"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Rekha Sharma-Crawford ESQUIRE Partner and Co-Founder Sharma-Crawford Law Kansas City, KS
Rekha writes on LinkedIn:
A major step towards acknowledging that the best interest of the child must play a critical role in immigration cases. This was an idea I raised over 10 years ago with my friend and colleague, the brilliant Lory Rosenberg. Later the idea again was put forward with two additional brilliant colleagues, Paul Schmidt and Susan Roy. Sometimes it takes a very long time, but the right approach can’t be hidden forever.So pleased to see it is finally seeing some daylight.
Here’s the Memorandum from EOIR Director David L. Neal:
As noted by my Round Table colleague “Sir Jeffrey” Chase, our Round Table has spoken out about the need for a separate Immigration Court system for children:
As you know, our Round Table signed on to a letter of support for proposed legislation to create a Children’s Immigration Court.
[Director Neal’s statement is] a positive administrative development.
Here’s my take:
While progress is always welcome, this statement shrouds the concept of “best interest of the child” (“BIC”) with legal gobbledygook and bureaucratic doublespeak. (P. 3 of Neal Memo under “Legal Standards”).
Here’s what a clear, correct statement on BIC would look like:
BIC, regardless of whether or not presented by a “Child Advocate” or incorporated in a “Best Interests Determination” (“BID”), can be directly relevant to issues of removability. For example, evidence of removability obtained by methods that clearly conflict with the BIC could be found unreliable or the result of “egregious misconduct” for the purposes of determining removability.
The BIC can also be highly relevant to issues of eligibility for relief. For example, a government or society that deprives certain children of all meaningful educational oportunities might well be engaging in persecution.
In addition, in NLPR cancellation cases, the BIC could be persuasive, even determinative, evidence that removal of a parent will result in “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a USC or LPR child or children.
3) Finally, since the EOIR Director is an administrator, not a quasi-judicial official, his or her policies have a distinct “you can take it or leave it” effect in Immigration Court. Therefore ameliorative statements from the Director, no matter how well-intended, are only effective if the BIA is willing and able to insist on and enforce “best practices” on Immigration Judges, preferably through precedent decisions and reassigning cases away from those IJs who show repeated contempt for due process and best practices.
Unfortunately, the current version of the BIA has, as a body, shown neither much sympathy nor concern for the substantive and due process rights of asylum seekers and other immigrants in Immigration Court. Unless and until Garland “cleans house” and appoints a BIA where all Appellate Judges are immigration/human rights experts laser focused on due process and best practices in Immigration Court — and not afraid of enforcing them uniformly in individual cases and incorporating them in binding precedents — the Director’s latest somewhat ameliorative statement is likely to be as toothless in practice as past efforts.
To a large extent, that’s a “nutshell” of why Garland’s Immigration Courts are in dire failure that threatens our entire democracy.
Unfortunately, that we are three years into this Administration and Garland is still bumbling along with a BIA that largely represents the mistakes and shortcomings of his predecessors suggests that waiting for him to “get religion” on the need for expertise, due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices at EOIR will continue to be an exercise in “Waiting for Godot!”
Immigration practitioners waiting for Garland to institute “due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices” as the sole mission of his EOIR “courts.” It could be a long wait. Very long! Too long! Naseer’s Motley Group in The Rose Bowl Merlaysamuel Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Waiting for Godot in Doon School.jpg Copy [[File:Waiting for Godot in Doon School.jpg|Waiting_for_Godot_in_Doon_School]] Copy December 8, 2011
As predicted by experts from the “git go,” AG Merrick Garland’s indolent, half-baked approach to his most important responsibility — bringing justice and functionality to his Immigration Courts, has been a disastrous failure endangering our entire democracy! PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Here’s the latest report from TRAC documenting how former Federal Judge Merrick Garland’s failure to fulfill his most important duty — reforming and fixing the U.S. Immigration Courts, has built backlog at record paces and undermined our democracy:
Here’s the “action plan” that’s been publicly available since July 2023 — “Rethinking The U.S. Immigration Court System” — yet largely, and disastrously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and the Biden Administration:
The U.S. immigration courts—and the nation’s immigration enforcement system they support—face
an unprecedented crisis. With a backlog of almost 2 million cases, it often takes years to decide cases. Moreover, the recent growth in the caseload is daunting. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, immigration courts received approximately 708,000 new cases, which is 160,000 more than in any previous year. Such numbers, coupled with the courts’ resource constraints and decision-making processes, ensure that the court system will continue to lose ground.
For asylum cases, which now make up 40 percent
of the caseload, the breakdown is even more dire. Noncitizens wait an average of four years for a hearing on their asylum claims to be scheduled,
and longer for a final decision. Those eligible for protection are thus deprived of receiving it in a timely manner, while those denied asylum are unlikely
to be returned to their countries of origin, having
established family and community ties in the United
States during the intervening years. The combination
of years-long backlogs and unlikely returns lies at the
heart of our broken asylum system. That brokenness contributes to the pull factors driving today’s migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, thereby undermining the integrity of the asylum and immigration adjudicative systems, and immigration enforcement overall.
Many of the factors contributing to the dramatic rise in the courts’ caseload have deep and wide-reaching roots, from long-standing operational challenges in administering the courts to new crises in the Americas that have intensified both humanitarian protection needs and other migration pressures. The scale of these twin challenges has made it more urgent than ever to address them together. In the aftermath of lifting the pandemic-era border expulsion policy known as Title 42 in May 2023, the Biden administration is implementing wide-ranging new border policies and strategies that establish incentives and disincentives linking how migrants enter the United States with their access to the asylum system. But timely, fair decisions are also central to the success of this new regime.
While many other studies have outlined wholesale changes in the immigration court system that only Congress can enact, such legislative action seems unlikely, at least in the near term. Thus, this report calls
for changes that can be made by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that houses the immigration courts, as it is presently organized. Because the immigration courts are administrative bodies, the executive branch has considerable latitude in determining their policies and procedures. The changes laid out in this report hold great potential to improve the courts’ performance and, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of the U.S. immigration system more broadly.
Some steps in this direction are already being taken. The Biden administration has streamlined certain important policies and procedures at EOIR. Nonetheless, these courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals
2 million
cases in the backlog
About 650
immigration judges nationwide
Less than 500
cases completed per judge in most recent years
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
(BIA), which reviews appeals from immigration court decisions, fall short of meeting the hallmarks of a well- functioning adjudicatory system: that decisions be accurate, efficiently made, consistent across both judges and jurisdictions, and accepted as fair by the public and the parties in the case.
Related issues of caseload quantity and decision quality have given rise to the difficulties EOIR is confronting. Under the Trump administration, the reopening of thousands of administratively closed cases and increased interior enforcement led to rising court caseloads. And since 2016, increased border crossings have accounted for growing numbers of new cases, many of them involving asylum claims.
Cases are also taking longer to complete. While pandemic-related restrictions played a role in this slowdown, case completion rates had in fact already been declining. In FY 2009, each immigration judge completed about 1,000 cases per year. By FY 2021, the completion rate had decreased to slightly more than 200 cases per year, even as the number of immigration judges grew. Thus, more judges alone are not the answer. Slow hiring, high turnover, and a lack of support staff have resulted in overwhelmed judges whose productivity has decreased as the backlog has grown.
Concerns about the quality of decision-making by immigration courts and the BIA have existed for decades. More than one in five immigration court decisions were appealed to the BIA in FY 2020, and appeals of BIA decisions have inundated the federal courts. Federal court opinions have pointed to errors of statutory interpretation and faulty reasoning when overturning decisions. Policy changes at
the BIA, ever-changing docket priorities from one
administration to the next, and some recent Supreme
Court directives have contributed to the diminished
adjudicative quality. Wide variances in case outcomes among immigration judges at the same court and across different courts around the country further point to quality concerns; for example, the rate at which individual immigration judges denied asylum claims ranged from 1 to 100 percent in FY 2017–22.
EOIR has increasingly turned to technology to manage its dockets, primarily through video-conferencing court proceedings. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use of internet-based hearings. Four important, yet at times competing, considerations are central when evaluating how technology—and particularly video-conferencing tools—are used in immigration proceedings: efficiency, the impact of technical difficulties, security issues, and concerns about due process.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys who prosecute removal cases also play an important role in the court system. Their use of prosecutorial discretion, along with judges’ docket management tools, help shape which cases flow through the system, and how.
Legal defense representation—or the lack of it—is a critical issue plaguing the immigration court system. Noncitizens in immigration proceedings, which are civil in nature, are not entitled to free legal counsel, as
The rate at which asylum claims are denied varies widely, from
1% with one judge to
100%
with another in FY 2017-22
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
defendants in criminal proceedings are. But they can face life-changing, and sometimes life-threatening, circumstances when subject to an order of removal from the United States. Studies have repeatedly found that representation in immigration proceedings improves due process and fair outcomes for noncitizens. It also improves efficiency, as represented noncitizens move more quickly through immigration court. Lawyers, accredited representatives, immigration help desks, and legal orientation programs aid some noncitizens through this process. But many more move through complex proceedings pro se (i.e., unrepresented).
Federal funding for representation of noncitizens in removal proceedings is effectively barred. Public funding at the state and local levels has increased the availability of representation for some noncitizens. A large share of representation is provided by nonprofit legal services organizations and pro bono law firm resources. Nonetheless, representation is fragmented and insufficient, given the scale of need.
One element of this system that has seen notable signs of change in recent years has been how border management feeds into the courts’ caseload. The Biden administration began implementing a new
asylum processing rule at the southwest border in June 2022 that aims to ease the growing pressures on immigration courts.1 The rule authorizes asylum officers, who are part of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to make the final decision in asylum cases instead of immigration judges. Asylum seekers whose claims are denied by an asylum officer can still appeal the decision, but on an expedited timeline. As such, the rule holds the potential to reduce the growth of the immigration court backlog and shorten adjudication times to months instead of years.
Since lifting the Title 42 expulsion policy, the Biden administration has paused implementation of the asylum rule due to competing demands for asylum officer resources. But returning to the rule, and strengthening EOIR’s functioning overall, will be important for managing the flow of cases into the immigration courts and the courts’ ability to keep pace with them. Doing so depends on the court system using technology better, more strategically exercising discretion in removal proceedings, and increasing access to legal representation so that courts deliver decisions that are both timely and fair.
This report’s analysis of the issues facing the nation’s immigration courts and its recommendations for addressing them reflect research and conversations with a diverse group of stakeholders—legal service providers, immigration lawyers and advocates, current and former immigration judges, BIA members and administrators, academics, and other experts who have administered, practiced before, and studied the immigration court system. The report urges EOIR and DHS, in its role as the agency whose decisions and referrals come before EOIR, to work together to:
Strengthen the immigration court system’s management and efficiency
► Schedule new cases on a “last-in, first-decided” basis. Such a reset to the system, which has proven successful in the past, could bring processing times on new cases down to months, rather than years.
1 This rule draws in part on proposals made in an earlier Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report: Doris Meissner, Faye Hipsman, and T. Alexander Aleinikoff, The U.S. Asylum System in Crisis: Charting a Way Forward (Washington, DC: MPI, 2018).
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
Because this disadvantages cases that have already been waiting for a long time, it should be treated as a temporary, emergency measure alongside policy and procedural reforms that protect fairness and promote efficiency more broadly. Shifting resources back to adjudicating older cases, as timeliness is established with incoming cases, is essential for shrinking the growth and size of the backlog, which should be among the courts’ highest priorities.
► Terminate cases that do not meet the administration’s prosecutorial guidelines, which focus priorities on felons, security threats, and recent entrants. One approach to this would be to task ICE attorneys with triaging backlog cases to determine which could be fast-tracked for grants of relief or for removal. Such efforts would allow the courts and ICE attorneys to focus on more serious cases, especially those involving criminal charges.
► Centralize case referrals from DHS. Instead of the current practice of having all three DHS immigration agencies (ICE, USCIS, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection) refer cases separately to EOIR, ICE attorneys should initiate all cases. As de facto prosecutors, they are best positioned to determine the legal sufficiency and priority for moving cases the government has an interest in pursuing.
► Establish two tiers of immigration judges—magistrate and merits judges—modeled on existing state and federal court systems where judges and staff are assigned to different roles or dockets so that cases move through the adjudication system efficiently and expeditiously.
► Expand the use of specialized dockets or courts that handle cases involving specific groups of noncitizens or require certain subject matter expertise, such as juveniles, families, reviews of credible fear determinations, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, and voluntary departure.Restart the asylum officer rule and provide the support needed to implement it
► Establish a dedicated docket for the asylum officer rule’s streamlined appeal proceedings. As the most far-reaching reform the Biden administration has introduced for strengthening management of the asylum and immigration court systems, implementing the rule effectively is key to reducing the pace of caseload growth in the court system and discouraging weak claims.
Upgrade how the courts use technology
► Ensure that technology is used to make immigration courts fairer for everyone involved, such as by holding hearings remotely when parties would be unable to attend an in-person hearing. Special attention should be paid to how the use of technology can affect detained noncitizens and vulnerable populations such as children.
Increase access to legal representation
► Establish a new unit within EOIR devoted to coordinating the agency’s efforts to expand representation. The unit should collaborate with nongovernmental stakeholders to make representation of detained noncitizens a priority and to allow partially accredited representatives— some of whom may be non-lawyers—to appear in immigration court for limited functions.
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
► Develop new and innovative ways to scale up representation by coordinating with lawyers who take responsibility for specific aspects of cases or non-lawyers who are specially trained and supervised
to do so. Legal service providers should build a multi-stage, collaborative online system that enables representation by lawyers or non-lawyers in specific stages of a case for which they have the requisite expertise (e.g., filing forms, attending bond or master calendar hearings, or seeking relief ). This approach requires creating e-files for cases, with files moving from one representative or provider to another as cases progress, resulting in both expert representation at each stage and greater efficiency in moving cases forward overall.
► Encourage efforts by state and local governments to provide and/or increase funding to support representation, especially given current restrictions on federal funding of representation in most removal cases.
Despite efforts by successive administrations to bring
the immigration court system’s unwieldy caseload
under control and to improve the quality of its
decision-making, the courts remain mired in crisis.
And while many of the most pressing problems have
roots that stretch back decades, they have in recent
years reached a breaking point. The measures
proposed in this report hold the potential to reduce
case volumes, increase the pace of decision-making,
and improve the quality of adjudications. They would
also mitigate migration pull factors that result from
years-long waits for decisions. The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.
The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement
and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.
BOX 1
About the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Project
This report is part of a multiyear Migration Policy Institute (MPI) project, Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy. At a time when U.S. immigration realities are changing rapidly, this initiative has been generating a big- picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future. It provides research, analysis, and policy ideas and proposals—both administrative and legislative—that reflect these new realities and needs for immigration to better align with U.S. national interests.
The research, analyses, and convenings conducted for MPI’s Rethinking initiative address critical immigration issues, which include economic competitiveness, national security, and changing demographic trends, as well as issues of immigration enforcement and administering the nation’s immigration system.
To learn more about the project and read other reports and policy briefs generated by the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, see bit.ly/RethinkingImmigration.
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Read the full report at the link.
Not the first time I’ve said this, but it’s time for “Amateur Night @ The Bijou” (“A/K/A Merrick Garland’s failed EOIR”) to end! Reassign the EOIR senior management folks who have demonstrated “beyond any reasonable doubt” their inability to provide dynamic, due process with efficiency management and visiononary leadership and to solve pressing problems. (This includes the inability to stand up and “just say no” to bonehead “gimmicks” like Garland’s due-process-denying, quality diminishing, backlog-building, “expedited dockets”).
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the anti-asylum, anti-human rights, anti-reality charade now playing out in Congress is driven in large part by Garland’s three-year failure to do his job by getting functionality and due process focused leadership into EOIR.
Bring in a competent, expert executive team, hand them the MPI Plan, and empower them to move whatever “bureaucratic mountains” need to be moved to get results, including, but not limited to, major personnel changes at the BIA and in Immigration Courts and taking a “hard line” with counterproductive performance by DHS (actually “just a party” before the Immigration Courts, NOT “their bosses!”)
Bring in these experts:
Judge (Retired) Dana Leigh Marks
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Dean Kevin Johnson
Michelle Mendez (NIPNLG)
Professor Michele Pistone
Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow
Wendy Young (KIND)
Task this “Magnificent Seven” — folks with centuries of practical expertise and creative ideas for actually solving humanitarian problems (rather than making them worse, as per the ongoing travesty on the Hill) — with turning around the EOIR disaster; support and empower them to achieve results and to reject politicized bureaucratic meddling from DOJ and elsewhere! Make the long-unfilled “promise of INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca” — a legitimate, properly generous, practical, efficient asylum and refugee adjudication system that complies with international and domestic law and simple human decency — a reality!
This is about rebuilding America’s most important and consequential court system, NOT running an “government agency!”
This is also the “demand” that Congressional Dems SHOULD be making of the Biden Administration, instead of engaging in disgraceful (non) “bargaining” with GOP nativists that seek an end to asylum and an increase to human suffering and ensure continuing humanitarian disaster at our borders!
Melissa Del Bosque Border Reporter PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.comCaitlyn Yates Fellow Strauss Center for International Law & Security PHOTO: Strauss Center
This podcast from Melissa Del Bosque of The Border Chronicle and Caitlyn Yates, who actually works with migrants in the Darien Gap, gives real life perspective on the humanitarian crisis and all the reasons why more cruelty, punishment, and deadly deterrence isn’t going to solve the flow of forced migrants. But, unhappily, policy makers aren’t interested in the voices of those who actually have experience with forced migrants, nor are they interested in learning from the forced migrants themselves — a logical — if constantly ignored — starting point for making sound policy decisions!
Migration and human rights experts have excelled in court and academia. Yet, they have been consigned to wander the political wilderness, their wisdom, expertise, and real world solutions are routinely ignored or mindlessly rejected by both political parties. Colmar – Unterlinden Museum – The Isenheim Altarpiece 1512-16 by Matthias Grünewald (ca 1470-1528) – Visit of Saint Anthony the Great to Saint Paul the Hermit in the Wilderness Creative Commons
Four “takeaways” on what a consensus on migration should be:
Human migration is real;
Forced migration is largely beyond the unilateral control of any one nation;
Deterrence alone won’t stop migration;
More legal pathways for migration are necessary.
We’re a long way from that needed consensus right now!
A robust asylum system is essential to national security. A closed border is as dangerous as an open border. If you close the asylum system, they will just cross illegally. Republicans need the border out of control. This is a trap!
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That’s it in a nutshell! Reality and practicality have nothing to do with it. It’s about the GOP creating chaos and fanning hate! Unhappily, Dems fall for it — every time! That’s why American democracy is on the ropes!
The Dems have ready access to the greatest “treasure trove” of real life expertise and truth about the border in history. Yet, they routinely ignore it and let themselves be “hoodwinked” by GOP nativists peddling lies, hate, and myths. It’s seriously undermining our democracy while squandering human lives and potential!
There’s deep irony in “national security” being disingenuously parroted by a party lead by a demagogue who encouraged actual insurrection against the U.S. Government! Yet Dems and the “mainstream media” fall for it! Gimmie a break!
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is taking a more active role in Senate negotiations about changes to the immigration system that Republicans are demanding in exchange for providing money to Ukraine in its fight against Russia and Israel for the war with Hamas.
The Democratic president has said he is willing to make “significant compromises on the border” as Republicans block the wartime aid in Congress. The White House is expected to get more involved in talks this week as the impasse over changes to border policy has deepened and the money remaining for Ukraine has dwindled.
Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is leading the negotiations, pointed to the surge of people entering the U.S. from Mexico and said “it is literally spiraling out of control.”
But many immigration advocates, including some Democrats, say some of the changes being proposed would gut protections for people who desperately need help and would not really ease the chaos at the border.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democratic bargainer, said the White House would take a more active role in the talks. But he also panned Republican policy demands so far as “unreasonable.”
. . . .
Critics say the problem is that most people do not end up getting asylum when their case finally makes it to immigration court. But they say migrants know that if they claim asylum, they essentially will be allowed to stay in America for years.
“People aren’t necessarily coming to apply for asylum as much to access that asylum adjudication process,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the U.S.
Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants need to meet during that initial credible fear interview. Those who do not meet it would be sent home.
But Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration court judge who blogs about immigration court issues, said the credible fear interview was never intended to be so tough. Migrants are doing the interview soon after arriving at the border from an often arduous and traumatizing journey, he said. Schmidt said the interview is more of an “initial screening” to weed out those with frivolous asylum claims.
Schmidt also questioned the argument that most migrants fail their final asylum screening. He said some immigration judges apply overly restrictive standards and that the system is so backlogged that it is hard to know exactly what the most recent and reliable statistics are.
. . . .
WHAT MIGHT THESE CHANGES DO?
Much of the disagreement over these proposed changes comes down to whether people think deterrence works.
Arthur, the former immigration court judge, thinks it does. He said changes to the credible fear asylum standards and restrictions on the use of humanitarian parole would be a “game changer.” He said it would be a “costly endeavor” as the government would have to detain and deport many more migrants than today. But, he argued, eventually the numbers of people arriving would drop.
But others, like Schmidt, the retired immigration court judge, say migrants are so desperate, they will come anyway and make dangerous journeys to evade Border Patrol.
“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said.
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Ignoring both the powerful forces that drive human migration and folks who actually work with migrants at the border and in foreign countries seems like a totally insane way to “debate policy.” But, then, whoever said this “nativist-driven debate” on enhanced cruelty, dismantling the rule of law, and de-humanization is rational?
You can read Rebecca’s full article, with an “accessible” explanation of what’s at stake and what’s being proposed at the above link.
The settlement involves a 2018 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to block the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which called for separating parents from their children to prosecute the adults for crossing the border illegally. Officials sent parents to detention centers and children to shelters, without a plan to reunite them, under the policy. Some were apart for months, some for years.
“It does represent, in my view, one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw said before he approved the settlement in a hearing that recalled the shock and disbelief surrounding the policy in 2018.
Under the settlement approved Friday, crossing the border illegally will no longer be a reason to separate a family, at least for the next eight years, which is how long that provision will last, lawyers said. The Justice Department has said the government will not prosecute parents for crossing the border without permission, a misdemeanor, or for the felony crime of reentering after being deported.
The settlement also offers aid to once-separated families so that they may apply to stay in the United States permanently. Those who were deported may apply to come back. Their immigration records will be cleared, giving them a fresh start on applying for humanitarian protection such as asylum.
Once they are in the United States, formerly separated families may apply for three-year work permits, six months of housing assistance and one year of medical care, according to the settlement. The families also are eligible for three years of counseling under the settlement.
Sabraw, a Republican nominee, declared the separations unlawful and ordered the families reunited in June 2018, after President Donald Trump halted the policy amid widespread condemnation.
Trump’s zero-tolerance policy ran from May to June 2018. Later, investigations determined that officials separated migrant families throughout Trump’s four-year term, which ended in January 2021.
Biden administration officials said the Trump administration separated more than 4,000 children from their parents, though past estimates have put that figure as high as 5,500. Lawyers for the ACLU, which represented the migrant families in court, estimated that as many as 1,000 children may still be separated from their parents. Advocates are trying to track them down.
The ACLU has called the case the most significant settlement in the organization’s 103-year history.
“This settlement brings much needed help to these brutalized children but there remains significant work to ensure that every family is now reunited and to monitor that no future administration tries to circumvent the agreement and reenact the same horrific policy,” Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer and the lead counsel in the case, said in a statement.
. . . .
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Read the rest of Maria’s report at the link!
The human and fiscal costs of this illegal policy, developed and implemented by GOP White Nationalist child abusers, is beyond comprehension! Some of the damage can never be repaired!
Notably, there has never been any accountability for the architects of this clearly unconstitutional abuse and the Government attorneys who failed to do “due diligence” and misrepresented the facts surrounding child separation in Federal Court. The truth was only brought out when the ACLU was forced to do the DOJ’s job for it! It’s also curious how a prohibition on clearly unconstitutional conduct could have only an “eight year shelf life.”
But, there are even worse developments on the horizon — immoral, illegal, and unconscionable policies under consideration that will dwarf even this horrible episode in terms of preventable deaths, disregard for humanity, dereliction of duty, moral cowardice, and degradation of our nation!
Why are Dems ignoring their “core supporters” and negotiating with this notorious human rights abuser! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
So why are Dem legislators and the Administration “negotiating” even more outrageous legal violations, moral transgressions, and human rights abuses with the GOP? Talk about “shameful!” If Dems don’t get some backbone and live up to their professed values and the law, “shameful” will have a whole new meaning!
Here’s a link to tell your Congressional representatives to “just say no” to the truly repulsive proposals to bully and inflict pointless harm on the most vulnerable and to arrogantly violate human rights on a massive scale being pushed by theGOP and some so-called Dems.https://lnkd.in/gp2RteRr.
Trading away human rights that are not yours to dispose of for unrelated foreign military aid is beyond unconscionable! 🤮
U.S. immigration law and policy, including border security and asylum, have nothing to do with Ukraine, NATO, Russia and Putin. Right?
Wrong, if you are a Republican in Congress. Here, let Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) explain: “I think … Schumer will realize we’re serious … and then the discussions will begin in earnest.”
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If you are still having trouble with the concept, I’ll translate for you: “Yes, we understand and agree that Russia cannot be allowed to take over Ukraine, and we will fund aid to Ukraine, but in exchange, we insist on fundamental changes to our immigration laws to make sure no more Brown people come to America, starting right effing now.” (“Brown,” in this context, means anyone who is poor, Latin American, Asian, African, non-Anglophone…you get the idea.)
How will this play out in the next few weeks? I see three options: 1) Biden and the Dems cave, so the 1980 Refugee Act is scrapped, Dreamers get deported, the southern border is further militarized, and the economy tanks because a good chunk of the workforce is afraid to come to work; or 2) the GOP does a Tuberville and caves; or 3) the Unknown Unknown.
Stay tuned…
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Thanks for telling it like it is, Dan! There is no validity to the GOP’s attempt to punish asylum seekers by unconscionably returning them to danger and death with no process.
The cruelty and threat to life from forcing desperate seekers to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico, pushing them to attempt entry in ever more deadly locations along the border, detaining them in inhumane substandard prisons in the U.S., and or returning them without meaningful screening by qualified independent decision-makers is overwhelming. That Congress, the Administration, and much of the “mainstream media” choose to ignore, and often intentionally misrepresent, truth and reality about the horrible human and fiscal wastefulness of “border deterrence” doesn’t change these facts!
The Administration’s three year failure to build a functional, robust asylum system at the border with humane reception centers, access to legal assistance, a rational resettlement system, and sweeping, readily achievable, administrative reforms and leadership changes at EOIR and the Asylum Office (as laid out by experts, whose views were dismissed) is also inexcusable.
Yet, the media misrepresents this farce as a “debate.” It’s a false “debate” in which neither disingenuous “side” speaks for the endangered humans whose rights and lives they are bargaining away to mask their own failures and immorality.
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, died at age 93, the court announced Friday.
The woman who often referred to herself as FWOTSC (First Woman on the Supreme Court) was a justice for 26 years, serving as the swing vote in cases addressing abortion and affirmative action. (O’Connor, however, hated the term “swing vote,” saying it suggested a person who made their rulings on a whim.) She retired from the court in 2006.
“My appointment just opened the doors, and it was not only in the United States,” O’Connor said in 2012. “It immediately had an effect in other parts of the world, with opportunities for women. It was quite amazing to see.”
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Read the rest of the tribute at the link.
She was a pioneer and a legal giant who put thoughtful judging, fairness, problem solving, and collegiality above ideology. She changed America for the better. Not many judges today can say that!
Interestingly, Justice O’Connor’s story is similar to that of one of my law professors at U.W. Law (1970-73), Hon. Shirley Abrahamson who went on to serve as Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Despite graduating at the top of her class at Indiana Law, like Justice O’Connor, Chief Justice Abrahamson got no job offers other than as a legal secretary. Like Justice O’Connor, Chief Justice Abrahamson refused to accept the arrogant, misogynistic “verdict” of the then male-dominated legal system “establishment.” Like Justice O’Connor, she fought her way the top of our profession by virtue of her intellectual excellence, performance, and persistance.
While opening doors for many, unfortunately, as she herself acknowledged, Justice O’Connor is also symbolic of a bygone era — one where practical experience and common sense in our judges was valued over ideology. It’s impossible to imagine any candidate for the Supremes being unanimously confirmed by the Senate, as it is that any future Republican President would even consider someone like Justice O’Connor for the job.
Jennifer Habercorn and Burgess Everett report for Politico:
A growing number of Senate Democrats appear open to making it harder for migrants to seek asylum in order to secure Republican support for aiding Ukraine and Israel.
They are motivated not just by concern for America’s embattled allies. They also believe changes are needed to help a migration crisis that is growing more dire and to potentially dull the political sting of border politics in battleground states before the 2024 elections.
“Look, I think the border needs some attention. I am one that thinks it doesn’t hurt,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s midterm election.
Tester said he’s eager to see if a bipartisan group of negotiators can come up with an agreement on a policy issue as elusive as immigration. While he refused to commit to supporting a deal until he sees its details, he didn’t rule out backing stronger border requirements. And he’s not alone.
“I am certainly okay with [border policy] being a part of a national security supplemental,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), another Democrat facing reelection next year. On changes to asylum policy, she said: “I would like to see us make some bipartisan progress, which has eluded us for years. The system’s broken.”
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Professor Karen Musalo Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law
Meanwhile, the GOP’s proposal to essentially end asylum — going well beyond the unfair and unduly restrictive policies already imposed by the Administration — has been condemned in the strongest possible terms by human rights and immigration experts. For example, here’s what Professor Karen Musalo, Founder & Director of the Center For Gender & Refugee Studies at Hastings Law, and an internationally-renowned human rights expert, said yesterday:
CGRS Urges Senators to Reject GOP Push to End Asylum
Nov 28, 2023
As negotiations over President Biden’s supplemental funding request continue, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) urges lawmakers to reject Republican-led proposals that would upend the U.S. asylum system and eviscerate life-saving protections for people fleeing persecution and torture. If enacted, they would erase our longstanding tradition of welcoming asylum seekers and lead to the wrongful return of refugees to countries where they face persecution or torture, in violation of international law.
“These radical proposals amount to a complete abandonment of the U.S. government’s legal and moral obligations to extend protection to refugees fleeing persecution,” Karen Musalo, Director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS), said today. “In practice, they would result in the persecution, torture, and deaths of families, children, and adults seeking safe haven at our nation’s doorstep. It is utterly shameful that Republican lawmakers are attempting to exploit the budget negotiations process to advance an extremist, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee agenda. The lives of people seeking asylum are not political bargaining chips. We urge lawmakers to join Senator Padilla and other congressional leaders in rejecting these cynical proposals.”
Read the complete Politico article at the first link above.
To me, expressions like “attention” and “bipartisan progress” used by Dem politicos in connection with the Southern border are “code words” for appeasing the GOP nativist right by agreeing to “more border militarization” and “abrogation of the human rights of refugees and asylees!”
I see little “attention” or “bipartisan progress” being discussed on measures that, unlike the GOP “end of asylum/uber enforcement” proposals, would actually address the humanitarian situation on the border (and elsewhere) in a constructive and positive manner:
More, better trained, expert Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers;
Organized resettlement assistance and expedited work authorization for asylum applicants;
Legal assistance for asylum seekers;
An independent Article I Immigration Court;
Revision of the refugee definition to more clearly cover forms of gender-based persecution;
Increased DHS funding for sophisticated undercover and anti-smuggling operations targeting smugglers and cartels;
Adjustment of status for long-term TPS holders.
These are the types effective measures that have long been recommended by experts, yet widely ignored or even directly contravened by those in power. The negative results of “enforcement only” and “extreme cruelty” at the border are obvious in today’s continuing humanitarian situation.
The idea that a forced migration emergency will be “solved” by more draconian enforcement, eradication of human rights, and elimination of due process, as touted by GOP nativists, is a preposterous! Yet, many Dems seem ready, even anxious, to throw asylum applicants and their advocates under the bus — once again!
Unhappily, Congress and the Biden Administration have paid scant attention to the views of experts and those actually involved in relieving the plight of asylum seekers at the border. The politicos continue to dehumanize and demean forced migrants while stubbornly treating a human rights emergency as a “law enforcement crisis” that can be solved with more cruelty and repression.
As experts like Karen Musalo continue to point out, experience shows us that more deterrence and harshness will only make things worse, squandering resources and attention that could more effectively be used to address and alleviate unnecessary human suffering and finally making our refugee and asylum systems function in a fair and efficient manner.
Yet, politicos are more interested in grandstanding, “victim shaming,” and finger pointing than in achieving success and harnessing the positive potential of forced migration for countries like ours fortunate enough to be “receivers” rather than “senders!”
Ending asylum will NOT stop refugees from coming — at least in the long run. Every Administration manipulates or misrepresents statistics to show immediate “deterrent” effect from their latest restrictionist gimmicks (some ruled illegal by Federal Courts). But such “bogus successes” are never durable!
As the current situation shows, decades of failed deterrence merely creates new flows, in different places, piles up more dead migrant bodies, and surrenders the control of border policies to smugglers and cartels. That, in turn, fuels calls by restrictionists and their enablers for harsher, crueler, and ever more expensive (and profitable to some) sanctions imposed on some of the world’s most vulnerable humans.
If asylum ends, America will find itself with a larger, less controllable reality of a growing underground population of extralegal migrants. Contrary to nativist alarmism, this population has remained largely stable recently.
But, that will change as the legal asylum system contracts. Right now, most asylum seekers either apply at ports of entry (often undergoing unreasonable and dangerous waits and struggling with the dysfunctional “CBP One App”) or voluntarily surrender to CBP shortly after entering between ports. The GOP and Dem “go alongs” are determined to change that so that those seeking refuge will have no choice but to be smuggled into the interior where they can become lost in the general population.
This, in turn, will fuel demands by GOP White Nationalists and their Dem enablers for even more expensive and ultimately ineffective border militarization. It will also turn DHS into an internal security police.
Unable to “ferret out” and remove the underground population — because, in fact, they look, act, and are in many cases indistinguishable from native-born Americans and often perform essential services — they will concentrate on harassing and spreading fear among minority populations in America. Also, Trump has also promised that if re-elected, he will abuse his Executive authority to punish his critics and political opponents. Further empowerment of DHS in the interior would be handy in this respect.
Underground populations are also more susceptible to exploitation — another unstated objective of GOP restrictionist policies. What’s better for employers than a disenfranchised workforce who can be fired and turned over to DHS if they demand fair wages or better treatment?
Senate Dems appear to be on the verge of doing precisely what Karen and other experts have repeatedly warned against: using the lives and rights of asylum seekers as a “political bargaining chip” to appease the GOP right and secure military funding for Israel and Ukraine. It’s exactly what happens when experts and those with “on the ground” experience dealing with forced migrants are “locked out of the room” where decisions are made!
While White Nationalist neo-fascists like Stephen Miller and his cronies have remained “at the heart” of GOP policy making on eradicating human rights and punishing asylum seekers, lifetime experts on human rights and asylum find themselves reduced to the role of “outside critics” and “kibitzers” as the Dem Administration and Senate Dems bumble along on the border and human rights. That’s a shame that will certainly diminish and threaten the future of American democracy! And, it’s hard to see how appeasing the GOP restrictionist right will help Dems in 2024!
Estrella Santos-Zacaria has come a long way from San Pedro Soloma, Guatemala, a village nestled in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes mountains and known as El Valle del Ensueño, or the Valley of Dreams.
For years, Santos-Zacaria dreamed desperately — of escape.
In 2008, she attempted to immigrate to the U.S., fearing that the violence she had experienced because of her sexual orientation and identity as a transgender woman could get her killed. Since then, she has been deported twice.
But in January, her case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on May 11, Santos-Zacaria won the right to further challenge her deportation — and the potential to start a new life in the U.S. Other immigrants facing deportation could benefit, as well, because the ruling helps clear a procedural obstacle for noncitizens seeking judicial review of rulings by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an administrative appellate body within the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Supreme Court’s decision, authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, also marks a notable step in its acknowledgment of transgender people. Santos-Zacaria’s chosen name, Estrella, was referenced alongside her former given name, and her proper pronouns were used throughout.
The case was the first initiated by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. SIFI provides pro bono legal representation to asylum seekers who are being held at immigrant detention centers in the Deep South.
“What Estrella’s won is the right to keep fighting,” said Peter Isbister, senior lead attorney for SIFI. “And that would not have been possible without her team of volunteer attorneys. Cases and clients like Estrella are why SIFI believes so deeply in having a pro bono program.”
In her case, both the BIA and the 5th Circuit had gone out of the way NOT to meaningfully review life or death mistakes made in the Immigration Court. In doing so, they tossed aside the realities and roadblocks facing those seeking justice in Immigration Court and their representatives (if any, in a glaringly unfair system).
This case shows the critical importance of pro bono immigration assistance. These lower court Federal Judges focused not on constitutionally required due process and fundamental fairness, or on the vulnerable human life at stake, but rather on inventing ways NOT to provide fair hearings in some of the most important, perhaps the most important, cases coming before the Federal Justice system.
Pro bono representation levels the playing field and exposes the poor performance of those whose sole focus should be individual justice, rather than “institutional task avoidance!”
Three principles are at the core of Andy’s article:
. . . .
International Obligations and Refugee Protection
Key international obligations regarding refugees also play a crucial role in shaping the discourse. The United States, as a signatory to the 1967 Protocol to the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, is bound by several obligations, including:
Non-refoulement: Prohibiting the return of refugees to countries where they would face persecution or harm based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
Access to asylum procedures: Ensuring a fair and accessible process for individuals to seek asylum and present their claims for protection.
Non-discrimination: Preventing discrimination against refugees based on factors such as nationality or place of entry.
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Read the complete article at the link!
I think that the U.S. is in violation of all three of these essential, mandatory legal obligations.
Gimmicks like Title 42, “Remain in Mexico,” coercive detention, “CBP One,” and artificial roadblocks for those applying between ports of entry have violated and continue to violate our “non-refoulment” obligation.
These provisions, along with conducting interviews in detention settings, improperly limiting access to representation, and “expedited dockets” to limit the ability to prepare and present claims are examples of violations of our obligation to provide “fair access” to our asylum system.
And, by intentionally designing our system to discourage and deny applicants of color from the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Muslim nations, and imposing illegal higher burdens on those not applying at ports of entry, we clearly are violating the “non-discrimination” requirement.
The GOP answer is simply to double down on the violations and abrogate our domestic and international obligations. While the Biden Administration at least nominally acknowledges these obligations, their actions and policies, some actually carried over or borrowed from the Trump Administration, blatantly undermine these principles of protection.
Indeed, the whole “movement” by both parties to use the refugee/asylum system for “rejection and deterrence” rather than “enhanced protection” is a “bipartisan legal and moral travesty!”
What if our “number one priority” was what it should be: Establish a world-class, expert, efficient, robust, generous system that is driven by, and true to, these three governing obligations?
Only after achieving that can we discuss and achieve “border security” in a realistic and effective manner! And, it couldn’t possibly be more expensive, in both fiscal terms and human lives cost, than decades of costly failed deterrence gimmicks and schemes! It’s a case of badly screwed up priorities aggravated by political cowardice!
Institutionalized cruelty, deterrence, and unlawful behavior by our Government has failed to create order at the border and has demonstrably destroyed or diminished human lives. Why not give adherence to laws and to humanitarian values and principles a chance?🤯
We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!
Katharina Obser Director of Migrants Rights and Justice Women’s Refugee Commission PHOTO: Women’s Refugee Commission website
Close to San Diego, California, hundreds of people seeking asylum are being held in deplorable conditions. So-called open-air detention sites are desolate areas in the US at or close to the US-Mexico border, where men, women, and children seeking protection wait outside, exposed to the elements. Nonprofit organizations and volunteers do their best to provide desperately needed water, meals, snacks, first aid, diapers, clothing, and blankets.
Last month, the Women’s Refugee Commission traveled to San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, to assess the conditions that people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border face. Our short report, released today, is heartbreaking. We heard about families being separated. About people scared to go to hospital for treatment in case they aren’t reunited with their loved ones. And about rampant exploitation of people seeking asylum as they travel through Mexico to reach the United States.
We will use our findings to advocate that the Biden administration rescind its asylum ban; ends the use open-air detention sites; and that Congress significantly increase investment in organizations providing short-term aid, housing, and services. And we will continue to call for those seeking asylum to be treated humanely and with dignity.
Katharina Obser
Director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program
Compare this with the “border BS” spread by the GOP and the media that ignores the human and legal traumas at the border and falsely insists that competently administering domestic and international refugee and asylum laws is “mission impossible” for the world’s most prosperous superpower.
It appears that the politicos are too busy spreading lies and myths about the most vulnerable among us to solve problems in a humane, reasonable, and efficient manner!
CLARIFICATION:While a number of members of the Round Table signed this letter in a “personal capacity,” the Round Table, as an organization did not take a position on this issue.
Signs like the one in this undated image were displayed at various restaurants and other pubic accommodations under a system known as “Juan Crow” laws.Russell Lee / Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
11-16-23
UPDATE FROM HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE:
Hi all: The Texas state law was passed by both houses of the Texas legislature, and is expected to be signed into law.
The letter from 30 individual members of this group was specifically mentioned yesterday on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper.
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.
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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 ourConstitution 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).
Simon Rosenberg Veteran U.S. Political Analyst Hopium PHOTO: Substack
Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:
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.
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!
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.”
“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.
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!
Marianne LeVine Political Reporter Washington Post PHOTO: WashPost
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.
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