"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.
Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.
“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.
Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.
The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.
Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.
In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.
But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.
Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.
Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.
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Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters
Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.
Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.
Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.
She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.
Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.
“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”
The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.
This is what a few of those children will remember.
No Touching, No Running
Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.
He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.
Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.
The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.
There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.
“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”
Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.
Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.
“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”
A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”
Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.
“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”
But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.
. . . .
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Read the full story at the link.
This is America in the age of Trump & Sessions. A few of these kids might get to stay in the U.S. Most will be returned (with little or no Due Process) to countries will they will be targeted, harassed, brutalized, extorted, impressed, and/or perhaps killed by gangs that operate more or less with impunity from weak and corrupt police and governments. Indeed, contrary to the false blathering of Sessions & co., gangs and cartels are the “de facto government” in some areas of the Norther Triangle. Those kids that survive to adulthood will have these memories of the United States and how we treated them at their time of most need.
One month after Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued his cruel, misguided decision in Matter of A-B-, we are seeing the first signs of how the decision is being implemented by the BIA, USCIS, and ICE.
There is no question that Sessions’ intent was to eliminate domestic violence and gang violence as bases for asylum. How can I be so certain of this? While Matter of A-B- was pending before him, Sessions told a Phoenix radio station in March: “We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence, therefore they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.” (here’s the link: https://ktar.com/story/2054280/ag-jeff-sessions-says-closing-loopholes-can-fight-illegal-immigration/).
However, Sessions chose to attempt to achieve this goal by issuing a precedent decision. A decision is not a fiat. It must be analyzed in the same manner as any other legal decision and applied to the facts accordingly.
Asylum experts and advocacy groups analyzing the decision have reached the following conclusions. The main impact of Sessions’ decision is to vacate the Board’s 2014 precedent decision, Matter of A-R-C-G-, holding that a victim of domestic violence was eligible for asylum as a member of a particular social group. Therefore, asylum applicants can no longer rely on that decision.
However, Sessions’ decision otherwise cobbled together already existing case law (which was taken into consideration in deciding Matter of A-R-C-G-), and added non-binding dicta, i.e. his statement that “generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence…will not qualify for asylum.” (Note the use of the pejorative “aliens” to describe individuals applying for asylum.)
Furthermore, most of the items covered by Sessions involved questions of fact (which are specifically dependent on the evidence in the individual case, and which the BIA and AG have very limited ability to reverse on appeal) as opposed to questions of law, which can be considered de novo on appeal and have more general applicability. The questions of fact raised by Sessions include whether the persecutor was aware of the existence of the group and was motivated to harm the victim on account of such membership; whether the society in question recognizes the social group with sufficient distinction; whether the authorities in the home country are unable or unwilling to protect the victim, and whether the victim could reasonably relocate to another part of the country to avoid the feared harm.
So in summary, Sessions felt that the Board’s decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- did not provide a sufficiently detailed legal analysis, therefore vacated it, and laid out all of the legal analysis that future decisions must address. Domestic violence and gang violence claims still remain very much grantable, provided that all of the requirements laid out by the Attorney General are satisfied. Hearings on these cases may now take much longer, as testimony will need to be more detailed, additional social groups will need to be proposed and ruled on, more experts must be called, and more documents considered. But nothing in A-B- prevents these cases from continuing to be granted.
Therefore, how discouraging that the first decision of the BIA to apply this criteria failed to do what is now required of them. A single Board Member’s unpublished decision issued shortly after A-B-’s publication did not engage in the detailed legal analysis that is now warranted in domestic violence cases. Instead, the decision noted that the case involved a social group “akin to the group defined in Matter of A-R-C-G-.” The Board then found that the AG’s decision in A-B- “has foreclosed the respondent’s arguments,” because “the Attorney General overruled Matter of A-R-C-G- and held that it was wrongly decided.”
What is particularly dispiriting is that the decision was authored by Board Member Linda Wendtland. A former OIL attorney whose views are more conservative than my own, I have always respected her scholarly approach and her intellectual honesty. At the BIA, staff attorneys draft the decisions which the Board Members then edit. Judge Wendtland always took the time to write her edits as academic lessons from which I always learned something. She recently authored the lone dissenting opinion in a case involving a determination of whether a women was barred from relief for having provided material support to terrorists; Judge Wendtland correctly determined that the cooking and cleaning that the woman was forced to perform after having been kidnapped by rebels did not constitute “material support.” It is therefore perplexing why she would sign the post-A-B- decision that so sorely lacked her usual degree of analysis.
In addition to the BIA, on July 11, both USCIS and ICE issued guidance on applying A-B- to asylum adjudications. Much like the BIA decision, the USCIS guidelines to its asylum officers, which serve as guidance not only in adjudicating asylum applications, but also for making credible fear determinations, seem to apply the personal opinion of Sessions rather than the actual legal holdings of his decision. USCIS decided to print in boldface Sessions’ nonbinding dicta that such cases will generally not establish eligibility for asylum, refugee status, or credible or reasonable fear of persecution.
Credible fear interviews are conducted right after an asylum seeker arrives in this country, while they are detained, scared, often unrepresented by counsel, before having a chance to understand the law or gather documents or witnesses. The interviewer is supposed to find credible fear if there is a significant possibility that the applicant will be able to establish eligibility for relief at a future hearing before an immigration judge. It is likely that, at such future hearing, the applicant will have an attorney who will make the proper legal arguments, call expert witnesses, formulate the particular social group according to the requirements of case law, submit other supporting evidence, etc. But now asylum officers are being instructed to ignore all of that and deny individuals the chance to even have the opportunity to apply for asylum before an immigration judge essentially because Jeff Sessions doesn’t believe these are worthy cases.
ICE (through its Office of the Public Legal Advisor) has issued guidance that, while probably reflecting internal conflict within the bureau, is nevertheless somewhat more reasonable than the interpretations of either USCIS or the Board. The ICE guidance does ask its attorneys to hold asylum applicants to some exacting legal standards, to look for flaws in supporting evidence, and to question asylum applicants in great detail. It also asks its attorneys not to opine on whether gender alone may constitute a PSG until further guidance is offered (again, probably reflecting internal conflict within the bureau on the issue). But the guidance does not simply conclude that all domestic violence and gang violence cases should be denied. It even encourages attorneys to employ a “collaborative approach” by pointing out flawed social groups offered by pro se applicants in the hope that the IJ might help the applicant remedy the situation early on.
However, let’s remember that ICE stipulated to grants of asylum for victims of domestic violence in both Matter of R-A- (during the Bush administration, and to the consternation of then Attorney General John Ashcroft), and in Matter of A-R-C-G-. ICE argued in its brief to Sessions in Matter of A-B- that Matter of A-R-C-G- was good law and should not be vacated. So then shouldn’t ICE be applying these same principles to its guidance to attorneys?
It should also be noted that ICE and USCIS could see a way to granting worthy cases in spite of Sessions’ decision. In the early 1990s, then INS General Counsel Grover Joseph Rees III took exception with the BIA’s precedent decision holding that forcible abortions and sterilization under China’s family planning policies did not constitute persecution on account of a protected ground. Rees instructed his attorneys to seek to remand cases involving such claim to the INS Asylum Office, where per his instructions, such claims were granted affirmatively by asylum officers. There is no reason that a similar practice could not be employed now, particularly as both ICE and USCIS are not part of the Department of Justice and therefore are not controlled by Sessions. The only thing lacking is the political will to take such a stand. In the early 1990s, Rees’s stance involving abortion played to the Bush Administration’s political base. Today, ICE and USCIS would have to take action contrary to the wishes of that same base because doing so is the just and humane thing to do. Unfortunately, based on the tone of their recent advisals, doing the right thing is not enough of a motive in the present political climate.
Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
The Trump administration’s kidnapping — that’s the proper word — of the children of would-be migrants should be seen as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Somebody ought to go to jail.
Under a federal court order, all 103 children under the age of 5 who were taken from their families at the border were supposed to be returned by Tuesday. The government missed that deadline, and I wish U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who issued the order, had held somebody in contempt. One candidate would be Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who on Tuesday had the gall to describe the administration’s treatment of immigrant children as “one of the great acts of American generosity and charity.”
On Thursday, officials announced with fanfare that 57 of the kids — some still in diapers — had been returned to their parents. But 46 others were deemed “ineligible,” meaning they remain in government custody.
The reasons for failing to comply fully with Sabraw’s order sound reasonable, unless you take into account the bad faith with which the administration has conducted this whole sordid exercise. In 22 cases, officials had “safety concerns posed by the adults in question,” presumably the parents; in 12 cases, parents have already been deported; in 11 cases, parents are in federal or state custody; and in one case, an adult believed to be the child’s parent cannot be found.
In a joint statement, Azar, along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, took credit for working “tirelessly” to reunite the children with their families — which is rich, given that the Trump administration deliberately and cynically created this crisis in the first place.
“Our message has been clear all along: Do not risk your own life or the life of your child by attempting to enter the United States illegally,” the statement said. Translation: Don’t come to the border seeking asylum because, when others did, we took away their kids.
Given that the intention from the beginning was clearly to frighten and intimidate would-be migrants from Central America, why should anyone believe that the administration is acting or speaking in good faith now? Why should we accept at face value that exactly 103 children under 5 were seized? How can we be sure there is only one case in which officials can’t find or identify the parents? Given that it has taken weeks to return just 57 children, what is the likelihood the government kept adequate records?
This is an administration, after all, that conducts immigration court proceedings, or travesties, in which children too young to know their ABCs are expected to represent themselves without the benefit of legal counsel. Imagine your 3-year-old child or grandchild in that situation. Now tell me how adopting child abuse as a policy is supposed to Make America Great Again.
And what about the children older than 5 who were taken from their families? Sabraw ordered that they be returned to their parents by July 26, but don’t hold your breath. We don’t even know how many there are, because the government doesn’t seem to know. Officials first gave the number as about 2,300, but the latest estimate is nearly 3,000. Why can’t they settle on a precise figure? What reason could there be for such vagueness, other than ignorance?
I don’t think they know how many kids they ripped away from their families, and I believe it is inevitable some children will never again see their parents. The fact that my government would commit such a crime weighs on my conscience as an American. President Trump and his accomplices, from all appearances, couldn’t be prouder.
“Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!” Trump tweeted Wednesday. As usual, he was ascribing his own base motives to others: He is the one who is “just using children.”
Remember what this is really about. The main flow of undocumented migrants consists of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans seeking to escape rampant, deadly gang violence that their home governments cannot or will not check. The Trump administration issued new instructions on Wednesday to officers who interview asylum seekers at the border, telling them that fear of gang violence, no matter how well-founded, is no longer grounds for asylum. The same new guidance applies to immigration judges, who take their orders from Sessions.
Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.
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Yup. Sessions and his group of fellow racists know very well that their actions violate the Constitution and the laws of our country governing both conditions for detention and reasons for detention. Yet, they walk free and smugly give press conferences at which they continue to lie about their actions. Their victims, on the other hand, largely languish in substandard prisons or are being removed to the dangerous situations they fled in their home countries without any pretense of Due Process or fundamental fairness.
VICTORVILLE — Immigration detainees who were sent to a federal prison here last month were kept in their cells for prolonged periods with little access to the outside and were unable to change their clothing for weeks, according to workers at the facility and visitors who have spoken with detainees.
Staffers at the prison also say they have not been given the proper resources or direction to handle the influx of detainees, putting those in custody as well as workers in danger.
“We’re putting out fires, just like we were doing before,” said a worker who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “But it’s gone from bad to worse to worst. We cannot take care of these inmates.”
The Victorville Federal Correctional Complex is a sprawling federal prison in San Bernardino County that houses thousands of inmates who have been convicted of crimes in federal courts.
By contrast, the immigrants who have been sent there are considered “civil” rather than criminal detainees, meaning they are being held pending the outcome of their immigration cases. Some are asylum seekers; some are fathers who were separated from their children in recent months.
They were sent to the prison in June as part of the Trump administration’s policy of increasingly detaining asylum seekers and immigrants who are in the country illegally until their cases are decided. Federal officials have said using prisons to hold the detainees is a stopgap measure while officials find more holding space.
Officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons say the facility had beds available because of a decline in the inmate population in recent years, and that it has managed the new population using existing staff, some of whom were reassigned from other facilities.
But workers and people who have been able to visit the detainees say the prison was seriously unprepared for its new role.
The prison, which workers have long complained was short-staffed, is now scrambling to care for hundreds of new detainees from around the world with language, medical and care needs that are very different from those of typical federal prisoners, workers say.
The situation has raised concern among Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
In late June, Rep. Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) wrote a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Prisons urging officials to increase staffing levels at Victorville to match the increase in population.
“Furthermore, I urge ICE to support and train [prison] staff so they are properly equipped to implement policies and procedures that may be unfamiliar to them when dealing with immigration detainees,” Cook wrote.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), who visited the facility July 2, said he saw numerous signs that the prison was struggling to meet detainees’ needs.
“Every detainee group that we met said they had not had a change in clothes since they arrived on June 8. Their bedding had not been switched. They were wearing the same underwear,” Takano said.
Thirteen of the detainees who spoke with Takano and his staff were fathers who had been separated from their children. The men said they had been unable to speak with their children since arriving at the facility.
Detainees also complained of not getting enough food, of being “locked up for long periods of time in their cells” and having very limited access to the outdoors, Takano said.
Prison officials showed Takano a recreation area that he said was nicely equipped. But when he asked one group of detainees whether they were able to use that room, they told him they had been there only once, he said.
“That’s an indicator to me that the prison was not ramped up to be able to accommodate this incursion of detainees. They were understaffed before the detainees arrived, and the arrival of 1,000 detainees I think has fully stressed the staff’s ability to be able to safely oversee their health and safety,” Takano said.
Nearly 1,000 immigration detainees were initially transferred to the prison. As of this week, 656 remained, said ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley.
The complex includes a high-security prison, two medium-security prisons and a minimum-security camp. The detainees are being housed in one of the medium-security prisons. Visits to the facility are tightly controlled.
Workers say one of their biggest concerns is the lack of staff and resources to adequately handle detainees’ medical needs.
There have been three cases of chickenpox and about 40 scabies cases since the detainees arrived.
One worker who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said medical workers are stretched so thin they can address only detainees’ most urgent needs.
“We’re not finding illness because we are so rushed,” the worker said. “As patients, they’re not getting the care they need.”
After Takano’s visit, the worker said, detainees were given a change of clothing — but for many of them it was paper gowns normally reserved for inmates with specific medical needs.
Eva Bitran, an attorney for the ACLU who has met with two detainees at the facility, said both men told her they had struggled to get medical care.
One man told her about a button that detainees could push for emergency medical care. When that button was pushed, they were asked: “Are you being raped or are you dying?” When the answer was no, no help would come, the man told her.
One detainee who has since left the facility told The Times that he and others in his unit were locked in their cells for most of the day for the two weeks he was at the prison, with food passed through a small opening in the door.
The man said he was not given a change of clothes during the 14 days he was at the facility and was not able to bathe for the first four days.
In late June, the ACLU sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Prisons on behalf of detainees, saying they had been held “incommunicado,” asking the court to order the prison to allow lawyer visits and phone calls.
U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II sided with the ACLU and granted a temporary restraining order June 21 requiring the prison to allow detainees to communicate with immigration attorneys and attend “know your rights” workshops.
Haley, the ICE spokeswoman, referred questions about conditions at the prison to the Bureau of Prisons and said ICE was deferring to that agency’s standards on questions of things such as access to time outside of cells and outdoors time.
In an email response to questions from The Times, Bureau of Prisons officials said, “[D]etainees have regular inside and outside recreational opportunities.”
Officials also said that since the detainees’ arrival, 25 medical staff members had been temporarily assigned to help with intake screenings, physical exams and general care.
Regarding the chickenpox and scabies cases, officials said the facility was “taking the necessary precautionary measures to protect staff, inmates and detainees, and the community, from the possibility of being exposed.”
John Kostelnik, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3969, which represents workers at the prison, said that although some medical staffers were briefly assigned to help with the detainees, it was far from enough to meet the need.
He said many problems stem from a lack of direction from officials about how to reconcile standards that are common to federal prisons but aren’t necessarily appropriate for immigration detainees.
“We’re still day by day, making things up as we go,” he said.
As the facility has received increasing scrutiny from political leaders, legal groups and others following the transfer of detainees, Kostelnik said, some things appear to be improving — such as more uniforms.
But the staff is still overtaxed, said Kostelnik, who worries about what might happen if bigger changes don’t come fast enough.
“You have this group of detainees that are starting to get upset,” he said. “You get a large group of individuals that are upset, you have the potential for anything.”
(CNN)Authorities are investigating after an ICE detainee facing possible deportation apparently killed himself.
Efrain De La Rosa, 40, was found unresponsive in a cell at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, on Tuesday night and was later pronounced dead at a hospital, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
The apparent cause of death was self-inflicted strangulation, the agency said Thursday, adding that the case is under investigation.
De La Rosa, a Mexican national, was in removal proceedings at the time of his death, ICE said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the death at the request of the local sheriff. There is no indication of foul play, GBI Special Agent in Charge Danny Jackson said.
A preliminary investigation revealed De La Rosa was alone in an isolation cell at the detention center when officials there found him, Jackson said.
It was not immediately clear why De La Rosa had been placed in isolation.
ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said he could not provide additional comment because an agency review of the death is ongoing.
Amanda Gilchrist, a spokeswoman for CoreCivic, which owns and operates the facility, said the company is fully cooperating with investigators but declined to comment further because of the active investigation.
De La Rosa is the eighth detainee to die in ICE custody in the 2018 fiscal year, the agency said.
De La Rosa’s death comes less than six months after the death of another ICE detainee who had been in custody at Stewart.
Yulio Castro Garrido, a 33-year-old Cuban national, was diagnosed with pneumonia at Stewart and was hospitalized as his condition worsened. He died in January at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
And in May 2017, Jean Jimenez-Joseph, a 27-year-old Panamanian national, killed himself in solitary confinement at Stewart.
Immigrant rights groups swiftly criticized the facility as word of De La Rosa’s death spread.
“The deaths and systematic abuse at Stewart are not only tragic, but infuriating,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director at Project South.
ICE said it is conducting an agency-wide review of De La Rosa’s death and “is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody.”
Four Democratic senators are calling for an investigation into the treatment of pregnant women detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, following a BuzzFeed News report on several women who said they were mistreated while in immigration detention.
The letter to the Department of Homeland Security Acting Inspector General John Kelly, sent Friday, cites BuzzFeed News’ reporting on the conditions pregnant women in ICE and Customs and Border Patrol custody have faced under the Trump administration, particularly following a new policy issued in December allowing pregnant women to be detained. Under the Obama administration, ICE was ordered to release pregnant women past their first trimester from custody.
“Recent reports cite the inadequate care that pregnant women receive while in ICE custody, pregnant women’s lack of access to medical care, and their heightened vulnerability to sexual assault,” the letter reads. “Given the multiple findings of harmful and substandard conditions of detention for this particularly vulnerable population, we ask that you open an investigation into the treatment and care of pregnant women in ICE detention facilities.”
The letter was organized by Sen. Kamala Harris and signed by fellow Democratic Sens. Patty Murray, Maggie Hassan, and Tom Carper. A spokesperson for Harris’s office told BuzzFeed News that Harris was working “with a group of senators on legislative options to address this as well.”
In a story published Monday, BuzzFeed News related the stories of three women who had miscarriages while in the custody of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol and said they did not receive adequate medical care while pregnant or miscarrying. One woman told BuzzFeed News she was physically abused by CBP officials. All three said they bled for days without medical care and all said they were shackled while pregnant at some point during their detention. Shackling pregnant women is prohibited by ICE’s and CBP’s most recent standards-of-care policies, as well as by a congressional directive.
The report also included interviews with 11 legal, medical, and advocacy workers who work with pregnant detainees in or near detention centers, as well as two affidavits signed under “penalty of perjury” in which a fourth woman described being given clothes so small for her pregnant belly they gave her welts and “pain in [her] uterus.” A fifth woman said she underwent repeated X-rays, despite this being against the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendations and against CBP’s(but not ICE’s) policies for pregnant women.
“Pregnant women have repeatedly described the fear, uncertainty, and exhaustion they experience as a result of being detained,” the senators wrote in Friday’s letter. “Detained pregnant women have stated they experience routine mistreatment, including malnutrition, inadequate bedding, insufficient access to basic medical care, lack of privacy regarding their medical history, and even shackling during transportation for medical care.”
The senators’ letter said there was a 35% increase in the number of pregnant women detained by ICE in the fiscal year of 2017 compared to the year before, under the Obama administration. During that year, ICE detained nearly 68,000 women, 525 of whom were pregnant, the letter stated, and an additional 590 between December 2017, when the policy change was issued, and April 2018.
In June, Harris toured Otay Mesa Detention center, where the three women BuzzFeed News spoke with were held while miscarrying. There, Harris met with mothers who had been separated from their children as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which has triggered national outrage, court cases, and an executive order from President Trump.
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These human beings aren’t “inmates”
They “civil detainees”
Their only “crime” is seeking asylum under U.S. and international law
Their only mistake: believing that the United States is a nation of laws and human decency, not just another “Banana Republic” as it has become under Trump & Sessions
The solution: regime change
Another thought: The problems in civil immigration detention were well-known and well-documented before Sessions and his cronies established the “New American Gulag” to punish, duress, and deter asylum seekers:
Shouldn’t that result in eventual successful suits against Sessions for ethical violations and for civil damages for intentionally violating the Due Process rights of asylum seekers?
At least at first reading, the OPLA memo seems like a more neutral legal analysis than the USCIS “Sessions told us to shoot ’em all on sight” memo:
On its face it also seems like a much less biased analysis than the anti-asylum, anti-woman, anti-Hispanic screed that Sessions spewed forth in Matter of A-B-;
OPLA appears to be emphasizing that each claim must be individually evaluated and examined, rather than the idea promoted by Sessions and USCIS that all women from Central America and all Central Americans fleeing gang violence or domestic violence should be presumptively denied with only a few exceptions;
Does this mean that there is an internal split within DHS?
Interestingly, the OPLA memo specifically reserves judgement on “gender as a particular group” claims;
Of course, if Sessions and Cissna have their way nobody will ever get to Immigration Court to claim asylum, because nobody will get out of the now-gamed “credible fear” process, so perhaps OPLA’s views won’t have much effect.
How bad and biased are Sessions and Cissna? That ICE’s OPLA, the head of all the ICE prosecutors, sounds more reasonable should tell you all you need to know!
It’s also worth remembering that OPLA and the DHS General Counsel actually led the years-long effort to provide protection for victims of domestic violence that Sessions, without any reasonable explanation, reversed in Matter of A-B-.
Trump administration to turn away far more asylum seekers at the border under new guidance
By Tal Kopan, CNN
The Trump administration is implementing a new asylum policy at the border that will result in potentially thousands of asylum seekers being turned away before they can plead their case in court.
The guidance, reviewed by CNN, also applies to refugee applicants — immigrants seeking similar protections in the US who are still abroad.
Under new guidance given Wednesday to the officers who interview asylum seekers at the US’ borders and evaluate refugee applications, claims based on fear of gang and domestic violence will be immediately rejected. In addition, the guidance tells officers they should consider whether an immigrant crossed the border illegally and weigh that against their claim, potentially rejecting even legitimate fears of persecution if the immigrant crossed illegally.
The move is likely to draw swift condemnation from immigration advocates and legal challenges. Advocates say international law is clear that asylum claims are valid even when a migrant enters a country illegally. They also argue that rejecting these traumatized immigrants puts their lives at risk immediately upon their return home.
The changes being implemented by the Department of Homeland Security come on the heels of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision last month that gang and domestic violence victims no longer qualify for asylum. Asylum protects migrants already in the US who fear persecution in their home country.
Remember, folks, most of the intended “victims” of this policy are:
unrepresented
detained
traumitized
speaking through an interpreter (perhaps telephonic)
totally clueless as to what a “particular social group,” the “three criteria,” nexus,” or Matter of A-B- mean, and
Matter of A-B has never been tested or approved by any “real (Article III) court.”
Shoot first, ask questions later. This is America in the 21st Century. This is how we treat our fellow human beings —- most of them refugees seeking our help and protection under the law. This is what we are as human beings under Trump & Sessions. Someday, our descendants will look back on us and say “how could you!”
The privatization of ICE detention centers has exacerbated the problems the bureau faces and has given considerable fodder to media exposes of abuses. The DHS Office of Inspector General recently released a scathing report on failures of the private contractors to comply with detention standards. It’s time to restructure the responsibilities to administer detention and removal policies more humanely.
To its credit, ICE also performs critical assignments that include investigating foreign nationals who violate the laws. The main categories of crimes its agents investigate are suspected terrorism, criminal acts, suspected fraudulent activities (i.e., possessing or manufacturing fraudulent immigration documents) and suspected smuggling and trafficking of foreign nationals. ICE investigators are housed in the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) component and are among those who would dismantle ICE.
If ICE is not at the border performing critical background checks and national security screenings, who does? First, the State Department consular officers screen all foreign nationals requesting a visa, employing biometric technologies along with biographic background checks. In some high-risk consulates abroad, ICE assists in national security screenings. Then, DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors examine all foreign nationals who seek admission to the United States at ports of entry. CBP inspectors and consular officials partner with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to utilize the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment on known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups.
They also check the background of all foreign nationals in biometric and biographic databases such the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Improvements in intelligence-gathering, along with advances in technologies and inter-agency sharing, have greatly enhanced the rigor of our national security screenings.
The most effective policy for interior immigration enforcement would be one prioritizing “quality of life” enforcement. As I have written elsewhere, it would be aimed at protecting U.S. residents from the deleterious and criminal aspects of immigration. Foremost, it would involve the investigation and removal of foreign nationals who have been convicted of crimes and who are deportable, thus maintaining the important activities of the current ICE investigators.
“Quality of life” enforcement, furthermore, would prioritize investigations of specific work sites for wage, hour and safety violations, sweatshop conditions and trafficking in persons — all illegal activities to which unauthorized workers are vulnerable. “Quality of life” enforcement also would encompass stringent labor market tests (e.g., labor certifications and attestations) to ensure that U.S. workers are not adversely affected by the recruitment of foreign workers, as well as reliable employment verification systems. Many of these functions once were performed by the Department of Labor (DOL), before funding cuts gutted its enforcement duties.
Prioritizing these functions likely would go a long way toward curbing unauthorized migration. Whether DOL or a revamped immigration enforcement be the lead on “quality of life” measures remains a key management question. There is a strong case for re-establishing DOL’s traditional role in protecting U.S. workers and certifying the hiring of foreign workers. Given the critical role that ICE investigators play, it is imperative that they be housed in an agency that provides them with adequate support. These are finer points that can be resolved as the functions are reorganized.
Including a multi-pronged agency or agencies charged with ensuring “quality of life” immigration enforcement measures as part of a package of immigration reforms would only increase the strong public support (roughly two-thirds favor) for comprehensive immigration reform. Good policy. Good politics.
Ruth Ellen Wasem is a clinical professor of policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. For more than 25 years, she was a domestic policy specialist at the U.S. Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. She is writing a book about the legislative drive to end race- and nationality-based immigration.
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Hit the above link to read Ruth’s entire article over at The Hill.
I believe that both Nolan Rappaport and I have previously noted the importance of better wage and hour enforcement in preventing employer abuse of both the legal and extra-legal immigration systems. Sure make lots more sense than “busting” hard-working, productive members of our community who have the bad fortune to be here without documents in an era of irrational enforcement!
There are lots of “smart immigration enforcement” options out there. Although the Obama Administration for the most part screwed up immigration policy, toward the end they actually were coming around to some of the “smart enforcement” initiatives, particularly with DACA at USCIS and more consistent and widespread use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) at ICE.
Naturally, the Trump Administration abandoned all of the “smart” initiatives started by the Obama Administration and instead doubled down on every cruel, ineffective, and just plain stupid policy from the past. But, that’s because it’s never been about law enforcement or developing a rational immigration policy. It’s really all about racism and White Nationalism. This Administration, representing a minority of Americans, has absolutely no interest in democracy or governing for the common good.
That’s why it’s critical for the rest of us, who want no part of White Nationalist Nation, to begin the process for “regime change” at the ballot box this Fall! And, in the meantime, join the New Due Process Army and fight the horrible excesses and intentionally ugly policies of the Trumpsters!
After Mr. Ross’s explanation for the citizenship question’s origin shifted, Judge Furman said it appeared that the Commerce Department had acted in “bad faith” in deciding to add the question.
Mr. Ross said in a statement on March 26 that the Justice Department, which oversees enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, had asked that the question be placed on census forms. But late last month he reversed course, stating in a memo that he actually had been discussing the citizenship question “with other government officials” since shortly after taking office in February 2017 — and that the Justice Department had made its request only after he or his aides asked it to.
Judge Furman called Mr. Ross’s March explanation of his decision both “potentially untrue” and improbable because, he said, the Justice Department “has shown little interest in enforcing the Voting Rights Act.”
In an emailed response to questions, a Commerce Department spokeswoman, Rebecca Glover, said there was no inconsistency between the two statements. “Characterizations of the secretary’s prior public statements as somehow misleading are false,” she wrote. Whatever the run-up to the Justice Department’s request, she said, it remained the trigger that led to Mr. Ross’s “thorough and transparent assessment” of the need for a citizenship question.
Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional expert on the census who is a private consultant to groups seeking an accurate 2020 count, called Mr. Ross’s revised timeline “disappointing and deeply troubling.”
“This seems to confirm that the Justice Department request for the citizenship question was a pretense to achieve a political goal through the census,” she said. “The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit together, going back to when President Trump took office.”
In their lawsuit, which is led by the New York attorney general, Barbara D. Underwood, the plaintiffs imply that enforcing the Voting Rights Act was a pretext for another goal: ensuring that the nation’s 11 million-plus undocumented immigrants are not counted for the purpose of drawing congressional and other political districts, which are required to have equal populations.
The practical impact would be to reduce the number of congressional districts, and therefore Electoral College votes, in states with large numbers of noncitizens — often, though not always, Democratic strongholds.
Mr. Ross has not named the administration officials with whom he discussed the citizenship question after taking office. But other lawsuit documents released last month show that Mr. Ross received an email in July 2017 from Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has taken a strong position against illegal immigration. Mr. Kobach urged Mr. Ross to add the citizenship question to the 2020 census because undocumented immigrants “do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States” but are counted for reapportionment purposes.
Mr. Kobach noted in the email that he had recently reached out to Mr. Ross “on the direction of Steve Bannon,” who was then the White House chief strategist. Documenting the extent of outsiders’ role in the citizenship decision will be a priority when the plaintiffs’ search for new evidence begins, experts said.
“That suggests very strongly that the directive here was ultimately a directive that came from the White House,” said Thomas Wolf, counsel at the democracy program of the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law.
The census tally, which includes everyone living in the United States regardless of immigration status, is used to reapportion political boundaries every 10 years to account for population changes. But a growing movement on the far right seeks to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted during reapportionment; Alabama’s Republican secretary of state filed a lawsuit in May seeking to do exactly that.
If only citizens were counted for reapportionment, “California would give up several congressional seats to states that actually honor our Constitution and federal law,” one leader of the anti-immigrant movement, Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, said in February.
That is, for now, a distant prospect. But some experts say they believe asking about citizenship could accomplish the same goal by discouraging undocumented immigrants, even legal ones, from being counted.
“Their actions can produce a census that leaves out many of the people they don’t want counted for political representation,” Ms. Lowenthal said. “And there will be consequences, perhaps, well beyond what immigration hard-liners believe will only be reduced numbers in selected states.”
Tyler Blint-Welsh contributed reporting from New York.
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Read the complete article at the link.
These guys are totally disgusting. Sessions’s “we’ve gotta enforce the law” blather has always been totally bogo. Sessions is interested in enforcing only those laws that happen to support his racist, White Nationalist agenda. Even then, he lies, twists the meaning, and intentionally misuses statistics to support his perverted Jim Crow outlook.
My question is why the DOJ attorneys presenting these obviously untrue and dishonest positions in Federal Court haven’t been referred to their state bars for disciplinary proceedings and possible revocation of their law licenses? And, why isn’t our biased “chief lawyer” Jeff Sessions the subject of ethics and disciplinary procedures given his clear record of bias against people of color and his pushing of unlawful political/racial agendas based on lies before the Federal Courts?
Private attorneys who conducted themselves the way Sessions and his DOJ crew do before Federal Courts would be in deep trouble by now? Why are they getting away with it?
IN LATE June, Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, assured migrant parents whose children had been snatched away by U.S. border officials that there was “no reason” they could not find their toddlers, tweeners and teenagers. Then it turned out that Mr. Azar’s department, which is in charge of the children’s placements and welfare, doesn’t have a firm idea of how many of those children it has under its purview. Or where all their parents are (or even whether they remain in custody). Or how parents and children might find each other, or be rejoined.
On Thursday Mr. Azar was back with more rosy assurances, this time that the government would meet a court-imposed deadline to reunite those children with their parents — by Tuesday in the case of 100 or so kids under the age of 5, and by July 26 for older minors. A day later it turned out the government was begging the court for more time.
Mr. Azar blamed the judiciary for setting what he called an “extreme” deadline to reunify families. Yet as details emerged of the chaotic scramble undertaken by Trump administration officials to reunify families, it is apparent that what is really “extreme” is the government’s bungling in the handling of separated families — a classic example of radical estrangement between the bureaucracy’s left and right hands.
A jaw-dropping report in the New York Times detailed how officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection deleted records that would have enabled officials to connect parents with the children that had been removed from them. No apparent malice impelled their decision; rather, it was an act of administrative convenience, or incompetence, that led them to believe that, since parents and children were separated, they should be assigned separate case file numbers — with nothing to connect them.
The result is Third World-style government dysfunction that combines the original sin of an unspeakably cruel policy with the follow-on ineptitude of uncoordinated agencies unable to foresee the predictable consequences of their decisions — in this case, the inevitability that children and parents, once sundered, would need at some point to be reconnected.
Now, faced with the deadline for reuniting parents and children set June 26 by Judge Dana Sabraw of U.S. District Court in San Diego, hundreds of government employees were set to work through the weekend poring over records to fix what the Trump administration broke by its sudden and heedless proclamation in May of “zero tolerance” for undocumented immigrants, and the family separations that immediately followed.
Mr. Azar, following the White House’s lead, insisted any “confusion” was the fault of the courts and a “broken immigration system.” In fact, the confusion was entirely of the administration’s own making. The secretary expressed concern in the event officials lacked time to vet the adults to whom it would turn over children. Yet there was no such concern about the children’s welfare, nor the lasting psychological harm they would suffer, when the government callously tore them away from their parents.
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Is this really happening in the United States of America in 2018? Are racist-inspired, cruel, human rights atrocities how we want to be remembered as a nation at this point in our history? Did we learn nothing from the death of Dr. King and seemingly (but apparently not really) moving by the “Jim Crow Era?” What excuse could we possibly have for allowing 21st Century “Jim Crows” like Trump, Sessions, & Miller to run our country when we should know better?
It’s interesting and somewhat satisfying to see that the “mainstream media” are now picking up the descriptive terms for the Trump Administration and their overt racism, unnecessary cruelty, and incompetence that “bloggers” like Jason Dzubow (“The Asylumist”), Hon. Jeffrey Chase (jeffreyschase.com), and me have been using for some time now!
The most important task right now: Hold this cruel, racist, and irresponsible Administration accountable for the unconscionable mess they have manufactured!
Don’t let them blame the victims!
Don’t let them blame the courts!
Don’t let them blame asylum laws!
Don’t let them blame lawyers!
Don’t let them blame Democrats!
Don’t let them blame Obama!
Don’t let them blame International Treaties!
Hold the Trump Administration & Its Minions Fully Accountable For Their Actions!
Racism is a feature of the Trump administration, not a bug. Like demagogues before him, President Trump and his aides consistently single out one group for scapegoating and persecution: nonwhite Hispanic immigrants.
Trump doesn’t much seem to like nonwhite newcomers from anywhere, in truth — remember how he once expressed a fond wish for more immigrants from Norway? — but he displays an especially vicious antipathy toward men, women and even children from Latin America. We have not seen such overt racism from a president since Woodrow Wilson imposed Jim Crow segregation in Washington and approvingly showed “The Birth of a Nation,” director D.W. Griffith’s epic celebration of the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House.
Trump encourages supporters to see the nation as beset by high levels of violent crime — and to blame the “animals” of the street gang MS-13. He is lying; crime rates nationwide are far lower than two or three decades ago, and some big cities are safer than they have been in a half-century. But Trump has to paint a dystopian panorama to justify the need to Make America Great Again.
MS-13 is, indeed, unspeakably violent. But it is small; law enforcement officials estimate the gang’s total U.S. membership at roughly 10,000, concentrated in a few metropolitan areas that have large populations of Central American immigrants — Los Angeles, New York and Washington. Trump never acknowledges that the gang was founded in the United States by immigrants from El Salvador and exported to Central America, where it took hold. He also neglects to mention that its members here, mostly teenagers, generally direct their violence at one another, not at outsiders.
Trump deliberately exaggerates the threat from MS-13 in order to justify his brutality toward Central American asylum seekers at the border. People should never be treated that way, but “animals” are a different story.
It is unbelievable that the U.S. government would separate more than 2,300 children from their parents for no good reason other than to demonstrate cruelty. It is shocking that our government would expect toddlers and infants to represent themselves at formal immigration hearings. It is incredible that our government, forced to grudgingly end the policy, would charge desperate parents hundreds or thousands of dollars to be reunited with their children. It is appalling that our government would refuse even to give a full and updated accounting of how many children still have not been returned. Yet all of this has been done — in our name.
Trump uses words such as “invading” and “infest” and “breeding” to describe Central American migrants who arrive at the border lawfully seeking asylum. I’ll believe this is neutral immigration policy when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents begin hunting down and locking up Norwegians who have overstayed their visas.
Said Norwegians, if anyone bothered to look for them, might well be taking jobs away from American workers or taking advantage of social-welfare programs or boosting crime rates. There is no evidence that asylumseekers are doing any of these things.
Trump’s policies flow from a worldview that he has never tried to hide. To describe Trump and aides such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller as “anti-immigration” tells only part of the story. They adopt the stance of racial and cultural warriors, “defending” the United States against brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking hordes “invading” from the south.
Trump has proposed not just building a wall along the border with Mexico to halt the flow of undocumented migrants but also changing the system of legal immigration so that it no longer promotes family unification. He calls his aim a “merit-based” system, but Miller has specified that the administration wants to produce “more assimilation.”
Yet there is no evidence that immigrants from Latin America fail to assimilate in any way except one: They do not come to look like Trump’s mental image of “American,” which is basically the same as his mental image of “Norwegian.”
This is a story as old as the nation. German, Irish, Polish, Italian and other immigrant groups were once seen as irredeemably foreign and incapable of assimilating. The ethnic and racial mix of the country has changed before and is changing now.
Hispanics are by far the biggest minority group in the country, making up nearly 18 percent of the population; by 2060, the Census Bureau estimates, that share will rise to nearly 29 percent . Trump is punishing Central American mothers and babies because, try as he might, he can’t Make America White Again.
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Robinson gives us one of the best, concise summaries of the horrible dishonesty, racism, and all around meanness of spirit and ugliness that Trump, Sessions, Miller, and their enablers have brought to 21st Century America. But, in the end, it can’t change demographics any more than it can stop human migration. However, it does diminish us as a nation every day every day that these totally unqualified individuals remain in charge of our government, without any realistic restraints on their toxic, corrupt, and immoral actions.
ERO shouldn’t terrorize anyone, but it has to be able to arrest deportable aliens where they can be found.
The main reason for wanting to abolish ICE is likely to prevent undocumented aliens who are here for a better life from being deported.
But if ICE were to be abolished, its responsibilities would be assigned to another agency and Trump would require the new agency to implement the same policies.
Trump’s enforcement policies
President Barack Obama focused his immigration enforcement programprimarily on aliens who had been convicted of crimes in the United States, had been caught near the border after an illegal entry, or had returned unlawfully after being deported.
Once an undocumented alien had succeeded in crossing the border without being apprehended, he did not have to worry about being deported unless he was convicted of a serious crime. He was home free.
This created a “home free magnet” which encouraged more undocumented aliens to come and do whatever they had to do to cross the border.
“We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
He directed DHS “to employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all removable aliens.”
Nevertheless, he prioritized removing aliens who are inadmissibleon criminal and related grounds, on security and related grounds, and for misrepresentations, or who are deportable for criminal offenses or on security and related grounds, and removable aliens who:
Have been convicted of any criminal offense;
Have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;
Have committed acts that constitute a criminal offense;
Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or government application;
Have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits;
Are subject to a final order of removal but have not left the United States; or
In the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.
Sanctuary policies prevent local police departments from turning inmates over to ERO when they are released from custody, so ERO is spending more of its time looking for deportable aliens in communities. This resulted in arresting 40,000 noncriminal aliens in FY 2017.
But ERO should not be engaging in improper behavior to make these or any other arrests.
If you see an ICE officer doing something improper, report him. This is far more likely to improve the situation than calling for the abolishment of ICE.
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Go on over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.
I agree with Nolan that ICE isn’t going anywhere under Trump.
I also agree that the essential functions of ICE will still need to be performed, regardless of the ultimate fate of the organization.
I think it’s great that the “Abolish ICE Movement” has focused more attention on the cruel, unnecessary, and highly counterproductive enforcement and prosecutorial policies of ICE under Trump.
Indeed, the counterproductive nature of the Trump/Sessions immigration enforcement is a major reason why a group of Senior ICE Agents who actually perform real law enforcement functions — anti-smuggling, anti-human trafficking, immigration fraud, anti-terrorism — want to ditch the ICE label, because they know it’s inhibiting cooperation with other agencies and communities and thereby diminishing real law enforcement.
Most true law enforcement professionals that I have known don’t want to be associated with a group that glorifies cruelty and de-humanizes ordinary people. Having ICE on your resume today wouldn’t be a plus for most folks interested in a legitimate law enforcement career.
While the “essential functions” of ICE will continue, lots of today’s ICE enforcement has little to do with “essential enforcement.” The latter would be targeted at criminals, fraudsters, spouse abusers, traffickers, and recent arrivals who don’t have applications pending.
The lack of any semblance of common sense and responsibility in ICE’s abusive refusal to exercise prosecutorial discretion and actually putting properly closed cases back on the docket is a major contributor to the absolute mess in today’s Immigration Courts.
It’s also a reason why the Immigration Court mess is unlikely to be solved until Congress, the courts, and/or some future Executive force some fundamental changes in ICE enforcement and prosecutorial policies to reflect the same type of prudent, respectful, and realistic use of judicial time and prosecutorial discretion that is employed, to some extent, by every other major law enforcement agency in the U.S.
It never hurts to complain. I’m a big fan of making a “running record” of misconduct.
But, in the Trump Administration a record is about all you’ll get. Nothing is going to be done to correct misconduct because misconduct comes from the top.
My experience with ICE Chief Counsel’s Office in Arlington was highly positive. The attorneys were overwhelmingly fair, smart, responsive, respectful, and part of the “team” with the private, bar, the courts, and the interpreters that made the justice system work in Arlington in the past.
Indeed, working with the Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office made me proud to have led the major reorganization that established the forerunner to the “Modern Chief Counsel System” at the “Legacy INS” during the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office was exactly what former General Counsels Dave Crosland, Mike Inman, Regional Counsel Bill Odencrantz, and I had envisioned when we planned and carried out the reorganization (over considerable internal opposition, I might add).
My overall experiences with the officers of ICE and it’s forerunner INS Investigations were positive. I found and worked with plenty of capable, dedicated, professional, and humane officers during my decades of dealing with immigration enforcement in some form or another.
All of that suggests that the major problems in ICE have arisen almost entirely under the Trump Administration. That’s because of truly horrible leadership from the top down.
ICE won’t improve until we get “regime change.” When that happens, ICE will have to be reorganized, reinvented, and “rebranded.” Professional management — one that pays particular attention to its relationship to local communities — must be reestablished. Sane enforcement and prosecutorial discretion policies will have to be reinstated.
My experiences with ICE suggest that the right people to lead an “ICE-type” agency in the future are likely already somewhere in ICE. They just aren’t in the right leadership and management positions. Maybe they will all quit before the end of the Trump Administration If not, they could serve as a “professional core” for rebuilding and reforming ICE.
I’m skeptical that so-called “Catch and Release” has a significant effect on what’s happening on the Southern Border.
In the first place, the current situation is “a self-created crisis” initiated by Trump & Sessions. Otherwise it’s pretty much normal migration.
Seeking asylum at the border isn’t “illegal migration” at all. It’s asserting an internationally recognized right. Detention and family separation are not appropriate responses to individuals seeking in good faith to exercise their rights.
In any event, the primary drivers of migration outside the visa system are: 1) unmet needs of the U.S. labor market, and 2) political, social, and economic conditions in foreign countries. So-called “Catch and Release” has no established effect on either of these “drivers.” See, e.g.,https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/crisis-border-not-numbers.
PORT ISABEL DETENTION CENTER, Texas — Sitting before an immigration judge in this south Texas detention center Thursday, a Central American mother separated from her son pleaded for asylum.
“Your honor, I’m just asking for one opportunity to be here,” said the woman wearing a blue prison uniform and a red plastic rosary around her neck. “You don’t know how much pain it has caused us to be separated from our children. We’re kind of losing it.”
Judge Robert Powell’s face was stern. During the last five years, he has denied 79% of asylum cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
“What you’re describing is not persecution,” he said.
“I’m asking for an opportunity,” the woman replied in Spanish through an interpreter.
“I’m not here to give you an opportunity.” He ordered her deported.
Immigrant family separations on the border were supposed to end after President Trump issued an order June 20. A federal judge in California ordered all children be reunited with their parents in a month, and those age 5 and under within 15 days. On Thursday, the administration said up to 3,000 children have been separated — hundreds more than initially reported — and DNA testing has begun to reunite families.
Port Isabel has been designated the “primary family reunification and removal center,” but lawyers here said they have yet to see detained parents reunited.
To qualify for asylum in the U.S., immigrants must prove they fear persecution at home because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group,” and that their government is unwilling or unable to protect them. Most of the Central American parents detained here after “zero tolerance” fled gang and domestic violence. But that’s no longer grounds for seeking asylum, according to a guidance last month from Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. Immigration courts are part of the Justice Department, so judges are following that guidance.
Because immigration courts are administrative, not criminal, immigrants are not entitled to public defenders. And so, each day, they attempt to represent themselves in hearings that sometimes last only a few minutes.
The courtrooms are empty. That’s because, like others nationwide, the court is inside a fortified Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. Access is restricted, and may be denied. The Times had to request to attend court hearings — which are public — 24 hours in advance. After access to the facility was approved last week, admission was denied to the courtrooms when guards said the proceedings were closed, without explanation.
Detainees have little access to the outside world, including their children. It costs them 90 cents a minute to place a phone call. When they do, they can be nearly inaudible. They receive mail, but when reporters wrote to them last week, the letters were confiscated and guards questioned why they had been contacted, according to a lawyer. Lawyers also said some separated parents have been pressured into agreeing to deportation in order to reunite with their children.
UNICEF officials toured Port Isabel Thursday. A dozen pro bono lawyers visited immigrants. But they were spread thin. None represented parents at the credible fear reviews, where judges considered whether to uphold an asylum officer’s finding that they be deported.
Immigration Judge Morris Onyewuchi, a former Homeland Security lawyer appointed to the bench two years ago, questioned several parents’ appeals.
“You have children?” he asked a Honduran mother.
Yes, Elinda Aguilar said, she had three.
“Two of them were with me when we got separated by immigration, the other is in Honduras,” said Aguilar, 44.
“How many times have you been to the U.S.?” the judge asked.
Aguilar said this was her first time. The judge reviewed what Aguilar had told an asylum officer: That she had fled an ex-husband who beat, raped and threatened her. “He told you he would kill you if you went with another man?” the judge said.
Yes, Aguilar replied.
The judge noted that Aguilar had reported the crimes to police, who charged her husband, although he never showed up in court. Then he announced his decision: deportation.
Aguilar looked confused. “Did the asylum officer talk to you and explain my case?” she said.
The judge said he was acting according to the law.
Although she was fleeing an abusive husband, he said, “your courts intervened and they put him through the legal process. That’s also how things work in this country.”
Aguilar knit her hands. She wasn’t leaving yet.
“I would like to know what’s going to happen to my children, the ones who came with me,” she asked the judge.
“The Department of Homeland Security will deal with that. Talk to your deportation officer,” he said. Guards led her away as she looked shocked, and brought in the next parent.
Down the hall, Judge Powell heard appeals from separated parents appearing by video feed from Pearsall Detention Center to the west. Though he denied most asylum cases, there are exceptions. Recently, after an asylum officer denied a claim by a Central American woman who said police raped and threatened to kill her, Powell reversed that decision. She can now pursue her asylum claim, though she still hasn’t been released or reunited with her kids.
Obvious question: What, in fact, is a “judge” who isn’t there to give individuals fair hearings and treat them with respect, dignity, and humanity “there for?” What good is a judge who won’t protect individual rights from Government abuses? That’s the whole reason for our “Bill of Rights!”
Jeff Sessions regularly makes bogus, racist inspired claims about “fraud” in our asylum system. But, the REAL fraud in our asylum system is holding ourselves out as a nation of laws and Constitutional government instead of the Banana Republic we have become under Trump. And, maybe if this is what America is today, Trump is right: we don’t need any judges. Just jailers and executioners.
S.E.R.L. v. Att’y Gen., No. 17-2031, 3rd Cir., July 3, 2018
HOLDING: Latinas fleeing persecution in the Northern Triangle can expect no protection under U.S. asylum laws in the Third Circuit.
PANEL: Circuit Judges Kent Jordan, Cheryl Ann Krause; Senior Circuit Judge Ira Morton Greenburg
OPINION BY: Judge Kent Jordan
KEY QUOTES:
S.E.R.L., a native of Honduras, seeks review of the denial of her application for asylum and statutory withholding of removal based on membership in a proposed particular social group that she characterizes as “immediate family members of Honduran women unable to leave a domestic relationship[.]”2 (Opening Br. at 21.) She fears persecution by two men, Jose Angel and Juan Orellana. Jose Angel abducted, raped, and continues to stalk one of S.E.R.L.’s daughters, K.Y.R.L. That daughter has already been granted asylum in the United States. Juan Orellana is S.E.R.L.’s stepfather and has repeatedly abused S.E.R.L.’s mother. S.E.R.L. fears that if she is removed to Honduras, both men will persecute her, Jose Angel because of her relationship to her daughter, and Juan Orellana because of her relationship to her mother.S.E.R.L. and two of her children fled here from Honduras in 2014. Within a month of their unlawful arrival, the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings pursuant to INA § 212(a)(6)(A)(i). S.E.R.L. conceded removability, and timely applied for asylum and statutory withholding of removal.4 In support of her claims for relief, she alleged past persecution and a fear of future persecution based on the relationships just noted.
. . . .
S.E.R.L. contends that the BIA’s change innomenclature from “social visibility” to “social distinction” is the only change the BIA has made to its test for assessing a“particular social group,” and, she says, that is a “distinction without a difference.” (Reply Br. at 5.) According to S.E.R.L., our decision in Valdiviezo-Galdamez forecloses application of the “particularity” and “social distinction”requirements. She also argues that the BIA plainly acknowledges that it has not changed course, nor has itprovided a “principled” explanation for why it continues to impose criteria we rejected in Valdiviezo-Galdamez. (Opening Br. at 31.)
In addition, those who have filed amicus briefs in this case point out that the BIA’s decisions in M-E-V-G- andW-G-R- could be read as inconsistent with certain other BIA decisions and contrary to the canon of ejusdem generis. Amici note, for example, that in W-G-R-, the BIA concludedthat “‘former members of the Mara 18 gang in El Salvadorwho have renounced their gang membership’ does not constitute a particular social group” in part because “the group could include persons of any age, sex, or background.”26 I. & N. Dec. at 221. Yet, even though the groups varied significantly across age, sex, and background, the BIA has also held that “Filipinos of Chinese [a]ncestry” constituted a “particular social group,” In re V-T-S-, 21 I. & N. Dec. 792, 798 (BIA 1997), and that “former member[s] of the national police” in El Salvador, Fuentes, 19 I. & N. Dec. at 662, likewise could be cognizable.15 And although the BIA expressly justified its new requirements as “[c]onsistent with the interpretive canon ‘ejusdem generis,’” M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 234, amici highlight that some of the enumerated grounds for persecution, including “political opinion,” and “religion,” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A), may themselves be thought of as amorphous, diffuse, or subjective and therefore as insufficient bases for PSGs under M-E-V-G-’s requirements.
Those critiques raise legitimate concerns. The BIA has chosen to maintain a three-part test for determining the existence of a particular social group, and it has discussed how the revised particularity and social distinction requirements are not a departure from but a ratification of requirements articulated in its prior decisions. M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 234. And the arguable inconsistencies in its precedent highlight the risk that those requirements could be applied arbitrarily and interpreted to impose an unreasonably high evidentiary burden, especially for pro se petitioners, at the threshold. At the same time, however, we recognize thatM-E-V-G- is a relatively recent decision and clarity and consistency can be expected to emerge with the accretion of case law. That process is aided by M-E-V-G- itself, which addressed the specific concerns we raised in Valdiviezo- Galdamez, and explained why the particularity and social distinction requirements are different from one another and necessary. We now consider each of those requirements, beginning with social distinction, to explain why, notwithstanding our concerns, we conclude that the requirements are reasonable and warrant Chevron deference.
. . . .
Although S.E.R.L. also relies heavily on Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), where the BIAhad held that “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” constituted a particular socialgroup, the Attorney General recently issued a decision overruling A-R-C-G-. See Matter of A-B-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018).
. . . .
At the same time, we are mindful of the role that courts can and must play to ensure that agencies comply withtheir “obligation to render consistent opinions,” Chisholm v. Def. Logistics Agency, 656 F.2d 42, 47 (3d Cir. 1981), including, as relevant here, review of BIA decisions for inconsistent application of M-E-V-G’s requirements to similarly situated petitioners, routine rejection of proposed PSGs without reasoned explanation, and the imposition of insurmountable evidentiary burdens that would render illusory the opportunity to establish a PSG. However, just as we will carefully examine cases on petition for review to guard against such dangers, we anticipate that the BIA will scrutinize the IJ decisions that come before it with those considerations in mind and with an eye towards providing clear guidance and a coherent body of law in this area.
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3RDCIRCUIT’S JULY 4 MESSAGE TO ABUSED LATINAS: YOUR LIVES DON’T MATTER! – S.E.R.L v. Att’y Gen., JULY 3, 2018 – How “Go Along To Get Along” Judging Costs Innocent Lives!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Judge Kent Jordan, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, and Senior Judge Ira Morton Greenburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit got together in Philly, ”our nation’s birthplace,” on July 3, 2018 to deliver an early July 4 message for courageous Latinas fleeing the Northern Triangle: Your lives don’t matter; we’re OK with femicide, rape, torture, and abuse of you and your children as long as it’s out of sight, out of mind in some foreigncountry where we don’t have to listen to your screams or come across your mutilated bodies!
These judges’ names and faces are worth remembering, since they went to such great lengths to avoid taking or acknowledging any legal or moral responsibility for their own actions. Obviously, they don’t want anyone to put names and faces with consequences.
While you wouldn’t recognize it from their 43 pages of intentionally legalistic, opaque, de-humanized, gobbledygook, there is actually a simple straightforward human tragedy behind their obfuscation and task shirking. Since they won’t tell it, I will.
“Ms. S.E.R.L”. (I’ll call her “Susana”) is a native and citizen of Honduras. Honduras is a patriarchal “failed state” with a corrupt and incompetent government that does little or nothing to control gang violence and violence against women, even encouraging it or participating in the abuses in many cases. By 2015, femicides in Honduras had far surpassed “epidemic levels.” For example, in 2013, one Honduran woman was murdered every fourteen hours!
Jose Angel abducted, raped, and continued to stalk Susana’s daughter “Karla.” Susana’s stepfather, Juan Orellana repeatedly abused Susana’s mother without any interference from the government. Juan also threatened Susana personally. Having witnessed what these men did to her closest relatives, her daughter and her mother, Susana reasonably believed that she would be next. Karla was granted asylum in the U.S. Susana fled to the United States with two other daughters and applied for asylum.
Since Karla was granted asylum in the U.S., Susana expected the same humane treatment, particularly since our Supreme Court once said that asylum laws should be generously applied to those with as little as a 10% chance of being persecuted. After all, Honduran women are a distinct, well-recognized class subject to essentially uncontrolled specifically gender-based violence in a patriarchal society. Additionally, the family members closest to Susana had already suffered severe harm in Honduras at the hands of two specific men. And, her daughter Karla was being allowed to stay.
The Immigration Judge supposedly believed Susana. However, he came up with some creative ways, pioneered by the BIA, to deny her protection. First, he found that she had no reason to fear harm because she hadn’t actually been harmed or killed by either Jose or Juan, despite the threats to her from Juan who obviously was capable of inflicting severe harm. Second, he found she didn’t fit within any “particular social group,” whatever that might mean on a particular day. The went on to make the amazing finding that being a Honduran woman would have nothing to do with the harm anyway.
Perhaps, the judge believed that Honduran men suffered the same high rate of femicide as did women. Or, maybe he believed that guys like Jose and Juan and Honduran society in general wouldn’t recognize that Susana was a Honduran woman closely related to two previously abused Honduran women. The judge observed that refugee laws weren’t meant to protect women like Susana from “generalized violence,” even though Susana’s claim wasn’t based on generalized violence but rather specific violence directed at her.
The judge basically told Susana to buck up and accept her fate. The judge appeared to have no idea what actually happens to women like Susana in Honduras. Susana appealed to the BIA which had very recently found that a virtually identical situation qualified a woman for asylum. But, the other woman wasn’t Susana, and the BIA found some reasons why it was OK to send Susana back to where she might reasonably expect be killed, raped, or abused by Jose and/or Juan.
Susana appealed to a “real court”, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Unlike the Immigration Judge and the BIA, judges on the Third Circuit don’t work for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jeff hates foreign nationals, women, and particularly brown-skinned foreign women fleeing from persecution in Central America. He thinks that they are all coming here for economic reasons and should just go stand in a line to immigrate. But, Jeff knows that the line doesn’t really exist, and that they will likely be killed or disabled shortly after return anyway. What Jeff really wants is an America where only nasty old White guys like him hold all the power and non-White folks stay away.
Judge Kent Jordan, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, and Senior Judge Ira Morton Greenburg decided Susana’s case. They recognized that the BIA had rewritten asylum law so that fewer individuals would be protected and more rejected. They also recognized that Jeff Sessions had further rewritten the laws so that women like Susana would have no chance of protection. They also knew that there were lots of good arguments against what the BIA and Jeff were doing and in favor of protecting Susana.
But the judges found another Supreme Court case saying that they really didn’t have to decide legal questions if Jeff Sessions and his subordinates had done it for them. They thought that it made sense to rewrite protection law so that very few people, particularly women of color, would be protected. According to their thinking, the asylum law is intended to reject, not protect. They also thought that because these were relatively new interpretations, Jeff and the BIA should have a chance to kill or harm as many Latinas as possible before they as judges might think about whether it was a good idea. Of course, by then, it would be too late for Susana and others like her. And, these judges don’t really have any intent or will to hold Sessions accountable anyway.
So, Judge Jordan, Judge Krause, and Judge Greenburg told Susana that she should be separated from her daughter Karla and go back to Honduras with her other daughters to die, be raped, be beaten, or whatever. They knew that she would receive no help from the Government. But, they just didn’t care. Because Susana and her daughters were not their daughters or granddaughters and they wouldn’t have to hear her screams or look at their dead bodies. But, history has recorded what they did. Let the slaughter of innocents commence.
Better, more courageous judges might have said the obvious: that “women in Honduras” are a particularized, distinct, immutable/fundamental protected group; that Susana is a member of that group; and that any reasonable person in her position would have an objectively reasonable fear of persecution if returned to Honduras.
They also could have castigated the BIA and Jeff Sessions for intentionally manipulating asylum law so as not to grant protection to some of the most vulnerable and needy refugees among us. But, this “Gang of Three’ who decided Susana’s case would have been happy pushing the St. Louisand its cargo of Jewish refugees from Germany back out to sea again. Any of the judges who looked at Susan’s case could have had spoken out for saving her life and the lives of her daughters. None did!
After abdicating their judicial functions to hold the Executive accountable, this “Gang of Three” dishonestly expresses concerns about consistency and not creating “insurmountable evidentiary burdens.” Get serious!
Everyone knows Jeff Sessions is ordering Immigration Judges to crank out more removal orders with little or no Due Process. He has publicly stated his disdain for asylum seekers and women asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle. He has made it clear that he intends to “deconstruct:” the entire U.S. protection system until the only “consistency” will be that nobody gets asylum. And with cases like his decision in Matter of A-B-and spineless “go along to get along” precedents like this from the Article III courts, Sessions is implementing his real plan – insuring that nobody who comes to the border and seeks asylum passes “credible fear” and even gets to an Immigration Judge hearing.
Judges like these can shirk their responsibilities and hide behind mountains of hollow words and legal platitudes. But, they won’t escape the judgement of history for their lack of courage, backbone, integrity, and their unwillingness to stand up for human rights and human decency in the face of tyranny.
Happy July 4, 2018 from Judge Kent Jordan, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, and Senior Judge Ira Morton Greenburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit! They can celebrate. But, for Susana, her family, and other vulnerable refugee like her, there will be no celebration. Indeed, they might not even live to see another July 4! That should make us all ashamed as a nation!
After a month of outrage at the cruelty of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, last week we saw a stream of confounding and divergent statements on immigration: The president suggested depriving undocumented migrants of due process; Attorney General Jeff Sessions insisted that every adult who crossed illegally would be prosecuted; and the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection announced that families would once again be released together to await trial. Meanwhile, thousands of separated children and their parents remain trapped in a web of shelters and detention facilities run by nonprofit groups and private prison, security and defense companies.
It is important to understand that the crisis of separation manufactured by the Trump administration is only the most visibly abhorrent manifestation of a decades-long project to create a “state of exception” along our southern border.
This concept was used by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to describe the states of emergency declared by governments to suspend or diminish rights and protections. In April, when the president deployed National Guard troops to the border (an action also taken by his two predecessors), he declared that “the situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis.” In fact, despite recent upticks, border crossings remained at historic lows and the border was more secure than ever — though we might ask, secure for whom?
For most Americans, what happens on the border remains out of sight and out of mind. But in the immigration enforcement community, the militarization of the border has given rise to a culture imbued with the language and tactics of war.
Border agents refer to migrants as “criminals,” “aliens,” “illegals,” “bodies” or “toncs” (possibly an acronym for “temporarily out of native country” or “territory of origin not known” — or a reference to the sound of a Maglite hitting a migrant’s skull). They are equipped with drones, helicopters, infrared cameras, radar, ground sensors and explosion-resistant vehicles. But their most deadly tool is geographic — the desert itself.
“Prevention Through Deterrence” came to define border enforcement in the 1990s, when the Border Patrol cracked down on migrant crossings in cities like El Paso. Walls were built, budgets ballooned and scores of new agents were hired to patrol border towns. Everywhere else, it was assumed, the hostile desert would do the dirty work of deterring crossers, away from the public eye.
. . . .
Such defenses also gloss over the patrol’s casual brutality: I have witnessed agents scattering migrant groups in remote areas and destroying their water supplies, acts that have also been extensively documented by humanitarian groups.
The principle of deterrence is behind the current administration’s zero-tolerance policy. In an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Mr. Sessions, pressed on whether children were being separated from parents to deter crossers, conceded, “Yes, hopefully people will get the message.”
Administration officials have claimed that even this policy is “humanitarian,” in part because it may dissuade future migrants from bringing their children on the dangerous journey.
This ignores decades of proof that no matter what version of hell migrants are made to pass through at the border, they will endure it to escape far more tangible threats of violence in their home countries, to reunite with family or to secure some semblance of economic stability.
Policymakers also ignore that new enforcement measures almost always strengthen cartel-aligned human trafficking networks, giving them cause to increase their smuggling fees and push vulnerable migrants to make riskier crossings to avoid detection.
Jason De León, the director of the Undocumented Migration Project, argues that the government sees undocumented migrants as people “whose lives have no political or social value” and “whose deaths are of little consequence.”
This devaluation of migrant life is not just rhetorical: CNN recently revealed that the Border Patrol has been undercounting migrant deaths, failing to include more than 500 in its official tally of more than 6,000 deaths over 16 years — a literal erasure of lives.
The logic of deterrence is not unlike that of war: It has transformed the border into a state of exception where some of the most vulnerable people on earth face death and disappearance and where children are torn from their parents to send the message You are not safe here. In this sense, the situation at the border has reached a point of crisis — not one of criminality but of disregard for human life.
We cannot return to indifference. In the aftermath of our nation’s outcry against family separation, it is vital that we direct our outrage toward the violent policies that enabled it.
Francisco Cantú, a former Border Patrol agent, is the author of “The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border.”
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Read Cantu’s full article at the above link.
BTW, when I was at the “Legacy INS” I was told the “Maglite hitting the migrant’s skull” version of the Border Patrol’s definition of “toncs.”
Cantu confirms what I have said many times on this blog. Far from keeping us safer, the cruel, inhuman, dishonest, and racist policies of Trump & Sessions actually “strengthen cartel-aligned human trafficking networks,” thereby making us markedly less safe. They also degrade us as a nation and as human beings by essentially assisting in the deaths of desperate and vulnerable refugees who are only required to use the cartels in the first place because of the willful failures, incompetence, dishonesty, and immorality of our Government officials administering refugee and asylum programs!
Focus on this ugly truth: Under Trump, Sessions, Miller, and their White Nationalist buddies, our government sees undocumented migrants as people “’whose lives have no political or social value’ and ‘whose deaths are of little consequence.'”
Celebrate July 4 by “just saying no” to the Trump regime! Join the New Due Process Army, and stop the ugliness of Trump, Sessions, Miller, and their White Nationalist cabal! Channel your outrage into saving the lives of the most vulnerable among us and resisting the Trump kakistocracy! Restore the optimistic, progressive, inclusive, idealistic vision of America set forth by our Founding Fathers in their Declaration of Independence!
