Reichstag Fire – immigrationcourtside.com

☠️⚰️🤮⚠️ DEMS MUST PREPARE FOR AN UNRELENTING DOSE OF THE “BIG LIE” ABOUT “OPEN BORDERS” FROM GOP WHITE NATIONALISTS — Don’t Expect Much Help Or Honest Reporting From The So-Called “Mainstream Media!” — “Loud fantasies are expansively covered, while life-and-death stories, like those of that infant and her mother, are seldom reported and, if they are, quickly disappear,” Says The Border Chronicle! — “Roger That!”

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
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

Todd Miller
Border Correspondent
Border Chronicle
PHOTO: Coder Chron

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/the-open-border-farce?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

The “Open Border” Farce

In 2023, there were record contracts for private industry on the world’s deadliest land border.

TODD MILLER

NOV 9

This article is a collaboration between The Border Chronicle and TomDispatch, a great outlet which has been looking at U.S. foreign policy, the military industrial complex, the “forever wars,” climate change, and many other topics since 2001.

On September 23rd, at about 2:30 a.m., a Border Patrol surveillance camera captured two people crossing the international boundary between Mexico and the United States on the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. A Border Patrol vehicle arrived quickly, but not before one of them had fled back into Mexico. When an armed agent stepped out, dressed in a forest-green uniform, he found a 16-year-old girl from Mexico softly crying, while holding her month-old baby swaddled in a blanket.

The agent commanded her to get in the vehicle. As they then drove to the Nogales Border Patrol station, the girl, he later reported, tried to speak to him in Spanish through the security partition that separated them. Her tiny daughter, she was telling him, was in distress. Cameras showed that the vehicle stopped for all of 10 seconds before continuing. The agent later claimed he couldn’t understand what she was saying and that he wanted to find a fluent Spanish speaker at the station. He didn’t realize, he insisted, that the infant was struggling to breathe, though the child soon died.

This hellish story of suffering at our border is but one of hundreds of similar tales of horror from 2023. They illustrate a fundamental truth about that border: it neither is, nor ever was, an “open” one in the Biden years, nor does the president faintly have an open-border policy, though prepare yourself to hear otherwise — over and over again — in Trumpublican campaign ads next year. They’ll repeat what party officials are already saying all too repetitively: that “President Biden’s radical open borders policies” have created “the worst border crisis in American history.” (While those are the exact words of House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, similar sentiments are already being offered by countless members of the GOP.)

Comer’s claim is, of course, no less predictable than the hardships migrants like that girl are suffering as they try to reach this country. While such border narratives traffic in the unreal, what is real either isn’t effectively reported or gets lost amid all the politically motivated noise. Loud fantasies are expansively covered, while life-and-death stories, like those of that infant and her mother, are seldom reported and, if they are, quickly disappear.

Barely a week before that 16 year old was desperately trying to communicate to the agent in Spanish, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) labeled the U.S.-Mexico border the world’s “deadliest migration land route.” In 2022, a record 853 remains of dead border crossers were recovered (and this is the U.S. Border Patrol’s figure, which is even higher than the IOM’s), dwarfing the record of 568 set the previous year. Such numbers, the IOM stresses, are known to be distinct undercounts, leaving all too many families pining for lost loved ones.

But those border fatalities weren’t the only record breaker. Another was confirmed just a week after medical personnel at the Nogales station rushed to treat that girl’s baby. The number of border contracts issued to private industry also set a new record. Like those deaths, such contracts soared in fiscal year 2023 to $9.96 billion, instantly stripping the previous high, also set last year, of $7.5 billion.

And mind you, those gifts to industry were made from the highest budget ever (including in the Trump years) for border and immigration enforcement: $29.8 billion. So, don’t for a second think that the U.S. has an “open” border. In fact, it’s never been more fortified or — something few even bother to mention — more profitable, if you happen to be part of the border-industrial complex.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Maybe it’s because the victims are “only migrants, mostly people of color” and therefore not considered to be “real human beings” by some in the media; maybe it’s because getting the real story about the border requires intensive digging, intellectual expertise, and perhaps some danger; maybe it’s because editors are in search of alarmist “sky is falling” myths about the “border apocalypse” to attract readers, viewers, and “online hits;” maybe it’s because of a false belief that truth is “boring” and “doesn’t sell!”

For whatever reason, the non-Fox networks (Fox is a primary purveyor of the “Big Lie” and the “Open Borders Fantasy”) and “mainstream media” do a really poor job on border reporting.

Those with even a passing familiarity with “talking heads” are no-doubt familiar with claims from nativist GOP politicos, righty reporters, and even some Dems about the mythical a “open borders!” None of these folks have recent experience helping asylum seekers trying to exercise their legal rights under domestic laws, international treaties, and our Constitution in a border system specifically designed to “discourage and deter” them, rather than identify and promptly grant the many legally sufficient claims for protection.

By contrast, when is the last time you saw real experts — folks like Clinical Professor Steve Yale-Loehr, former Deputy UNHCR and Georgetown Law Dean Alex Aleinikoff, CGRS Director Karen Musalo, HRF Refugee Programs Director Eleanor Acer, UC Davis Law Dean Kevin Johnson, NIJC Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy, Immigrant Defenders Executive Director Lindsay Toczylowski, Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) or any of the other huge numbers of highly articulate, well-recognized, “hands on practical experts” on human rights and asylum appear on the “talking heads” to throw some truth and real light on this important, nearly totally misunderstood and intentionally misconstrued, issue that GOP nativists have thrust to the forefront of the 2024 campaign?

Meanwhile, Dems should NOT be “running away” from the realities and essential benefits provided by robust immigration and the cruel wastefulness and immorality of Trumps’s proposed neo-Nazi “crackdown” on all forms of migration (although, disgracefully, some Dems are doing exactly that, thus playing into the hands of GOP nativists for absolutely NO return).

Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:

Trump Goes To War Against Immigration and Immigrants – It’s Another Big 2024 Problem For Republicans – Here at Hopium we talk about how “Abortion and Treason” will make it very hard for Republicans to win in 2024. It’s possible Trump is now adding a third item to that rancid list – mass deportation. From a new NYT article, Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps, and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans:

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”

The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.

Despite being inhumane and jawdroppingly cruel, this plan is now a major political problem for an already struggling Republican Party for at least three main reasons:

Raids and Mass Deportations Are Deeply Unpopular – We have decades of polling on the forced removal of the 10m+ undocumented immigrants (almost all of whom are employed and pay taxes) in the US, and it is wildly unpopular, perhaps even more so than “abortion bans.” One example – in the 2016 exit polls, in the election that gave Trump the Presidency, the American people choose “offer legal status” to “deported to home country” 70%-25%. Republicans may have a slight advantage on immigration issue right now, but mass deportation is seen as an extreme position by the American people (rightly so). It was so unpopular that the anti-immigration movement dropped mass deportation as a goal, moving to the softer “attrition through enforcement,” or “self-deportation,” political strategy more than a decade ago.

Trump’s plan is another sign of how extremism and extremists have overtaken the party of Lincoln and Reagan.

As I document here, since 2005, when the national Republican Party began adopting a far harder line on immigration (Reagan, W. Bush and McCain were all immigration reformers), the 4 battleground states of the Southwest, AZ/CO/NM/NV, have drifted away from the Republican Party, becoming far bluer. In the last 2 elections we’ve seen the best Democratic performance in that region since the 1940s and 1950s, and a reminder that Biden got within 5 points of Trump in Texas in 2020. In the heavily Mexican-American parts of the country in particular raids and mass deportations are wildly unpopular.

It Was A Plan Like This That Caused The Big Hispanic Protests Across the US in 2006 – In 2005 the Republican House of Representatives bucked their President, George W. Bush, and passed a bill that called for the rounding up and mass deportation of the 11m undocumented immigrants in the country. It was the moment when the party of the Sun Belt and the West went from pro-immigration to deeply restrictionist. Over the next year huge protests against this bill and mass deportation erupted across the US, and Republicans became so spooked that we were able to pass a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill through a Republican Senate in 2006. That bill, like the 2013 immigration reform bill we passed through the Senate, was never taken up by the Republican House and it died.

But those protests did something important politically – after years of Republican gains with Hispanics under W. Bush, Hispanics ran back into the arms of Democrats in 2006 and they have essentially stayed there ever since. In the 2006 midterms Democrats won 69% of the Hispanic vote, among our best performances in recent decades.

In the four Presidential elections leading up to 2006 Democrats averaged 47% of the vote, and in 2004 we lost AZ/CO/NM/NV. In the four Presidential elections since 2006 Democrats have averaged 51% and in 2020 we won AZ/CO/NM/NV at the Presidential level for the first time since 1940. As the Hispanic population has grown across the US and in these states, our net vote margin with Hispanic voters keeps increasing, even if we lose a few points in vote share. As I show here, in 2004 the net Hispanic vote margin for Democrats was about 700,000 votes nationally, meaning we won 700,000 more Hispanic votes nationally than Republicans. In 2020 that number was at least 4.5m net votes across the US, with this same dynamic playing out in each state with large Hispanic populations (except Florida of course).

My instinct is that whatever advantage Republicans had on immigration, and whatever small gains they had made with Hispanic voters in recent years, is now gone.

This Plan Will Wreck The American Economy – In a time of existing wide scale worker shortages, removing 10-15m workers from the American economy in a short period of time would be national economic suicide, and will be seen that way by the business community in DC and in the battleground states. It’s just totally insane and extremist policy no matter how you look at it, and I think it could become as much of a drag on the GOP brand as abortion is now.

For a party which has lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections, lost the popular vote to Democrats 51%-46% over the past 4, lost the 2018/2019/2020/2022 and 2023 elections, has deep performance issues across the country even in red states since Dobbs, embracing mass deportations seems like a colossal political error.

It is another reason why I think our goal in 2024 should be not just to win, but to really go on offense, get to 55, and make this election an historic repudiation of the worst and most dangerous political party in our history. We can do this people!

Onward/Adelante – Simon

Thank you for reading Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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It’s critical to remember that migrants aren’t the ONLY target of Trump’s neo-Nazism — they might not even be the primary ones! You can guarantee that many US citizens and lawfully present non-citizens of color will be caught up in the dragnet and sent off to deportation concentration camps where due process is non-existent.

Others will simply avoid certain public places and activities for fear of being accosted. Still others will be forced underground because of fear of drawing attention to undocumented relatives or neighbors. Some U.S. citizens will fear voting, which indeed is a key part of the GOP plan to cement their “out of the mainstream” minority rule by suppressing suffrage! As those of us who adjudicated asylum claims know, many will fear reporting abuses or asserting rights to police who openly identify with their oppressors. Fear, despair, distrust, and resignation are key pillars of any authoritarian regime!

It’s attack on all people of color in America and those who might speak with an accent or dress differently from the GOP’s “White Christian Nationalist norms.”

How many of us carry around documentation proving that our parents were U.S. citizens? Notably, although occupational status is often menioned on U.S. birth certificates, citizenship status is NOT. It’s not hard to guess who will be “required” to “document” their parents’ citizenship by Trump’s internal security police!

Trump and the GOP are an existential threat to U.S. democracy, human progress, and American leadership on the world stage. Don’t let them destroy OUR country and take away YOUR rights!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-14-23

☠️🤮🤯 ‼️🆘 WARNING: TRUMP GOES “FULL HITLER” IN HATEFUL, UNHINGED VETERANS’ DAY RANT! — Why Aren’t The “Mainstream Media” & U.S. Voters Takng This Assault On Humanity, Decency & Democracy Seriously! 🤯

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/

By Marianne LeVine

November 12, 2023 at 5:45 p.m. ET

Former president Donald Trump denigrated his domestic opponents and critics during a Veterans Day speech Saturday, calling those on the other side of the aisle “vermin” and suggesting that they pose a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China or North Korea. That language is drawing rebuke from historians, who compared it to that of authoritarian leaders.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

Trump went on further to state: “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”

The former president’s speech in Claremont, N.H., echoed his message of vengeance and grievance, as he called himself a “very proud election denier” and decried his legal entanglements, once again attacking the judge in a New York civil trial and re-upping his attacks on special counsel Jack Smith. In the speech, Trump once again portrayed himself as a victim of a political system that is out to get him and his supporters.

Yet Trump’s use of the word “vermin” both in his speech and in a Truth Social post on Saturday drew particular backlash.

“The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

“Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians ‘communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left’ to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom,” Ben-Ghiat said. “Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”

. . . .

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

Doubt the comparison? Check this out:

Nazi propaganda and “vermin”

In 1942, Adolf Hitler described Jews living in Germany as an “inferior race that multiplies like vermin.”

“The Nazis dehumanized the Jews. Nazi propaganda is replete with references to Jews as vermin, rats or parasites,” according to Harriet Over, a researcher in psychology at the University of York.

“We are still creating [monsters]. We see it in … Russian attitudes toward Ukrainians, in Hindu Islamophobia, and in American racism against Black people,” psychologist David Livingstone, a professor at the University of New England in Maine, told EL PAÍS.

It wasn’t just Germany.

In 1909, a U.S. satirical magazine, Puck, published a cartoon that showed Uncle Sam as a pied piper leading a group of immigrants from Europe. The immigrants were rats. Sending them off: smiling, well-dressed White men.

. . . .

https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-channels-hate-and-hitler-in-veterans-day-speech-tells-supporters-those-others-are-vermin/

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

I appreciate that Marianne LeVine of WashPost was one of the few “mainstream journalists” with the guts to make the painfully obvious connection and comparison between Trump’s insane threats and Hitler, Mussolini, and other horrible dictators!

Even so, it was only “page 2” news in today’s Post, apparently being of far less concern to her editors than the plans of Middle Eastern countries to “upend global sports!” Harkens back to 1936, when participating in Hitler’s “Aryan Showcase Olympics” was more important to the U.S. and other Western Democracies than protesting and condemning Hitler’s ongoing persecution of Jews!

There was a time in the not too distant past when use of racist, neo-Nazi language like Trump’s would have earned an immediate forceful condemnation from politicians across the political spectrum, from the media, and would have ended a candidacy. Now, it’s “just another day at the office.” Hate, lies, racism, and threats by a powerful national politician, a former President no less, cause barely a ripple in our national political dialogue. Not even front page news! Not covered at all by most “legitimate” news outlets! Yet the threat to our nation is real! Very real!

And, in case anyone still doubts the existential threat to American democracy and civilization itself posed by Trump and his anti-American followers, his “plans” include politicization of government, economic chaos, increasing global warming, and destabilization of the U.S. and world economies. See, e.g., http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=019284ab-7357-40c1-91c7-112654eb687a.

Deranged, false claims of being a “victim,” turning vengeance into a “holy quest,” dehumanizing enemies, uber race-based nationalism, presenting personal grievances as national priorities, and complete disregard for the common good were staples of Hitler’s National Socialism as they are of Trumpism! The question remains whether the U.S. will be able to stand up for democracy, reject Trumpism, and prevent a return to the horrific time of 1939! See also, https://immigrationcourtside.com/just-say-no-to-1939-how-judges-can-save-lives-uphold-the-convention-and-maintain-integrity-in-the-age-of-overt-governmental-bias-toward-refugees-and-asylum-seekers/.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-13-23

🏴‍☠️☠️ THE RIGHT IS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICA! — TRUMP, HENCHMEN, PLANNING “NAZIFACATION” INCLUDING CONCENTRATION CAMPS, MASS DEPORTATIONS, SUSPENSION OF CONSTITUTION, STRIPPING CITIZENSHIP! – Immigrants & Muslims Will Be First Targets, But Not Last!

Steve Schmidt on Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/steveschmidt/p/when-fascism-comes-to-america-it?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Christian nationalism is a grave threat to the United States and the American republic. There should be no ambiguity or dullness when it comes to understanding what it is — no matter how benign it may present itself. It is what lurks beyond the veneer that is terrifying. There, the evil is revealed and manifested.

The dogma is a perversion of Christ’s teachings that is antithetical to Christianity. More importantly, Christian nationalism is utterly opposed to democracy. Theocrats despise the United States. God‘s laws are beyond the reach of the American state, and Christianity is but one religion in the beautiful mosaic of American faith. It should always be noted that 600 generations of humans worshipped freely on the North American continent before the first European Christians came and killed them.

The US Constitution is the law of the land in the United States. Within it are the protections that safeguard our liberty. The freedoms of speech, dissent, conscience, worship and expression shall stand untroubled for as long as the great republic endures. We are within one calendar year of its possible end. We have arrived at a moment of grave crisis that cannot be ignored. The abyss that looked distant seven years ago is at hand.

Christian nationalism is incompatible with American democracy and pluralism. When political extremists take power in the name of God there is always death. Always.

I was pleased to participate in “American Theocracy: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” a documentary released in January 2023. Please watch this clip below. I have shared it before, but the fire keeps building.

The separation of church and state and religious freedom are profoundly important foundational achievements of the American republic. The extremists who seek power in God’s name are not benign men and women. They won’t be deterred by setbacks in Ohio and other places. They are on the march, and they are demanding power whether it is handed to them or not.

I want you to read these words from yesterday’s The New York Times that make clear Donald Trump’s plans:

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

Let’s call these giant detention and deportation camps what they are intended to be. These are concentration camps. Specifically, they are to be American concentration camps. Dachau was the Nazis’ first camp in Germany.

What will the first American camp look like? There will no doubt be a first, and it will likely be the first to house the political prisoners rounded up under Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act. He has promised to invoke it at the instant he returns to power.

Please understand this: Trump is announcing his intentions. He means it. He is surrounded by scores of “little Eichmanns” ready to help him achieve his aims. He should be taken literally and seriously at all times.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is second in line to the presidency. He rejects the greatest American idea in history, which is the separation of church and state. The greatest American invention — the peaceful transition of power — is utterly dependent on the separation of church and state in this country.

Johnson denied the 2020 election results, lied about the election results, created the conditions for the insurrection of January 6th, voted to disenfranchise millions of Black votes after the insurrection and continues to insist Trump won the election, despite the claim being a combination of fraud, malice and weapons-grade nuttery. The hostility to democracy is deeply rooted within his religious fanaticism, which is unique amongst the various strains of fanatical faith that have always found a home in America because of our nation’s unique faith protections.

We have churches where people pick up rattlesnakes and kiss them to prove they are protected by God. Proof of sin is a bite to the face and a painful death. Bo and Peep of Heaven’s Gate convinced their followers that they were headed to the Hale-Bopp comet, and Jim Jones took his flock to doom in Guyana. There are cults and fundamentalists all over America, but there is only one strain that wants to control your life by controlling the powers of the state to administer God’s law. They are the American Taliban.

Mike Johnson has invented his own distorted version of history as if the events of the late 1780s-90s occurred 6,000 years ago.

The American Constitution is clear about the founders’ intentions and their descendants’ actions to preserve and expand those intentions. There is no room for theocracy in the American system. It was rejected at hour one. The desire to impose it on all of us by a man who believes people and dinosaurs co-existed at the beginning of time 6,000 years ago is never going to happen…or is it?

The most important thing to understand about theocrats is that they view political power as being mandated by God. In fact, many fanatics across America believe Donald Trump has been sent by him, and his opponents are demonically-inspired.

. . . .

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

We can’t ignore the very real threat that Trump and his GOP followers present to our democracy. Now is NOT the time for Democrats and independents to “go soft” on human rights and immigrants’ rights!

While not highlighted by Steve Schmidt (no relation) the NYT quote above, one of Trump’s initiatives will be to instruct Administration officials to violate the 14th Amendment by denying citizenship to those born in the U.S. based on their parents’ status! USG officials must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but apparently Trump just plans to summarily fire any public servant who will not submit to his unconstitutional plan!

Those considering abandoning Biden because of his support for Israel should recognize the alternative — a rabidly anti-Muslim authoritarian bigot (who, ironically, has also been soft on those expressing anti-semitism and other purveyors of hate) who would happily try to punish them just for existing! See e.g., https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-gaza-israel-policy-trump-contrast_n_654eb574e4b0c9f246602f16.

Those who think that immigrants will be the only victims of Trump’s “Christian White Nationalism” should be clear about what the future would hold for almost all groups of “others” under his promised neo-fascist regime. See, e.g., https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trans-kids-flee-united-states-safety_n_654c44c7e4b088d9a74d2028.

It’s worth remembering that one of the first actions of Hitler’s Third Reich was to strip Jews of their German citizenship, a move that the complicit German judiciary approved and enthusiastically implemented! Who would have thought that nearly 90 years later, we would have a major American political party in thrall to a self-proclaimed fascist demagogue!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-12-23

⚒️👩🏾‍🌾🌾🇺🇸🗽 AN INSPIRING LABOR DAY MESSAGE FROM REV. CRAIG MOUSIN: Migrants Are The Backbone Of America & Those Who Fight For Migrant Justice Are Not Alone — A Special Podcast With Links To Music By John McCutcheon & Emma’s Revolution!

Dear Paul,

As we begin Labor Day weekend, I give thanks for the many ways your work and mission seek justice for all.

My latest podcast gives thanks to all of you who have worked to end Title 42 and to all those immigrants who have contributed to the common good.

As I end the podcast quoting Emma’s Revolution’s song, Bound for Freedom, I give thanks that we are not alone, but united in the struggle. Thank you.

https://blogs.depaul.edu/dmm/2022/09/02/lawful-assembly-podcast-episode-29-gratitude-for-those-who-labor-and-those-who-have-labored/

Have a great Labor Day weekend and Thank You.

Peace,

Craig

Rev. Craig B. Mousin

DePaul University

(mail) 1 East Jackson Boulevard

Chicago, Illinois 60604

(office) Suite 800H

14E. Jackson Blvd.

Chicago, Illinois 60604

312-362-8707 (voice)

312-362-5706 (confidential fax)

You can find some of my publications at either:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=667812or

https://works.bepress.com/craig_mousin/

You can find my digital story at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9VTkjhzIcI

You can follow the podcast Lawful Assembly at:https://lawfulassembly.buzzsprout.com

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

Thanks, Craig, for your “practical activism and scholarship!”

Takeaways:

Grass roots activism works to defeat the forces of darkness and White Nationalism (the defeat of the barrage of White Nationalist immigration amendments was covered on Courtside here: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/08/08/%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%b8%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fndpa-activists-help-beat-back-gop-nativist-spoiler-amendments-to-reconciliation-bill-dems-need-to-win-midterms-to-thwart-newest-gop-immi/);
The John McCutcheon version of Woodie Guthrie’s song “Deportees” shows how deeply ingrained “Dred Scottification” is in our country’s often unconstitutional, impractical, and sometimes immoral approach to immigration enforcement.“De-personification” of “the other’” — treating them as numbers, statistics, even “beds” or “apps” without names, faces or rights — and making up vile myths and lies about them, all while exploiting their labor — is still at the heart of the anti-American White Nationalist agenda!
Social justice activism is an important multi-disciplinary endeavor — here we see how law, education, religion, civics, history, broadcast journalism, performance art, music, technology, political science, economics, language, culture, & communication all work together to thwart hate and lies;
More undergraduate institutions need to be making these links and insisting that the true history of American Immigration — with all its triumphs and warts — becomes a staple of education;
Many of those tone-deaf (or worse) politicos pushing the far right agenda of hate, lies, and racism reflected in the defeated amendments are elitists masquerading as “bogus populists” who got the benefit of education at some of the top law schools and universities in the nation. Whatever happened to the teaching of basic legal ethics and responsibilities to society? The Jim Crow agendas of today differ little from those of the pre-civil rights era of the 20th Century. These are NOT debates between legitimate “differing viewpoints,” but essentially questions of truth vs. lies, hate v. tolerance, integration v. exploitation;
The White Nationalist Right is taking over school boards and local governance in the false name of “parents’ rights” — actually meaning the rights of far right parents to impose their minority religious doctrines and false social doctrines on others. The fight for social justice begins at the local level where where teaching of truth and legitimate debates are being drowned out by disgruntled, anti-democracy, empowered White Nationalist theocrats who claim they want liberty but actually are trying to impose autocracy and minority rule;
The fight for social justice never ends!

🇺🇸 Happy Labor Day, & Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-05-22

🏴‍☠️☠️DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST: THE JIM CROW GOP WAS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY LONG BEFORE TRUMP — Today’s Absurdist & Corrupt GOP Reaction TO DOJ’s Long Overdue Investigation Of Trump’s Treason & Criminality Is The Predictable Result Of Many Years Of Corrupt, Racist, Authoritarianism!

\https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/

. . . .

Much has been made of the ensuing polarization in our politics, and it’s true that moderates are a vanishing breed. But the problem isn’t primarily polarization. The problem is that one of our two major political parties has ceased good-faith participation in the democratic process. Of course, there are instances of violence, disinformation, racism and corruption among Democrats and the political left, but the scale isn’t at all comparable. Only one party fomented a bloody insurrection and even after that voted in large numbers (139 House Republicans, a two-thirds majority) to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election. Only one party promotes a web of conspiracy theories in place of facts. Only one party is trying to restrict voting and discredit elections. Only one party is stoking fear of minorities and immigrants.

Admittedly, I’m partisan — not for Democrats but for democrats. Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy — and there’s a perfectly logical reason for this: Democracy is working against Republicans. In the eight presidential contests since 1988, the GOP candidate has won a majority of the popular vote only once, in 2004. As the United States approaches majority-minority status (the White population, 76 percent of the country in 1990, is now 58 percent and will drop below 50 percent around 2045), Republicans have become the voice of White people, particularly those without college degrees, who fear the loss of their way of life in a multicultural America. White grievance and White fear drive Republican identity more than any other factor — and in turn drive the tribalism and dysfunction in the U.S. political system.

Other factors sped the party’s turn toward nihilism: Concurrent with the rise of Gingrich was the ascent of conservative talk radio, followed by the triumph of Fox News, followed by the advent of social media. Combined, they created a media environment that allows Republican politicians and their voters to seal themselves in an echo chamber of “alternative facts.” Globally, south-to-north migration has ignited nationalist movements around the world and created a new era of autocrats. The disappearance of the Greatest Generation, tempered by war, brought to power a new generation of culture warriors.

Dana Milbank: In the GOP, the paranoid fringe is becoming the establishment

But the biggest cause is race. The parties re-sorted themselves after the epochal changes of the 1960s, which expanded civil rights, voting rights and immigration. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” began an appeal to White voters alienated by racial progress, and, in the years that followed, a new generation of Republicans took that racist undertone and made it the melody.

It is crucial to understand that Donald Trump didn’t create this noxious environment. He isn’t some hideous, orange Venus emerging from the half-shell. Rather, he is a brilliant opportunist; he saw the direction the Republican Party was taking and the appetites it was stoking. The onetime pro-choice advocate of universal health care reinvented himself to give Republicans what they wanted. Because Trump is merely a reflection of the sickness in the GOP, the problem won’t go away when he does.

. . . .

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

Read the full excerpt from “The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party” by Dana Milbank at the link.

As I noted in yesterday’s post, racially charged lies, myths, knowingly false narratives, and bogus attempts to tie migrants to all the ills of society are a key part of the GOP’s toxic narrative! The continuing campaign of hate and misinformation began with immigrants — but as this article suggests, it won’t end until either the GOP is thrown out of office at all levels or our nation’s constitutional structure and democratic republic are in tatters!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-09-22

🇺🇸🗽⚖️NDPA ACTIVISTS HELP BEAT BACK GOP NATIVIST SPOILER AMENDMENTS TO RECONCILIATION BILL — Dems Need To Win Midterms To Thwart Newest GOP Immigration Hate Plan!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports:

Hi: I just heard that all of the anti-immigration measures that Republicans attempted to add as amendments to the reconciliation bill were defeated.

I’m so in awe of the advocates who were up all night monitoring the process and weighing in with Senators’ offices.

Best, Jeff

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

James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism, Now At The Heart of The GOP Immigration Agenda

But, don’t relax or breathe a sign of relief. The GOP is very up front about the Jim Crow hate agenda they plan to roll out if they gain control of Congress in the midterms. Here is is in all it’s dishonesty, cruelty, and racist agitation:

https://republicans-homeland.house.gov/media/2022/07/Border-Rollout-one-pager_FINAL_formatted.pdf

Yes, you can expect Biden to veto any of this. But, it still will disrupt the business of Congress and will lead to hate rhetoric, lies, and racist stereotypes being hurled against immigrants and people of color. There is virtually no chance that the GOP would have the votes to override the vetoes in both Houses.

Still, upcoming generations of younger Americans will have to decide whether they want to live and raise their children in the the “American Hungary” — a neo-Nazi state where racial and ethic hatred and anti-Semitism will be at the center of all authoritarian Government policy. If not, the younger generation of the NDPA needs to come up with ways of keeping the GOP out of political power from the top to the bottom.

However welcome, the latest hard-fought victory over racist nativism and xenophobia was just the beginning of the struggle for the heart and soul of America.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-08-22

🤮🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️ GARLAND’S “SHAMEFUL RECORD” GETS EVEN WORSE AS HE DEFENDS STEPHEN MILLER’S DEGRADATION OF HUMANITY AT OUR BORDERS!

Biden’s “Shadow Attorney General” speaks through the likeness of Merrick Garland! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/19/politics/title-42-biden/index.html

. . . .

“Today we heard the same unconvincing arguments from the Biden administration that we’ve been hearing for the last year about this xenophobic and baseless policy, arguments that have already been rejected in federal court. Title 42 unjustly and unnecessarily inflicts harm on families seeking asylum at our border, and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that this policy ends once and for all,” said Diana Kearney, senior legal adviser with Oxfam America, in a statement.

In a recently released report, Human Rights First found nearly 9,000 reports of kidnappings and other violent attacks against people who had been expelled to Mexico or blocked from seeking protection in the US.

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

Read Priscilla’s full story on the bottomless depths to which Garland has taken American “justice” and the Department of “Justice” at the link.

I can always count on Garland to illustrate and punctuate my points about his unfitness for the job of achieving racial equality, re-establishing the rule of law, and promoting human rights in America, not to mention his total unsuitability and inability to run a fair, impartial, due-process-oriented court system! He probably would have been right at home with the “GOP Six” on the Supremes.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-20-22

🏴‍☠️NO ACCOUNTABILITY: ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICLY INSTIGATING A FAILED COUP, TRUMP CONTINUES TO OPENLY PLOT TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY, AS NEO-FASCIST GOP & ITS TOADY POLITICOS LINE UP BEHIND THE “BIG LIE!” — THE GOP, & THOSE WHO SUPPORT & ENABLE IT, HAS ACTUALLY BECOME THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC!🤮👎🏽🏴‍☠️

S.V. Date
Senior White House Correspondent
HuffPost
PHOTO: HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coup-attempt_n_61c2733fe4b04b42ab6602a2

SV Date on HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — What if you attempted a coup but people were unwilling to wrap their heads around what you had done?

A year after Jan. 6, 2021, that is the peculiar situation in which Donald Trump finds himself. Instead of being carted off in handcuffs for inciting an insurrection against the United States, or even just being banished from federal office for life by the Senate, the former president instead remains the leader of one of the two major political parties and is openly considering another run for the White House in 2024.

. . . .

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

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/05/capitol-attack-january-6-democracy-america-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Cas Mudde on The Guardian:

The government is finally taking the threat of far-right militia groups seriously. But the larger threat are the Republican legislators who continue to recklessly undermine democracy

One year ago, he was frantically barricading the doors to the House gallery to keep out the violent mob. Today, he calls the insurrection a “bold-faced lie” and likens the event to “a normal tourist visit”. The story of Andrew Clyde, who represents part of my – heavily gerrymandered – liberal college town in the House of Representatives, is the story of the Republican party in 2021. It shows a party that had the opportunity to break with the anti-democratic course under Donald Trump, but was too weak in ideology and leadership to do so, thereby presenting a fundamental threat to US democracy in 2022 and beyond.

The risk of a coup in the next US election is greater now than it ever was under Trump | Laurence H Tribe

Clyde is illustrative of another ongoing development, the slow but steady takeover of the Republican party by new, and often relatively young, Trump supporters. In 2015, when his massive gun store on the outskirts of town was still flying the old flag of Georgia, which includes the Confederate flag, he was a lone, open supporter of then-presidential candidate Trump, with several large pro-Trump and anti-“fake news” signs adorning his gun store. Five years later, Clyde was elected to the House of Representatives as part of a wave of Trump-supporting novices, mostly replacing Republicans who had supported President Trump more strategically than ideologically.

With his 180-degree turn about the 6 January insurrection, Clyde is back in line with the majority of the Republican base, as a recent UMass poll shows. After initial shock, and broad condemnation, Republicans have embraced the people who stormed the Capitol last year, primarily referring to the event as a “protest” (80%) and to the insurrectionists as “protesters” (62%), while blaming the Democratic party (30%), the Capitol police (23%), and the inevitable antifa (20%) for what happened. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Republicans (75%) believe the country should “move on” from 6 January, rather than learn from it. And although most don’t care either way, one-third of Republicans say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who refuses to denounce the insurrection.

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The increased anti-democratic threat of the Republican party can also be seen in the tidal wave of voting restrictions proposed and passed in 2021. The Brennan Center for Justice counted a stunning 440 bills “with provisions that restrict voting access” introduced across all but one of the 50 US states, the highest number since the Center started tracking them 10 years ago. A total of 34 such laws were passed in 19 different states last year, and 88 bills in nine states are being carried over to the 2022 legislative term. Worryingly, Trump-backed Republicans who claim the 2020 election was stolen are running for secretary of state in various places where Trump unsuccessfully challenged the results.

. . . .

At the same time, the Republican party has become increasingly united and naked in its extremism, which denies both the anti-democratic character of the 6 January attack and the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency, and is passing an unprecedented number of voter restriction bills in preparation for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections. As long as the White House mainly focuses on fighting “domestic violent extremism”, and largely ignores or minimizes the much more lethal threat to US democracy posed by non-violent extremists, the US will continue to move closer and closer to an authoritarian future.

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

You can read both articles in full at the above links.

If you are counting on AG Merrick Garland to “lead the charge” on establishing accountability, your optimism might be tempered by his own failure to “clean house” at DOJ and in particular by his failure to reform his wholly-owned Immigration Court system that was front and center in assisting and carrying out the Trump/Miller White Nationalist assault on the rule of law, primarily targeting individuals of color and the “world’s most vulnerable” seeking justice in our system.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-06-22

🤮POLITICS: REBECCA SOLNIT: DEMS NEED TO STOP “TRYING TO UNDERSTAND” THE NEO NAZI GOP RIGHT WING & FIGHT IT LIKE THE THREAT TO HUMAN DECENCY, TRUTH, & ETHICAL BEHAVIOR THAT IT IS! — “And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?”

https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-on-not-meeting-nazis-halfway/

From Literary Hub:

Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting

Nazis Halfway

Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?

By Rebecca Solnit

November 19, 2020

When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record.

The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that.

Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.”

There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that “you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.” This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore “fuck your feelings” shirts at its rallies and popularized the term “snowflake.”

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results.

I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone. We actually want to see everyone have a living wage, access to healthcare, and lives unburdened by medical, student, and housing debt. We want this to be a thriving planet when the babies born this year turn 80 in 2100. But the recommended compromise means abandoning and diluting our stories, not fortifying and improving them (and finding ways for them to actually reach the rest of America, rather than having them warped or shut out altogether). I’ve spent much of my adult life watching politicians like Bill Clinton and, at times, Barack Obama sell out their own side to placate the other, with dismal results, and I pray that times have changed enough that Joe Biden will not do it all over again.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

As Rebecca points out, “understanding,” “compromising,” and “engaging in productive dialogue” with the disingenuously disgruntled and “uber angry” far right turns out to be a “one way street” (surprised?). A “fools errand” if you will.

I dealt with transgender youth on a number of occasions during my career on the bench of the Arlington Immigration Court. All of they had suffered severe mental trauma and/or physical mistreatment from peers and adults who should have known better. Most had attempted suicide one or more times.

How is it acceptable for them and their fundamental identities to be “abused” and “dehumanized” by out of control, irresponsible “adults” and “parents” at school board meetings and other events? The GOP should be ashamed for giving in and seeking “political capital” from these reprehensible and cowardly attacks on students, teachers, and public officials trying to do the right thing on accommodating the needs of LBGTQ+ students and African American and other minority students and immigrants whose histories, humanity, and contributions for many generations continuing into the present have not been dealt with honestly, fairly, and humanely by our society. How will appeasing or meeting halfway those peddling lies and hate make things better for future generations?

Just how much “understanding,” “compassion,” “courtesy,” or “compromise” did George Floyd’s family, vulnerable transgender youth, or black students suffering from generations of systemic societal racism and anti gay laws, policies, and social institutions (and “false denial”) get from these folks on the right?

Stunning examples of Dems failures to stand up for their principles, and the disastrous consequences for humanity, are the continuation of Stephen Miller’s grotesque misuse of Title 42 at the border and AG Garland’s failure to clean house and institute common sense reforms at his dysfunctional, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, anti-due process, intentionally dehumanizing Immigration Courts known as EOIR! His “tolerance” for gross abuses by so-called “courts” that he controls and for the dehumanization and mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants on a daily basis is not “compromise” or “understanding!” It’s an ongoing national disgrace!

Did Stephen Miller really win the last election? Garland & Mayorkas are acting like he did!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-09-21

☠️⚰️GOP’S RACIST ATTACK ON MIGRANTS PART OF MASSIVE ATTEMPT TO REWRITE HISTORY OF PANDEMIC AND THE TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE ROLE OF MANY GOP GOVS & TRUMPISTS IN SPREADING DISEASE AND PROMOTING DISINFORMATION!

Heather Cox Richardson — Letters From An American — 08-08-21

. . . .

Republican-led states have been hit the hardest. Last week, Florida and Texas alone made up one out of every three new cases, and now Florida is the center of the pandemic. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 23,903 new cases in Florida that day alone. Hospitals are filling up as unvaccinated Americans need medical care; Austin, Texas, activated an emergency alert this weekend as its hospitals were overwhelmed.

But Republican lawmakers stand against the mask requirements and vaccines that would help stop the spread. Texas governor Greg Abbott has banned mask and vaccine mandates across the state, as has Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (who has since said the law was an “error”). South Carolina and Arizona have banned mask mandates in schools.

Today, in just the latest example, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said, “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us…. No one should follow the CDC.” He claimed that masking and remote learning was physically and emotionally damaging for children, and there was no reason they should not return to school full time, without masks. He said he would work to defund any school or government agency or school that did not simply resume its pre-pandemic operations.

Instead of trying to stop the spread of the virus, Republicans are blaming Biden for it. They claim that it is sparked by his handling of immigration on our southern border and that infected immigrants are responsible for the spike in the deadly disease.

When Biden asked Republican governors on August 3 to help or get out of the way, Florida governor Ron DeSantis responded: “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies,” and claimed: “He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border.”

DeSantis is not an outlier. Trump has pushed this line, Fox News Channelpersonality Sean Hannity hammers on it, and right-wing publications from the Daily Wire to National Review to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page all insist that immigrants are to blame for the spread of the virus. Rand Paul has gone so far as to claim that administration officials are deliberately sending infected immigrant children around the country to spread the variant. Yesterday, Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis called for Biden’s impeachment over the issue.

In fact, the administration continues to reject or expel border crossers under a public health order known as Title 42. It does permit the entry of unaccompanied minors and some vulnerable families. Migrants who cross the border are immediately required to wear masks. They are not tested at Customs and Border Patrol unless they show symptoms, but all are tested if they move into the system, and those who test positive for coronavirus are quarantined. Those slated for deportation are quarantined before they are deported. While infection rates are climbing, because of both the Delta variant and the crowding at Border Patrol, immigrants test positive at a lower rate than the rate of non-immigrants around them.

And yet, Republicans are using the deadly new coronavirus variant to stoke anti-immigrant fires.

It is cynical, it is deadly… and it takes us one more step toward authoritarianism.

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

You can read the full letter and subscribe to HCR’s free newsletter here: https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkM1uhSAQhZ_msjT8iOKCRTdd9CUIwqCkCgbGtr59uddVkyZkSGDOnDmfswhLLpc-ckXyLAavA3SC77oBIhRyVigmei2ZolQJ4nXvmZKKxGpCAdht3DSWE8hxzlt0FmNOTwGnUgiy6l4E1aSDBKZASkcny2Y3M8sgCNWPt609fYTkQMMXlCsnIJteEY_6EG8P_t7OChZXKC7_lOhWW3zNqavnXNG6z87lvfWQ2Gw5o4pR2vNJ9h3rWJAwBuuYGNUQ2jZTEFMAR4UH7wb76Om-8D-TSNEfkFJMS2W8_du8vZ5bQtPu_UwRLwPJzhv4OzzeCF84zAIJSkPrjUXNBq7k2NbhExd32EZHTIoNY-PZfH1uqqT_C_gLFoaNIw

As the pandemic revives and spreads, primarily as a result of GOP anti-vaccers and anti-maskers, new infections of children not eligible for the vaccine set records, and schools are about to reopen in the face of incredibly idiotic “mask bans” by magamoron, irresponsible GOP Govs like DeSantis and Abbott, you decide who the real threat is to America’s health, welfare, safety, and future!

🇺🇸Due Process (and Sanity) Forever!

PWS

08-10-21

⚖️☹️A GOOD MAN IN THE WRONG JOB — The Last Two GOP Administrations Cut Through The “Levi-Civiletti” Post-Watergate Institutional Reforms @ Justice Like A Hot Knife Through Soft Butter — Garland’s “Old School” Approach Is Likely Doomed To Failure, & Might Take American Democracy With It! — The “St. Louis Gets Pushed Back Put To Sea” Every Day @ Garland’s Broken & Dysfunctional DOJ!☠️⚰️

Judge Merrick Garland — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — His poignant recollection of the inability of his great aunts to find refuge in the U.S., and their resulting deaths in the Holocaust, haven’t stopped him from daily “pushing the St. Louis back out to sea” and denying legal protections and full due process to asylum seekers at our Southern Border and at EOIR — his “wholly owned court system” that functions more like a branch of DHS enforcement than a court of law!
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/07/19/merrick-garland-justice-department-catharsis/

David Montgomery writes in the WashPost:

. . . .

“Garland believes that a thorough de-Trumpification of the Justice Department would … be called partisanship and would call into question the institution of the Justice Department, but the institution has already been called into question,” says Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Sessions and Barr came in with a goal of assaulting and undermining the institution of the Justice Department, and it’s just weird to presume that they failed. We presume that they succeeded. They were in the building. They hired their minions. They assessed people. They politicized everything. Garland presuming that the previous Department of Justice was behaving in good faith requires the same suspension of disbelief as believing dragons are real in a fantasy novel.”

. . . .

And so, we’ll also be judging Garland by another standard: how well his approach fortifies the institution against a future administration that once again disrespects norms and politicizes the rule of law.

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

These quotes go to the heart of the problem with Garland’s stewardship and his naive, ivory tower, ineffectively timid approach to restoring the rule of law at Justice. “By the book” is NOT an effective strategy against opponents who seek to burn the book, bury the ashes, and lie about it! It’s basically no “strategy” all!

I’d be shocked, as would most knowledgeable observers, if the next GOP Administration doesn’t “disrespect the norms and politicize the rule of law.” Not only have the past two GOP Administrations done exactly that, in spades, but that’s basically what today’s GOP stands for: neo-fascist, anti-democracy rule based on big lies and a cult of personality.

To the extent the modern GOP believes in anything, it’s the exercise of power without restraint of law or morality. “Why? Because we can, and you can’t stop us. We’re in power, and you aren’t,” was largely the Trump McConnell mantra, particularly when it came to judges. How did the dying plea of RBG and the appeals of Dems for fairness and consistency in Supremes’ appointments work out? It was a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” that once again left the Dems grasping at thin air.

So, these folks are going to respect long-gone “norms” from the 1970s? “Norms” that couldn’t and didn’t stop Ashcroft, Gonzalez (“Gonzo I”), Mukasey, Sessions, or Barr? You have to be kidding? I don’t know what universe Garland has been living in for the past four plus years, but it doesn’t appear to be this one.

Contrary to Garland’s approach, there is absolutely nothing wrong with:

Coming clean on recent abuses at DOJ;
Replacing lawless immoral intentional misconstructions of law with better progressive ones that adhere to and further both the rule of law and “good government;” and
Replacing political hacks who furthered the White Nationalist agenda or other personnel who “went along to get along” with abuses, to keep their jobs, with progressive experts committed to due process and best practices who’ll get the job of restoring the rule of law, respect, and human dignity done.

Not only is there nothing wrong with the foregoing, but they are moral and practical imperatives if lives are to be saved and our democracy preserved! For Pete’s sake, these are actually the things that Biden and Harris campaigned upon and won! Why is Garland reticent to act upon truth?

This isn’t an “academic exercise!” It’s an actual life or death moment for migrants and for our democracy! And, the opponents are not folks who intend to honor norms established by Garland or any other Dem.

Indeed, they will characterize all of his actions as “radical socialism,” as they already have, regardless of the truth. In many ways, Garland’s incremental, largely passive, approach to “de-Trumpifying justice @ Justice” has been a huge gift to GOP anti-democracy insurrectionists and restrictionists. But, if I were him, I wouldn’t wait for the “thank you note.”

To shrink from the bold decisive actions necessary to clean up the disgraceful mess at the DOJ and its most grotesque manifestations at EOIR shows not only a lack awareness, but a lack of belief in the progressive, democratic, humane values that got Biden and Harris elected in the first place and got Garland his job.

And, it’s not as if the problem with the values and institutional integrity at DOJ started only in the Trump regime. Under Bush II, Ashcroft and his advisor, notorious White Nationalist xenophobe Kris Kobach, had their plan to dismantle due process and fundamental fairness in the Immigration Courts, through compromising the BIA, in action before they even set foot in the building 10th & Pa. Ave. Those changes have actually cost some migrants their lives, and some DOJ attorneys their jobs (for the “crime” of standing up for due process for migrants) even before the Trump kakistocracy arrived.

And, al la Garland, the Obama Administration’s failure to either acknowledge the historical truth or take the obvious and necessary corrective actions sent our Immigration Courts and justice for migrants into a steep decline that became a “death spiral” under Sessions (“Gonzo Apocalypto”) and Barr and continues its accelerated downward trajectory under Garland. It’s a contributing factor in the largely self-created 1.3 million case Immigration Court backlog generated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR.

Indeed, the lack of quality, intellectual honesty, practical guidance, humane values, common sense, expertise, and legitimacy at EOIR has spread to and adversely affected other areas of our beleaguered justice system and now threatens to take down everything in a messy heap. Why a former Article III Appellate Judge can’t grasp that reality and act accordingly is beyond me.

Maybe its because he didn’t personally experience enough of EOIR’s deadly, failed, corner-cutting “work product” at the D.C. Circuit because DC has no “resident Immigration Court.” Maybe it’s because he can’t “connect the dots” between his relatives who died in the Holocaust and having no legal asylum system for those arriving at our Southern border and denying asylum seekers full due process every day @ EOIR.

For the reasons set forth in the article, it seems that Judge Garland is philosophically and by personality incapable of leading and implementing long overdue, critical progressive changes at this point in his otherwise distinguished career. The only hope would be that one of his advisors could light a fire and get him out of his inept centrist institutionalist funk.

But, the two best hopes to do that, Associate Attorney Vanita Gupta and Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who should be personally familiar with the practical and racial justice disaster at EOIR and its overall adverse effects on justice in America, have failed to make a visible impact.

Garland needs a practical expert like Dean Kevin Johnson at U.C. Davis Law, Professor Karen Musalo at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings Law, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean at Temple Law, Judy Rabinowitz at ACLU, Marielena Hincappie at the National Immigration Justice Center, or someone of equal expertise and stature in civil and human rights to advise him and lead the reform effort at EOIR. Sadly, he does not appear interested in surrounding himself with such capable, talented individuals who could “save him from himself” while saving the lives of those like his great aunts who perished in the Holocaust for want of a viable refugee and asylum system.

Like Garland, I was at the DOJ during the Levi-Civiletti post-Watergate reform era. I once knew him and certainly helped out his “boss” Ben Civiletti on several occasions.

Somewhere in the “archives,” I have a handwritten note from Ben Civiletti expressing his gratitude that he never had to use the “administrative subpoena” and “designation as an “immigration officer” that I had drafted for him in the midst of one of a number of “immigration emergencies” involving a plane on the tarmac.

Somewhere along the line, Merrick seems to have forgotten that even Civiletti was willing to take bold actions when necessary to advance the cause of immigration justice! There was no “precedent” for the Attorney General personally serving an INS subpoena. But, Civiletti was on the verge of doing it, until “Plan A” prevailed, and the crisis was resolved without resorting to “Plan B” or even “Plan C.”

I was also there and directly affected when the likes of Ashcroft, “Gonzo I”, Kobach, and Mukasey cut through those post-Watergate reforms at EOIR as though they never existed, with little resistance except for a few of us “survivors” who adapted and continued to fight for due process and individual justice in a deteriorating system.

I watched in disgust and disbelief as the Obama Administration (“change?” — not so much in immigration) completely “blew” the opportunity to make life and democracy saving corrections at EOIR. I then saw from the outside as “Gonzo Apocalypto” and Barr aggressively and systematically dismantled American justice, starting with the Immigration Courts. Their job was made infinitely easier by the indolence of the Obama Administration in failing to systematically bring progressive reforms and appoint more progressive judges at EOIR.

But, those of us “on the outside” were not just “passively outraged” by the due process and human rights abuses flowing from DOJ, we took action! Among many groups forming the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”), our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, some of whom had resigned or retired as an act of conscience, helped lead the charge against the Trump regime’s inhumane, scofflaw policies and bogus legal interpretations.

We filed over 100 amicus briefs in tribunals from the Supremes to the BIA, many of them successful in helping to correct and reverse the regime’s anti-due process, anti-immigrant, racially driven policies. We also wrote, educated, did media interviews, organized, inspired others to join the resistance, and voted for change!

Even assuming, as I do, that any future GOP Administration would move to undo progressive reforms and replace progressive judges, their job would be made much more difficult if Garland creates the progressive judiciary that he should at EOIR. Moreover, even if exiled, “true progressive practical scholars” will form the expert backbone of the resistance to neo-fascism in the “next generation” of the Round Table and the NDPA.

Some “graduates” of a progressive Immigration Judiciary could be elevated to the Article III Judiciary where they will have continuing beneficial influence beyond the ability of the next GOP Administration to change. Others could use their knowledge of the system to fight the forces of nativism, restrictionism, White Nationalist myths, and mindless cruelty. Others will run for office and improve our moribund legislative branch! Who knows, we could even get Article I during the Biden Administration, giving a progressive immigration judiciary yet another degree of protection from right-wing political shenanigans!

Garland’s “stuck in the irretrievable past” approach to EOIR and the DOJ generally is blowing a golden, perhaps never-to-come again, chance to finally create an effective progressive judiciary at EOIR and, perhaps most important, to save lives and stop “pushing the St. Louis” back out to sea! It’s something that Biden can’t fully achieve in the Article IIIs. It’s painful to watch him squander the opportunity.

Merrick Garland might well have been a great Supreme Court Justice had Mitch McConnell and the GOP had a serious interest in institutional integrity and preserving norms. They didn’t (which should have been “signal” that got Garland’s attention)! Garland might also have been great Attorney General in a bygone era.

Sadly for both Garland and America, he’s not the “right fit” for the job under today’s realities. Not only will that forever tarnish his reputation, but it could well cost the rest of us our democracy.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Timidity and false “restraint” in delivering equal justice for all, never!

The meek might well inherit the earth in the next world. But, they won’t restore the rule of law to the Department of Justice in this one!☠️

Come on, Judge Garland, take off the blinders and show that you are smart, flexible, and capable enough to get beyond the limitations of your past experiences and take the bold, aggressive, courageous, potentially controversial, yet absolutely necessary and long overdue, actions necessary to restore the rule of law at Justice in the 21st year of the 21st Century. And, that starts with progressive due process reforms and major personnel changes at EOIR!

PWS

07-26-21

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

HISTORICAL ADDENDUM FROM HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE:

I actually had Civiletti’s desk at the BIA (I was told that Tony Moscato had brought it with him from Main Justice).

PWS

07-27-21

🏴‍☠️☠️HOW RACIST DISTORTIONS & ABROGATIONS OF EQUAL PROTECTION & DUE PROCESS IN IMMIGRATION LAW FEED & REINFORCE INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM IN AMERICAN LAW GENERALLY! — New Scholarship By Carrie Rosenbaum Highlights An Old Problem That Is Destroying American Law & Ripping Apart Our Society!🤮👎🏽

James “Jim” Crow

“Jim Crow” is still alive and well @ EOIR. To date, Judge Garland & his team seem to think that the rest of us won’t notice what’s happening in “his” Immigration Courts and how it undermines every aspect of his claim to be restoring faith in the DOJ and the American justice system. A progressively-oriented, independent, expert Immigration Judiciary is a prerequisite for finally achieving racial justice in 21st Century America. So far, Judge Garland has NOT enunciated any plan to “get there,” nor has he even publicly acknowledged the many disgraceful problems plaguing EOIR!

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/04/immigration-article-of-the-day-unequal-immigration-protection-by-carrie-rosenbaum.html

From ImmigrationProf Blog:

(Un)Equal Immigration Protection by Carrie Rosenbaum, 50 Sw. L. Rev. 232 (2021)

ABSTRACT

This article will contribute to immigration equal protection jurisprudential discussions by highlighting the way in which the plenary power in immigration equal protection cases creates a barrier parallel to the intent doctrine—both prohibit curtailment of government action resulting in racialized harm. The scant recognition of the double duty done by plenary power and the intent doctrine reflects the banality of what may appear as a mere redundancy at first glance. However, the insidiousness of the double-barrier all but ensures that equal protection challenges to facially race-neutral immigration laws with disparate impact will fail. Plenary power is effectively duplicative of the intent doctrine because the intent doctrine already results in great deference to lawmakers.

. . . .

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

Read the full abstract at the link.

Unquestionably, immigration jurisprudence has intentionally misread the due process and equal protection clauses to achieve racist immigration policies. Getting rid of these perversions — analogous to the legal and judicial gobbledegook used by White men to make the 14th and 15th Amendments (and to a large extent, the 13th Amendment) “dead letters” for African Americans following Reconstruction — isn’t a matter of complicated legal thinking. It’s a matter of better Federal Judges and better legislators. And, the mess @EOIR — our Immigration “Courts” — is the best and most logical place to begin the long overdue task of instituting constitutional compliance and equal justice for all.

To date, Judge Garland’s failure to demonstrate a commitment to eliminating unconstitutional racism and misogyny (not to mention poor quality decision-making which also disproportionately affects individuals and communities of color) in his Immigration “Courts” threatens to destroy our legal system and “kneecap” American democracy.

We are in the perilous position we are today because past Administrations, to the extent they have even tried to address systemic racism (obviously, the Trump Administration sought the exact opposite — to deepen, protect, and promote racism and hate), have intentionally or negligently ignored the clear link between immigration law and racism in the rest of our legal system.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-26-21

🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/24/border-crisis-migrants-media-biden/

Leon Krauze in the WashPost tells us what’s really happening at the border. WARNING: It has little to do with the myths and false narratives being peddled by the GOP, the Administration, and the media.

The current emergency at the border has found the U. S. media at its most solipsistic. Coverage seems more focused on whether the emergency should be called “a crisis” (it should) and what the political fallout for the Biden administration will be. With few exceptions — like the remarkable work of MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff or Politico’s Sabrina Rodriguez — many news outlets seem utterly uninterested in the stories of the migrants themselves.

This is wrong because it fails to provide one crucial piece of the puzzle: the very concrete context of human suffering.

. . . .

This by no means excuses the stories of anguish and confinement that have emerged over the last few weeks from within the facilities set up by the Biden administration to deal with the number of young migrants crossing the border, nor does it absolve the president himself from delivering on his promise of a humane immigration system, diametrically opposed to Trump’s cruel policies, designed in collaboration with unapologetic racist xenophobes like Stephen Miller.

The Biden administration can and should do better. But the current debate cannot ignore the very concrete despair facing thousands of immigrant families who, under the direct threat of violence or abuse, chose to push their young children to the United States, in search of safety.

If the alternative was famine, gang violence, kidnapping, rape or sexual slavery, wouldn’t you bet it all on the journey north? If more people understood this, the political debate and the coverage surrounding the crisis would be much more empathetic and we would get closer at delivering concrete, humane solutions.

Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/americas-immigration-impasse-self-inflicted-doesnt-rcna485

America’s immigration impasse — an endless loop across different administrations — is largely self-inflicted, because Congress has repeatedly failed to acknowledge one simple thing: Immigration happens.

Accordingly, immigration laws must be continually adjusted, reformed and revised, experts say.

“People will always want to come to the U.S., and the U.S. will always need people,” said former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who was a top immigration adviser to President George W. Bush.

Until there is a system that allows enough legal immigration to meet the economy’s needs, there will be illegal immigration, Gutierrez said.

“That’s just part of how our economy is set up. It’s part of demographics,” Gutierrez said. “Our birthrate is not high enough to be able to fill the needs of our economy.”

The coronavirus pandemic reinforced the importance of immigrant labor to the American economy, including labor by the undocumented.

It opened many Americans’ eyes to the precariousness of the U.S. food supply, which depends on immigrant and undocumented farmworkers and meat plant workers, as well as to other immigrants’ roles as essential workers, such as home health care aides, nurses and paramedics.

All of those people and many other immigrants, including young immigrants — often called “Dreamers” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act — will play a key role in helping the economy recover from its pandemic bust.

But immigration requires periodic calibration, and the economics and the changing patterns are lost in the politics.

“People are going to move — as they are all around the world — where they think they can find places to better feed their children. That’s the bottom line, and that’s the history of migration to the United States,” said Luis Fraga, director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

. . . .

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

Everyone should read the rest of the stories at the above link.

Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration

By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt

“Courtside” Exclusive

March 26, 2021

Notwithstanding the endlessly disingenuous and self-centered alarmist rhetoric coming from all directions on the border mess, often mindlessly regurgitated by the press (not just Fox News), the real “crisis” involves the human lives at stake and the unnecessary human misery we are causing by failing to establish, professionally staff, and fairly and competently operate the legal refugee and particularly asylum systems required by law. This “due process crisis” actually has devastating and debilitating practical effects, starting with the dysfunctional immigration, refugee, and asylum system and the beyond dysfunctional Immigration Courts.

Heck, we don’t even pretend to comply with Constitutionally-required due process of law for asylum seekers who present themselves to us seeking life-saving refuge. Most of those who show up at legally-established border ports are told that the border is “closed” and that there is no way for them to apply. OK, so they attempt to cross between ports and immediately present themselves to the Border Patrol. But, they also are told there is no way to apply and are orbited back to some of the most dangerous countries in the world without any process whatsoever, let alone due process of law. Who are we kidding with all our dishonest pontificating about “the rule of law?”

It’s a strange way to implement the statutory command that any foreign national “irrespective of . . . status, may apply for asylum,” along with a constitutional guarantee that “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Gee, you don’t even need one of those fancy Ivy League law degrees to understand that language. You just have to be able to read, comprehend, and act.

What you do have to do to get where we are today is to view asylum seekers and other migrants (predominantly people of color) as less than human — “non-persons” in a constitutional sense. It’s what some of us call “Dred Scottification of the other” and it has accelerated over the past four years — not just in immigration.

The whole idea of a “court system” being run by the Executive who also is the chief of enforcement is beyond constitutionally preposterous. It’s a “negative tribute” to the Supremes and other Article III life-tenured judges who have grown so distant from their own humanity and immigration stories as to become willfully blind to the ongoing farce that constitutes “justice” and “due process of law” for asylum seekers and other immigrants in the U.S.

Today’s nearly non-existent “asylum system” is a deadly and illegal “catch 22,” with the Supremes sitting in their marble palace refusing to do the primary task that justifies their continued existence: enforce the Constitution against Government misbehavior and in favor of the “little guys” and the “vulnerable.” No thanks, not up to the job!

The real tragedy is that there are plenty of folks out here with the knowledge, integrity, courage, and ability to establish a legal system that would actually comply with out laws, our Constitution, and further offer the hope of constructively addressing some problems before refugees arrive at our borders. But, they remain “benched,” even by the Biden Team. So the “good guys”are going to keep attacking the corrupt and broken system in court and at the polls for as long as it takes to get some course correction — years, decades, centuries — ask most African Americans how long it takes to achieve the true justice that America promises to all, but historically has only delivered to some.

In the long run, a fair system would undoubtedly accept many more legal refugees and asylum seekers. That’s what happens in refugee situations — it’s the core of what we call “forced migration” — when you sign on to international conventions intended to prevent the “next holocaust,” and you fairly and humanely apply the rules meant to protect refugees and those who face torture. And, as they have in the past, the overwhelming number of refugees and asylees, like the overwhelming majority of immigrants (essentially all of us, except Native Americans) will adapt, fit in, and contribute to the health, wealth, and future of our nation. They will change, but so will we — ultimately for the better!

Sure, America wouldn’t be as white, “Christian” (to the extent that adherence to a nominal Christian denomination, rather than actually performing Christ’s extremely difficult, self-sacrificing, risky, compassionate mission, defines Christianity), and nominally heterosexual as it was when White Nationalist myths and whitewashed history ruled the roost. But, it would be a better nation — one that actually has a chance of prospering, realizing the full potential of all its residents, and leading the world in the 21st century. A nation that could devote more human, natural, and monetary resources to building and exporting greatness, rather than to an endless stream of cruel, inhuman, stupid, and wasteful enforcement and deterrence gimmicks.

Bottom line, folks are going to come to America, as they have throughout history. Some will stay, some won’t. But, come they will, unless and until those like Trump and the GOP create such a mess that our own people start fleeing to foreign shores. Immigration, regardless of status, is a sign of strength. Xenophobia a sign of fatal weakness.

Our real choice isn’t whether we want to “close” borders, bar refugees, and abuse children as the Cottons, Cruzes, Millers, and Hawleys advocate. It’s whether we create a robust, orderly, rational legal system to screen, regulate, and distribute the inevitable flow or whether, as we have for the past decades, we force millions to reside and work underground — part of an “extralegal” or “black market” system that pols of both parties and those who profit from that underground system have created.

Sprawling mismanaged enforcement bureaucracies, dysfunctional “courts,” armies of publicly-paid lawyers defending the indefensible, for-profit civil prisons, big agriculture, hospitality giants, loads of upwardly mobile professionals who need child care to pursue careers, communities that live off of marketing ethnic culture, meat packing conglomerates, architects and construction firms who are “building America,” even news media fixated on hyping the problem rather than fixing it (see, e.g., yesterday’s Biden press conference), the list of those who profit from a talented, hard working, reliable, loyal, yet politically and socially disenfranchised, workforce is endless.

Even the GOP’s “Cotton-Cruz crowd” benefits from having an imaginary enemy to rant and rail and gin up hate against — safe in the knowledge that the tanking of our economy, upheaval of society, and possible threat to their privilege that would result from realizing their disingenuous call to boot the entire undocumented population will never happen. Their kids and grandkids can continue to reap the privilege that comes from exploiting an essential, yet politically neutered, workforce. It’s really more about institutionalizing racism to maintain economic and political power over the eventual non-white majority that drives their bogus and ugly narratives.

We can degrade ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! It’s a vision based on a written promise, not a “pipe dream!”

PWS

03-26-21

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

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

Gabe Gutierrez reports for NBC Nightly News:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

03-19-21

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: Trump’s “Defense” Was An Astounding Mixture Of Lies, False Narratives, Conspiracy Theories, Nonsense, Gibberish, & Non-Sequiturs (Citing Madonna and Johnny Depp, Among Other Irrelevancies) — Of Course, Corrupt GOP Legislators Loved It!

Quick: You’re a lawyer and your client is on trial for inciting a violent insurrection. The problem is, he’s guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. Literally, there is no question whatsoever that he did what he’s been accused of—none! Whatsoever! And everyone knows it! To wonder if he’s guilty is to look at O.J. Simpson and think, “Well, the glove doesn’t fit, so who knows?” Nevertheless, you’ve been hired to defend him—after basically everyone else in your profession refused—and defend him you will! But how? If you’re Donald Trump’s attorneys, the answer is clearly: Lie, lie, play some Madonna clips, and lie some more.

There were far, far too many lies told over the course of Bruce Castor Jr., David Schoen, and Michael van der Veen’s presentation to catalog them all. In fact, it would be easier to simply point out the rare moments in which they did tell the truth. But, just for posterity’s sake, here were some of the biggest whoppers the defense team told as it claimed that Trump wasn’t responsible for the rally that took place at the Capitol on January 6:

Trump never intended for “the joint session [of Congress] be prevented from conducting its business”: This is obviously completely false and the reason we know that is because Trump repeatedly tried to get Mike Pence to stop Congress from doing just that, reportedly telling the V.P., “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy.”

The rioters were mostly antifa, and one of the first people arrested was a member of the left-wing group: This, like virtually all of Trump’s lawyers’ claims are not true. The first person arrested was John E. Sullivan, who has denied being a member of antifa, and the FBI has said there is zero evidence that the supporters’ movements participated in the riot, no matter what Trump’s most shameless loyalists say. (Rep. Matt Gaetz, for instance, falsely claimed, “They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”)

A prior protest in front of the White House was just as bad: Referring to the June protest in front of the White House, van der Veen claimed “violent rioters” attacked officers and “at one point, pierced a security wall, culminating in the clearing of Lafayette Square.” (1) There was no breach; (2) five people didn’t die (3) the people who were hurt were the protesters tear-gassed so that Trump could do a photo shoot with a bible outside a church (an event that, surprisingly, did not result in him bursting into flames).

Trump hates violence and only ever preaches “law and order”: If you forget the innumerable times he’s advocated for violence, including when he claimed the violent insurrection that took place at the Capitol was justified, sure, the guy is a total peace-loving pacifist.

“The reality is Mr. Trump not in any way shape or form instructing these people to fight or use physical violence. What he was instructing them to do was to challenge their opponents in primary elections, to push for sweeping election reforms, to hold Big Tech responsible—all customary and legal ways to petition your government for redress of grievances which of course is also protected Constitutional speech.” Right, right, sure, sure. Trump totally wasn’t encouraging his supporters to air their grievances via violence, he just wanted them to push for election reforms. He just wanted them to form political action committees, you see! Run for office! Fight ideological differences at the ballot box! It’s actually extremely impressive van der Ween was able to get through this whole thing without bursting into laughter, and for that he should win some kind of award (and then lose his license to practice law).

“There was no insurrection”: There was! We all saw it! If you missed it, just google “Capitol riot” or “Capitol attack” or “Trump insurrection.”

In addition to the many lies told by Trump’s defense, his legal team also proffered a series of arguments for why he couldn’t possibly be found guilty that sound like something a bunch of stoned college kids came up with shortly before a mock trial they forgot to prepare for, which is actually an insult to stoned college kids unprepared for mock trials. Specifically, we’re talking about the series of clips the defense presented showing various Democrats using the word “fight,“ which they claim means Trump can’t also be held responsible for telling his supporters to “fight,“ because other people have said “fight” before and they weren’t found guilty of inciting insurrections. (Naturally, they left out the part about how, for instance, when Elizabeth Warren told supporters to “fight” they didn’t proceed to storm the Capitol and try to burn down democracy):

Or that, when Chuck Schumer said “fight” he was talking about fighting COVID-19. Yes, this a real thing that actually happened:

And yes, there was also this:

Of course, the bald-faced lies and complete lack of convincing arguments will clearly do little to sway the majority of Republicans, who have already decided how they’re going to vote, which we know because they‘ve already said as much and also because during the question-and-answer portion of the day, a typical question posed of the attorneys went something like, “Can you tell us how it’s possible that President Trump has not been named People’s Sexiest Man Alive yet? Is it because the media is in the can for liberals? Because we can’t think of another explanation!”

Anyway, Madonna, eh? Someone better impeach that menace, ASAP!

Just in case there was any question re: whether or not Trump loved the insurrection he personally set into motion…

CNN reports that the ex-president insisted the rioters were patriots in a call with House leader Kevin McCarthy:

In an expletive-laced phone call with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy while the Capitol was under attack, then President Donald Trump said the rioters cared more about the election results than McCarthy did. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump said, according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy.

McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump’s supporters and begged Trump to call them off. Trump’s comment set off what Republican lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the president the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f–k do you think you are talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.

“I think it speaks to the former president’s mindset,” Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican who voted to impeach Trump last month, told CNN. “He was not sorry to see his unyieldingly loyal vice president or the Congress under attack by the mob he inspired. In fact, it seems he was happy about it or at the least enjoyed the scenes that were horrifying to most Americans across the country.”

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

You can read the rest of the Levin Report here:

https://mailchi.mp/ff0581d54d6b/levin-report-trumps-heart-bursting-with-sympathy-for-his-buddy-bob-kraft-2922686?e=adce5e3390

In reality, as others have observed, the “defense team” could have read old copies of the Congressional Record or all the baseball scores from the 2019 season from the podium and it wouldn’t have made any difference to corrupt GOP Sens who had already decided to acquit notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of guilt.

The indifference and boredom with the suffering of others and the clear misdeeds of Trump exhibited by scumbags like Cruz (who actually helped prepare the inept “defense”), Hawley, Cotton, et al, was pretty telling. Obviously, they wouldn’t have cared a fig if Trump’s rioters had done in Pence, Romney, or any other of their “colleagues.”

It’s all about the next election and destroying American democracy.

My favorite part is when the Trump defense Team kept whining about the rights of 74 million who voted for the The Big Clown. It’s like their attempt to disenfranchise and diss the 81+ million of us who didn’t vote for Putin’s Puppet are irrelevant? But, that’s always been the way the “modern GOP” has “governed.”

Right now, the GOP is hard at work at the state level trying to disenfranchise as many Black and Brown voters as possible in advance of the 2022 elections.

Remember all the great “bipartisanship” and concern with the legislative process on the tax giveaway (nobody actually read it, clearly not Trump) or the unsuccessful attempt to “do in” Obamacare. Lots of great “bipartisanship” on display with the Coney Barrett confirmation and the confirmation of a steady stream of Federalist Society judges.

The current GOP is an ongoing threat to the national security and well-being of our nation.

PWS

02-13-21

Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Doubt the comparison? Check this out:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Steve Schmidt on Substack:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Thanks, Craig, for your “practical activism and scholarship!”

🇺🇸 Happy Labor Day, & Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Heather Cox Richardson — Letters From An American — 08-08-21

🇺🇸Due Process (and Sanity) Forever!

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David Montgomery writes in the WashPost:

HISTORICAL ADDENDUM FROM HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE:

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🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Now, let’s hear more “simple truth” from Suzanne Gamboa over at NBC News:

Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration

By Judge (Ret) Paul Wickham Schmidt

“Courtside” Exclusive

March 26, 2021

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

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