Rodriguez met the higher burden of establishing that she is likely to be tortured, she necessarily met the lower burdens for asylum and withholding relief of establishing that she has a well-founded fear, or clear probability, of persecution. Similarly, because the Board determined that the Mexican government would acquiesce to

4 ROGRIGUEZ TORNES V. GARLAND

Rodriguez’s torture, the panel concluded that the Board had necessarily decided that the Mexican government would be unwilling or unable to protect Rodriguez from future persecution. The panel also concluded that because the Board determined that it would be unreasonable for Rodriguez to relocate within Mexico to avoid future torture, she likewise could not relocate to avoid future persecution.

The panel held that Rodriguez was thus eligible for asylum and entitled to withholding of removal, and it remanded for the Attorney General to exercise his discretion whether to grant Rodriguez asylum, and if asylum is not granted, to grant withholding of removal.

Concurring, Judge Paez wrote that in addition to ignoring evidence that Rodriguez was targeted on account of her feminist political opinion, the Board also ignored extensive record evidence from a leading authority on domestic violence that directly rejected the Board’s premise that domestic violence is presumed to be motivated by nothing more than the private dynamics of a “personal relationship.”

CONCURRING OPINION:

PAEZ, Circuit Judge, concurring:

I join Judge Graber’s fine opinion in full. I write separately on a point the court’s opinion does not address. In rejecting Ms. Rodriguez Tornes’s political opinion claim, the BIA suggests that the presence of a “personal relationship” motivation for intimate partner violence implies that there were no intersectional or additional bases for the violence Ms. Rodriguez Tornes experienced. The court’s opinion thoroughly documents the record evidence, which the BIA ignored, demonstrating how Ms. Rodriguez Tornes was targeted for violence by her domestic partners on account of her feminist political opinion. The BIA, however, also ignored extensive record evidence from expert witness Prof. Nancy Lemon, a leading authority on domestic violence, that directly rejects the BIA’s premise that domestic violence is presumed to be motivated by nothing more than the private dynamics of a “personal relationship.”

In contrast to the BIA’s “personal relationship” view of domestic violence,1 Prof. Lemon draws on more than three

1 The BIA cites Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316, 338–39 (A.G. 2018) as the basis for its assumption.

22 ROGRIGUEZ TORNES V. GARLAND

decades of research, writing, legal representation, and lawmaking to explain that “the socially or culturally constructed and defined identities, roles and responsibilities that are assigned to women, as distinct from those assigned to men, are the root of domestic violence.” She analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics and studies from leading medical and social science publications to highlight “compelling evidence that heterosexual domestic violence is, in significant part, motivated by bias against women and the belief that men are entitled to beat and control women.” Prof. Lemon summarizes cross-cultural studies within the United States and internationally that demonstrate “a correlation between patriarchal norms that support male dominance and violence against women by intimate partners.”

In her report, which the IJ referenced in her decision, Prof. Lemon provides a lengthy examination of social science research exploring how particular behaviors exhibited by male abusers—including emotional abuse, sexual abuse, marital rape, economic abuse, blaming, guilt and using children—are each tied to social belief systems that “men are entitled to dominate and control women because the male sex is considered superior” and operate to “exploit the traditional socially constructed roles, identities, duties and status of women in intimate relationships.” In describing the legal, social, cultural, and political structures that lay the foundations for intimate partner violence, Prof. Lemon explains that “domestic violence is not typically caused by behaviors unique to the victim or by inter-personal dynamics unique to the relationship between the abuser and the abused. . . . Rather, heterosexual male batterers have certain expectations of intimate relationships with regard to which partner will control the relationship and how control will be

ROGRIGUEZ TORNES V. GARLAND 23

exercised. These expectations are premised on a dogmatic adherence to male privilege and rigid, distinct, and unequal roles for women and men.”

The record evidence of Prof. Lemon’s rigorous expert analysis undermines the BIA’s unsubstantiated premise that, unless otherwise shown, domestic violence is a purely private matter. The BIA makes no mention of the record evidence of Prof. Lemon’s expert analysis, let alone the decades of publicly available social science research and public policy that all reject the BIA’s outdated view of domestic violence as a quirk within a “personal relationship.”2 Thus, the BIA’s assertion that domestic violence is presumptively a private matter is not supported by substantial evidence.

2 See e.g., Nina Rabin, At the Border Between Public and Private: U.S. Immigration Policy for Victims of Domestic Violence, 7 Law & Ethics Hum. Rts. 109, 111–12 (2013) (“Fifty years ago, domestic violence was widely understood to be a private matter, and the extent to which it was appropriate for the state to intervene was highly contested. Now, domestic violence shelters, state laws and policies specific to the prosecution of domestic violence crimes, and significant state and federal government support for efforts to eradicate domestic violence are all commonplace. Crucial to bringing about this shift in the state’s role vis-à- vis domestic violence victims has been the acknowledgment of the structural roots of domestic violence. When conceived of as a problem tied to gender subordination and pervasive inequality rather than interpersonal conflict, the violence at issue demands a state response.”); Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, 102d Cong., 63 (1991); Elizabeth M. Schneider, The Violence of Privacy, 23 Conn. L. Rev. 973 (1991); Reva B. Siegel, “The Rule of Love”: Wife Beating As Prerogative and Privacy, 105 Yale L.J. 2117 (1996); Leslye E. Orloff & Janice v. Kaguyutan, Offering A Helping Hand: Legal Protections for Battered Immigrant Women: A History of Legislative Responses, 10 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol’y & L. 95 (2001); see generally Am. Br. of the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project.

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

Congrats to all counsel involved for the “good guys.”

Another completely disastrous performance by the BIA!

Bias, sloppiness, legal errors galore, misuse of the appeals process, dissing experts, ignoring evidence, lousy analysis, an ethically questionable remand attempt by OIL, almost every aspect of the unmitigated professional disaster at the BIA and the failed DOJ is on display in this truly terrible parody of justice. These fundamental defects are what has helped generate incredible backlogs that EOIR and DOJ are attempting to cover up and shift blame to the individuals they systematically malign.

This disgraceful muck heap 🤮 won’t be cleaned up by bogus “case processing requirements!” What this system needs is expertise, fairness, due process, quality control, common sense, and human decency — in huge doses! A complete professional makeover!

Among the many good things about the Circuit decision is that it basically limited the impact of the atrociously wrong Sessions “precedent” in Matter of A-B-, even while overlooking the obvious ethical errors in his maliciously biased dicta and the glaring overarching constitutional problem in his improper interference and participation in the quasi-judicial process. This should be Exhibit 1 in why this process needs to be removed from the DOJ, placed in an independent Article I Court, and a new, qualified Appellate Division with real judges — capable of fairly and efficiently adjudicating asylum cases — selected to replace the BIA.

One particularly cruel, senseless, and inane aspect of the BIA’s attempt to “snuff” the respondent’s asylum application: Because of the essentially uncontested CAT grant, she was going to be allowed to remain in the U.S. anyway! So, this was all about illegally depriving an abused refugee woman of color of her ability to get a green card, become eligible for citizenship, and obtain full legal and political rights in our society!

Compare the time and effort expended by the BIA in trying to deprive this woman of her human rights with the carelessness and sloppiness of their legal analysis. That’s what the racist-driven “any reason to deny” culture created by Sessions, Barr, and their toadies at EOIR does to our justice system!

Imagine how much different the “retail level” of American justice would look with real judges and professional administrators, committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices, in charge! Amazingly, that’s what the “EOIR Vision” once was, before the forces of darkness, ignorance, and bias took over the system.

Think of how different the skewed asylum statistics would look if we honored, rather than mocked, our legal obligations to asylum seekers. Think of how many more individuals could fairly and efficiently be welcomed into our country at our borders and abroad in a well functioning system, staffed with professionals, that adhered to the rule of law. Think of how a better, more honest, and more professional Immigration Court could provide positive guidance on how to grant needed protection, rather than gushing forth an endless stream of bogus “how to deny” precedents based on racial and gender bias and specious reasoning.

Professor Nancy Lemon
Hastings Law
Photo: law.hastings.com

Obviously, experts like Professor Nancy Lemon, Professor Karen Musalo, and her colleague Blaine Bookey are the types of individuals who should be Appellate Judges at the BIA. The current BIA’s glaring lack of professional competence and its unconscionable abuse of vulnerable asylum seekers, particularly the institutional ignorance and shameless misogyny with which claims by women refugees are treated, has to be one of the darkest and most inexcusable chapters in modern American legal history!

Food for for thought:

How would an unrepresented individual, particularly one in detention or stuck on a street corner in Mexico, be able to prepare, document, and present a case like this to a biased court and then appeal successfully to the Circuit?
How is this system constitutional in any way, shape, or form?
How might the massive investment of resources, time, effort, and expertise in vindicating the legal and human rights of one individual in a broken system be redeployed to promote systemic fairness and efficiency in a court system that actually complied with constitutional due process?

And, we shouldn’t forget that the Biden Administration is still illegally killing off asylum seekers at the border with no due process at all! Cowardly inflicting human misery on the most vulnerable in violation of our Constitution, our laws, and our international obligations has become our “new national pastime!”

We might be averting our eyes from the slaughter now, but history will document and remember what the world’s richest nation did to our fellow humans seeking protection in their hour of direst need! No wonder we must dehumanize “the other” to go on with our daily lives. No wonder that racial and social justice remain elusive, unfulfilled concepts, throughout our society, in today’s “What’s in it for me” atmosphere promoted by many of our politicos!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-06-21

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️🗽COURT REFORM: GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS WEIGH IN ON ARTICLE I — Emphasize Critical Due Process Need To Entirely Remove AG From Decision-Making Process!

Here’s the letter to Chair Zoe Lofgren of the House Subcommittee on Immigration:

FIJC

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera

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

Thanks to Professors Benitez and Vera for the great work for the NDPA that they are doing and the values they are instilling in their students. Just think what due process could look like in the Immigration Courts if all judges, trial and appellate, reflected those same values!

The concepts are actually very straightforward.

The Attorney General is a litigant before the Immigration Court. He or she can insert themselves in the process if they choose, to represent the Government as a litigant. But, the Attorney General should be treated as any other litigant — at arm’s length.
Individuals appearing before the Immigration Court are entitled to a fair and impartial independent adjudicator. As long as the Attorney General exercises control over the selection of judges, evaluates their performance, and can review and arbitrarily change their decisions, on his or her own whim, the system will remain unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair.

Interesting that law students see so clearly, recognize, and can articulate what Federal Judges, all the way up to the Supremes, legislators, and our Attorney General all fail to acknowledge and act upon. Hope for the future! But without better-qualified legislators, judges, and Executive Branch officials, will our justice system survive long enough to get to the future? Not without some very fundamental changes!

Every day, individuals have their constitutional, statutory, and human rights stomped upon, mocked, and abused by the broken Immigration Courts. Sometimes, Circuit Courts intervene to provide some semblance of justice in individual cases; other times they turn a blind eye to injustice and fundamentally unfair decision-making in the totally dysfunctional Immgration Courts.

But, nobody, but nobody, except members of the NDPA appears to be willing to recognize and act on the overall glaring constitutional and operational defects in the current Immigration “Courts” — that don’t resemble “courts” at all. That’s something that should concern and outrage every American committed to racial justice, equal justice for all, fundamental fairness, and constitutional due process!

EOIR and the U.S. Immigration Courts are an ongoing national disgrace — a festering sore upon democracy!🤮 Every day, they inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on those humans being abused by their fundamental unfairness and institutionalized chaos.!

How many ruined human lives ⚰️ and futures ☠️is it going to take for someone in the “power structure” to wake up and take notice!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-05-21

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-21

🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻HISTORY OF HATE: Misogyny, Vilification, Racist Hate Directed At Asian Women Has Deep Roots in U.S. Law! — Jessica Pearce Rotondi in History!

Jessica Pearce Rotondi
American Freelance Writer & Editor
PHOTO: Facebook

Before the Chinese Exclusion Act, This Anti-Immigrant Law Targeted Asian Women
The 1875 Page Act was one of the earliest pieces of federal legislation to restrict immigration to the United States.
Jessica Pearce Rotondi Mar 19, 2021
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is often seen as the first major law to restrict immigration in the United States. But there is an earlier law that was used to effectively prevent Chinese women from immigrating to the United States: The Page Act of 1875.
Chinese Immigration in America
The first Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1850s. Many were fleeing the economic consequences of The Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60), when the British fought to keep opium trafficking routes open in defiance of China’s efforts to stop the illegal trade. An ensuing series of floods and droughts drove members of the lower classes to leave their farms and seek new work opportunities abroad.
When gold was discovered in California in 1848, more and more Chinese immigrants traveled to the West Coast to join the Gold Rush. Some worked on American farms or in San Francisco’s growing textile industry. Others were employed as laborers with the Central Pacific and Transcontinental railroads—railroads which would speed up Westward expansion and facilitate
https://www.history.com/news/chinese-immigration-page-act-women?c…21-0329-03292021&om_rid=&~campaign=hist-inside-history-2021-0329 Page 1 of 7

Before the Chinese Exclusion Act, This Anti-Immigrant Law Targeted Asian Women – HISTORY 3/29/21, 11:35 PM
the movement of troops during the Civil War.
Despite their pivotal role in building the infrastructure of the United States, racism directed at Chinese immigrants was a constant from the moment they arrived on American shores.

. . . .

Both European and Asian immigrants came to the United States seeking to improve their economic well being, explains Dr. Melissa May Borja, assistant professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. But Chinese immigrants were regarded as a bigger threat.
“They were seen as a racial threat to a pure white America. They were seen as an economic threat to free white labor. They were depicted as a disease threat—a lot of anti-Chinese rhetoric hinged on portraying Chinese people as filthy and disease-ridden. They were also seen as a religious and moral threat as heathens who threatened a Christian America.”

. . . .

Chinese women were perceived as a particular type of threat: A sexual one. “They were stereotyped as promiscuous, as prostitutes,” says Borja.
While there were Chinese women working in the sex industry in the mid-19th century, they were singled out from their white peers: “Chinese women were specifically accused of spreading sexually transmitted diseases. They were scapegoated. That sexualized stereotype stuck,” says Dr. Kevin Nadal, professor at the City University of New York and vice president of the Filipino American National Historical Society.
Did you know? The earliest known Chinese woman to immigrate to America, Afong Moy, arrived in New York from Guangzhou in 1834. She had bound feet and was exhibited as a curiosity across the United States, first by traders Nathaniel and Frederick Carne and later by American promoter and circus founder P. T. Barnum.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

The ugly history of abuse, vilification, sexualization, and racism directed at Asian American women has deep roots. It’s the history of the “real America” — essentially a “white’s only” sociopolitical structure engrafted on a national economy and culture built on the backs of black, Asian, Hispanic, and immigrant labor. The history that today’s GOP both doesn’t want you to learn while they generate hate directed at people of color and strive to repeat the mistakes and “reprise” the false racist narratives of the past.

PWS

03-31-21

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

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

Gabe Gutierrez reports for NBC Nightly News:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

03-19-21

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

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

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

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

READ MORE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

03-18-21

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

Greg Sargent
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

https://apple.news/Axz03Bes6T3ODoCivCDQ96g

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

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

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

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

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

Biden is cleaning up Trump’s mess

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

Read Greg’s full op-ed at the link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-17-21

⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/03/texas-governor-abbott-statement-on-unaccompanied-minor-crisis-created-by-biden-administration.html

There, of course, are pressing humanitarian issues to address along the U.S./Mexico border. But to say that this issues are a result of “open border policies” is simply wrong. No major party political leader to my knowledge is calling for “open borders.” Rather, the “open borders” mantra is something that Republican politicians invoke to attack immigration policies that they do not like.

Democrats have another explanation for the current situation at the border. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ “This Week” that the policies of the Trump administration, which radically transformed immigration enforcement from 2017-21, are to blame for the recent increase in unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border,

“This is a humanitarian challenge to all of us,” Pelosi said. “What the administration has inherited is a broken system at the border and they are working to correct that in the children’s interests.”

To address humanitarian concerns, Homeland Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas has directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to support an effort over the next 90 days to safely shelter unaccompanied children who make the dangerous journey to the U.S./Mexico border.

KJ

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

Thanks, Kevin, for adding some reality and perspective to the discussion. You can read Abbott’s statement at the link. Notably, the Republicans have offered no constructive solutions to this humanitarian issue, either in or out of power, other than to engage in child abuse and continually violate the laws, both international and domestic.

The criticism from the likes of Abbott, who as “Governor” of Texas has presided over a power grid disaster that actually killed and threatened the health of Texas residents and who has thumbed his nose at public health recommendations that save lives, is particularly disingenuous. And, naturally, the dangerous and deadly results of Abbott’s and the GOP’s mis-governance of Texas have fallen disproportionately on Latinos and other communities of color. The Abbott/GOP response has been to attempt to disenfranchise citizens of color in Texas!

The same can be said of GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy whose main contribution to America’s safety and security has been to whitewash the deadly assault on our Capitol that his “supreme leader” orchestrated. Again, a person with no credibility.

Those seeking a more nuanced and accurate picture of what’s really happening at the Southern Border should read the lengthy report of Arelis Hernandez in the WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/migrants-are-not-overrunning-us-border-towns-despite-the-political-rhetoric/2021/03/15/b193f3f2-8345-11eb-ac37-4383f7709abe_story.html

Migrants are not overrunning U.S. border towns, despite the political rhetoric

Leaders in Texas border towns say their economies are suffering because of pandemic restrictions on cross-border travel.

. . . .

City officials and nonprofit organizations can’t force families to stay in the hotels but Darling, the McAllen mayor, said so far no one they track has left isolation prematurely.

“We tell them if they want to leave on our buses, they need to follow our rules,” he said. The city has spent nearly $200,000 of taxpayer money it hopes will be reimbursed by the federal government, but Abbott’s rejection of Federal Emergency Management Agency funding from the Biden administration will complicate matters for localities.

Darling said his city is full of compassionate people, and they are doing the rest of the country a favor in taking care of migrant families on the front end of their journeys.

Along the border, faith organizations, local emergency managers and immigration advocates say they have learned from previous surges how best to coordinate. They are preparing to receive flights and buses full of asylum seekers, mostly recently released families with small children, to ease capacity issues that critics say the Department of Homeland Security officials should have anticipated.

Coronavirus restrictions have put capacity limits on shelters run by community organizations on the U.S. side of the border, but so far the numbers are not at 2019 levels, said Pastor Michael Smith of the Holding Institute in Laredo. Shelters and temporary detention facilities operated by the U.S. Health and Human Services’ contractors, however, are over capacity.

But without more orderly intervention, the numbers could overwhelm. The Biden administration plans to deploy FEMA to the border to help with the migration surge as the administration tries to quickly scale up space to temporarily hold and process migrants and unaccompanied children — many between the ages of 13 and 17.

“The failure to have an administrative process is causing a humanitarian crisis,” Smith said during a news conference organized by Laredo activists. “There are solutions to the issues, but they are not solutions that call for militarizing the border.”

“We need robust infrastructure at our ports of entry to handle people seeking asylum,” said Tannya Benavides, of the No Border Wall coalition. “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”

Arelis R. Hernandez
Southern Border Reporter
Washington Post

Great article by Arelis! I highly recommend it. My only caveat is that we need not just more lawyers and judges, certainly correct, but better Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum law, have experience representing asylum seekers, and can fairly, efficiently, and consistently identify those with valid claims to protection under the law before it was perverted by the Trump regime. Also, the Government could use more qualified Asylum Officers who could screen and finally adjudicate the grantable cases, under correct legal criteria set forth by better-qualified Immigration Judges and a completely new due-process-human rights-oriented BIA without even having to send the cases to court.

These are the bold steps necessary to get out of the cycle of “same old, same old” — which inevitably ends with harsh measures directed at asylum seeking families and children that do nothing to address the causes of forced migration. “Enforcement-only deterrent measures” never have solved, and never will solve, the long-term problem in a constructive manner. The cycle of failed, yet expensive and inhumane deterrents, just keeps repeating itself Administration after Administration.

I have already suggested tapping into retired Asylum Officers and other retired USCIS Adjudicators with the necessary asylum expertise. I’m betting that my retired Round Table colleague, and former Asylum Officer and UN Official, Judge Paul Grussendorf would be available to help lead such an effort.

To solve this problem, the Biden Administration must put some experts who understand the practicalities of refugee and asylum situations in place and let them solve the problem. It should come as no shock that the current gangs at DHS and EOIR —largely holdovers who participated in the Trump regime’s cruel, failed, and illegal “enforcement only” policies at the border — are not going to be able to get the job done. At least they can’t without some effective “adult supervision” from those committed to humane, legal, and timely processing of asylees and other migrants in full compliance with due process and best practices.

The Trump regime eschewed any attempt to build a fair, effective, timely asylum adjudication system that complied with domestic and international law as well as due process. Instead, they concentrated on eradicating the entire U.S. refugee and protection system through regulations (many enjoined), Executive Orders (some enjoined), bogus administrative “precedents,” and stacking the Immigration Courts with overtly anti-asylum or “go along to get along” “judges.” Right now, the entire system is in shambles — the most obvious example being the totally dysfunctional mess at EOIR!

To “win the game,” the Biden Administration needs to get the right players on the field. While there has been some notable progress, that hasn’t happened to date. And, with politicos like Abbott and McCarthy stirring the pot daily, time is running to get the “A Team” in place to combat their lies, distortions, and nonsense.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-16-21

⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️ THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SHOULD “RE-CERTIFY” THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF IMMIGRATION JUDGES (NAIJ) — Will They? ❓❓— Marcia Brown Reports For American Prospect

https://prospect.org/justice/one-union-biden-has-not-supported-immigration-judges/

. . . .

The union is hopeful that President Biden will reverse the decision, but they have yet to see action. “I know the new administration is extremely busy; I think this is a very important and significant issue,” said Paul Shearon, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a union that represents many high-skilled federal employees.

As the administration begins to process asylum seekers in the “Remain in Mexico” program and otherwise roll back Trump’s asylum blockades, the court system will need to run efficiently and fairly. As it is, the immigration court backlog—largely created by Trump policies—is at 1.3 million cases.

Trump’s decertification of NAIJ “was to retaliate against NAIJ for our strong voice and our strong call to demand transparency and accountability,” said Amiena Khan, NAIJ president. The union’s previous president, A. Ashley Tabaddor, is now chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The union is hopeful that Biden will take action, though nothing has yet been forthcoming.

“We are very supportive of the current Biden administration and appreciate his strong support for unions and collective bargaining,” said Khan.

Biden’s position on unions in other contexts has been clear. Some labor historians have said he is the most pro-labor president in their lifetimes. In an executive order in January, Biden directed the Office of Personnel Management to make recommendations concerning raising the minimum wage for federal employees to $15 per hour. In February, Biden voiced support for Amazon workers’ right to organize, an unprecedented level of support from a sitting president.

Almost immediately, the immigration judges’ union asked if he would follow up by voluntarily recognizing their union. No action has been taken. A White House spokesperson has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Merrick Garland has now been confirmed as attorney general, perhaps setting the stage for quicker movement. But the union says that, despite immigration judges being part of the Justice Department, an attorney general appointment isn’t needed to reverse the decision. The administration can voluntarily recognize the union.

. . . .

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

Over the last four years, the NAIJ was was one of the few “inside sources” of truth about the Trump Administration’s misconduct and gross mismanagement — “malicious incompetence” — at the DOJ. Obviously, in the Trump Administration speaking truth to power was a punishable offense. NAIJ was no exception.

This union representing Immigration Judges was illegally “decertified” in an absurd decision by the FLRA finding that IJs were now “management officials” on the basis of actions that had reduced them to little more than “deportation clerks” carrying out the regime’s White Nationalist, xenophobic agenda.

Not only did IJs continue to have no control whatsoever over their staff and working conditions, but they were unceremoniously stripped of their already-limited authority to professionally manage their dockets and to exercise independent discretion. They were subjected to due-process-killing “deportation quotas” and bogus “performance evaluations” by unqualified and largely out of touch “supervisors” — few, if any, of whom handled full dockets themselves — that would have been more suited to entry level deportation officers than supposedly independent and impartial “judges.” Meanwhile, the real primary cause of uncontrollable backlogs and endless delays at EOIR — “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by politicos at EOIR HQ and the DOJ, and horrible, anti-due process, out of touch with reality “precedents” by biased AGs and the BIA — continued unabated.

Always subject to control by their “handlers” at EOIR HQ and DOJ, IJs were further humiliated by being barred from teaching at professional seminars and writing for scholarly publications. Their dockets and roles were defined by highly unqualified politicos who had never presided at an immigration hearing in their careers! Talk about screwed up!

Who ever heard of a “judiciary” that operates like a totally dysfunctional bureaucratic agency — that has most recently been run by non-judicial personnel who lack expertise, experience, and a commitment to due process — but were focused on carrying out an overtly anti-immigrant, anti-human rights, anti-due-process White Nationalist political agenda!

To add to this outrageously politically-biased scenario, to reach its ludicrous result the FLRA had to steamroll both their prior precedent on the same issues and overrule the decision of their own Regional Director.

Presently, the NAIJ is the only organization providing due-process oriented training directly to Immigration Judges. The leadership of the NAIJ stand out as some of the most qualified, courageous, and talented judges on the immigration bench.

Judge Garland and the Biden Administration simply can’t afford to leave the NAIJ out in the cold if they intend to fix the now totally-screwed-up EOIR and bring constitutionally-required equal justice under law to the broken and reeling DOJ. You simply can’t promote racial justice in America while running a “court” that has institutionalized racial biases and mocks, tramples, and ignores due process and equal justice on a daily basis!

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a proud retired member of the NAIJ!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-15-21

🗽🇺🇸SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: PROFESSOR HEATHER COX RICHARDSON EXPLAINS THE SITUATION AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER

From Letters From An American, March 13, 2017:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-13-2021?r=330z7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email

Republican pundits and lawmakers are, once again, warning of an immigration crisis at our southern border.

Texas governor Greg Abbott says that if coronavirus spreads further in his state, it will not be because of his order to get rid of masks and business restrictions, but because President Biden is admitting undocumented immigrants who carry the virus. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is also talking up the immigration issue, suggesting (falsely) that the American Rescue Plan would send $1400 of taxpayer money “to every illegal alien in America.”

Right-wing media is also running with stories of a wave of immigrants at the border, but what is really happening needs some untangling.

When Trump launched his run for the presidency with attacks on Mexican immigrants, and later tweeted that Democrats “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country,” he was tangling up our long history of Mexican immigration with a recent, startling trend of refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (and blaming Democrats for both). That tendency to mash all immigrants and refugees together and put them on our southern border badly misrepresents what’s really going on.

Mexican immigration is nothing new; our western agribusinesses were built on migrant labor of Mexicans, Japanese, and poor whites, among others. From the time the current border was set in 1848 until the 1930s, people moved back and forth across it without restrictions. But in 1965, Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, putting a cap on Latin American immigration for the first time. The cap was low: just 20,000, although 50,000 workers were coming annually.

After 1965, workers continued to come as they always had, and to be employed, as always. But now their presence was illegal. In 1986, Congress tried to fix the problem by offering amnesty to 2.3 million Mexicans who were living in the U.S. and by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers. But rather than ending the problem of undocumented workers, the new law exacerbated it by beginning the process of guarding and militarizing the border. Until then, migrants into the United States had been offset by an equal number leaving at the end of the season. Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants refused to take the chance of leaving.

Since 1986, politicians have refused to deal with this disconnect, which grew in the 1990s when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with U.S. corn and drove Mexican farmers to find work, largely in the American Southeast. But this “problem” is neither new nor catastrophic. While about 6 million undocumented Mexicans currently live in the United States, most of them–78%– are long-term residents, here more than ten years. Only 7% have lived here less than five years. (This ratio is much more stable than that for undocumented immigrants from any other country, and indeed, about twice as many undocumented immigrants come legally and overstay their visas than come illegally across the southern border.)

Since 2007, the number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States has declined by more than a million. Lately, more Mexicans are leaving America than are coming.

What is happening right now at America’s southern border is not really about Mexican migrant workers.

. . . .

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

Read Heather’s complete article at the link.

The Biden Administration needs to stay the course and continue to treat this as the humanitarian situation that it is, rather than portraying desperate kids and families like an invading army. These issues can be addressed without engaging in egregious violations of international laws, domestic laws, and our Constitution. Even with the current flow, we are not going to be “overrun” with migrants. Indeed, by most reliable accounts, we will need increased immigration for our recovery and long-term economic well-being.

A critical piece will be revoking the Sessions/Whitaker/Barr precedents, replacing the current BIA with real judges who are experts in immigration, asylum, human rights, and due process, removing most of the cases unnecessarily lingering on the self-bloated EOIR docket, and getting some real expert guidance on asylum law and due process out there from the “new BIA” to guide decision-making at both DHS and EOIR.

Our asylum, refugee, and immigration systems can be fixed. But, not with the “players” left behind by the past regime. And, certainly not with more scofflaw, uber-enforcement-only gimmicks, cruelty, and inhumane policies like those that have failed time after time in the past.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-14-21

RACIST MAGAMORON RON JOHNSON SHOULD HAVE HEEDED MARK TWAIN: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt.”🤮🤡☠️

Ron Johnson Fool — Fool
15th Century
Public Domain

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-johnson-capitol-riot-black-lives-matter_n_604c0313c5b636ed337a71ce

Mary Papenfuss reports for HuffPost:

In an absolutely stunning statement, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) admitted in a radio interview that he wasn’t frightened by white insurrectionists’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — but said he would have been “concerned” had they been Black.

Johnson accurately predicted that his racist statement to conservative radio host Joe Pags on Thursday would get him “into trouble.”

The senator noted that he has been criticized for previous remarks that he “never felt threatened” by the attack.

He added: “Now, had the tables been turned, Joe, and this’ll get me in trouble — had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election, and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

. . . .

**************
Read the full article at the link.

Oh Wisconsin, how far you have fallen to inflict this racist idiot on our nation!

PWS

03-14-21

🏴‍☠️🤡SLOPPINESS, POOR ANALYSIS, MISCONSTRUING RECORD, CONTEMPT FOR COURTS CONTINUE TO PLAGUE BIA’S DENIAL CULTURE!

Here are four more recent screw-ups:

Misinterpreting “Realistic Possibility” — 8th Cir.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca8-on-realistic-probability—lopez-gonzalez-v-wilkinson

CA8 on “Realistic Probability” – Lopez Gonzalez v. Wilkinson

Lopez Gonzalez v. Wilkinson

“The question in this case is whether the categorical approach requires a petitioner seeking cancellation of removal to demonstrate both that the state offense he was convicted of is broader than the federal offense and that there is a realistic probability that the state actually prosecutes people for the conduct that makes the state offense broader than the federal offense. We conclude that it does not. … Because the BIA’s decision relied on a misinterpretation of the realistic probability inquiry, we grant the petition for review, vacate, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Jamie Arango!]

2) Wrong Interpretation Of Child Status Protection Act — 2d Cir.

Cuthill v. Blinken

https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/05b681bb-4767-4cf6-b370-6f0ee77ad5d2/3/doc/19-3138_opn.pdf

D. Chevron Deference

Lastly, the government argues that we should defer to the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) in Matter of Zamora-Molina, 25 I. & N. Dec. 606, 611 (B.I.A. 2011), in which the BIA adopted the same interpretation as the Department of State. Even assuming, without deciding, that Chevron deference applies when one agency (the Department of State) seeks to rely on the interpretation of another agency (the Department of Justice), we agree with the district court and with the Ninth Circuit that Chevron deference does not apply here because “the intent of Congress is clear.” Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842 (1984); see also id. at 842–43 (“If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.”); Tovar, 882 F.3d at 900 (declining to apply Chevron deference to Zamora-Molina because “traditional tools of statutory construction” and “the irrationality of the result sought by the government” combine to “demonstrate beyond any question that Congress had a clear intent on the question at issue”). As discussed above, the text, structure, and

33

legislative history of the CSPA conclusively show the “unambiguously expressed intent of Congress” to protect beneficiaries like Diaz. Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843.7

3) Ignoring Previous Circuit Ruling On Related Case — 10th Cir.

https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/20/20-9520.pdf

Ni v. Wilkinson, unpublished

After we determined that conditions in China had materially worsened for Christians, Mr. Ni moved again for reopening. Despite our opinion in his wife’s case, the Board of Immigration Appeals concluded

2

again that Mr. Ni had failed to show a material change in country conditions.

This conclusion is unsupportable. Mr. Ni’s evidence of worsening

conditions in China largely mirrored his wife’s evidence, which had led us

to grant her petition for review. Mr. Ni’s evidence was even stronger than

his wife’s because China had recently adopted a regulatory crackdown on

practicing Christians. We thus grant Mr. Ni’s petition for review.

4) Misconstruction Of Record — 1st. Cir.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-on-albania-changed-circumstances-lucaj-v-wilkinson

CA1 on Albania, Changed Circumstances: Lucaj v. Wilkinson

Lucaj v. Wilkinson

“To support his case for reopening, Mr. Lucaj submitted an affidavit complaining in particular about two events that occurred after his removal proceeding in 2006: The Socialist party took power in 2013, and then in 2019 the Socialists’ corruption and connections with organized crime deterred the opposition party from even participating in the 2019 elections. Mr. Lucaj provided, among other things, the State Department’s 2018 Human Rights Report on Albania, the Freedom House “Freedom in the World 2018” Report on Albania, and articles from 2018 and 2019 about corruption in Albania and the Socialist Party’s success in recent elections. We do not know whether those submissions show materially worsening conditions for Democratic Party members in Albania, however, because the BIA refused to compare those reports to available evidence of conditions from 2006, claiming that Mr. Lucaj had not “explained how the proffered . . . country condition documentation show[s] qualitatively different conditions from 2006.” Plainly, though, he did so by pointing out the two cited, post-2006 events as evidence of changed conditions. The BIA’s failure to assess whether those changes were sufficient was arbitrary and capricious. … Therefore, we reverse the decision by the BIA and remand Mr. Lucaj’s case so that the BIA can review available evidence to examine whether conditions for members of the Democratic Party in Albania have deteriorated since 2006 and, if so, whether Mr. Lucaj has established a prima facie case for relief.”

[Hats off to Gregory G. Marotta!]

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

America and humanity deserve better from a supposed “expert tribunal” which actually functions more like a “denial factory” without much, if any, “quality control.” No wonder these guys are running an out of control, ever-expanding 1.3 million case backlog!

Denying continuances, not closing cases that belong at USCIS, rushed briefing, IJ’s “certifying” BIA remands to the Director (who should have no judicial role), dismissing applications for failure to fill in irrelevant blanks, raising fees, and a host of other nonsensical proposals that EOIR has had shot down by the Article III Courts recently won’t reduce the backlogs. They actually will make it worse, as have all the other “gimmicks” tried by EOIR to eradicate due process and dehumanize migrants over the past four years!

See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/11/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%97%bdu-s-district-judge-susan-illston-nd-ca-shreds-enjoins-eoirs-anti-due-process-%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%aemidnight-rules-judge-p/

Who ever heard of lower court judges providing “quality control” for appellate judges, working through a bureaucrat who (at the time the proposal was supposedly “finalized”) had never presided over a case in Immigration Court? And, let’s remember, these are haphazardly selected trial judges, a decidedly non-diverse, non-representative group, whose own qualifications, expertise, judicial temperament, and training have been widely criticized by experts in the field. Few of today’s Immigration Judges and BIA Judges would be “household names” among immigration, human rights, and constitutional law experts and scholars!

See,e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/08/%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8finside-a-failed-and-unjust-system-reuters-report-explains-how-the-trump-administration-destroyed-due-process-fundamental-fairness-humanity-in-the-u-s-immig/

The current mess is largely the result of Aimless Docket Reshuffling imposed on the Immigration Courts by unqualified politicos at the DOJ and their equally unqualified toadies at EOIR HQ. Also, DHS has more often than not ignored the realities of good docket management and the prudent exercise of prosecutorial discretion. It is not the fault of the vulnerable migrants and their lawyers victimized by this absurdly politicized, biased, and mal-administered system!

Restoration of justice at EOIR will require radical due process oriented changes starting with new, professional leadership from “practical scholars” in immigration and human rights as well as replacing BIA Judges with better qualified jurists selected from the ranks of those “practical scholars.” Quality control, expertise, competence, common sense, and human understanding are all lacking at today’s EOIR!

Judge Garland must “clean house!” Now!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-12-21

“Refugee women get ‘special treatment’ in accordance with the ‘traditional values’ applied to their cases in Judge Garland’s Immigration Courts!”

It’s a “win-win-win” that you no longer can afford to ignore, Your Honor!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Misinterpreting “Realistic Possibility” — 8th Cir.

2) Wrong Interpretation Of Child Status Protection Act — 2d Cir.

3) Ignoring Previous Circuit Ruling On Related Case — 10th Cir.

4) Misconstruction Of Record — 1st. Cir.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

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