Civil Rights – Page 6 – immigrationcourtside.com

🏴‍☠️☠️ 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

⚖️🗽 WHAT DEMS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE BORDER — As Speculation Grows That Dems Will “Sell Out” Asylum Seekers To Get Aid For Israel & Ukraine, They Should Think About The Cruelty, Deadly Consequences & Inevitable Failure The GOP Seeks & The Real Costs Of Abandoning Human & Civil Rights — “Deterrence won’t solve migration—it will only maim and mangle more men, women, and children.“

Border Death — Is it REALLY a good idea for Dems to trade war aid abroad for eradication of human rights and even more border deaths to appease right wing GOP extremists in Congress? — 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

From The Border Chronicle:

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

We are happy to announce that we will be doing occasional guest op-eds here at The Border Chronicle, and today is our first. You probably remember Brian Elmore, the emergency-medicine resident physician who did a Q&A with Melissa last month. In this op-ed he vividly describes what border deterrence does to a person’s flesh, and he makes an eloquent call for its end. After 30 years of this strategy, which has proved both deadly and harmful for people crossing the border, it is our honor to publish this reckoning and call for action, especially since we are entering an election year (it is now November, after all).

Brian is also the cofounder of Clínica Hope, a free clinic for migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which he runs with the nonprofit Hope Border Institute.

And lastly, !Feliz Día de Muertos! Todd

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

The Political Pathology of Border Deterrence: An Up-Close View of How This Policy Looks in the Emergency Room

“Deterrence won’t solve migration—it will only maim and mangle more men, women, and children. It will send more people to my emergency room. Some it will send to the morgue.”

. . . .

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

Read Dr. Elmore’s complete op-ed at the link.

So, exactly what makes “selling out” the legal, civil, and human rights of other persons a viable “strategy option” for Dem politicos, who certainly know better? See, e.g., https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/biden-ukraine-aid-deal-00125125. Sounds “pretty GOP” to me — selling rights that aren’t yours in the first place! See, e.g., Women’s Right to Choose & the “Forced Birth Movement!”

Dems shouldn’t believe that by abandoning asylum seekers and trashing both civil and human rights at the border they will gain any credit from the GOP or leverage from their xenophobic voters. They will just leave a trail of dead bodies and sow the seeds for the destruction of our democracy.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-07-23

⚖️🗽😎 CRAVATH CELEBRATES PRO BONO WEEK WITH A BIG “W” — Case Had Been Pending 5 Years Because Of Bad Decisions From BIA, IJ!

Wes Earnhardt, Esquire
Partner
Cravath, NYT Office
PHOTO Cravath

https://bit.ly/3M9E57w

On August 30, 2023, Judge Leo A. Finston of the Newark Immigration Court granted asylum to a Cravath pro bono client persecuted by gang members in El Salvador.

Cravath’s client overheard the murder of his neighbors by a Salvadoran gang and, fearing retaliation from the gang, subsequently refused to provide police with information. Even so, he was repeatedly attacked and continued to receive threats to “cooperate with the gang.” He fled El Salvador and arrived at the Texas border in December 2017, turning himself in to United States immigration officials and requesting asylum. He was detained, and Human Rights First represented him before the Immigration Court in Newark, New Jersey.

In September 2018, Judge Finston denied the application for asylum, finding that, while the man was credible and had suffered PTSD from the events in El Salvador, “complaining witnesses against major Salvadoran gangs” were not a “particular social group” for purposes of asylum, and there was not sufficient probability that he would be tortured upon his return to El Salvador. In March 2019, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dismissed the initial appeal. Cravath became involved at this stage, briefing and arguing the appeal before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

On April 17, 2020, the Third Circuit issued a precedential opinion (see related news item here) granting the client’s petition for review, vacating the BIA’s removal order and remanding the case to the BIA for further proceedings. The Court held that “persons who publicly provide assistance against major Salvadoran gangs do constitute a particular social group” for purposes of asylum, and that the BIA erred in denying relief under the Convention Against Torture, finding that “it is clear to us, viewing the record as a whole, that [he] suffered torture”. The Court remanded the case to the BIA, and in December 2021, the BIA remanded the matter to the Newark Immigration Court for further proceedings.

By that time, Cravath’s client was living in hiding in El Salvador, and the Cravath team spent the next year and a half trying to secure his return for a new merits hearing, consistent with the Third Circuit’s opinion.

On July 20, 2023, at a Master Calendar Hearing before Judge Finston, the Cravath team argued the man had a meritorious case and constitutional due process and statutory rights to be present at his merits hearing, but the Department of Homeland Security took the position that it had no obligation to allow him to return. On August 30, 2023, the Cravath team appeared on the client’s behalf at a second Master Calendar Hearing, where Judge Finston found that, in light of the Third Circuit’s opinion and based on the record before him, it was clear the man qualified for asylum and no further proceedings were necessary.

The Cravath team was led by partner Wes Earnhardt and included associates Brian P. Golger and Ana C. Sewell.

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

Many congrats to Cravath!

I told the BIA that witnesses were a PSG more than a decade ago! They wouldn’t listen, but the Fourth Circuit did! See Crespin-Valladares v. Holder, 632 F. 3d 171 (4th Cir. 2011). When will they ever learn?

With proper guidance from a competent BIA, this case should have been a “slam dunk grant” five years ago. This also illustrates the absurdity of those who disingenuously claim that asylum applicants can receive due process without competent representation! It also shows the legal and moral bankruptcy of “expedited docket gimmicks” that attempt to rush cases to denial and deportation without a realistic chance to get representation and prepare!

The U.S. asylum system would work much more fairly and efficiently with a BIA of recognized asylum experts! They are out here! Why hasn’t Garland reformed and reconstituted the BIA to get the job done?

Lives and the future of American law are at stake here!

It’s a huge deal! Dems must “lose” the arrogant “it’s only immigration” attitude that has prevented Dem Administrations from doing the correct, courageous (and smart) thing on immigration, human rights, social justice, and civil rights! Migrants’ rights are human rights are civil rights are everyone’s rights!

Judge Finston did the right thing on remand from the Circuit. I’d like to believe that with better guidance from the BIA he would have done it five years ago. The human impact of the abject failure of the BIA to provide positive leadership on GRANTING asylum in recurring situations is an incomprehensible drag on our justice system at many levels.

Better judges for a better America! And, it starts at the “retail level” with EOIR!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-2-23

🤯 POLITICS: (SADLY) YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! — Bess Levin @ Vanity Fair With The (Very) Low Down On MAGAMIKE!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/10/everything-to-know-about-mike-johnson?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HIVE_102823&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67c363f92a41245df49eb&cndid=48297443&hasha=8a1f473740b253d8fa4c23b066722737&hashb=26cd42536544e247751ec74095d9cedc67e77edb&hashc=eb7798068820f2944081a20180a0d3a94e025b4a93ea9ae77c7bbe00367c46ef&esrc=newsletteroverlay&mbid=mbid%3DCRMVYF012019&source=EDT_VYF_NEWSLETTER_0_HIVE_ZZ&utm_campaign=VF_HIVE_102823&utm_term=VYF_Hive

Election Denial, “Sexual Anarchy,” Noah’s Ark: All the Mike Johnson Details We Regret to Inform You Of

By Bess LevinOctober 26, 2023

There’s a lot that’s concerning!

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On October 25, after several weeks that saw dysfunction, chaos, humiliation, and anonymous threats to at least one lawmaker’s wife, Republicans finally elected a Speaker of the House to succeed Kevin McCarthy: Mike Johnson, a representative from Louisiana who has the distinction of being the least experienced Speaker in more than a century.

At the time of Johnson’s accession, a lot of Americans likely had no idea who he was; actual Republican senator Susan Collins, for one, told a reporter she didn’t know Johnson but planned to remedy that by googling him. And if you weren’t familiar with Johnson, you might’ve assumed that that was maybe even a good thing—that he was just a quiet Republican who hadn’t gotten wrapped up in the insanity plaguing the GOP over the last seven or so years. He didn’t have the name recognition of, say, Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz, but perhaps that simply spoke to the fact that he wasn’t leading a series of absurd hearings in an attempt to take down Joe Biden; or bragging about being so devoted to Donald Trump that he answered his phone calls during sex. Maybe, you might have thought, he wasn’t someone you’d have to constantly worry about re: undermining democracy or trying to take away people’s rights.

Unfortunately, that is not the case with Johnson, who may not have been well known prior to being given one of the most powerful jobs in government but is very much someone whose extremist views and actions should keep you up at night.

Herein, a running list of the absolute most WTF things the new Speaker has said and done on everything from the 2020 election to abortion to LGBTQ+ rights and more.

Abortion

Johnson is proudly antiabortion. When Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, he called it “a great, joyous occasion,” later writing, “We will get the number of abortions [in Louisiana] to ZERO!!” As an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom, he worked on efforts to shut down abortion clinics in the state. In Congress, he cosponsored legislation that would have banned abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy, i.e., a time when many people do not even know they’re pregnant. He’s beloved by the antiabortion organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which has given him an A+ rating. In 2015, he blamed school shootings on abortion, telling writer Irin Carmon, “When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it’s expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters.”

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In some real Handmaid’s Tale shit, he declared during a House hearing that if women were forced to have more children, a.k.a. “able-bodied” workers, there would be more funding for Social Security and Medicare:

On at least one occasion, he declared that doctors who perform abortions should be sentenced to “hard labor”:

Oh, and like many antiabortion zealots, Johnson doesn’t seem to like contraception either.

LGBTQ+ rights

Hoo boy, where to start? Here are some things that Johnson has said about LGBTQ+ people, same-sex marriage, and gay sex between consenting adults:

“Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do. This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”

“You can call [homosexuality] sinful or destructive—ultimately it’s both.”

“States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse, including concerns for public health…safety, morals, and the promotion of healthy marriages.”

“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone. Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”

“Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

In his work as an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, Johnson also argued in court that same-sex couples should not receive domestic partnership benefits, and officially opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to decriminalize gay sex between consenting adults. In the Louisiana House of Representatives, he proposed a bill that critics say would have made it easier to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. (In response, he claimed he was not a “bigot,” adding: “I know that I brought this bill for the right reason.”) Meanwhile, in Congress, he introduced a national bill seemingly modeled after Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law; voted against the 2022 bipartisan bill to codify gay marriage; and last year cosponsored a bill making it a crime to provide gender-affirming care to anyone under 18, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics backing such care.

“I would be hard-pressed to think of a worse member to be elected Speaker of the House,” Allen Morris, policy director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, told The 19th.

Separation of church and state

If you guessed that Johnson doesn’t believe in it, you guessed right. In April—as in, just a few months before he was elected Speaker—the congressman railed against what he referred to as the “so-called separation of church and state,” saying, “The founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”

In 2018, Johnson argued for prayer in public schools.

Evolution

In addition to blaming abortion for mass shootings, Johnson has also claimed that the teaching of evolution has played a part. In a 2016 sermon, he told the audience, “People say, ‘How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?’ Because we’ve taught a whole generation—a couple generations now—of Americans, that there’s no right or wrong, that it’s about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there’s nobody sacred to whom it’s owed. None of this should surprise us.”

In related news, a year prior, Johnson filed a lawsuit for an organization to receive tax subsidies to build a Noah’s Ark–focused theme park in Kentucky. “When the Ark Project sails, everybody will benefit,” he wrote in an op-ed, “even those who are stubbornly trying to sink it.” The Ark Encounter is operated by a fundamentalist Christian group that believes in creationism.

Climate

Where does Johnson, not exactly a man of science, land on global warming? Well, per The New York Times:

Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the newly elected House Speaker, has questioned climate science, opposed clean energy, and received more campaign contributions from oil and gas companies than from any other industry last year. Even as other Republican lawmakers increasingly accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is dangerously heating the planet, the unanimous election of Mr. Johnson on Wednesday suggests that his views may not be out of step with the rest of his party.

A former constitutional lawyer, he does not sit on committees that decide the fate of major energy issues. But he has consistently voted against dozens of climate bills and amendments, opposing legislation that would require companies to disclose their risks from climate change and bills that would reduce leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells. He has voted for measures that would cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In 2017, Johnson opined: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”

The 2020 election

By now you’ve likely heard that Johnson spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to overturn the 2020 election—an effort that included leading the amicus brief signed by more than 100 GOP lawmakers that asked the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Johnson also objected to the certification of Biden’s win on January 6; his arguments for doing so were adopted by a significant number of Republicans, leading the Times to call him “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.” One day prior, per Politico, he told colleagues, “This is a very weighty decision. All of us have prayed for God’s discernment. I know I’ve prayed for each of you individually,” before pressing them to oppose the Electoral College results. Oh, and he was a Dominion truther:

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Where does Johnson stand on the 2020 election now? Before the floor vote, he refused to answer a reporter’s question about the matter, and after officially becoming Speaker, he did just the same:

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Not really the kind of endorsement you want these days

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Thank God the GOP is now free to get back to the important, not-at-all-made-up issues

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Elsewhere!

Could Mike Johnson, the New House Speaker, Undermine the 2024 Election?

NYT • Read More

North Carolina Republicans Approve House Map That Flips at Least Three Seats

NYT • Read More

Georgia’s congressional map violates Voting Rights Act, court finds

Politico • Read More

Donald Trump’s 2020 Cronies Appear to Be Ditching Him One by One

Vanity Fair • Read More

Democrats plot end run around Tuberville blockade of military promotions

The Washington Post • Read More

Blake Masters announces House bid in Arizona, forgoing another run for Senate

Politico • Read More

“Get the right cases to the Supreme Court”: inside Charles Koch’s network

The Guardian • Read More

CEO Morning Routines Are Bananas. So I Tried a Few.

WSJ • Read More

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

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

Go on over to the Levin Report at the above link to get all the gory (perhaps an understatement) details on America’s Retrograde Speaker!

MAGAMike often pretends as if the his interpretation of the Bible, not the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, were our founding document.

But, believe it or not, the founding fathers were actually “revolutionaries,” not “reactionaries,” who overthrew tradition to arrive at a different place. In the process they incorporated what in those days were some “enlightenment” ideals to replace “traditionalist” regressive principles like the “divine” right of kings and a purely hierarchical society where there was no escape from the status assigned at birth!

One can debate the exact religious beliefs of the founders. But, they certainly foresaw a non-static society, open to change, and tolerating more than one viewpoint. They weren’t theocrats, and they weren’t wedded to the view that society can’t change and evolve to adapt to new norms and practical realities.

One could read the teachings of Christ as promoting love, kindness, tolerance, forgiveness, perspective, and siding with society’s outcasts. MAGAMike and his zealots appear to have a quite different “take.” That’s their prerogative. But, they shouldn’t be allowed to impose their peculiar, wayward views on the rest of us.

Faced with his first national tragedy, and a chance to show some real guts, leadership, and humane, common-sense principles derived from Christianity, all the self-professed “Man of God” and “protector of the unborn” (but “rejector of the born”) could muster was the same old trite “hearts and minds” garbage that flows from spineless GOP politicos. Compare MAGAMike with Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) who apologized and changed his position to favor an assault weapons ban. See, e.g., https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiJ35iN1puCAxVBk2oFHWs3CX8QvOMEKAB6BAgQEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fpolitics%2F2023%2F10%2F26%2Fmaine-shooting-gun-control-laws%2F&usg=AOvVaw1NdJWXqX0pvd75g3dguKa_&opi=89978449.

Jesus would have valued assault weapons over human lives? Gimmie a break!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-29-23

🏴‍☠️🤮 “CHRISTIAN” WHITE NATIONALIST MAGAMIKE TAKES GOP TO NEW LOWS — Greg Sargent @ WashPost

MAGA Mike

By Bruce Plante

Republished under license

Greg writes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/27/mike-johnson-great-replacement-theory-house-speaker/

Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power.

“This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing in May 2022, gesturing at Democrats. “That’s why the border’s open.”

The “open borders” trope is a lie, and while a few municipalities allow voting for noncitizens in local elections, in no sense do national Democrats have any such “plan” for “all the illegals.” As far as I can determine, no House speaker in recent memory has been quite as reckless and incendiary with this kind of language.

Johnson employs it regularly. He reiterated the claim in an interview this year with the right-wing outlet Newsmax, accusing President Biden of “intentionally” encouraging undocumented migration to “turn all these illegals into voters for their side.” On numerous other occasions, he has made similar charges, even declaring that Democrats’ express goal is the “destruction of our country at the expense of our own people.”

On immigration, as well as on abortion and gay rights, Johnson’s elevation is a triumph for the far right. It has been widely noted that Johnson doesn’t come across as a MAGA bomb-thrower, despite his extreme views. That’s true on immigration, too: He voices high-minded platitudes about how providing asylum to the persecuted is a noble ideal, but he’s a big booster of the wildly radical House GOP border bill that would functionally gut asylum entirely.

The pro-immigrant group America’s Voice, which tracks lawmakers’ positions on the issue, has not documented any comparable rhetoric in Johnson’s predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. “Johnson has gone farther than most of his Republican colleagues in elevating alarmist and dangerous rhetoric,” says Vanessa Cardenas, the group’s executive director.

Other predecessors, such as John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, were supporters — nominally, at least — of reforms that would legalize large numbers of undocumented immigrants, though they ultimately failed to deliver. Not even Newt Gingrich, the most extreme House speaker of the modern era, went as far as Johnson, says Nicole Hemmer, author of a history of conservatism in the 1990s.

“Even at his most anti-immigrant, he spoke largely in fiscal and law-and-order terms,” Hemmer told me, while eschewing the “eliminationist rhetoric” at the core of great replacement theory.

Yet little by little, those more extreme ideas have penetrated GOP leadership circles. In 2021, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a top House Republican, charged Democrats with scheming to replace conservative voters with Democratic-leaning immigrants.

. . . .

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

Greg Sargent
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

Read Greg’s full column at the link.

Bigot, racist, theocrat, misogynist, liar, election denier, anti-democracy zealot — “MagaMike” is the disgraceful embodiment of today’s extremist GOP. Just when we think that the GOP can’t sink any lower, they surprise us!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-28-23

👦🏽⚒️ 🤯 THE U.S. HAS A BIG CHILD LABOR PROBLEM: Stephanie Canizales & Jen Podkul Have Solutions! — Hint: Deportations, Detentions, Separtions, Weakening Child Labor Laws, Border Militarization AREN’T Helping! — “Children’s futures are under threat in the U.S., and stalled immigration policy is a culprit.”☠️

Stephanie L. CanizalesAssistant Professor of Sociology U of Cal. - Merced PHOTO: UCM — Stephanie L. Canizales
Assistant Professor of Sociology
U of Cal. – Merced
PHOTO: UCM

Stephanie writes in the LA Times:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-26/immigration-policy-child-migrants-labor

. . . .

The stories of child migrant laborers are harrowing. They take on late-night, early-morning or 12-hour shifts that keep them out of school. They work on farms, at garment and food manufacturing factories as well as meat and processing plants, in construction and sawmills — often dangerous jobs with few protections.

Despite media portrayals of this system as a new economy, historian Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez has documented that the success of industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and construction in the Southwest relied on child labor as far back as the early 20th century. My dad arrived in Los Angeles from El Salvador as a 17-year-old in the 1970s. He immediately became a garment worker in denim factories across downtown Los Angeles and later installed carpet for a man who refused to pay him.

Los Angeles remains a center for this problem. My research studies the lives of undocumented young adults who arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors from 2003 through 2013 and now live in L.A. I’ve spoken to children who have worked in garment factories that sew clothes for companies including Forever 21, J. Crew and Old Navy. Others worked in hotels such as the Ritz Carlton downtown or cleaned the homes of the rich and famous as live-in domestic workers.

Given my research focus, I often get asked what the government is doing about this child labor epidemic and what regular people can do about it. My response: It depends how far you want to go.

Perhaps counterintuitively to many Americans, part of the equation is paying attention to these youth before they cross our border by granting them what anthropologist Lauren Heidbrink and other scholars identify as “el derecho a no migrar” — the right not to migrate.

Young people need alternatives to migration to make a living. That shouldn’t mean aiding foreign governments in deporting migrants, as the Biden administration recently pledged to aid Panama’s government. It should mean investing in community-based programming to integrate children into their home society, such as Colectivo Vida Digna in Guatemala, which aims to reduce youth migration by supporting Indigenous teens and their families in reclaiming Indigenous cultural practices and strengthening communities so they can build futures without leaving their home country.

Even with those programs, some children will migrate to the U.S. and need shielding from exploitation. That may sound uncontroversial in theory, but the current policy landscape shows little willingness to widen the social safety net in practice, even for children and youth.

Take, for example, that last month a federal judge ruled illegal, but declined to end, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program implemented by executive order in 2012 that offers work authorization and a stay on deportation for undocumented youth brought to the U.S. as children. Courts have debated the policy for more than a decade, and with the Supreme Court expected to review the policy a third time, even these longtime U.S. residents — once touted by President Obama as “talented, driven, patriotic young people” — are left in limbo.

Then there’s the immigration program meant to provide vulnerable immigrant children a path to lawful residence and citizenship: the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status designation created in 1990. A recent report found that it has produced “avoidable delays, inconsistent denial rates, and a growing backlog” of petitioners, putting unaccompanied youth’s lives “on hold” and leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

All the while, states across the U.S. are actively moving to weaken child labor laws for all children, immigrants or not.

Children’s futures are under threat in the U.S., and stalled immigration policy is a culprit. Protecting children and child workers requires moving forward on immigration. Failing to do so may haunt us for generations to come.

Stephanie L. Canizales is an assistant professor of sociology at UC Merced.

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Jennifer Podkul
Vice President of Policy & Advocacy
Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)
PHOTO: Momsrising.com

Jen writes in WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/26/legal-protection-children-exploitation/

October 26, 2023 at 1:58 p.m. ET

The figures in the Oct. 20 news article “Child labor violations soar in FY 2023” were staggering and all too familiar in my work with unaccompanied children, who are particularly vulnerable to exploitative labor conditions. Overnight shifts operating heavy machinery at slaughterhouses are not jobs or roles for any child.

To prevent this exploitation of unaccompanied children, we need to ensure existing laws are enforced, including child labor standards put forth by the Labor Department. Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services should work toward ensuring every unaccompanied child is provided legal counsel as set out in the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, recently introduced by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).

As we’ve seen from experience, a lawyer can be one of the few trusted adults in the life of a child who is experiencing exploitation. Attorneys help unaccompanied children understand their rights against abuse and access a fair chance to make their case for U.S. protection, which can lead to the ability to apply for legal and safe employment. Most unaccompanied children do not have this elemental protection.

Jennifer Podkul, Washington

The writer is vice president of policy and advocacy for Kids in Need of Defense.

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Read Stephanie’s full op-ed at the above link. Many thanks to both of these experts for speaking out on this tragic, solvable, yet widely ignored by the pols and the media, issue!

For what it’s worth, one enforcement measure that Nolan Rappaport and I have agreed upon and pushed in our respective commentary has been better enforcement of labor laws. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/06/06/nolans-latest-in-the-hill-undocumented-immigrants-shouldnt-replace-legal-ones/. Seems like it should be a “no-brainer first step” that doesn’t require major legislative changes.

Another outspoken supporter of the right of all children not to be exploited is my friend Rep.Hillary Scholten (D-MI)! See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/02/28/⚖️-tackling-the-problem-in-fiery-🔥-floor-speech-rep-hillary-scholten-d-mi-demands-action-against-migrant-child-labor-these-are-my-kids-re/.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-27-23

😎 🇺🇸 HOPE FRIDAY: The Common Good W/ Robert Reich — Maine Prepares To Welcome More Refugees — Austin Kocher On Keeping Faith During The Age Of Trumpist White Nationalist Hatred & Lies!

From Robert Reich on Substack:

https://substack.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.YI3yXyy6J0uje-L2r-wh7kLsh8LeAZQ2K9oq40sSau0?

. . . .

Many Americans today worry that our nation is losing its national identity. Yet the core of that identity is not the whiteness of our skin or our religion or our ethnicity.

It is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common.

That common good is a set of shared commitments. To the rule of law. To democracy. To tolerance of our differences. To equal political rights and equal opportunity. To participating in our civic life. To sacrificing for the ideals we hold in common. To upholding the truth.

We cannot have a functioning society without these shared commitments. Without a shared sense of common good, there can be no “we” to begin with.

If we are losing our national identity, it is because we are losing our sense of the common good. This is what must be restored.

As I’ve argued in these essays, recovering our common good depends on several things:

It depends on establishing a new ethic of leadership based on trusteeship. Leaders must be judged not by whether they score a “win” for their side, but whether they strengthen democratic institutions and increase public trust.

It depends on honoring those who have invested in the common good, and holding accountable those who have exploited it for their own selfish ends.

It requires that we understand — and educate our children about — what we owe one another as members of the same society. Instead of focusing solely on the rights of citizenship, we need also to focus on the duties of citizenship.

And it requires a renewed commitment to truth.

Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. The era we are living in offers too many illustrations of greed, narcissism, brutality, and hatefulness.

I, however, firmly believe this quest is not hopeless.

Almost every day, I witness or hear of the compassion and generosity of ordinary Americans. Their actions rarely make headlines, but they constitute much of our daily life together.

The challenge is to turn all this into a new public spiritedness extending to the highest reaches in the land — a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the major institutions of the nation.

The moral fiber of our society has been weakened but it has not been destroyed.

We can recover the rule of law and preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in politics.

We can fight against all forms of bigotry. We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another by reaching out to one another. We can help resurrect civility by acting more civilly toward those with whom we disagree.

We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies.

We can help restore the common good by striving for it and showing others it’s worth the effort.

We have never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we sought to live up to our shared ideals.

I worked for Robert F. Kennedy a half-century ago when the common good was better understood. Resurrecting it may take another half-century, or more.

But as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history.”

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you’ve found these essays useful and even on occasion inspiring. I hope you’ll join me in carrying forward the fight for the common good.

***

Subscribers to this newsletter are keeping it going. If you are able, please consider a paid or gift subscription. And we always appreciate your sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments.

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Kelly Bouchrd — Kelly Bouchard
Staff Writer
Portland Press Herald
PHOTO: Linkedin

From Kelly Bouchard in the Portland Press Herald:

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/10/17/maine-refugee-resettlement-numbers-expected-to-double/

. . . .

COMMUNITY OUTREACH IN MAINE

Despite the uncertainty, resettlement agencies in Maine are pushing ahead, preparing to welcome as many refugees as possible. To increase their chances of finding affordable apartments, they’re building a network of landlords willing to rent to newcomers and expanding resettlement efforts beyond Greater Portland, Lewiston-Auburn and Augusta-Waterville to Bangor and Brunswick, Ouattara said.

“We can settle people within 100 miles of Lewiston-Auburn,” said Rilwan Osman, executive director of Maine Immigrant & Refugee Services in Lewiston. “We have settled some families in Augusta, and we are exploring other communities.”

The State Refugee Advisory Council held four quarterly meetings last year to connect and support various community representatives in government, public safety, schools, social services and health care, Ouattara said.

“There are resources that are available from the federal government to assist communities that accept refugees,” he said.

At least half of the new arrivals last year had family ties in Maine, Ouattara said, while the other half were “free cases” that could be resettled more widely in the state but would require more support from agency staff. Transportation continues to be a challenge for many newcomers.

“The public transit system in Maine is still in development, so that can be isolating in some communities,” he said.

Helping refugees find jobs is a top priority for resettlement agencies, which provide financial assistance and case management support for up to 90 days after arrival and limited case management and employment services for up to 60 months.

“All the refugees that are coming have permission to work as soon as they are able,” Osman said. “Some have English skills, some don’t. If they have the necessary language skills, they can at least start entry-level work within 90 days.”

One refugee who is eager to get to work is Ahmed, a recent arrival from Somalia who also declined to give his last name. Ahmed, 58, attended a cultural orientation session Wednesday at the JCA. Through an interpreter, Ahmed said he has been reunited with his wife and six children after being separated from them for 21 years.

He also said he wants to be a good citizen and a taxpayer.

“I’m so grateful to be here,” he said. “My dream is to settle in and get work at a job in my skill range. I am a welder and I would like to work in the same industry.”

Staff Photographer Brianna Soukup contributed to this report.

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

Grace Benninghoff in the Portland Press Herald:

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/10/19/portland-mayoral-candidates-frustrated-with-federal-work-rules-as-asylum-seekers-look-to-start-new-lives/

. . . .

Pious Ali says people will keep coming though.

“America is a beautiful country and has a lot to offer the world and the people who come here, and so does Portland,” said Ali, who came to the United States from Ghana more than two decades ago.

Portland’s five mayoral candidates may be more aligned on this issue than any other. They all fundamentally see asylum seekers as an asset to the city, and they all want to see the wait time before they can work made much shorter. They all also feel a little bit helpless.

For years, Portland has welcomed these immigrants, who often undertake dangerous journeys to get here and then go through an arduous, sometimes yearslong process to get visas and work authorization.

. . . .

Zarro said that if it should turn out to be too big a legal risk to offer asylum seekers paid work before they got federal work authorization, he would like to build a more robust job training program so they would be ready to start work in local businesses as soon as their work authorization comes though.

“We have people who are coming here to better their lives and to better their communities. Maine stands to benefit significantly,” he said.

All the candidates also are keenly aware that Portland is in need of more young workers.

“We’re an aging state without enough people to fill the workforce,” Costa said.

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

Abstract of Austin Kocher, PhD’s article “Welcoming the stranger in Trump’s America: Notes on the everyday processes of constructing and enduring sanctuary:”

https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/hosp_00050_1

Geographers have begun to explore the concept of ‘immigrant welcome’ as a framework for understanding the tension between spontaneous social support for immigrants and refugees and their subsequent restriction and criminalization by states. Overlooked in the emerging discourse on immigrant welcome is the rich literature in feminist geography that views the everyday practices of endurance, care and social reproduction as essential to, but often hidden within, more traditional, political and economic analyses of power. By focusing on the everyday practices of welcome within sanctuary church activism, I argue for more attention to the energy-intense work that is often excluded from official media and academic accounts, yet which is essential to understanding what makes welcome function or fail. I draw upon one in-depth case study of a sanctuary church in Ohio, where a woman has been living for a year and a half in public defiance of her deportation order. In addition to contextualizing this specific case within the broader policy and immigrant rights landscape, I focus on the spatial, material and relational processes that participants implemented to construct a ‘welcoming’ environment as well as observe the ways in which welcome fails to live up to its imagined potential. The case study provides important grounded insights into the material, relational and emotional processes of enduring sanctuary as a form of resistance to the US deportation regime and enduring sanctuary itself as an intensive socio-spatial form of existence.

© 2022 Intellect Ltd

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Read more about each of these inspiring efforts at the respective links above.

Compare what could be if folks put aside hate and worked together to solve human problems with the pathetic, totally selfish, inept, inane, yet existentially dangerous, “Clown Show” 🤡 in the GOP House Conference egged on by their “leader” — congenital liar, bully, insurrectionist buffoon, and criminal defendant Donald Trump.🤮

What’s missing is more dynamic, courageous, truth-based national leadership on immigration and human rights issues from Dems (although, to be fair, the bipartisan Maine delegation — and many Maine Republicans — appear to “get it”)! But, fortunately, that void hasn’t stopped members of the NDPA from “soldiering on” for the commn good and a better America!

A life saved is a life saved! Sometimes, we just have to focus on the daily victories we can achieve!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-20-23

⚖️👩🏻‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️ NAIJ’s HON. MIMI TSANKOV & HON. SAMUEL COLE HEADLINE SESSION ON BACKLOG & CRISIS IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS @ NATIONAL PRESS CLUB — Wed. Oct. 18 @ 10:00 AM EDT!

Honorable Mimi Tsankov
U.S. Immigration Judge
President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

Hon. Samuel B. Cole
Executive Vice President
NAIJ
PHOTO: NAIJ

Federal immigration judges Mimi Tsankov and Samuel B. Cole to address immigration courts backlog at Headliners Newsmaker, Oct. 18

October 16, 2023, 5:13 pm

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Judges Mimi Tsankov, a federal immigration judge in New York City, and Samuel B. Cole, a federal immigration judge in Chicago, will speak Wednesday, Oct. 18 at 10 a.m. at a National Press Club Headliners news conference about the pressures of the migrant crisis on the federal immigration court system.

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB LOGO. (PRNewsFoto/NATIONAL PRESS CLUB) (PRNewsfoto/National Press Club) (PRNewsfoto/National Press Club)

An unprecedented surge in migration has created a backlog of 2.6 million cases in the nation’s immigration courts resulting in long waits for hearings. Among other topics, the judges will address the recent assignment of judges to areas along the border. They will provide an update on the judges’ union efforts to restore rights lost during the previous administration.

Federal immigration judges are generally barred from speaking out on issues that affect their courts. Tsankov and Cole will speak in their capacity as president and executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), an affiliate of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE).

The National Press Club is located on the 13th Floor of the National Press Building at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

PRESS CONTACT: Cecily Scott Martin for the National Press Club; cscottmartin@press.org; (202) 662-7525

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/federal-immigration-judges-mimi-tsankov-and-samuel-b-cole-to-address-immigration-courts-backlog-at-headliners-newsmaker-oct-18-301958051.html

SOURCE National Press Club

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The dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts are the where “the rubber hits the road” for American justice — the “retail level” of our court system. Deterioration of individual rights in the U.S. legal system for immigrants, people of color, women, non-Christian religious minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community can all be traced to antecedents in the “too often due process and common sense free zone” of EOIR courts held “captive” within our DOJ. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/10/08/%f0%9f%a4%af-jason-the-asylumist-dzubow-explores-the-incredible-exploding-asylum-backlog-predictably-eoirs-aimless-docket-reshuffling/

Yet, the mainstream media, Democrats, Civil Rights organizations, and commentators often pay scant attention to the outrageous dehumanizing chaos in our Immigration Courts. One contributing factor is that the DOJ has “muzzled” Immigration Judges from speaking out publicly about what’s happening in their courts, a questionable 1st Amendment suppression that a Federal District Judge recently “shrugged off.” See, e.g., https://knightcolumbia.org/cases/naij-v-neal.

This is a rare opportunity for the public to get insights on this critically important yet “below the radar screen court system” from two sitting judges. They apparently have “sidestepped” the DOJ’s censorship by appearing “solely in their capacity as officers of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”).” (Full disclosure: I am a retired NAIJ member.)

The NAIJ strives to provide professional training, encouragement of best practices, more independence, better working conditions, and more cooperation with parties appearing before the Immigration Courts. These positive efforts, among the few happening at EOIR, earned the NAIJ a “decertification” of their status as a union representing Immigration Judges during the Trump Administration.

Ironically, although the Biden Administration touts itself as the most “union-friendly Administration in history,” three years in, the NAIJ has yet to regain full recognition as a union.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-17-23

🇺🇸🗽⚖️ LISTEN UP DEMS ⚠️ — THE SO-CALLED “ASYLUM CRISIS” CAN BE SOLVED WITHOUT THROWING REFUGEES, DUE PROCESS, & HUMANITY UNDER THE BUS 🚌☠️— Human Rights First Has Practical Proposals For Better Borders!

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7118356784905367552?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7118356784905367552%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

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

Read the complete HRF report at the above link!

“Pie in the sky?” Hardly! Undoubtedly, these measures could be carried out far less expensively than further, ultimately fruitless, border militarization and enhanced cruelty being pushed by the GOP and some Dems. And, they would be more effective in bringing “law and order” to the border and our overall legal system.

Fanned by alarmist narratives being spread by folks like Adams and Hochul (no, Governor, 8 billion people aren’t going to descend on your state — in fact, the U.S. has a “refugee/1,000 population ratio” far below that of many smaller, much poorer countries), and the mainstream media’s insatiable need for a “trumped-up invasion narrative” to create headlines and sound bites, I suspect that the Administration and Dem politicos might be prepared to “throw asylum seekers under the bus” to reach an agreement with the GOP to keep the Government open. After all, asylum seekers don’t vote, and their advocates have historically been good “team players” who go to bat for the Dem Party despite having their contributions, energy, and ideas consistently undervalued, even dissed, once elections are over.

Don’t do it Dems! Giving in to the righty nativists will NOT solve anything, nor will abandoning values help you in the next election! Indeed, the Administration could set more “world records” for exclusions, deportations, denials, imprisonments, wall-building, enforcement hiring, “rocket dockets,” and the GOP would still spout the same “open borders” myth, and the media would give it equal, or greater, time. They largely ignore HRF and other experts who actually understand the border, migration, and have practical, humane, if less inflammatory or drastic, solutions to offer.

The mainstream media seems to have endless time for folks like Trump, Gaetz, Jordan, Haley, Ramaswamy, etc., who have little to contribute to solving pressing national problems. Why aren’t they talking to the folks who understand migration, asylum seekers, the border, and the legal framework? Why aren’t they “headlining” and publicizing reasonable, humane, values-based solutions rather than promoting narratives of doom, hopelessness, and expensive, often illegal, cruelty as the only “solutions?” There actually have been some bipartisan proposals for addressing the border while respecting and even enhancing the rights of asylum seekers. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/02/14/🇺🇸courtside-politics-rep-hillary-scholten-d-mi-is-part-of-a-bipartisan-group-of-new-house-members-reaching-across-the-aisle-in-an-attempt-to-govern-for-the-public-good/. But, you sure wouldn’t know it from listening to the so-called “mainstreamers!”

Here’s another fascinating thing. Humane, sensible, legally compliant, cost effective solutions to migration issues proposed by experts, many of whom are immersed in the reality on a daily basis, are often dismissed, if even mentioned, as “impractical,” “unrealistic,” “idealistic,” “costly.” On the other hand, when politicos, think tankers, reporters, commenters, profiteers, many largely removed from the human trauma of the border situation, present costly, proven to fail, draconian, often illegal measures directed against asylum seekers, the same prejorative, dismissive terms are seldom used.

Indeed, the worse, crueler, and more hare-brained a scheme is, the more likely it is to be mischaracterized as a “realistic response” to a hyped-up emergency! Somehow, wanton cruelty and end-running legal obligations are packaged as a “practical necessities,” while creative ideas on how to solve problems and make the current laws work are summarily brushed aside, often without meaningful analysis and discussion.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-15-23

🤮 AMERICAN ASYLUM POLICY: GOP POLITICOS PANDER, ADMINISTRATION BUILDS WALLS, DEMS PREPARE TO THROW ASYLUM SEEKERS UNDER THE BUS (AGAIN) — What Happens To Those Waiting To Use “CBP One” At The Border? — They Get Raped & Extorted! — “It’s the saddest, most horrible thing that can happen to a person!”

""Rape of the Sabine Women" — “Rape of the Sabine Women”
Peter Paul Rubens
Circa 1635
Public Domain

From Reuters:

https://www.voanews.com/a/migrants-being-raped-at-mexico-border-as-they-await-entry-to-us-/7291239.html

REYNOSA, MEXICO —

When Carolina’s captors arrived at dawn to pull her out of the stash house in the Mexican border city of Reynosa in late May, she thought they were going to force her to call her family in Venezuela again to beg them to pay $2,000 ransom.

Instead, one of the men shoved her onto a broken-down bus parked outside and raped her, she told Reuters. “It’s the saddest, most horrible thing that can happen to a person,” Carolina said.

A migrant advocate who assisted Carolina after the kidnapping, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, confirmed all the details of her account.

The attack came amid an increase in sexual violence against migrants in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, both major transit routes for immigrants seeking to enter the U.S., according to data from the Mexican government and humanitarian groups, as well as interviews with eight sexual assault survivors and more than a dozen local aid workers.

“The inhumane way smugglers abuse, extort, and perpetrate violence against migrants for profit is criminal and morally reprehensible,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Luis Miranda said in response to questions about the rise in reported rapes.

Criminal investigations into the rape of foreign nationals, excluding Americans, were the highest on record in the two cities this year, according to state data from 2014 to 2023 obtained by Reuters through freedom of information requests.

The U.S. State Department considers Tamaulipas, where the two cities are located, to be the most dangerous state along the U.S.-Mexico border.

. . . .

A Venezuelan migrant said he was kidnapped in May in Reynosa by a cartel while traveling to the border for his confirmed CBP One appointment. He couldn’t raise the full $800 ransom, so he was forced to work for two months to pay off the remaining $200, he said.

Two other migrants who said they were held at the house during the same time period confirmed the man was forced to work against his will, and that they heard female migrants being raped.

On the nights the Venezuelan man was tasked with standing guard over the other migrants, he said he watched the cartel members ask the man in charge of the house for permission to rape the women of their choosing.

He said the answer was always the same: “Take her.”

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Read the full article at the link.

Walls, detention, eliminating the right to asylum aren’t going to solve this. But, solving it doesn’t seem to be the objective. Blaming the victims is a lot easier than treating them as human beings.

As my friend Debi Sanders (who alerted me to this report) said: “Terrifying!” Yup! 🤯🏴‍☠️

How disingenuous is the Biden Administration’s latest attempt to “get tough” at the border with more proven to fail deterrence? Well, just this week, DHS announced plans to deport more individuals to Venezuela. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-restarting-direct-deportations-venezuela-senior-official-2023-10-05/

Yet, just a few days earlier, in deciding to extend TPS to nearly a half million Venezuelans in the US, that same DHS found:

Overview

Venezuela continues to face a severe humanitarian emergency due to a political and economic crisis, as well as human rights violations and abuses and high levels of crime and violence, that impacts access to food, medicine, healthcare, water, electricity, and fuel, and has led to high levels of poverty. Additionally, Venezuela has recently experienced heavy rainfall in the spring and summer of 2023 which triggered flooding and landslides. Given the current conditions in Venezuela, these issues contribute to the country’s existing challenges.

Venezuela is experiencing “an unprecedented political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.” ^[5]“Venezuela is suffering one of the worst humanitarian crises in the history of the Western Hemisphere,” which has been characterized by “[h]igh levels of poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, and infant mortality, together with frequent electricity outages and the collapse of health infrastructure.” ^[6]Though there were some positive developments in Venezuela in 2022 “as the economy stabilized and showed signs of economic growth,” the effects of these changes were not felt across the Venezuelan population and did not offset the impact of the large-scale economic contraction which resulted in significant humanitarian challenges that continue today and will take time to address.^[7]

Political Repression and Human Rights

The Maduro regime has closed off channels for political dissent, restricting enjoyment of civil liberties and “prosecuting perceived opponents without regard for due process.” ^[8]The UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (IIFFM) found in its September 2022 report, “Venezuela’s military and civilian intelligence agencies function as well-coordinated and effective structures in the implementation of a plan” to “repress dissent.” ^[9]

Crime and Insecurity

Venezuela has one of the highest rates of violent deaths in the world.^[10]Additionally, “Venezuelans face physical insecurity and violence from several sources, including irregular armed groups, security forces, and organized gangs.” ^[11]Corruption in Venezuela exacerbates insecurity. InSight Crime has reported that “criminal groups and corrupt state actors together form a hybrid state that combines governance with criminality, and where illegal armed groups act at the service of the state, while criminal networks form within it.” ^[12]Human trafficking remains a serious concern. Traffickers exploit and subject Venezuelans, including those fleeing the country, to egregious forms of exploitation, including sex trafficking and forced labor.^[13]Members of non-state armed groups that operate in the country with impunity, subject Venezuelans to forced labor and forced criminality, and recruit or use child soldiers.^[14]

Economic Collapse

Since 2014, Venezuela has suffered from an “economic recession marked by hyperinflation, shortages of basic goods and a collapse in public services such as electricity and water.” ^[15]Recently, Venezuela’s economy has shown some signs of recovery; however, it is still in a precarious condition.^[16]In a report covering the period from May 2022 through April 2023, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that while economic growth which occurred in 2022 “would bring hope for improved economic prospects, persistent challenges and other factors continued to negatively affect essential public services, transport, education, and health.” ^[17]

In its annual report covering 2022, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) noted “the high rates of poverty and inequality in the country, in which there are estimates that more than 90% of the population lives in poverty.” ^[18]The same report stated that “as of March 2022, HumVenezuela estimated that 94.5% of the population would not have sufficient income to cover items such as food, housing, health, education, transportation and clothing.” ^[19]

Health Crisis

Various sources have referred to severe problems with health systems in Venezuela, including the IACHR, Human Rights Watch, and the Congressional Research Service (CRS).^[20]Per The Associated Press, Venezuela’s “health care system crumbled long before” the start of the COVID–19 pandemic.^[21]Likewise, in its 2022 annual report, the IACHR acknowledged that while the COVID–19 pandemic “has had significant impacts on the health sector and the population, the serious affectations of the system preceded the health emergency.” ^[22]Elaborating on this topic, the IACHR identified “shortages of medicines, supplies, materials and medical treatment” as of 2018, and that the “situation has been worsening since 2014, and it is important to highlight that the health system has reportedly collapsed due to its persistent precariousness, which would have been exacerbated by the pandemic.” ^[23]

According to OHCHR, health centers in Venezuela “report structural underfunding and understaffing resulting in for example, regular blackouts and water shortages.” ^[24]In its report on the humanitarian situation in Venezuela in 2022, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that “[h]ealth services continue to be affected by insufficient water and sanitation conditions and the lack of electricity supply in facilities.” ^[25]Similarly, Human Rights Watch stated in its annual report covering 2022 that “[p]ower and water outages at healthcare centers—and emigration of healthcare workers—were further weakening operational capacity.” ^[26]Furthermore, the IACHR has reported that “98% of the hospitals in the country lack medicines, electrical plants and water, as well as failures in laboratories, reagents and wards. As a result, it is estimated that only between 3 and 10% of the hospitals have medical and surgical material to solve medical circumstances.” ^[27]

Food Insecurity

In a humanitarian response plan published in 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) identified food insecurity as “the most pressing challenge for the population.” ^[28]Human Rights Watch stated in its annual report covering 2022 that HumVenezuela reported in March 2022 that “most Venezuelans face difficulties in accessing food, with 10.9 million undernourished or chronically hungry. Some 4.3 million are deprived of food, sometimes going days without eating.” ^[29]Moreover, the IACHR noted in its 2022 annual report that “32% of children live in a situation of chronic malnutrition.” ^[30]

Heavy Rains and Flooding

Since May 26, 2023, as hurricane season began, Venezuela has experienced heavy rains which resulted in flooding that affected several areas of the country.^[31]According to ACAPS, “Between June and July there have been 19 tropical waves, that have brought heavy rains, floods and landslides across the country.” ^[32]As of July 11, 2023, the meteorological situation in Venezuela indicated “that rainfall and resulting damages are expected to be more severe than previous years.” ^[33]Reports of the damage caused by the heavy rains include 5,100 people affected with damage to houses and blockages in the drainage system in the state of Portuguesa.^[34]In another area—Delta Amacuro state—around 7,500 people are affected by the 2023 floods.^[35]

In summary, extraordinary and temporary conditions continue to prevent Venezuelan nationals from returning in safety due to a severe humanitarian emergency which has resulted in food insecurity and the inability to access adequate medicine, healthcare, water, electricity, and fuel. Additionally, human rights violations and abuses, high levels of poverty, high levels of crime and violence, and heavy rains and flooding prevent Venezuelan nationals from returning in safety and permitting Venezuelan noncitizens to remain in the United States temporarily would not be contrary to the interests of the United States.

Based on this review and after consultation with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary has determined that:

• The conditions supporting Venezuela’s designation for TPS continue to be met. See INA sec. 244(b)(3)(A) and (C), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(3)(A) and (C).

• There continues to be extraordinary and temporary conditions in Venezuela that prevent Venezuelan nationals (or individuals having no nationality who last habitually resided in Venezuela) from returning to Venezuela in safety, and it is not contrary to the national interest of the United States to permit Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries to remain in the United States temporarily. See INA sec. 244(b)(1)(C), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(1)(C).

• The existing designation of Venezuela for TPS (Venezuela 2021) should be extended for an 18-month period, beginning on March 11, 2024 and ending on September 10, 2025. See INA sec. 244(b)(3)(C), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(3)(C).

• Due to the conditions described above, Venezuela should be redesignated for TPS beginning on October 3, 2023, and ending on April 2, 2025. See INA sec. 244(b)(1)(C) and (b)(2), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(1)(C) and (b)(2).

For the redesignation, the Secretary has determined that TPS applicants must demonstrate that they have continuously resided in the United States since July 31, 2023.

Initial TPS applicants under the redesignation must demonstrate that they have been continuously physically present in the United States since October 3, 2023, the effective date of the redesignation of Venezuela for TPS.

There are approximately 243,000 current Venezuela TPS beneficiaries who are eligible to re-register for TPS under the extension.

It is estimated that approximately 472,000 additional individuals may be eligible for TPS under the redesignation of Venezuela. This population includes Venezuelan nationals in the United States in nonimmigrant status or without immigration status.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2023-10-03/pdf/2023-21865.pdf

Does this sound like a country that will “ensure orderly, safe and legal repatriation?” Duh!

As for the DHS attempt to “blame the victims” for not taking advantage of legal opportunities, the legal right to apply for asylum in the U.S. attaches at the border to ANYONE “who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status.” INA, section 208.

With huge backlogs at both the Asylum Office and EOIR, and some problematic adjudicators, judges, administrators, and poor precedents, just how could hundreds of thousands of legal removals take place without huge systemic changes that to date the Administration has failed to make at either DHS or EOIR? Sounds like a prescription for massive legal and human rights violations!☠️

Yes, we’re going to hear chants of “we can’t take them all” from all sides. But, the truth that few acknowledge is that we haven’t and won’t be “taking them all” — not by a long shot! Of the more than 7 million who have fled the Maduro regime in Venezuela, only approximately 10% (about 750,000) have come to the U.S.! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66875264. The vast, vast majority — approximately 90% — have taken refuge elsewhere in Latin American, in poorer countries far less able than the U.S. to absorb them! But, hey, when does truth and reality ever enter into the U.S. political debate on immigration?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-05-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑‍⚖️👨🏾‍⚖️ ATTENTION NDPA: BETTER COURTS MEAN A BETTER AMERICA, FROM THE “RETAIL LEVEL” TO THE SUPREMES! — The Future Immigration Courts Are Being Formed Today — We Need NDPA All-Stars 🌟 On The Bench! — You Can’t Be Selected If You Don’t Apply (My History Notwithstanding)!

I want you — Don’t just complain about the awful mess @ EOIR! Get on the bench and do something about it!
Public Domain

EOIR is looking for “many judges in many locations:”

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/many-immigration-judge-positions-open

https://www.justice.gov/legal-careers/job/immigration-judge-26

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Some folks who should be applying for these jobs tell me they “couldn’t work with such an unfair law.” I say “poppycock.” To a large extent, the law and the unfair results are only as bad as EOIR judges choose make them.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way! For example, you can choose to:

Apply Cardoza-Fonseca, Mogharrabi, Kasinga, A-R-C-G-, and other precedents favorable to applicants fairly and robustly;
Honestly apply the presumption of future persecution set forth in 8 CFR 208.13 and actually put the burden on DHS to rebut it with evidence, not mere conjecture;
Carefully consider the possibility of a discretionary grant of asylum under the regulations (“so-called Chen grant”), even where the government rebuts the presumption of a well-founded fear;
Make realistic, practical, proper credibility determinations based on “the totality of the circumstances and all relevant factors;”
Require only “reasonably available” corroborating evidence;
Actually follow the legal principle that credible testimony, in an of itself, can be enough to grant relief;
Apply the “reasonableness of internal relocation” regulation set forth at 8 CFR 208.13(b)(3) honestly;
Fairly apply the properly generous interpretation of the “well founded fear” standard required by the Supremes in Cardoza and described by the BIA in Mogharrabi to cases where there is no past persecution;
Incorporate the latest scholarship on “country conditions,” rather than “cherry picking” DOS Country Reports looking for ways to deny;
Use the latest body of scholarship on “best interests of the child” in deciding cancellation of removal for non-LPRs;
Schedule cases in a reasonable manner, in consultation with both counsel, to eliminate endemic “aimless docket reshuffling;”
Take measures to promote and facilitate representation of individuals, rather than throwing up roadblocks;
Make ICE counsel do their jobs, rather than doing it for them, particularly in cases where ICE unilaterally declines to appear at the merits hearing;
Use all of your practical skills and knowledge of the law and practice to solve problems and promote efficiency;
Consider all interpretations available to you, not just “defaulting” to the one offered by ICE;
Make careful, analytical, findings of fact, rather than just glossing over facts favorable to the individuals and over-emphasizing or fabricating the facts most favorable to DHS;
Make your “courtroom a classroom” where exceptional scholarship, due process, fundamental fairness, teamwork, practical solutions to human problems, and best practices are promoted and institutionalized.

You might well find, like I did, that being guided by Cardoza and Mogharrabi, sticking to your guns, providing full due process, and faithfully following the law actually leads to grants of relief in the majority of individual hearings. Notably, ICE seldom appealed my grants, and I was rarely reversed by the BIA, no matter who appealed.

I actually did better with my former BIA colleagues as an IJ than I had during my eight years of service on the Board. Indeed, as I sometimes quipped, as an IJ, I finally got that which my colleagues often denied me during my tenure as BIA Chair and an Appellate Judge/BIA Member: deference!

Worried about “life after EOIR!” Yes, there is such a thing!

And, a quick survey of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges and BIA Members 🛡⚔️ would show everything from partners and of counsel in law firms, professors and educators, major NGO supervisors and attorneys, community activists, consultants and coaches, to those, like me, who claim to be “fully retired and just enjoying life.” The Round Table actually has great credibility with the Federal Courts and the media because, unlike sitting judges and their “handlers,” we can actually speak truth to power outside the courtroom!

Whether you serve for a year or the rest of your career, what you learn as an EOIR judge if you pay attention, will give you a “leg up” and otherwise unobtainable practical knowledge of how America’s most important, yet least understood, court system actually works (or not)!

Every week, almost every day in fact, we see in Federal Court reversals and remands to EOIR and reports from practitioners about unpublished successes the fundamental difference that great litigation and equally “great judging” can make in reaching correct results! Making it happen every day, in every court, at the “retail level,” rather than counting on the uncertainties and limitations of Circuit review, will save lives and change the delivery of justice throughout America!

NDPAers, the “EOIR train” is leaving the station. 🚅 As a nation, we can’t afford the “best and the brightest” of today’s legal profession not to be on board! So, get those “many applications” in for those “many jobs” and let’s see if we can fix this “life or death system” from both the inside and the outside! We won’t know if we don’t try!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-27-23

🇺🇸🗽FRANCESCO ISGRO @ VOCE ITALIANA: WE NEED A RETURN TO UNITY & ACTING FOR THE COMMON GOOD: “Rather than disparage fellow humans and our time-honored institutions, we should instead seek to rediscover that lost common ground, where solutions to common problems have resided and still do.”

Francesco Isgro, Esquire
President & CEO of Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center, Inc.
Editor-in-Chief,
Voce Italiana
PHOTO: Linkedin

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Well said, my friend! (You might need to use your computer to enlarge the above reprint.)

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-24-23

🇺🇸⚖️🏅A LIFE DEVOTED TO JUSTICE: JOSEPH GERALD “GERRY” HEBERT (1949-2023): Voting Rights Icon, Teacher, Community Activist, Inspiration To Upcoming Generations!

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/washingtonpost/name/joseph-hebert-obituary?id=53065154

Joseph Hebert Obituary

Hebert

Joseph Gerald Hebert

Joseph Gerald Hebert (Gerry), Voting Rights Attorney of Alexandria, Virginia passed away at the age of 74 on September 7, 2023.

Gerry was born in Worcester, Massachusetts to Joseph Gerald Laurie Hebert and Adeline Agnes Whitehead Hebert on February 13, 1949. A graduate of St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, Gerry went on to earn his bachelor’s degree from Stonehill College and Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School.

A respected Civil Rights and Voting Rights attorney, Gerry worked in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 1973 to 1994. While at the DOJ, he won acclaim for his work in school desegregation cases and served as the lead attorney in voting rights and redistricting lawsuits, including several cases decided by the U. S. Supreme Court. Post-DOJ, Gerry spent time in private practice specializing in election law and the Voting Rights Act. His expertise led him to the Campaign Legal Center in 2004, serving as Executive Director until 2018, before retiring from the organization in 2021. During this time, Gerry was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and developed a thriving intern program for CLC. He also taught at University of Virginia, American University, and New York Law School. He was awarded the Wasserstein Fellowship at Harvard Law School and Mentor in Residence at Yale Law School. In 2015, Gerry spearheaded the CLC effort to establish the Voting Rights Institute (VRI), a partnership with the American Constitution Society and Georgetown Law, which created opportunities for law students and graduates to learn how to litigate voting rights cases.

Gerry’s advocacy extended beyond his professional career. He served as PTA president at George Mason Elementary School, where he was a fixture in the hallways for years, his voice on the loudspeaker delivering the morning announcements. He worked particularly hard to ensure that families of color were involved in their children’s education, and that the needs of George Mason Elementary were made known to the School Board.

As ASA soccer coach to many of Alexandria’s youth, Gerry shared his own athletic skills, always ending a weekly practice – at the request of the team – punting the ball straight up in the air, multiple stories high.

A man of strong faith and an enthusiastic choir member, Gerry served the Fairlington United Methodist Church community in many capacities including lay leader.

Gerry worked tirelessly to help Alexandrians in need, volunteering with ALIVE! Inc. since 1986. He dedicated his time and talents, serving as ALIVE’s president, director of development, chair of the furniture program, and Last Saturday food distribution coordinator. Earlier this year, Gerry was awarded Volunteer Alexandria’s 2023 Joan White Grassroots Volunteer Service Award for his commitment to ALIVE!’s mission, specifically for his work to open both of ALIVE!’s beautiful and welcoming food hubs, ensuring that Alexandrians maintained their integrity while receiving food and critical services.

Gerry approached his personal life with the same passion and purpose. He was omnipresent in his children’s lives as he filled the roles of brown bag lunch maker, short order breakfast cook, and overprotective parent. He could be found lifting his grandchildren to top the Christmas tree, eating Oreos and drinking straight from the milk carton in the middle of the night, or dancing in the street with Victoria during a red light at the intersection of Braddock and Russell. He would “give you a nickel” if you could name the artist from the 60’s singing on the radio. He’d send you recipes for the perfect pork chop, articles about the latest threat to justice and democracy, and a heads up about recent sunscreen recalls. He was deeply devoted to playing the guitar, discovering the best deal on good wine, and playing the lottery. He never said goodbye without also holding up his hand to sign “I love you.” He had the timing of a stand-up comedian, all the wisdom of a perfect storyteller, and an unfulfilled desire to travel the world. He was just beginning to discover what retirement was like and between the Rock ‘n Roll cruises he took with Victoria, his long ponytail, and his Bohemian pants, he confirmed his family’s suspicion that he really did dream of being the next great American folk singer. He was a lively wedding dancer, a proficient recaller of sports stats, and even attended MLB professional umpire school. Gerry was an expert magician, the friend you were thankful to call yours, and as far as his family knew, he was “the strongest man in the world.”

Gerry is preceded in death by his mother and father.

Gerry is survived by his wife of 37 years, Victoria, his children, Christy Przystawik (Tom Przystawik), Greta Gordon (Jim Gordon), Brooke Harris (Ben Harris), Josh Hebert, and Marlea Hebert (Anthony DiBerardinis). His brother, Tom Hebert (Maria Hebert), and his 10 grandchildren, Gunter, Annika, Amelie, Harper, Sadie, Bailey, Brighid, Adrian, Tyler, and Abe.

A funeral service will be held on Saturday, September 16, 2023 at Fairlington United Methodist Church.

In lieu of flowers donations can be made in honor of Gerry to The Campaign Legal Center, ALIVE, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Fairlington United Methodist Church (music program).

Published by The Washington Post on Sep. 10, 2023.

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Gerry’s son Josh Hebert is one of our son Will’s closest friends, growing up in Alexandria and attending Alexandria City Public Schools together. Our church, Beverley Hills Community Methodist Church, has been part of ALIVE’s “grass roots” programs to make Alexandria a better place to live for families and individuals of all income levels. I also spoke at Fairlington Methodist on immigration and the need for reform at a public forum that Gerry helped organize.

Gerry was one of the former DOJ attorneys to courageously speak out publicly against the appointment of notorious White Nationalist and civil rights underminer then-Senator Jeff Sessions to be U.S. Attorney General under Trump. See.e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/01/04/sessions-no-civil-rights-hero-say-former-doj-cvil-rights-attorneys/. Sessions proved to be just as horrible and unqualified for the job as Gerry had warned.

Gerry was an inspiration and role model for the “new generation” of civil rights attorneys dedicated to making equal justice in America a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise!

Yesterday’s “Courtside” post highlighted the words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that embodied many of Gerry’s life values;

And I am confident that, just like generations of Americans before us, we are up to the challenge. Armed with our history, well-prepared by our past, and secure in the knowledge of what we have been through and where we’re headed, we will triumph in the valiant struggle to promote constitutional values and to obtain freedom and justice for all.

Due Process Forever and deep appreciation to a great American who represented “due process in action” and leaves a vibrant legacy for future generations. A life well-lived indeed!

PWS

09-18-23

🇺🇸⚖️ THE GOP RIGHT WING WANTS TO WHITEWASH AMERICAN HISTORY — JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON SAYS WE MUST TEACH THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ROLE OF RACISM IN AMERICA —“If we are going to continue to move forward as a nation, we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth, or history.”

Dan Rather
American Journalist
PHOTO: Creative Commons

Justice Katenji Brown Jackson — Judge (now Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, honoree at the Third Annual Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner, February 24, 2020, University of Chicago Law School. Photographer Lloyd DeGrane.
Creative Commons License

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner write on Steady on Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/steady/p/60-years-ago-in-birmingham?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

60 Years Ago in Birmingham

September 15, 1963 — 60 years ago today. An act of murderous cowardice in Birmingham, Alabama, shocked a nation. A bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church placed by Klansmen killed four girls as they attended Sunday school. Many others were wounded.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say in eulogy, “These children — unoffending, innocent, and beautiful — were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”

Let us pause in remembrance. Please say their names aloud. They deserve our recognition:

Denise McNair, age 11.

Carole Robertson, 14.

Addie Mae Collins, 14.

Cynthia Wesley, 14.

This horrific act is not ancient history. Some of you were of memory age at the time it happened. And it was not an isolated act of violence. Rather, it was part of a bloody, tragic, and unjust campaign of terror that stretches from before our country’s birth into our present age. It is a story of murder, torture, rape, lynching, and the tearing apart of families. It is a story of Jim Crow, redlining, and voter suppression. And now it is a story that powerful forces in our country would like us to forget, or at least sanitize from the unadulterated truth.

And yet, throughout our history, bigotry has not gone unanswered. Women and men of courage and fortitude have reminded us that we should walk a path toward equality and justice. Many have sacrificed greatly in service to our nation’s highest ideals.

This bombing was an act of domestic terrorism meant to stifle a growing Civil Rights Movement. It had the opposite effect. Less than a year later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act.

Progress has been made. However, we are reminded in our current age that the forces of white supremacy will never give up their privilege without a fight. We see more acts of racist violence, more denying of reality, more attempts to rewrite history. It is a cynically destructive ploy for power at the expense of our national unity and the truth.

All this was on the mind of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson this morning, when the first Black woman to serve on the court went to the 16th Street Baptist Church to commemorate the bombing’s anniversary. It was the justice’s first trip to Alabama, but she told those in the pews, “I felt in my spirit that I had to come.”

What she subsequently shared was an acknowledgement of the past and an admonition for our present and our future. We were moved by her words and want to include some of them here, as well as a video of the entire speech, should you wish to watch.

Justice Jackson began by contrasting the story of the Birmingham bombing and her own personal journey.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article, including Justice Jackson’s remarks and pictures of the murdered girls, at the link. Don’t let GOP extremists get away with rewriting our history to match their White Nationalist myths! It’s a key part of their scheme to “dumb down” American education and intellectual debate on all levels!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-17-23

⚖️😎☹️ AFTER RARE VICTORY FOR RESPONDENT IN MATTER OF C-G-T- (UNWILLING/UNABLE TO PROTECT, POLICE REPORT, HIDING SEXUAL ORIENTATION), BIA REVERTS TO FORM BY DENYING ADJUSTMENT TO CONDITIONALLY PAROLED CUBANS (MATTER OF CABRERA-FERNANDEZ)

Here’s the link to Matter of C-G-T-, 28 I&N Dec. 740 (BIA 2023):

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1594626/download

Here’s the link to Matter of Cabreara-Fernandez, 28 I&N Dec, 747 (BIOA 2023):

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1595041/download

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This e-mail exchange among experts says it all about Cabrera-Fernandez:

Expert 1: Wow – they never miss a chance to hurt noncitizens, do they?

Expert 2: The cruelty is the point.

“The Cruelty Is The Point”
IMAGE: Amazon.com

With an available interpretation that would have allowed regularization of status, what purpose is served by devising a way to keep these otherwise qualified Cubans in limbo? Why would the DHS appeal a decision like this? Why would the BIA reward them for pursuing a result that is 1) inhumane, 2) undesirable, and 3) entirely avoidable with a little creativity and common sense (see, IJ in this case)?

No wonder we have backlogs everywhere an a dysfunctional system that nobody in charge seems interested in fixing — even when fixes are available and basically “cost free?” Better leaders and more enlightened decision-makers would be helpful.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-12-23

Steve Schmidt on Substack:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

From The Border Chronicle:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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MAGA Mike

Greg writes:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Stephanie writes in the LA Times:

Jen writes in WashPost:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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From Robert Reich on Substack:

From Kelly Bouchard in the Portland Press Herald:

Grace Benninghoff in the Portland Press Herald:

Abstract of Austin Kocher, PhD’s article “Welcoming the stranger in Trump’s America: Notes on the everyday processes of constructing and enduring sanctuary:”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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From Reuters:

Overview

Political Repression and Human Rights

Crime and Insecurity

Economic Collapse

Health Crisis

Food Insecurity

Heavy Rains and Flooding

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

EOIR is looking for “many judges in many locations:”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Related posts:

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner write on Steady on Substack:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Here’s the link to Matter of C-G-T-, 28 I&N Dec. 740 (BIA 2023):

Here’s the link to Matter of Cabreara-Fernandez, 28 I&N Dec, 747 (BIOA 2023):

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts: