☠️🤮🤯 HOW CAN JUDGES WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT TORTURE IS FAIRLY PREDICT ITS FUTURE PROBABILITY? — THEY CAN’T! — 1st Cir. “Outs” EOIR’s CAT Denial Conveyor Belt!

Hernandez-Martinez v. Garland, 1st Cir.

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/21-1448P-01A.pdf

. . . .

In March 2014, Hernandez-Martinez was on his way to work when two men approached him, demanding money and threatening to kill him if he did not pay. Hernandez-Martinez did not know who the men were. The men told him that they knew where he lived and would harm him or his wife if he did not comply. They also instructed him not to go to the police.

Hernandez-Martinez went to the police later that day. Two police officers told Hernandez-Martinez not to be afraid because they would “take matters into their own hands,” and they offered to drive him home. Instead, they delivered him to the men who had threatened him earlier. The men hit Hernandez-Martinez in the face, cut his waist with a knife, burned his right foot with motorcycle exhaust, dragged him, repeated their threats, and beat him senseless. The police appeared to know his assailants and laughed while the men were assaulting him. Hernandez-Martinez recovered consciousness in a hospital, where he stayed for three or four days. When he had sufficiently recovered, he promptly fled to the United States to join his wife and then four- or five- year-old son, who had already made the journey.

. . . .

The IJ’s reasons are not at all clear. She more or less simply stated the elements of a CAT claim and asserted that Hernandez-Martinez did not establish those elements without specifying which elements were found wanting, or why.2 In addressing the asylum claim, the IJ did comment on the severity of harm inflicted on Hernandez-Martinez, stating that the abuse he suffered did not “rise above the level of unpleasantness, harassment, and even basic suffering.” We agree with the government that were this a supportable description of the harm inflicted, it would not support a CAT claim. We disagree, though, that the facts found support such a description. More to the point, as a matter of law we reject the implicit claim that the harm visited upon Hernandez-Martinez was not severe enough to qualify as torture.

. . . .

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

It’s actually pretty hard to get a “rise to the level of torture” case wrong as a matter of law! But three levels of Garland’s DOJ managed to pull it off!

EOIR’s “holdover Ashcroft/Sessions/Barr era” deny every CAT claim approach seems to be running into problems in the “real” Federal Courts. Nothing that competent BIA Appellate Judges couldn’t solve. But, don’t hold your breath!

This absurdist CAT “adjudication” and its beyond absurd, unethical defense by OIL (“doesn’t even rise to the level of persecution,“ citing inapposite cases, gimmie a break) falls below minimum legal and professional standards in every conceivable way: at the IJ, the BIA (“summary affirmance”), and OIL!

That nearing the halfway point of the Biden Administration there is no Senate-confirmed Assistant AG running the all-important Civil Division, which supervises OIL, shows just how grossly deficient and indolent Dems’ approach to “justice at Justice” has been — both within the Biden Administration and in the Senate.

This stunningly defective, shallow, basically non-existent “analysis” by this IJ shows an out of control system where judges feel free to enter defective deportation orders in life or death cases without much thought and without fearing any accountability from the BIA. The latter obviously is an “any reason to deny” assembly line where clearly unacceptable performance by IJs is “rubber stamped” so long as the result is “deny and deport!”

What’s happening at Garland’s EOIR is analogous to a patient going into the hospital for knee replacement, getting a lobotomy by mistake, and dying to boot. Yet, the “hospital administrator “ shrugs it off as just “business as usual,” a “minor mistake” — “good enough for surgery” and lets the team of quacks keep operating and killing folks!

Gosh, even lesser legal luminaries like Gonzalez and Mukasey finally “got” that EOIR was totally out of control and off the wall in the aftermath of Ashcroft’s “due process purge” and mal-administration. They actually took some “corrective action,” even if largely ineffectual and mostly cosmetic.

It’s also no accident that a disproportionate amount of EOIR’s bad judging and docket mismanagement is inflicted on migrants of color, particularly those from Latin America and Haiti, and their representatives. Much as the Biden Administration tries to ignore it, there is a clear connection between institutionalized xenophobia and racial bias in our immigration system and the problematic state of racial justice elsewhere in the U.S.

Contrast the truly abysmal, unacceptable performance by the EOIR judges and OIL attorneys in this case with the outstanding performance of Judge Brea Burgie and private attorney Alexandra Katsiaficas in the asylum grant from Denver I highlighted yesterday. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/02/06/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%97%bd%f0%9f%a7%91%f0%9f%8f%bb%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%a9%f0%9f%92%bc-modeling-eoirs-potential-in-denver-judge-brea-c-burgie-attorne/.

Obviously, there is expert judicial talent on the EOIR bench and in the private sector that could be recruited and elevated to fuel a “due process, great judging, and best practices renaissance” in this dysfunctional, inherently unfair, and grotesquely mal-administered system! But, equal justice and minimal professional standards at EOIR can’t wait! Lives are going down the drain, and wasteful corrections and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” further cripple this already “rock bottom” system every day.

Garland must finally “swap out the deadwood and under-performers” at the BIA and senior management at EOIR HQ in Falls Church. He needs to bring in the available, proven talent from both Government and the private sector to lead and guide his mockery of a court system back to at least a minimal level of competence, professionalism, and accountability.

It’s well within Garland’s authority to “end this disreputable, deadly ‘clown show’ at EOIR!” Dems both inside and outside Government should be demanding reforms and accountability!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-07-23

🤮🤥 “DUH” OF THE DAY: “Billy the Bigot” Barr Is An Unethical, Right-Wing Hack Who Abused His Authority @ DOJ In Service Of Trump Over America! — Durham Investigation Was “Abusive, Partisan, and Unhinged!“

Barr Departs — Lowering The Barr by Randall Enos, Easton, CT
Republished By License

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-durham-probe-was-barrs-witch-hunt.html

Johnathan Chait @ The Intelligencer:

There is an enduring pattern in American conservatism in which the right first develops a paranoid interpretation of the liberal Establishment, and then reverse engineers its own version of the monster it has imagined. Conservatives convinced themselves that the mainstream media and universities were mere propaganda organs, then created institutions like the Heritage Foundation and Fox News, warped reflections of their own overheated critique. The January 6 insurrection was, of course, in the mind of its participants, a “response” to the imagined vote-fraud conspiracy and its antifa/BLM shock troops.

John Durham’s investigation is a classic episode in this tradition. The American right first convinced itself that Robert Mueller and the deep state, using the cover of dispassionate professionalism, had launched a partisan witch hunt to smear Donald Trump. In response, it created a right-wing mirror image, as fervently partisan and unhinged as they believed their enemies to be.

The New York Times has a deeply reported narrative showing how Durham’s counter-investigation of the Russia probe, cooked up by William Barr at Donald Trump’s urging, was just as abusive, partisan, and unhinged as Trump’s defenders made Mueller out to be.

The purpose of special counsel is to wall off a politically sensitive investigation from the attorney general. But Durham, reports the Times, was working closely with Barr behind closed doors all along. The two Republicans dined and drank together, and came to share Barr’s Fox News–brained beliefs that Trump had been the victim of a conspiracy.

Rather than preventing Barr from meddling in a politicized investigation, this arrangement inverted that purpose and laundered Barr’s involvement through Durham’s putative independence. “At some point, some particularly ill-informed critic of the administration may try to paint Durham as a right-wing hack or Republican loyalist,” wrote National Review’s Jim Geraghty in a fawning profile, singling out the NAACP’s Sherrilyn Ifill for having the temerity to suggest Durham might have been compromised by serving Trump’s ends.

Durham and Barr kept failing to prove the deep-state conspiracy they imagined, but continued to press forward anyway. At one point they seized upon hacked Russian memos that intelligence analysts deemed obviously fake, instead treating them as a valuable intelligence trove, and tried to prove it out, even harassing one of the targets to obtain his emails (which contained nothing incriminating). It weirdly reflected the Trumpist accusation that Robert Mueller had been tricked into pursuing Russian disinformation.

As Durham kept failing to find support for the conspiracy he was pursuing, and which Barr kept floating in public, his deputies chafed at his obsession. Eventually, one of them resigned in protest when he brought charges against Michael Sussmann, a target of the right. As his former lieutenants expected, Durham’s case was defeated in court.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Immigration advocates didn’t need a NY Times investigation to tell you that Barr was corrupt! Biased anti-immigrant, anti-asylum “AG precedents;” BIA “Appellate Judges” appointed for their unusually high asylum denial rates and known hostility to migrants and their attorneys; Immigration Judges appointed without expertise in immigration and human rights, overwhelmingly from the ranks of prosecutors; busting the IJ union (“NAIJ”) for speaking out against DOJ’s politicized mismanagement; issuing an EOIR “Fact Sheet” full of lies, misrepresentations, and myths; appointing politicized managers at EOIR without judicial or due process qualifications; taking ethically questionable litigating positions in Federal Court; the list of Barr’s abuses of authority on immigration and human rights goes on and on!

AG Merrick Garland has made a few ameliorative changes. Some of the worst precedents have been overruled; some unqualified political senior executives been removed or reassigned; over time, judicial selection has been shifted to a more balanced, merit-based system that has resulted in the appointment as Immigration Judges of some widely-recognized experts, with experience representing individuals, and a demonstrated commitment to due process for all; “numerical quotas” for IJs have been eliminated. (Curiously, however, Garland “honored” 17 “transition” Barr judicial selections made under badly flawed selection criteria!)

Yet, overall, EOIR remains largely the disaster zone that Barr left behind. Trump-era anti-asylum Appellate Judges continue to dominate the BIA; many Trump-era IJs still misapply basic immigration legal standards and operate “asylum free zones;” management is weak; training is inadequate; dockets are out of control; respondents and their attorneys are treated unprofessionally; quality control is largely nonexistent; wildly inconsistent “refugee roulette” asylum adjudication remains; an enforcement-skewed culture of “any reason to deny and deport” continues to infect EOIR at all levels; “numbers” are emphasized over quality and fairness; and the DOJ’s OIL often defends indefensible EOIR decisions in Federal Court on the apparent rationale that “it’s only migrants’ lives at stake, so who cares!”

Unhappily, the Biden Administration has barely “scratched the surface” of the badly needed and long overdue common sense reforms needed at EOIR and the DOJ to put the Sessions/Barr abuses behind us and move forward! Barr was a bad AG; but, his ghost continues to haunt the DOJ and those seeking equal justice for all!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-30-23

🤮☠️ EGREGIOUS “ETHNOCENTRIC” JUDGING! — BIA IGNORES RECORD IN FABRICATED DENIAL OF GUATEMALAN CLAIM — 3RD CIR PUZZLED BY BIA’S CONDUCT: “At times, the IJ’s decision completely conflicts with the record. Yet, for reasons that are not at all apparent, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision in its entirety.“

Four Horsemen — BIA Asylum Panel cutting down the backlog by trampling asylum seekers and their legal rights! Guatemalans are a favorite target for Garland’s “Band of Bullies” at EOIR.
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-on-guatemala-law-facts-and-standard-of-review-saban-cach-v-atty-gen

Daniel M. Kowalski

25 Jan 2023

persecution

standard of review

Guatemala

asylum

CA3 on Guatemala, Law, Facts and Standard of Review: Saban-Cach v. Atty. Gen.

Saban-Cach v. Atty. Gen.

“Based on past experiences, if returned to Guatemala, Selvin Heraldo Saban-Cach fears being persecuted by a local gang because of his identity as an indigenous person. Accordingly, he seeks withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act and protection from removal under the Convention Against Torture. The Immigration Judge denied his applications and ordered his removal, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed. This petition for review followed. For the reasons that follow, we will grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. … Although the BIA need not write an overly detailed explanation of its review of an IJ’s decision, it must provide an adequate explanation of its ruling and afford us an opportunity to review it. Here, the BIA did neither. At times, the IJ’s decision completely conflicts with the record. Yet, for reasons that are not at all apparent, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision in its entirety. … The BIA must review the first, factual question for clear error and the second, legal question de novo. In affirming the IJ’s decision of the second question regarding acquiescence, the BIA concluded that it found “no clear error in the [IJ]’s predictive fact-finding.” Accordingly, in addition to not bifurcating the Myrie step-two inquiry, the BIA also erred by applying this heightened standard of review to a legal question. Because of these errors, “we have little insight into the basis for [the BIA’s] determination that the IJ’s opinion ‘clearly reflects that [s]he used the proper “willful blindness” standard in relation to the issue of acquiescence.’” Accordingly, on remand the BIA needs to reassess each question.”

[Hats way off to Stephanie Norton, CSJ Practitioner-in-Residence, Detained Immigrant Project Education, Seton Hall!]

Stephanie Norton
CSJ Practitioner-in-Residence, Detained Immigrant Project Education, Seton Hall Law
PHOTO: Seton Hall Law website

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

Congratulations to NDPA star Stephanie Norton! This is yet another example of the great talent “out here” who could replace mal-functioning EOIR judges. Human lives are at stake, this system is dysfunctional, crying out for bold reforms! Wonder how the Dems will try to “spin” their miserable performance at EOIR in 2024?

The IJ’s and BIA’s findings of “no past persecution” in this case rise to the level of absurd! Here’s what happened:

The BIA recognized that gang members had attacked Saban-Cach on multiple occasions and that the worst attack left him unconscious after he was stabbed with a broken glass bottle. However, the BIA agreed with the IJ that, in the aggregate, this abuse did not rise to the level of persecution. The BIA explained that, “because most of the incidents did not involve physical injuries, and because the worst attack did not require him to seek professional medical care for his physical injuries, the applicant did not establish harm rising to the level of past persecution.”

Come on man! No competent, fair minded judge would reach such a totally ridiculous conclusion based on such shallow, specious, and basically “made up reasoning!” Not incidentally, it also directly conflicted with Circuit precedent as well as with the realities of life in Guatemala!

The BIA also ran roughshod over its OWN binding precedent, Matter of O-Z- & I-Z-, 23 I&N Dec. 22 (BIA 1998) (cumulative harm is persecution), which should have made a finding of past persecution a “no brainer” for a panel of competent asylum adjudicators! The sloppy, biased, “any reason to deny” culture at EOIR is a major cause of their out of control backlog. Efforts to deny easily grantable cases, and failure to direct wayward asylum-denying IJs to get it right in the first place, is a drag on our entire justice system — all the way up to the Courts of Appeals!

That’s because EOIR’s “any reason to deny” approach to asylum encourages, and often rewards, frivolous litigating positions by ICE, discourages stipulations and settlements in cases that should easily be granted, and results in OIL taking ethically and legally flawed positions in the Courts of Appeals. For example, in this case the 3rd Circuit characterized parts of OIL’s position as “disingenuous,” “puzzling and disappointing,” and pointedly stated that “[r]egrettably, the government’s response brief doubles down on this inaccuracy.”

So, these are the legal quality and ethical standards set at DOJ by AG Merrick Garland, a former Circuit Judge himself who certainly should be expected to “know better.” Apparently, in his view, due process, fundamental fairness, impartial adjudication, adherence to the law, judicial and legal ethics don’t apply when it’s “only migrants” whose lives are at stake! While this is a common approach from White Nationalist GOP politicos, don’t we deserve better from a Dem Administration that claims to care about racial justice, but whose actions with respect to migrants say otherwise?

The court also blasted EOIR for “ethnocentric” judging and failure to fairly evaluate cases.

We have previously cautioned IJs and the BIA against ethnocentric evaluations of petitioners’ resources. Petitioners primarily come from countries in the poorest and most dangerous regions of the world. Any presumption that they enjoy the same kinds of resources as their adjudicators is shortsighted and unfair. Unless the record supports it, IJs and the BIA should not assume that their own views of appropriate medical care and its ready accessibility make up a universal reality.

Petitioners for relief under the asylum system must be afforded the just hearing that due process and basic fairness demands. The immigration system can only provide a fair and neutral determination of the claims of people from different cultural and economic circumstances if adjudicators diligently avoid unrealistic assumptions about petitioners’ circumstances.

Any competent asylum practitioner would understand what the court is getting at. But, EOIR IJs at both the trial and appellate level make these basic mistakes time after time.

The 3rd Circuit and other courts might claim to find the BIA’s “entire” affirmance of a decision often in “complete conflict” with the record to be inexplicable. But, WE know that it’s because the “deportation assembly line” works on the “principle” of “any reason to deny” and “keep cranking out those final orders of removal.” To Hell with justice, quality, fairness, and the human lives involved!

Also, Guatemalan applicants, along with others from the Northern Triangle, are “de facto disfavored” in EOIR’s asylum adjudications. That’s right “in line” with the bias against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle exhibited by both the Trump and Biden Administrations. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/01/25/historical-perspective-from-yael-schacher-refugees-international-biden-administrations-bias-against-refugees-fleeing-the-northern-triangle-is-baked-into-the-prob/.

It’s also part of an ingrained institutional bias at EOIR against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle and Latin America that Garland has failed effectively to address! See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/justice-betrayed-the-intentional-mistreatment-of-central-american-asylum-applicants-by-the-executive-office-for-immigration-review/; https://immigrationcourtside.com/appellate-litigation-in-todays-broken-and-biased-immigration-court-system-four-steps-to-a-winning-counterattack-by-the-relentless-new-due-process-army/.

This disasterous, backlogged, “star chamber system” is neither appropriately staffed nor competently operated to afford individuals “the just hearing that due process and basic fairness demands.” How is this due process and fundamental fairness required by our Constitution?

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style. — AG Merrick Garland appears to be blissfully unconcerned about the methods applied by too many of his EOIR “judges,” and his DOJ attorneys who “run interference” for them, to achieve “removal for any reason, at any cost!”

Until a court has the guts to “pull the plug” on EOIR’s ongoing, deadly clown show 🤡, declare it unconstitutional, and require at least minimal due process reforms, these outrages will continue! “Puzzling” about recurring miscarriages of justice at EOIR, as the 3rd Circuit did here, is one thing; acting decisively to enforce the Constitution by stopping the abuse, once and for all, is quite different. Requiring EOIR judges with demonstrated expertise in asylum law, willing to professionally review records, and decide cases of asylum seekers correctly, without “ethnocentrism” or bias, would be a logical starting point! It should be a “no brainer!”

Clown Court — “When you walk into your EOIR ‘courtroom’ and this guy takes the bench, you’re probably in for a BAD day! Isn’t it time to finally END the ‘Clown Show’ in our dystopian Immigration ‘Courts?'”
PHOTO: Clown Civertan.jpg, Creative Commons License

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-27-23

🤮☠️ THE COLLATERAL DAMAGE FROM GARLAND’S “AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING” (“ADR”) A/K/A “PLANNED CHAOS” IS DEVASTATING THE LEGAL PROFESSION! 🏴‍☠️ — Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow Reports!

Immigration Lawyers Fleeing — Immigration lawyers – seen here fleeing the profession.

https://www.asylumist.com/2023/01/18/court-chaos-creates-collateral-consequences/

IMMIGRATION COURT

Court Chaos Creates Collateral Consequences

January 18, 2023

Immigration Courts across the U.S. have been randomly rescheduling and advancing cases without regard to attorney availability or whether we have the capacity to complete our cases. The very predictable result of this fiasco is that lawyers are stressed and overworked, our ability to adequately prepare cases has been reduced, and–worst of all–asylum seekers are being deprived of their right to a fair hearing. Besides these obvious consequences, the policy of reshuffling court cases is having other insidious effects that are less visible, but no less damaging. Here, I want to talk about some of the ongoing collateral damage caused by EOIR’s decision to toss aside due process of law in favor of reducing the Immigration Court backlog.

As an initial matter, it’s important to acknowledge that the Immigration Court backlog is huge. There are currently more than 2 million pending cases, which is more than at any time in the history of the Immigration Court system. To address this situation, EOIR (the Executive Office for Immigration Review – the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts) has been working with DHS (the prosecutor) to dismiss low-priority cases, where the non-citizen does not have criminal issues or pose a national security threat. Also, the U.S. government has been doing its best to turn away asylum seekers at the Southern border, which has perhaps slowed the growth of the backlog, but has also (probably) violated our obligations under U.S. and international law.

In addition, EOIR has been hiring new Immigration Judges (“IJs”) at a break neck pace. In the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of IJs nationwide, though some parts of the country have received more judges than others. In those localities with lots of new IJs, EOIR has been advancing thousands of cases. The goal is to complete cases and reduce the backlog. Why EOIR has failed to coordinate its new schedule with stakeholders, such as respondents and immigration attorneys, I do not know.

What I do know is that EOIR’s efforts have created great hardships for attorneys and respondents (respondents are the non-citizens in Immigration Court). Also, I expect that this whole rescheduling debacle will have long-term effects on the Immigration Courts, as well as on the immigration bar.

The most obvious effect is that lawyers and respondents simply do not have enough time to properly prepare their cases. When a hearing was set for 2025 and then suddenly advanced to a date a few months in the future, it may not be enough time to gather evidence and prepare the case. Also, this is not occurring in a vacuum. Lawyers (like me) are seeing dozens of cases advanced without warning, and so we have to manage all of those, plus our regular case load. So the most immediate consequence of EOIR’s policy is that asylum seekers and other respondents often do not have an opportunity to present their best case.

Perhaps less obviously, lawyers are being forced to turn work away. We can only competently handle so many matters, and when we are being assaulted day-by-day with newly rescheduled cases, we cannot predict our ability to take on a new case. In my office, we have been saying “no” more and more frequently to potential clients. Of course, this also affects existing clients who need additional work. Want to expedite your asylum case? Need a travel document to see a sick relative? I can’t give you a time frame for when we can complete the work, because I do not know what EOIR will throw at me tomorrow.

One option for lawyers is to raise prices. We have not yet done that in my office, but it is under consideration. What we have done is increase the amount of the down payment we require. Why? Because as soon as we enter our name as the lawyer, we take on certain obligations. And since cases now often move very quickly, we need to be sure we get paid. If not, we go out of business. The problem is that many people cannot afford a large down payment or cannot pay the total fee over a shortened (and unpredictable) period of time. The result is that fewer non-citizens will be able to hire lawyers.

Well, there is one caveat–crummy lawyers will continue to take more and more cases, rake in more and more money, and do very little to help their clients. Such lawyers are not concerned about the quality of their work or doing a good job for their clients. They simply want to make money. EOIR’s policy will certainly benefit them, as responsible attorneys will be forced to turn away business, those without scruples will be waiting to take up the slack.

Finally, since EOIR is increasing attorney stress and burnout to untenable levels, I expect we will see lawyers start to leave the profession. I have talked to many colleagues who are ready to go. Some are suffering physical and mental health difficulties due to the impossible work load. Most immigration lawyers are very committed to their clients and have a sense of mission, but it is extremely difficult to work in an environment where you cannot control your own schedule, you cannot do your best for your clients, you cannot fulfill your obligations to your family and friends, and where you are regularly abused and treated with contempt. Long before EOIR started re-arranging our schedules, burnout among immigration lawyers was a serious problem. Today, that problem is exponentially worse, thanks to EOIR’s utter disrespect for the immigration bar. I have little doubt that the long term effect will be to drive good attorneys away from the profession.

For me, the saddest part of this whole mess is that it did not have to be this way. EOIR could have worked with attorneys to advance cases in an orderly manner and to ensure that respondents and their lawyers were protected. But that is not what happened. Instead, EOIR has betrayed its stated mission, “to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation’s immigration laws.” Respondents, their attorneys, and the immigration system are all worse off because of it.

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

“For me, the saddest part of this whole mess is that it did not have to be this way.” Amen, Jason! Me too! And, I think I speak for most, if not all, of my esteemed colleagues on the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges and BIA Members.”⚔️🛡

In addition to betraying its mission “to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation’s immigration laws,” EOIR has trashed its noble once-vision: “Through teamwork and innovation be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”

The use of the word “uniformity” in EOIR’s “mission” is an absurdity given the “range” of asylum denials fostered and tolerated by Garland’s dysfunctional system: 0-100%! It’s also understandable, if unforgivable, that EOIR no longer features words like “due process,” “fundamental fairness,” “teamwork,” and “innovation” prominently on its website!

A Dem AG is attacking our American justice system and the legal profession at the “retail level” and causing real, perhaps “irreparable,” damage! What’s wrong with this picture? Everything! What are we going to do about it? Or, more appropriately, what are YOU going to do about it, as my time on the stage, and that of my contemporaries, is winding down?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-24-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽LEADING EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO’S BLUNT MESSAGE TO BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: “Enough with the political games. Migrants have a right to asylum!” — LA Times

https://www-latimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-01-06/biden-border-immigration-asylum-title-42?_amp=true

President Biden’s seemingly chaotic policy toward asylum seekers at the U.S. border is no accident. It’s carefully crafted to minimize political fallout. The administration should keep it simple instead, by following the law and doing the right thing — admitting those who arrive at our borders seeking asylum.

Give voters a chance, Mr. President. The American people value decency. They don’t respect craven and calculated inconsistency.

This week, the Biden administration announced an expansion of a Trump-era policy to turn away individuals fleeing persecution who reach our borders. This began with a pretext of limiting the spread of COVID-19, using a public health law known as Title 42. Now it’s just a sop to people who oppose immigration.

Until the Trump administration used Title 42 in this way, the nation had honored its obligation to asylum seekers for 40 years, under the 1980 Refugee Act. It grants the right to seek protection. Abrogating that right has resulted in the untold suffering, the return of refugees to persecution and death, and chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In April 2022, the Biden administration stated its intent to end Title 42. Litigation delayed the termination, but in mid-November, a federal judge ruled the policy unlawful, and ordered it to end by Dec. 21. The Supreme Court has stayed that order until it hears arguments next month.

Now, in a head-spinning turn of events, Biden has announced the expansion of Title 42 to Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans — nationalities that had not previously been subject to summary expulsion at the border.

If this were not enough of a contradiction, the administration also plans to resurrect another Trump-era policy which Biden had previously denounced, the “transit ban.” This rule bars from asylum any migrants who do not apply for and receive a denial of asylum from the countries they pass through on their way to the U.S.

This “outsourcing” of our refugee obligations to countries of transit, which a federal court found unlawful when implemented by the Trump administration, is ludicrous on its face. The asylum seekers who arrive at our border pass through countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, with human rights conditions as dire as in the migrants’ nations of origin.

To date, the only country with which we legally have such an arrangement is Canada — which makes sense because it has a robust refugee protection system and an admirable human rights record. And even if there are other countries of transit, such as Costa Rica, that have a well-developed framework for the protection of refugees, and solid records on human rights, they are already taking in numbers of asylum seekers that far exceed their capacity.

. . . .

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

Read Karen’s full op-ed at the above link.

It’s simply appalling, not to mention disingenuous, for Biden to ignore the advice of experts like Karen, the founder and moving force behind the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at U.C. Hastings Law. (Karen also argued the landmark Kasinga case before the BIA when I was Chair). Instead, disgracefully, he has turned human rights and immigration policies over to a bunch of spineless, scofflaw politicos and “go along to get along” bureaucrats.

He has multiplied the problem by following and adopting their highly politicized program of “carefully crafted chaos” — which both ignores the law and inflicts irreparable harm, including death, on legal asylum seekers! The “crime” of these victims of Biden’s tone-deafness? Seeking to exercise their legal rights under U.S. and international law to apply for asylum!

Biden and some Dems seem to have forgotten the nationwide, grass roots wave of support for admission of refugees in response to Trump’s despicable “Muslim ban!” As Karen points out, rather than “running from” immigration, refugees, and asylum as issues, Biden and other Dems should be embracing them as part of our heritage as a nation of immigrants and a source of strength and shared prosperity for our future! Refugees and asylees are a key component of our legal immigration system.

Making the necessary progressive, due process and fundamental fairness oriented, reforms to enable our nation to welcome those qualified in a timely, humane, and fair manner should be a top priority! As Karen cogently notes, “doing the right thing,” and doing it really well, “is good politics!”

Biden’s latest immigration nonsense will be attacked by litigators on both sides. Both the ACLU and Stephen Miller’s nativist legal group “America First Legal” have pledged to resist various parts of the new policies in court. The irony here is that Biden’s latest anti-asylum efforts incorporate much of the “Miller White Nationalist agenda” that Biden and other Dems campaigned (and fund-raised) against during the 2020 election!

Miller Lite — Biden and his immigration advisors apparently have been overindulging in this stuff lately! It shows in their disturbingly poor performance on asylum, human rights, an “order at the border!”

Karen’s message is the same as mine. “It’s not rocket science!🚀 Migrants have a right to asylum.”🗽 Start with that straightforward truth and everything else falls into place!

Thanks for speaking out so forcefully, articulately, and truthfully, Karen, my friend!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-22

🏴‍☠️ BREAKING: SCOFFLAW ALERT: LACKING COMPETENCE & ABILITY TO FAIRLY ADMINISTER REFUGEE & ASYLUM LAWS, LIKE TRUMP BEFORE HIM, BIDEN PROPOSES NEW “GIMMICKS” TO REWRITE LAW BY FIAT RATHER THAN LEGISLATION! — Expanded Use Of “Emergency Parole” To Replace Law’s Existing Refugee & Asylum Programs Appears Illegal!

Biden Border Message — “Border Message”
By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license

Biden’s new immigration plan would restrict illegal border crossings

The measures are likely to draw legal challenges. They would expand rapid expulsion for illegal border crossers but allow more migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.

Read in The Washington Post: https://apple.news/ARS8hkdNCShagYwOQlpmHkA

BY CLEVE R. WOOTSON JR., NICK MIROFF AND MARIA SACCHETTI report for WashPost, January 5, 2023 11:22 AM

President Biden on Thursday will announce new immigration restrictions, including the expansion of programs to remove people quickly without letting them seek asylum, in an attempt to address one of his administration’s most politically vulnerable issues at a time when the nation’s attention is focused on Republican disarray in the U.S. House.

The measures will expand Biden’s use of “parole” authority to allow 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela to come to the United States each month, as long as a U.S. sponsor applies for them first. But those who attempt to migrate through the region without authorization will risk rapid expulsion to Mexico, as the administration plans to expand its use of the pandemic-era Title 42 public health policy. Mexico has agreed to take back 30,000 border-crossers from those nations each month, U.S. officials told reporters during a briefing Thursday morning.

The measures, which are likely to draw legal challenges from immigration advocacy groups,”will expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways,” the White House announced.

Biden, who has said he will seek reelection in 2024, is contending with the political and operational fallout of two consecutive years of record numbers of migrants taken into custody at the Mexican border, in part because of his more welcoming policies.

Before taking office, Biden said he wanted an orderly system, not “2 million people on our border.” The number of border apprehensions jumped to 1.7 million during his first year in the White House, however, and soared to nearly 2.4 million in his second year. Biden campaigned on the promise that his administration’s immigration system would be “safe, orderly and humane”; his pivot toward amped up enforcement suggests the White House sees immigration as a 2024 liability.

The administration’s solution is legally thorny and will likely anger immigration advocates and even some Democrats — and will probably do little to silence Biden’s Republican critics.

. . . .

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

Read the complete story at the link:

Biden’s plan effectively imposes arbitrary geographic and ideological restrictions on those seeking protection — something that Congress specifically intended to eliminate when enacting the Refugee Act of 1980;
Biden’s plan leaves out asylum seekers and refugees from the Northern Triangle, some of those most in need of protection;
It imposes arbitrary and illegal numerical limits on those who might otherwise seek asylum;
It continues the illegal and expanded use of Title 42 as a border enforcement mechanism having nothing whatsoever to do with public health — a position that the Administration itself has refuted in Federal Court all the way up to the Supremes;
It leaves those “paroled” in limbo with no clear path to legalization in the U.S., other than perhaps eventually applying for asylum in overloaded and often biased system with a backlog of many years;
Any future path to legal status for these parolees would require legislation agreed to by the GOP — not likely to happen — thus making these individuals “bargaining chips” for nativists seeking further restrictions on legal immigration and the right of asylum;
The “mass use” of parole at a rate of 30,000/month appears a direct violation of section 212(d)(5) of the INA, as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980, which specifically intended to end the “mass use” of parole as a substitute for admitting refugees under the legal framework set up by the Refugee Act of 1980, as amended.

Here’s a “spot on” comment by Margaret Cargioli from the Post article:

Margaret Cargioli, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said the program was effectively screening out migrants who lack U.S. connections or money to buy airplane tickets. She said Title 42 was “put in place by a racist and xenophobic administration” bent on stopping immigration, not protecting public health.

“It really does go against the nature of … ‘My life is in danger. I need to get out,’ ” she said at a Dec. 29 news conference. “And that is what the essence of an asylum seeker is.”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-05-23

🎪 NEWS FROM THE BIG TOP: “We need a Congress, not a circus,” 🤡 say Dan Rather & Elliot Kirshner! — “Burning Down The House!” 🔥

https://steady.substack.com/p/burning-down-the-house?utm_medium=email

Burning Down The House

Chaos reigns

Dan Rather

and

Elliot Kirschner

13 hr ago

834

266

Before craziness and chaos engulfed the House of Representatives in the saga of electing a new speaker, a Kodak moment provided a vivid portrait of the relative health of our two major political parties and our nation as a whole.

There stood Nancy Pelosi raising the gavel for the last time as speaker in front of the imposing scroll-back chair from which she had wielded power. Her job at that moment was purely ceremonial — closing the 117th Congress — but the symbolism was poignant. It marked an end to a Congress of action and accomplishment and the beginning of an era of performative pandemonium. The gavel stood there in mid-air like a baton with no one to accept it.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In the reporting on Kevin McCarthy’s travails for gaining the speakership, many have noted how small his majority is, how he can afford to lose only a few votes, and that therein lies his major problem. But as others have pointed out, Pelosi had a small majority in the last Congress — yet she maintained unity in her party and ran the House with efficiency and precision, and to great effect.

The dumpster fire we are witnessing now has been smoldering for years, if not decades. It is what happens when people elect representatives who actively hate the idea of governance. It is what happens when people rack up victories with Fox News rants and not legislation. It is what happens when a quest for power means you’re willing to yield and appease everyone and everything that can help you secure it.

To be sure, crooks, cranks, and malevolent embarrassments have not been the exclusive purview of any one political party over the years. The nature of democracy is that it can be very messy; in moments of passion, fear, or even apathy, it can sweep into office all manner of men and women who have no business being there. The idea of a legislature, however, is that the whims, idiosyncrasies, and destructive instincts of a few can be tempered by the many. Obviously that is not what is happening now.

There is a tendency among some in the beltway press to frame this as a battle of the political extremes, how the far right is undermining Republican initiatives. In this analysis there is often a perfunctory “both sides” mention of the political left, which also supposedly threatens the “center” and the ability to govern.

This simplistic framing misses the mark at this moment. On the Republican side, it is not clear what the renegades want, other than to figuratively burn down the house (or House). Some have specific demands, and McCarthy has caved more than a spelunker. But it’s still not good enough. Furthermore, these demands are almost exclusively about process and not policy. It’s about allowing a nihilistic minority to foment perpetual mayhem, thereby undercutting the debate and responsible compromise that should be the business of Congress. Ultimately, it’s about accommodating Steve Bannon and not delivering for constituents.

There is no analogous movement on the left. Even if one disagrees with the policy positions of the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party, ultimately those members of Congress are almost all institutionalists — in that they believe in the idea and work of the legislative branch of government. They understand that you need a speaker for the House to function, so they backed Pelosi. They left the debates and disagreements for individual bills and votes. That, by the way, is how the Founders envisioned it.

But this isn’t just about Pelosi, as formidable as her leadership skills were. The Democrats also have rallied around her successor, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who occupies more of the moderate middle of the party. As Republicans embarrass themselves on the national stage with rounds and rounds of votes, the Democrats have held steady in unity behind Jeffries. It’s an impressive show of discipline for a political party that was once mocked (including by Democratic members of Congress) for having all the herding instincts of cats.

As much as this spectacle is gaining the attention of the American people, make no mistake that it is being watched with keen eyes around the world — by our friends and foes alike. Our allies wonder, especially in the wake of the last administration, whether they can count on America. Will these renegades blow up the world economy by defaulting on American debt? Will they pass a budget? Will they support Ukraine? Will they actively continue to undermine America’s democratic traditions?

Meanwhile, in places like Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang, despots, autocrats, and dictators are cheering our divisions and the distance they create between our national ideals and our political reality. In moments of instability in Washington, the entire world becomes more dangerous. Not that the Republican holdouts care.

The public debasement of House Republicans may make for great schadenfreude viewing for Democrats. Some literally broke out the popcorn in the House chamber. But ultimately this is a sad moment for our country. We need strong political parties that believe in negotiating, legislating, and governing. We need individual congresswomen and men of decency and integrity. We need strength and thoughtfulness to tackle our myriad problems.

We need a Congress, not a circus.

Note: If you are not already a member of the Steady community, please consider subscribing. We always appreciate you sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments.

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

Don’t expect the “Party of Insurrection & Putin” to come around. Even assuming that McCarthy eventually prevails (not by any means a “safe bet”), he is totally compromised as a leader. Any other candidate would be in a similar weak position.

The GOP has for many years evinced no interest whatsoever in governing in the public interest, rather than destroying, disrupting, and engaging in shameless self-aggrandizement.The problem for democracy is that too many voters keep electing them, thereby promoting the demise of our nation.

For now, the “Clown Car” 🤡🚗 remains parked in the Speaker’s space at the Big Top 🎪!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-05-23

🤮👨‍⚖️OUR FAILING COURTS👎🏽: Dean Erwin Chemerinsky Slams Supremes For Scofflaw, Politicized, Biased Title 42 Travesty — The Supremes’ Misconduct & Incompetence In This Case Affecting Human Lives Is Totally Unacceptable! 🏴‍☠️ — Progressives Must Take The Fight To The Neo-Fascist Right For American’s Future! — “The Supreme Court’s order is senseless!”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=792adcfa-2c82-4cca-953c-bf1dfeb1a070

On Title 42, the Supreme Court rules for a partisan agenda

COVID-19 is no reason to shut out migrants. Yet it’s used as a political pretext.

By Erwin Chemerinsky

The Supreme Court’s ruling last week to keep in place a Trump-era immigration order can only be understood as five conservative justices advancing a conservative political agenda, in violation of clear legal rules.

Without giving reasons or any explanation, the court reversed lower court decisions that allowed the Biden administration to lift a restriction that prevents asylum seekers at the border from entering the country, imposed early during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The federal law — referred to as Title 42 — permits the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prohibit people from coming into the U.S. to avert the spread of a “communicable disease” present in a foreign country.

.. . .

In November, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, in Washington, D.C., found that the continued use of Title 42 was “arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.” He ruled that the expulsion policy was no longer justified based in light of the present state of the pandemic, which includes widely available vaccines, treatments and increased travel in the United States.

Nineteen states with Republican attorneys general, however, oppose that ruling and sought the right to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. They were not parties to the lawsuit in the District Court and the law generally does not allow parties to get into a case for the first time at the appeals level. On Dec. 16, the federal Court of Appeals, following its well-established law, refused to allow the states to intervene. The states then sought Supreme Court review of that decision.

On Dec. 27, in Arizona vs. Mayorkas, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, not only said that it would hear the states’ appeal, but that it would require that the Biden administration continue to use Title 42 to expel migrants.

The court’s action makes no sense for several reasons. Title 42 provides the government authority to close the borders only if a public health crisis involving a communicable disease requires it. No one in the litigation disputes that COVID no longer warrants restrictions on immigration.

. . . .

The states are intervening not because they believe that a continuing public health emergency requires Title 42, but because they want to use it as a pretext to close the borders.

In fact, in another case now pending on the Supreme Court’s docket — on whether the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program is justified as a response to the pandemic emergency — 12 of the states in the Title 42 case argued in their brief that “COVID-19 is now irrelevant to nearly all Americans.”

The Supreme Court’s order is senseless for another reason: The only issue before the court is whether the states can intervene in the case. It is not about whether the District Court erred in ending the use of Title 42 to expel migrants. Even if the states were allowed to join the case, they can’t plausibly make the case that COVID concerns still justify immigration expulsions at this point.

. . . .

The five conservative justices based their decision not on the purpose of Title 42, which is to stop the spread of a communicable disease, but on their partisan agreement with conservatives on immigration issues. We should expect better of the court than that.

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

Read Dean Chemerinsky’s full article at the link. Having a High Court, with life tenure, where a majority of the Justices enter “senseless orders” — targeting some of the most vulnerable and abused in our society who also happen to be predominantly individuals of color — is in and of itself senseless — from a standpoint of preserving our democracy!

The action of the five GOP Supremes is beyond outrageous! The NDPA CAN turn this gross right-wing minority abuse of our judicial system around! Likely not in my lifetime!

But, you need to keep pushing Dems to pay attention to judicial appointments and start insisting on meaningful professional expertise in immigration and actual experience representing individuals in Immigration Court as a basic requirement to serve as a Justice. Also we need an Article I Immigration Court and NO MORE Attorneys General without proven “grass roots” immigration and human rights experience!

Immigration is “where the action is” on the fight to save American democracy! If tone-deaf and spineless Dem politicos keep “running” from the key issue in American law and society, perhaps it’s time for true liberals, progressives, and constitutional humanitarian realists to “run” from the Dem Party!

This Supreme farce also reinforces the disgraceful failure of Garland and the Dems to reform the “Supreme Court of Immigration” — the BIA — by replacing enforcement-tilted Trump holdovers with practical scholar, expert, progressive judges committed to realizing long-denied due process, fundamental fairness, and the best interpretations of immigration and refugee laws! Dems control an important Federal Appellate body and are too clueless and afraid to do the right thing — even with the rule of law, racial justice, and human lives on the line!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-02-23

🤯 ❓QUESTION OF THE DAY: “Biden says he wants to dismantle Title 42,” writes Catherine Rampell @ WashPost, “so why has he expanded it?”

By Catherine Rampell

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/29/title42-migrant-asylum-biden-solutions/

The Biden administration has long been saying that it wants to get rid of Title 42.

Why, then, has it been expanding use of this policy?

“Title 42” is shorthand for what is effectively an abuse of a public health authority to circumvent U.S. asylum laws. Beginning in March 2020, the Trump administration used an obscure public health statute to automatically expel migrants without allowing them to first apply for asylum, as is their right under U.S. law and international treaty;PresidentDonald Trump’s pretext was that these immigrants might spread covid-19.

Apparently, Trump considered covid a liberal media hoax except when useful for punishing foreigners.

Human rights advocates and public health experts alike criticized the policy as probably both illegal and lacking a credible epidemiological purpose. Whatever its intentions, it didn’t reduce stress at the border; instead, it increased attempted border crossings, as many people expelled without consequence or due process turned right around and tried again to enter the United States.

That is, if they weren’t kidnapped, tortured, raped or otherwise violently attacked first. This happened in more than 10,000 cases of expelled migrants, as documented by Human Rights First.

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden pledged to restore the integrity of the asylum system. He promised that anyone qualifying for an asylum claim would “be admitted to the country through an orderly process.” As president, though, Biden dragged his feet in terminating Title 42. He finally agreed to end the program this past spring. But termination has since been delayed by complicated court rulings, which Biden officials seem to have fought only half-heartedly.

This week, the Supreme Court determined that Title 42 must remain in place at least until the court decides a related issue (probably in the coming months). Given the Biden administration’s claims of wanting to end Title 42, the president should theoretically be mad about the delay.

Instead, Biden officials seem to have seized the opportunity to make yet more immigrant groups subject to automatic expulsions. “The administration has taken the position in court that they can no longer justify keeping Title 42 in place, given the lack of any public health justification,” said Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the expulsion policy. “If you look at the administration’s actions, however, it’s clear they’re fine with Title 42 remaining in place.”

. . . .

Americans often complain that immigrants should come here “the right way,” but for many migrants, showing up at the border unannounced and turning themselves in is the only legal pathway available. If given options to come here that don’t require paying gangs and crossing deserts, people would gladly take them — which would in turn alleviate stress at the border.

To its credit, the Biden administration has taken baby steps on that last recommendation.

Its Uniting for Ukraine program, for instance, has vetted and “paroled in” more than 82,000 Ukrainians and their immediate relatives abroad, which has discouraged Ukrainians from showing up en masse at our southern border (as had been the case early in the war). A similar but much more restrictive program was created for Venezuelans, whose numbers are capped at 24,000; a parallel program is reportedly in the works for Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians.

But again, these additional legal pathways can be created while still upholding the ability to apply for asylum at our borders. That’s what U.S. law requires — and what Biden has, repeatedly, promised to do.

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

Read Catherine’s full article at the link. “If you look at the administration’s actions, however, it’s clear they’re fine with Title 42 remaining in place.” So true! So outrageous!

Contrary to much of the blather from both parties, refugee and asylum laws are an integral part of our LEGAL immigration system — one that is now being grossly misapplied and under-utilized!

Creating additional legal avenues for immigration by legislation is by no means inconsistent with maintaining robust, well-functioning refugee and asylum programs!

There are lots and lots of improvements that the Biden Administration could and should have made to the legal refugee and asylum programs that already exist under the law! Indeed, I suggest that many of the bogus “gimmicks” and counterproductive, wasteful, unfair “deterrents” devised and implemented by the Biden Administration, including expanded use of Title 42, were in direct or indirect response to Garland’s failed Immigration Courts. Because they are backlogged, inefficient, and dysfunctional, bureaucrats and politicos dream up ways to evade them (as opposed to fixing them so they work)!

It’s all wrong! There are “tons” of cases rotting in Garland’s ever-expanding EOIR backlog that could be granted or otherwise disposed of with relative ease and without stomping on anyone’s due process rights! There are ways of providing proper notice, better scheduling, and a new system for initial adjudications of non-LPR cancellation cases that do NOT require legislation; just better leadership and personnel at DOJ, DHS, and the White House!

The lack of scholarly, progressive, due process oriented precedents and implementation of best judicial practices by the BIA cripples justice in both the Immigration Courts and the USCIS Asylum Offices, even extending to the Refugee Program and other forms of USCIS adjudication of benefits.

For example, the ridiculous, largely self-created, backlogs in USCIS work authorizations is at least partially fueled by never ending backlogs in Immigration Court. Also, bad judicial decisions at EOIR create large amounts of unnecessary litigation in the Article III Courts and promote inconsistencies by allowing too many important issues, including proper application of some of the BIA’s own precedents favorable to respondents, to be resolved by the Circuits.

The system is a godawful mess! Yet, Dems in Congress didn’t even consider pressing for long-overdue Article I legislation, already introduced by Chair Lofgren, as part of their “lame duck push.” Thus, a key part of the immigration and justice systems continues to flounder and fail in Garland’s DOJ!

The need for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” does not in any way minimize the responsibility of the Biden Administration for failing to reform the leadership and bureaucracies at DOJ and DHS to produce fairer, more efficient, expert, professional results!

Some cowardly Dem politicos and many Biden officials “run” from the immigration issue; yet, addressing and fixing the parts they control, like EOIR, could well have given them success to tout during the mid-term campaign.

And, as many experts suggest, it might also have helped address labor shortages, inflation and improved the economy. Rather than just “holding off disaster,” by acting more boldly on immigration the Dems might even have maintained and expanded their political control by demonstrating both the competence to solve immigration problems, even without comprehensive legislation, and the benefits of a fair, efficient, functional immigration system to America as a whole.

With the GOP taking over the House, expect many Dems to continue bellyaching that “nothing can be done about immigration.” It’s not like they did much of anything when they controlled both Houses!

There are still things that can be done to make the system fairer, more efficient, and more responsive to the common needs of America. Progressives should not let Dem “naysayers” off the hook!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-31-22

🤯TRAC: GARLAND’S IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG HITS 2 MILLION: More Judges, More Completions, Less Representation, Defective BIA, Mindless Mal-Administration = More Backlog!

Michigan Stadium, America’s largest, holds 107,601. It would take approximately 20 Michigan Stadiums to hold all the 2,000,000 + folks waiting for hearings in Garland’s dysfunctional and backlogged Immigration Courts! And, that doesn’t include their families, communities, employers, co-workers and others affected by their fates! If Garland were the managing partner of a law firm or the CEO of a business, he would be “long gone.” Why aren’t competence and accountability “minimum requirements” for America’s chief lawyer?
Michigan Stadium Photo by Andrew Horne, Creative Commons License

Here’s the latest from TRAC Immigration:

TRAC — EOIR Backlog 2 million

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

Quick takes:

Even at this accelerated completion rate, on an annualized basis, I calculate that EOIR will still be building backlog at a rate of nearly 300,000 annually, based on 800,000 new receipts from DHS.
At approximately 700 completions/year/judge (EOIR’s figure), EOIR would need approximately 400 additional, fully trained, fully productive IJs on the bench just to “break even” and stop creating more backlog.
Nearly 800,000 asylum cases are sitting in the backlog, many ready to try and pending for years. With a better BIA and better trained IJs who actually applied Cardoza-Fonseca, Mogharrabi, and the regulatory presumptions of well-founded fear properly (instead of being “programmed to deny”) the vast majority of these old asylum cases could be prioritized and granted in short hearings.
Even with today’s broken, biased, and unconstitutionally inconsistent Immigration Courts, migrants prevail against deportation in approximately 60% of cases! This suggests that the majority of the Immigration Court’s cases could be prioritized and resolved in the migrant’s favor without lengthy hearings IF the system had a better BIA, better IJs, better training, better practices, and a better working relationship with the private bar and DHS.
Far too few bonds are being granted, and insufficient attention is being paid to inconsistencies in the bond process.
Only an infinitesimally small percentage, .56%, of new cases filed by ICE involve allegations of criminal conduct. This suggests continuing problems with the way ICE allocates enforcement resources and chooses to use Immigration Court time.

Earlier this year, I had predicted that Garland would top the 2 million backlog mark by the end of August 2022. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-7dT

I was off by 3 months, as it actually took him until the end of November 2022 to achieve this negative landmark.

Nevertheless, some things are clear: This system is “beyond FUBAR!” It needs professional leadership, a new appellate board, better judges, better training, better utilization of the private bar, smarter, more creative and innovative practices, and authority to “rein in” in out of control ICE Enforcement. All the same things experts said were needed back at the time of Biden’s election! Ignoring expert advice has resulted in just the continuing, mushrooming disaster at EOIR and in our legal system that experts predicted!

Over two years, Garland has shown that he is not the person for the job. Nor have his political subordinates shown any aptitude for addressing the festering management, legal, and quality control problems @ EOIR!

Experts and advocates should be pushing the Administration and Dems in Congress for a change in leadership at the DOJ! Every day of failure means more backlog, more injustice, more frustration, more lives endangered, and a growing threat to American democracy — from those sworn to protect and uphold it, but aren’t getting the job done!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-16-22

🇺🇸🗽⚖️ JOIN AFSC IN OPPOSING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S EMBRACE OF TITLE 42 & THE DAILY VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS THE ADMINISTRATION COMMITS 🏴‍☠️ USING THIS UNLAWFUL & IMMORAL CHARADE!

https://www.afsc.org/action/tell-president-biden-restore-right-to-claim-asylum

Tell President Biden: Restore the right to asylum!

Sign our petition today

American Friends Service Committee

1.89K subscribers

End Title 42!

<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpQH–gTPoA” target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>

Migrants should be welcomed with dignity and compassion—not turned away or treated inhumanely.

Finally, after over two years, a district court has ruled that the Title 42 expulsion policy- which has blocked most migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum- violates U.S. law and ordered the Biden administration to end it.

This anti-immigrant policy has led to hundreds of thousands of people deported back to dangerous conditions or stranded in makeshift camps. Other migrants have been forced to take dangerous routes through deserts, mountains, rivers, and the ocean—facing extreme heat, violence, even death.

The termination of the policy goes into effect at the end of December, unless the administration attempts to delay this. That is why we are calling on the Biden administration to end this policy IMMEDIATELY and to not accompany this with the expansion of detention.

Sign our petition to speak out against this cruel policy today!

Letter to President

Dear President Biden:

I believe that people fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries should be welcome to the United States with compassion—not dealt overwhelming obstacles to seeking asylum.

That is why I am relieved to hear that after over two years, a district court has ended the cruel and unnecessary use of Title 42. This anti-immigrant policy has led to hundreds of thousands of people deported back to dangerous conditions or stranded in makeshift camps. Under this cruel policy, Black and Brown migrants have suffered disproportionately while some others have been able to seek asylum—evidence of the racism that drives our immigration enforcement policies.

That is why I am calling on the Biden administration to end Title 42 immediately and to not replace it with other inhumane and xenophobic policies that cause similar harm. Additionally, your administration must not accompany this with the expansion of immigration detention. Any efforts to uphold this policy actively supports more family separations, trauma, and violence against Black, Brown, and immigrant communities.

All people—regardless of where they were born, the color of their skin, their culture or religious affiliation—should be able to seek refuge and be welcomed with the compassion, dignity, and respect we all deserve. I urge your administration to do all that you can to end Title 42 immediately—and ensure all migrants can exercise their right to seek asylum.

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The regime that employed this monster to abuse and persecute asylum seekers was voted out of office more than TWO YEARS AGO! Long past time for the Biden Administration to STOP defending, expanding, and carrying out his illegal and immoral policies that inflict “DIRE HARM” on vulnerable LEGAL asylum seekers! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

”BIDEN DOJ HALL OF SHAME” — Those Who Have Defended or Enabled Stephen Miller’s “Crimes Against Humanity:”

Merrick Garland, Attorney General
Lisa Monaco, Deputy Attorney General
Vanita Gupta, Associate Attorney General
Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights
Elizabeth Prolager, Solicitor General

When these guys eventually “come out” of their cushy political positions, and are looking for jobs in the “real world” they now blithely ignore, progressives, human rights, and racial justice advocates should remember where they stood and what they did or failed to do when human rights and the rule of law were “on the line!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-10-22

🗽DISSENTING OPINION: TRADING AWAY REFUGEE RIGHTS & DUE PROCESS FOR LONG OVERDUE DREAMER PROTECTIONS IS “NOT OK!”

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Dec. 6, 2022

I dissent.

I was outraged when I read in this morning’s Washington Post about the horrible “Sinema/Tillis misnamed immigration compromise” (actually a “sellout”) being negotiated during the lame duck session of Congress. In short, that proposal apparently would trade long overdue protection for “Dreamers” for the rights and lives of refugees and asylum seekers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/05/congress-working-strike-last-minute-immigration-deals/

Incredibly, in the face of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s findings that the intentional illegal use of Title 42 had resulted in countless clear violations of the legal rights of asylum seekers, subjecting them to a litany of horrors and abuses that he described as “dire harm,” these legislators would extend those abuses for an indefinite period! That’s notwithstanding evidence not only of the irreparable harm that Title 42 has caused, but also the rather obvious fact that once we “normalize” those abuses, they will never end.

There will always be another fabricated reason for extending the Title 42 charade. Indeed, once we start mischaracterizing abuse as “law,” we can’t even call it “abuse” and hold the abusers accountable! That’s all part of the dehumanizing or “Dred Scottification” process!

Additionally, in the place of a functioning working asylum and refugee system, the proposal would eventually substitute so called “processing centers” and “expedited procedures” to railroad asylum seekers out of the country without due process. And, it wouldn’t address the total dysfunction and denial of due process in our Immigration “Courts” by enacting another long overdue provision: the “Lofgren Article I Immigration court bill!” What a farce!

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here! The legal and human rights of refugees and asylum seekers are not “ours” to trade away for relief for another deserving group that has long been irrationally denied! “Processing centers” are a euphemism for “immigration prisons” — part of the “New American Gulag.” “Expedited processing” is a euphemism for “railroading.” Both detention and artificially expediting dockets have been proven to be ineffective and unjust, over and over. Yet, here we go again!

My outrage turned to shock and dismay when I learned that some erstwhile defenders of due process, human rights, and racial justice for asylum seekers (incredibly) thought that this type of immoral compromise was a “good idea!” Not me!

Restrictionist/nativist Dems masquerading as “moderates” are a huge problem. They play right into the GOP’s hands.

When committing crimes against humanity or giving away refugees’ rights becomes a “strategy,” “option,” or “bargaining chip,” we’re lost as a nation. And, that’s exactly where we’re heading with horrible, immoral proposals like this.

Human rights and due process are non-negotiable! And, I guarantee that extending Title 42, building additional Gulag (rather than making the existing legal asylum and refugee systems work), and railroading asylum seekers will empower smugglers and lead to further growth of our underground population.

Human migration won’t be stopped by ineffective and immoral “deterrence.” And, although many hate the idea, refugees basically “self-select” and are driven by forces beyond our immediate control.

Refugees are, by definition, folks who can’t return! So, there is no reason to believe that true refugees (of which there are many) are going to be “deterred.” They might be “incentivized” to seek refuge in particular, relatively safe, places; but, nobody seems interested in a “carrot” approach — even though the “stick approach” has failed and continues to do so!

Look at the folks who continue to die in vessels in the Mediterranean even though they are fully aware that they are unwanted and that the EU will stop at no cruelty to keep them out.

And, examine the wealth of documentation that folks forced to “remain in Mexico” — and apply under what we know to be a corrupt and inadequate system — are systematically abused and exploited.

This time, we’re not just “pushing the St. Louis out to sea.” We’re torpedoing her and watching the passengers drown. And Dems are a huge part of the problem!

Other (soon to be former) progressive Democrats might choose to “go along to get along” with heaping additional abuses on largely defenseless refugees and asylum seekers. But, not me! I dissent!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-06-22

🤯🏴‍☠️🤡🤮👎🏽INCOMPETENCE WATCH: Lacking Integrity & Skills To Follow The Law, Tone-Deaf, Dangerous, & Disingenuous Biden Immigration Officials Consider Additional Massive Violations Of Human Rights For Asylum Seekers! — ACLU & NDPA Ready To Resist Administration’s Latest Unwarranted Assaults on Human Rights, Common Sense, & Human Decency!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/biden-immigration-asylum-restrictions.html

From Michael Shear & Eileen Sullivan the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is considering substantial new limits on the number of migrants who could apply for asylum in the United States, according to people familiar with the proposal, which would expand restrictions similar to those first put in place along the border by former President Donald J. Trump.

The plan is one of several being debated by President Biden’s top aides as the country confronts a high number of illegal crossings at the border. It would prohibit migrants who are fleeing persecution from seeking refuge in the United States unless they were first denied safe harbor by another country, like Mexico.

People familiar with the discussions said the new policy, if adopted, could go into effect as soon as this month, just as the government stops using a public health rule that was put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump administration and became a key policy to manage the spike in crossings during Mr. Biden’s tenure. A federal judge has ordered the administration to stop using the health rule on Dec. 21.

But the idea of broadly prohibiting migrants from seeking asylum strikes directly at the heart of decades of American and international law that has shaped the United States’ role as a place of safety for displaced and fearful people across the globe.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

[U.S. District Judge Emmet ]Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.

“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”

What part of Judge Sullivan’s very clear ruling on their “crimes against humanity” and knowing violations of U.S. and international law doesn’t the “Biden Administration Clown Show” 🤡 understand? Just follow the asylum law and due process, already! If you can’t do that, resign and let folks who can do the job (of which there are plenty out here in the “real world”) take over and do the job you have been failing at for two years!

In any event, the talent is out here in the private/NGO sector and will resist this latest insult to humanity and degradation of the rule of law and due process that Administration officials are “pondering!” “Studying and deciding whether or not to violate the law (again)?” Sounds like a potential criminal conspiracy to me!

In any event, expert litigators like Lee Gelernt of the ACLU and other NDPA superstars are prepared to “beat the Biden Administration’s brains (if any) out” in court again if they try to implement any more of their illegal and immoral immigration gimmicks!

“If the Biden administration simply substitutes the unlawful and anti-asylum Trump transit ban for Title 42,” Mr. Gelernt said, “we will immediately sue, as we successfully did during the Trump administration.”

The Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee was also “not on board” with the Biden Administration’s latest harebrained ideas on diminishing human rights that they have substituted for basic competence over the past two years of disasters, and unforgivable policy screw-ups on immigration, human rights, and racial justice issues:

“If the reported story is true, the Biden administration would further step away from our nation’s commitment to offer refuge to asylum seekers,” Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “I will firmly oppose this misguided attempt to rewrite our asylum laws without congressional approval, just as I firmly opposed the same efforts under President Trump.”

I also have to wonder how Judge Sullivan will react when he learns how Biden Administration officials are using his “reluctantly granted” five weeks of delay in implementing his “cease and desist order.” Instead of, at long last, getting their collective tails in gear to finally put in place a competent legal system for re-establishing legal asylum at the southern border, these disgraceful petty bureaucrats and so-called “policy” officials have been scheming to evade the rule of law and commit yet more “crimes against humanity.”

The NDPA is not going to let them get away with it. Even if it means ripping apart the “so-called Democratic Coalition” going into the 2024 elections!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever! Tyranny & Stupidity From either Dems or the GOP, never!

PWS

12-05-22

🤯JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IMMIGRATION POLICIES COULDN’T GET DUMBER, SURPRISE! — Administration Struggles To Cajole “Allies” Into Leading Armed Invasion Of Haiti To Save America From “Invasion” Of Black Refugees!🏴‍☠️— Naturally, US Would Remain On Sidelines While Others Do “Dirty Work!” 🤮

Dead Haitians — American poses with dead Haitian revolutionaries after being killed by US Marine machine gun fire – 10-11-1915.jpg. Past US armed invasions of Haiti to protect our interests haven’t done much to improve the lives of the Haitian people.
Public Realm

I’m a fool to do your dirty work

Oh yeah

I don’t wanna do your dirty work

No more

I’m a fool to do your dirty work

Oh yeah

— Dan, Steely, “Dirty Work”

https://www.google.com/search?q=dirty+work+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

NY Times: As Haiti Unravels, U.S. Officials Push to Send in an Armed Foreign Force

https://lnkd.in/eg9VM88S

As Haiti Unravels, U.S. Officials Push to Send in an Armed Foreign Force

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U.S. seeks to prompt armed invasion of Haiti by OTHER countries to protect US from Haitian refugees seeking freedom and a new life! What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing shakes up brave US security officials like some unarmed Black individuals in leaky boats risking their lives to “breathe free” and to contribute to the U.S. economy in the process!

Really! There must be about “two Democrats in the world” who think this crackpot scheme is a good idea. Unfortunately, they are employed by the Biden Administration and in charge of “immigration policy!”

Sorry, Casey, but I have to keep saying it: “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Apparently not!

“Casey Stengel might understand the Biden Administration’s immigration policies. The rest of us not so much.”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-30-22

☠️🤯🤮🚫 AFTER WINNING YEARS-LONG BATTLE TO STOP ILLEGAL REFUGEE REMOVALS BY TRUMP & BIDEN, WEARY HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES FACE DAUNTING NEW CHALLENGE: Garland’s Dysfunctional Due-Process-Denying “Courts” — Key Empirical Info Lacking, But We Do Know One Important Thing: Garland’s Latest Docket “Gimmick” — Time Limits — Sharply Reduces Chances Of Success, From Probable Grant (52%) To Likely Denial! — Quality Control & Grotesque Inconsistencies Remain Unaddressed In Dem AG’s “Race To Deny” Legal Protection!🤮

Judge Roy Bean — “Judge” Roy Bean (1825-1903)
American Saloon Keeper & “Jurist”
Public Realm
His reputation for “rough justice” in the West would be right at home in the “Asylum Free Zones” of Garland’s EOIR. Bean “was once trying a Mexican on a charge of horse stealing and his charge was the shortest on record: Gentlemen of the Jury, there’s a greaser in the box and a hoss missing. You know your duty, and they did.”

Here’s the latest analysis of Garland’s ongoing abuse of his office from Austin Kocher, PhD, at TRAC:

https://trac.syr.edu/reports/702/

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If someone NOT Merrick “What Me Worry” Garland (the “Alfred E. Neumann of Biden’s immigration bureaucracy”) took a look at the data, one major thing would jump out! There are likely more than 400,000 refugees entitled to asylum sitting in Garland’s 770,000 case asylum backlog (52% x 770,000). (The asylum backlog at EOIR is a “subset” of Garland’s largely self-inflicted, ever mushrooming, nearly 2 million case EOIR backlog — more judges have produced more backlog, so that’s likely NOT the answer here).

And, this is in a system currently governed by skewed anti-asylum BIA “precedents” and a chronic “anti-asylum culture” actively encouraged and fed by the Trump Administration. In a properly staffed and functioning court system with qualified, due-process oriented, judges and an expert BIA that enforced some decisional consistency and properly and generously interpreted asylum law, a “grant rate” of 75% or more would be a plausible expectation.

Given the obvious (and I would argue intentional) lack of reliable data on how a legitimate asylum system, one consisting at all levels of judges with well-recognized expertise in asylum law and human rights, and overseen by competent, due-process-oriented judicial administrators, might function, the 75% figure is just an “educated guesstimate.” But, it matches my own personal experience over 13 years on the bench in the (now defunct) Arlington Immigration Court.

It’s also in line with my recent conversations with the head of one of the largest NGOs in the DMV area involved in meeting busses and counseling those “orbited” from the Southern border by the racist/nativist GOP Govs that Biden, curiously, has chosen to run our domestic refugee resettlement program. This is a person who, unlike Garland, his lieutenants, and most of the other politicos and nativist blowhards participating in the “border travesty,” actually spent years of a career representing individuals in Immigration Court. They estimated that “at least 70%” of the “arriving bus riders” had very viable asylum claims.

This is a far cry from the nativist, restrictionist myths promoted by both the Trump and Biden Administrations — obviously to cover up their gross human rights violations in knowingly and illegally returning hundreds of thousands of legal refugees to danger zones! Many human rights experts would consider such gross misconduct to be “crimes against humanity.” Consequently, it doesn’t take much imagination to see why self-interested scofflaw officials like Garland, Mayorkas, and White House advisors seek to manipulate the system to keep the asylum grant rates artificially low while eschewing proper, realistically robust use of the overseas refugee program to take the pressure off the border — by acting legally rather than illegally!

Almost all the EOIR asylum backlog consists of “regular docket” (I use this term lightly with EOIR where “normalcy” is unknown) cases. Those are refugees who have had time to get lawyers, adequately prepare, document their cases, but are stuck in Garland’s chronically dysfunctional system. Consequently, they are “denied by delay” legal immigration status, a chance to get green cards, and to eventually qualify for citizenship. The American economy is denied an important source of legal workers who should be part of our permanent workforce and well on their way to full participation in our political system and society!

An expert looking at this system would see a “golden opportunity” to move most of the backlogged “easily grantable” asylum cases out of the system with stipulated grants or short hearings (the kind you actually might be able to do 3-4 a day without stepping on anyone’s due-process rights or driving the private bar nuts). These cases would also avoid the BIA’s appellate backlog, as well as eliminating unnecessary workload in the U.S. Circuit Courts (which already have their own inconsistency, rubber stamp, and bias issues in the human rights/racial justice area that seem to be getting worse, not better).

Knocking 400,000+ cases off the backlog wouldn’t completely solve Garland’s 2 million case backlog problem — only a complete “house cleaning” at EOIR, replacing many of the current bureaucrats with competent leaders and expert Immigration Judges well-versed in asylum law, will do that. But, cutting EOIR’s backlog by 20% (and the asylum backlog by over 50%) without stomping on anyone’s rights, while bolstering much-needed legal immigration, and harnessing the strengths of the private/pro bono bar, is nothing to “sneeze at!” That’s particularly true in comparison with Garland’s two years of mindless “designed to fail” gimmicks and astounding mismanagement, which have produced exactly the opposite results!

How bad has Garland’s leadership been at on human rights, due process, and racial justice at DOJ. A number of seasoned asylum practitioners have told me that today’s EOIR, also suffering from a tidal wave of Garland’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — is actually significantly worse than it was under Trump! That’s right, Garland’s tone-deaf incompetence has exceeded the disorder and systemic unfairness caused by overt xenophobia, anti-asylum bias, misogyny, “dumbing down,” and enforcement-biased “weaponization” of the Sessions/Barr years.

As for Dr. Kocher’s cogent observation that input from the Immigration Judges who actually decide these cases is a “missing ingredient,” good luck with that, my friend! Perhaps understandably in light of his unseemly failures at EOIR, Garland has taken EOIR’s traditional opaqueness and “muzzling” of Immigration Judges to new heights — even barring their participation in CLE events aimed at improving the level of practice before his courts.

Apparently, “studied incompetence” in a Democratic Administration can be even worse than the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy — at least where immigrants rights/human rights/racial justice/ women’s rights are concerned at EOIR. That’s an astounding observation! One that I actually never thought I’d hear from practitioners!

The only way for human rights and racial justice experts and advocates to “communicate” with Garland in his “ivory tower” is to ‘“sue his tail” in court! Judge Sullivan’s recent opinion finding Title 42 illegal incorporates the very facts and law used by human rights experts and advocates in years of fruitless pleading and begging Garland to “cease and desist” his support for unlawful conduct and “just follow the law.” The latter seems like a modest “no-brainer” request to a guy once nominated by an Dem President for the Supremes.

Waiting for Merrick Garland to fix the mess at EOIR to provide even a bare minimum of due process and rational administration is like waiting for the guy pictured below. Frustrated and “Garland-weary” as they might be, human rights advocates should take it to heart and act accordingly!

Waiting for Godot — Waiting for Merrick Garland and his “clueless crew” at DOJ to fix the dysfunctional Immigration Courts will be an exercise in futility. He only pays attention when ordered by a Federal Judge, which, somewhat ironically, he used to be. But, he’s proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he is unqualified to run one of the most important and life-determining Federal Judiciaries — one where due process has been buried beneath an avalanche of expediency, incompetency, intellectual dishonesty, and dumb gimmicks. When will “enough be enough?”
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-17-22

Hernandez-Martinez v. Garland, 1st Cir.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Burning Down The House

Chaos reigns

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By Catherine Rampell

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Here’s the latest from TRAC Immigration:

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Tell President Biden: Restore the right to asylum!

”BIDEN DOJ HALL OF SHAME” — Those Who Have Defended or Enabled Stephen Miller’s “Crimes Against Humanity:”

Merrick Garland, Attorney General

Lisa Monaco, Deputy Attorney General

Vanita Gupta, Associate Attorney General

Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights

Elizabeth Prolager, Solicitor General

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🗽DISSENTING OPINION: TRADING AWAY REFUGEE RIGHTS & DUE PROCESS FOR LONG OVERDUE DREAMER PROTECTIONS IS “NOT OK!”

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Dec. 6, 2022

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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From Michael Shear & Eileen Sullivan the NY Times:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever! Tyranny & Stupidity From either Dems or the GOP, never!

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NY Times: As Haiti Unravels, U.S. Officials Push to Send in an Armed Foreign Force

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Here’s the latest analysis of Garland’s ongoing abuse of his office from Austin Kocher, PhD, at TRAC:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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