Know-Nothings – Page 73 – immigrationcourtside.com

TAL @ SF CHRON WITH SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE “BORDER SECURITY” BILL THAT TRUMP (APPARENTLY) WILL SIGN BEFORE DECLARING HIS TOTALLY BOGUS “NATIONAL EMERGENCY!”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Funding-deal-blocks-ICE-from-arresting-adults-13617721.php

Funding deal blocks ICE from arresting adults taking in undocumented children

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — A government funding deal on the verge of congressional passage would block federal officers from arresting undocumented immigrants solely because they come forward to take in migrant children.

The constraint on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency comes after The Chronicle reported that the government had made scores of such arrests — including more than 100 people who were taken into custody from July through November despite having no criminal record. Immigrant and child welfare advocates had assailed the practice as endangering young people by keeping them in detention longer and by giving immigrants an incentive to conceal potential sponsors’ true identities.

The population of undocumented children in government custody skyrocketed to record levels as immigration officials investigated the potential sponsors.

The ban on arresting sponsors with no criminal record is included in a bill to fund roughly one-quarter of the government through September. The appropriations legislation is the product of weeks of intense negotiations to avert a repeat of the partial shutdown that began Dec. 22 and lasted 35 days.

The Senate passed the bill Thursday and the House was expected to follow suit before government funding runs out Friday. The White House said President Trump would sign it.

House Democrats pushed strongly for the provision during negotiations over the funding package, said a Democratic aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz offered the specific legislative language.

“Arresting potential sponsors only ensures that children who flee dangerous circumstances will languish longer in overly crowded detention facilities,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Democrats agree, this cruel, immoral Trump trap does nothing to make America safer.”

At issue is the process of finding homes for undocumented immigrant children who come to the U.S. by themselves or are separated from an adult at the border.

Those children end up detained in a national network of shelters until they can be released to an adult, usually a relative. The shelters are designed to be a temporary bridge for often-traumatized children to more stable homes, in which they can pursue their case to stay in the country legally.

To sponsor a child, adults have long had to go through background checks for any criminal history or other red flags that might endanger the child. Immigration status is not weighed as a risk factor.

But last year the Trump administration added additional layers of review, including working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run fingerprints of potential sponsors. That caused concern within the immigrant community that sponsors, many of whom are undocumented themselves, could be ensnared in the administration’s no-limits immigration enforcement. The revelation that ICE had in turn used that information to arrest potential sponsors, most of whom had no criminal record, confirmed that fear.

Under the administration’s policies, the number of children in custody reached nearly 15,000, breaking records even after the government halted the practice it implemented in spring 2018 of separating families at the border. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services stopped requiring that every additional adult in a sponsor’s home be fingerprinted, a practice that had greatly slowed the process, keeping children detained longer. Since then, the number of children in custody has dropped to 11,500.

The government funding bill bars the administration from detaining or moving to deport undocumented immigrants based solely on information provided by Health and Human Services, which runs the unaccompanied children program, unless it provides evidence of a past child abuse-related felony or potential human trafficking.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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Thanks, Tal, for putting the Chron “on top” of this grotesque mistreatment of children by the Trump Administration. Obviously, your courageous and timely reporting of abuses of human rights that DHS was trying to hide from public view has had a “real life” impact on legislation and people’s lives.

The intentional abuses of children and families that the Trump Administration is perpetrating in the name of our country is simply outrageous! Bad things happen to countries that make child abuse a national policy!

It also shows that the Democrats are right in challenging funding for abusive, wasteful, and unnecessary DHS detention. While they lacked the votes to succeed this time around, the battle certainly will continue, on both legislative and litigation fronts. As it does so, the full range of abuses, corruption, and unethical behavior by the Administration and DHS will be exposed and recorded for posterity.

As I’ve said before, it’s time for Article III Judges who have been lied to by Administration officials and whose orders to reunite families have been arrogantly ignored by the Trump Administration to put some of the Administration officials who have planned and carried out these gross human right abuses and thumbed their noses at court orders in jail for contempt.

Again, Tal, thanks for all you do for “truth, justice, and the American way!” And, thanks to conscientious legislators of both parties who helped put these restrictions on anti-social behavior in place. When the system works for the greater good, everyone benefits.

PWS

02-15-19

JUDICIAL BRAIN DRAIN: As Outlaw Administration Attacks Due Process & Attempts To Institutionalize Xenophobic Bias, Experienced, Conscientious U.S. Immigration Judges Head For The Exits – Abandonment Of Scholarship, Fairness, Commitment To Due Process Threatens Entire U.S. Justice System!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-policy-judge-resign-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Being An Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

San Francisco, California

Posted on February 13, 2019, at 6:15 p.m. ET

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Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

SAN FRANCISCO — Rebecca Jamil was sitting in a nondescript hotel ballroom in suburban Virginia when she realized that her dream job — being an immigration judge — was no longer tenable. It was June 11, 2018, and then–attorney general Jeff Sessions, her boss, was speaking to a room packed with immigration judges, running through his list of usual complaints over what was, in his estimation, a broken asylum system.

Toward the end of the speech, Sessions let slip some big news: He had decided whether domestic abuse and gang victims could be granted asylum in the US. Advocates, attorneys, and judges had been waiting months to see what Sessions, who in his role as attorney general had the power to review cases, would do. After all, it would determine the fate of thousands of asylum-seekers, many fleeing dangerous situations in Central America.

Sessions didn’t reveal to the room the details of his ruling but Jamil, based in San Francisco since she was appointed in 2016, learned later that day that the attorney general had decided to dramatically restrict asylum protections for domestic abuse victims.

“I’d seen the faces of these families,” the 43-year-old judge said. “They weren’t abstractions to me.”

Eric Risberg / AP

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Jamil, a mother of two young daughters, had been shaken by the images and sounds that came as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to separate families at the border. As a judge who oversaw primarily cases of women and children fleeing abuse and dangers abroad, this was the last straw.

Soon after, she stepped down from the court.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told friends. “I felt that I couldn’t be ‘Rebecca Jamil, representative of the attorney general’ while these things were going on.”

In many ways, her resignation underscores the tenuous position of immigration judges, who are overseen by the attorney general and susceptible to the shifting winds of each administration. To avoid potential conflicts, the union that represents the judges has long called for its court to be an independent body, separate from the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration has undertaken a monumental overhaul of the way immigration judges, which total around 400 across the country, work: placing quotas on the number of cases they should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.

In the meantime, the case backlog has jumped to more than 800,000 under the administration and wait times have continued to skyrocket to hundreds of days.

The quotas in particular have made judges feel as if they were cogs in a deportation machine, as opposed to neutral arbiters given time to thoughtfully analyze the merits of each case.

“The job has become exceedingly more difficult as the court has veered even farther away from being administered as a court rather than a law enforcement bureaucracy,” said Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing around 350 judges.

And it’s not just Jamil who has departed because of the massive changes to the court undertaken by the Trump administration, according to observers within the Department of Justice and those on the outside. While some, like Jamil, have resigned, others have retired early in large part because of the policies instituted under Trump, they said.

For those remaining at the immigration court, the mood is bleak.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge who declined to be named. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Another Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told BuzzFeed News, “It is exhausting when you feel undervalued by the people at the top of your organization, especially when they are motivated by partisanship and have not spent their careers doing the job that you do.”

Tabaddor, the head of the union, said that her group has noticed a higher rate of retirements and resignations than in the past because of the way judges have been treated under Trump.

Some have been bold in their timing. John Richardson, a former immigration judge in Phoenix, stepped down on Sep. 30, 2018 — the day before the administration instituted a quota for the number of cases to be completed by judges.

“The timing of my retirement was a direct result of the draconian policies of the Administration, the relegation of [judges] to the status of ‘action officers’ who deport as many people as possible as soon as possible with only token due process, and blaming [judges] for the immigration crisis caused by decades of neglect and under funding of the Immigration Courts,” he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Another judge who resigned from the bench in September told staff members in a goodbye email, “I know things are getting difficult for you at [the Executive Office for Immigration Review], but I believe all you will ‘ride through the storm’ and ‘come out with a smile.’”

There have long been work challenges for immigration judges, including heavy caseloads and assignments, leading to comparatively high burnout rates. Justice Department officials told BuzzFeed News that concerns over retirements were nothing new.

“In 2015, 2013, and 2011, the National Association of IJs [immigration judges] raised the same concerns. In 2011, the NAIJ said that ‘stress on judges has reached unbearable levels … a large contributing factor to retirement at the earliest possible opportunity,’” said Steven Stafford, a Justice Department spokesperson. “What is actually new is that we are hiring more and more IJs and doing so faster than ever before. Today we have 68.9 percent more IJs than we did in 2010, and that number is only rising.”

According to the agency, from the beginning of fiscal year 2014 through Feb. 12, 2019, 94 immigration judges have retired, separated, or died. More than a third of those judges, 32, have left since Oct. 1, 2017. The agency does not track why judges leave their positions.

To those within the court and others who have recently retired, the situation has worsened to an unprecedented level. Richardson, the former judge in Phoenix, said he would have continued presiding over immigration cases if the status quo had remained.

“Yes, I was 75 years old with over 50 years of honorable federal service with the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, but had no plans for retirement as long as I was treated with respect, appreciated, and provided adequate support,” he said. “I had 28 years as an IJ and very much enjoyed my job, even with the poor funding and lack of support by Congress and the White House during that 28 years.”

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge who stepped down years ago and who speaks regularly with others who’ve left the bench, was blunt in his characterization.

“The fastest growth industry is former immigration judges,” Chase said. Those still on the bench have told him, “It’s horrible. Whatever you think it is, it is much, much worse.”

In the meantime, the Trump administration has hired more than 100 judges to not only fill the vacancies of those who’ve retired but to add numbers to the bench. It’s a rehauling of the courts that could “have a drastic impact,” according to Chase.

Many of the judges retiring in recent months are experienced jurists, hired by the Clinton administration in the mid to late ’90s, he said. These judges, Chase said, were more willing to push back on claims made in court by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to allow immigrants extended time to make their cases in what could otherwise be a rushed procedure.

In their place, Chase said, are judges hired by the new administration with case completion quotas, a two-year probation period, and a mandate to avoid showing sympathy for the people appearing before them.

“Even if it doesn’t show up on the sheet, just the level of humanity, that makes a huge difference — that’s what this administration is trying to remove from the immigration judge corps,” he said.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

For her part, Jamil wanted to become an immigration judge from the earliest moments of her legal career. After working as a staff attorney at the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, she joined the government as a prosecutor with ICE in 2011, where she was able to use discretion to focus deportation efforts on those with serious criminal backgrounds. Under the Trump administration, ICE attorneys have been told that nearly all undocumented immigrants are priorities for deportation.

In 2014, Jamil took a chance to fulfill her dream: She applied to become an immigration judge. It was a 17-month process, full of drawn-out interviews in Washington, DC, but finally, in 2015 she received a phone call informing her that she got the job.

“I thought, and I must have told most people I know, that this is the last job that I would ever have. It’s all I wanted to do,” she said.

Jamil dedicated herself to the exhausting career. She oversaw a docket made up primarily of families and regularly heard cases in which women and children applied for asylum based on abuse that they had experienced by partners and family members abroad.

Day in and day out, Jamil heard intense testimony of physical and sexual violence against women and children.

“You’re sitting in a windowless room and people tell you the very worst parts of their life and you have to decide if it is enough to stay in the US,” she said. “That is very tiring day after day to be the person who makes that decision.”

Then, under the Trump administration, things started to change. In 2018, Sessions instituted a new policy, severely limiting when judges could suspend certain cases. Suddenly, her docket expanded and she wasn’t allowed to decide which cases deserved to remain in court and which didn’t.

Jamil and fellow immigration judges were in attendance at the Virginia conference where Sessions spoke for annual trainings on courtroom procedure. The year before, jurists heard substantive legal updates and trainings on bias in the courtroom.

This version of the training, however, felt different.

“The entire conference was profoundly disturbing. Do things as fast as possible. There was an overarching theme of disbelieving aliens and their claims and how to remove people faster,” Jamil said. “That is not what I saw my job as an immigration judge to be. I was not trained to do that.”

Soon after she returned home, Jamil put in her resignation. Her colleagues fretted, probing her about whether she had considered the type of judge that could fill her spot on the bench and the impact that could have.

She didn’t have an answer, but she knew that she couldn’t do it any longer.

“Family separations; Sessions making his own case law on asylum; when we could continue cases — I could no longer sit below the seal of the Department of Justice and represent the Department of Justice at that point,” Jamil said. “They just chipped away at our authority on a daily basis. It felt like we weren’t really judges. It was frustrating and demoralizing.”

A former colleague, Laura Ramirez, worked for years as an immigration judge in San Francisco. In December, she retired at the earliest date possible, five days after she turned 60.

The changes put in place by the Trump administration, especially the case quotas, and the politicization of her job, became too much to handle.

The loss of judges like Jamil and others could be immeasurable to both immigrants and Department of Homeland Security attorneys, Ramirez said.

“For the system of justice, there’s these highly qualified, fair, thoughtful people who are being squeezed out of the system for political reasons, basically,” she said. “If people like her are squeezed out, it’s a loss to people who appear before her. The system can’t be fair if good people like her are pushed out.”

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Forcing the “best, brightest, and fairest” out. Reinforcing “worst practices.” Enabling judges with well-established records of anti-asylum, nationality-based, and misogynistic bias. Attacking those private attorneys who steadfastly defended legal and Constitutional rights that were being systematically undermined by the Administration. Blaming others for his own incompetence and lack of scholarship. That’s what the “Sessions program” was all about.

The only good news: folks like Judge Jamil, Judge Ramirez, Judge Richardson, and Judge Chase are now part of the ever-growing “Our Gang” of retired Immigraton Judges helping others to fight the injustices and destruction of Due Process being pushed by the Trump Administration and a DOJ that has abandoned its mission in favor of a White Nationalist political agenda. Our voices are being heard in support of the efforts of the “New Due Process Army.”

And, while I doubt that anyone outside of Trump and Miller can match the viscous lies, racism, and knowingly false narratives of Sessions, I wouldn’t expect much improvement under Barr. Barr thought Sessions was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” That, more than the Mueller investigation, should have caused all Democrats to vote against his confirmation. He’ll just “lose” some of the overtly racist and inflammatory lingo of the White Nationalist restrictionists and attack immigrants on the basis of bogus “strict enforcement” platitudes.

Every American who believes in our Constitution and thinks that America is different from the “Banana Republics” we often criticize will be threatened by this development. Malicious harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all; and the collapse of one of the “building blocks” at the “retail level” of the American justice system will adversely affect everybody’s ability to get justice with fairness and impartiality.

Many of us don’t think we will need fair, independent, and impartial courts until we do. Once the Trump Administration destroys them, they won’t easily be rebuilt.

Who will defend your rights when the time comes if you stand by and watch the rights of others being trampled?

PWS

02-14-19

TRAC IMMIGRATION: Latest Stats Strongly Suggest That Immigration Court Bond Decisions Are At Best A “Crapshoot,” & At Worst A Farce — Factors Other Than Due Process, Fairness, & Consistent Application Of Transparent Criteria Appear To Control Freedom From So-Called “Civil” Imprisonment Without Conviction!

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The chances of being granted bond at hearings before immigration judges vary markedly by nationality, as do required bond amounts. Court hearing locations also appear to influence bond outcomes even for the same nationality.

Currently less than half of detained immigrants with bond hearings were granted bond – 48 percent during FY 2018, and 43 percent thus far during FY 2019. The median bond amount was $7,500 in FY 2018, and rose to $8,000 during the first two months of FY 2019.

Differences among nationalities are striking. Currently more than three out of every four individuals from India or Nepal, for example, were granted bond, while only between 11 and 15 percent of immigrants from Cuba received a favorable ruling. And those from China were less likely to receive a favorable ruling than are those from India or Nepal.

The median bond for immigrants from the Philippines was just $4,000, while those from Bangladesh were required to post $10,000-$12,000. These and many other findings are based on a detailed analysis of court records covering all of FY 2018 and the first two months of FY 2019 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. The bond hearing-by-bond hearing records were obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

A brand new free web query tool now allows the public for the first time to examine in detail the bond experience by hearing location for any nationality. The new app covers outcomes in Immigration Court bond hearings as well as subsequent case dispositions after detained immigrants are granted bond.

To read the full report, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/545/

To examine the underlying results for any nationality, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/bond/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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The U.S. Immigration Court System has deep Constitutional Due Process, fundamental fairness, and quality control issues that are being intentionally swept under the carpet by the Trump Administration in an attempt to just “move ’em out, to hell with the law, Constitution, or human rights.” And, while the Article IIIs occasionally step in, they are basically complicit in allowing this parody of justice affecting life and freedom to go on without honest, effective, professional judicial administration and accountability. Don’t get me started on Congress which created and then abandoned this dysfunctional mess that they mindlessly allow to continue in a “death spiral” that threatens to take the integrity of the entire U.S. justice system down with it.

These problems can be solved! But, not as long as politicos in the DOJ are involved and improperly and unethically using the Immigration Courts as an adjunct of ICE Enforcement.

And, remember that ability to be released on bond pending removal proceedings is often “outcome determinative.” Those free on bond can usually get attorneys, prepare and document a case for relief, and have a decent chance of prevailing. Those forced to proceed in DHS detention (a/k/a the “New American Gulag”) are usually “shot like fish in a barrel” — with little chance of understanding, preparing, or presenting a case.

Then, there is the intentionally and inherently coercive effect of detention in the DHS’s substandard, sometimes life threatening, “Gulag.” Detainees too often are treated like statistics rather than human beings with rights. That’s how politicos “jack up” removal statistics. But, it bears little resemblance to Due Process or justice in any independent court system in America.

That’s why we need the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day to make the unkept, now openly disregarded, promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process to all” of those appearing in our Immigration Courts a reality rather than a sick joke!

PWS

02-13-19

GREG SARGENT @ WASHPOST: “Good Guys” Apparently Gaining Legislative Traction Against The Trump-Miller White Nationalist Cabal!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/12/with-new-border-deal-republicans-are-trying-negotiate-trumps-surrender/

Sargent writes:

At President Trump’s big rally in El Paso on Monday night, you could see signs everywhere that proclaimed: “Finish the wall.”

That’s some amusingly dishonest sleight of hand — it’s meant to create the impression that the wall is already being built, which is a lie Trump tells regularly. Thus, it substitutes an imaginary Trump win for a real one, since apparently support for Trump among his voters on such an important symbolic matter is too delicate to withstand the unbearable prospect of him losing without withering or shattering.

Now that negotiators have reached an agreement in principle for six months of spendingon the border, however, it’s once again clear that Trump’s win on the wall will remain firmly in the category of the imaginary.

It includes only $1.375 billion for new bollard fencing in targeted areas. That’s nothing like Trump’s wall — it’slimitedto the kind of fencing that has already been built for years— and it’s substantially short of the $5.7 billion Trump wants. It’s nothing remotely close to the wall that haunts the imagination of the president and his rally crowds. The $1.375 billion is slightly lessthan what Democrats had previously offered him. It can’t even be credibly sold as a down paymenton the wall.

Trump’s political and media allies are already in a rageover this point. And Trump may not accept the deal, or perhaps he’ll agree to it and try to find the wall money through executive action.

The compromise, to be clear, is a mixed bag for progressives. But on balance, based on what we are learning now, it’s plainly more of a victory than not.

The deal will include ‘substantial’ humanitarian spending

A House Democratic aide tells me that negotiators also agreed that the deal would include “substantial” expenditures to address the humanitarian plight of migrants arriving at the border.

Such money would go toward “medical care, more efficient transportation, food and other consumables,” to “upgrade conditions and services for migrants,” as the original Democratic proposalat the start of conference committee talks put it.Democrats had called for $500 millionfor this purpose. It’s not yet clear how much the final deal will include, as negotiations are ongoing, but it is likely to be in the hundreds of millions.

The details on this spending will matter greatly. But if structured well, it could be significant. The goal would be to upgrade current facilities where migrants are held before entering the system, which were not designed to cope with a new type of immigration: the arrival of asylum-seeking families and children, which has spikedeven as adults looking to sneak across illegally — the type Trump mostly rages about — is at historic lows.

Such an upgrade could address some terrible things we’ve seen: migrant families herded into tight conditions, and migrant children stacked up on concrete floorsand at medical riskdue to a lack of transportation out of remote areas, or proper screening and treatment.

Here’s the bad news

Unfortunately, Democrats backed down on a core demand: a cap on Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds. Democrats hoped this would force ICE to focusresources on dangerous undocumented immigrants, thus picking up fewer longtime noncriminal residents.

But Democrats instead agreed to fund 45,000 detention beds. To understand this, note that ICE is currently overspending against last year’s budget, by funding around 49,000 beds. So relative to that, Democrats are cutting the number of beds. But as Heidi Altman notes, what Democrats agreed to is higher than the actual number of beds legitimatelyfunded last year. So that’s a hike. And if there is no hard statutory cap on beds, ICE can find money elsewhere to fund extra beds, detaining more people than funding levels suggest. As one advocate told me, the deal “contains no new controls on ICE overspending.”

That’s a very serious problem. But overall, if the humanitarian money turns out to be real, the emerging agreement could prove to be a far-from-perfect but nonetheless decent one.

Some of Trump’s worst designs are getting frustrated

The larger context here is that Trump and top adviser Stephen Miller have pushed on many fronts to make our immigration system as cruel as possible. They’d hoped to use the first government shutdown to force Democrats to agree to changes in the law that would make it harder for migrant children to apply for asylum, and easier to deport migrant children and to detain migrant families indefinitely.

The overriding goal behind such changes is to reduce the numbers of immigrants in the United States — not just through deportations, but also through deterring people from trying to migrate and/or apply for asylum. That was the goal of Trump’s family separations, and after those were halted last year, he renewed the push for those other changes.

Trump’s first surrender three weeks ago temporarily conceded that he would not be able to make those things happen. Now the new compromise suggests Republicans want him to agree to reopen the government for far longer, without getting those legal changes orthe wall.

“We have yet to see the details in writing, but based on news reports, I’d say this deal is a huge loss for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the pro-immigrant America’s Voice, told me.

“This deal has no money for his concrete wall and less money for barriers than was on offer last December,” Sharry added. “Trump tried to use a shutdown to force through radical policy changes, and at this point, Republicans are saying, ‘Let’s keep the government open and move on.’”

Sharry conceded that the failure to get detention bed caps is a “real setback.” But he also noted that in six months, Democrats can renew the battle for caps, now that “a lot of lawmakers understand that ICE is detaining many more people than Congress funds. We live to fight another day.”

Trump and Republicans suffered an electoral wipeout in an election that Trump turned into a referendum on his xenophobic nativist nationalism. He then used a shutdown to try to force the new Democratic House to accept both his wall and radical legal changes that would have made our immigration system far more inhumane. He isn’t getting his wall or those changes, and it looks as though a lot of humanitarian money will be channeled to the border to address the actual crisis there.

In other words, the fake crisis that Trump invented — and with it, his broader immigration vision — is getting repudiated. The only question is whether Trump will agree to the surrender Republicans are trying to negotiate for him.

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Update:I’ve rewritten the section on detention beds to make it more accurate.

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Bad news for Trump on immigration is great news for America!

And, don’t forget how Trump’s devotion to himself, first, foremost, and always, as opposed to our country or even his White Nationalist restrictionist supporters played out at the DOJ. Trump’s concern for his own skin caused him to unceremoniously dump loyal White Nationalist acolyte former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, the “role model” for Stephen Miller.

In fewer than two years on the job, Sessions managed to push for the White Nationalist restrictionist immigration agenda in every possible way. In a sea of ethically questionable behavior during his tenure at the DOJ, the “original sin,” in Trump’s eyes, was Sessions’s following DOJ ethical advice to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. Ethics is a dirty word in the Trump world.

A “shout out” to my friend Heidi Altman over at the Heartland Alliance who apparently helped thwart a DHS sleight of hand on detention statistics.

PWS

02-13-19

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney!

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney!

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-beto-border-rallies-20190211-story.html

Eli Stokols & Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times:

President Trump falsely told a raucous rally in El Paso on Monday night that he is already building a wall on the adjacent border with Mexico, as a potential Democratic challenger assailed him at a large protest nearby and, in Washington, congressional negotiators announced a tentative funding deal without the billions he demanded for a wall.

Beneath banners reading “Finish the Wall,” Trump hailed what he called a “big, beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande,” though no such construction is known to be underway. When supporters launched into a chant of “Build the wall!” — standard at his rallies for years — Trump corrected them: “You mean finish the wall.”

The president alluded to lawmakers’ announcement of a deal, which came moments before he took the stage, but did not give it his blessing. Nor did he disparage it though one of his foremost confidants, Fox News host Sean Hannity, came on the air midway through the president’s rally and condemned the reported agreement as “this garbage compromise.”

Without the president and Congress agreeing to a border security funding bill by midnight Friday, the government could be partially shuttered again, just three weeks after a shutdown that at 35 days was the longest ever. The “agreement in principle” called for $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new barrier on the 2,000-mile border — less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded.

He told the crowd that he hadn’t bothered to find out the particulars of the agreement because he was eager to take the stage. “I could have stayed in there and listened, or I could have come out to the people of El Paso, Texas,” he said. “I chose you.”

Outside the El Paso County Coliseum, thousands of protesters, bundled against the evening chill, marched along the Rio Grande to a nearby park. There, El Paso’s former congressman and a possible Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, joined other locals who spoke of El Paso and neighboring Juarez, Mexico, as one community and expressed indignation over Trump’s false characterization of their city as a violent one in last week’s State of the Union address.

“With the eyes of the entire country upon us, all of us together are going to make our stand. Here in one of the safest cities in the United States of America — safe, not because of walls but in spite of walls,” O’Rourke said, in the sort of rousing speech that brought nationwide attention to his Senate race last year, though he lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Let’s own this moment and the future and show this country there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border,” O’Rourke said to cheers. “Let’s make sure our laws, our leaders and our language reflect our values.”

Late Monday, the House-Senate committee bargaining over border security funding and trying to avert another shutdown reached an “agreement in principle,” according to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Talks had stalled on the weekend, Republicans said, over Democrats’ demands to limit the detention of undocumented immigrants, many of them seeking asylum.

Should Congress pass a compromise, the onus would be on the president to accept it, or risk taking blame again for a partial federal shutdown. Before arriving in El Paso, Trump sought to preemptively shift blame to Democrats should the legislative effort ultimately fail. After the recent shutdown, polls showed the public put the blame squarely on him, and his approval rating slid.

With both his rally and the protest featuring O’Rourke receiving national coverage, the split-screen moment promised something of an audition of a hypothetical 2020 matchup, effectively creating a live debate between the president and a charismatic potential challenger on the issue that most animated Trump’s followers in 2016 and probably will again in his reelection bid.

Before leaving the White House, the president signaled that he too saw the dueling rallies as an early competition, with his familiar emphasis on crowd sizes. “We have a line that’s very long already,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to people waiting to enter his El Paso venue. He added, “I understand our competitor’s got a line too, but it’s a tiny little line.”

At his rally, Trump bragged that 10,000 supporters were inside the arena and 25,000 more were standing outside. According to the El Paso Fire Department, 6,500 people — the building’s capacity — were allowed inside, while at least 10,000 attended the protest rally. Organizers, however, had a slightly lower estimate.

“We have 35,000 people tonight and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump said. “Not too good. That may be the end of his presidential bid.”

While the border visit was intended as an opportunity for Trump to promote his signature issue, he wandered widely in his remarks — attacking Democrats repeatedly, including on abortion and on a so-called Green New Deal environmental platform that some are advocating, and mocking Virginia Democrats for controversies that have roiled the state’s government.

Trump’s drumbeat on immigration has yet to pay political dividends beyond his own supporters, and it has further galvanized his opponents. His fear-mongering during campaign rallies last fall over caravans of immigrants failed to prevent a Democratic wave that cost Republicans a net 40 seats and their majority in the House.

And during his State of the Union address, his incorrect portrayal of El Paso — he said it had “extremely high rates of violent crime” and was “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until the government built a “powerful barrier” there — touched a nerve among civic leaders and citizens.

The El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday approved a resolution assailing the president and his administration for misinformation and lies about a “crisis situation” on the U.S.-Mexico border, and noting that the federal government said “no crisis exists” and that “fiscal year 2017 was the lowest year of illegal cross-border migration on record.”

Yet Trump, at the rally, denounced his critics and media fact-checkers who disputed his claims that existing border fencing had slashed crime rates in El Paso. “They’re full of crap when they say it doesn’t make a difference,” he said, suggesting that local officials tried to “pull the wool over everybody’s eyes” by reporting low crime rates.

Lyda Ness-Garcia, a lawyer and founder of the Women’s March of El Paso, said organizers of Monday night’s protest were motivated to counteract Trump’s “lies” about their city.

“There was a deep sense of anger in our community, from the left and the right. It’s the demonization of our border. It’s the misrepresentation that the wall made us safe when we were safe long before,” she said.

Referring to the Mexican city just over the border, Garcia added: “We’re connected to Juarez. People forget. We’re not separate. We’re one culture.”

In truth, violent crime dropped in El Paso after a peak in 1993. It was at historic lows before Congress authorized a fence along the Rio Grande in 2006. Crime began to rise again over the next four years, after the fencing went up.

The city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo, admonished Trump after the State of the Union speech, saying during an appearance on CNN that the president’s depiction of El Paso is “not factually correct.”

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said organizers intended the march as a community celebration rather than an anti-Trump or pro-O’Rourke political event. “The administration, they didn’t believe our community would react, that people would get upset about the lies,” he said. “Our community spoke in numbers.”

Garcia noted that residents had seen the fallout from the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies firsthand, both in family separations and in asylum-seekers being turned away from border bridges and required to remain in Mexico while they await hearings.

In December, two Guatemalan migrant children died in Border Patrol custody in the El Paso area after seeking asylum.

“Trump has created policies and strategies that have created deep wounds in our region,” Garcia said. “We are not a violent city. We are not criminals. We are part of America and we deserve respect from this president.”

Although the protest event brought together roughly 50 local groups, O’Rourke’s political star power generated significant media coverage.

“If you’re Beto, there couldn’t be a better, more visual contrast,” said Jen Psaki, a former communications director to President Obama. “By leading a march, he gets back to his grass-roots origins and it allows him to stand toe to toe with the president of the United States and to echo a message that even local Republicans agree with. It gives him a platform and a megaphone at a beneficial time.”

Not willing to cede the moment completely to O’Rourke, Julian Castro — a former mayor of San Antonio, an Obama Cabinet member and already a declared presidential candidate — went Monday to the border checkpoint where his grandmother entered the United States as a young girl. He filmed a video denouncing the president and calling Trump’s visit to El Paso an effort “to create a circus of fear and paranoia” and “to tell lies about the border and about immigration.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Castro added, “Don’t take the bait.”

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The racist lies about immigration just keep spewing forth from Trump and his White Nationalist support groups, including the “right wingnut” media.

We’re not being invaded by foreign criminals. Actually, we’re experiencing a quite predictable and potentially manageable influx of refugees seeking to exercise their legal rights to lawfully apply for asylum in the US. Not surprising, given that we have no viable refugee program in or near the Northern Triangle and have undoubtedly contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law and society in those “failed states.”

The idea that real criminals, terrorists, drug smugglers, or human traffickers will be stopped or even materially deterred by a Wall is beyond absurd. Walls generally “reroute migration” and kill more innocent people. Real threats to our security are laughing at Trump and his base while they view the diversion, wasted time and money, and the failure to beef up intelligence, undercover, and anti-smuggling operations as a free gift.

And, I’m sure they cheer the focus on “rounding up” and detaining asylum applicants who turn themselves in to apply for asylum (because Trump has intentionally disabled reasonable processing through legal ports of entry) instead of doing the real law enforcement work of breaking up criminal enterprises.

“Numbers” aren’t everything, particularly when the majority of the apprehensions have little to do with criminals or other “bad guys. But, it’s easier to “chalk up big numbers” and support a bogus White Nationalist narrative about “loss of border security” by apprehending asylum applicants who are in search of ever more elusive justice in the U.S.

Unfortunately, outright fibs and bogus racist narratives seem to work for our “Lier-in-Chief!” Here is an article from today’s NY Times by native Texan Richard Parker actually suggesting that Trump succeeds because Texans are as addicted to “Tall Tales” as Trump is to “Big Lies!” In other words, a “match made in Heaven.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/el-paso-trump-beto.html

Rather an unhappy commentary, if true. Who am I as a “mere Badger” to say, but I would suspect that these tall tales of fake invasions and bogus fear mongering directed mostly at the growing Latino community appeal more to some Texans than to others.

Just shows the importance of the work of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) in defending our laws and Constitution! Also illustrates the importance of committing ourselves to “regime change” in 2020. The immigration nonsense from Trump and his supporters and the intentional divisiveness, chaos, and anarchy that flow from it is an existential threat to our national existence — much greater than his mostly fake “border emergency.”

PWS

02-12-19

HON JEFFREY S. CHASE: Trump’s Disingenuously Named “Migrant Protection Protocols” Are Anti-American – “As the late Arthur Helton wrote more than 25 years ago, ‘A basic measure of a civilized society is the way it treats strangers.’”

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/2/10/wait-in-mexico-policy-access-to-counsel-amp-crime

Feb 10 Wait in Mexico Policy, Access to Counsel, & Crime

A February 1, 2019 article in the L.A. Timesreported that two American attorneys who work for the immigrant rights organization Al Otro Lado, which has sent attorneys to Tijuana to offer advice to Central American refugees seeking to apply for asylum in the U.S., were stopped by Mexican immigration officials while attempting to enter that country. The attorneys were detained and questioned, and eventually denied entry because their passports had been “flagged.” One of the lawyers was actually traveling to Mexico on a family vacation, and was separated from her husband and 7-year-old daughter at the airport and taken to a separate room where she was interrogated. Her crying daughter was eventually allowed to join her; the two were held for 9 hours and forced to sleep on a cold floor without food or water before being sent back to the U.S. Two journalists who had been covering the issue of refugees seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border suffered the same experience. The Mexican government denied responsibility for the “flagging;” one of the journalists was told “the Americans” were responsible.

One of my first reactionsto the remain in Mexico policy was the impact it would have on access to counsel. I have heard disturbing first-hand reports from individuals who have traveled to Tijuana to provide legal assistance to refugees there. When crossing back to the U.S., American citizens identified by Customs and Border Patrol officers as “activists” have been harassed by being sent to secondary inspection, where they have been questioned and, remarkably, have had the contents of their electronic devices accessed by DHS agents. A means of avoiding such treatment was to fly directly to Mexico. However, the reported policy of flagging the passports of attorneys engaged in such work has undermined that route as well. Thus, attorneys are being treated like criminals for the “crime” of doing their job of providing legal assistance to asylum seekers.

While DHS focuses on such imaginary “crime,” it willfully ignores the actual crime to which those asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico are exposed. In a letterto DHS Secretary Kirsjen M. Nielsen, the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Catholic Legal Immigration Network reported that 90.3% of asylum seekers surveyed said that do not feel safe in Mexico; 46% stated that either themself or their child had suffered harm in Mexico, and 38.1% reported mistreatment at the hands of the Mexican police. Female asylum seekers accompanied by their minor children reported suffering crimes in Mexico including rape, sexual assault, kidnaping, extortion, and death threats.

Keep in mind that the Administration has shamelessly named its wait-in-Mexico policy the “Migrant Protection Protocols.” Instead, the policy exposes asylum seekers (including vulnerable unaccompanied children and families) to crime and police harassment, while restricting their access to counsel.

Access to counsel is increasingly critical to Central American asylum seekers, many of whose claims require proving that their fear is on account of their membership in a particular social group. Where fear is of non-governmental persecutors, applicants must further establish that the government is unable or unwilling to control such actors, and that internal relocation to another part of the country was not reasonable. Meeting these criteria requires an applicant to offer complex legal theories, and to support such claims with affidavits, reports, and articles from one or more experts. Without legal assistance, this is a daunting task for refugees (some of whom are families or children) living under difficult conditions (including the above-mentioned exposure to crime and government harassment) on the Mexico side of the border. Under present BIA precedent, an asylum seeker who is just a little off in formulating their particular social group (even if they included one word too many or too few) is stuck with such formulation, and may not amend it should they be fortunate enough to obtain counsel to assist them with their appeal. See Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 189 (BIA 2018).

The Trump Administration’s policies towards Central American asylum seekers has consistently run counter to our country’s international treaty obligations. The Administration has tried to argue that those fleeing to our country are not truly refugees, falsely painting them (in the words of a Human Rights First release) as “frauds, security threats, and dangerous criminals.”

By undertaking efforts on so many fronts to make it increasingly more difficult for such claimants to succeed in their asylum applications, the Administration seeks to paint the resulting drop in grant rates as “proof” that such claims are “fraudulent.” In criminally prosecuting those who eventually try to cross the border when they are no longer to endure the conditions under which refugees are forced to wait in Mexico, the Administration cites such convictions as “proof” that the refugees are “criminals.” The Administration seems to view the flight to the U.S. as a choice, and believes that its deterrence policies might convince refugees to simply return to their home countries.

Such view is at odds with reality. This December articleby Prof. Karen Musalo in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminismadds further corroboration to the many reports detailing the horrible violence Central American refugees are fleeing. And the World Migration Project at the Columbia Univ. School of Journalism continues to track those who have suffered harm (including death) following their deportation from the U.S.; its findings also counter the Administration’s position that those fleeing are not truly refugees, and that repatriation is a viable option.

As the late Arthur Helton wrote more than 25 years ago, “A basic measure of a civilized society is the way it treats strangers.” Similarly, Jorge Ramosrecently wrote in Timemagazine that “countries are judged by the way they treat the most vulnerable, not the rich and powerful.” Our government’s policies towards asylum seekers (including its most recent efforts to interfere with that population’s ability to retain counsel), and its willingness to expose such a vulnerable population to harm (including murder and rape) shames us all.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

JEFF CHASE

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City. Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First. He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

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Feb 10 All The World’s A Stage (including the 2d Cir.!)

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As Jeffrey and I have pointed out a number of times before, a “bona fide Administration” could resolve the “self-created non-crisis” at the Southern Border simply by:

Following existing asylum laws;
Generously granting asylum in accordance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, the BIA’s precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the Handbook;
Working with NGOs, pro bono groups, bar associations, “Big Law,” the religious community, and affected states and localities to provide easy access to counsel and achieve universal representation of asylum seekers, which, in turn:
- has a proven strong correlation to court appearances;
- makes most detention unnecessary, and most important,
- safeguards Due Process and the rule of law.

Clearly, these measures could be accomplished more quickly and for far less than the $5.7 billion that Trump so desperately wants to waste on his Wall. And, other than perhaps a few “tweaks” to allow some U.S. Government funding of pro bono and “low bono” representation projects, they would not require a major rewrite of current statues.

By sharply reducing unnecessary and wasteful “civil immigration detention” (a/k/a the “New American Gulag” or “NAG”) and the many legal challenges it generates, the money and litigation time, on both sides, could be redirected at actually solving the problems, rather than making them worse.

PWS

02-11-19

SOME FEDERAL CIVIL SERVANTS WERE IDEALISTIC & NIAVE ENOUGH TO EXPECT TRUMP TO APOLOGIZE FOR HIS SHUTDOWN — Instead, He Kicked Them In The Teeth, Ignored Their Essential Contributions, Pain, & Suffering, & Instead Touted His Bogus Border Wall Using A False Nativist Narrative!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-shutdown-state-of-the-union_us_5c5a4711e4b00187b55612d4

Amanda Terkel writes in HuffPost:

The longest government shutdown in history happened on Donald Trump’s watch. But the president made no mention of it in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The partial government shutdown lasted 35 days, affecting about 800,000 federal workers ― in addition to thousands of federal contractors. Government employees missed two paychecks, with many wondering how they would pay for essentials like food, medicine and housing. They looked for new jobs, turned to relatives and friends for temporary loans and went to food pantries.

The shutdown occurred because Trump insisted that Congress give him $5.7 billion to build a wall on the country’s southern border, even though he once promised that Mexico would pay for that barrier. Democrats refused to go along with his demand and said he should simply fund the government and argue about immigration later. He refused.

On Jan. 25, Trump caved and signed a bill funding the government for three weeks. He has insisted that if he doesn’t get his money for a wall by Feb. 15, he may declare a national emergency allowing him to build it anyway.

Trump never mentioned what federal workers went through during his speech Tuesday night. He expressed no remorse for the shutdown, and he didn’t promise that it wouldn’t happen again. The closest he came to referencing the shutdown was in urging Congress to fund the border wall when passing legislation to fund the government beyond Feb. 15.

“Congress has 10 days left to pass a bill that will fund our government, protect our homeland and secure our southern border,” he said. “Now is the time for the Congress to show the world that America is committed to ending illegal immigration and putting the ruthless coyotes, cartels, drug dealers and human traffickers out of business.”

Even Trump’s State of the Union address was affected by the shutdown. It was supposed to occur on Jan. 29, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) canceled it ― she has that power since the president delivers it in the Capitol ― and said they would discuss a new date only after the government reopened.

Trump’s approach is a break from what President Bill Clinton did in 1996, after what had previously been the longest shutdown ever. In his State of the Union speech that year, Clinton honored a heroic public servant who had been furloughed because of the shutdown. He then warned Congress to remember the pain of the shutdown when legislating in the future.

“On behalf of Richard Dean and his family and all the other people who are out there working every day doing a good job for the American people,” Clinton said. “I challenge all of you in this chamber: Never, ever shut the federal government down again.”

In the Democratic response to Trump’s address Tuesday night, Stacey Abrams ― who ran for governor of Georgia ― did address the shutdown.

“Just a few weeks ago, I joined volunteers to distribute meals to furloughed federal workers. They waited in line for a box of food and a sliver of hope since they hadn’t received a paycheck in weeks. Making their livelihoods a pawn for political games is a disgrace,” she said. “The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the President of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people ― but our values.

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If Tom Brady is the the “GOAT,” Trump certainly is the “WOAT,” hands down!

There aren’t many things more vile than an ungrateful employer!

PWS

02-06-19

“COURTSIDE” POLITICS: A HOLLOW SPEECH FROM AN EMPTY SUIT!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/state-of-the-union-trump-rhyme-women-usa.html

Jim Newell writes @ Slate:

Donald Trump turned to the most lethal of oratorical tools in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address: the rhyme. To summarize his argument that Democratic investigations into his administration could imperil America’s economic gains, he said: “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.” And then—copying directly from the prepared text here—the follow-up: “It just doesn’t work that way!”

In political speechwriting, flat attempts at cleverness are often made to paper over a total lack of substance, and this little rhyming number was no exception. Democrats in the chamber laughed at the line, just as they did when President Trump said, “If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion”—in my opinion!—“be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed.”

The Democrats’ laughter wasn’t the over-the-top, fake guffaw that parties might prepare ahead of time for risible talking points. It was the sort of chuckling you do when you’re scrolling through your phone and only casually paying attention—exactly what many Democrats were doing throughout the speech—and hear something truly out of left field. It’s the way you might respond to someone who has nothing much to say, and no new tricks to force you to take him seriously.

Trump didn’t move Congress any closer to a deal on immigration, the most pressing matter currently facing Congress. (The expectations were so low, though, that negotiators were just happy he didn’t blow everything up.) If he was trying to get a border wall agreement—and he really didn’t seem like he was trying that hard—it wasn’t by putting something new on the table, a real concession that Democrats might consider. He resorted to the same scary warnings about the “tremendous onslaught” of “caravans” approaching the border (another chuckle line for Democrats) and once again used grieving families who’d lost loved ones as pawns in his insinuation that undocumented immigrants are naturally inclined to violence. In an ad-lib to satisfy his itch for hyperbole, he stated that he wanted legal immigrants “in the largest numbers ever” to come to the country, when in reality his administration turned down an offer in the last Congress to fund his entire wall because it didn’t cut legal immigration enough.

Anyway, it was all just words. They don’t mean anything, they haven’t worked in the past, they won’t work in the next 10 days. And everyone in the room knew it.

Trump seemed to think that he was skewering the Democrats by boldly declaring that he is prepared to stop socialism in its tracks, as if it had gotten particularly far along. “We are born free, and we will stay free,” he said. “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Was this supposed to be a dig at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Judging from the look on her face and the chatter she was making with members around her, she was asking the same question. So she laughed. Whatever. It wasn’t worth the effort to get particularly mad at anything this guy said.

The only break from this yawning rendition of the Same Old Thing was when Democrats decided to hold a dance party in the middle of the speech. When Trump, in the prelude to a short section introducing the “first-ever government-wide initiative focused on economic empowerment for women in developing countries,” mentioned that “we have more women in the workforce than ever before,” Democrats decided to take over the room. The 89 House Democratic women, all dressed in white, and their male counterparts started cheering, high-fiving, and in the case of one New Hampshire Rep. Annie Kuster, raising the roof.

Trump played along, telling them not to sit down just yet, and then delivered a line about how “we also have more women serving in the Congress than ever before.” The celebration continued, eventually transitioning into a bipartisan chant of “U-S-A!”

During the extended cheering, no one seemed to be thinking about Trump at all. They were celebrating amongst themselves. Trump was just a piece of furniture along the wall of a room, a fact of life that didn’t need their gratification or their outrage. He was just … there.

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

Lies, alternative facts, White Nationalist myths, racist “dog whistles.” IOW, same old same old from a parody of a leader who demonstrates his breathtaking ignorance, inherent meanness, lack of empathy, and spectacular lack of qualifications for the position he occupies without filling.

And the GOP sycophants who nodded, applauded, and refuse to stand up for America against this dangerous clown showed why progress for our future will depend on their being removed from office in large numbers.

Vladimir must have enjoyed last night. Just like he had it scripted.

PWS

02-07-19

AOC & CO. ARE RIGHT TO SPEAK OUT ON INEFFECTIVE, INHUMANE, WASTEFUL, OFTEN ILLEGAL DHS POLICIES DRIVEN BY A WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA – But, They Might Be Better Served By Holding Their Fire For Meaningful Oversight & The Next Budget Cycle – Like It Or Not, DHS Is Here & Isn’t Going Anywhere & We Do Need An Orderly System For Controlling Migration & Processing Refugees At Our Border!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberals-urge-democrats-to-take-a-hard-line-on-border-11549323945

Kristina Peterson & Louise Radnofsky report for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—House Democratic leaders held firm through the five-week government shutdown that ended last month. Still, the party’s liberal wing is keeping up pressure on leadership as negotiations over a border-security deal heat up.

A group of liberal House Democrats and advocacy groups are urging Democrats in a bipartisan negotiating committee to refuse further funding for the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the border with Mexico. The group’s 17 lawmakers have less than two weeks to reach a deal before government funding expires again.

President Trump has said several times he is pessimistic lawmakers can reach a deal that he would accept, and he has threatened to take action to build his long-promised border wall on his own, including possibly declaring a national emergency.

Congressional leaders have been optimistic the group of House and Senate lawmakers can reach an agreement, but any bipartisan deal is unlikely to appease some in the party’s left wing.

A letter to House Democrats, written by freshman Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and signed by at least three others, criticizes Homeland Security for practices including prosecution and detention of immigrants.

The department and its frontline enforcement units—Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection—have become high-profile targets as they implement the Trump administration’s attempts to step up deportations and the zero-tolerance policy that last year resulted in family separations at the border.

“These agencies have promulgated an agenda driven by hate—not strategy,” the lawmakers wrote. They argue that the agencies’ ability to shift funds makes it impossible to prevent money from being used for policies that Democrats generally oppose.

Refusing funding for the agency housing the president’s top political priority isn’t going to draw Republican support, a House Democratic aide said, which the committee would need to produce a deal.

“It’s totally unrealistic,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.), who is in the negotiating group, said of the Democratic letter. “That basically says you don’t want to secure the border.”

Democrats overall say they favor border security, just not Mr. Trump’s border wall, and immigration advocates said their task is to counter the president.

. . . .

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

Read the complete WSJ report from these “emerging stars on the immigration beat.”

There hasn’t been any meaningful oversight of DHS or the mess DOJ politicos have created at EOIR in two years. So, while there certainly should not be additional funding for DHS’s already overused and abused detention system, for now, Democrats should probably work with DHS as the “only game in town” on the Southern Border.

Over the next year, DHS and DOJ politicos should be required to testify and should be held accountable for the absolute, largely avoidable, chaos and inefficiency they have intentionally, incompetently, or maliciously created in immigration enforcement, our Immigration Courts, the refugee and asylum system, and the system for granting immigration benefits.

Then, based on the record, make rational, fact-based proposals for needed improvements in immigration enforcement, administration, and adjudication for the next budget cycle.

PWS

02-05-19

ANOTHER UGLY TRUMP MILESTONE: Administration’s “Malicious Incompetence” Jacks Immigration Court Backlog To 1.1 Million! — Even With 17% Increase In Judges, Trump & Sessions Incredibly DOUBLED Backlog In Under Two Years!

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/536/

Immigration Court Backlog Surpasses One Million Cases

Figure 1. Immigration Court Workload, FY 2018

The Immigration Court backlog has jumped by 225,846 cases since the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office. This represents an overall growth rate of 49 percent since the beginning of FY 2017. Results compiled from the case-by-case records obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the court reveal that pending cases in the court’s active backlog have now reached 768,257—a new historic high.

In addition, recent decisions by the Attorney General just implemented by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) have ballooned the backlog further. With a stroke of a pen, the court removed 330,211 previously completed cases and put them back on the “pending” rolls. These cases were previously administratively closed and had been considered part of the court’s completed caseload[1].

When the pending backlog of cases now on the active docket is added to these newly created pending cases, the total climbs to a whopping 1,098,468 cases! This is more than double the number of cases pending at the beginning of FY 2017.

Pending Cases Represent More Than Five Years of Backlogged Work

What does the pending case backlog mean as a practical matter? Even before the redefinition of cases counted as closed and cases considered pending, the backlog had reached 768,257 cases. With the rise in the number of immigration judges, case closures during FY 2018 rose 3.9 percent over FY 2016 levels, to 215,569. In FY 2017, however, closure rates had fallen below FY 2016 levels, but last year the court recovered this lost ground[2].

At these completion rates, the court would take 3.6 years to clear its backlog under the old definition if it did nothing but work on pending cases. This assumes that all new cases are placed on the back burner until the backlog is finished.

Now, assuming the court aims to schedule hearings eventually on all the newly defined “pending” cases, the backlog of over a million cases would take 5.1 years to work through at the current pace. This figure again assumes that the court sets aside newly arriving cases and concentrates exclusively on the backlog.

Table 1. Overview of Immigration Court Case Workload and Judges
as of end of FY 2018

	Number of Cases/Judges	Percent Change Since Beginning of FY 2017
New Cases for FY 2018	287,741	7.5%
Completed Cases for FY 2018	215,569	3.9%
Number of Immigration Judges	338/395*	17.0%
Pending Cases as of September 30, 2018:
On Active Docket	768,257	48.9%
Not Presently on Active Docket	330,211	na
Total	1,098,468	112.9%

* Immigration Judges on bench at the beginning and at the end of FY 2018; percent based on increase in judges who served full year.
** category did not exist at the beginning of FY 2017.

Why Does the Backlog Continue To Rise?

No single reason accounts for this ballooning backlog. It took years to build and new cases continue to outpace the number of cases completed. This is true even though the ranks of immigration judges since FY 2016 have grown by over 17 percent[3] while court filings during the same period have risen by a more modest 7.5 percent[4].

Clearly the changes the Attorney General has mandated have added to the court’s challenges. For one, the transfer of administratively closed cases to the pending workload makes digging out all the more daunting. At the same time, according to the judges, the new policy that does away with their ability to administratively close cases has reduced their tools for managing their dockets.

There have been other changes. Shifting scheduling priorities produces churning on cases to be heard next. Temporary reassignment and transfer of judges to border courts resulted in additional docket churn. Changing the legal standards to be applied under the Attorney General’s new rulings may also require judicial time to review and implement.

In the end, all these challenges remain and the court’s dockets remain jam-packed. Perhaps when dockets become overcrowded, the very volume of pending cases slows the court’s ability to handle this workload – as when congested highways slow to a crawl.

Footnotes

^[1] The court also recomputed its case completions for the past ten years and removed these from its newly computed completed case counts. Current case closures thus appear to have risen because counts in prior years are suppressed. Further, the extensive judicial resources used in hearing those earlier cases are also disregarded.

^[2] For consistency over time, this comparison is based upon the court’s longstanding definition, which TRAC continues to use, that includes administratively closed cases in each year’s count. Under this standard, numbers are: 207,546 (FY 2016), 204,749 (FY 2017), 215,569 (FY 2018).

^[3] The court reports that the numbers of immigration judges on its rolls at the end of the fiscal year were: 289 (FY 2016), 338 (FY 2017), and 395 (FY 2018). The 17 percent increase only considers judges who were on the payroll for the full FY 2018 year. See Table 1. For more on judge hires see: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1104846/download

^[4] New court cases based upon court records as of the end of FY 2018 were: 267,625 (FY 2016), 274,133 (FY 2017), and 287,741 (FY 2018). Due to delays in adding new cases to EOIR’s database, the latest counts may continue to rise when data input is complete. TRAC’s counts use the date of the notice to appear (NTA), rather than the court’s “input date” into its database. While the total number of cases across the FY 2016 – FY 2018 period reported by TRAC and recently published by EOIR are virtually the same, the year-by-year breakdown differs because of the court’s practice of postponing counting a case until it chooses to add them to its docket.

TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.

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

This is truly “Kakistocracy in Action.” Remember these numbers are as of the end of FY 2018, September 30, 2018. Trump’s Shutdown added another 80,000 to 100,000 to the backlog. Combined with “normal mismanagement,” the backlog is probably over 1.3 million by now and growing daily.

Unfortunately, this isn’t going to stop until either Congress or the Article III courts step in, put an end to this travesty, and force due process, fairness, and administrative competence back into this dysfunctional national disgrace.

PWS

02-05-19

THE GIBSON REPORT 02-04-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT 02-04-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TOP UPDATES

USCIS Processing Delays Have Reached Crisis Levels Under the Trump Administration

AILA’s analysis of USCIS data reveals crisis-level delays in its processing of applications and petitions for immigration benefits under the Trump administration. This brief examines how current USCIS policies lengthen the delays and what steps USCIS and Congress can take to remedy this crisis. AILA Doc. No. 19012834

ICE told hundreds of immigrants to show up to court Thursday — for many, those hearings are fake

CBS: ICE is required to include court dates with court notices, per a Supreme Court decision last summer, but most don’t actually reflect scheduled hearings. The American Immigration Lawyers Association issued a “practice alert” on Tuesday evening, warning members “the next upcoming date on NTAs that appears to be fake is this Thursday.”

Immigration Court Backlog Surpasses One Million Cases

TRAC: The Immigration Court backlog has jumped by 225,846 cases since the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office. This represents an overall growth rate of 49 percent since the beginning of FY 2017.

Retired judge: Shut down this immigrant detention center

Houston Chronicle: Lumpkin has fewer than 1,200 locals plus up to 1,900 men delivered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Stewart from across the country, including Texas. The town has just one private immigration lawyer.

Prisons Across The U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases Of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints

Intercept: In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on these databases to identify the voices taking part in a call and to search for other calls in which the voices of interest are detected. Some programs, like New York’s, even analyze the voices of call recipients outside prisons to track which outsiders speak to multiple prisoners regularly.

Immigrant rights attorneys and journalists denied entry into Mexico

LA Times: Two U.S. immigrant rights attorneys and two journalists who have worked closely with members of a migrant caravan in Tijuana said they had been denied entry into Mexico in recent days after their passports were flagged with alerts by an unknown government.

Migrants Say They Pay For Inclusion On ‘La Lista’ To Make Border Crossing

Appeal: Migrants near Brownsville, Texas say that if they don’t bribe Mexican officials they’re stuck at the bottom of a list of people seeking refuge in the U.S. via international bridges

‘A watershed moment’: Trump faces crossroads amid mounting threats on all sides

WaPo: Senate Republicans also are overwhelmingly resistant to declaring a national emergency, according to two senior GOP aides. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) privately cautioned Trump last week that doing so could divide the GOP and told the president that Congress might pass a resolution disapproving an emergency declaration.

ICE Failed to Hold Detention Center Contractors Accountable, Report Finds

NPR: The report detailed several of the most egregious cases, including contractors failing to notify ICE of sexual assaults and employee misconduct, using tear gas instead of approved pepper spray, and commingling detainees with serious criminal histories with those who might be at risk of sexual assault.

India Protests U.S. Detention of Students in Fake-University Sting

NYT: The American authorities said this past week that they had indicted eight people accused of exploiting the country’s student visa system. They were said to have helped foreign nationals illegally remain in the United States by enrolling them into the University of Farmington in Farmington Hills, Mich., which billed itself as a “nationally accredited business and STEM institution” with an innovative curriculum, flexible class schedules and a diverse student body. But the private university was being secretly operated by agents of the Department of Homeland Security to expose immigration fraud, according to federal prosecutors who announced charges in the case.

Federal prosecutors unseal indictments naming 19 people linked to Chinese ‘birth tourism’ schemes that helped thousands of aliens give birth in US to secure birthright citizenship for their children

USCIS: The indictments charge operators and clients of three “maternity house” or “birthing house” schemes that were dismantled in March 2015 when federal agents executed 35 search warrants, which resulted from international undercover operations.

Two young adults infiltrated an immigration detention center in Florida. This Sundance film shows what they found

Deseret News: In 2012, Saavedra and Martinez, two young adults in their early 20s, decided to turn themselves in to authorities to get inside the Broward Transitional Center, a for-profit immigration detention facility in Florida that houses 600 men and 100 women.

ICE confirms it is force-feeding detainees on hunger strike

WaPo: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have confirmed they are force-feeding nine detainees who initiated a hunger strike at an El Paso detention center.

The Travel Ban at Two: Rocky Implementation Settles into Deeper Impacts

MPI: Monthly immigrant visa issuances to nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen were down an average of 72 percent between FY 2017 and 2018 (see Figure 1).

OCA Mulls Rule Requiring Judicial Warrants for ICE Arrests in NY Courts

NY Law Journal: The Office of Court Administration, which oversees New York state courts, is considering making a rule that would prohibit federal immigration officers from arresting undocumented immigrants in state courthouses without a warrant signed by a federal judge.

Government Quietly Increases ICE Detention to 48,000 Beds During the Shutdown
AIC: ICE drastically expanded its network of immigration jails in the last month by a startling 7 percent.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Defense Department engaged in illegal discrimination against some soldiers, district court finds

ABA: A Seattle federal district court ruled Thursday that the federal government illegally discriminated against naturalized U.S. citizens in the U.S. Army by requiring security checks on them every two years, without individualized suspicion.

Acting AG Refers BIA Case to Himself and Invites Amicus Regarding “Particular Social Group” Membership

The Acting AG referred a BIA decision to himself for review whether an individual may establish persecution on account of membership in a “particular social group” based on membership in a family unit. Amicus briefs are due by 2/25/19. Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 494 (A.G. 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18120432

Acting AG Refers BIA Case to Himself and Invites Amicus Regarding Cancellation of Removal and Impact of Multiple DUIs

The Acting AG to review cancellation of removal eligibility and the impact of multiple convictions for driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence with regards to “good moral character.” Amicus briefs due by 2/25/19. Matter of Castillo-Perez, 27 I&N Dec. 495 (A.G. 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18120437

BIA Terminates Proceedings Over DHS Opposition Following Approval of U Visa

Unpublished BIA decision reopens and terminates proceedings sua sponte over DHS opposition following approval of respondent’s application for U nonimmigrant status. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Singh, 1/18/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012838

BIA Orders Further Consideration of Request for Continuance for U Visa Applicant

Unpublished BIA decision remands for further consideration of request for continuance pending U visa application adjudication where respondent was no longer detained and IJ didn’t consider likelihood application would be granted. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Munoz-Pocasangre, 1/19/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012841

BIA Rescinds In Absentia Order Because NTA Did Not Specify Immigration Court

Unpublished BIA decision rescinds in absentia order because NTA did not specify the particular immigration court at which the respondent was required to appear. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Ramos, 2/9/18) AILA Doc. No. 19020434

BIA Vacates Bond Decision Based on Allegations in Police Report

Unpublished BIA decision reverses IJ determination that respondent was danger to community, stating that it accords little weight to conduct described in police documents that is neither prosecuted criminally nor independently corroborated. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of A-B-L-, 1/23/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012940

BIA Finds DHS Failed to Properly Authenticate Form I-213

Unpublished BIA decision vacates finding that respondent was present without being admitted or paroled because DHS failed to properly authenticate the Form I-213 used to establish alienage. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Reyes, 1/26/18) AILA Doc. No. 19013033

BIA Finds Respondent Did Not Knowingly Waive Appeal

Unpublished BIA decision finds respondent did not knowingly waive right to appeal because IJ did not warn him failing to appeal would constitute an irrevocable waiver of the right. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Chaudhary, 1/18/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012839

BIA Finds LPR Who Involuntarily Reentered U.S. Without Inspection Was Not Seeking Admission

Unpublished BIA decision holds that returning LPR was not properly regarded as an applicant for admission because he was fleeing for his life from a drug cartel in Mexico when he illegally reentered the country. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of I-C-B-, 1/25/18)

BIA Holds Utah Sexual Battery Not a CIMT

Unpublished BIA decision holds that sexual battery under Utah Code section 76-9-702(3) is not a CIMT because it is a general intent offense for which no harm or evil intent is required. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of V-C-, 1/24/18) AILA Doc. No. 19013031

BIA Equitably Tolls Motion to Reopen Deadline

Unpublished BIA decision equitably tolls deadline for motion to reopen where respondent was suffering from undiagnosed medical condition while in detention and was unable to obtain record from immigration court. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of A-A-B-, 1/22/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012939

BIA Remands for Testimony on Amount of Loss to Victims of Fraud

Unpublished BIA decision holds that IJ should have permitted respondent to testify regarding amount of loss to the victims before finding that he had been convicted of an aggravated felony under INA §101(a)(43)(M)(i). Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Mena, 2/7/18) AILA Doc. No. 19020103

BIA Rescinds In Absentia Order Against Respondent Who Recently Gave Birth

Unpublished BIA decision rescinds in absentia order upon finding that respondent giving birth via caesarean section 10 days prior constituted exceptional circumstances for her failure to appear. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Valencia Barragan, 2/5/18) AILA Doc. No. 19020102

BIA Vacates Denial of Bond Hearing to Respondent Mistakenly Designated as Arriving Alien

Unpublished BIA decision reversed determination that IJ lacked jurisdiction over bond hearing where respondent was apprehended after entering country and was mistakenly designated an arriving alien on the NTA. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of A-M-Y-, 2/2/18) AILA Doc. No. 19013140

BIA Finds Failure to Meet Filing Deadline Constitutes Ineffective Assistance On Its Face

Unpublished BIA decision holds that prior attorney’s failure to submit application by court-imposed deadline was ineffective assistance on its face, reopening proceedings despite failure to comply with Matter of Lozada. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Cortes-Reyes, 1/26/18) AILA Doc. No. 19013139

BIA Reopens and Terminates Proceedings Sua Sponte Following Reduction in Drug Sentence

Unpublished BIA decision reopens and terminates proceedings sua sponte following reduction of respondent’s sentence for possession of cocaine to simple drug misdemeanor under Cal. Penal Code 1170.18(G). Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Gonzalez, 2/2/18) AILA Doc. No. 19020100

BIA Finds Terrorizing Statute Not a CIMT

Unpublished BIA decision holds that terrorizing under Guam Code Ann. 19.60(a) is not a CIMT because the victim is not required to actually experience fear. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Eidaro, 1/19/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012938

CA6 Upholds Determination that Asylee Who Copied and Distributed Flyers Provided Material Support to Terrorist Organizations

The court affirmed USCIS adjustment denial and its finding that MeK and Fek between 1979 and 1981 were Iranian terrorist organizations and that copying and distributing flyers was material in that it was both “relevant” and “significant” to terrorism. (Hosseini v. Nielsen, 12/19/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012833

CA7 Affirms District Court Dismissal of APA and DJA Claims Based on Doctrine of Consular Nonreviewability

The court found that in citing a valid statutory basis and offering a factual predicate, a consular officer’s visa rejection was facially legitimate and bona fide; it also held that plaintiffs made no affirmative showing that officer acted in bad faith. (Yafai v. Pompeo, 1/4/19) AILA Doc. No. 19012901

CA9 Panel Issued Amended Decision on “Crime of Domestic Violence” Conviction

The court issued an amended decision, where the panel concluded that a class one misdemeanor domestic violence assault under Arizona Revised Statutes §§ 13-1203 and 13-3601 conviction was a “crime of domestic violence” under 8 USC §1227(a)(2)(E). (Cornejo-Villagrana v. Whitaker, 12/27/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012836

CA9 Upholds BIA Controlled Substance Removability Finding and Remands to Determine Continuous Presence for Cancellation Claim

The court found that the BIA correctly determined that the Travel Act is divisible and that petitioner was removable based on his conviction for a controlled substance offense and remanded for consideration of the claim for cancellation of removal. (Myers v. Sessions, 9/25/18)

CA9 Denies Petition for Review Citing Bermudez-Cota After NTA Didn’t Specify Time/Date

The court denied petitioner’s petition for review, holding that a NTA that does not specify the time/date vests an IJ with jurisdiction over the removal proceedings, so long as a notice specifying this information is sent to the individual in a timely manner. (Karingithi v. Whitaker, 1/28/19) AILA Doc. No. 19012972

CA9 Denied Petition for Review After Applying Leal I and Leal II Standard and Finding Petitioner Removable For Two CIMTs

The court held the BIA did not commit any of the raised legal errors related to In re: Leal and Leal v. Holder by concluding that the petitioner’s conviction for reckless engagement was a crime involving moral turpitude. (Olivas-Motta v. Whitaker, 12/19/18) AILA Doc. No. 19012933

Ohio Attorneys Sue ICE Alleging Public, Humanitarian, and Bioethical Abuse

Attorneys David Malik and Anna Markovich submitted a FOIA request asking ICE for information about the people who have been deported, ICE’s policies related to racial and ethnic profiling, and ICE’s process for determining which individuals to deport. (Malik v. ICE, 1/9/19 AILA Doc. No. 19012832

USCIS Announces Online Case Status Feature for Asylum Applicants

USCIS announced that applicants who have a pending affirmative asylum application with USCIS can now check the status of their applications online at uscis.gov/casestatus. It will not cover defensive asylum applicants whose cases are pending in immigration court. AILA Doc. No. 19012804

DHS OIG Issues Report on ICE’s Failure to Fully Use Contracting Tools to Hold Detention Facility Contractors Accountable

DHS OIG’s report found ICE doesn’t adequately hold detention facility contractors accountable to performance standards and issues waivers seeking to exempt them from complying with certain standards instead of applying financial penalties for deficient conditions. AILA Doc. No. 19020104

DHS Releases Policy Guidance for Implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols

CBP Releases Guidance on Migrant Protection Protocols

USCIS Releases Guidance for Implementing Section 235(b)(2)(C) of the INA and the Migrant Protection Protocols

EOIR Releases Addendum to LOP Cohort Analysis of Phase I: Detention Length with DHS Data

EOIR Releases Phase II Analysis of Its Legal Orientation Program Cohort

Announcements of ICE Enforcement Actions

ICE reports that it arrested 118 during a five-day period, from January 14-18, 2019, in New York City, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley. AILA Doc. No. 17041232

HHS Annual Update of Poverty Guidelines for 2019

Health and Human Services (HHS) notice providing the annual update of the HHS poverty guidelines to account for last calendar year’s increase in prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index, effective 1/11/19. (84 FR 1167, 2/1/19) AILA Doc. No. 19020107

Applicants Can Now Request Certificates of Citizenship Online

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that applicants can now complete and file Form N-600, Application for Certificate of Citizenship, and Form N-600K, Application for Citizenship and Issuance of Certificate Under Section 322 online.

RESOURCES

·         IDP is releasing a new practice advisory and issue-spotting checklist addressing conviction finality issues in light of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ August 2018 decision in Matter of J.M. Acosta.

·         Practice Alert: DHS Issuing NTAs with Fake Times and Dates

·         Practice Alert: Long-Pending I-765 and I-131 Applications at the NBC

·         AILA’s Administrative Litigation Task Force Provides Litigation Briefings

·         Ethical Considerations in Declining Representation

·         Crossing State Lines: A Practical Guide for Immigration Lawyers When Volunteering Their Services Out of State

·         Zero Protection: How U.S. Border Enforcement Harms Migrant Safety and Health

·         Matter of A-B-: Case Updates, Current Trends, and Suggested Strategies

·         Stopping Immigration Services Scams: A Tool for Advocates and Lawmakers

·         Filing DACA Applications in the Wake of Federal Court Rulings

·         Central Americans were Increasingly Winning Asylum Before President Trump Took Office

EVENTS

2/4/19 AILA CLE: Local Agency Practices In NY, NJ, & CT

2/5/19 Developments in Waivers: The I-601A, Removal Proceedings, and Beyond

2/6/19 Matter of A-B-: Case Updates, Current Trends, and Suggested Strategies

2/7/19 Basic Immigration Law 2019: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas

2/8/19 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Immigration Relief 2019

2/12/19 I-751 Petitions: How to Handle Delays and Changes in Circumstances

2/26/19 Naturalization Challenges and Strategies in the Trump Era

3/8/19 Asylum & Immigration Conference with the Federal Bar Association at NY Law School

3/12/19 AILA Spring Federal Court Litigation Conference

8/4/19 Legal, Cultural, & Historical Approach to Understanding the Complex and Controversial Issue Dominating Our National Dialogue

ImmProf

Monday, February 4, 2019

·         From the Bookshelves: Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together Hardcover by Andrew Selee

·         Shoba Wadhia on the Two Year Anniversary of the Travel Ban

Sunday, February 3, 2019

·         Race in Our Politics: A Catalog of Campaign Materials — Immigration as a Racial Dog Whistle

·         University of Farmington? ICE set up a fake university. Hundreds enrolled.

·         The Travel Ban at Two: Rocky Implementation

·         Immigrants from New Origin Countries in the United States

·         “U.S.” Rapper Facing Removal

·         Federal prosecutors unseal indictments naming 19 people linked to Chinese ‘birth tourism’ schemes

·         SCOTUS Says Government Must Give Notice of Time and Place of Immigration Court Hearings, So Government Gives Times/Places for Nonexistent Hearings. Again.

·         Super Sunday: DHS Fights Super Scammers

·         THE BIG SLOWDOWN — AILA Policy Brief: USCIS Processing Delays Have Reached Crisis Levels Under the Trump Administration

·         At the Movies: The Invisibles

Saturday, February 2, 2019

·         Amanda Frost: The revival of denaturalisation under the Trump administration

·         Trump’s Former Undocumented Housekeeper to Join Congressman as State of the Union Guest

·         From the Bookshelves: Mexico The Good Neighbor: Contracts, Betrayal and Survival in the Cold War by Soledad Quartucci

·         Al Otro Lado Legal Director Nora Phillips Denied Entry to Mexico in Apparent Retaliation for Human Rights Work

Friday, February 1, 2019

·         Immigration Article of the Day: Growing the Resistance: A Call to Action for Transactional Lawyers in the Era of Trump by Gowri Krishna

Thursday, January 31, 2019

·         Detained Migrants Being Force Fed

·         Alleged Illegal Voters in Texas are Actually Citizens

·         Immigration Article of the Day: Health Justice for Immigrants by Medha D. Makhlouf

·         No-Stop Religious Services to Avoid Deportation in the Netherlands

·         Symposium: Immigration in the Trump Era, Southwestern Law School

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

·         Border Fencing To Prevent Another Kind of Migration Altogether

·         When Spouse’s Freedom Depends on ICE Agent’s Discretion

·         From the Bookshelves: Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire by Jeffrey S. Kahn

·         U.S. Government Shutdown Worsens Immigration Court Backlog

·         How immigration could help a shrinking American labor force

·         Immigration and Civil Rights in an Era of Trump by Kevin R. Johnson

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

·         Border Patrol Openings Hard to Fill

·         Call For Papers: Emerging Immprofs @ BYU June 7 & 8

Monday, January 28, 2019

·         Desert X: Roadtripping for Large-Scale Immigration Art

·         Message to Italy: Allow Minors to Land

If you would like to be added to the Weekly Briefing distribution list, please email egibson@nylag.org.

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

Check out Elizabeth’s first four items showing how Trump’s “malicious incompetence” is destroying the U.S. immigration system and harming people in a variety of ways.

PWS

02-05-19

EXPOSED: In Matter of A-B-, Sessions & An Immigration Judge Found That The Government Of El Salvador Offered “Reasonable Protection” To Persecuted Women & That Internal Relocation Appeared “Reasonably Available” To A Severely Battered & Threatened Woman — They Lied!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/el-salvador-votes-for-president-as-the-country-seeks-a-new-way-to-deal-with-gangs/2019/02/02/1ce34c1e-2288-11e9-b5b4-1d18dfb7b084_story.html

Anna-Catherine Brigida reports on the recent El Salvadoran presidential election for the Washington Post:

. . . ..

“The ultimate actor who determines whether you have more or less homicides tomorrow or right now or in a week is not the government. It’s the gangs,” said José Miguel Cruz, an expert on Salvadoran gangs at Florida International University. “They do it for political purposes as a bargaining tool to improve their position vis-a-vis the government or vis-a-vis the society.”

. . . .

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

Read Anna’s complete article at the link. This is a “must read” for members of the NDPA or anyone else handling El Salvadoran asylum cases in this “Post-Matter of A-B- Era.”

Fact is, the gangs are in many practical ways the “de facto government” in El Salvador. That makes Sessions’s suggestion that persecuted individuals can get reasonable protection from the government or avoid persecution in a tiny, totally gang-infested country absurdly disingenuous. It also calls into question the judicial integrity of those U.S. Immigration Judges who mindlessly “parrot” Sessions’s “parallel universe” dicta regarding conditions in El Salvador. Indeed, it has been reported elsewhere that gangs are actually the largest employer in El Salvador, exercising far more power over politics and the economy than the government! https://www.newsweek.com/ms-13-barrio-18-gangs-employ-more-people-el-salvador-largest-employers-1200029

Also, this article illustrates the absurdity of the position often taken by the BIA and some Immigration Judges that resistance to gangs is not a “political act.” In a country where gangs and government are inextricably intertwined, and gangs actually control more of the country than does the national government, of course resisting or publicly standing up against gangs is an expression of political opposition to those in power. And, it’s a political statement for which the consequences all too often can be deadly.

Matter of A-B- has yet to be tested in a Court of Appeals. But, it spectacularly “flunked” its initial judicial test before Judge Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3rd Judge Sullivan clearly saw through many of Sessions’s biased conclusions that contradict not only the history and purpose of he Refugee Act, but also well established case law. Although A-B- was an Immigration Court case, and many of Sullivan’s conclusions would apply in Immigration Court proceedings, EOIR saw fit to construe Grace narrowly as applying solely in “Credible Fear Reviews.” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3BE

It’s important for advocates to press all challenges to Matter of A-B- in the Circuit Courts of Appeals. If appellate judges agree with Judge Sullivan, all of the erroneous “summary denials” of asylum based on A-B- will come back to Immigration Court for rehearings, thus further adding to the Administration-created mess in America’s most dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust court system, where Due Process for asylum seekers has become a bad joke rather than the watchword.

PWS

02-04-19

“MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/report-trump-admin-does-not-plan-to-reunite-families-separated-before-zero-tolerance_us_5c55c3c4e4b087104753e468

Angelina Chaplin reports for HuffPost:

On Friday, officials from the Trump administration said it would require too much effort to reunite the thousands of families it separated before implementing its “zero-tolerance” policy in April, according to a declaration filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last month, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services released a report stating that “thousands” more immigrant families had been separated than the government had previously disclosed. In the declaration submitted Friday, HHS officials said they don’t know the exact number of children who were taken from their parents before “zero tolerance” and that finding them would be too much of a “burden” since there was no formal tracking system in place.

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit against ICE, in a statement. “The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”

HHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

The deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Jallyn Sualog, said that 100 ORR analysts would have to work eight hours each day for between seven and 15 months to “even begin reconciling” data on separated families. “In my judgment, ORR does not have the requisite staff for such a project,” Sualog wrote in the declaration.

Immigration advocates are appalled by the fact that the government didn’t bother to properly track separated families and that it is now shirking its responsibility to reunite parents and children.

“They are saying they just don’t care,” said Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “It’s shocking frivolous om a human rights perspective for a government to behave this way.”

“I think the policy of taking the children away in the first place was cruel,” said Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer, “but to not even have a system to return the parents to the children just increases the magnitude of the cruelty.”

The government also failed to properly track the roughly 2,800 children that it separated from their parents under the “zero-tolerance” policy between April and June. The administration was required to reunite families as part of an ACLU lawsuit, an ongoing process that has at times required immigration advocates to search for deported parents on foot in remote, crime-ridden areas of Central America.

According to the inspector general’s report, 159 children who were separated under “zero tolerance” are still in ORR care, most of whose parents were deported and decided to keep their kids in the U.S. due to dangerous situations back home. If the government doesn’t allow those parents to re-apply for asylum in the U.S., families may remain permanently separated. Gelernt worries that before “zero tolerance” the government could have deported hundreds more parents who might not have had a say in their children’s futures.

In the declaration, Jonathan White, a commander with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said that most unaccompanied children are released to family sponsors and that in addition to logistical challenges, trying to reunite separated kids with their parents could be destabilizing and “would present grave child welfare concerns.”

But Gelernt says the government should not be making decisions on behalf of mothers and fathers. “[The administration] had no right to just give these kids away unless the parent was making an informed decision,” he said. “This is not a situation where the parents put the child up for adoption. This is a situation where the child was forcibly taken from the parents.”

On Feb. 21, Gelernt will argue in front of a federal judge in California that all families separated before “zero tolerance” should be part of the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit and that the government has a responsibility to reunify these parents with their children. He is disappointed that the administration failed to act humanely towards immigrant families in its declaration.

“The [government] is saying it’s not legally required for them to [reunite families] and therefore they won’t do it,” he said. “But why not do it because it’s the right thing to do?”

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

Isn’t it time for the U.S. District Judge to start holding ICE and ORR officials in contempt of court? What about former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who “masterminded” this cruel fiasco?

Can there be justice without any morality or accountability?

PWS

02-02-19

PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/31/never-mind-wall-theres-more-important-question-we-need-answer/

Waldman writes:

As immigration policy hangs over the ongoing conflict over whether the government is going to remain open, there’s something missing from this discussion, something so fundamental that it’s quite remarkable that we all seem to have forgotten to even ask about it. The president is demanding his border wall, Democrats are fighting against him, and occasionally we bring up issues like the fate of the Dreamers and those here under Temporary Protected Status.

But what nobody asks is this: What kind of immigration system do we actually want?

Not what might happen in the next negotiation or what each side would be willing to give up, but what does each side see as the ultimate goal they’re working toward? If they could look forward ten or twenty years and say “This is where we should get to,” what would that look like?

It’s a vital question, because whatever we’re doing at the moment should be guided by our long-term goals. Once we understand what those goals are, we can think more clearly about where we should go after we get this whole shutdown ridiculousness behind us. And we all ought to be able to agree that there is some future we’re trying to arrive at, a point at which we have a system that works to our satisfaction and immigration isn’t something we’re constantly at each other’s throats about.

That may not be possible, but I’ll start with what liberals would like to see. There are certainly disagreements not just on the left generally but among immigration advocates as well, but there is a basic vision one can identify.

The first thing they want, of course, is to take the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are in the country now and give them a path to citizenship. That’s something even some Republicans agree with, and if you put requirements like learning English and paying back taxes on it, support becomes nearly universal.

Second, liberals would like to see an expansion of the legal immigration system, which is a consistent source of frustration and a driver of illegal immigration. When it can take decades to get approved to move to the United States, of course many people are going to opt for the illegal route, even if it can be dangerous and uncertain. If the legal immigration works, people will go through it and not around it.

And if you have a well-functioning legal system, you can make illegal immigration less attractive, with things like an E-Verify process that makes it harder to find work if you’re undocumented. There may always be some kind of black market for workers, but if you’re simultaneously offering people a legal path — both toward permanent residency and with temporary work visas for people who are looking only to make some money and then return to their home countries — it will be much smaller problem.

So in the liberal vision, we might end up with about the same number of immigrants coming into the country as we have now, it’s just that the overwhelming majority would be coming legally. We’d have security at the border, but we wouldn’t need ICE breaking down doors and tearing parents from their children’s arms. We’d have a robust system to evaluate asylum claims so we wouldn’t have to be throwing people in cages. We certainly wouldn’t pretend that one day there will be no more demand in the labor market for immigrant workers.

There are many Republicans who could be okay with that future, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. But the conservative vision is complicated. For years, we heard Republican politicians say, “I’m for legal immigration. I’m against illegal immigration.” They may not usually have been advocating significant increases in legal immigration, but it’s important to remember that the current venomous hostility toward immigrants was not always the standard Republican position. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both far friendlier toward immigrants than Donald Trump is.

Conservatives might disagree with this characterization, but as I see it, their ultimate goal is a system in which coming into the country illegally is utterly impossible, but levels of legal immigration don’t change much. In other words, we still have immigration, but the flow slows to a trickle. And the Trump administration is making attempts to drastically reduce legal immigration. With the president’s enthusiastic support, domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is driving a nationalist agenda that seeks to drastically reduce the inflow of immigrants to the country and even looks for every possible means to deport both legal and undocumented immigrants, even if they’ve been living here for years or decades.

That’s a somewhat extreme position even within the Republican Party, but it does reflect a discomfort with immigration that is common on the right. It’s the cultural problem, the fact that many people just don’t like having contact with people who don’t look like them or don’t speak the same language they do or eat the same foods they do. Trump very skillfully played to that discomfort by essentially telling voters he could wind back the clock to the time when they were young, before all this disconcerting change happened. His targets were the people who say “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” and when he said he would make America great again, “great again” meant “like things were when you were young.”

That’s a demand that can never be satisfied, even if it’s only a portion of the Republican electorate that really dreams of an America where there are almost no new immigrants and most of those who are already here just disappear. Unfortunately, that portion currently not only controls the White House but exercises a veto over any attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, because the rest of the GOP is so terrified of them.

Which is why it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.

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

Right on, Paul! You “nailed” it! Pretty much what I’ve been saying on “Courtside” all along!

However, the unlikelihood of achieving “comprehensive immigration reform” in the “Age of Trump” shouldn’t prevent the parties from working together in a bipartisan manner on “smaller fixes” such as that relating to child marriage suggested by Nolan Rappaport, posted earlier this week. See https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3Hu

Progress is progress, even by “small steps.”

PWS

02-01-19

EFFECTS OF TRUMP SHUTDOWN, “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” CONTINUE TO ROIL U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM, SCREW MIGRANTS WHO FAITHFULLY SHOW UP FOR “FAKE” HEARINGS! – Trump Shut Down USG Over A Bogus “National Immigration Emergency” While Deeming Immigration Courts “Nonessential!” – Would ICE Agents Dare File “Charging Documents” Containing False Information With “Real” U.S. Courts?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/31/politics/immigration-court-fake-dates/index.html

By Catherine E. Shoichet, Angela Barajas and Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

Updated 10:15 PM ET, Thu January 31, 2019

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a U.S. immigration office with numerous courtrooms Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

(CNN)More than 1,000 immigrants showed up at courts across the United States on Thursday for hearings they’d been told were scheduled but didn’t exist, a lawyers’ group said, as the Justice Department struggles with an overloaded immigration court system and the effects of the recently ended partial government shutdown.

Immigration attorneys reported that lines wrapped around the court building in San Francisco, a line stretched for blocks to get into the court in Los Angeles and hundreds of people waited outside the court in Newark, New Jersey.

Thursday’s problems are the latest example of US immigration authorities issuing a large number of inaccurate notices ordering immigrants to appear at hearings that, it later turns out, had never been scheduled.

Lawyers first told CNN last year that they’d observed a wave of what they call “fake dates” pop up. For instance, lawyers reported examples of notices to appear issued for nonexistent dates, such as September 31, and for times of day when courts aren’t open, such as midnight.

“The immigration courts have reached a new crisis point,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The group said it tracked over 1,000 people showing up in courts Thursday with inaccurate hearing notices.

In Los Angeles, immigrants who had “fake dates” were given paperwork acknowledging they’d appeared at the immigration court, according to attorney Jonathan Vallejo, who provided this redacted copy of one such form.

‘I’m afraid and nervous’

Inside a packed waiting room at the Arlington Immigration Court on Thursday, confused immigrants clutching paperwork asked lawyers for help. Some said they’d driven hours to get to court and had awakened at 3:30 a.m. to arrive on time.

“I’m left with a question mark. I’m wondering, ‘Why?'” said Bigail Alfaro, 39, who’s seeking asylum with her two children. “I’m afraid and nervous.”

RELATED: The government shutdown took its toll on the nation’s immigration courts

As she prepared to head into court for a scheduled hearing, immigration attorney Eileen Blessinger found herself fielding questions and asking court officials to stamp paperwork to provide proof that immigrants had shown up.

“What happened?” one woman asked her.

“You don’t have court, because they made a mistake,” Blessinger said.

At an immigration court in Atlanta, a crowd of around 40 people were turned away, almost one by one, by a Spanish-speaking court employee telling people with notices that their hearings had been “postponed.”

Among those showing up for court were parents with small children, some dressed only with hooded sweatshirts and covering themselves with blankets, with the temperature in Atlanta in the mid-20s.

“They told us they would send us another citation by mail,” said a man named Jose who asked to be identified only by his first name. “But who knows when? And the hard part is they don’t let us know with enough time, enough time to prepare ourselves.”

In Los Angeles, immigration attorney Jonathan Vallejo said he saw 30-40 people ushered into a room where they were told they didn’t have hearings and given forms acknowledging they’d appeared at the court.

“It’s absurd what’s going on,” he said.

RELATED: Trump admin faces two big deadlines on family separation policy

Two lawyers. One court. And their fight against the odds.

Problems were also seen in Dallas, Miami and San Diego, Lynch said.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the division of the Justice Department that runs the immigration courts, said the weather and government shutdown were partially to blame.

The office “was unable to proceed with hearings for some respondents who believed they had hearings scheduled,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “In some cases, the cases had been rescheduled to another date, but the lapse in appropriations prevented the immigration courts from issuing new hearing notices far enough in advance of the prior hearing date.”

An ongoing problem

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nation’s immigration system, specifically taking issue with the practice of releasing immigrants while they await their court dates. To remedy that, his administration has sought to hire more immigration judges in the hopes of unclogging the court.

But that has not happened — there are 409 immigration judges nationwide but nearly 80 vacancies — and the number of cases continues to grow.

For years, the number of pending cases has been slowly creeping up, as more are added to the docket than can be addressed at any given time. There are more than 800,000 cases pending, according to the Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions also created a quota system that requires judges to clear at least 700 cases a year in order to receive “satisfactory” performance evaluations. Between 2011 and 2016, judges completed 678 cases a year on average.

Judge Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, described judges in Los Angeles coming back this week to boxes filled to the rim with mail that had piled up over the course of the 35-day partial government shutdown.

“What this does is it adds greater delay to the cases. We were shortchanged five or four weeks of time,” Tabaddor told CNN. “Not only were we not able to hear cases that were previously cases that were scheduled, but it’s going to take time to regroup.”

RELATED: US immigration authorities detail so-called return-to-Mexico guidance for migrants

Immigration attorneys say the instances of mistakenly scheduled hearings unfairly burden immigrants and create more pressure on a system that’s already suffering from a crushing backlog.

“Imagine the stress of facing potential deportation,” North Carolina immigration attorney Jeremy McKinney said on Twitter. “You’re told show up in court or be ordered deported in your absence. You drive hundreds of miles & wait in line only to be told the court date was not real. ‘Sorry for the minor logistical errors.’ “

A NOTICE TO APPEAR AT MIDNIGHT (p. 1)

Atlanta immigration attorney Rachel Effron Sharma says this is an example of a notice a client received, ordering the client to report to an immigration court at a time when the court was closed.

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

The US Supreme Court ruled in June that notices to appear — the charging documents that immigration authorities issue to send someone to immigration court who’s accused of being in the United States illegally — must specify the time and place of proceedings in order to be valid.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said officials have been working to comply with the court’s requirements for notices to appear, but the lapse in funding during the partial government shutdown had delayed those administrative efforts.

“All appropriate parties are working together to solve this issue going forward,” she said.

In its statement Thursday, the Executive Office for Immigration Review said it had issued policy guidance in December and modified its system so the Department of Homeland Security and its components can directly schedule hearings.

The agency said it “does not expect any further recurrence of this type of situation.”

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

Yup, and it happened in the “Bay Area” also:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Confusion-erupts-as-dozens-show-up-for-fake-13579045.php

Tatiana Sanchez reports for the SF Chronicle:

One woman pulled her daughter out of school to make it to the courthouse on Montgomery Street. Another caught a ride from Fresno. A teenage girl and her ailing mother waited for hours, clutching documents that summoned the mother to Immigration Court Jan. 31.

But none of them got what they came for and expected: a hearing before a judge.

Dozens of people reported Thursday to hearings previously scheduled by the Department of Homeland Security at the federal San Francisco Immigration Court, only to find the appointments didn’t exist.

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Immigration attorneys described similar scenes in Chicago, Atlanta, Virginia, Miami and Texas, where long lines snaked around courthouses for hours.

Federal officials said Thursday’s problems resulted from the government shutdown delaying the process of rescheduling the hearings.

But attorneys representing immigrants called the court dates fake, and said Immigration and Customs Enforcement is sending immigrants notices to appear — charging documents instructing people accused of being in the country illegally to come to court — with court dates it knows are not real.

“Every city in every jurisdiction is doing this, obviously knowing that there really won’t be court on that date,” said Christable Lee, an immigration attorney in San Francisco. “These immigrants are standing with their kids outside with no direction. They’re afraid to stand outside on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse because there could be other immigration authorities there. It’s a really harrowing situation.”

Attorneys say the new practice stems from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, known as Pereira vs. Sessions that requires notices to appear to include a specific date and time in order to be valid. Previously, immigration authorities could send notices with the date listed as “to be determined.”

A similar situation occurred in several cities nationwide Oct. 31 when dozens of people showed up for court hearings that didn’t exist. Since then, some have reported court dates scheduled on weekends or late at night.

In a prepared statement, ICE denied giving immigrants a fake court date, saying, “Due to the recent partial lapse in government appropriations, the administrative process to resolve this issue was delayed, resulting in an expected overflow of individuals with Notices to Appear listing immigration proceedings on January 31.”

Meanwhile, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees all immigration courts, said it was “unable to proceed” with hearings for some people who “believed they had hearings scheduled” Thursday.

“In some cases, the cases had been rescheduled to another date, but the lapse in appropriations prevented the immigration courts from issuing new hearing notices far enough in advance of the prior hearing date,” the agency said in a statement. “In other cases, EOIR did not receive the Notice to Appear (NTA) in a timely manner. Immigration proceedings do not commence until the Department of Homeland Security has filed an NTA with an immigration court.”

Attorneys with the American Immigration Lawyers Association said they’ve received more than 1,000 reports of immigrants who had notices to appear in court containing fake dates, though they said it’s extremely difficult to track.

Mothers with small children, families and confused couples clutching manila folders crowded the sidewalk in San Francisco Thursday while others filled nearby coffee shops and restaurants after being told to come back a different day. The news was particularly troubling for immigrants who traveled several hours to get to the courthouse, many relying on relatives and friends for rides.

More than a dozen people waiting outside the courthouse declined to be interviewed but told The Chronicle that staff informed them court wasn’t in session Thursday. Some people who showed up in the morning were asked to come back later in the day, though it’s unclear what happened once they returned.

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

As I’ve reported before on “Courtside,” contrary to the myths promoted by Trump, DOJ, and DHS, migrants generally appear for court when they get valid notice with real hearing dates and actually have the system explained to them (usually by an attorney); ironically, it’s often EOIR (“the lovable donkey”) that “Fails to Appear” (“FTA”) with an assist from their “partners in crime” over at ICE.

Would a “real court” let the “cops” run roughshod over them and their dockets as EOIR permits ICE to do? Would a “real President” shut down the Immigration Courts over a wall that will have NO, I repeat NO, “immediate impact” on migration while forcing tens of thousands of “ready to try removal cases” to the end of dockets that already stretch out four or more years in some locations?

Part of the problem is the continuing failure since the Clinton Administration of the DOJ to implement the statutory contempt of court authority granted to the Immigration Judges by Congress approximately two decades ago! A few contempt of court orders directed at ICE Agents and the ICE Chief Counsel who are failing to control their so-called “clients,” or perhaps at Secretary Nielsen herself, would bring these absurd, illegal, time-wasting practices that actually hurt real human beings and sow chaos in our justice system to a screeching halt!

That’s why an independent Article I Immigration Court is an essential priority in fixing our immigration system, including the procedures both for granting asylum and other relief promptly, fairly, and in accordance with due process, and issuing removal orders for those who don’t qualify. The current system does neither, for reasons largely beyond the control of the Immigration Judges (although some judges at both the trial and appellate level bear responsibility for failing to carry out in a fair and unbiased manner, consistent with due process, the generous, humanitarian statutes for the granting of asylum and implementing the legal mandates for other forms of protection from persecution and torture. That’s why a transparent, merit-based selection and reappointment system, with provision for public input is essential to an Article I system).

News from the “Journalism Carousel:” Star immigration reporter Priscilla Alvarez has moved to CNN from her prior birth over at The Atlantic. Congrats to Priscilla and to CNN!

PWS

02-01-19

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‘I’m afraid and nervous’

An ongoing problem

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