Panel Discussion: Freedom from Fear: Young Women and Asylum
Alberto Manuel Benitez, Paulina Vera, and Gisela Camba
GW law professors Alberto Benitez and Paulina Vera will interview GW alumna Gisela Camba, JD ’18, and her client K-A-, who was granted asylum to the United States. Their discussion will review the arduous journey to freedom, and importantly, the reason asylum was granted. A collaboration with GW’s Law School. Free; no registration required.
Category: Sexual Harassment
EOIR DIRECTOR McHENRY TRIES TO EXPLAIN TRASHING OF DUE PROCESS TO SKEPTICAL HOUSE DEMS — DOJ Leadership Has Turned “Courts” Into “A DMV For Deportation,” Says Chairman Jose Serrano (D-NY)!— Many Cases From Trump Shutdown Still “MIA” While Lives Hang In The Balance!
Kate Smith reports for CBS News:
Immigration courts are still wading through the disruptions caused by the government shutdown, which closed the courts and effectively cancelled between 50,000 and 95,000 hearings in December and January.
Many immigrants are still waiting to have those hearings rescheduled, James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, told lawmakers during a hearing last week. “The courts are in the process of rescheduling those, they’ve been working overtime since the shutdown ended to get that done,” McHenry said.Congressman Jose Serrano, who chaired the hearing, called the delay “deeply problematic,” in an email to CBS News. The nation’s immigration courts reopened on January 28 after being closed for over a month during the partial government shutdown.
“It is ironic that this Administration’s obsession with building a wall only increased the number of immigrants in limbo, aggravating an already serious crisis,” said Serrano, who represents New York’s 15th district. “There needs to be a serious effort to reschedule these hearings quickly”
Although McHenry estimated that 50,000 immigration cases were cancelled during the shutdown, others say the number could be nearly double that. According to Syracuse University’s TRAC, 80,051 hearings during the shutdown were either outright cancelled or had their status left unchanged — the hearing date simply came and went without acknowledgement, leaving affected migrants to wonder what comes next.
TRAC said the number of cancelled cases rises to more than 94,000 when it includes other factors, like “Docket Management” or “Immigration Judge Leave.”
Many hearings scheduled for the week after the government reopened were also postponed as court clerks waded through over a month’s worth of filings that hadn’t been touched during the shutdown. Rather than processing those documents, court administrators in Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, threw them into brown cardboard boxes for clerks to deal with once the court opened, said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration attorney who serves clients in North Carolina and South Carolina.
The immigration court system, which is overseen by the Department of Justice, handles a range of cases involving non-citizens, including issuing green cards and ruling on asylum claims. The courts also serve as a necessary step toward temporary Social Security cards — needed for work permits and driver’s licenses — making hearings intensely important for immigrants.
The Executive Office of Immigration Review declined to comment on the status of the courts after the shutdown.
CBS News spoke with six immigration attorneys, all of which have at least one client whose cancelled case hasn’t yet been rescheduled. Many of the hearings that were have yet to be rescheduled are for migrants seeking asylum, a legal form of immigration for people fleeing persecution and threats in their home country. One immigrant was waiting on a final hearing on their asylum case, a decision that would determine whether she gets to stay in the United States or be deported.
“The impact on the client is just not knowing,” said McKinney.
The cancellations have also added to the system’s record-high case backlog, which McHenry estimated to be 850,000 during Thursday’s hearing. Once the courts have fully realized the impact from the shutdown, immigration advocates predict it will get even bigger.
For the immigrants with cancelled hearings, getting back in front of a judge could take years. At the Newark, New Jersey immigration court, some cancelled hearings have been penciled in as far back as August 2021, said Alan Pollack, an immigration attorney in New Jersey, in an interview with CBS News. In Houston, the immigration court begun issuing dates in 2022, said Ruby Powers, an immigration attorney.
“We’re getting a bit used to things taking a while and a dose of chaos,” Powers said.
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Here’s Subcommittee Chairman Jose Serrano’s (D-NY) “spot on” statement about the DOJ’s “dissing” of Due Process at EOIR.
Chairman Serrano Statement at Hearing on Executive Office for Immigration Review
March 7, 2019Press Release
Congressman José E. Serrano (D-NY), Chair of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related AgenciesAppropriations Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee’s hearing on the Executive Office for Immigration Review:
The subcommittee will come to order.
For our second hearing of the year, today we welcome James McHenry, the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR. EOIR primarily functions as our nation’s immigration court system, where it administers and adjudicates our nation’s immigration laws. Thank you for being with us, Director McHenry.
I wanted to hold this hearing because I have deep concerns about how our nation’s immigration courts are operating. Some of those concerns are longstanding, while others have been exacerbated by the decisions of the Trump Administration.
Our nation’s immigration courts handle a wide variety of immigration-related claims, from removal proceedings to asylum claims. These are complex, nuanced proceedings that require time, understanding, and care. In many cases, the consequence—removal from this country—is so severe that we must have significant due process to ensure that no one’s rights are violated in an immigration court proceeding.
Unfortunately, these concerns are increasingly being shoved aside. This, in part, is due to the enormous, and growing, backlog of pending cases before the courts, which is now more than 1 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That growth is largely due to the significant increase in immigration enforcement efforts over the past 15 years, which has not been followed by a similar growth in the immigration court system. Although this subcommittee has included significant increases in immigration judge teams for the past two fiscal years, the backlog has actually increased under the Trump Administration. This situation was worsened by the recent government shutdown.
The reasons for that are sadly clear. The leadership at the Justice Department has attempted to turn our immigration courts into a sort of deportation DMV– where immigrants get minimal due process on their way out the door. This Administration has chosen to: impose quotas on immigration judges to limit case consideration regardless of complexity; limit the ways in which immigrants can make valid claims for asylum; increase the use of videoconferencing to reduce in-person appearances; and undermine the discretion of immigration judges to administratively close cases, among many other things. Ironically, these choices, supposedly aimed at efficiency, have actually increased the backlog.
I believe our immigration courts should strive to be a model of due process. A couple of bright spots in that effort are the Legal Orientation Program and the Immigration Court Help Desk, both of which help to better inform immigrants about their court proceedings. We should seek to expand such programs.
Despite these efforts, in our current system, an estimated 63 percent of immigrants do not have legal counsel. We’ve all read stories about children, some as young as 3 years old, being made to represent themselves. That is appalling. Our immigration laws are complicated enough for native English speakers, let alone those who come here speaking other languages or who are not adults. We can, and should, do better than this.
Today’s hearing will explore the choices we are making in our immigration court system, to better understand how the money we appropriate is being used, and whether it is being used in line with our expectations and values. Thank you, again, Director McHenry, for being here.
Now let me turn to my friend, Mr. Aderholt, for any comments he may have.
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It’s painfully obvious that Director McHenry doesn’t have the faintest idea how many cases are actually “off docket” because of the Trump Administration’s malicious incompetence, a/k/a ”Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”
As Chairman Serrano observed, the vision of the Immigration Courts once was “through teamwork and innovation be the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” That noble vision has been replaced by a “partnership” with DHS Enforcement to misconstrue the law, deny rights, punish those we should be protecting, and reduce “Immigration Judges” to menial “rubber stamps” on cruel, illegal, and unduly harsh enforcement actions in the hopes that the Article III Courts will “take a dive” and “defer” rather than intervening to put an end to this travesty.
Chairman Serrano and others have identified the problem. But they haven’t solved it!
That will require the removal of the Immigration Courts from the DOJ and establishing an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court where Due Process can flourish, fundamental fairness will be the watchword, “best practices” (not merely expediency) will be institutionalized, and all parties will be treated equally and respectfully, thus putting an end to years of preferential treatment of DHS.
PWS
03-12-19
“CBS HOUR” IS A BIG HIT AT FBA/NY LAW SCHOOL ASYLUM CONFERENCE — Chase, Bookey, Schmidt Entertain, Educate Sell-Out Crowd!
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Blaine Bookey, Co-Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law
Me
“Eric the Cameraman”
NEW YORK, NY, Friday, March 8, 2019. The “CBS Team,”* Jeffrey S. Chase, Blaine Bookey, and Paul Wickham Schmidt wowed the sellout crowd at the FBA Asylum Conference at NY Law School Friday. Speaking in the coveted “final slot” of the afternoon, the “CBS Gang” gave an enthusiastic audience lots of reasons and ways to go out and oppose former Attorney General Sessions’s perversion of American asylum law in Matter of A-B-.
In that case, Sessions reversed nearly two decades of progress and consensus in asylum law to “stick it” to Ms. A-B-, a survivor of extreme domestic violence persecution in El Salvador who fled to the U.S., escaping torture and death threats.
Schmidt, a former Immigration Judge in Arlington, Virginia and past Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals, led off with a rousing speech blasting Sessions for bias, intellectual dishonesty, and bad lawyering. He agreed with U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the recent case Grace v. Whitaker that much of what Sessions said was non-binding dicta.
Schmidt also formulated seven ways for advocates to challenge the decision. He brought the crowd to its feet with his closing exhortation to what he called the New Due Process Army: “Due Process forever, xenophobia never!”
Bookey, Co-Director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings Law and a long time refugee advocate, appeared “larger than life” from California through the “miracle of televideo.” She showed a moving video of Ms. A-B- relating the horrible rape, beatings, death threats and abandonment by her government that forced her to leave El Salvador and her fear that she would be killed upon return.
Bookey also pointed out that this isn’t a mere “difference of opinion” among lawyers. Rather, Matter of A-B- is a concerted and evil attempt to undo an existing national and international legal consensus that women facing domestic violence can and must be protected under refugee law. The reversion sought by Sessions and his restrictionist supporters would basically return women to the “dark ages” and result in torture, death, maiming and rape of countless females by persecutors throughout the world. Bookey also offered the Center for Refugee and Gender Studies at Hastings as a “clearinghouse” for litigation and litigation strategies attacking A-B-.
Batting “clean up,” retired Immigration Judge and noted asylum historian Chase led the audience in a tribute for Bookey’s “in the trenches” heroism in staunchly defending the rights of refugee women throughout our nation and the world. He then proceeded to eviscerate Sessions’s decision by going through Ms. A-B-‘s actual evidence in detail.
He pointed out how Sessions ignored facts of record supporting a grant of asylum to Ms. A-B- on the merits regardless of the favorable BIA precedent that Sessions went to great lengths to overrule. He also mentioned the ongoing efforts of “Our Gang” of retired U.S. Immigration Judges, assisted pro bono by some of America’s best lawyers, to educate the Article III Courts as to the realities of asylum adjudication and the systemic destruction wrought by Sessions’s unprovoked attack on women’s asylum rights.
The Conference concluded with a request by FBA immigration Section Chair Elizabeth “Betty” Stevens for everyone to contract their Senators and Representatives about the need for an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court as proposed by the FBA, ABA, National Association of Immigration Judges, AILA, and others.
Netflix filmed the proceedings for a future documentary about American immigration. Additionally, star immigration reporter Nicole Neara of Law 360 was in the audience. Immediately following the closing, Conference organizer and NY Law School Professor Claire “Human Dynamo” Thomas left for the Southern Border with a group of students committed to putting into effect what they had learned about strategies for ensuring due process and re-establishing justice in the U.S. asylum system.
*The “CBS Hour,” “CBS Team,” and “CBS Gang” have no relationship to the CBS Network, CBS Broadcasting, CBS Sports, CBS News, or any other legitimate organization.
Here’s the video featuring Ms. A-B-:
And, here’s the text of my speech:
FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION ASYLUM CONFERENCE
NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL
March 8, 2019
Good afternoon, and thanks so much for inviting me. In the “old days,” I would have started with my comprehensive disclaimer. But, now that I’m retired, I’m just going to hold the FBA, New York Law School, my fellow panelists, and anyone else of any importance whatsoever “harmless” for my remarks today. They are solely my views, for which I take full responsibility. No sugar-coating, no bureaucratic doublespeak, no “party line,” no BS – just the unvarnished truth, as I see it!
“We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence; therefore they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.”
“Good lawyers, using all of their talents and skill, work every day—like water seeping through an earthen dam—to get around the plain words of the INA to advance their clients’ interests. Theirs is not the duty to uphold the integrity of the act. That is our most serious duty.”
“When we depart from the law and create nebulous legal standards out of a sense of sympathy for the personal circumstances of a respondent in our immigration courts, we do violence to the rule of law and constitutional fabric that bind this great nation. Your job is to apply the law — even in tough cases,”
Those, my friends, are obviously not my words. Whose words are they? They are the words of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions who ran the U.S. Immigration Courts for nearly two years.
Incredibly, this totally biased, xenophobic, misinformed, and glaringly unqualified individual, who had actually been rejected for a Federal Judgeship by his own party because of alleged racial bias, was in charge of our U.S. Immigration Court system. That helps explains why it is such a total disgraceful mess today from both a Due Process and administrative standpoint.
The Immigration Courts have a “known backlog” of over 1.1 million cases, with tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of additional cases likely squirreled away and still unaccounted for following the unnecessary “shutdown,” no signs of abating, and absolutely no, I repeat no, credible planfor reducing or controlling the backlog consistent with Due Process and our asylum laws. The DOJ’s process for increasing the backlog, known as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” – and their outrageous attempts to “shift the blame” to respondents and their attorneys – are, as my esteemed former colleague retired Judge M. Christopher Grant used to say, “on steroids.” And, as my friend and fellow panelist, Judge Jeffrey Chase pointed out this week to BuzzFeed News, the current “strategy shift” to slowing down judicial and court staff hiring and abandoning once again the “e-filing program” that EOIR has failed to roll out after two decades of failed efforts is a guarantee that: “More people will wait longer!”
Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s questionable certification of two important cases during his brief tenure promises a continuation of political interference with the Immigration Courts in derogation of Due Process.
Don’t expect any improvement under current Attorney General Bill Barr. He’s known as an “enforcement solves all problems” immigration hard liner who co-authored an article praising Sessions for his attacks on Civil Rights, immigrants, and other vulnerable communities.
One of Sessions’s most cowardly and reprehensible actions was his atrocious distortion of asylum law, the reality of life in the Northern Triangle, and Due Process for migrants in Matter of A-B-. There, he overruled the BIA’s important precedent in Matter of A-R-C-G-, a decision actually endorsed by the DHSat the time, and which gave much need protection to women fleeing persecution in the form of domestic violence.
Take it from me, Matter of A-R-C-G-was one of the few parts of our dysfunctional Immigration Court system that actually workedand provided a way of moving cases efficiently through the court system in accordance with Due Process while consistently granting much needed protection to some of the most vulnerable and most deserving refugees in the world!
Sessions is gone. But, his ugly legacy of bias and unfairness remains. Fortunately, because he was a lousy lawyer on top of everything else, he failed to actually accomplish what he thought he was doing: wiping out protection for refugee women, largely from Central America. That’s why it’s critically important for you, as members of the “New Due Process Army” to fight every inch of the way, for as long as it takes, to restore justice and to force our U.S Immigration Courts to live up to their unfulfilled, and now mocked, promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all!”
The only real,Article IIIFederal Judge who has ruled on Matter of A-B-to date largely supports my criticisms of Sessions’s effort to distort asylum law against refugee women. It’s a decision written by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C. called Grace v. Whitaker. You will want to read that decision. There is also an outstanding analysis by my fellow panelist Judge Jeffrey S. Chase on his blog.
Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, EOIR has purported to limit Grace’s rejection of Matter of A-B-to so called “Credible Fear Reviews.” In other words, they have improperly, and perhaps unethically, instructed Immigration Judges and the BIA not to apply Gracein individual asylum hearings.
But, that shouldn’t stop you from shoving Grace back down their throats! There is an outstandingonline practice advisory on how to argue Gracein Immigration Court by my fellow panelist Blaine’s amazing colleague, my good friend Professor Karen Musalo. I also reposted it in my blog, immigratoncourtside.com.
I’m going to give you sevenvery basic tips for overcoming Matter of A-B-. I’m sure that Blaine and her colleagues, who are much more involved in the day to day litigation going on in the courts than I am, can give you lots of additional information about addressing specific issues.
First, recognize that Matter of A-B- really doesn’t change the fundamental meaning of asylum.It just rejected the way in which the BIA reached its precedent in A-R-C-G-— by stipulation without specific fact-findings based on the administrative record. Most of it is mere dicta.
On a case by case basis, domestic violence can still be a proper basis for granting asylum in many cases. Indeed, such cases still are being granted by those Immigration Judges committed to following the rule of law and upholding their oaths of office, rather than accepting Sessions’s invitation to “take a dive.”
Just make sure you properly and succinctly state your basis, establish nexus, and paper the record with the overwhelming amount of reliable country condition information and expert opinion that directly contradicts the bogus picture painted by Sessions.
Second, resist with all your might those lawless judges in some Immigration Courts who are using, or threatening to use, Sessions’s dictum in Matter of A-B- to deny fair hearings or truncate the hearing process for those claiming asylum through domestic violence.If anything, following the overruling of A-R-C-G-,leaving no definitive precedent on the subject, full, fair case-by-case hearings are more important than ever. Under Due Process, asylum applicants are entitled to a full and fair opportunity to present their claims in Immigration Court. Don’t let wayward, biased, or misinformed Immigration Judges deny your clients’ constitutional and statutory rights.
Third, keep it simple. Even before A-B-, I always said that any proposed “particular social group” (“PSG”) longer than 25 words or containing “circular” elements is D.O.A. I think that it’s time to get down to the basics; the real PSG here is gender! “Women in X country” is clearly a cognizable PSG. It’s undoubtedly immutable or fundamental to identity; particularized, and socially distinct. So, it meets the BIA’s three-part test.
And, “gender” clearly is one of the biggest drivers of persecution in the world. There is no doubt that it is “at least one central reason” for the persecution of women and LGBT individuals throughout the world.
As Judge Chase and I recently reported on our respective blogs, a number of these “women as a PSG” cases have succeeded in the “Post-A-B-Era.” The detailed unpublished analyses by Immigration Judges are available online and, although of course not precedents, should give you helpful ideas on how to construct arguments and rebut ICE attempts to invoke A-B- to bar meritorious asylum claims by abused women.
Fourth, think political. There is plenty of recent information available on the internet showing the close relationship between gangs and the governments of the Northern Triangle. In some cases, gangs are the “de facto government” in significant areas of the country. In others, gangs and local authorities cooperate in extorting money and inflicting torture and other serious harm on honest individuals who resist them and threaten to expose their activities. Indeed, a very recent front-page article in the Washington Postpointed out that gangs are so completely in charge in El Salvador that U.S-trained policemen are forced to flee and seek asylum in the United States. Additionally, gangs are the largest employer in El Salvador.
In many cases, claiming political or religious persecution should be a stronger alternative ground than PSG. As one of my friends recently pointed out, because of the incorrect precedents by the BIA, Immigration Judges almost always reject gang cases as actual or imputed political opinion. That’s plain wrong.
We need to start making the record and fighting back, using the large amount of available evidence and expert testimony on how gangs have infiltrated and influence every aspect of life in the Northern Triangle including, of course, politics and government. It’s time for the “EOIR charade” of “let’s not grant gang-based asylum cases” to end, once and for all.
Fifth, develop your record. The idea that domestic violence and gang-based violence is just “common crime” advanced by Sessions in A-B-is simply preposterous with regard to the Northern Triangle. Establish records that no reasonable factfinder can refute or overlook! Use expert testimony or expert affidavits to show the real country conditions and to discredit the watered down and sometimes downright false scenarios set forth in Department of State Country Reports, particularly under this Administration where integrity, expertise, and independence have been thrown out the window.
Sixth, raise the bias issue. As set forth in a number of the Amicus Briefs filed in Matter of A-B-, Sessions clearly was a biased decision maker. Not only had he publicly dismissed the claims of female refugees suffering from domestic violence, but his outlandish comments spreading false narratives about immigrants, dissing asylum seekers and their “dirty lawyers,” and supporting DHS enforcement clearly aligned with him with one party to litigation before the Immigration Courts. By the rules governing judicial conduct there was more than an “appearance of bias” here – there was actual bias. We should keep making the record on the gross violation of Due Process caused by giving a biased enforcement official like Sessions a quasi-judicial role.
Seventh, and finally, appeal to the “real” Article III Courts.I can’t over-emphasize this point. What’s happening in Immigration Court today is a parody of justice and a mockery of legitimate court proceedings. It’s important to “open the eyes” of the Article III Judges to this travesty which is threatening the lives of legitimate refugees and other migrants.
Either the Article III’s do their jobs, step in, and put an end to this “theater of the absurd,” or they become complicitin it. There’s only one “right side of the law and history” in this fight. Those who are complicit must know that their actions are being placed in the historical record – for all time and for their descendants to know – just like the historical reckoning that finally is happening for so- called “Confederate Heroes” and those public officials who supported racism and “Jim Crow.”
Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness, the true rule of law, and simple human decency! Join the New Due Process Army and fight to vindicate the rights of asylum seekers under our laws against the forces of darkness and xenophobic bias! Due process forever! Xenophobia never!
(03-11-19)
PWS
03-12-19
“DUE PROCESS FOREVER, XENOPHOBIA NEVER!” — Here’s An Inspirational Creation By The Courageous Students Of Professor Claire Thomas Of NY Law School, Stalwart Members Of The New Due Process Army!
This is derived from the closing lines of my speech to the 2019 FBA New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School last Friday, March 8!
“Practicing what they preach,” Professor Claire Thomas of NY Law School and her courageous, smart, and dedicated students are now at the Southern Border saving lives and making a historical record of the cruel, ineffective, illegal, and bias-driven policies of the Trump Administration.
Thanks again to Professor Thomas, who was also one of the primary organizers of the “sold-out” Conference, and her inspiring students for all they are doing to preserve America and our system of justice against the attacks on the rule of law, our Constitution, and simple human decency by the scofflaw and incompetent Trump Administration.
Here’s the amazing Professor Thomas:
Due Process Forever, Xenophobia Never!
PWS
03-11-19
THE ART OF SOCIAL JUSTICE — HON. POLLY WEBBER’S TRIPTYCH “REFUGEE DILEMMA” HITS THE ROAD!
- a) “Fleeing From Persecution;” b) “Caught in the Covfefe;” c) “Safe Haven;”
- The stories behold each rug by the artist, Hon. Polly Webber;
- Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase & Hon. Polly Webber admiring “Caught in the Covfefe” during a break at the 2019 FBA New York Asylum & Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School on March 8, 2019;
- Closeup of “Caught in the Covfefe.”
Art powerfully expresses the overwhelming need to fight for social justice and human dignity in the age of Trump’s unabashed cruelty, racism, and White Nationalism.
It’s even more powerful when the artist is Retired U.S. Immigration Judge Polly Webber (a proud member of “Our Gang” of retired judges) who has spent her life promoting Due Process, fundamental fairness, justice, and the rule of law in American immigration. She has served as an immigration attorney, former President of AILA, U.S. Immigration Judge, and now amazing textile artist bringing her full and rich life and deeply held humane values to the forefront of her art.
Thanks, Polly, for using your many talents to inspire a new generation of the “New Due Process Army!”
I’m only sorry that my photos don’t do justice to Polly’s art. Hopefully, the “real deal” will come to a venue near you in the future!
PWS
03-10-19
TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=d85e48a2-1a59-4182-854b-dfd9a146177c
TThe numbers are sobering. The federal government reported Tuesday that immigration agents apprehended 76,000 people — most of them families or unaccompanied minors — at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, twice the level of the previous year and the highest for February in 11 years. The increase continues a trend that began in the fall, and offers direct evidence that President Trump’s strategy of maximal enforcement at the border is not reducing the flow of migrants.
And no, the answer is not “a big, beautiful wall.” Most of those apprehended weren’t trying to sneak past border agents; instead, they sought out agents once they reached the border and turned themselves in, hoping to receive permission to stay.
Furthermore, the situation isn’t a national security emergency, as he has declared in an effort to spend more on his border wall than Congress provided. It’s a complex humanitarian crisis that appears to be worsening, and it’s going to take creative analytical minds to address.
For instance, the vast majority of the families flowing north in recent months come from poor regions of Guatemala, where food insecurity and local conflicts over land rights and environmental protections are pushing more people off their farms and into even deeper poverty, according to human rights observers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Just months earlier, gang violence in urbanized areas were pushing people north to the United States; increasingly now, it’s economics.
But Trump’s rhetoric may be playing a role too. The more he threatens draconian enforcement and cutbacks in legal immigration, the more people contemplating moving north are pushed to go sooner, before it gets even harder to reach the U.S. Similarly, more migrants are arriving at more treacherous and remote stretches of the border to avoid getting stuck in Tijuana or other border cities where the U.S. government has reduced the number of asylum seekers it will allow in, claiming an inability to process the requests.
The system is overwhelmed. But the solution isn’t to build a wall, incarcerate more people, separate children from their parents or deny people their legal right to seek asylum. The solution is to improve the efficiency and capacity of the system to deal with the changed migrant demographics. A decade ago, about 1 in 100 border crossers was an unaccompanied minor or asylum seeker; now about a third are.
More judges and support staffs are necessary for the immigration court system, as the Trump administration has sought from Congress. Yet the case backlog there has continued to grow — in part because the increase in enforcement actions, in part because the Justice Department ordered the courts to reopen cases that had been closed administratively without deportations, often because the migrant was in the process of obtaining a visa. A faster and fair process would give those deserving asylum the answer they need sooner, cutting back on the years they spend in limbo, while no longer incentivizing those unqualified for asylum to try anyway.
The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, has suggested one partial fix. Currently, migrants claiming asylum have a near-immediate initial “credible fear” hearing with an asylum officer from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who determines whether the migrant has a significant potential to make a successful asylum claim. Most migrants pass that low threshold and are then directed to the immigration courts to make the formal case, a more involved process that can take years. Keeping those cases within the citizenship and immigration branch for an administrative hearing instead of sending them to immigration court could lead to faster decisions for the deserving at a lower cost — a single asylum agent is cheaper than a court staff — while preserving legal rights by giving those denied asylum a chance to appeal to the immigration courts. That’s a process worth contemplating.
More fundamentally, the current system hasn’t worked for years, and under Trump’s enforcement strategy it has gotten worse. It’s a big ask, but Congress and the president need to work together to develop a more capable system that manages the many different aspects of immigration in the best interests of the nation while accommodating the rights of the persecuted to seek asylum.
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=1cbd9b3d-f2d0-4249-b602-37223ff3f407
The U.S. government is reportedly compiling dossiers on journalists, lawyers and activists at the border.
ASan Diego television station recently obtained some troubling documents that seem to show that the U.S. government, working with Mexican officials under a program called Operation Secure Line, has created and shared dossiers on journalists, immigrant rights lawyers and activists covering or involved with the so-called caravans of migrants moving from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Worse yet, the government then detained some of these people for questioning (one photojournalist was held for 13 hours), barred some of them from crossing the border and interfered with their legitimate efforts to do their jobs. NBC 7 also received a copy of a purported government dossier on lawyer Nicole Ramos, refugee program director for a migrant rights group, that included a description of her car, her mother’s name, and details on her work and travel history. That’s not border security, that’s an intelligence operation and, as the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, “an outrageous violation of the First Amendment.”
The ACLU noted correctly that it is impermissible for the government to use “the pretext of the border to target activists critical of its policies, lawyers providing legal representation, or journalists simply doing their jobs.”
It’s unclear when the intelligence gathering began, or how widespread it is, but the Committee to Protect Journalists reported in October that U.S. border agents, using the broad power the law gives them to question people entering the country, seemingly singled out journalists for in-depth examinations, including searching their phones, laptops and cameras — all without warrants, because they’re generally not required at the border. These are troubling developments deserving of close scrutiny by Congress and, if warranted, the courts.
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for controlling the flow of people across U.S. borders and has broad and court-recognized authority to search for contraband. But the government should not use that authority as a pretext to try to gain information to which it would not otherwise be entitled. And it certainly doesn’t give it a framework for harassing or maintaining secret files on journalists, lawyers and activists who are covering, representing or working with activists.
Homeland Security defended the targeting by linking the intelligence operation to the agency’s investigation of efforts this winter by some Central American migrants to cross the wall near San Ysidro, Calif. It said also that all the people entered into the database had witnessed border violence. That sounds an awful lot like a criminal investigation, not a border security operation.
The name of the report leaked to NBC 7 was “Migrant Caravan FY-2019: Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media.” The only thing suspect here is the government’s actions.
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Unfortunately, the second editorial on the “enemies list” shows why the first one on solving the Central American forced migration issue in a sensible, legal, and humanitarian manner simply isn’t in the cards without “regime change.”
First, the Trump Administration simply lacks the competence, professionalism, and expertise to solve real problems. The absolutely stunning incompetence of Nielsen and the rest of the politicos who supposedly run immigration and national security policy these days was on full display this week. America’s “real” enemies must have been watching with glee at this public demonstration of lack of competence and concern for any of the actual national security issues facing our nation.
Career civil servants who have the knowledge, expertise, motivation, and ability to solve migration problems have been forced out, buried in make-work “hallwalker jobs” deep in the bowls of the bureaucracy, or simply silenced and ignored. The Administration has also declared war on facts, knowledge, human decency and scorns the humanitarian expertise available in the private and NGO sectors.
Second, there is zip motivation within the Trump Kakistocracy to solve to the problem. As long as neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is in charge of immigration policy, we’ll get nothing but White Nationalist, racist nonsense. Miller and the White Nationalist restrictionists (like Trump & Sessions) have no motivation to solve immigration problems in a practical, humane, legal manner.
No, the White Nationalist agenda is to use lies, intentionally false narratives, racial and ethnic stereotypes, bogus statistics, and outright attacks on our legal system to further an agenda of hate, intolerance, and division in America intended to enfranchise a largely White GOP kakistocracy while disenfranchising everyone else. It plays to a certain unhappy and ill-informed political “base” that has enabled a minority who cares not a whit about the common good to seize control of our country.
While the forces of evil, division, and Constitutional nihilism can be resisted in the courts, the press, and now the House of Representatives, the reign of “malicious incompetence” can only be ended at the ballot box. If it doesn’t happen in 2020, and there is certainly no guarantee that it will, it might well be too late for the future of our republic.
PWS
03-07-19
HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: ADMINISTRATION’S LATEST IMMORAL GIMMICK — A “REGIONAL REPRESSION COMPACT” — FURTHERS PERSECUTION WITHOUT ADDRESSING ROOT CAUSES OF REFUGEE FLOW FROM NORTHERN TRIANGLE!
February 21, 2019
Homeland Security Regional Compact Plan Won’t Address Root Causes of Refugee Crisis
New York City—In response to today’s announcement that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is discussing the development of a regional compact plan with Central American countries in the northern triangle, Human Rights First’s Eleanor Acer issued the following statement:
The so-called compact announced today sounds like a short-sighted and heavy-handed attempt to stop people in desperate need of safety from finding it in the United States, rather than an actual commitment to address underlying human rights violations in the region. It is yet another move from an administration that has spent the past two years dismantling the systems put in place to protect the world’s most vulnerable people.
This announcement does not reflect any commitment to address the actual root causes pushing people to seek protection—political repression, gender-based persecution, brutal murders, and other human rights violations.
The Trump Administration is enlisting the very countries that people are fleeing to prevent the escape of individuals plagued by this persecution and violence. The United States should certainly work with countries in the region to counter and prosecute smugglers and traffickers who prey on migrants and asylum seekers. This plan, however, aims to stop asylum seekers who do not employ smugglers but travel with other people for safety through dangerous territories.
Human Rights First urges the Trump Administration to implement regional strategies that strengthen the rule of law and human rights conditions in Central America, strengthen refugee protection in Mexico and other countries, and stop its efforts to block refugees from asylum in the United States.
For more information or to speak with Acer contact Corinne Duffy at DuffyC@humanrightsfirst.org or 202-370-3319
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It’s “Kakistocracy in Action” — malicious incompetence institutionalized. Certainly, Nielsen has to be the worst excuse ever for a DHS Secretary. Indeed, those who actually might threaten our security must be “licking their chops” at her continuous display of idiotic Trump sycophancy and White Nationalist lies and obsessions with bedraggled families seeking refuge while smugglers, drug traffickers, cartels, and gangs reap profits from her failed policies and take delight in her inability and unwillingness to address the real security problems.
While real human rights crises are unfolding, and real human lives are in danger, the Trump Administration dawdles away time and resources on endless “designed to fail” White Nationalist gimmicks that appear intended to enable and encourage persecution rather than addressing the problems that cause forced migration.
The Obama Administration did a genuinely lousy job of addressing the refugee and human rights issues in the Northern Triangle. But, Trump, Nielsen, and McAleenan are making to Obama group look like humanitarian geniuses by comparison.
As the great Casey Stengel once said while attempting to manage the 1962 NY Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Sadly, in the case of the Trump Administration, the answer is a resounding “No.”
Bad things happen to countries that allow themselves to be run by malicious incompetents (that is, a Kakistocracy).
As I have said before, “We Are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.”
Join the New Due Process Army and help restore humanity, Due Process, competence, and good government to America before it’s too late!
PWS
03-07-19
GW CLINIC REPORT: Justice Finally Triumphs — 7-Year Battle On Behalf Of Abused Refugee Woman Succeeds!
Paulina Vera, Esq.; Professor Alberto Benitez; Rachel Petterson
Friends,Please join me in congratulating S-P-G-G, from El Salvador, whose asylum application was granted by IJ David Crosland on February 26. We received the decision today. When told of the grant, S-P-G-G screamed. She can start the process of bringing her minor son to the USA. Please also join me in congratulating Rachael Petterson, Julia Navarro, Solangel González, Chen Liang, Xinyuan Li, Abril Costanza Lara, Allison Mateo, and Paulina Vera, who worked on this case.The IJ found that S-P-G-G warranted humanitarian asylum because she established compelling reasons arising from the severity of her persecution. Among other things, she had been raped by her sister’s ex-boyfriend, which resulted in her becoming pregnant, and giving the child up for adoption. S-P-G-G testified that she experiences recurring nightmares, suicidal feelings, a sense of hopelessness, and fear as a result of her persecution.FYI. The client’s initial hearing was on December 18, 2012, IJ Crosland denied asylum, she appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which remanded to the IJ, he denied asylum again, she appealed to the BIA, which denied asylum, she appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded to the IJ, and he finally granted asylum on February 26.
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Alberto Manuel Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law
Director, Immigration Clinic
The George Washington University Law School
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Congrats to SPGG and her wonderful team at the GW Immigration Clinic! More than six years of litigation, two wrongful denials, two appeals to the BIA, one incorrect BIA decision, and a remand from the Fourth Circuit before justice was finally done.
Illustrates four things:
- The absolute BS of those like Sessions and other restrictionists who say asylum cases can be raced through the system on an assembly line;
- The further BS of claiming that asylum applicants and their lawyers are “gaming” the system when many delays, like this, are caused by poor anti-asylum decision-making within EOIR combined with the DOJ’s incompetent administration of the Immigration Courts;
- The importance of full appellate rights, including review by a U.S. Court of Appeals that is actually an independent, fair, and impartial court, not a Government agency masquering as a court;
- The absurdity of claiming that unrepresented asylum seekers can receive anything approaching Due Process in the EOIR system, particularly when they are held in inherently coercive “civil immigration detention.”
What if we had a fair, expert Immigration Court system that made every effort to do right by asylum seekers in the first instance by interpreting and applying the law in the generous and humanitarian manner to protect those in need as originally intended in the Refugee Act of 1980 and described by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca?
What if we had a Government that cared about Due Process and worked to promote it rather than attempting to whack it out of shape to screw the most vulnerable among us at every opportunity?
What if the emphasis in the Immigration Courts was on fairness, scholarship, respect, and teamwork with all concerned (not just “partnership” with the prosecutor and politicized Administration goals) rather than on “haste makes waste” methods and gimmicks.
Hey, we could have a working court system where justice was served and more things got done right in the first place, instead of the disgraceful mess that EOIR has become under DOJ’s highly politicized mismanagement!
PWS
03-07-19
IN MATTER OF A-B-, SESSIONS DISINGENUOUSLY SUGGESTED SALVADORAN POLICE COULD PROTECT ABUSED WOMEN – THE TRUTH IS STARKLY DIFFERENT: American-Trained Cops Flee El Salvador Because Gangs Are In Control – Ex-Cops Granted Asylum While Helpless DV Victims Sent Back To Face Deadly Abuse – Trump Administration Continues To Pervert Asylum Law!
Kevin Sief reports in WashPost:
SAN SALVADOR — They were given one of the most dangerous tasks in policing: Take down MS-13.
They were bankrolled by the United States and trained by FBI agents. But members of the Salvadoran police have been killed by the dozens in each of the past three years, most in attacks that investigators and experts blame on MS-13, an international street gang. At least nine officers were killed in the first month of this year.
Now, a number of El Salvador’s police officers are fleeing the gang they were tasked with eliminating.
There is no list in either El Salvador or the United States of Salvadoran police officers who have fled the country. But The Washington Post has identified 15 officers in the process of being resettled as refugees by the United Nations and six officers who have either recently received asylum or have scheduled asylum hearings in U.S. immigration courts. In WhatsApp groups, police officers have begun discussing the possibility of a migrant caravan composed entirely of Salvadoran police — a caravana policial, the officers call it.
The exodus of Salvadoran police points to how the country’s security forces have failed to break the stranglehold of organized crime. It also shows that among those seeking refuge in the United States during the Trump administration are some of America’s closest security partners.
“These are among the most vulnerable people in El Salvador,” said Julio Buendía, the director of migration at Cáritas El Salvador, a nonprofit organization that works with the United States and United Nations on refugee resettlement.
The United States has been bolstering the Salvadoran police, part of a regional strategy intended to stabilize Central America’s most violent countries and reduce migration. The State Department spent at least $48 million to train police in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras from 2014 through 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The department opened a law enforcement training academy in San Salvador, where 855 Salvadoran officers were trained by the FBI and other American law enforcement agencies in those four years.
“The Salvadoran government, with U.S. government support, has made significant gains in the area of security, including reductions in homicides and every other category of violent crime measured,” the State Department said in a statement issued in response to an inquiry by The Post.
Citing “privacy reasons,” the department would not comment on whether it was receiving asylum or refugee applications from Salvadoran police officers.
By some measures, the U.S.-backed security efforts appeared to be showing results. In 2018, El Salvador’s murder rate was 50.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. That was still among the highest in the world, but it was down from 60.8 per 100,000 in 2017 and 81 per 100,000 in 2016.
MS-13 was born in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, expanding as more Salvadorans arrived in the United States after fleeing the country’s civil war. The group splintered, with Barrio 18 becoming a chief rival, and both groups grew in American prisons before reaching El Salvador through mass deportations. Between 2001 and 2010, the United States deported 40,429 ex-convicts to El Salvador, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
El Salvador’s government adopted an “iron fist” response to the gangs, including more police operations. When that approach failed, it tried to broach a truce with the gangs in 2014. The pact quickly disintegrated and was followed by another surge in violence. It was then that the gangs began to explicitly broadcast their threats against police officers.
“If you kill a ‘pig,’ or a police officer, you’re more respected in these gangs. That’s the policy — using death as exchange currency,” said Héctor Silva Ávalos, a journalist and researcher who has written a book on the Salvadoran police and has served as an expert witness at several asylum hearings for former police officers in the United States.
A man with an MS-13 tattoo is detained by Salvadoran security forces during an operation in San Salvador in January. (Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)With salaries of $300 to $400 per month, the low-level police officers who make up the majority of the force often have no choice but to live in neighborhoods vulnerable to gangs. And so, in the vast majority of the cases, police officers are killed when they are home from work or are on leave.
In August, Manuel de Jesús Mira Díaz was killed while buying construction materials. In July, Juan de Jesús Morales Alvarado was killed while walking with his 7-year-old son on the way to school. In November, Barrera Mayén was killed after taking leave to spend time at home with his family.
The police investigated a number of the killings since 2014 and found members of the major gangs responsible.
“They have more control than we do. When we go home, we’re in neighborhoods where there’s one police to 100 gang members. We’re easy victims,” said one officer in the country’s anti-gang unit, who, after being threatened by MS-13 in his home, is awaiting refugee status from the United Nations. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.
Police arrested a 26-year-old man, who they said is an MS-13 member, after he fatally shot an alleged rival gang member Feb. 3 in Queens.
Complicating their response to the threats, Salvadoran police are also not legally allowed to take their weapons home with them.
“I bring it home anyway. I sleep with it on my waist,” said a female officer, who is awaiting refugee status from the United Nations and spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety. “My husband and I take turns sleeping. We know they are going to come for us.”
Many units in the Salvadoran police are forbidden to wear balaclavas to conceal their identities. In anti-gang units, officers are allowed to wear such masks during operations, but they are frequently asked to testify in court, where they must show their faces and identify themselves by name while gang members look on.
In 2017, El Salvador’s attorney general, Douglas Meléndez, urged the government to do more to protect off-duty police, asking the parliament to pass a “protection law” for police and soldiers that would also provide funding to protect their families. The law was never passed.
Last month, security concerns played a central role in a presidential election won by San Salvador’s 37-year-old former mayor, Nayib Bukele. At least 285 people were killed in January, leading up to the vote, which many saw as the gangs’ attempt to leverage their influence amid the election campaign. In a security plan leaked to the Salvadoran news media, Bukele’s campaign wrote: “The expansion of these criminal groups is undeniable, as is the impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.”
In response to the targeting of police officers this year, El Salvador’s police chief introduced a policy: For their own protection, officers were not allowed to return to their homes. The police chief declined multiple interview requests.
Suspects are detained by police in a neighborhood in San Salvador dominated by MS-13. (Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)Many officers, feeling unprotected by their own force, have said their only option is to leave the country.
Organizations that work with the United Nations to resettle Salvadoran refugees in the United States say they have found more and more police officers arriving unannounced at their offices. In addition to the 21 asylum seekers and refugees identified by The Post, several others have recently arrived in Spain and Mexico, according to news reports, applying for humanitarian visas or other forms of protection. Lawyers for police officers and many officers themselves say that far more officers are preparing to flee.
One of the cases that Buendía, the migration director of Cáritas, referred to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is an officer who survived two attacks while off duty. First, he was shot eight times by suspected gang members; then, two years later, he was shot four times. The officer pleaded for protection from his commander.
Buendía included a letter from the commander in the officer’s refugee application. “There’s nothing we can do for you,” the commander wrote. “You need to protect yourself.”
A police spokesman declined to comment on the letter.
In one case, concerning a police officer now applying for asylum in U.S. immigration courts, gang members threatened to kidnap the officer’s child at an elementary school in rural El Salvador.
“That’s not what these guys signed up for. It’s one thing to be shot at on the job. It’s another for your family to be targeted while you’re off duty,” said Emily Smith, the attorney representing the officer.
Lawyers such as Smith who are representing the officers typically try to explain to immigration judges that as former police officers, their clients would be persecuted if they were forced to return to El Salvador. But the attorneys are also aware of how narrowly U.S. asylum law can be applied, and that the courts are unlikely to grant asylum to all former officers.
“What we chose to do is focus on the specific threats facing our client,” said Patrick Courtney, who last year represented a Salvadoran officer who had been physically assaulted in his home before fleeing. “We focused on his anti-gang views, on the fact that the threats were directed at him individually.”
Courtney’s client was granted asylum late last year. They discussed where he would live in the United States, and what he would do next. The former officer had only one goal: He wanted to join the United States military.
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Former policemen have been recognized by BIA precedent as a “particular social group” for asylum for many years. Matter of Fuentes, 19 I&N Dec. 658 (BIA 1988). However, in their rush to deny asylum to Central Americans, particularly under this xenophobic Administration, some U.S. immigration Judges and BIA panels simply choose to ignore precedent or to manufacture other reasons to deny asylum.
Granting asylum to endangered former police officers clearly is appropriate; but, granting it to the women targeted because of their gender whom those police cannot protect is equally required. Nevertheless, Sessions simply “streamrolled” the asylum law in Matter of A-B-.
While some U.S. Immigration Judges have recognized that even A-B-, properly read without regard to its pernicious dicta, leaves plenty of room for protecting refugee women who have suffered or fear domestic violence, others, and a number of BIA “panels” have jumped on the “Sessions deportation express.” I wouldn’t count on new AG Bill Barr to restore justice to this system, particularly since he has retained some of Sessions’s worst and most unqualified henchmen on his staff.
That’s why we need a legitimate, independent Immigration Court system not beholden to prejudiced “enforcement only” officials in the DOJ and the Executive Branch. It’s also time for a better and wiser Congress to specifically write gender into the asylum law to guard against this and future scofflaw Administrations who seek to inflict cruelty and injustice on some of the most vulnerable and deserving among us.
PWS
03-04-19
SYSTEMIC FAILURE: 9TH Circuit’s Most Recent Reversal Of BIA Demonstrates Disturbing Lack Of Basic Judicial Competence At All Levels Of EOIR – But, Even The 9th’s Rebuke Misses The Real Point – There Can Be No Due Process In Complex Cases Of This Type Without Legal Representation! – Arrey v. Barr
Arrey v Barr — 9th — Firm Resettlement
Arrey v. Barr, 9th Cir., 02-16-19, Published
SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:
The panel granted in part a petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision affirming an immigration judge’s denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture to a citizen of Cameroon, and remanded.
The panel rejected petitioner’s contention that she was deprived of her due process right to a full and fair hearing based on the denial of her right to retained counsel and an unbiased fact finder. The panel held that the IJ in this case provided petitioner reasonable time to locate an attorney, where the IJ provided several continuances so she could do so, warned her repeatedly that he would not grant further continuances, and attempted to call her attorney when he failed to appear on the day of her merits hearing. The panel also held that although the IJ was rude and harsh with petitioner, petitioner failed to establish that the IJ’s conduct prejudiced her, where the IJ held a complete hearing and made a thorough decision that fully examined the underlying factual matters, and any potential prejudice caused by the IJ’s questionable adverse credibility determination was cured by the Board’s subsequent decision assuming the credibility of petitioner’s testimony in full.
The panel held that the Board committed three legal errors in its application of the firm resettlement bar, which precludes asylum relief if an applicant was firmly resettled in another country prior to arriving in the United States. First, the panel held that the Board erred by failing to consider whether the conditions of petitioner’s offer of resettlement in South Africa were too restricted for her to be firmly resettled. Second, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement rule not as a mandatory bar to petitioner’s asylum claim, but instead as a limitation on the evidence the Board considered in support of her claim for relief from removal to Cameroon, thus causing the Board to improperly ignore evidence of the abuse petitioner suffered in Cameroon before fleeing to South Africa, as well as evidence of the nature of her relationship with her abuser. Third, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement bar to petitioner’s withholding of removal claim, which is not subject to the firm resettlement bar.
Turning to petitioner’s CAT claim, the panel held that substantial evidence did not support the Board’s determination that petitioner could avoid future harm through internal relocation in Cameroon.
The panel remanded petitioner’s asylum, withholding, and CAT claims for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.
** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
PANEL: Ronald M. Gould and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Frederic Block,* District Judge.
* The Honorable Frederic Block, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.
OPINION BY: Judge Gould
KEY QUOTE:
Petitioner Delphine Arrey petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA” or “Board”) decision dismissing her appeal of an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of her application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We conclude that the IJ did not deny Arrey her due process rights to counsel and an unbiased factfinder. As to Arrey’s asylum and withholding of removal claims, we conclude that the Board erred as a matter of law in its analysis and application of the “firm resettlement” rule. As to Arrey’s claim for relief under CAT, we conclude that substantial evidence does not support the Board’s determination that Arrey could safely relocate in another area of Cameroon. We grant the petition in part and remand for reconsideration of Arrey’s claims consistent with our opinion.
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Even the 9th Circuit “blew” the fundamental issue here: No matter how annoying the respondent’s conduct might have been, there was no way to conduct a fair hearing in a case of this complexity without counsel present.
From this recitation of facts, it’s pretty obvious that the respondent had no idea what “firm resettlement” was or how the process for proving or disproving it worked. Going ahead with the hearing created a miscarriage of justice that simply wasted time by going all the way the 9th Circuit and then being returned for competent judicial adjudication applying the correct standards. Haste makes waste.
And the overwhelming backlog that obviously was on the judge’s mind here was not created by this respondent and her attorney; no, it primarily results from “aimless docket reshuffling,” poor administration, Congressional neglect, and “designed to fail policies” by politicos in the DOJ (under the improper and unethical political influence of the DHS) which went into “overdrive” under Sessions.
Getting to the merits, beyond apparently correctly setting forth the respondent’s name and “A number,” the Immigration Judge and the BIA got largely everything else in this case wrong! The basic errors range from a “clearly erroneous” adverse credibility ruling, to a legally incorrect standard for “firm resettlement,” to an idiotically nonsensical ruling that “threats and one attempted assault of rape” did not “rise to the level of persecution” (cases involving these facts were routinely granted by the BIA during my tenure and, to my knowledge, were uniformly granted by IJs in Arlington; indeed, I can’t even imagine an ICE Assistant Chief Counsel during my tenure in Arlington arguing the contrary), to wrong evidentiary determinations, to another completely nonsensical finding on internal relocation.
In other words, this was a “rubber stamp” by BIA “judges” of a staff attorney’s writeup with canned “any reason to deny” language. It was not a fair and impartial adjudication by an “expert” group of appellate judges.
Far from it. If a student had turned this in as an exam answer to a hypothetical case on my Georgetown Law final exam, it would have received “zero credit.” So, how is it “OK” to have a system where individuals in what are supposed to be senior judicial positions, requiring great expertise in immigration, asylum, and human rights law, perform in a manner that would have been deemed unacceptable for L2s and L3s?
It isn’t; and it’s up to the Article III Courts and Congress to get some backbone and some integrity and put an end to this travesty. Yeah, this is “only one case.” But, it involves a human life. Cameroon is a horrible country; credible Cameroonian asylum cases were routinely granted in the Arlington Immigration Court, normally without appeal by ICE.
And for every case where a respondent is lucky enough to get a “Court of Appeals intervention,” dozens of individuals, many without lawyers or the faintest knowledge of what’s happening, are “railroaded” through this fundamentally unfair and constitutionally defective system. This, rather than the bogus wall, or an influx of desperate refugee families seeking asylum, is our true “national emergency” involving immigration: The disdain by our current Administration for the rule of law, human rights, judicial quality, simple human decency, and Due Process of Law under our Constitution!
Congrats to Attorney Ron Richey, an “Arlington Immigration Court regular,” who appeared before me many times, for fighting for due process and justice in another jurisdiction. You are an inspiration to all of us in the “New Due Process Army!”
PWS
03-01-19
COLBY KING @ WASHPOST: The “Original Dreamers” Were Disenfranchised African Americans! — “That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.“
Colby King writes in WashPost:
Today, a wall looms large in my thoughts. It isn’t the structure President Trump has in mind for our southern border. I’m thinking of the Wall of Honor at the African American Civil War Memorial, located at Vermont Avenue and U Street NW.
Listed on the wall are the names of 209,145 U.S. Colored Troops who fought during the Civil War. One of those names is that of Isaiah King, my great-grandfather.
I think of those courageous black men as America’s original “dreamers.”
Today’s dreamers are in their teens and 20s, having arrived in this country as children. King’s generation of dreamers were former slaves or descendants of slaves brought to these shores against their will.
However, the black men who fought in the Civil War had the same status as today’s dreamers: noncitizens without a discernable path to citizenship.
Like dreamers of today, those black soldiers and sailors also had families and attended churches; some were enrolled in schools. They could dream of a future, anchored in the rights and privileges that come with democracy. But they had no legal claim to an existence within America’s borders.My great-grandfather was born in the slave-holding city of Washington in 1848, but his mother was a freed woman. She moved the family to New Bedford, Mass., when he was 4. Around the time of his 17th birthday, Isaiah King enlistedin the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry (Colored), thinking, “I would have it easier riding than walking,” he told the New Bedford Evening Standard in an interview on the eve of Memorial Day services in 1932.
Black men such as my great-grandfather signed on to fight for a Union in which the right to citizenship was reserved for white people. The Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in 1857, that black people were not citizens of the United States. Putting it bluntly, the high court said black people were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
And even then, they started their service to the United States one step behind.In his book “The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry in the Civil War,” Steven M. LaBarre cited the first disparity: It was enshrined in the Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862, which authorized recruitment of black men into the Union army. The law stated that a “person of African descent [of any rank] . . . shall receive ten dollars per month . . . three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.” White privates at the time received $13 per month plus a $3.50 clothing allowance. It wasn’t until July 15, 1864, that Congress granted equal pay to black soldiers.
Yet, serve they did.
As evidence of the regard in which they were held, LaBarre quoted Massachusetts Gov. John Albion Andrew’s commendation of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry when it was launched: “In this hour of hope for our common country and for themselves; at a time when they hold the destiny of their race in their own grasp; and when its certain emancipation from prejudice, as well as slavery, is in the hands of those now invited to unite in the final blow which will annihilate the rebel power, let no brave and strong man hesitate. One cannot exaggerate the call sounding in the ears of all men, in whose veins flows the blood of Africa, and whose color has been the badge of slavery. It offers the opportunity of years, crowded into an hour.”
Volunteering was a start. They still had something to prove.According to National Archives, by the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men were serving as soldiers — 10 percent of the Union army — and 19,000 served in the Union navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war — 30,000 of infection or disease. By war’s end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor .
King came back to the capital in May 1864 as a private with the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry to defend the city against attack by Confederate troops. His unit participated in the Siege of Petersburg. They guarded Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Md. And his unit was among the first Union regiments to enter Richmond, capital of the dying Confederacy, on April 3, 1865.
The Civil War ended, but not his service. Three months later, the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry was sent to Texas to defend against threats from Mexico. (Sound familiar?) He was mustered out of service on Oct. 31, 1865, at Clarksville, Tex. — still not a citizen of the United States.
It wasn’t until 1868 that the threat of removal from the United States was lifted by the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in this country, including former slaves.The men with names on the African American Civil War Memorial’s Wall of Honor fought and died to end two centuries of slavery, without being able to count democracy as their own.
For their descendants, the fight for full rights, for full participation in every part of our democracy, goes on.
That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.
Read more from Colbert King’s archive.
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Thanks, Colby, for putting the current plight of “Dreamers” (and I might add refugees and other migrants who are serving, contributing, and building our society despite their disenfranchisement and the government-sponsored dehumanization being inflicted upon them) in the historical context of the fight for civil rights and human dignity in America.
That’s why the “21st Century Jim Crows” like Trump, Sessions, Stephen Miller, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Steve King, and others (largely associated with the GOP) are so pernicious. Like the “Jim Crows of the past,” these guys use degrading racial stereotypes, intentionally false narratives, and bogus “rule of law” arguments to generate hate and bias, sow division, and use the law to suppress and violate rights rather than advancing them.
While sycophant DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen does not appear to be an “ideological racist,” her mindless and disingenuous parroting of the Trump White Nationalist “party lies” and “enforcement” (read “de-humanization”) agenda certainly makes her a “functional racist.”
It’s quite outrageous and dangerous that individuals with these types of views have been elevated to powerful public offices in the modern era, after the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?
PWS
02-16-19
“’DUH’ ARTICLE OF DA DAY” – Former FBI Acting Director McCabe Says “then–Attorney General Sessions [was] a Trump-like idiot and racist” – Gee, Seems Like That Was What Liz, Corey, & The Black Caucus Told Us – But McConnell Silenced The Truth & He & His GOP Cronies Subjected America To Perhaps The Worst & Least Qualified Attorney General In U.S. History!
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-book-jeff-sessions-irishmen.html
Molly Olmstead reports for Slate:
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book, which details his frustrations with President’s Trump administration, has made it clear that his “disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for [Jeff] Sessions,” according to an assessment from Washington Post reporter Greg Miller.
According to Miller’s review of the book, McCabe saw then–Attorney General Sessions as a Trump-like idiot and racist who had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues,” failed to read intelligence reports, and jumbled classified material with publicly reported news.
The strangest detail from the book, though, had to do with Sessions’ thoughts on the FBI’s hiring practices. According to the Post:
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”
According to a Wall Street Journal review of the book, McCabe wrote in his book that Sessions was only interested in immigration issues. He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion, according to the Post. When presented with a counterterrorism case, he would first ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness,” Miller concluded from McCabe’s book.
McCabe’s assessment is surprising in only that it comes so bluntly from a man who once was acting head of the FBI but now seems intent on speaking out against the men who made his professional and personal life so difficult for 10 months (before he was fired just hours before his planned retirement, blocking him from receiving his full pension benefits). Sessions has a long, long history of making racist and anti-immigrant comments, while also implementing racist and anti-immigrant policies. A non-exhaustive list includes: allegedly warning a black lawyer to “be careful how you talk to white folks”; calling the NAACP “un-American”; reportedly joking that he used to think the KKK was “OK” until he discovered some smoked marijuana; praising an 1924 immigration act promoted by Nazi-style eugenics; denigrating a judge in Hawaii as “sitting on an island in the Pacific”; fondly remembered George Wallace, America’s most famous segregationist politician, as “one of the most formidable third-party candidates in this century; and lauding “the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”
As for actions, in Alabama, Sessions punished black activists, defended voter suppression tactics, and kept black judges off the federal bench. He opposed sentencing reform over the crack-cocaine disparity. He has opposed hate crime protections and defended the official display of the Confederate flag. He has regularly attended events hosted by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, which he maintains a close relationship with. He touted falsehoods about DACA and immigrants in general. And of course, he pushed, relentlessly, for deportations and prosecutions of undocumented immigrants and even refugees fleeing domestic and gang violence.
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Sessions is a living example of how someone can spend a lifetime “on the dole” as a so-called “public servant” without providing any meaningful positive service or contributions to the public good.
Compare this “life not so well lived” with the “real world” contributions of the many decent, hard-working, honest, and dedicated civil servants who were screwed over by Trump’s shutdown. Or, compare Sessions’s squandered, anti-social life with the significant “real life” contributions of many of the immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who came before me in Immigration Court over 13 years.
I’m not sure even the worst of the aggravated felons that I ordered deported did as much lasting damage to our nation and its future as did Sessions! He was a child abuser on a grand scale, and someone who used knowingly false narratives to send deserving refugees, particularly abused women, back to torture or even death in the countries from which they had fled. He was the architect of both family separation and the unbridled expansion of the “New American Gulag.”
He promoted hate, intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, bias, and intolerance of all kinds, and was an avowed enemy of kindness and human compassion. He even had the absolute audacity to cite the Christian Bible, the compassionate, merciful, inclusive, and forgiving teachings of one of the world’s greatest “outcasts,” in support of his own perverted, bias-driven, and totally un-Christian world view.
Oh yeah, and he had no management qualifications going into the job and proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. Seldom in modern times has there been a more demoralized, mission-less, and dysfunctional mess than today’s Department of Justice. Even Watergate didn’t do as much institutional damage.
Sessions’s only real contribution to justice, due process, and the public good was the day he walked out of the U.S. Department of Justice for the last time. But, it will take years, if not generations, to repair the damage he has inflicted on the rule of law, our Constitution, honest government, and humane values.
Truly, Liz was right! This was one supremely unqualified dude!
PWS
02-16-19
EXPOSED: In Matter of A-B-, Sessions & An Immigration Judge Found That The Government Of El Salvador Offered “Reasonable Protection” To Persecuted Women & That Internal Relocation Appeared “Reasonably Available” To A Severely Battered & Threatened Woman — They Lied!
Anna-Catherine Brigida reports on the recent El Salvadoran presidential election for the Washington Post:
. . . ..
“The ultimate actor who determines whether you have more or less homicides tomorrow or right now or in a week is not the government. It’s the gangs,” said José Miguel Cruz, an expert on Salvadoran gangs at Florida International University. “They do it for political purposes as a bargaining tool to improve their position vis-a-vis the government or vis-a-vis the society.”
. . . .
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Read Anna’s complete article at the link. This is a “must read” for members of the NDPA or anyone else handling El Salvadoran asylum cases in this “Post-Matter of A-B- Era.”
Fact is, the gangs are in many practical ways the “de facto government” in El Salvador. That makes Sessions’s suggestion that persecuted individuals can get reasonable protection from the government or avoid persecution in a tiny, totally gang-infested country absurdly disingenuous. It also calls into question the judicial integrity of those U.S. Immigration Judges who mindlessly “parrot” Sessions’s “parallel universe” dicta regarding conditions in El Salvador. Indeed, it has been reported elsewhere that gangs are actually the largest employer in El Salvador, exercising far more power over politics and the economy than the government! https://www.newsweek.com/ms-13-barrio-18-gangs-employ-more-people-el-salvador-largest-employers-1200029
Also, this article illustrates the absurdity of the position often taken by the BIA and some Immigration Judges that resistance to gangs is not a “political act.” In a country where gangs and government are inextricably intertwined, and gangs actually control more of the country than does the national government, of course resisting or publicly standing up against gangs is an expression of political opposition to those in power. And, it’s a political statement for which the consequences all too often can be deadly.
Matter of A-B- has yet to be tested in a Court of Appeals. But, it spectacularly “flunked” its initial judicial test before Judge Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3rd Judge Sullivan clearly saw through many of Sessions’s biased conclusions that contradict not only the history and purpose of he Refugee Act, but also well established case law. Although A-B- was an Immigration Court case, and many of Sullivan’s conclusions would apply in Immigration Court proceedings, EOIR saw fit to construe Grace narrowly as applying solely in “Credible Fear Reviews.” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3BE
It’s important for advocates to press all challenges to Matter of A-B- in the Circuit Courts of Appeals. If appellate judges agree with Judge Sullivan, all of the erroneous “summary denials” of asylum based on A-B- will come back to Immigration Court for rehearings, thus further adding to the Administration-created mess in America’s most dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust court system, where Due Process for asylum seekers has become a bad joke rather than the watchword.
PWS
02-04-19
PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”
Waldman writes:
As immigration policy hangs over the ongoing conflict over whether the government is going to remain open, there’s something missing from this discussion, something so fundamental that it’s quite remarkable that we all seem to have forgotten to even ask about it. The president is demanding his border wall, Democrats are fighting against him, and occasionally we bring up issues like the fate of the Dreamers and those here under Temporary Protected Status.
But what nobody asks is this: What kind of immigration system do we actually want?
Not what might happen in the next negotiation or what each side would be willing to give up, but what does each side see as the ultimate goal they’re working toward? If they could look forward ten or twenty years and say “This is where we should get to,” what would that look like?
It’s a vital question, because whatever we’re doing at the moment should be guided by our long-term goals. Once we understand what those goals are, we can think more clearly about where we should go after we get this whole shutdown ridiculousness behind us. And we all ought to be able to agree that there is some future we’re trying to arrive at, a point at which we have a system that works to our satisfaction and immigration isn’t something we’re constantly at each other’s throats about.
That may not be possible, but I’ll start with what liberals would like to see. There are certainly disagreements not just on the left generally but among immigration advocates as well, but there is a basic vision one can identify.
The first thing they want, of course, is to take the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are in the country now and give them a path to citizenship. That’s something even some Republicans agree with, and if you put requirements like learning English and paying back taxes on it, support becomes nearly universal.
Second, liberals would like to see an expansion of the legal immigration system, which is a consistent source of frustration and a driver of illegal immigration. When it can take decades to get approved to move to the United States, of course many people are going to opt for the illegal route, even if it can be dangerous and uncertain. If the legal immigration works, people will go through it and not around it.
And if you have a well-functioning legal system, you can make illegal immigration less attractive, with things like an E-Verify process that makes it harder to find work if you’re undocumented. There may always be some kind of black market for workers, but if you’re simultaneously offering people a legal path — both toward permanent residency and with temporary work visas for people who are looking only to make some money and then return to their home countries — it will be much smaller problem.
So in the liberal vision, we might end up with about the same number of immigrants coming into the country as we have now, it’s just that the overwhelming majority would be coming legally. We’d have security at the border, but we wouldn’t need ICE breaking down doors and tearing parents from their children’s arms. We’d have a robust system to evaluate asylum claims so we wouldn’t have to be throwing people in cages. We certainly wouldn’t pretend that one day there will be no more demand in the labor market for immigrant workers.
There are many Republicans who could be okay with that future, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. But the conservative vision is complicated. For years, we heard Republican politicians say, “I’m for legal immigration. I’m against illegal immigration.” They may not usually have been advocating significant increases in legal immigration, but it’s important to remember that the current venomous hostility toward immigrants was not always the standard Republican position. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both far friendlier toward immigrants than Donald Trump is.
Conservatives might disagree with this characterization, but as I see it, their ultimate goal is a system in which coming into the country illegally is utterly impossible, but levels of legal immigration don’t change much. In other words, we still have immigration, but the flow slows to a trickle. And the Trump administration is making attempts to drastically reduce legal immigration. With the president’s enthusiastic support, domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is driving a nationalist agenda that seeks to drastically reduce the inflow of immigrants to the country and even looks for every possible means to deport both legal and undocumented immigrants, even if they’ve been living here for years or decades.
That’s a somewhat extreme position even within the Republican Party, but it does reflect a discomfort with immigration that is common on the right. It’s the cultural problem, the fact that many people just don’t like having contact with people who don’t look like them or don’t speak the same language they do or eat the same foods they do. Trump very skillfully played to that discomfort by essentially telling voters he could wind back the clock to the time when they were young, before all this disconcerting change happened. His targets were the people who say “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” and when he said he would make America great again, “great again” meant “like things were when you were young.”
That’s a demand that can never be satisfied, even if it’s only a portion of the Republican electorate that really dreams of an America where there are almost no new immigrants and most of those who are already here just disappear. Unfortunately, that portion currently not only controls the White House but exercises a veto over any attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, because the rest of the GOP is so terrified of them.
Which is why it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.
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Right on, Paul! You “nailed” it! Pretty much what I’ve been saying on “Courtside” all along!
However, the unlikelihood of achieving “comprehensive immigration reform” in the “Age of Trump” shouldn’t prevent the parties from working together in a bipartisan manner on “smaller fixes” such as that relating to child marriage suggested by Nolan Rappaport, posted earlier this week. See https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3Hu
Progress is progress, even by “small steps.”
PWS
02-01-19
TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICY: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE!” — Also, ICE Intentionally Falsifies Court Hearing Dates — Where Is The Accountability?
Bill Boyarsky writes for Truthdig:
From the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the immigration issue has defined his political profile. More than anything else, it has opened a window on his authoritarian mind, his disdain for the truth and for democratic institutions. Such contempt has revealed the dangers of Trumpism to much of a nation governed, often imperfectly, by the law. The way immigrants are locked up in detention centers without trial warns us of the possibility of a police state.
Last week, the president’s braggadocio crumbled in the face of facts and the strategic opposition of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She clearly saw beyond the façade as she took the measure of her opponent.
Trump’s signature combination of untruthfulness, ignorance and arrogance became evident to the country on Friday when maps appeared on cable television showing planes stacking up at airports, sending passengers into a state of exasperation that transcends partisan politics. Those deficiencies were further exposed when he, while putting an end to the protracted government shutdown, used his concession speech in the White House Rose Garden on Friday to rehash his lying attacks on immigrants.
Trump repeated his call for a wall, arguing that only a wall would stop the drug dealers and other criminals from coming across the southern border. But he pulled back from the “Build the Wall” promises that stirred nationalistic crowds at his rallies. “We do not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall from sea to shiny [sic] sea—we never did,” he said, insisting that he had never proposed one.
On the contrary, as Linda Qiu and Michael Tackett wrote in The New York Times:
Dozens of times during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump promised to build a wall along the southwestern border, usually saying it would be 1,000 miles at varying heights and costs. At times the building materials changed. He mentioned concrete, steel and, at one point, even a wall that would have solar panels. But a wall and the unsupported pledge that Mexico would pay for it were foundational elements of his campaign, and Mr. Trump has continued to make similar assertions throughout his presidency.
Except on Friday. Qiu and Tackett also picked up that detail: “ … notable was something Mr. Trump did not say, namely that Mexico would pay for the wall. …”
As he had from the beginning of his presidential campaign, Trump trafficked in falsehoods Friday in the Rose Garden when he described the immigrants trying to cross the border into the United States as dangerous criminals.
Figures from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Clearinghouse(TRAC), a respected compiler of immigration statistics, refute his claim.
As of June 30, 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had 44,435 immigrants in custody. Of these, four out of five had no criminal record or had committed only a minor offense, such as a traffic violation. Of the remainder, only 16 percent had committed crimes considered serious, which includes selling marijuana, now legal in many states. Of those eventually convicted of a crime, most were for illegal entry into the United States, a misdemeanor.
Another factor to consider is the incompetence of the way Trump administers his anti-immigrant policy. His former Attorney General Jeff Sessions drastically reduced the grounds for immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Under his plan, dangers posed to immigrants by criminal gangs or domestic violence were no longer accepted as reasons for granting asylum—a devastating legislative blow to those fleeing gang-ridden Central American countries.
Other restrictions on asylum were also imposed. When immigrants present themselves to border officers and ask for sanctuary, they are arrested for illegal entry. They are then placed in detention, awaiting a hearing in immigration court, or are deported, although courts have ordered some released.
Sessions also ordered judges in immigration courts to speed up their hearings and decision-making protocols. He claimed this directive was aimed at reducing the backlog of cases awaiting hearing in immigration court that involve immigrants either in detention or freed through the legal intervention of immigrant advocates.
The backlog, TRAC said, totals 1,098,468—more than double the waiting list in January 2017 when Trump took office. It would take immigration courts more than five years to work their way through the backlog. This explains why so many immigrants are held in detention for years without a trial in onerous conditions, and why those freed from detention are in legal limbo, subject to being stopped, questioned and improperly arrested.
When Trump shut down the government, most immigration hearings were cancelled. That gave the president a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Rather than carry out his intent—hustling the immigrants out of the country—he has done the opposite and has increased the logjam.
In short, incompetence plus evil intentions have brought the country to this point.
Trump has been able to paper over his incompetence with bluster. The mass media has served as an accomplice. Too many stories focus on his performance. Sometimes, even his critics offer grudging admiration.
The shutdown ripped away the mask. Immigration was the central issue behind Trump’s closure of the federal government. His lies about immigration were exposed, as was his bungling execution of a cruel policy.
Bill Boyarsky
Political CorrespondentBill Boyarsky is a political correspondent for Truthdig. He is a former lecturer in journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Southern California. Boyarsky was city editor of….
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Meanwhile, over at CBS News, Kate Smith continues her great coverage of the illegal and unethical behavior that has become the norm at DHS and which is enable and tolerated by an enfeebled politically dominated EOIR.
ICE agents told hundreds of immigrants to show up to court on Thursday or risk being deported. But lawyers say many of those hearings won’t happen because the dates ICE provided are fake.
Immigration attorneys in Chicago, Miami, Texas, and Virginia told CBS News their clients or their colleagues’ clients were issued a Notice to Appear (NTA) for hearings scheduled Jan. 31. The attorneys learned the dates weren’t real when they called the courts to confirm. ICE is required to include court dates with court notices, per a Supreme Court decision last summer, but most don’t actually reflect scheduled hearings.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association issued a “practice alert” on Tuesday evening, warning members “the next upcoming date on NTAs that appears to be fake is this Thursday.”
On Wednesday evening, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the body that oversees all the immigration courts, instructed all attorneys with a January 31 NTA “to confirm the time and date of any hearing.”
“There will be another episode of mass confusion in the immigration courts [Thursday] as a result of the DHS’s decision to issue Notice to Appear with fake immigration court dates,” Brian Casson, a Virginia-based immigration attorney, said in an email to CBS News.
In a statement Thursday morning, an ICE spokesperson said the agency was working with the Department of Justice “regarding the proper issuance of Notices to Appear.” The spokesperson said the government shutdown “delayed” that process, “resulting in an expected overflow of individuals appearing for immigration proceedings today/January 31.”
The fake notices stem from a Supreme Court ruling last summer. Prior to the decision, ICE officials used to send immigrants NTAs with date listed as “TBD” – or “to be determined.” The immigration court would issue the migrant an official hearing notice later, said Casson.
One effect of this: The NTAs could block an immigrant’s eligibility for “cancellation of removal,” a legal residency status granted to some undocumented immigrants after 10 uninterrupted years of living in the U.S. A NTA, even without a hearing date, would interrupt the 10-year “clock,” said Jeremy McKinney, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based immigration attorney, in a telephone interview with CBS News.
A Supreme Court ruling last summer — Pereira v. Sessions — banned the practice, requiring all appearance notices to use actual dates.
However, systems weren’t in place for ICE to see the court’s schedule, so ICE issued fake dates instead. Immigrants were instructed to appear on weekends, midnight, and dates that just didn’t exist, like Sept. 31, multiple attorneys told CBS News.
On October 31, hundreds of immigrants received phony NTAs. They showed up to court for non-existent hearings to find “extraordinarily long lines,” according the recent alert from the immigration lawyers’ organization.
“It was complete dysfunction and confusion,” said McKinney.
The problem became so pervasive that on Dec. 21, the Executive Office of Immigration Review issued a rare policy memo telling ICE agents and DHS that courts would “reject any NTA in which the date or time of the scheduled hearing is facially incorrect.”
Matthew Kriezelman, a Chicago-based immigration attorney, has four clients with hearings scheduled for tomorrow. After checking with the court earlier this week, he found out that two of those appearances weren’t real: administrators had no record of the hearings and told Kriezelman his clients would have to wait until the court itself sent them a hearing date.
Kriezelman’s clients are among the lucky ones; experts estimate less than half of immigrants have legal representation. That means hundreds won’t realize their Jan. 31 hearing date was phony and will show up anyway, said Kriezelman.
The court in Chicago handles all the immigration cases in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, meaning many immigrants could be traveling for hours on Thursday morning for a hearing that doesn’t actually exist, Kriezelman said.
When they show up, nobody will be able to assist — because of the extreme cold weather, the Chicago immigration court is scheduled to be closed on Thursday, Kriezelman said.
Failure to show up to an immigration hearing can result in immediate removal proceeding, making immigrant especially wary when they hear they don’t need to come into court after all, said Kriezelman.
“They feel like someone is screwing with them or playing a terrible joke,” Kriezelman said. “It’s really confusing for a lot of people, especially ones that are unrepresented.”
Read more CBS News immigration coverage: The country’s busiest border crossing will allow 20 people to claim asylum a day. They used to take up to 100
Every congressperson along southern border opposes border wall funding
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Bill and Kate must be “reading my mind.” Keep on exposing the truth about this cruel, dishonest, and incompetent Administration and all of the “ethics-free minions” who carry out often illegal orders! What goes around, comes around, folks.
Anybody and I mean anybody, could need a fair, impartial, and honest justice system at some point in life. Why are so many folks standing by and letting Trump and his toadies destroy it? Piece by piece, the most important foundations of our democracy are being destroyed right in plain daylight!
Also congrats to my good friend and long-time fellow member of the Beverley Hills Community United Methodist Church family Mike Tackett of the NY Times and his colleague Linda Qiu for their continuing outstanding coverage of the truth about Trump’s disingenuous, wasteful, and cruel immigration policies. You’re making a difference, Mike and Linda! Keep at it!
There was a time when dishonesty and falsely filling out official government documents (known as fraud or willful misrepresentation in some criminal law circles) would get a Government employee fired, prosecuted, or disciplined. Not any more. With our country headed by a grifter “Liar-in-Chief” “anything goes” unless you are a migrant, a minority, or a member of the LGBTQ community. In that case, expect “no mercy.”
Also remember that White Nationalist former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions disingenuously pontificated about “the rule of law,” called DHS “a partner of EOIR,” and referred to immigration attorneys as “dirty lawyers.” He tried to cover up his gross mismanagement and political manipulation of the Immigration Courts by falsely blaming migrants, their attorneys, and the Immigration Judges themselves for the mess he himself, and also to a large extent DHS, caused.
He also spread false narratives about “widespread asylum fraud” and made the demonstrably false claim that asylum applicants were somehow a “major cause” of 11 million (mostly hard-working and law-abiding) “illegals” as he liked to contemptuously call them in his racist lingo. I doubt that there have even been 11 million asylum applicants total since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980.
Certainly, the causes for our “extra-legal” immigration system go far beyond alleged asylum fraud (which, in fact, does exist on a much smaller scale and in my experience is generally effectively uncovered, investigated, and aggressively prosecuted by DHS). They are a direct result of outdated and misguided policies that failed to recognize legitimate market forces in creating legal immigration categories and a failure to fully carry out in a good faith manner our humanitarian obligations under the refugee laws and international conventions.
Fact is, even if restrictionists like Sessions won’t admit it, the vast majority of the 11 million undocumented individuals should have been screened and admitted under our legal immigration system. The U.S. Government created the problem; so far, they have lacked the honesty, leadership, and courage to fix it in a fair and humane way that will benefit both our country and the migrants, current and future. Immigrants are America. And, except for our Native American brothers and sisters, we are all immigrants!
That’s why we have the “New Due Process Army!” Enlist today, and help fight the forces of “malicious incompetence” everywhere and for as long as it takes to win the battle and vindicate the Constitutional right of everyone in American to enjoy the benefits of Due Process of law.
PWS
01-31-19