☠️👎🏻TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK:  Professor César García Hernández Analyzes Order Extending Ban On Biden’s Deportation Bar — Texas v. USA 

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Denver Sturm Law

 

From: César García Hernández <ccgarciahernandez@gmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2021 1:52 PM

To: IMMPROF (UCLA) (immprof@lists.ucla.edu) <immprof@lists.ucla.edu>

Subject: [immprof] 100-day removal pause enjoined

 

Colleagues,

 

Judge Tipton in the Southern District of Texas enjoined the 100-day removal pause. The 105-page order has something for everyone. For the history fans, there are references or citations to John Marshall, Joseph Story, and James Madison. For the federalism aficionados, there’s a description of the three branches of government and an explanation about the relationship between the federal government and the states. For the administrative law scholars and Bluebook fans, the proposition that “ICE is an agency within DHS” is supported by a footnote, a citation, and a parenthetical explanation. And for anyone interested in bilingual education, you’ll note that “regular” students cost Texas one amount and students enrolled in the state’s bilingual program cost another amount.

 

The order (and my analysis) are available at crimmigration.com.

 

César

 

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Professor of Law
University of Denver
crimmigration.com

(he/him/his/el)

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The case name says it all, particularly in light of the past two weeks. Indeed, “Texas v. The People” would be equally fitting. GOP misrule and the vile shenanigans of GOP politicos, like Texas AG Ken Paxton (who also fled the state during the crisis he and his party helped cause) has real life consequences. It kills and harms U.S. citizens of all political persuasions in addition to foreign nationals in our country. 

Note that the order does not purport to stop DHS or EOIR from granting stays of removal on a case by case basis. 

Notwithstanding the flaws in Judge Tipton’s reasoning, cogently pointed out by Cesar, I wouldn’t put much stock in the chances that the right-wing dominated Fifth Circuit or the Supremes will rein in Tipton and other righty jurists. I predict that GOP jurists oft-expressed grave concerns about the effect of nationwide injunctions will dissipate now that they are being used as a tool to undermine the Biden Administration’s attempts to return rationality and humanity to our justice system.

The deep problems in the Article III Judiciary, aggravated by four years of bad appointments by Trump & Mitch, reinforce the pressing need for immediate Immigration Court reform, starting with replacing the BIA. That is the most pressing task facing the Administration on the judicial front. The EOIR judiciary is one that the Biden Administration has complete authority to fix with better judges. Now, not later! 

And, with better judges at EOIR, there will be fewer bad legal decisions thrown into the Article III “lottery.” Moreover, as I continue to point out, it will give the Administration a much-needed pool of diverse, readily identifiable, talented, experienced, progressive, due-process/human rights committed jurists to draw on for Article III appointments. Additionally, it sets the stage for legislation to create an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court.

Can advocates for racial justice, human rights, and immigrants’ rights finally get the message across to Judge Garland about the urgent need to act decisively? Or, like the Obama Administration, will this turn out to be another golden opportunity for justice squandered? 

Unfortunately, I could find little in this week’s confirmation hearings to visibly show that Judge Garland “got” the connection between the refuge that he and his family were so grateful for and the continuing unconscionable mess at EOIR. 

Indeed, if Judge Garland and his family showed up at our borders today seeking refuge from persecution, they would unceremoniously have been loaded onto a plane and “orbited” back to the persecution from which they fled without any process at all, let alone “due process of law.” Even if they had gotten a hearing, an EOIR “judge” somewhere along the line would undoubtedly have found a “reason to deny” regardless of the need for protection. 

For a good measure, they probably would have been mocked as “criminals, line jumpers, and job stealers” by GOP politicos and their toadies still stashed throughout our broken and compromised immigration bureaucracy. Their lives would have been treated as worthless; their removal to persecution, harm and possible death, just another “statistic” to tout in connection with false claims to having achieved “border security!”

Use the “overseas refugee program?” Probably not. Although Biden has pledged to restart refugee admissions, as a practical matter our once proud and highly efficient refugee processing system is currently in tatters after four years of intentional abuse inflicted by the defeated regime.

Every day that the ongoing problems at EOIR remain unresolved is another day of injustice for refugees and other migrants, as well as another day of frustration and abuse heaped on those attempting to help them achieve justice. 

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-25-21

SESSIONS’S CLAIM THAT HE WAS “REQUIRED BY LAW” TO PROSECUTE ALL ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSERS IS BOGUS — CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS ARE ALWAYS DISCRETIONARY — “[W]hen it comes to prosecuting immigration laws, it’s never not a choice.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-hernandez-family-separations_us_5b5a0a30e4b0fd5c73cd2e59

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández writes in HuffPost:

When President Barack Obama announced Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, his administration’s policy of pushing young unauthorized migrants to the bottom of the immigration law-enforcement priority list, Republicans complained that focusing on some legal violations over others was equivalent to not enforcing the law. When Obama used his discretion to extend similar protections to parents of U.S. citizens, Republican legislators successfully took to the courts to block him. 

Within days of entering the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order proclaiming, “We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.” To Republicans, prosecutorial discretion subverts the rule of law. Or so they say.

Government data about the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy toward border crossers reveal that it, too, is picking and choosing whom to target. In May, at the height of its policy of tossing parents into criminal proceedings while their children were hauled to government-run prisons, Border Patrol agents sent 9,216 people to prosecutors. That is about 1,000 more than in April and over 5,000 more than the same month a year earlier. The increase was especially noticeable in the family separation epicenter of McAllen, Texas, where I was born and where my law firm is based. Lawyers in my hometown saw 841 prosecutions in April jump to 2,079 in May.

That is a lot of people, but it’s not everyone. In May, Border Patrol agents stationed across the southwest border caught almost 29,000 adults clandestinely entering the United States. Eighty-five percent had no children; the rest are the parents whose anguish has been heard across the world. 

Of all the adults apprehended that month, most were not prosecuted criminally. Only one-third were charged with a federal immigration crime. The rest presumably ended up in the civil immigration court system or in fast-track legal proceedings in which immigration officials deport people without taking them in front of a judge. Zero tolerance apparently didn’t mean zero exceptions.

It makes complete sense that the government did not go after everyone. The federal courts can’t handle that many cases. Picking and choosing is a part of every big law enforcement system. The important question isn’t whether that happens ― despite Republican insistence, it always does. The important question is why law enforcement officers choose to target some people over others.

. . . .

When it comes to taking a child from her parent, nothing is simple. And when it comes to prosecuting immigration laws, it’s never not a choice.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández is an associate professor of law at the University of Denver, publisher of the blog crimmigration.com, and of counsel to García & García Attorneys at Law.

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Of course separating children from parents has always been a choice driven by Sessions’s racism, White Nationalism, and xenophobia and having nothing whatsoever to do with sound law enforcement policy.

Indeed, studies have shown that so-called “zero tolerance” enforcement programs are failures across the board from a law enforcement standpoint. And, low level immigration prosecutions such as those promoted by Sessions have no documented deterrent effect. But, they have been shown to reduce the amount of time that Federal prosecutors and Federal Judges have to spend on “real” law enforcement, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, organized crime, and fraud.

PWS

07-31-18