Human Rights – Page 228 – immigrationcourtside.com

NYT OPINION: Nicholas Kristof — Paul Ryan Meets Jesus

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/opinion/and-jesus-said-unto-paul-of-ryan.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referer=http://m.facebook.com

“From everyone who has been given much,” Jesus told him, “much will be required.”

“Well, sure, this hospital would have a foundation to do some charity work. Maybe commissioning portraits of The Donald to hang in the entrance. But let’s drop this bleeding heart nonsense about health care as a human right, and see it as a financial opportunity to reward investors. In this partnership, 62 percent of the benefits would go to the top 0.6 percent — perfect for a health care plan.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul on his left and said: “Be gone! For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; and I was sick, and you did not help me.”

“But, Lord,” protested Pious Paul of Ryan, “when did I see you hungry or thirsty or sick and refuse to help you? I drop your name everywhere. And I’m pro-life!”

“Truly, I say to you,” Jesus responded, “as you did not help the homeless, the sick — as you did not help the least of these, you did not help me.”

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Read the full op-ed at the link.

PWS

03/16/17

WashPost OPINION: EUGENE ROBINSON — Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Is A Self-Proclaimed Racist/White Supremacist — White House Doesn’t Appear To Have A Problem With That

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/white-supremacism-is-ready-to-roar/2017/03/13/883e7570-082b-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?utm_term=.52288350b631

Robinson writes:

“White supremacism was never banished from American political thought, just shoved to the fringe and hushed to a whisper. Now, in the Age of Trump, it’s back in the mainstream and ready to roar.

Witness the words of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on the subject of immigration: “Culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” King offered these sentiments Sunday in a tweet expressing solidarity with Geert Wilders, an openly racist and Islamophobic Dutch politician who has a chance of becoming prime minister in elections this week. Wilders is someone who “understands,” King wrote.

And we understand just what King meant. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke certainly got the message, using his vile Twitter account to proclaim, “GOD BLESS STEVE KING!!!”

. . . .

“Immigrants — both voluntary and involuntary — have shaped this nation since long before its founding. The first Africans were brought here in bondage in 1619, one year before the Mayflower. Americans have never been a single ethnicity, speaking a single language, bound by the centuries to a single patch of land. We have always been diverse, polyglot and restless, and our greatness has come from our openness to new people and new ideas.

King’s distress about birthrates can be read only as modern-day eugenics. If he is worried about the coming day when there is no white majority in the United States, he has remarkably little faith in our remarkable society — or in the Constitution that he, as a member of Congress, is sworn to support and defend.

President Trump played footsie with the white supremacist movement during his campaign. His chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, waged civilizational war when he ran the Breitbart News site. Trump could definitively denounce King’s racism with a statement or a tweet, but so far his silence is deafening.”

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I’m glad that Robinson makes the point that America literally was developed, founded, and built on the backs, free labor, and talents of African American “involuntary” immigrants. (In my Refugee Law and Policy course at Georgetown Law we referred to them as “forced migrants.”)

In fact, of our first five Presidents, only John Adams was self-supporting. The others owed their livelihood to the free labor provided by enslaved African Americans. Sad, but true.

PWS

03/15/17

9th Cir. En Banc — After 80 Pages, 9-2 Majority Finds Mexican Gov. “Unwilling Or Unable To Prevent” Persecution Of Gays — Dissent Bemoans “Usurpation” Of BIA’s Fact-Finding Authority — BRINGAS-RODRIGUEZ V. SESSIONS

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/03/08/13-72682.pdf

Judge Wardlaw for the majority:

“In Castro-Martinez, we also failed to consider the difference between a country’s enactment of remedial laws and the eradication of persecutory practices, often long ingrained in a country’s culture. Rejecting Castro’s claim that, in Mexico, a systematic pattern or practice of persecution against homosexuals remained, we found Castro’s evidence unpersuasive “in light of recent country reports,” which showed that the “Mexican government’s efforts to prevent violence and discrimination against homosexuals . . . ha[d] increased in recent years.” Castro- Martinez, 674 F.3d at 1082.

Mexico is to be lauded for its efforts. But it is well recognized that a country’s laws are not always reflective of actual country conditions. It is not unusual that a country’s “de jure commitments to LGBTI protection do not align with the de facto reality of whether the State is able and willing to provide protection.” Brief for UNHCR as Amicus Curiae at 4. And we have recently recognized that Mexico has experienced “an increase in violence against gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals during the years in which greater legal protections have been extended to these communities.” Avendano-Hernandez v. Lynch, 800 F.3d 1072, 1081 (9th Cir. 2015) (emphasis in original).

Moreover, the anti-discrimination efforts discussed in Castro-Martinez seem to have been made by the national government, and thus do not necessarily reveal anything about the practices within state or municipal jurisdictions. See Madrigal v. Holder, 716 F.3d 499, 507 (9th Cir. 2013) (noting that while Mexico’s national government was willing to control the drug cartel that attacked the petitioner, it was not necessarily able to do so, in part because state and local officials were involved with drug traffickers).”

Writing for the dissent, Judge Bea (who claims to be the only U.S. Circuit Judge to actually have been the subject of deportation proceedings), joined by Judge O’Scannlain:

“I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because it usurps the power of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to determine facts. It does this by reciting, but ultimately departing, from the “substantial evidence” standard which states that agency “findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B) (emphasis added).”

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The Administration apparently believes that cases like this are going to be resolved on an “assembly line” operation with U.S. Immigration Judges sitting in “shifts” in detention centers from 6 AM until 10 PM.

While notable for its potential precedential effect, this case is not particularly unusual in terms of the difficult factual and legal issues that arise daily in U.S. Immigration Court in asylum cases coming from countries “south of our border.” This happened to be Mexico, but LGBT cases involving individuals from the Northern Triangle are quite common, even in jurisdictions like the Arlington Immigration Court.

I note that the amicus views of the UNHCR fare much better in the majority’s decision than they typically do these days at the BIA. For example, in Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 227, 248 (BIA 2014), the BIA summarily “blew off” the views of the UNHCR on the issue of “particular social group.”

It’s also interesting that notwithstanding the dissent, the BIA actually lacks de novo fact finding authority of its own. Following a regulation change during the “Ashcroft era,” that authority belongs to the Immigration Judge with review by the BIA for “clear error.”

PWS

03/14/17

EAST BAY EXPRESS: Are U.S. Immigration Court Hearings For Unrepresented Individuals Unconstitutional? Darwin BondGrahm Seems To Think So — Perhaps Darwin Is Right!

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/inside-immigration-court-are-deportation-hearings-in-the-bay-area-unconstitutional/Content?oid=5642504

Darwin BondGraham reports in a profile of justice at the U.S. Immigration Court in San Francisco, CA:

“Ilyce Shugall can rattle off a similarly long list of due-process problems. The directing attorney of Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, Shugall is one of a couple dozen pro-bono lawyers who try to provide counsel to a fraction of the people facing deportation in San Francisco.

“Procedural protections don’t really exist, despite the consequences of banishment,” she said at a recent legal symposium held by the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice in Berkeley. “There’s no right to an attorney, but the government is represented in every case by an ICE attorney.”

As Shugall sees it, the ICE attorney also has a kind of home-field advantage: Being in the same courtrooms day-in, day-out, allows an attorney to establish better rapport with judges.

And the judges and ICE attorneys all have the same boss: The President of the United States.

The immigration judges are employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is overseen by the attorney general — they’re not members of the independent judicial branch of government. The ICE attorneys work for the Department of Homeland Security.

Over her career practicing immigration law, Shugall said she’s seen ICE attorneys frequently miss filing deadlines without consequences; file motions on the day of a hearing, preventing review by the defense; and withhold records in a case from the person being targeted for deportation, thereby forcing them to file a burdensome Freedom of Information Act request to get the documents.

She’s also seen extended detention result, countless times, in what Mr. Gonzales apparently did in Judge Murry’s courtroom this past December: Give up on his case and beg to be deported, just to get escape the misery of jail.”

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The full article, which I found through ImmigrationProf Blog, is well worth a read.

I think that the Administration’s ill-advised “pedal to the metal” detention and removal plans, combined with elimination of funding for various Government sponsored outreach, information, and self-help programs is very likely to bring the due process weaknesses of the current U.S. Immigration Court system to a head.

I would not be surprised if a U.S. District Judge somewhere issues a TRO preventing the Government from proceeding in certain types of cases unless the individual is represented. After all, the Government was recently blocked in the 9th Circuit from proceeding against incompetent individuals without establishing some viable system for determining competency and representing those determined to be incompetent.

I also predict that the Administration’s ill-conceived plan to “jack up” detention, particularly by using private facilities which have been determined to have a greater incidence of problematic conditions, is likely to result in major “conditions of detention” litigation and, perhaps, further intervention by the Article III Courts.

Rather than studying the situation and looking for ways to fix our broken immigration justice system so that individuals receive the due process to which they are entitled, the Trump Administration seems determined to make matters worse by turning up the volume. That’s likely to have unhappy consequences not only for the individuals, but also for the Administration.

PWS

03/13/17

NEW FROM 4TH CIR: Cantallano-Cruz v. Sessions — 4th Rips BIA’s “Excessively Narrow” & “Shortsighted” Treatment Of “Nexus” Issue In Honduran Family PSG Asylum Case!

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/152511.P.pdf

“Our decision in Hernandez-Avalos is particularly instructive in the present case. There, the BIA denied asylum to a petitioner who fled El Salvador after gang members threatened to kill her because she prevented her son from joining the gang. 784 F.3d at 946-47. The petitioner had argued that at least one central reason for her persecution was her nuclear family relationship with her son. Id. at 949. The BIA disagreed, holding that she actually was targeted because she did not consent to her son’s criminal activity. Id.

We held that this application of the nexus requirement by the BIA was “excessively narrow,” and explained that there was no meaningful distinction between the existence of a maternal relationship and a mother’s decision to forbid her son from participating in a gang. Id. at 949–50. We held that the record compelled a factual conclusion that the petitioner’s relationship with her son was a central reason for her persecution, because that relationship was the reason “why she, and not another person, was threatened.” Id. at 950.

We likewise conclude in the present case that the BIA and IJ applied an improper and excessively narrow interpretation of the evidence relevant to the statutory nexus requirement. The BIA and IJ shortsightedly focused on Avila’s articulated purpose of preventing Cantillano Cruz from contacting the police, while discounting the very relationship that prompted her to search for her husband, to confront Avila, and to express her intent to contact the police. See Oliva, 807 F.3d at 59-60 (although the applicant’s refusal to pay the gang rent was the “immediate trigger” for an assault, the applicant’s membership in the social group of individuals who left the gang led to threats, and thus the two reasons were linked). The BIA’s and IJ’s focus on the explanation Avila gave for his threats, while failing to consider the intertwined reasons for those threats, manifests a misapplication of the statutory nexus standard.

The full record before us compels a conclusion that Avila’s threats were motivated, in at least one central respect, by Cantillano Cruz’s membership in Martinez’s nuclear family. Although, as the IJ observed, any person interested in Martinez’s disappearance may have confronted Avila concerning Martinez’s whereabouts, this fact does not adequately explain the ongoing threats Avila made against Cantillano Cruz and her children over a period of two years at her home. See Cordova, 759 F.3d at 339-40 (although the applicant was first attacked by the persecutor to force the applicant to join the gang, the BIA failed to consider evidence showing that later attacks were motivated by family ties). Avila persisted in threatening Cantillano Cruz after she promised him that she would not contact the police. Avila placed threatening telephone calls to Cantillano Cruz at her home, the center of life for Martinez and his nuclear family. Also at the Martinez family’s home, Avila and his associates killed the family’s dogs, brandished and fired weapons, and threatened to harm Cantillano Cruz and her children.”

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Read the full opinion at the link.

In too many cases, the BIA appears to strain the law and misconstrue facts to avoid granting protection to deserving applicants from Northern Triangle countries in Central America who clearly face harm upon return. Misapplication of the highly technical concept of “nexus” is a device sometimes used by by the Board and some Immigration Judges to deny claims of vulnerable individuals who could and should be granted protection under U.S. laws.

In doing so, the BIA jettisons the generous spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cardoza-Fonseca and their own precedent decision in Mogharrabi warranting generous treatment of credible asylum seekers in need of protection. Indeed, the BIA often seems more willing to “rote cite” Mogharrabi than to actually follow their own precedent.

The purpose of asylum and other protections laws is to protect individuals facing harm wherever possible, not to find hyper-technical ways to deny or limit protections.

I am pleased that one of the cases cited by the Fourth Circuit is Crespin-Valladares v. Holder, 632 F.3d 117 (4th Cir. 2011). Crespin is one of the “seminal” fourth Circuit cases recognizing family as a “particular social group” for asylum purposes. I had granted the asylum applications in Crespin only to have the BIA reverse those grants after the DHS appealed. However, upon judicial review, the Fourth Circuit agreed with me and reversed and remanded the case to the BIA.

This case also vividly illustrates the absurdity of forcing individuals to pursue these types of claims in Immigration Court without a lawyer. Even the Immigration Judge and the BIA were confused about the proper standards here! Fortunately, this individual not only had a lawyer but a good one.

But, how would an unrepresented individual, without English language skills, and perhaps with minimal education, and therefore no ability to access or understand the important and complicated Fourth Circuit precedents showing the BIA and the IJ to be wrong have any legitimate chance of achieving success? Yet, the Administration proposes to race just such individuals through expedited hearings at inconveniently located and often poorly run detention facilities where chances of getting competent legal assistance are minimal.

PWS

03/13/17

REUTERS: U.S. Immigration Court’s “Night Court” Plan Shows Why Due Process Is A Mirage In A “Captive” Court System — Will EOIR Cave To Administration’s Move To Put “Due Process Veneer” On Assembly Line Removals!

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN16H030

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports:

“The Department of Justice is deploying 50 judges to immigration detention facilities across the United States, according to two sources and a letter seen by Reuters and sent to judges on Thursday.

The department is also considering asking judges to sit from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., split between two rotating shifts, to adjudicate more cases, the sources said. A notice about shift times was not included in the letter.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.”

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Thanks much to Zoe Tillman over at BuzzFeed News for bringing this article to my attention.

“Judges” working “shifts” on the “removal assembly line!” “Come on, man!” A “real” court would be strongly resisting this mockery of justice and due process.

But, because the U.S. Immigration Court is a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the Administration, EOIR leadership will likely “go along to get along” with a transparent scheme to railroad human beings in real danger back to the “death zone” of the Northern Triangle with “rubber stamp” justice. In other words, the Immigration Courts are considered by the Administration and the DOJ to be part of the “enforcement team,” rather than an independent due-process focused judiciary.

Scheduling early in the AM and late at night is likely to make it more difficult to get pro bono lawyers, witnesses, interpreters, etc. It isn’t just judges.

Also, some folks don’t function very well at those hours. Sounds sort of “gulag like” to me.

And, what about court clerks and other support staff? Additionally, by putting courts in out of the way detention locations and scheduling hearings at odd times, DOJ limits transparency. It’s harder for the press and other “outsiders” to observe.

Moreover, what happens to existing dockets of those IJs who “volunteer?” Reassigning 50 currently sitting Immigration Judges to the Southern Border on a rotating basis for one year would require the rescheduling of nearly 40,000 cases from their “home” dockets. Those cases, many already years old, are likely to be sent to the end of the docket, several years out. This is classic “aimless docket reshuffling” which increases backlogs and inhibits fairness and due process.

Finally, what’s going to happen to a “volunteer” Immigration Judge who takes due process seriously, slows down the cases so individuals can get lawyers, takes time for full presentation of the cases by both sides, and writes carefully reasoned decisions granting asylum or alternative forms of protection. Chances are they will be considered “unproductive,” “not with the program,” “not carrying their weight,” or “not committed to carrying out the Attorney General’s priorities” (yes, folks, Immigration Judges actually are given “performance ratings,” and one of the elements has to do with supporting “agency priorities”)? That’s likely to be “career limiting.”

Final question: How would you like to have your life determined by a judge working (for the “chief prosecutor”) under these conditions?

PWS

03/10/17

TIME: Deportation Can Be a Death Sentence — We Should Be Concerned About “Quick Removal Schemes” By The Administration & Continued Deterioration of Due Process And Fairness For Asylum Seekers – Particularly Those Unrepresented — In U.S. Immigration Court!

http://time.com/4696017/deportation-death-refugees-asylum/

Conchita Cruz and Swapna Reddy, co-founders of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project at the Urban Justice Center, write:

“For one immigrant group—asylum seekers already living in the United States—the fear is especially intense: deportation is a death sentence.
While thousands showed up to support refugee families at airports in response to the refugee ban, many Americans do not realize that a different group of refugee families stands to be picked up in raids, detained and wrongfully deported from the United States. These refugees are called “asylum seekers” because they are seeking refugee status from inside the United States instead of abroad.
For many asylum seekers, there is no mechanism to apply for refugee status abroad, which causes them to come to the U.S.-Mexico border and turn themselves in, seeking refuge. Like their counterparts in airports, they have experienced incredible violence in their countries of origin. They have been brutally raped, threatened by gunpoint to join gangs, or witnessed the murder of loved ones.
In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) holds asylum seekers in detention centers for weeks or months until they pass a preliminary interview with an asylum officer. If they secure release, they move in with relatives or friends while remaining in deportation proceedings pending a full asylum trial.
Asylum seekers do not have a right to government-appointed counsel though their lives hang in the balance. Instead, families are forced to navigate the complex immigration system alone in a language they do not understand. Many also suffer from trauma-based disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder due to the persecution they experienced in the countries they fled.”

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Perhaps contrary to popular perception, we often return individuals to dangerous and life-threatening situations. That’s because of the somewhat arcane “nexus” requirement for asylum that only covers persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

By manipulating these definitions, U.S. Government authorities often can deny protection even to individuals who clearly face life-threatening danger upon return. The Government has worked particularly hard to develop technical legal criteria to disqualify those fleeing danger in the Northern Triangle.

Given the complexity and the highly legalistic nature of the system, competent representation by an attorney is a requirement for due process. For example, according to TRAC, for a sample population of Northern Triangle “women with children,” slightly more than 26% of those with lawyers got favorable decisions from the Immigration Court. Without lawyers, only 1.5% succeeded.

And, if the law were interpreted more reasonably and generously, in accordance with the spirit of asylum protection, I think that a substantial majority of those applying for asylum from the Northern Triangle would be granted relief. Pressure for more favorable interpretations will not come from unrepresented individuals who can’t speak English, let alone articulate, document, and support sophisticated legal arguments for better interpretations of protection laws.

PWS

03/09/17

My Message To Cornell Law — “Fight For Due Process” — Join The “New Due Process Army” — Due Process In Peril At The U.S. Immigration Court!

I spoke to an audience of approximately 120 members of the Cornell University community in Ithaca on Wednesday, March 8, 2017, as part of the Berger International Programs Lecture Series at Cornell Law. Many thanks to Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr for inviting me.

Read my entire speech

“EXISTENTIALISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE AT THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT – CORNELL LAW VERSION”

here:

EXISTENTIALISM — Cornell — AND THE MEANING OF LIFE AT THE U

Here are a few “Highlights:”

“Sadly, the Immigration Court System is moving further away from that due process vision. Instead, years of neglect, misunderstanding, mismanagement, and misguided priorities imposed by the U.S. Department of Justice have created judicial chaos with an expanding backlog now exceeding an astounding one half million cases and no clear plan for resolving them in the foreseeable future.”

“Nobody has been hit harder by this preventable disaster than asylum seekers, particularly scared women and children fleeing for their lives from the Northern Triangle of Central America. In Immigration Court, notwithstanding the life or death issues at stake, unlike criminal court there is no right to an appointed lawyer.”

“First, and foremost, the Immigration Courts must return to the focus on due process as the one and only mission. The improper use of our due process court system by political officials to advance enforcement priorities and/or send “don’t come” messages to asylum seekers, which are highly ineffective in any event, must end. That’s unlikely to happen under the DOJ – as proved by over three decades of history, particularly recent history.”

“This is hardly “through teamwork and innovation being the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!” These unusually low asylum grant rates are impossible to justify in light of the generous standard for well-founded fear established by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca and the BIA in Mogharrabi, and the regulatory presumption of future fear arising out of past persecution that applies in many asylum cases. Yet, the BIA has only recently and fairly timidly addressed the manifest lack of respect for asylum seekers and failure to guarantee fairness and due process for such vulnerable individuals in some cases arising in Atlanta and other courts with unrealistically low grant rates.”

“Over the past 16 years, the BIA’s inability or unwillingness to aggressively stand up for the due process rights of asylum seekers and to enforce the fair and generous standards required by American law have robbed our Immigration Court System of credibility and public support, as well as ruined the lives of many who were denied protection that should have been granted. We need a BIA which functions like a Federal Appellate Court and whose overriding mission is to ensure that the due process vision of the Immigration Courts becomes a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise.”

“So, do we abandon all hope? No, of course not! Because there are hundreds of newer lawyers out there who are former Arlington JLCs, interns, my former student, and those who have practiced before the Arlington Immigration Court.”

“They form what I call the “New Due Process Army!” And, while my time on the battlefield is winding down, they are just beginning the fight! They will keep at it for years, decades, or generations — whatever it takes to force the U.S. immigration judicial system to live up to its promise of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”

“Folks, the U.S Immigration Court system is on the verge of collapse. And, there is every reason to believe that the misguided “enforce and detain to the max” policies being pursued by this Administration will drive the Immigration Courts over the edge. When that happens, a large chunk of the entire American justice system and the due process guarantees that make American great and different from most of the rest of the world will go down with it.”

“Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness! Join the New Due Process Army! Due process forever!”

PWS

03/10/17

The Human Costs Of Trumpism — Kids In Danger, Abandoned By U.S.!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/americas/trump-refugee-ban-children-central-america.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0

The NY Times reports:

“SAN SALVADOR — Veronica picked up some modeling clay, molded it into little human figures with her hands — and then dug holes into the sculpture’s face.

“Look,” said Veronica, 9, showing off the creation to her aunt. “That’s how Mamá ended up.”

For more than a year, Veronica and her sister have been in hiding here in El Salvador, hoping to receive refugee status in the United States. The two girls were doing homework at their dining room table when masked men burst in and gunned down their grandparents — the community’s only two health workers — on rumors that the couple had been tipping off the police about gangs in the neighborhood.

Like many thousands of others, Veronica and her sister applied for sanctuary in the United States under a special Obama administration effort to grapple with the violence that has gutted Central America and sent waves of its people on a desperate march toward the American border.

But on Monday, the Trump administration announced a four-month suspension on all refugee admissions to the United States so security procedures can be improved and, perhaps most significantly, cut the number of total refugees allowed into the country by more than half.

“We can’t remain in the same place,” said the girls’ aunt, Reina, who is seeking refugee status for her nieces, witnesses to the double homicide. “We got a call last weekend telling us that they’d find us under whatever rock we were hiding.”

When President Trump first tried to freeze the nation’s refugee program in January, the courts jumped in and thwarted his executive order.

But one vital limit that the courts did allow — and which Mr. Trump’s new order continues — is a drastic reduction in the number of refugees admitted to the United States this fiscal year, from 110,000 under President Barack Obama to Mr. Trump’s revised cap: 50,000.

And those seats are mostly taken already.”

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We supposedly don’t want folks sending their kids on a dangerous journey to the U.S. to escape life-threatening situations in the Northern Triangle. So, the Obama Administration finally creates a very, very modest program for processing refugees (mostly women and children) in the Northern Triangle.

But, the Trump Administration comes along and reduces refugee numbers and suspends refugee admissions. So, why are we surprised that kids continue to make the dangerous journey with the help of smugglers. Basically, what the Trump Administration has done is to 1) endanger kids, and 2) enrich smugglers?

PWS

03/07/17

THE HILL: Nolan Rappaport Says New Trump Travel Ban A Slam Dunk Winner In Court! Get Link Here!

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/322720-trumps-travel-ban-legally-sound-defensible-all-the-way-to-the

Nolan writes:

“The Trump administration released Monday a revised version of its immigration Executive Order to address the concerns raised in an appeals court decision, but those criticisms were always fundamentally irrational and not based in the text of the Order.”

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Read Nolan’s complete article in The Hill at link.

As I indicated in my posts yesterday, the new travel ban appears to me just as bogus as the first one. Rather than being designed to solve a real national security problem, it is fear-mongering designed primarily to rev up public opinion, particularly among Trump’s base, against Muslims and refugees, neither of which pose a significant threat to the U.S. at present.

I noted that the Post “Fact-Checker” has already awarded “Three Pinocchios” to the misleading statistics that Secretary Kelly and AG Sessions cited in their “staged dialogue” asking the President to reimpose the travel ban. And, this is from a President and an Administration that already have pretty much zero credibility.

That being said, I don’t necessarily disagree with Nolan’s bottom line that Trump might well win this one if it even gets to the Supremes. This time, following the advice of Government litigators, he has applied the ban prospectively only to those foreign nationals overseas who have not previously been admitted or already documented to enter the U.S. He’s also eliminated the overt mention of religion.

Given that the standard for overseas visa denials is a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason,” the Administration might well be home free. Although the stated rationale might not stand up to a rigorous examination, it is unlikely that the Supremes, or even most lower Federal Courts, view engaging in a testing of the factual basis for this type of order affecting individuals overseas as something that can properly be adjudicated by Article III judges.

See my previous posts here:

http://wp.me/p8eeJm-ry

http://wp.me/p8eeJm-rH

PWS

03/07/17

NY TIMES OPINION: James Traub Says Refugee Issues Are More Nuanced Than Most Of Us Want To Admit!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/the-hard-truth-about-refugees.html?emc=edit_ty_20170307&nl=opinion-today&nlid=79213886&te=1&_r=0&referer=

“The situation is different here. Since the United States has no real refugee problem, save one fabricated by Mr. Trump and conservative activists, and no immigrant crime wave, the chief answer has to be on the level of the opinion corridor: Liberal urbanites have to accept that many Americans react to multicultural pieties by finding something else — sometimes their own white identity — to embrace. If there’s a culture war, everyone loses; but history tells us that liberals lose worse.

I believe that liberalism can be preserved only if liberals learn to distinguish between what must be protected at all cost and what must be, not discarded, but reconsidered — the unquestioned virtue of cosmopolitanism, for example, or of free trade. If we are to honor the human rights of refugees, we must find a way to do so that commands political majorities. Otherwise we’ll keep electing leaders who couldn’t care less about those rights.”

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Read the entire thought-provoking op-ed at the link.

PWS

30/07/17

Proving My Point — The Sessions, Kelly, Trump Claim That More Than 300 Refugees Are Subjects Of Counterterrorism Investigations Earns “Three Pinocchios” From the WashPost “Fact Checker!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/03/06/trumps-claim-that-more-than-300-refugees-are-the-subject-of-counterterrorism-investigations/?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name:homepage/story&utm_term=.e6cc017ec4a9

Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes in the Washington Post:

“It’s irresponsible for the administration to tout this number repeatedly without context or giving the public additional information to understand whether refugees are a threat to the U.S. homeland. The burden of proof is on the speaker, yet administration officials repeatedly declined reporters’ requests for more information. Moreover, the administration’s credibility on factual accuracy is open to question, given the frequent false claims made by the president and other senior officials.
This 300 figure, without context, is problematic for three reasons. It represents a tiny fraction of all resettled refugees in the United States per year (83,380 on average), and since the refugee program began in 1980 (3 million). Since Sept. 11, 2001, roughly 190,000 refugees were accepted into the United States from the six countries listed in the immigration executive order. The 300 figure represents a fraction — though unclear how small or big — of the total open counterterrorism investigations (which could be 1,000 or up to 10,000). And we have no idea what charges are involved, or if these investigations will even result in any charges (or convictions, for that matter).

In the absence of context or additional information from the administration, we find this figure highly misleading, worthy of Three Pinocchios. Should the administration decide to share more information to place this figure into context, we’re happy to reconsider the evidence and the rating.”

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Coulda been worse, as in “Four Pinochios” the “Lowest Award.” And, there is always a chance that the Administration could eventually provide real evidence to back up its largely fictional claims that refugees are a major threat to our national security. But, I wouldn’t count on it.

In the meantime, as I suggested in the previous post, Gen. Kelly is likely to see his sterling reputation go down the drain if he continues to go along with the Sessions, Bannon, Miller crowd. All of the latter have spent their lives living in an “alternate universe” largely free of truth, common sense, perspective, reflection, humanity, and common decency (yes, there is a difference between “geniality” and “courtesy” for which Sessions is known and “human decency” of which he has exhibited depressingly little in his long career in public service).

PWS

03/07/17

WashPost: What Cheers A Grumpy Trump? — A Muslim & Refugee Bashing Session With Sessions, Kelly, Bannon & Miller

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-fury-the-president-rages-at-leaks-setbacks-and-accusations/2017/03/05/40713af4-01df-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumptumult-830pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.89b3d6c4aad2

Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker report in the Washington Post:

“That night at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had dinner with Sessions, Bannon, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, among others. They tried to put Trump in a better mood by going over their implementation plans for the travel ban, according to a White House official.”

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Kind of sad to see Gen. Kelly go over to the “dark side.” At his confirmation hearings, he actually was one of the few in this Administration to show a nuanced understanding of migration.

But he now seems to have either “bought into” or chosen to “go along to get along” with the fiction that the world’s most vulnerable and needy individuals, refugees, and legal immigrants, most of whom are coming to join family members already admitted to the U.S., are a greater threat to our security than, say, ISIS or disgruntled and/or disturbed native born U.S. citizens walking around with all too readily available military style firearms.

Yes, I suppose that I’d still rather have General Kelly in charge of the DHS than the likely alternatives — unqualified idealogical zealots. But, as time goes on and the problems with the Administration’s nationalistic, unrealistic, and inhumane approach to immigration multiply, Gen. Kelly might find that he will be remembered more for his failure to stand up to guys like Sessions, Bannon, and Miller than his many military achievements. And, that will be an “American Tragedy.”

PWS

03/07/17

THE ATLANTIC: Our Unhappy Immigration History — President Herbert Hoover’s Anti-Immigrant Policies Resulted In The “Mexican Repatriation” — U.S. Citizens Were The Majority Of Those Illegally Removed!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/americas-brutal-forgotten-history-of-illegal-deportations/517971/

Alex Wagner writes:

“Back in Hoover’s era, as America hung on the precipice of economic calamity—the Great Depression—the president was under enormous pressure to offer a solution for increasing unemployment, and to devise an emergency plan for the strained social safety net. Though he understood the pressing need to aid a crashing economy, Hoover resisted federal intervention, instead preferring a patchwork of piecemeal solutions, including the targeting of outsiders.
According to former California State Senator Joseph Dunn, who in 2004 began an investigation into the Hoover-era deportations, “the Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name.”

“Getting rid of” America’s Mexican population was a random, brutal effort. “For participating cities and counties, they would go through public employee rolls and look for Mexican-sounding names and then go and arrest and deport those people,” said Dunn. “And then there was a job opening!”

“We weren’t rounding up people who were Canadian,” he added. “It was an absolutely racially-motivated program to create jobs by getting rid of people.”

Why, specifically, men and women of Mexican heritage? Professor Francisco Balderrama, whose book, A Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s is the most definitive chronicle of the period (and, not coincidentally, one of the only ones), explained: “Mexican immigration was very recent. It goes back to that saying: Last hired, first fired. The attitude of many industrialists and agriculturalists was reflected in larger cities: A Mexican is a Mexican.” And that included even those citizens of Mexicans descent who were born in the U.S. “That is sort of key in understanding the psychic of the nation,” said Balderrama.

The so-called repatriation effort was, in large part, a misnomer, given the fact that as many as sixty percent of those sent to “home” Mexico were U.S. citizens: American-born children of Mexican-descent who had never before traveled south of the border. (Dunn noted, “I don’t know how you can repatriate someone to a country they’ve not been born or raised in.”)

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Pretty grotesque. Where’s the apology? Where is the circumspection? Where its the humanity in the Administration’s new “immigrant scapegoating” program?

Thanks much to Nolan Rappaport for bringing this interesting, if disturbing, piece of immigration history to my attention.

PWS

03/06/17

DIFFERING VIEWS OF NEW “TRAVEL BAN” ON CNN: Jeffrey Toobin: It Could Stand Up — Advocates: It Stinks!

Jeffrey Toobin writes:

“CNN)For President Trump and his travel ban, the second time may be the charm.

The revised executive order, revealed Monday during a rare joint appearance by three Cabinet members, addresses many of the legal problems that led Trump’s first executive order to be stymied by the courts.
The new order makes plain that holders of green cards and valid visas are now clearly exempt. There is no longer an exception to allow Christian refugees to jump to the head of the line.

The government’s explanation for why it selected the covered countries does not mention religion; rather, the administration says the six countries — down from seven in the previous order — either support terrorism or lack sufficient controls to identify dangerous visitors to the United States. The order also removes Iraq as one of the countries covered by the order.
The courts, which invalidated the original ban, did so, in effect, because they found the order amounted to religious discrimination against Muslims. This new order, unlike the first, makes no mention of the religions of any applicants to come to the United States.
Still, opponents of the order will insist the new rules are merely pretexts — that the new order once again fulfills President Trump’s campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the United States.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/opinions/trump-travel-ban-toobin/index.html

On the other hand, Lauren Said-Moorhouse reports:

“(CNN)International humanitarian groups have slammed US President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban, which targets six Muslim-majority nations, for sharing many of the same flaws as its predecessor.

Similar to the January order, travel ban 2.0 again prevents citizens from Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan from entering the United States for at least 90 days. In this iteration, Iraq is not on the list of barred countries.
The new order, which the Trump administration says is needed to protect the United States from foreign terrorists entering the country, will also suspend the admission of refugees for 120 days and urges US officials to improve vetting procedures for a resettlement program already regarded to be rigorous.
Aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, and Amnesty International USA, quickly condemned the new directive, arguing the ban still does not make the United States any safer.
David Miliband, IRC president and CEO, said in a statement that the revised executive order on immigration “heartlessly targets the most vetted and most vulnerable population to enter the United States.” He added that the new executive order could affect 60,000 people already screened for resettlement in America.

“The ban doesn’t target those who are the greatest security risk, but those least able to advocate for themselves. Instead of making us safer, it serves as a gift for extremists who seek to undermine the United States,” Miliband said.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/world/trump-travel-ban-world-reaction/index.html

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PWS

03/06/17

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