History – Page 22 – immigrationcourtside.com

🤯👎🏼WHY U.S. ASYLUM LAW IS FAILING UNDER BIDEN: “ASYLUM DENIERS CLUB” 🏴‍☠️ @ EOIR REMAINS MAJOR OBSTACLE TO DUE PROCESS, EFFICIENCY, & BEST PRACTICES UNDER GARLAND — 20% Of IJ’s Deny Asylum @ Rates Of 90% Or More! — Grant Rates “Range” From 0% To 99%, With Nationwide Average Denial Rate of 64% For Represented & 83% For Unrepresented Applicants!

Jason Dzubow, “The Asylumist” —

https://www.asylumist.com/2022/12/21/judging-the-judges-in-immigration-court/

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, Immigration Court is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Also, some of the chocolate is poison.

For many applicants in Immigration Court, the most important factor in determining success is not the person’s story or the evidence or the quality of their lawyer. It is the judge who is randomly assigned to the case. According to TRAC Immigration, a non-profit that tracks asylum approval rates in Immigration Court, Immigration Judge (“IJ”) approval rates vary widely. For the period 2017 to 2022, asylum approval rates ranged from 0% (a judge in Houston) to 99% (a judge in San Francisco). Of the 635 IJs listed on the TRAC web page, 125 granted asylum in less than 10% of their cases. At the other extreme, nine IJs granted asylum more than 90% of the time.

Based solely on these numbers, there is a 20% chance (1 in 5) that your IJ denies at least 90% of the asylum cases that he adjudicates. That’s pretty frightening. But there is much more to the story, which we will explore below.

If Santa were an IJ, it wouldn’t matter whether you were naughty or nice – he would deport you Ho-Ho-Home.

First, the raw TRAC data does not distinguish between represented and unrepresented applicants, and having a lawyer generally makes a difference. Overall, represented applicants were denied asylum in 64% of cases. Unrepresented applicants were denied asylum more frequently–in 83% of cases. So if your IJ sees many cases where the applicant does not have an attorney, her overall denial rate is likely to be higher than if most of her cases have lawyers. To find this information, go to the TRAC website, click on the judge’s name, and scroll almost to the bottom of the IJ’s individual web page. You will see the percentage of cases before that IJ where the asylum applicant had an attorney. If you see that your judge presides over many unrepresented cases, it probably means that her overall denial rate is higher than would be expected if that IJ saw more cases where the applicant had a lawyer. What does this mean? Basically, if you are before such a judge, and you have an attorney, your odds of success are probably better than the judge’s overall denial rate would suggest. Conversely, if you do not have an attorney, your odds of receiving asylum are probably lower than the judge’s overall denial rate would suggest.

A second big factor that is relevant to each IJ’s denial rate is country of origin. People from certain countries are more likely to be denied, and so if your judge sees many people from those countries, his overall denial rate will be pushed up. You can see country-of-origin information if you click on your judge’s name and scroll to the very bottom of his web page. The countries that have had the highest denial rates over the past two decades are: El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico. And so if your IJ has many cases from these countries, his overall denial rate will likely be higher. Meaning that if you are not from one of these countries, your odds of winning asylum are probably better than what your judge’s overall denial rate would suggest.

A third important factor in examining IJ approval rates is the distinction between detained and non-detained asylum applicants. Certain judges have “detained dockets,” meaning that they rule on cases where the applicants are detained. Such people have a much more difficult time winning asylum: Some are barred from asylum due to criminal history or the one-year asylum bar. Others just have a more difficult time preparing their cases because they cannot easily gather evidence while detained. For these reasons, judges who decide many detained cases will generally have a lower overall asylum approval rate. Unfortunately, the TRAC data does not distinguish between detained and non-detained cases, and it is not always easy to know whether an IJ’s record includes detained cases (EOIR has a website that gives some details about each court, including whether that court is located at a detention facility).

While the TRAC data is not perfect (and there is no data on the newest IJs), it is the best source of information we have on Immigration Judge grant rates. Do keep in mind that the numbers only tell part of the story, and it is important to consider the above factors, as well as any other information you can gather from immigration lawyers and asylum applicants about your IJ.

What if you’ve done your research and have concluded that your judge is one of those who denies almost every case she sees? There are a few options.

One: You can go forward with the case and hope for the best. Sometimes a strong case can overcome a judge’s tendency to deny, and after all, even the worst IJs grant cases now and again (except for the 0% guy in Houston).

Two: You can ask for prosecutorial discretion and try to get the case dismissed. Except for cases where the noncitizen has a criminal or security issue, DHS (the prosecutor) is often willing to dismiss. Assuming you can get the case dismissed, you can then re-file for asylum at the Asylum Office (yes, this is a ridiculous waste of resources, but people are now doing it all the time). If you pursue this option, make sure to read the Special Instructions for the form I-589, as you will most likely be required to file your form at the Asylum Vetting Center.

Third: You can move. If you move to a new state (or at least a new jurisdiction within the same state), you can ask the IJ to move your case. Typically, you file a Motion to Change Venue. If the judge agrees, your case will be moved to a different court where you will hopefully land on a better IJ. Judges (and DHS attorneys) do not always agree to allow you change venue, especially if you are close to the date of your Individual Hearing or if you have previously changed venue in the past. And so if you plan to move your case, the sooner you make the move, the better.

Most Immigration Judges will do their best to evaluate the evidence and reach a fair decision. But some IJs seem intent on denying no matter what, and these judges are best avoided, if at all possible. Thanks to TRAC, you can get an idea about whether your IJ is one of these “deniers,” and this will help you decide how best to proceed in your case.

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So, at roughly the “halfway point” of the Biden Administration, one of the “best minds in the business,” Jason Dzubow, is expending his awesome brain-power advising lawyers on “strategies” for avoiding unfair “any reason to deny” Immigration Judges who inhabit about one in five Immigration Courtrooms under Garland! In other words, what steps you have to take to get a “fair hearing” on asylum from an agency whose sole function is SUPPOSED to be providing said “fair hearings” to everyone! See something wrong here?

One of these “strategies:” Request the ICE prosecutor’s agreement to dismissal of the (probably already long-pending) case in Immigration Court and “refile” before the Asylum Office (which also is hugely backlogged). Jason admits “that this is a ridiculous waste of resources, but people are now doing it all the time.”

Wonder why we have huge asylum backlogs? Despite what Trump, Biden, and nativist GOP politicos would have you believe, it has less do with those vainly seeking legal justice at our borders and LOTS to do with inept decisions, dumb actions (some of them downright malicious), and inactions by Congress and Administrations of both parties in the 21st Century.

Garland’s job was to fix this broken, unfair, wasteful, and astoundingly inefficient system. That isn’t “rocket science.” But, it requires dynamic, progressive, due process committed new leadership at EOIR and a major “shakeup” among Immigration Judges, at both the trial and appellate levels, so that those who are “looking for any reason to deny” either are get different jobs or start treating asylum seekers fairly and humanely by following Cardoza, Mogharrabi, Kasinga, and 8 CFR!

Garland hasn’t gotten the job done! And, the applicants and lawyers whose lives and livelihoods are tied up in his beyond dysfunctional system are the ones paying the price for his failure! Also taxpayers see their dollars and resources being poured down the drain at EOIR!

But, they aren’t Garland’s only victims! EOIR’s dysfunction and its failure to provide consistently correct, generous, positive guidance on how to efficiently grant asylum, particularly at the border, drives a whole other series of failures, illegalities, wastefulness, and mis-steps by the Administration.

Much of the nonsense and legally inappropriate gimmicks being rolled out by President Biden himself at the border this week is an insane attempt to avert the dysfunction at EOIR and USCIS by punishing not the inept politicos and bureaucrats responsible (nor political grandstanding GOP demagogues like Abbott & DeSantis), but the victims!

Improperly taking away the legal right to seek asylum at the border and creating more “jury-rigged” faux refugee programs by misusing parole are NOT the answer! Whatever their short-term impact is, in the long run they will fail just like all the other “deterrents” and “asylum work-arounds” unsuccessfully tried by Administrations of both parties over the past two decades.

Indeed, for those of us who have been around immigration law and policy for the last half-century, it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the “ad hoc, highly politicized, unsatisfactory” approach to refugee situations that was superseded by enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980. How little we learn from the past!

What HASN’T been tried is the obvious: Recognizing and vigorously defending the right to asylum and building a fair and efficient adjudication system run and staffed by human rights experts under the existing authority provided by the Refugee Act of 1980, as amended. Why not build a fair, functional, generous legal asylum system under that Act that would encourage applicants to use it and reward those qualified for doing so with timely legal status (including, of course, authorization to work)?

Existing law already provides for “expedited removal,” without full Immigration Court hearings, of those who fail to establish to a trained USCIS Asylum Officer that they have a “credible fear” of persecution! Draconian as that measure is, and it undoubtedly has resulted in mistakes and injustices to asylum seekers, both the Trump and Biden Administrations have gone even further by wrongfully depriving those fleeing persecution of even this limited statutory right to present their claim to an Asylum Officer! To matters worse, both politicos and so-called “mainstream” media have “normalized” this disgraceful and harmful scofflaw behavior by ignoring the pretextual, racist roots of the Title 42 charade!

In the meantime, given the near total lack of leadership, competence, and courage from above to “do the right thing” and bring the “rule of law” to life, I do have a strong suggestion for NDPA members courageously “fighting in the trenches.” Apply for upcoming Immigration Judge vacancies at EOIR in massive numbers, over and over, until the roadblocks are removed and justice prevails!

As the relative proportion of “expert practical scholars” on the Immigration Bench grows and the “deniers’ club cohort” shrinks, change will emerge “from below” at EOIR, lives will be saved by the thousands, and justice will finally be realized in a system that now tries to resist and twist it! Functionality and “good government” will eventually win out over today’s inexcusable, and preventable, mess!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-08-22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-22

🤯👎🏼 EXPERTS’ CONDEMNATION OF BIDEN’S LATEST ANTI-ASYLUM BORDER GIMMICKS SWIFT, BRUTAL, TRUE!

From Eleanor Acer @ Human Rights First:

The president described the new approach as one intended to expand opportunities for migrants. But immigration advocates denounced the changes, saying that they included vast new restrictions on the right to claim asylum for people who need to escape their countries.

Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First, called the new policies “a humanitarian disgrace” and said the president should not be adding restrictions on people who seek refuge in the United States.

“The Biden administration should be taking steps to restore asylum law at ports of entry,” she said, “not doubling down on cruel and counterproductive policies from the Trump playbook.”

https://lnkd.in/eJeDidzY

Biden Announces Major Crackdown on Illegal Border Crossings

nytimes.com • 2 min read

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From Amy Fischer @ Amnesty International USA:

“Amnesty International USA condemns the Biden Administration’s attack on the human right to seek asylum. Today, the Biden Administration fully reversed course on its stated commitment to human rights and racial justice by once again expanding the use of Title 42, announcing rulemaking on an asylum transit ban, expanding the use of expedited removal, and implementing a new system to require appointments through a mobile app for those desperately seeking safety. While we welcome the expanded humanitarian parole program to provide a pathway for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to apply for protection without having to make the dangerous journey to the border, that must not come at the expense of the human right to seek asylum. These new policies will undoubtedly have a disparate impact on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people seeking safety. In fact, Amnesty International previously found that the cruel treatment of Haitians under Title 42 subjected Haitian asylum seekers to arbitrary detention and discriminatory and humiliating ill-treatment that amounts to race-based torture. The United States has both a legal and moral obligation to uphold the right to seek asylum, and over the holidays, we once again saw communities mobilize to welcome asylum seekers with dignity. The Biden Administration must reverse course and stop these policies of exclusion, and instead uphold the right to seek asylum and invest in the communities that are stepping up to welcome.”

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2023/01/biden-administration-continues-to-attack-asylum.html

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From Mary Miller Flowers @ Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights:

“President Biden’s announcement today is a far cry from the commitments he made on day one to fight for racial justice, immigrant rights, and family protection,” Mary Miller Flowers, the senior policy analyst at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, said in a statement.

“The right to asylum should not hinge on your manner of flight from danger or your financial means,” Flowers continued. “Seeking safety is treated as a privilege for a select few, and the Biden Administration’s cherry-picking of who can and cannot access protection proves this.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-border-policy-cubans-haitians-nicaraguans_n_63b72754e4b0ae9de1bcb181

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From Kate Jastrom @ Center for Gender & Refugee Studies @ Hastings Law:

“Today President Biden proudly touted his commitment to providing legal pathways for asylum seekers and improving conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border. These were empty words,” said Kate Jastram, CGRS Director of Policy & Advocacy. “By expanding its deadly Title 42 policy to Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, the Biden administration is going far beyond what any court has required it to do. This expansion will put vulnerable refugees in harm’s way and exacerbate violence and chaos in border communities.”

“People fleeing persecution have a legal right to seek asylum at our border under both U.S. and international law, no matter how they get here, no matter who they know, and no matter what documents they hold,” Jastram continued. “Many are forced to escape their homes under threat of death at a moment’s notice, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Their rights should never be supplanted by limited and discriminatory parole programs that offer relief only to a lucky few. We are also deeply disturbed that the administration has announced plans to revive and repackage the Trump-era asylum transit ban. President Biden cannot pledge to hold the ‘torch of liberty’ aloft, then turn around and embrace the most inhumane, anti-refugee policies of his predecessor.”

https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/news/biden-doubles-down-trump-era-cruelty-border

From Maria Daniella Prieshoff @ Tahirih Justice Center:

“This is truly a stain on the record of any administration seeking to uphold the U.S. asylum law and its responsibilities under international law. We must work together to ensure that for #JusticeForImmigrants is truly equal.”

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From Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.):

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who along with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pushed the Biden administration for months to end Title 42, criticized the administration’s plan, saying it goes too far in restricting migrants’ access to the border.

“The Biden Administration’s decision to expand Title 42, a disastrous and inhumane relic of the Trump Administration’s racist immigration agenda, is an affront to restoring rule of law at the border,” Menendez said in a statement. “Ultimately, this use of the parole authority is merely an attempt to replace our asylum laws, and thousands of asylum seekers waiting to present their cases will be hurt as a result.”

From Jonathan Blazer @ ACLU:

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has led the legal battle to stop the expulsions since the Trump administration, criticized Biden for continuing to rely on Title 42, saying expelling migrants will send them into dangerous border cities where some have been kidnapped or killed. “This knee-jerk expansion of Title 42 will put more lives in grave danger,” Jonathan Blazer, the ACLU’s director of border strategies, said in a statement.

Border Death — This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
In order to comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

From Margaret Cargioli @ Immigrant Defenders Law Center:

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

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/05/biden-border-security-immigration/

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Alas, no surprise to “Courtside” readers! The question is what can and will human rights supporters, progressives, and racial justice advocates DO about the consistent betrayal of humanitarian values values and the rule of law by Dems; not to mention Dems trashing their own campaign promises!

Trump’s nativist racism and Biden’s incompetence have actually moved our nation’s approach to legal refugee and asylum status BACK more than four decades! In place of the international framework put in place by Congress in the Refugee Act of 1980, we now have a hodgepodge of arbitrary, ad hoc, actions by the Biden Administration, relying to an unacceptable (and prima facie illegal) extent on the use of “emergency parole” authority as a partial substitute for legal refugee and asylee admissions!

This favors some non-refugees with “sponsors” over those who meet the accepted international definition of “refugee.” It promotes Executive and political favoritism over the needs of legal refugees. It stands on its head the normal refugee definition requiring an individual to be OUTSIDE their country of nationality to apply.

Congress did give the President extraordinary authority to admit those who otherwise meet the “refugee” definition directly from their native countries in conflict. However, rather than using this legal authority, Biden has chosen to misuse parole to EVADE it.

Even for those Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans fortunate enough to be chosen for parole, the first three groups will be left in limbo with no clear way of obtaining permanent immigration status after the expiration of their two-year “parole.” This obviously converts them into “political footballs” — particularly if the GOP were to regain the Presidency in 2024!

Paroled Cubans, on the other hand, might qualify for green cards under the “Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966” after one year. This creates yet another arbitrary inconsistency among those similarly situated, based solely on nationality.

The Refugee Act of 1980 creates a screening and adjustment process for those admitted as refugees thereunder, similar to the Cuban Adjustment Act. It also creates a similar process for those refugees granted asylum at the border or in the interior.

But, Biden’s choice NOT to use the existing legal provisions established by the Refugee Act of 1980, recreates exactly the type of disorder, arbitrariness, and uncertainty that the Refugee Act of 1980 was intended to end! And, they did in fact more or less end for nearly four decades, prior to the Trump-initiated fiascos that began in 2017 and which Biden, despite pledges to the contrary, has lacked the competence, expertise, and will to end and restore the rule of law!

If properly staffed with human rights experts and dynamic, visionary “practical scholars” as leaders, our legal refugee and asylum systems could not only be restored, but could also be dramatically improved and made fairer! That’s basically what Biden promised during the 2020 campaign.

Outrageously, once in office those promises have been trashed and, predictably, chaos and incompetence reigns. That’s a deadly combination for asylum seekers patiently waiting for our nation to honor its laws and international obligations!

It shouldn’t be like “waiting for Godot!” But, it is!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-06-22

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

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

Biden’s new immigration plan would restrict illegal border crossings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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Read the complete story at the link:

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-05-23

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

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

Burning Down The House

Chaos reigns

Dan Rather

and

Elliot Kirschner

13 hr ago

834

266

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

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

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need a Congress, not a circus.

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

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-05-23

☹️THE BORDER ISN’T THE ONLY PLACE WHERE GOP REVELS IN MAKING KIDS SUFFER — Ludicrous (Yet Predictable) Delay In Choosing House Speaker By “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” 🤡 Makes For Long, Disappointing Day For Families Of Those Waiting To Be Sworn In!

Incoming Rep.Hillary Scholten (D-MI), an NDPA Superhero, patiently waits with family for the GOP Clown Show 🤡 to end. It didn’t on Day 1 of the 118th Congress!
PHOTO: Matt McClain/Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/03/speaker-house-vote-mccarthy-new-congress/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_AMP&location=alert#link-ITWUC7BTSNEGJFZXA6XFSCLKUQ

“Newly elected members can’t be sworn in until the House has a speaker.”

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

The promised GOP Clown Show in the House gets off to a super clownish start! 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-02-22

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

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

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

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

By Erwin Chemerinsky

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

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

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

.. . .

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-02-23

🎊HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023 FROM COURTSIDE — A RETROSPECTIVE — From The 12-26-16 Edition Of “Courtside” — The NDPA Has Gotten Stronger; Our Political, Judicial, & Bureaucratic Officials, Not So Much!

Starving Children — If these kids survive, what will they think about a rich nation that turned its back on the world’s most vulnerable in their hour of need?
Creative Commons License

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/newsheadlines/archive/2016/10/18/saving-child-migrants-while-saving-ourselves-hon-paul-wickham-schmidt-ret.aspx?Redirected=true

Originally published by LexisNexis Immigration Community on Oct. 18, 2016:

SAVING CHILD MIGRANTS WHILE SAVING OURSELVES

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

They cross deserts, rivers, and territories controlled by corrupt governments, violent gangs, and drug cartels. They pass through borders, foreign countries, different languages and dialects, and changing cultures.

I meet them on the final leg of their trip where we ride the elevator together. Wide-eyed toddlers in their best clothes, elementary school students with backpacks and shy smiles, worried parents or sponsors trying to look brave and confident. Sometimes I find them wandering the parking garage or looking confused in the sterile concourse. I tell them to follow me to the second floor, the home of the United States Immigration Court at Arlington, Virginia. “Don’t worry,” I say, “our court clerks and judges love children.”

Many will find justice in Arlington, particularly if they have a lawyer. Notwithstanding the expedited scheduling ordered by the Department of Justice, which controls the Immigration Courts, in Arlington the judges and staff reset cases as many times as necessary until lawyers are obtained. In my experience, retaining a pro bono lawyer in Immigration Court can be a lengthy process, taking at least six months under the best of circumstances. With legal aid organizations now overwhelmed, merely setting up intake screening interviews with needy individuals can take many months. Under such conditions, forcing already overworked court staff to drop everything to schedule initial court hearings for women and children within 90 days from the receipt of charging papers makes little, if any, sense.

Instead of scheduling the cases at a realistic rate that would promote representation at the initial hearing, the expedited scheduling forces otherwise avoidable resetting of cases until lawyers can be located, meet with their clients (often having to work through language and cultural barriers), and prepare their cases. While the judges in Arlington value representation over “haste makes waste” attempts to force unrepresented individuals through the system, not all Immigration Courts are like Arlington.

For example, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (“TRAC”), only 1% of represented juveniles and 11% of all juveniles in Arlington whose cases began in 2014, the height of the so-called “Southern Border Surge,” have received final orders of removal. By contrast, for the same group of juveniles in the Georgia Immigration Courts, 43% were ordered removed, and 52% of those were unrepresented.

Having a lawyer isn’t just important – it’s everything in Immigration Court. Generally, individuals who are represented by lawyers in their asylum cases succeed in remaining in the United States at an astounding rate of five times more than those who are unrepresented. For recently arrived women with children, the representation differential is simply off the charts: at least fourteen times higher for those who are represented, according to TRAC. Contrary to the well-publicized recent opinion of a supervisory Immigration Judge who does not preside over an active docket, most Immigration Judges who deal face-to-face with minor children agree that such children categorically are incompetent to represent themselves. Yet, indigent individuals, even children of tender years, have no right to an appointed lawyer in Immigration Court.

To date, most removal orders on the expedited docket are “in absentia,” meaning that the women and children were not actually present in court. In Immigration Court, hearing notices usually are served by regular U.S. Mail, rather than by certified mail or personal delivery. Given heavily overcrowded dockets and chronic understaffing, errors by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) in providing addresses and mistakes by the Immigration Court in mailing these notices are common.

Consequently, claims by the Department of Justice and the DHS that women and children with removal orders being rounded up for deportation have received full due process ring hollow. Indeed a recent analysis by the American Immigration Council using the Immigration Court’s own data shows that children who are represented appear in court more than 95% of the time while those who are not represented appear approximately 33% of the time. Thus, concentrating on insuring representation for vulnerable individuals, instead of expediting their cases, would largely eliminate in absentia orders while promoting real, as opposed to cosmetic, due process. Moreover, as recently pointed out by an article in the New York Times, neither the DHS nor the Department of Justice can provide a rational explanation of why otherwise identically situated individuals have their cases “prioritized” or “deprioritized.”

Rather than working with overloaded charitable organizations and exhausted pro bono attorneys to schedule initial hearings at a reasonable pace, the Department of Justice orders that initial hearings in these cases be expedited. Then it spends countless hours and squanders taxpayer dollars in Federal Court defending its “right” to aggressively pursue removal of vulnerable unrepresented children to perhaps the most dangerous, corrupt, and lawless countries outside the Middle East: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), the institution responsible for enforcing fairness and due process for all who come before our Immigration Courts, could issue precedent decisions to stop this legal travesty of accelerated priority scheduling for unrepresented children who need pro bono lawyers to proceed and succeed. But, it has failed to act.

The misguided prioritization of cases of recently arrived women, children, and families further compromises due process for others seeking justice in our Immigration Courts. Cases that have been awaiting final hearings for years are “orbited” to slots in the next decade. Families often are spread over several dockets, causing confusion and generating unnecessary paperwork. Unaccompanied

children whose cases should initially be processed in a non-adversarial system are instead immediately thrust into court.

Euphemistically named “residential centers” — actually jails — wear down and discourage those, particularly women and children, seeking to exercise their rights under U.S. and international law to seek refuge from death and torture. Regardless of the arcane nuances of our asylum laws, most of the recent arrivals need and deserve protection from potential death, torture, rape, or other abuse at the hands of gangs, drug cartels, and corrupt government officials resulting from the breakdown of civil society in their home countries.

Not surprisingly, these “deterrent policies” have failed. Individuals fleeing so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have continued to arrive at a steady pace, while dockets in Immigration Court, including “priority cases,” have mushroomed, reaching an astonishing 500,000 plus according to recent TRAC reports (notwithstanding efforts to hire additional Immigration Judges). As reported recently by the Washington Post, private detention companies, operating under highly questionable government contracts, appear to be the only real beneficiaries of the current policies.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We could save lives and short-circuit both the inconsistencies and expenses of the current case-by-case protection system, while allowing a “return to normalcy” for most already overcrowded Immigration Court dockets by using statutory Temporary Protected Status (known as “TPS”) for natives of the Northern Triangle countries. Indeed, more than 270 organizations with broad based expertise in immigration matters, as well as many members of Congress, have requested that the Administration institute such a program.

The casualty toll from the uncontrolled armed violence plaguing the Northern Triangle trails only those from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. TPS is a well- established humanitarian response to a country in crisis. Its recipients, after registration, are permitted to live and work here, but without any specific avenue for obtaining permanent residency or achieving citizenship. TPS has been extended among others to citizens of Syria and remains in effect for citizens of both Honduras who needed refuge from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and El Salvador who needed refuge following earthquakes in 2001. Certainly, the disruption caused by a hurricane and earthquakes more than a decade ago pales in comparison with the very real and gruesome reality of rampant violence today in the Northern Triangle.

Regardless, we desperately need due-process reforms to allow the Immigration Court system to operate more fairly, efficiently, and effectively. Here are a few suggestions: place control of dockets in the local Immigration Judges, rather than bureaucrats in Washington, as is the case with most other court systems; work cooperatively with the private sector and the Government counsel to docket cases at a rate designed to maximize representation at the initial hearings; process unaccompanied children through the non-adversarial system before rather

than after the institution of Immigration Court proceedings; end harmful and unnecessary detention of vulnerable families; settle ongoing litigation and redirect the talent and resources to developing an effective representation program for all vulnerable individuals; and make the BIA an effective appellate court that insures due process, fairness, uniformity and protection for all who come before our Immigration Courts.

Children are the future of our world. History deals harshly with societies that mistreat and fail to protect children and other vulnerable individuals. Sadly, our great country is betraying its values in its rush to “stem the tide.” It is time to demand an immigrant justice system that lives up to its vision of “guaranteeing due process and fairness for all.” Anything less is a continuing disgrace that will haunt us forever.

The children and families riding the elevator with me are willing to put their hopes and trust in the belief that they will be treated with justice, fairness, and decency by our country. The sole mission and promise of our Immigration Courts is due process for these vulnerable individuals. We are not delivering on that promise.

The author is a recently retired U.S. Immigration Judge who served at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington Virginia, and previously was Chairman and Member of the Board of Immigration Appeals. He also has served as Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, a partner at two major law firms, and an adjunct professor at two law schools. His career in the field of immigration and refugee law spans 43 years. He has been a member of the Senior Executive Service in Administrations of both parties.

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

Recently, NDPA stars have achieved important senior positions in the Congress, the judiciary, and the immigration bureaucracy. We will need many, many more in such positions to finally turn around the limping ship of state on human rights, immigration, racial justice, smart economics, and values-based practical leadership! In the end, it’s going to be up to the “newer generations” to overcome the mistakes of my generation and create a better America and a better world — one in which individual rights and human dignity are respected and everyone can achieve their fullest potential.

Here’s a New Year’s greeting from New York courtesy of Round Table leader, talented photographer, and proud new granddad, Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

Happy New Year in NY 2023
PHOTO: Jeffrey Chase

😎🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-01-23

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

By Catherine Rampell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-31-22

⚖️🏴‍☠️ SEPARATION OF POWERS DISAPPEARS AS SUPREME RIGHTY POLITICOS TAKE OVER IMMIGRATION POLICY, IMPOSE BOGUS NATIVIST AGENDA — “[P]olicymakers of last resort,” per Justice Neil Gorsuch!

Jay Kuo
American Author, Producer, CEO of The Social Edge
PHOTO: Facebook

Torture — Some righty judges get all the way to the Supremes while remaining indifferent to the wrongful suffering of humanity from their bad judging!y
Photo by David R. Badger, Creative Commons

https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/scotus-just-deployed-its-most-potent?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

From “The Status Kuo” by Jay Kuo:

Time and again, the current Supreme Court has waded into what should be a political fight, using its broad power to effectively freeze or rewind the clock. In so doing, it has often locked in the worst possible outcome, then leveraged its busy and lengthy docket to unacceptably extend that outcome.

It did this with the Texas vigilante enforced abortion law, allowing a facially unconstitutional restriction to remain on the books and actively in place, effectively shutting down reproductive health services across the state. It did it again by staying lower federal court orders that had struck down unconstitutional racial gerrymanders in the South, permitting illegal maps to disenfranchise African American voters. That was at least four seats that should have been minority opportunity districts—enough to cost the Democrats the House majority. And on Tuesday, SCOTUS pulled this trick once more, this time leaving in place a draconian Trump-era pandemic immigration ban, broadly known as Title 42, that the Biden administration wanted gone and that a federal judge already had ordered lifted.

In so doing, the Court further revealed itself as precisely what it should not be: a political powerbroker and, as even conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in dissent, a group of “policymakers of last resort.”

What’s the story behind Title 42, and how does this most recent ruling get things upside down? What will it mean for the thousands of desperate migrant families camped in dangerous conditions at the border? And what should we expect next from Congress and the White House? I explore these and some key takeaways from the decision.

. . . .

It is next-level hypocrisy that red state leaders, who during the pandemic eschewed all manner of basic preventative health measures at great cost to human life, should now champion a policy that cites the virus as the reason to expel millions of theoretical carriers. The idea that Mexico was somehow a greater vector for disease and infection than the red states of America is also both deeply cynical and plainly counterfactual.

From a policy standpoint, the notion that certain states can claim they would suffer special harm from the lifting of Title 42 and that this somehow gives them standing to stop the government in its tracks threatens to upend our entire federal system. In every policy decision by federal authorities there are winners and losers, from taxation to infrastructure spending to rules around land and water use. Immigration, and the states which allegedly are most affected by it, should receive no special dispensation or consideration. Giving these states a voice and standing in this instance sufficient to hamstring the government would be premised on nothing but the Court’s apparent political priorities, and not sound federal principles.

Finally, the crisis at the border truly requires a bipartisan political solution, but no comprehensive immigration reform bill has passed Congress since 1986. Today, the “problem” of immigration has become a useful political tool for Republicans around which to rally their base and with which to fundraise. Unsurprisingly then, they appear to have no real interest in actually trying to solve the problem through legislation. As Secretary Pete Buttigieg has observed, this will remain the case so long as the problem of immigration is more useful to them than the solution.

The upshot is, we likely will continue to see misery at our border and buses of migrants sent by governors Abbott of Texas and DeSantis of Florida dropped off in liberal bastions like Martha’s Vineyard or in front of Vice President’s Harris’s home in D.C. The Biden Administration will still continue to work quietly behind the scenes to lessen the impact of Title 42 and to argue in court for ending the policy. But whether SCOTUS will relinquish its de facto policymaking role to the proper branches of government remains unclear.

Jay Kuo is the CEO of The Social Edge, a digital publishing and social media company based in New York City. Jay is head of “Team Takei,” managing engagement with Star Trek legend George Takei’s 23 million Facebook, Instagram and Twitter followers. Jay is also the composer, lyricist and co-librettist for the Broadway musical Allegiance as well as the librettist on the Broadway-bound Indigo, the first musical to feature and star a teenage girl on the autism spectrum. Jay is also a two-time Tony-winning co-producer for the hit musical Hadestown and the critically acclaimed, epic play The Inheritance.

Apart from his Broadway and social media work, Jay is a published author, an avid political blogger, and a partner in Gaingels LLC, the nation’s largest private investment syndicate. While he worked as an attorney, Jay was an appellate litigator admitted to practice before the Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court.

Jay has served on the boards of the Northern California ACLU and the Bay Area Lawyers Individual Freedom, and he argued the first Ninth Circuit challenge to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Jay currently serves on the national board of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization serving the LGBTQ+ community.

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

Read Jay’s complete, very clear and understandable, analysis of the Title 42 charade at the link.

These ivory tower right wing zealots in robes exempt themselves from the human pain and suffering that their horrible judging causes. Judges are supposed to solve problems. This gang makes them worse!

Lets’ repeat it again: The idea that this “esoteric issue,” raised at the last second, by corrupt GOP AGs who aren’t even parties to this case, claiming largely phantom “harm” that pales in relation to the well-documented life-threatening harm suffered by legal asylum seekers every day, merits an indefinite stay that inflicts yet more unconscionable harm, even death, upon the most vulnerable among us, is as illegal as it is patently absurd.

That it was imposed by five judges on our highest Court, who are suppose to uphold our Constitution and individual rights against government overreach is something that should be of grave concern to all who believe in American democracy, particular future generations who will have to live with the shame and damage inflicted by these out of touch far-right jurists!

Better judges for a better America! Why should judges who have never participated in the “retail level of our justice system” — by representing individuals in our broken, biased, and dysfunctional Immigration Courts — be ensconced on our highest Court and given life or death power over persons they wrongfully treat as less than human and whose legal and human rights they so shamelessly deny?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-30-22

🗽FROM LA TIMES ED BD: TWO BIG LIES & A WIDELY IGNORED TRUTH ABOUT THE S. BORDER: 1) LIE #1: Title 42 Is Effective Border Control; 2) LIE #2: The Border Is Wide Open; 3) TRUTH: There Is A Humanitarian Crisis At The Border & Many Gov. Actions Are Making It Worse!

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-12-28/la-ed-border-myths

BY THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

DEC. 28, 2022 3 AM PT

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The myths — or, rather, convenient lies — that some politicians keep circulating about the U.S.-Mexico border have resulted in another disappointing congressional session for immigration reform.

Instead of crafting much-needed solutions to address the fate of young immigrant “Dreamers,” the backlog of cases in immigration courts or any of the myriad problems caused by outdated immigration laws, policymakers spent most of their time wrangling over Title 42, a public health order invoked during the COVID-19 pandemic to manage border crossings.

Disinformation prevents policymakers from having honest discussions and enacting sensible solutions. The complex U.S.-Mexico border region is a confluence of cultural, social and economic communities whose problems need sophisticated solutions not easily summarized by sound bites. Yet many people continue to peddle misconceptions about the border and engage in partisan theater such as dispatching migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’ home or creating a wasteful wall of shipping containers, as the Arizona governor has done.

The debate on immigration and border control is likely to intensify in early 2023, when the GOP takes control of the House. Though there’s little expectation of significant legislation in a divided Congress, the constant arrival of migrants at the border is sure to keep the topic in the news. Because it’s important to look beyond sound bites, we’re fact-checking the misconceptions about the U.S.-Mexico border you are likely to hear in the coming months.

. . . .

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Read the complete editorial at the link.

The lies and myths are largely pushed by GOP nativist politicos, and some right wing activist Federal Judges, although disgracefully some Dems have adopted, enabled, or gone along with certain aspects of them.

NGOs, communities, and advocates are about the only ones acting with urgency on the truth of this solvable humanitarian crisis. In doing so, they too often face roadblocks or lack of competence, honesty, and urgency from government officials at all levels.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-29-22

☠️💀COURT OF SUPREME INJUSTICE: “NO ROOM AT THE INN!” — GOP JUSTICES INFLICT PAIN, SUFFERING, POSSIBLE DEATH ON MOST VULNERABLE HUMANS! 🤮 — Justice Gorsuch Defects, Leads Dissent Against Majority’s Shameless Righty Political Pandering!

Four Horsemen — GOP Supremes believe in a different version of the “Christmas Story.” One that bypasses the humane, hopeful message!
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson dissented, with Justice Jackson joining Justice Gorsuch in a written dissent. In it, Gorsuch explains why he would deny the states’ request for a stay of the district court order and request for an expedited briefing:

“Reasonable minds can disagree about the merits of the D. C. Circuit’s intervention ruling. But that case-specific decision is not of special importance in its own right and would not normally warrant expedited review. The D. C. Circuit’s intervention ruling takes on whatever salience it has only because of its presence in a larger underlying dispute about the Title 42 orders. And on that score, it is unclear what we might accomplish. Even if at the end of it all we find that the States are permitted to intervene, and even if the States manage on remand to demonstrate that the Title 42 orders were lawfully adopted, the emergency on which those orders were premised has long since lapsed. In April 2022, the federal government terminated the Title 42 orders after determining that emergency immigration restrictions were no longer necessary or appropriate to address COVID–19. 87 Fed. Reg. 19944. The States may question whether the government followed the right administrative steps before issuing this decision (an issue on which I express no view). But they do not seriously dispute that the public-health justification undergirding the Title 42 orders has lapsed. And it is hardly obvious why we should rush in to review a ruling on a motion to intervene in a case concerning emergency decrees that have outlived their shelf life.”

For more on the devastating impact of Title 42 and other Trump-era changes on asylum seekers, see Lindsay Muir Harris, Asylum Under Attack, 67 Loyola Law Review 1 (2021).
IE

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2022/12/breaking-news-us-supreme-court-issues-order-in-arizona-et-al-v-mayorkas-keeping-in-place-title-42-fo.html
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Quite notably, NEITHER ACTUAL PARTY TO THIS CASE REQUESTED THIS TOTALLY UNJUSTIFIED STAY! In fact, both opposed an indefinite stay!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS
12-28-22

⚖️👏😎👍🏼 CELEBRATING INSPIRING TEEN LEADERS — “[A]sk yourself how you can help. We’re in this together, after all.”

https://www-teenvogue-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.teenvogue.com/gallery/21-under-21-2022/amp

From Teen Vogue:

So far, the 2020s have proven to be a time of great change, and the past year has been no exception. In 2022, we endured a third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, saw girls and young women fight for gender equality in Iran, watched as Russia escalated its invasion in Ukraine, protested after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and continued to fight for racial equality and social justice of all kinds.

Amid the hardship, however, has been immense hope — driven particularly by young people. Gen-Z turned out in droves to vote in the midterm elections, hampering the “red wave” predicted by the GOP; young LGBTQ people have fought back against homophobic rules in their cities and states; and groups like the ever-powerful Gen-Z for Change have made waves across activist spaces.

To honor their work and the lasting change young people have made this year, Teen Vogue presents our annual 21 Under 21, a list of changemakers, influencers, activists, and artists who have made a substantial impact in both their communities and the world.

But as we celebrate these young people, we also understand that we shouldn’t have to — young people are too often upheld as the ones who will save the world, but it’s a job that shouldn’t necessarily rest on their shoulders. In our recent cover marking 10 years since the tragedy at Sandy Hook, March for Our Lives co-founder Delaney Tarr wrote about the gun violence crisis in America: “[The youth activist industrial] complex puts the focus on…the individual vs. the system, the youth vs. everyone who should bear responsibility for this crisis. And at what cost?”

So, as you read about and celebrate these extraordinary young people who are, no doubt, doing their part to save the world, ask yourself how you can help. We’re in this together, after all.

Here are Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21 2022:

. . . .

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

Read all about these talented, courageous, inspiring young people at the above link.

Many thanks to the amazing Hannah Cartwright (“Hannah from Indiana”) for sharing this! Hannah is an “outstanding alum” of the Arlington Immigration Court Internship Program and a former EOIR Judicial Law Clerk, selected under the AG’s Honors Program! She’s a “charter member” of the NDPA, and has degrees from Catholic University in both law and social work.

Hannah currently is Executive Director & Immigration Attorney at the Mariposa Legal Foundation in Indianapolis, IN, a program of COMMON Foundation. Look forward to seeing you on the Immigration Bench in the future, Hannah! Your “practical scholarship,” proven leadership, and real life experience assisting individuals caught up in the morass of today’s immigration bureaucracy are exactly what EOIR needs right now to fulfill the one-time vision of “through teamwork and innovation, being the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!” ⚖️🗽

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever, & Best Wishes to All!

PWS🎄😎

12-25-22

👍🏼 ⚖️🗽“CHANGE COMES FROM THE GROUND UP” — Expert Yale-Loehr Reinforces Schmidt & Friends! — EOIR Judgeships 👩🏻‍⚖️👨🏽‍⚖️ Are A Great Place To Start “Grass Roots Due Process Improvements!”

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/expert-change-happens-from-the-ground-up

Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Cornell Law

Expert: “Change Happens From The Ground Up”

Victor Reklaitis, MarketWatch, Dec. 22, 2022

“Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell showed last week that he’s thinking about how recent lower immigration has factored into the ongoing U.S. labor shortage, but he said it’s not appropriate for the Fed to call for increased legal immigration to help alleviate the shortage. Could his remarks, careful as they were, somehow move the needle on immigration policy? His comments came as one new bipartisan proposal for immigration reform flopped in Congress, and some analysts say they aren’t optimistic about progress on immigration next year in a divided Washington. Still, others see Powell’s remarks having a small effect. … Powell’s answer could be seen as part of a slow process that eventually results in long-awaited fixes to the U.S. immigration system, according to Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School. “To me, it’s like water dripping on a rock,” Yale-Loehr told MarketWatch in an interview. “A single drop of water, whether it’s from Fed Chairman Powell or somebody else, won’t make a difference by itself. But if enough drips of water from other people and other studies consistently show that immigration can help our labor shortages and improve our economy, then I hope that will move the needle so that Congress will seriously take up immigration reform in 2023.” … The Cornell professor also suggested that grassroots efforts eventually might end up spurring U.S. lawmakers to do more. “A lot of change happens from the ground up, rather than the top down — if you think about civil-rights legislation in the 60s, the Environmental Protection Act of 1970, the antiwar efforts,” he said. “It was because people really protested the existing framework that they forced Congress to make changes in those areas. And so too, I think that if more Americans stood up and said, ‘We need immigration reform,’ I think that that would help persuade Congress to actually put pen to paper and make some significant changes.””

Compare with my recent post on the need and opportunity to get more NDPA experts on the immigration bench @ EOIR. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/12/21/%f0%9f%91%a9%f0%9f%8f%bb%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%a8%f0%9f%8f%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-five-attorneys-with-recent-experience-representing-individuals-in-immigration-court-among-garland/

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

What better place to start forcing some long overdue changes than by getting more NDPA “practical scholar/experts” onto the EOIR bench where lives are on the line every minute of every working day? There are lots of ways to do justice at the “retail level” despite, or perhaps because of, the indifference of those in charge!

Folks, approximately a decade ago, the asylum grant rate at EOIR exceeded 50%! When grants of withholding (many the result of the 1-year-bar on asylum) and CAT were added in, almost 2/3 of asylum applicants who got a merits determination received some form of legal protection!

The vast majority of these cases were not appealed to the BIA. Slowly, but steadily, the EOIR system “at the retail level” was committing to expertise, sound scholarship, due process, fundamental fairness, faithful application of the generous legal principles established in Cardoza, Mogharrabi, and the regulatory presumption of future future persecution based on past persecution.

For years, those precedents and that regulation were resisted by many EOIR judges who continued, in practice, to apply the higher “more likely than not” standard rejected in Cardoza. But, following a series of savagely critical reversals of EOIR asylum denials by the Courts of Appeals the ground started to shift toward a more generous, proper, and correct interpretation of asylum law. Notably, those Court of Appeals “roastings” came after AG John Ashcroft “purged” the BIA in 2003 of appellate judges who spoke out for a better legal interpretation of asylum laws — one that faithfully followed Cardoza, Mogharrabi, and international standards!

As I used to tell my Georgetown Law students, a quarter century after the Supremes’ landmark decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, establishing the generous “well-founded fear” standard for asylum (reasonable likelihood = 10% chance) and the BIA’s implementation of that standard in Matter of Mogharrabi (asylum can be granted even where it is significantly unlikely that persecution will occur) the more generous standard was actually achieving “traction” at EOIR!

The law hasn’t changed very much since 2012. But, the progress toward a “Cardoza/Mogharrabi compliant” interpretation and application of asylum law halted and regressed substantially during the last part of the Obama Administration and during the Trump era.

What did change, for the worse, was the attitude of politicos, who have seen the Immigration Courts as captive “tools” to deter asylum seekers and “send negative messages” rather than insuring that they function as due-process-oriented, independent, subject matter expert, courts of law. The qualifications of those selected as Immigration Judges were “watered down” to favor high-volume government prosecutorial experience over demonstrated expertise in immigration and asylum laws and “hands on” experience representing individuals before EOIR.

Not surprisingly, asylum grant rates dropped precipitously during the Trump years. Although they have rebounded some under Biden, they still remain below the 2012 levels. It’s certainly not that conditions have substantially “improved” in major “sending countries.” If anything, conditions are worse in most of those countries than in the years preceding 2012.

So, if the law hasn’t changed substantially and conditions haven’t improved, what has caused regression in asylum grant rates at EOIR? It comes down to poor judging, accompanied by inadequate training, too much emphasis on “churning the numbers over quality and correctness,” and a BIA that really doesn’t believe much in asylum law and lacks the expertise and commitment to consistently set and apply favorable precedents and end disgraceful inconsistencies and “asylum free zones” that continue to exist.

Some of the most disgraceful, intentional asylum misinterpretations by Sessions and Barr now have been reversed by Garland. Unfortunately, he failed to follow-up to insure that the correct standards are actually applied, particularly to recurring circumstances. It’s one of many reasons that the Biden Administration struggles to re-establish a fair and efficient legal asylum system at the Southern Border — notwithstanding having two years to address the problems!

But, it doesn’t have to be this way! Recently, a number of notable “practical scholar experts” have been appointed to the Immigration Judiciary. When such well-qualified jurists reach a “critical mass” in the expanding EOIR, systemic changes and improvements in practices and results will happen.

The “dialogue” among Immigration Judges from government backgrounds and those from the private/NGO sector will improve. Lives will be saved. Life-threatening inconsistencies and wasteful litigation to correct basic mistakes at all levels of EOIR will diminish. The EOIR system will resume movement toward the former noble, but now long abandoned, vision of “through teamwork and innovation, being the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”

So, warriors ⚔️🛡of the NDPA, make those applications for EOIR judgeships! Storm the tower from below! Make a difference in the lives of others and help save our democracy! If not YOU, then who?👩🏻‍⚖️👨🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-23-22

🏰🏴‍☠️“FORTRESS EUROPE” HAS RECEDED FROM U.N. REFUGEE CONVENTION — SPOILER ALERT: It Hasn’t Gone Well! — The US Appears Wedded To The Same Path Of Failure & Deadly Human Rights Abuses!☠️⚰️

Chico Harlan & Stefano Pitrelli report for WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/19/migration-europe-numbers-increase/

CROTONE, Italy — On a continent that has spent years trying to cut off undocumented immigration — using fences, surveillance, financial incentives and sometimes even brute force — the close-the-door strategy is faltering

Migration across the Mediterranean has crested to the highest level in five years. New nationalities, most notably from Egypt, have joined the stream of people seeking escape to Europe. And hard-line border policies are merely driving smugglers to adapt: Soon after Greek authorities instituted a practice of harsh pushbacks, boats departing Turkey began charting a longer route — bypassing Greece and heading instead to Italy’s Calabrian coast, an area that used to see almost no arrivals.

“Here comes another,” a law enforcement official at the port of Crotone said one recent morning, watching a vessel with 80 people come into view, just four hours after the arrival of a boat with 81 others.

France accepts migrant rescue ship rejected by Italy as tensions flare

The European Union’s desire to obstruct migration on multiple fronts was reflected in a collection of deals cobbled together in the aftermath of a 2015 mass-scale wave from Africa and the Middle East. And, for a while, the strategy appeared to be working: Mediterranean crossings dipped dramatically. The issue lost political primacy, depriving nationalist parties of kindling.

But an increase in arrivals this year is showing the limits of a Fortress Europe strategy — and reviving the highly contentious issue of how to handle and divvy up those who make it to the E.U. and its borderless travel zone.

“Europe’s expectations were based on a wrong assumption — that mobility across the Mediterranean could be stopped or limited, so it would no longer be politically relevant,” said Roberto Cortinovis, a migration specialist at the Center for European Policy Studies. “And that is impossible.”

. . . .

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

Some of the same things are happening here. Nativist/restrictionists, largely, but not exclusively, from the GOP, keep pushing failed “deterrence only” enforcement policies. And, the USG keeps “investing” in them despite decades of proven failure and deadly human results.

Ironically, today should have been the end of the illegal and abominable Title 42 charade. But, as with past fictional “deadlines” for termination, it didn’t happen.

Even today, nativist GOP Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) seeks to “sink” the Omnibus Budget Bill with a “poison pill” amendment that would require the Biden Administration to extend the deadly and illegal Title 42. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3784529-mike-lee-title-42-drama-holds-up-omnibus-passage/

Just to put Lee’s outrageous abuse of the law and human rights in perspective, remember that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan recently concluded, on a voluminous record, that the use of Title 42 to deny migrants’ legal rights at the border was: 1) an illegal pretext from the beginning, and 2) causes “stomach churning” dire, irreparable harm, including rape, torture, and death, to legal asylum seekers. Essentially, nativist politicos like Lee are trying to force the Biden Administration to commit even more egregious human rights violations — on top of the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, they have already committed by enforcing Title 42 over the past two years.

While Lee’s scurrilous and totally misguided amendment is likely to fail, another almost equally bad one, sponsored by Sen. Sinema (I-AZ) to extend Title 42 indefinitely (till a “better plan” is in effect, which will never happen, particularly if the GOP has anything to say about it), is also up for a vote. “Lost in the shuffle” is the simple fact that we have existing laws that could and should be used to timely grant refugee to those legally qualified while expeditiously and summarily removing those with no credible claim. That the Biden Administration has failed to develop a viable plan for re-implementing existing law (which had been in effect for decades before being illegally abrogated by Trump) over the past two years should not be confused with impossibility!

As Nolan Rappaport recently said over on The Hill, “Title 42 is a distraction, not the solution. . . . . And Title 42 didn’t prevent a surge in the number of illegal crossings.” https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3782869-bidens-border-crisis-title-42-is-a-distraction-not-the-solution/.

Far from it, as many experts have pointed out, illegally “closing” ports of entry to asylum seekers has made unauthorized entry the “sole and exclusive” way for asylum seekers to exercise their rights! Yet, nativist politicos, the media, and even the Biden Administration ignore or mister present this truth.

As the International Organization on Migration has said, ““Migration is inevitable, necessary and desirable.” https://www.iom.int/news/migration-inevitable-necessary-and-desirable-opening-exhibition-iom-hague. It can be controlled and channeled with wise, realistic, and humane decisions. But, it won’t be stopped by walls, prisons, deportations, racist nationalistic rhetoric, militarization of borders, or cruel and inhumane laws and restrictionist policies.

Or, as I have said before, “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration.” Sure, the U.S. needs comprehensive, robust immigration reform that recognizes the inevitably and mutual benefits of human migration. But, particularly with a GOP House, it’s not on the horizon.

In the meantime, it is incumbent on the Biden Administration to make existing laws and policies work to timely, efficiently, and humanely screen refugees and asylum seekers at our borders. Those who qualify should be admitted in a reasonable period of time rather than aimlessly sent to wander the U.S. waiting for interviews from USCIS or hearings from EOIR that might never happen because of mismanagement and lack of vision in the current system. Those who don’t have credible claims should be subject to the summary removal procedures of the current law.

That the Biden Administration has, to date, lacked the competence, vision, and expertise to make the existing laws work in an acceptable manner is a shame. Ultimately, it’s one they won’t be able to “run away from” no matter how hard they try!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-22-22

Jason Dzubow, “The Asylumist” —

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

From Amy Fischer @ Amnesty International USA:

From Mary Miller Flowers @ Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights:

From Kate Jastrom @ Center for Gender & Refugee Studies @ Hastings Law:

From Maria Daniella Prieshoff @ Tahirih Justice Center:

From Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.):

From Jonathan Blazer @ ACLU:

From Margaret Cargioli @ Immigrant Defenders Law Center:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Burning Down The House

Chaos reigns

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Originally published by LexisNexis Immigration Community on Oct. 18, 2016:

SAVING CHILD MIGRANTS WHILE SAVING OURSELVES

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

😎🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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By Catherine Rampell

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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From “The Status Kuo” by Jay Kuo:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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From Teen Vogue:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever, & Best Wishes to All!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Chico Harlan & Stefano Pitrelli report for WashPost:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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