"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
The Biden Administration’s vision for asylum seekers is a game of chance with the odds rigged heavily against them. Circus Circus Reno – 2021-11-14 – Sarah Stierch 05.jpg Creative Commons LicenseEmily Green Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist PHOTO: Twitter
REYNOSA, Mexico — A 2-1/2 year old boy dragged an oversized suitcase along the sidewalk excitedly, on the edge of a cramped migrant encampment straddling the U.S.-Mexico border. Every few seconds, he looked behind him to make sure his parents were still there. But the boy wasn’t going anywhere, and the suitcase was empty, much like the yearned-for promise of being finally allowed to enter the United States. The boy, born in Brazil, and his parents, from Haiti, have spent five months living in a tent just feet from the U.S. border.
“We will stay here until we can go to the other side,” the boy’s father said.
On April 1, the Biden administration announced that on May 23, it will rescind Title 42, the pandemic-era, public-health policy that allowed for the automatic expulsion of more than a million migrants to Mexico and other countries. The policy is why the little boy and his parents hadn’t sought asylum. They’re scared that if they crossed into the U.S. and asked for protection, they’ll be deported to Haiti. They instead opted to wait in Reynosa, despite its reputation as one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities.
The repeal of the Trump-era rule is expected to trigger an influx of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border. Already, around 2,500 people are living in the public plaza here at the edge of the border, their tents packed together so tightly there’s barely room to walk. While the policy change won’t take effect for a month and a half, the response on both sides of the international line couldn’t be more different.
In the U.S., officials are busy expanding border facilities and sending more personnel to staff emergency operations. In Mexico meanwhile, most of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who’ve been waiting for months to cross legally at a port of entry have received no information from authorities and seem completely in the dark about what’s to come. There are no guidelines for who gets to enter first, nor instructions about when and where to cross, or even a line to sign up for.
Compounding the confusion, many of the migrants have no idea why they were denied entry to the U.S to request asylum in the first place. They have only the vaguest notion of Title 42, and what its repeal could mean for them. The information they have largely comes via word of mouth, which human smugglers frequently spin to sell their services.
But migrants may be headed towards disappointment as Title 42 winds down and another restrictive immigration policy is likely ramped up.
Jacki, a Honduran woman who has spent six months in the encampment with her four-year-old daughter, learned of Title 42’s end through a reporter (not this one). Jacki and the other migrants interviewed for this story declined to provide their last names. “We are all excited… but… I don’t know,” Jacki said. “It’s too good to be true.”
She may be right. Department of Homeland Security officials said that in the wake of winding down Title 42, it will increase its use of the policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or “Remain in Mexico,” which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided. It’s possible that asylum seekers stranded in some of Mexico’s most dangerous border cities by Title 42 could finally enter the U.S. and ask for protection, only to be returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico.
The Biden administration has also expanded “Remain in Mexico” to include Haitians, who make up the fastest-growing group of migrants in Reynosa. Even with Title 42 gone, gaining legal entry into the U.S. is uncertain at best.
For migrants, U.S. immigration policy can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. From Feb. 2021 to Dec. 2021, during Biden’s first year in office, immigration agents allowed roughly 29 percent of migrants encountered at the southern border to enter the U.S. and plead their case before an immigration judge, according to the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of migrants. The rest were summarily expelled under Title 42 to Mexico or another country, or sent to ICE detention.
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Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.
The way to start breaking backlogs and restoring confidence in the rule of law is to identify and prioritize asylum grants!
That’s precisely the opposite of the misguided border policies that Administrations of both parties have followed for the past two decades: Move unrepresented individuals to the front of the line and issue lots of bogus in absentias and hasty denials in a perverted, and highly ineffective, attempt to use our legal system as a “deterrent” and to “send don’t come messages.”
The Biden Administration should have a team of trained Refugee Officers and Asylum Officers in Mexico, now, working with pro bono advocates and NGOs to identify and “pre-process/pre-approve” asylum cases that can be granted on May 23 or shortly thereafter. That would start clearing out the camps in Mexico, reducing processing backlogs, and lessening pressure on the Immigration Courts. Incidentally, it would also provide needed potential legal workers for the U.S. economy.
It would also establish the credibility of the asylum processing program (something now in tatters) at legal ports of entry. That, in turn, would incentivize individuals to use orderly asylum processing rather than being lured by smugglers into attempting dangerous irregular entries.
A major overlooked fact in the restrictionist babble (disgustingly repeated even by some Administration officials and Dem politicos) about “illegal border crossings” is that the U.S. has had no transparent legal asylum system at ports of entry for years. Our Government’s failure, has empowered smugglers, encouraged irregular entry, and endangered asylum seekers. Amazingly, despite years of bad faith, dishonesty, and insulting “die elsewhere” racist messages, tens of thousands of individuals have waited patiently on the Mexican side of the Southern Border, in horrid and life-threatening conditions, for appointments, hearings, and adjudications that have never happened and that are often biased and unfair on those occasions when they did take place.
The Biden Administration should also be working in Mexico with NGOs to provide accurate information (NOT “stay home and die” propaganda) about the U.S. Asylum program, the legal documentation requirements, opportunities for representation and counseling, and what will happen after May 23. Given the lack of honesty, transparency, accuracy, and humanity in many “official” USG pronouncements, it’s no wonder desperate folks seek information and guidance elsewhere.
An essential part of the foregoing is to establish officially-maintained prioritized processing lists for ports of entry. As noted in Emily’s article, informal “do it yourself” lists are being maintained by unofficial and unregulated “gatekeepers.” This has been a key reason why the U.S. system lacks credibility and orderliness.
It’s not “rocket science.” 🚀 But, as usual, when it comes to immigration, human rights, and equal justice, the Biden Administration lacks dynamic expert leadership, a positive vision of immigration, and the ability to “pick off the low hanging fruit.”
Subject: [bog] PLEASE SHARE: New AILA Think Immigration video blog post with Jeremy McKinney and Greg Chen regarding immigration court reform (includes sample tweets and posts).
Good afternoon everyone,
We are really excited that this week the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act of 2022 – introduced by Rep. Lofgren to establish an independent immigration court system which we’ve been working for steadily for years now. The markup hearing will cover a lot of different bills so we may see the bill come up today, or more likely tomorrow. To watch the hearing, keep an eye on the hearing livestream page: https://judiciary.house.gov/calendar/eventslisting.aspx?EventTypeID=216
The AILA Comms Team produced a video in which Jeremy McKinney and Greg Chen talk through the immigration court’s problems and the need for a real solution in order to ensure judicial independence and due process. We have embedded the video as a blog post and would love to have you amplify it to your networks on social media.
I’ll be watching to see the House Judiciary Committee mark up the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act which would create an independent #immigration court this week. WATCH this video with @MckJeremy and @GregChenAILA for a helpful intro: http://ow.ly/oqap50IB7Cp @AILANational
Simply put, the history of politicization and turmoil make it clear that we need an independent #immigration court – WATCH @AILANational’s @MckJeremy and @GregChenAILA explain: http://ow.ly/oqap50IB7Cp
Sample Facebook/LinkedIn posts:
I’ll be watching to see how the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act introduced by Rep. Lofgren fares as the House Judiciary Committee discusses how to create an independent #immigration court but in the meantime, this video with AILA President-Elect Jeremy McKinney and Greg Chen serves as a helpful intro: http://ow.ly/oqap50IB7Cp
Simply put, the history of politicization and turmoil make it clear that we need an independent #immigration court – WATCH AILA’s President-Elect Jeremy McKinney join Greg Chen to explain:
What DHS SHOULD have said about reinstitution of our legal asylum system at the border:
“The Department of Homeland Security works to secure and manage our borders while building, maintaining, and improving a fair and orderly immigration system. That includes a fair and timely system for granting asylum or other forms of refuge from persecution or torture to qualified applicants. Insuring legal protection for refugees is a critical part of DHS’s mission of administering and enforcing the laws.
Violence, political upheaval, war, genocide, religious intolerance, racism, food insecurity, poverty, femicide, child abuse, environmental disasters, rampant corruption, and prospects of starvation in several areas around the world are driving unprecedented levels of migration to our Southwest Border. The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which involved the temporary suspension of our system for legal immigration, including admission of asylees and other refugees, has only exacerbated these challenges. A number of sources, including human smuggling organizations, peddle misinformation about entering the United States or coming to our borders.
With the restoration of our legal immigration system on the horizon, only two groups of foreign nationals will generally qualify for admission at our borders: first, those in possession of visas or equivalent documents usually issued by U.S. consular officers abroad; and second, those who can establish that they qualify for asylum or other forms of legal protection from return to persecution and/or torture.
Under our laws, asylum can only be granted to those reasonably fearing harm because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Other foreign nationals facing harm not amounting to “torture” in their home countries will not be eligible for admission under our laws. Those who apply or are apprehended at or near the border and cannot show a “credible fear” of harm because of one of the foregoing grounds will be summarily removed from our country.
In short, if you do not have a valid visa or a bona fide claim for asylum or other legal protection, you should not make the journey to the U.S. border. You will be apprehended and summarily returned to your home country in accordance with our laws.
DHS is implementing a comprehensive strategy to address a potential increase in the number of border encounters. That strategy includes:
Acquiring and deploying many more trained Asylum Officers to legal ports of entry to promptly decide “credible fear” cases for asylum seekers;
Delivering a more efficient, fair, and timely asylum process by allowing Asylum Officers to grant credible, well-documented claims at the border;
Working with NGOs, legal aid groups, and local governments to provide legal counseling and representation to those seeking asylum;
Working with NGOs, religious organizations, and other social services entities in the U.S. to assist in orderly resettlement of those granted asylum or whose cases cannot be timely processed at the border;
Processing and removing those who do not have valid claims; and
Working with the UNHCR, NGOs, and other countries globally to manage migration and address root causes.
With the restoration of a fair and timely asylum and protection processing system at our legal ports of entry, all asylum applicants should apply in an orderly fashion only at those ports. That will be the safest, most efficient way of applying, offer the greatest opportunities for legal representation, and increase the chances of timely, legal admission into the United States for those who are qualified.
Those who attempt to avoid legal processing at ports of entry by unauthorized entry may well find their lives endangered by unscrupulous smugglers. Additionally, those who attempt to avoid the legal process available at ports of entry might subject themselves to detention, additional grounds for removal, bars on future reentry, and criminal prosecution. With the return of full legal immigration and improved asylum processing to ports of entry, DHS will be able to devote more enforcement resources to locating and apprehending those attempting irregular entry into the U.S. DHS will also target human smuggling operations.
There is broad agreement that our immigration system is fundamentally broken. The Biden-Harris Administration continues to call on Congress to pass legislation that holistically addresses the root causes of migration, fixes the immigration system, and strengthens legal pathways.”
FACT SHEET: DHS Preparations for a Potential Increase in Migration
Release Date: March 30, 2022
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) works to secure and manage our borders while building a fair and orderly immigration system. The CDC has announced that, on May 23, 2022, its Title 42 public health Order will be terminated. As a result, beginning on May 23, 2022, DHS will no longer process families and single adults for expulsion pursuant to Title 42. Instead, DHS will process them for removal under Title 8. Until May 23, 2022, the CDC’s Title 42 Order remains in place, and DHS will continue to process families and single adults pursuant to the Order.
Under Title 8, those who attempt to enter the United States without authorization, and who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States (such as a valid asylum claim), are subject to additional long-term consequences beyond removal from the United States, including bars to future immigration benefits.
DHS is implementing a comprehensive strategy to address a potential increase in the number of border encounters.
The strategy includes: 1) Acquiring and deploying resources to address increased volumes; 2) Delivering a more efficient and fair immigration process; 3) Processing and removing those who do not have valid claims; and 4) Working with other countries in the Western Hemisphere to manage migration and address root causes.
Violence, food insecurity, poverty, and lack of economic opportunity in several countries in the Western Hemisphere are driving unprecedented levels of migration to our Southwest Border. The devastating economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region has only exacerbated these challenges. Human smuggling organizations peddle misinformation that the border is open. DHS is implementing a comprehensive strategy to address a potential increase in the number of border encounters.
There is broad agreement that our immigration system is fundamentally broken. The Biden-Harris Administration continues to call on Congress to pass legislation that holistically addresses the root causes of migration, fixes the immigration system, and strengthens legal pathways.
1. Acquiring and deploying resources to address increased volumes.
Developed an integrated and scalable plan to activate and mobilize resources.
DHS initiated a Southwest Border contingency planning effort last fall. Last month, the Secretary designated a Senior Coordinating Official and established the Southwest Border Coordination Center (SBCC) to coordinate planning, operations, engagement, and interagency support.
Ready to surge personnel and resources to the Southwest Border.
DHS has moved officers, agents, and DHS Volunteer Force personnel to rapidly decompress points along the border and more efficiently process migrants.
Increasing CBP temporary holding capacity to process high volumes of individuals in a humane manner.
CBP has mobilized resources to rapidly stand up, expand, and/or reinforce Central Processing Centers in order to provide more efficient end-to-end processing for migrants encountered at the Southwest Border. Additionally, more ICE staff will be deployed to the border to facilitate processing.
Utilized appropriated resources to improve border processing
In its FY22 appropriations bill, Congress provided an additional $1.45 billion for a potential Southwest Border surge, including $1.06 billion for CBP soft-sided facilities, medical care, transportation, and personnel costs; $239.7 million for ICE for processing capacity, transportation, and personnel costs; and $150 million for FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program at the Southwest Border. Earlier this week, President Biden submitted to Congress its FY23 Budget, which would fund the hiring of 300 new Border Patrol Agents and 300 new Border Patrol Processing Coordinators.
While the 2022 appropriation exceeded the request and represents a historic funding level for DHS, the appropriation would not be sufficient to fund the potential resource requirements associated with the current increase in migrant flows. DHS will fund operational requirements by prudently executing its appropriations; reprioritizing and reallocating existing funding through reprogrammings and transfers; requesting support from other Federal agencies; and finally, by engaging with Congress on any potential need for supplemental appropriations, as necessary.
Implementing COVID mitigation measures
The health and safety of the DHS workforce, communities, and migrants themselves is a top priority. CBP provides PPE to migrants who cannot be expelled under the CDC’s Title 42 order or are awaiting processing from the moment they are taken into custody, and migrants are required to keep masks on at all times. CBP also works with appropriate agencies that facilitate testing, isolation, and quarantine of migrants.
DHS has also been providing the COVID-19 vaccines to noncitizens in ICE custody since summer 2021. Beginning March 28, 2022, DHS expanded those efforts to cover migrants in CBP custody, so as to further safeguard public health and ensure the safety of border communities, the workforce, and migrants. These efforts will be ramped up over the next two months, to cover the majority of noncitizens taken into CBP custody.
In addition, DHS is putting in place decompression plans to protect against the kind of overcrowding that facilitates the spread of COVID-19.
2. Delivering a more efficient and fair immigration process.
Issued rule to expedite asylum claims.
On March 24, 2022, DHS and the Department of Justice issued a rule to improve and expedite processing of asylum claims made by recently arriving noncitizens, which provides for the expeditious granting of relief to those who have valid claims for asylum and prompt removal of those whose claims are denied. Once implemented at scale in the coming months, the rule will transform how cases are processed at the border. In President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget to Congress, he makes good on the promise of this rule by investing $375 million to hire the personnel needed to quickly process asylum claims.
A Dedicated Docket process for more efficient immigration hearings.
In partnership with the Department of Justice, DHS established a new, more efficient process called the Dedicated Docket to conduct speedier and fair immigration proceedings for families who arrive between ports of entry at the Southwest Border. As a result, the length of time it takes for many of these cases to reach a final disposition has decreased from years to months.
Increased efforts to dismantle transnational criminal organizations that exploit vulnerable migrants
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice launched a counter-network targeting operation focused on transnational criminal organizations affiliated with the smuggling of migrants.
This Operation targets criminal networks that profit from a broad range of illicit activities, such as human smuggling, by using targeted enforcement actions against them, including by denying access to travel and freezing bank accounts.
3. Processing and removing those who do not have valid claims.
Continuing to process migrants in accordance with the laws of the United States, including expeditiously removing those who do not have valid claims to remain in the United States.
Individuals who cross the border without legal authorization will be placed into removal proceedings and, if unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, expeditiously removed. Those who attempt to enter the United States without authorization, and without a valid asylum claim, are subject to additional long-term consequences beyond removal from the United States, including bars to future immigration benefits.
Bringing targeted prosecutions of smugglers, repeat offenders, and those who seek to evade law enforcement.
In close coordination with the Department of Justice, DHS will refer border-related criminal activity to DOJ for prosecution where warranted, including that of smugglers, repeat offenders, and migrants who seek to evade U.S. Customs and Border Protection. U.S. Customs and Border Protection also continues to enforce its Repeat Offender initiative to target recidivism. Any single adult apprehended along the Southwest Border a second time, after having previously been apprehended and removed under Title 8, is referred for criminal prosecution. This initiative has improved DHS’s ability to escalate consequences and conserve processing resources.
4. Working with other countries in the Western Hemisphere to manage migration and address root causes.
Working closely with source and transit countries in the region to deter migration.
The Administration is working with source and transit countries in the region to facilitate the quick return of individuals who previously resided in those countries, as well as stem migration at its source. DHS, in coordination with the Department of State, has regular discussions with partner countries in the Hemisphere on migration related matters and continues to engage with foreign governments to improve cooperation with countries that systematically refuse or delay the repatriation of their nationals.
Signed Migration Arrangement with Costa Rica to address irregular migration.
On March 15, 2022, Secretary Mayorkas traveled to Costa Rica where he joined President Alvarado in announcing a bilateral Migration Arrangement, outlining our shared commitment to both manage migrant flows as well as to promote economic growth in the region. DHS and the Department of State are currently engaged with other countries in the region to advance similar objectives.
Continuing close partnership with the Government of Mexico on migration-related issues.
The Biden-Harris Administration continues to maintain a close partnership between with the Government of Mexico to stem irregular migration, creating viable legal pathways, fostering legitimate trade and travel, and combating the shared dangers of transnational crime. In March, Secretary Mayorkas made his fourth official visit to Mexico City where he and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador committed to the promotion of lawful trade and travel and a regional approach to migration management.
As a sometimes law professor, “What if” is a question I can’t avoid!
The DHS “Fact Sheet” reads like an unprepared agency, planning to be overwhelmed by forces allegedly beyond their control, and looking for ways to shift the anticipated political fallout by blaming others: Congress, smugglers, foreign countries, COVID-19, the Trump Administration, and, in a particularly “low blow” the victims themselves — asylum seekers and other desperate migrants.
Let’s keep in mind that legitimate “refugees” have been largely “shut out” of our legal system for the past several years. Thus, many were left with little or no choice but to seek “do it yourself” refugee within our large “extralegal immigration subsystem.” Often they resort to smugglers and put themselves at increased risk after finding our borders closed to those orderly seeking protection under our laws. We have watched it unfold, and largely ignored the unsavory consequences of our own actions.
I’m certainly not the only one to see “planned disaster” for the Biden Administration on the horizon. Check out today’s WashPost lead editorial:
However, what if, with 51 days to go, advocates and NGOs could “flip the script” on “programmed failure” and make the asylum system at our border function fairly and efficiently, in spite of itself?
What if the “anticipated narrative” of an out of control border never came to pass? What if the U.S. could actually make the rule of law a reality at the border? What if reopening legal ports of entry for asylum seekers, thereby eliminating the pressure for “do it yourself refuge,” actually helped the Border Patrol concentrate on smugglers and those without any legal claim to remain here?
That might involve getting an “army” of volunteers to the border to:
Convince asylum seekers to trust the new system and apply in an orderly fashion only at ports of entry;
Work with the DHS to insure that any processing lists are established and controlled by legitimate authorities;
Leverage the potential for more rapid asylum grants by Asylum Officers by representing applicants and assisting them in documenting and presenting their claims in formats that will facilitate more AO grants;
Represent those improperly denied by the AO before the Immigration Courts and use effective, “practical scholarship,” expert advocacy, and compelling documentation to force due process and fundamental fairness into an Immigration Court system and a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals historically biased against asylum seekers at our borders;
Counsel those prima facie unqualified for asylum and those rejected after applying on possible alternatives outside the U.S.;
Work with authorities, local communities, and NGOs to provide viable resettlement opportunities for those granted asylum and safe, secure, and non-intrusive temporary living conditionson both sides of the border for those awaiting legal processing;
Advocate to the DHS for establishment of robust, realistic, generous, credible refugee programs for Latin America, Haiti, and elsewhere to reduce pressure on the border asylum system. A “viable alternative” to appearing at the border for refugees is what’s glaringly missing from both our past and current approaches.
Can change really come from below and outside the struggling DHS and EOIR systems? Frankly, I don’t know. But, we’re going to find out in the next several months! We can’t change history, but, perhaps, we can rewrite the future!
For all the world, it looks like the BIA just signed off on a “canned language, rote denial” that had little or nothing to do with the actual record and the arguments raised on appeal. Apparently, as long as the bottom line is to “dismiss” the respondent’s appeal, what goes above it is largely irrelevant to the “Deniers’ Club” that Garland employs as “appellate judges.”
In a system already struggling with a largely self-inflicted backlog of 1.7 million cases, unnecessary remands caused by poor BIA performance are NOT a “no harm, no foul” proposition. Moreover, how in good faith can Garland propose to “expedite” asylum cases at the border when many of his trial judges possess neither the expertise nor the temperament to fairly and efficiently decide asylum claims and the Trump holdover appellate body charged with providing guidance, enforcing best practices, and guaranteeing fairness is itself a major part of the problem? That’s what “designed for disaster” is all about!
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have an AG who made due process, fundamental fairness, correct results, and careful, “practical scholarly” analysis the touchstone of “his courts” and who cared enough about our justice system to appoint a BIA of real, expert judges — “practical scholars, if you will, of which there are plenty outside of EOIR — capable of focusing on and achieving the foregoing values?
Apparently, in his comfy 5th floor office at DOJ where he thinks great thoughts and does little to achieve them, Garland can’t put himself in the unnecessarily frustrating position of actual human beings and their lawyers who are subjected to EOIR’s incompetent nonsense and “judicial malpractice” on a regular basis! He doesn’t even seem capable of relating to the Courts of Appeals Judges who are constantly called upon to correct fundamental mistakes and clear injustices that Garland ignores and his DOJ attorneys mindlessly defend! Perhaps this “blind spot” is because on the DC Circuit, Garland was absolved from the task of reviewing individual petitions for review emanating from the dysfunctional Immigration Courts that he inherited from his White Nationalist predecessors.
Whatever the reason for his lackadaisical performance, America needs and deserves an AG who takes immigrant justice, racial justice, due process, and equal justice for all seriously!
“Kelly Gonzalez Aguilar is a transgender woman from Honduras. She came to the United States and applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and deferral of removal. In support, Kelly claimed • past persecution in Honduras from her uncle’s abuse, • fear of future persecution from pervasive discrimination and violence against transgender women in Honduras, and • likely torture upon return to Honduras. The immigration judge denied the applications and ordered removal to Honduras. In denying asylum, the immigration judge found no pattern or practice of persecution. Kelly appealed the denial of each application, and the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the appeal. The dismissal led Kelly to petition for judicial review. We grant the petition. On the asylum claim, any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to find a pattern or practice of persecution against transgender women in Honduras.”
Imagine what it would be like if we had an AG with the guts and decency to appoint a BIA of real judges — asylum experts who would adhere to due process and fairly, properly, and consistently interpret asylum laws rather than spewing out specious, life-destroying, bogus denials? Backlogs might even start decreasing!
Remarkably, even the Trump-appointed dissenting Circuit Judge Joel M. Carson concedes that EOIR easily could have decided this case in favor for the respondent and perhaps should have.
No doubt a person could view the record before us differently—the majority does so today—and I might on de novo review.
He then willingly gets lost in a forest of bogus reasons for abusing “standards of review” as an excuse for Article III Judges to avoid responsibility for life-threatening miscarriages of justice.
In stark terms, a reasonable judge could have saved this respondent and probably should have. But, this IJ and the BIA chose not to. So, who cares because it’s only a brown-skinned asylum seeker whose life is so insignificant that we should relegate it to the realm of chance and happenstance. Next case, please!
Asylum law, according to the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca is supposed to be interpreted generously in favor of protection. If legal protection from persecution or death is one possible outcome, it should be the the only acceptable outcome! Saying that some humans should potentially die while others be protected basically depending on a Federal Judge’s personal philosophy and mood on a particular day isn’t just legally wrong and a denial of due process and equal protection — it’s immoral!
The point is obvious. Better qualified judges at the BIA would put an end to this treatment of life or death decisions as a “crap shoot” — dependent on which IJ is drawn, the composition of the BIA “panel,” the Federal Circuit in which the case arises, the “luck of the draw” on the Circuit panel, and probably the “day of the week.” This is no way to run a justice system. And, Garland and his complicit lieutenants know that!
A better AG would long ago have installed a better BIA. It’s classic “Refugee Roulette” ☠️⚰️ being promoted by a Dem Administration! Instead of putting an end to this disgraceful “intellectual game of chance with human lives” being played by ivory tower bureaucrats and judges who have “immunized” themselves from the traumatic real life consequences of their bad decisions, Garland has chosen to “play along”
When he’s not carrying out Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum policies @ EOIR with Miller’s holdover acolytesas “judges” and “senior executives,” Garland is busy helping Trump and his fellow GOP insurrectionists “run out the clock” on the House Jan. 6 Panel!
“Students in the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) worked to obtain asylum for a voting rights activist from Nigeria. This case prompted the Clinic to develop a resource to assist asylees in understanding their rights.
The clinic took on the case of a Nigerian woman, Chioma*, who had been active in organizing women and youth in the Delta region to vote against corrupt political candidates. She drew crowds of women and youth as an effective organizer, simultaneously drawing the ire of incumbent politicians. Armed thugs targeted Chioma in her home in 2019, resulting in her hospitalization. Refusing to back down, she later attended a political event where she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Deciding she would rather stay alive for her children – even if far away – Chioma fled to the U.S. and left her family behind.
Clinic students Forrest Lindelof and Chizoba Kagha, both 3Ls, picked up Chioma’s case in the fall semester and worked under the supervision of Associate Dean of Clinical and Experiential Programs Lindsay M. Harris to complete her declaration, a detailed narrative of what she had endured in Nigeria and what she feared. The students crafted a legal brief with supporting evidence they obtained through working with a country conditions expert, a therapist and a medical doctor. The legal arguments were challenging because of the client’s dual citizenship in Cameroon and Nigeria; they needed to argue she would face persecution in both nations. The students had to become experts in the complex political dynamics at play in both countries, along with the citizenship laws.
This case also hit close to home for both students. Kagha shared, “I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who relocated to the United States in hopes of a better opportunity for their future children. When we began working with our client, I immediately felt a connection to her.”
As well, Lindelof related the client’s story to that of his immigrant mother. “As the son of an immigrant, it was not difficult to imagine my mother experiencing similar maltreatment and vulnerability. We worked that much harder, knowing that our work would have a meaningful impact on our client and her future.”
Moreover, the students got to know their client and were inspired by Chioma’s strength, resilience and personality. Lindelof described her as “jolly and good-humored” and the case as “a great source of pride.” Kagha added, “Her personality lit up a room, and her passion for helping others was inspiring.”
After working diligently with the client to prepare for the asylum interview, the students accompanied her to the asylum interview in November. After extensive questioning, Kagha delivered the closing statement, drawing together all the key issues in the case.
In January, Lindelof, Kagha and Harris received word that Chioma’s asylum application had been approved. The client was ecstatic, as was the UDC Law team. “To be able to sit in the asylum office as a Nigerian female student attorney delivering the closing statement for a Nigerian female client is a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life,” said Kagha.
Chioma was eager to be reunited with her spouse and children as soon as possible, but she was worried about accessing the asylee benefits to which she is entitled. Dean Harris has written about these benefits in depth in a 2016 article, From Surviving to Thriving: An Examination of Asylee Integration in the United States. Due to Chioma’s questions and concerns about her accessing public benefits rendering her a “public charge,” Dean Harris brought on 1L Clinical Associate Kendra Li to create a helpful one-page resource, Asylum and Public Charge. This resource clearly explains that asylees like Chioma are exempt from the public charge bar to adjustment of status to become a lawful permanent resident and eventually U.S. citizen.
“The best way to master a subject is to teach it to someone else,” Li said of developing the resource. “The public charge rule isn’t a complicated topic, but the process of researching it and distilling that research into a digestible and accessible product really cemented the learning.”
The document answers questions common for Chioma and other asylees. Li explained the need for creating this resource to answer these questions not only for the client in this case but countless other asylees. “Even though the Trump administration’s attempt to expand the public charge rule couldn’t, by law, apply to asylum seekers, it unsurprisingly – and perhaps deliberately – created a chilling effect well beyond the categories of immigrants it actually impacted,” Li said. “Our country is stronger and more just when the public benefits we provide reach all the people they’re meant to lift up, so it’s important to get the right information out there.”
Lindelof, under Harris’s supervision, quickly filed petitions to bring Chioma’s children and spouse to the United States and is now working to expedite those requests. Since Chioma was forced to flee Nigeria in 2019, thugs hired by political actors have targeted her husband at least five times, searching for Chioma and her whereabouts. The Clinic will stand by Chioma and her family throughout the lengthy process of family reunification and consular processing at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. In the meantime, Chioma hopes to reengage in organizing and contribute to her community in the United States.
All three students reflected on how this case and their time engaging with the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic have enriched their legal education and helped them prepare for their careers.
“It is tough to express how meaningful my clinic experience was at UDC Law,” Lindelof said. “I came to law school with a background in psychology, having done a lot of fulfilling work with children with disabilities and individuals who suffered from addiction. I had not quite felt that same sense of fulfillment until my time at the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic. It renewed my passion for the law.”
Li “came to law school to practice immigration law and chose UDC for its clinical program.” She added, “I’m very appreciative to be involved as a 1L. This was a great first-year project. If this one pager helps just one person, it’ll have been well worth the effort.”
Kagha chose to attend UDC Law because of her “desire to positively impact the lives of others, especially people who look like me. To be able to sit in the asylum office as a Nigerian female student attorney delivering the closing statement for a Nigerian female client is a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
Lindelof added praise for Dean Harris and the ways in which working with her have helped him narrow down his post-law school path. “Working with a supervisor with such tremendous drive and passion was infectious. Dean Harris did a great job tying the clinic’s content to racial justice and deficiencies in the justice system, which impacted my philosophy about the law and my general outlook on the world. It also drove me to seek out a career in immigration. I am humbled at the opportunity that I will be working for the D.C. Affordable Law Firm and practicing hopefully both family law and immigration next year, which happen to be the clinics I was a part of at UDC.”
*Name changed to preserve anonymity.”
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Congrats to my friend Dean Harris and her terrific students on saving another life in a system that often eats up humanity without much regard for justice.
This case is a prime example of why “expedited” asylum calendars are a bad idea that 1) impedes effective preparation and representation by attorneys; 2) underestimates the complexity of many asylum cases, particularly under today’s skewed, often hyper technical, anti-asylum framework established and promoted by the BIA; 3) violates due process and best practices by encouraging judges to focus on speed and artificial time limits, rather than using careful scholarship along with fair and careful procedures to achieve correct results.
This also shows the extreme harm caused by the Trump-Miller White Nationalist “public charge sham” and the damage to the integrity of our justice system of a intellectually dishonest, imperious GOP Supremes’ majority who enabled Trump’s cruelty and evil nonsense to corrupt justice in America. (The Supremes had improperly lifted a correct nationwide injunction against the Trump Administration’s scofflaw scheme, before the Biden Administration finally was allowed to withdraw the case from the Court.)
It’s also interesting that the task of “setting the record straight” on the chilling effects of the former Trump policy fell to Dean Harris and the IHRC. In a more functional and just system, one might envision such public information efforts being undertaken by the Government!
Additionally, Dean Harris directly ties the meltdown and systemic unfairness of our Immigration Courts to the overall problems of racism and lack of equal justice in our country. That’s a lesson that could profit AG Garland and his lieutenants who so far have mostly pretended that the dysfunctional, biased, and broken Immigration Courts exist in a bubble beyond the other problems facing our democracy. There will be no equal justice in American without equal justice for immigrants!
Report on Boston Asylum Office finds disproportionately low acceptance rates, bias against applicants
The office serving asylum seekers in and around Maine has the second lowest approval rate in the nation, according to a report by Maine immigrant advocacy groups.
The Boston Asylum Office has the second lowest acceptance rate of any office in the nation, and granted asylum to only 11 percent of its applicants in 2021, according to a report by Maine legal aid organizations handling immigration cases and advocates for reform.
The report says the office that serves asylum seekers in and around Maine is plagued by bias and burnout, and that its low grant rate is “driven by a culture of suspicion” toward asylum seekers.
The process of seeking asylum in the United States begins with an application to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. Applicants must prove they are fleeing a country in which they previously suffered persecution or were at risk of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
Applications go through asylum offices first, which can either grant asylum from the outset or refer an application to an immigration court for a judge to consider.
Jennifer Bailey, an attorney for the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project and one of the report’s authors, said almost all asylum seekers she works with eventually obtain asylum status through immigration court, after failing to be granted asylum at the Boston Asylum Office. But the court process can take years, and, while they’re waiting, applicants aren’t able to access federal student aid, social services or educational opportunities. Even worse, they spend that time away from their families, who can still be at risk.
“It’s not uncommon for people’s (families) left at home to die while they’re waiting, or to be lost within the violence,” Bailey said.
Collaborating with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project on the report were the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Maine School of Law, the ACLU of Maine and a visiting lecturer at Amherst College in Massachusetts who spent eight years waiting on a decision from the Boston Asylum Office and was ultimately denied in May 2021. Today, he and his family live in Canada.
During its first five years, the Boston office – which opened in 2015 and processes about 5,600 applications a year – granted roughly 15 percent of its asylum applications on average, the report states. Meanwhile, offices in San Francisco and New Orleans were accepting asylum requests at rates that were more than three times higher. Nationally, the acceptance rate from 2015 to 2020 was 28 percent, the report says.
The report acknowledged that asylum officers who approve or refer cases to court face a “complex and essential” list of responsibilities. Being overworked and having less time to consider cases often results in asylum officers sending more referrals to immigration court, said some former officers cited in the report.
Meanwhile, supervising officers play an “outsized” role in the asylum-granting process, according to the report. If an asylum officer recommends granting asylum and the supervisor disagrees, the officer could face retaliation in the form of more work or a negative performance evaluation, the report states.
PRESUMPTION OF FRAUD
The report’s authors contend that their research “strongly suggests” that Boston’s asylum office doesn’t consider applications from a neutral stance, “but rather presumes they must be fraudulent or pose a security threat.” Of 21 trainings for asylum officers mentioned in the report, 14 were focused on fraud detection. Former officers told the report’s authors that constantly hearing concerns about fraud and credibility made them think such problems were more prevalent than they were.
“They’re telling their story, which, no matter what, can involve this unimaginable trauma of torture and violence or sexual violence or death,” Bailey said of asylum seekers. “Put yourself in that position and imagine how hard it is to talk about the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life, and having this officer – who has the power to help you and your family – say ‘No, I don’t believe you.’”
According to the report, bias and skepticism in the office extend to certain countries. The Boston Asylum Office granted only 4 percent of asylum applications from the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2015 to 2020, even though the U.S. has acknowledged significant human rights violations in that country, including unlawful killings and torture, the report says. The office granted only 2 percent of its applications from Angola, another country where there is known abuse.
The Newark Asylum Office in New Jersey, which also serves some of New England, granted asylum to 17 percent of its applicants from Angola and 33 percent of its applicants from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
English-speaking applicants are nearly twice as likely to be granted asylum as non-English speakers, who are referred to immigration court 80 percent of the time, the report says. Asylum-seekers who can speak English are referred to immigration court just under 60 percent of the time.
. . . .
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Read the rest of Emily’s fine article at the link.
I did lots of DRC cases over 13 years on the trial bench! Most had lawyers and were extremely well-documented. Often ICE didn’t oppose grants (prior to Trump).
In Arlington, with agreement from the parties, they were candidates for the “short docket.” Nearly all the DRC cases “referred” from the Arlington Asylum Office were granted upon “de novo” review in Immigration Court.
This is a prime example of how our asylum system seriously regressed under Trump and has not been fixed by Garland and Mayorkas! No wonder our Immigration Courts are hopelessly and unnecessarily backlogged with an astounding 1.6 million pending cases. Bad judging, systemic anti-asylum bias, lack of competence, and gross mismanagement by DOJ and DHS are taking a toll on democracy and humanity!
Pathetically and disingenuously, USCIS tries to blame their malfeasance and lack of competence on “the pandemic.” That drew one of the more perceptive public comments I’ve seen recently:
Pandemic restrictions didn’t create bias in other asylum offices – that’s a totally inadequate excuse.
For sure! Just like it’s a pretext for the elimination of our legal asylum system at the border that Garland disgracefully defends! Think that the “anti-asylum culture” problem ends with USCIS? Guess again?
Former Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions was never bashful about sharing his White Nationalist, nativist, xenophobic falsehoods and myths about asylum seekers with his “captive” Immigration Judges. That’s right, for those not “in the know,” amazingly the “courts” that are supposed to provide expert legal precedents on asylum law and give a “fresh look” to those cases not granted by the Asylum Office aren’t “courts” at all as most Americans know them. They are run by the chief law enforcement official of the United States, the Attorney General, even though they are called “Immigration Courts.”
Sessions actually made the following statement, unsupported by any hard evidence, to a group of his wholly owned “judges” on October 12, 2017:
“We also have dirty immigration lawyers who are encouraging their otherwise unlawfully present clients to make false claims of asylum providing them with the magic words needed to trigger the credible fear process.”
At the same time, he announced that he was, on his own motion and over the objection of the DHS and the applicant, “undoing” the leading BIA precedent recognizing gender-based harm as a ground for asylum. For a good measure, he also warned his supposedly, but not really, “fair and impartial judges” that he expected them to strictly apply precedent — HIS precedents, that is. In other words, start cranking out those asylum denials or your career might be in peril!
Some judges chose to resign or retire. Some kept on doing their jobs conscientiously, legitimately “working around” Sessions’s poorly reasoned and factually inaccurate anti-asylum precedents. Many, however, chose to “go along to get along” with the anti-asylum program — some happily (there were reportedly some cheers and applause when Sessions announced his cowardly assault on vulnerable refugee women of color), some not.
So clearly wrong and totally off-base was Sessions’s assault on asylum-seeking women, primarily those of color, that even the otherwise timid and reticent AG Merrick Garland had to reverse it during his first year in office and restore the prior BIA precedent. However, there has been no further guidance from the BIA on properly and generously applying this potentially favorable, life-saving precedent.
President Biden charged Garland and Mayorkas with developing regulations on gender-based claims by October 2021. Obviously, that date has come and gone with the regulations still MIA!
Think that promoting a culture of xenophobia, racism, and overt bias has no effect? During the Trump Administration, although conditions for refugees, and particularly for refugee women, worsened over that time, the Immigration Court asylum grant rate fell precipitously — from more than 50% during the mid-years of the Obama Administration to only 23% during FY 2020, the last full year of the Trump regime.
The Immigration Courts and especially the BIA were “packed” by Sessions and his successor “Billy the Bigot” Barr with questionably qualified “judges” perceived to be willing to do their nativist bidding. Inexplicably, Garland has been unwilling to “unpack” them, despite these being DOJ attorney positions in the “excepted service,” NOT life-tenured Federal Judges.
Consequently, life or death asylum decisions today depend less on the legal merits of an applicant’s case than they do on the particular Immigration Judge assigned, the composition of the BIA “panel” on appeal, the Federal Circuit in which the case arises, and even the composition of the panel of U.S. Circuit Judges who might review the case.
They also depend on whether the applicant is fortunate enough to have a lawyer (not provided by the USG). Any unrepresented, often non-English-speaking asylum seeker has little or no chance of negotiating the intentionally arcane, opaque, unnecessarily hyper technical, and “user unfriendly” asylum system in Immigration “Court” without expert help.
Almost every week, the Circuit Courts of Appeals publish major decisions pointing out elementary legal and factual errors by the BIA’s “deportation railroad.” But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg! The vast majority of life-threatening errors by the Immigration Courts go uncorrected as the applicants are unable to pursue their cases to the Courts of Appeals or are “duressed” by DHS detention in substandard conditions into giving up viable claims.
Check out some of these denial rates by ten of Barr’s BIA appointees who previously served as Immigration Judges. Those judges are listed with their asylum denial rates, according to Syracuse University’s 2021 TRAC Reports:
Michael P. Baird (91.4%),
William A. Cassidy (99%),
V. Stuart Couch (93.3%),
Deborah K. Goodwin (91%),
Stephanie E. Gorman (92%),
Keith Hunsucker (85%),
Sunita Mahtabfar (98.7%),
Philip J. Montante, Jr. (96.3%),
Kevin W. Riley (90.4%),
Earle B. Wilson (98.2%)
Gee, these guys make even the artificially high nationwide asylum denial rates (76%) resulting from Trump’s all-out assault on due process and the rule of law look low by comparison! Gosh, only one of these Dudes was even within 10% (just barely) of that already outrageously high, artificially “reverse engineered” national denial rate.
Yet, inexplicably, these virulently anti-asylum judges continue to serve and negatively shape asylum law under Garland! Even “pre-Trump,” most of them avoided granting any asylum, in the face of precedents supposedly requiring generous application of the law in accordance with U.N. guidance and recognizing gender-based persecution as real.
So, it’s little surprise that no meaningful positive guidance or helpful interpretation has come from Garland’s BIA that might lead to expedited and consistent asylum grants to the many meritorious asylum cases now buried in his burgeoning 1.6 million case Immigration Court backlog! No wonder civil rights, human rights, equal justice, and Constitutional law experts consider Garland to be a failure as AG!
To date, Garland has appointed only one BIA Appellate Judge out of 21! That was to fill an existing vacancy. Judge Andrea Saenz is a superbly qualified asylum expert with scholarly credentials, “real life” experience representing asylum seekers in Immigration Court, clerking experience in those courts, and proven intellectual and practical leadership capabilities.
But, we need a “BIA of Judge Saenzes” — like yesterday! The talent is out there! But, Garland and his lieutenants have been too dilatory, tone deaf, and shockingly indifferent to these glaring due process, expertise, and racial justice issues to bring in the qualified judges and judicial administrators to fix his unjust, unfair, and grotesquely inefficient “courts.” Thus, the dysfunction grows, festers, and eventually destroys, maims, and kills! Is this really an appropriate “legacy” for a Dem Administration?
Today, in a WashPost OpEd, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President & CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, points out:
Why are members of this outrageous “protection deniers’ club” still on Garland’s broken and biased Immigration Court bench? You don’t have to be a human rights scholar or Constitutional law expert to see that there is something seriously wrong here that Garland is sweeping under the rug!
Yes, the best answer is an independent Article I Immigration Court, free from the mismanagement and political shenanigans of the DOJ, with a merit-based selection system for judges. But, that doesn’t absolve Garland from the responsibility to fix the existing system NOW before more lives are lost, futures ruined, and American justice irretrievably degraded!
The current racially discriminatory, scofflaw, patently unjust parody of a “court” system being run by Garland is as unacceptable as it is immoral!
Garland and Mayorkas have allowed this approach to asylum seekers to flourish on their watch. That raises serious questions about their suitability for their current positions! Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“Interim Regulations” Aren’t The Answer!
Today, the Biden Administration released new “Interim Asylum Regulations” that appear designed to fail. https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2022-06148.pdf. That’s because they don’t address the real competency, leadership, and legal problems plaguing the current system!
I won’t claim to have waded through every word of this entire 512-page mishmash of largely impenetrable bureaucratic gobbledygook. But, I can see it’s more tone-deaf micromanagement of the Immigration Court, along with the usual, arbitrary and capricious, unrealistic “off the wall” “time limits” that are guaranteed to make things worse, not better. It’s basically more of Garland’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and his “Treadmill for Immigration Attorneys” that have already helped fuel unprecedented backlogs amidst wildly inconsistent results and a steady stream of life-threatening errors from his dysfunctional “courts.”
As if the answer to a poorly functioning, hopelessly self-backlogged, incompetent, biased, and unfair system is to “speed it up!” Come on, man! That suggests, quite incorrectly, that the primary problems in our asylum system are something other than lack of competence, integrity, expertise, and leadership at DHS and DOJ!
In reality, Garland’s defective “assembly line justice” at EOIR is already cutting so many corners and being so careless and “denial focused” that a steady stream of elementary legal errors show up in the Courts of Appeals every week. How is speeding up an already unfair and error plagued system going to make it better?
The real answer is to move the many grantable asylum cases that pass credible fear through the system correctly, fairly, on a reasonable, timely, predictable basis, with representation. That requires more and better trained Asylum Officers; different, better Immigration Judges who know how to recognize and grant asylum and keep the parties moving through the system; a new BIA of practical scholars who are due-process-oriented human rights experts to set favorable, practical asylum and procedural precedents and to keep IJs, AOs, and counsel for both sides in line; and close cooperation and advance coordination with the private bar and NGOs to insure representation of all asylum seekers.
This “interim regulation” avoids and obfuscates the necessary personnel replacement, attitude adjustment, and changes to the “culture of denial and deterrence” required in the Executive Branch for our asylum system to work! I predict colossal failure!
Get ready to litigate, NDPA! This is an “in your face,” largely unilateral, insulting approach. Rather than respecting your expertise, dedication, abilities, and counsel in fundamentally changing this system, Mayorkas and Garland intend arrogantly to “shove it down your throats and the throats of asylum seekers” with their inferior personnel, a toxic culture of denial, bad attitudes, and poor lawyering! Accept the challenge to resist!`
For the last year, “Courtside” has been ripping the incredibly poor, timid, stunning lack of vision leadership, expertise, common sense, and morality in the Biden Administration’s failure to restore and expand a robust overseas refugee program and to enforce the rule of law and due process in our asylum system at the border and in the US. Even as I write this, Garland’s failed BIA, with too many Trump restrictionist holdover judges, continues to crank out bad asylum precedents and anti-immigrant legally incorrect appellate decisions and precedents.
DOJ mindlessly continues to advance and defend the indefensible in Federal Court. It’s “Miller Lite” on steroids! Squandering taxpayer money, wasting scarce pro bono resources, and worst of all, endangering human lives!
This guy has to be thrilled with Garland’s approach to human rights, racial justice, and due process @ DOJ! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
Essential human rights issues like providing definitive, generous, positive guidance to move gender-based asylum cases through the system, correcting “intentionally overly restrictive” and ridiculously hyper-technical, legally wrong, highly impractical applications of supposedly “generous” asylum laws, lack of common sense, expertise, understanding, and humanity remain endemic in Garland’s broken “court” system and the USCIS Asylum Offices which are supposed to be under their legal guidance.
The border effectively remains illegally and irrationally closed to refugees seeking asylum! Absurdly, the decisions as to who lives and who dies are left to the unfettered, unreviewable, “discretion” of Border Patrol Agents who are glaringly unqualified to make them. There aren’t even any known criteria in effect!
Indeed, that’s the precise reason why Congress created Asylum Officers and put them and Immigration Judges into the life or death asylum screening process, only to have Trump abrogate the law as Federal Courts meekly and fecklessly stood by! Hardly America’s finest moment!
There is plenty of irresponsibility to go around! But, dilatory “What Me Worry” AG Merrick Garland and his feckless lieutenants Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta, Kristen Clarke, and Liz Prelogar, along with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, deserve “special censure” for the brewing, unnecessarily out of control humanitarian and equal justice crisis!
Garland’s tone-deaf approach to human rights and the rule of law now threatens the international order and the lives of perhaps millions of refugees and asylum seekers! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
The Biden administration’s immigration policy to date has been shambling. It can now do one big thing right: step up, grant humanitarian parole and help resettle Ukrainian refugees.
Catherine Rampell Opinion Columnist Washington Post
Trump’s xenophobic policies had consequences beyond the cruelty inflicted while he was in office. Ultimately, they hobbled our ability to provide aid during a humanitarian catastrophe and thereby protect our own national security interests. Now, Biden must not only respond to the current crisis but also repair our institutions so that we have greater capacity to deal with future ones.
I’m sure traumatized Ukrainians and Russian dissidents being improperly turned back at our border were comforted by the following tone-deaf blather from Mayorkas as reported by Deepa Fernandes in the SF Chron:
Deepa Fernandes Immigration Reporter SF Chronicle PHOTO: SF Chron
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas told reporters that Border Patrol agents were reminded they have some leeway with regard to enforcing Title 42, particularly when it comes to those fleeing the crisis in Ukraine, BuzzFeed News reported.
“This was policy guidance that reminded (border officers) of those individualized determinations and their applicability to Ukrainian nationals as they apply to everyone else,” the online news outlet quoted Mayorkas as telling reporters.
Come on, man! You’ve got to be kidding me!
Belatedly, it appears that the Biden Administration is now “considering” restoring the rule of law at the borders (something they actually promised during the election), according toAlexandra Meeks over at CNN:
ALexandra Meeks Current News Reporter CNN PHOTO: Linkedin
The Biden administration is preparing for the potential of mass migration to the US-Mexico border when a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule ends. The influx is expected because officials are considering the possibility of terminating a public health order known as Title 42, which border authorities have relied on to turn away migrants, sources familiar with the discussions said. Internal documents, first reported by Axios, estimate around 170,000 people may be coming to the US border and some 25,000 migrants are already in shelters in Mexico. The Department of Homeland Security has asked department personnel to volunteer at the Mexico border in response.
But, it’s not clear that they have any real plan in mind. That’s certainly the case in Garland’s dysfunctional, astoundingly backlogged (1.6 million known cases) Immigration “Courts” led by a Trump restrictionist BIA. “Gauleiter” Stephen Miller must evilly chuckle every morning at how Garland has left his “designed for White Nationalism” system largely in place and continuing to shaft and screw asylum seekers on a daily basis.
And, no, 170,000 migrants arriving at the border, not all of whom are seeking asylum, isn’t a “mass migration” emergency! It’s a fairly predictable movement of migrants at a pace that should be well within the capabilities of our nation.
Treat them with respect. Promptly and properly screen them with qualified Asylum Officers. Timely welcome those many who qualify for protection with competent expert Immigration Judges. End the anti-asylum nonsense and move the many grantable asylum, withholding, and CAT cases through the system. Develop humane, orderly responses for those who are rejected. Get in place a new BIA that understands asylum law, due process, and human rights. Empower them to “knock heads” of IJs and Asylum Officers who won’t let go of the White Nationalist “reject, don’t protect” program!”
It’s not “rocket science.” 🚀 Not by a long shot!
No, an “emergency mass migration situation” is 3.2 million refugees fleeing war in Ukraine in three weeks and arriving in allied nations like Poland, Romania, and Moldova who have far fewer resources and ability to respond than the U.S.! These are also nations who legitimately fear that they could be next on Russia’s “hit list.”
And, while the humanitarian crisis is brewing, what’s Garland up to? He beefing up his already-record-setting Immigration Court backlog with “kiddie cases” (0-4 year olds, incredibly) — to the extent anyone can even figure it out, given his notoriously flawed and unprofessional record keeping at EOIR. See, e.g., https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/681/.
Garland and his top lieutenants are too busy filling the Immigration Courts with these desperados in the 0-4 age group to worry about restoring due process or treating asylum seekers fairly! PHOTO: Sean Choe, Creative Commons License
Honestly! But, don’t say that “Courtside,” Jeffrey Chase Blog, Dan Kowalski, ImmigrationProf Blog, CGRS, Human Rights First, NIJC, AILA, KIND, NCIJ, ABA, and many other experts didn’t warn against this grotesque failure long ago — often predating the 2020 election!
I understand that “no fly zones” are more complicated than most American pols and media wags think and that there are challenges to waging war from afar without actually declaring war on Russia. But, repairing our refugee, asylum, and immigration systems, and restoring due process to our courts are not in this category of difficulty.
It’s beyond time for the Biden Administration, particularly Mayorkas and Garland, to get the lead out, grow backbones, get rid of the remnants of Trumpism in their ranks— personnel, substance, process — and run a refugee and asylum legal system that serves our and our allies’ needs. One that is values and law based! One that our nation can be proud of, rather than embarrassed before the world! End the Clown Show, in Falls Church and throughout our muddling immigration and (non) human rights bureaucracy!🤡
The Garland/Mayorkas “Plan” for human rights and immigrant justice is proving as deadly as it is dysfunctional. PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Time’s a wasting and people are dying! ⚰️ Enough of “Amateur Night at the Bijou.”☠️ Nobody’s laughing!🤮
“Oh, Great and Exalted Masters at DHS Enforcement, how high would you like your humble servants here at the BIA to jump?” https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review Board of Immigration Appeals
When the Department of Homeland Security raises the mandatory bar for filing a frivolous asylum application under section 208(d)(6) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(6) (2018), an Immigration Judge must make sufficient findings of fact and conclusions of law on whether the requirements for a frivolousness determination under Matter of Y-L-, 24 I&N Dec. 151 (BIA 2007), have been met.
FOR THE RESPONDENT: Elias Z. Shamieh, Esquire, San Francisco, California
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Jennifer L. Castro, Assistant Chief Counsel
BEFORE: Board Panel: WILSON and GOODWIN, Appellate Immigration Judges. Dissenting Opinion: GREER, Appellate Immigration Judge.
WILSON, Appellate Immigration Judge: [Opinion]
For those interested in what the law actually says (clearly an “endangered minority” @ Garland’s BIA), here’s key language from Judge Greer’s dissent:
In my view, when an Immigration Judge elects to undertake the analysis set forth in our precedent under Matter of Y-L-, either independently or at the request of the DHS, and determines that the application is frivolous, then the plain statutory language requires the entry of a frivolousness finding as part of the Immigration Judge’s decision. But whether the Immigration Judge must conduct that analysis in the first place because the DHS requests it is a different question. This key distinction was recognized by the Second Circuit in stating that Immigration Judges “regularly exercise discretion when deciding whether to initiate a frivolousness inquiry.” Mei Juan Zheng, 672 F.3d at 186.
Requiring the adjudicator, either independently or at the request of the DHS, to engage in this analysis because the respondent made a material misrepresentation upends current practice by creating a rigid structure not mandated by statute. It equates adverse credibility with frivolousness, which I view as conflicting with the case law. It also removes discretion from the Immigration Judge and transfers it to the DHS. Accordingly, the majority’s interpretation constitutes an unwarranted expansion of the frivolousness provisions.
Although the majority casts this question in terms of whether an Immigration Judge may “ignore” a mandatory bar to asylum, the question is whether the Immigration Judge has the authority to make a judgment about pursuing a frivolousness inquiry. This Immigration Judge did not ignore a request from DHS to consider frivolousness. Rather, she entertained it and made an independent judgment not to proceed based on particular facts and circumstances in this case after deliberation. As discussed, the DHS did not question the judgment she made, which is a critical distinction; rather the DHS questions the ability of the Immigration Judge to make this judgment at all.2
I interpret the language and structure of the statute and development of relevant case law, combined with the sequencing of the frivolousness inquiry and its consequences, to demonstrate the discretionary nature of the frivolousness inquiry. And, absent any challenge to how the Immigration Judge exercised her discretion in this case, which I consider to have been waived, I would dismiss the appeal.
2 The relevant factors for the Immigration Judge to assess in making a threshold determination whether to invoke the frivolousness inquiry are a separate issue not implicated by the posture of this case.
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BIA to IJs: “When our overlords @ DHS tell you to jump, your duty is to say ‘how high, my masters!’”
Here, a correct (basically, uncontested on the merits, as Judge Greer points out) grant of a waiver was reversed just because DHS wanted “control” over the judges. “How dare a ‘mere employee’ of the AG exercise discretion in the face of the ICE ACC’s demand? Do these guys think they are ‘real’ judges? Let’s tell our buddy Merrick to get his toadies back in line like they were under Sessions and Barr!” How does the “holdover” BIA’s steady stream of incorrect decisions, institutionalized bias, and “worst practices” advance justice?
The “Biden-Era BIA” is building a legacy of bad law, poor judging, and unnecessarily broken lives. Not exactly what the Biden Administration promised during the election! And, it goes without saying that requiring a fact-heavy “full Y-L- analysis” at the unilateral demand of the DHS will increase the backlog as Garland “shoots for 2 million” in his dysfunctional and chronically misdirected “courts.”
The whole issue is devoted to addressing the critical due process, fundamental fairness, and ethical issues in Immigration Court with articles by NAIJ President Judge Mimi Tsankov, Judge Samuel B. Cole, Professor Michele Pistone of the VIISTA Villanova Project and others in addition to Joan.
“After an immigration judge ordered him removed from the United States, Olawole Oluwajana appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals and retained counsel to represent him. But the government was slow in providing a copy of Oluwajana’s immigration file, without which his attorney could not prepare a brief. The Board granted one extension but denied a second, suggesting that Oluwajana instead submit his brief with a motion seeking leave to file it late. When he did so, less than two weeks after the submission deadline, the Board denied the motion in a cursory—and factually erroneous—footnote. And having rejected the brief, the Board upheld the removal order without considering Oluwajana’s allegations of error by the immigration judge. Based on the undisputed circumstances of this case, we conclude that the Board abused its discretion by unreasonably rejecting Oluwajana’s brief. We therefore grant the petition for review, vacate the Board’s order, and remand for further proceedings.”
Here, the BIA took 7 months to set a briefing schedule, didn’t get the file to counsel in a timely manner, then “dinged” the R’s counsel for being 12 days late in filing a brief on a complex issue where input from legal counsel would likely be “outcome determinative!”
But, along the way, “Garland’s Clown Show” 🤡 fabricated a 33 day “late period.” And, to add insult to injury, they ignored their own regulations and instructions to counsel.
Even OIL couldn’t defend this one! But, Garland nevertheless retains the “Miller Lite” Clowns from his predecessors’ “whatever it takes to deny and deport assembly line!” No quality, no fairness, no accountability! Just “anything goes” when it’s “only immigrants of color!”
Briefing schedules aren’t “rocket science.” But Garland’s “Miller Lite” holdover gang can’t even get the simple stuff right!
How is this “expert judging” entitled to “deference?”
How is having the Circuit spend time cleaning up Garland’s messes an acceptable use of Article III resources?
What happens to the many human victims of Garland’s unjust and unprofessional system who don’t have Scott Pollock & Co. to take Garland to the Court of Appeals?
What happens to Garland’s victims when the CA is on “autopilot,” which often happens?
Is it any wonder that “judges” who would rather fight with attorneys than read their briefs are running an astounding 1.6 million case backlog and an appellate backlog of 82,000, up approximately 7 times from just four years ago?
Wonder why an AG running a “second (or perhaps third or fourth) class justice system” for people of color isn’t a very effective leader or force for racial justice in America?
Few Americans favor mass deportations, and with good reason — a large majority of the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States have been here for at least a decade, including more than 4 in 5 Mexican migrants. Many are fixtures in their community, with U.S. citizen spouses and children; the vast majority are employed, and some own their homes and businesses.
So it was not a radical idea when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued new enforcement guidelines last fall that urged deportation agents to focus their efforts on actual threats to public and national safety, as well as border security. As for long-term migrants, the bulk of whom are law-abiding, Mr. Mayorkas urged Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to use some common sense. “The fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” he said.
. . . .
Despite the resistance, however, they appear to be having a preliminary and positive effect of tailoring enforcement to unauthorized immigrants who are dangerous. In the first 13 months of the Biden administration, 44 percent of deported migrants had been convicted of felonies or aggravated felonies, compared with just 18 percent during the Trump administration, according to internal ICE figures. For the same period, there was also a sharp jump, compared with under the Trump administration, in the number of arrests of migrants who had earlier convictions for aggravated felonies.
At the same time, the number of migrants held in ICE detention facilities has dropped sharply. At the end of February, roughly 18,000 migrants were detained, and the vast majority had no criminal record or had committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. By contrast, nearly three times as many migrants were held for much of 2019, when the Trump anti-immigrant blitz was in full force.
. . . .
It’s not lax enforcement to refrain from arresting very old or very young migrants, or to think twice about a deportation that would tear apart a family. It’s an intelligent application of the law.
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Read the full editorial at the link.
The Post is right. But, unfortunately, by not making this “smarter PD” part of an overall plan to reduce backlogs, reform the Immigration Courts, re-establish the legal asylum and refugee systems, and end unnecessary detention, the Biden Administration has failed to take full advantage of this promising development.
By “running” from immigration improvements rather than embracing them, they also fail to to get credit for replacing the “maliciously incompetent,” demonstrably not in the national interest Trump/Miller/Homan White Nationalist nativist policies with a functioning system that actually serves the national interest and works as well as can be expected without legislative reforms.
A major problem remains the underperformance of DOJ and EOIR under AG Garland. Without the enlightened leadership and better personnel that should now be in place, Garland has failed to “leverage and build upon” improvements in DHS enforcement priorities to slash backlog and advance due process at EOIR.
Indeed, disturbingly, Garland has actually built new Immigration Court backlogat a record pace, while inexplicably relying on a “holdover Miller Lite” BIA that continues to deliver bad precedents, resulting in increased wasteful litigation and backlog-building remands from Circuit Courts. He has also ignored the many opportunities for harnessing the innovative ideas and high-level pro bono advocacy skills developed by the private sector in response to the “Trump onslaught” to dramatically advance and increase quality representation before the Immigration Courts.
The grotesque mismanagement of EOIR by the Trump DOJ resulted in a backlog of approximately 12,000 pending BIA appeals at the end of FY 2017 exploding to more than 84,000 by the end of FY 2020 — a mind-boggling 700% increase!https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1248501/download
Yet, curiously, there has been no major personnel shakeup at EOIR under Garland. The Trump-era “hand selected” BIA whose skewed anti-asylum, anti-immigrant “jurisprudence” helped create this mess remains largely intact.
Most of the EOIR senior managers who helped DOJ engineer this unmitigated disaster remain in their jobs. Garland has sent a message that there will be no accountability for “going along to get along” with the White Nationalist war on immigrants and that he isn’t interested in expertise, fundamental fairness, creativity, or dynamic leadership by example in his reeling “court system!”
Yet, Garland continues to “blow off” and “lock out” the private/NGO sector experts who could bring rational professional docket management, higher representation rates, and resulting reductions in detention to his dysfunctional system. Instead, he continues the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” approach of unilateral “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and endless “built to fail gimmicks” designed by bureaucrats to meet political agendas without meaningful input from and consideration of the views of those who have actual private sector experience litigating in his broken system.
How does the make sense? It doesn’t!
Of course, effective, dynamic, courageous management of EOIR to focus on constitutionally required due process would provoke reactions from the GOP nativist right, including obstructive litigation. That’s why Garland also needs better litigators at DOJ: Tough, experienced “due process warriors” who will aggressively and expertly defend and advance the Executive’s authority to rationally administer the law, allocate resources wisely and prudently, and to recognize and vindicate civil and constitutional rights that have been suppressed by GOP politicos and some of their reactionary Federal Judges.
Bottom line: Probably the majority of those 1.6 million individuals rotting in EOIR’s largely self-created backlog fit the Post’s “lead-in” description above: “Many are fixtures in their community, with U.S. citizen spouses and children; the vast majority are employed, and some own their homes and businesses.”
Many could be granted asylum or other protection under proper interpretations of the law or granted “cancellation of removal” but for the unrealistic, anachronistic 4,000 annual “numerical cap” imposed by Congress decades ago. Others could be granted Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) just as it recently was extended to Ukrainians in the U.S.
Very few are “criminals” or others who should be “priorities” for removal. Most are actively contributing to our society and many are paying taxes. In most cases, removing individuals in the EOIR backlog from the U.S., even if possible, would be a net loss for our society.
Yet, the uncontrolled, undifferentiated EOIR backlog prevents the Immigration Courts from working in “real time” on more recent cases that might actually be proper priorities.What’s the good of a more rational and professional system at DHS Enforcement if the Immigration Courts under Garland remain discombobulated? The system will not change without dynamic expert leadership at the top and an infusion of better judges, particularly at the appellate level where precedents are set and “best practices” and some measure of fair and consistent adjudication can be established and enforced.
Immigration is a complex, often convoluted system. Without a comprehensive plan led by outside experts that fixes the Immigration Courts and restores a robust functional asylum system at our borders, the positive enforcement changes initiated by Mayorkas will continue to have limited impact. And, ironically, that will play right into the hands of the Millers and Homans of the world who would like to see democracy fail, irrationality prevail, and cruelty rule!
In the early morning on Feb. 4, Jose boarded a packed airplane in Illinois filled with handcuffed immigrant detainees just like him. They were en route to another detention center in Oklahoma after theirs was ordered close. During the hour-and-35-minute flight, several people appeared ill, coughing and sniffling, but no one was able to socially distance. A few days later, Jose began experiencing the worst kind of sickness he had ever felt. He had contracted COVID-19. Jose joins the 1,126 other immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention who are currently being monitored and tested positive for the virus, representing a 395% surge in COVID-19 cases since January when there were only 285 reported cases.
“I was scared at one point. I’ve never been sick like that in my life,” Jose said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to die here.’”
Jose, who has asked to withhold his last name to protect his identity, is 25 years old and has lived in the U.S. since he came with his parents from Mexico at age seven; he has been in immigration detention for three months. He was originally detained in Illinois at McHenry County Jail, but when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Illinois Way Forward Act, banning private and county-run immigration detention, Jose was one of 17 people from McHenry County Jail transferred to the Kay County Jail in Oklahoma.
“We really want to focus on getting releases and getting folks out of detention, instead of transfers to another facility,” said Gabriela Viera, advocacy manager at the Detention Watch Network. “We need to continue shutting down facilities until we are in a place where there are no more facilities for people to be transferred to.”
Another person in a different immigrant detention center, Jorge, was transferred from a facility in New York to Krome Detention Center in Homestead, Florida. According to advocates from the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, he was exposed to COVID-19 and tested positive for the virus. Jorge has confirmed widespread reports that there is a complete disregard for the virus within the detention center, with no access to hand sanitizer or vaccines.
According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, both McHenry County Jail and the Jerome Combs Detention Center in Kankakee County experienced COVID-19 outbreaks among the ICE population at the time of these transfers. Advocates, public health experts, and members of Congress raised the alarm to Chicago Field Office Director Sylvie Renda in the days before the transfers about the risks of moving people to jails out of state under these circumstances, but ultimately, about 30 people were transferred from McHenry and Kankakee to Oklahoma, Indiana, and Texas.
“There was no distance between us,” Jose said. “When we got there, they just put us all in the dorm room.”
About four days after arriving in Oklahoma, Jose began feeling sick. His body ached, his sinuses were congested, and he had difficulty standing, especially during routine phone calls where there are no chairs provided. The extreme cold at night only worsened his symptoms, and he developed body shivers, chest pain, and a fever. He put in two requests to see the medic before he was finally tested for COVID-19 and confirmed that he had the virus.
“They’re not testing people regularly, and they’re not socially distancing, they’re not providing people with sufficient hygiene products,” said Diana Rashid, National Immigrant Justice Center’s managing attorney, who is representing Jose in his release request. “The spread is just going to continue.”
The medic gave him fever-reducing medication and vitamin D. He was returned to his 20-person pod and was told to remain in his bunk and try to self-isolate within his dorm room the size of a small basketball court.
“I thought they were going to move me to a cell alone,” Jose said. “But, they just left me in the room. I think I even got someone else sick.”
Jose is now recovering and feels better, but at least one other person has tested positive, with a total of nine positive cases in the detention center, according to ICE. But, Jose says that number may be even larger due to underreporting. When a person tests positive, they are put under quarantine for 10 days, meaning they cannot interact with other pods. Even worse, they are not taken out of their rooms for their court hearings, postponing an already delayed process and forcing them to stay in detention longer than necessary. According to Rashid, it would take about two to four weeks to get the first hearing in Chicago’s immigration court after a person is first detained.
“Everyone’s cases stalled for those who are in quarantine,” said Rashid.
Jose, who has been in quarantine for a majority of his detention, says that people are getting frustrated and desperate with the continued prolonging of their cases. Some are even considering signing the removal papers out of desperation.
“I just want to go ahead with my court proceedings and get out of here,” said Jose. “I want to make it to the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Immigration advocates hope more states will follow Illinois and close their detention centers. A total of 41 people were released from these jails during January in Illinois, but they believe that everyone, including Jose, should have been released on the current ICE enforcement memo guidelines. Advocates are also continuing to push for Congress to cut funding for immigration detention and enforcement and hope to invest in vital programs that uplift their communities instead, like health care, affordable housing, and education.
Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke looks for civil rights violations by state and local governments. Yet, she studiously ignores those being committed in broad daylight by her boss’s dysfunctional and biased Immigration Courts and the immigration detention empire he enables, supports, and defends.
As Alexandra’s report notes, one well-known result of prolonged detention in intentionally unsafe and substandard conditions is to “duress” individuals into giving up legal rights. Could there be a clearer violation of our Constitution going on right under Garland’s nose? I doubt it! But, no stand against these clear abuses. It’s as if “Gonzo” Sessions, “Billy the Bigot” Barr, and “Gauleiter” Stephen Miller were still calling the shots for Garland!
“The New American Gulag” (“NAG”) operates right under the noses of civil rights honcho Kristen Clarke and her boss AG Merrick Garland with their blessing. Indeed, they have “embedded courts” in the NAG! So much for the Biden Administration’s commitment to civil rights. GULAG PHOTO: Public Realm.
Almost from the “git go,” the Biden Administration has avoided dealing effectively and honestly with the “second (or third) class justice system” being inflicted by the DOJ, disproportionately targeting individuals of color and ethnic communities in America! It’s a rather glaring case of “do as I say, not as I do” that doesn’t appear to have escaped the notice of some Trump Article III judges. They turn the DOJ’s spineless “Dred Scottification” and “Miller Lite” actions and arguments back against them to undermine racial justice, fundamental fairness, and truth in all areas.
In a truly revolting🤮, yet highly revealing, interview with Savannah “Why Am I Giving Air Time To This Bad Dude” Guthrie on today’s Today Show, “Billy the Bigot” Barr made it clear that he considers corruption, lies, fascism, racism, and the final destruction of American democracy a “small price to pay” to fight the “real problem:” Progressive, humane, values-based governance in the common public interest.
But, somehow, Garland and others in the Biden Administration see no reasons to take a stand against this dangerous nonsense!
Remember folks, BTB is the overt racist who casually and glibly told Lester Holtthat “Black Lives Matter” is the “Big Lie!” He knows there will be no accountability for GOP enablers like him! Who’s the next “exclusive” for the NBC News crew, the Grand Dragon of the KKK? And, you can bet that if empowered again, the GOP will have no problem reviving the “White Nationalist Clown Show”🤡 @ DOJ.
That leaves the fight for the future of our nation to the NDPA and others who believe that America doesn’t necessarily have to spiral downhill into a “MAGAland” grave, ⚰️ but could actually become something better than we are today! It’s not a given that we can build a better nation and a better world, but it is a possibility.
Will the next generation stand up for a better future for everyone, or fulfill the nasty, backward-looking vision of lies, hate, and intolerance that BTB and the rest of the GOP right have mapped out for them?
The CLAWmobile — America’s First Due Process Powered Vehicle, Piloted by Attorney Yousof “Joe” Nesari, will be spreading the message to the Commonwealth and beyond!
CANCELLATION & LIFE AFTER WINNING: The CLAW Campaign Kicks Off
Delivered by Paul Wickham Schmidt
CLAW Headquarters, Reston, Virginia
February 27, 2022
Thank you for inviting me this afternoon. I’m honored to be here. Beyond that, I wish to congratulate and thank Neela Nesari and the rest of you for your courage, dedication, and humanity in standing up and speaking out for social justice in America.
Of course, I will start out by giving you my “standard comprehensive disclaimer.” What I’m about to tell you represents solely my views and not the views or opinions of any individual, institution, organization, or group with which I am associated, have been associated in the past, or might associate with in the future!
My time on the stage is winding down. But yours, my friends, is just beginning. You are the ones who control your destinies and must decide what kind of world you want to live in and what you want to leave behind for the next generations.
Relief for families granted cancellation of removal is a “just cause” that should be a “no-brainer” in a fair, well-functioning, human-values-based society. That neither such badly-needed specific remedial changes nor long overdue “big picture” reforms to fix our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, restore fairness and functionality to our shattered refugee and asylum programs, and make our legal immigration system robust, realistic, workable, and serving the national interest says something about our current national mood and our political leadership that should be quite concerning to you as the upcoming generation!
My friends, both our Immigration Courts and our democratic republic are in a grave existential crisis. There are powerful and well-organized forces with a very dark, exclusive, intolerant, sometimes belligerent vision of America’s future: one that reverses generations of human progress and knowledge and actively promotes intolerance, misinformation, dehumanization, and deconstruction of our democratic institutions and fundamental human values.
They actively promote an intentionally “whitewashed” version of American history: One that denies the ingenuity, creativity, and forced labor of generations of African Americans who literally built our country!It disregards the courage, tenacity, skill, and strength of Asian Americans who built our Transcontinental Railroad and literally brought our nation together. And, of course, it dismisses the legions of Hispanic Americans who have been “making America great” since before “America was America,” with their culture, hard work, determination, and commitment to the “real” American dream, not the “whitewashed” version. It basically devalues the essential contributions of almost all non-Western-European immigrants!
The future envisioned by these dark forces “x’es out” many, probably the majority, of you in this room. It says that their so-called individual rights to do as they please outweigh the common interests of society and humanity as a whole. Yet, few seem willing to challenge them and stand up for the rights and human dignity of“the others” which are being demeaned, devalued, and, in some cases, erased. Don’t let their darkness, willful ignorance, and often threatening demeanor be your future and that of generations to come.
Look around you here at the real history and the real America represented by this audience. The future is yours! Don’t let the forces of darkness and a “past that never was” deny your destiny!
Now is the time to take a stand for Due Process, fundamental fairness, human rights, human dignity, social justice, and human decency! Become the “next generation leaders” of the New Due Process Army and fight to make equal justice under law and the constitutional and human rights of everyone a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise! Due process forever!
Thanks again for inviting me and for listening.
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It was great to see in the audience some of the former students from my last “pre-pandemic in-person speech” to Professor Dree Collopy’s class at Washington College of Law at American University there as lawyers in the ranks of the NDPA!
One Year In: The Biden Administration and Asylum Policy
Developments in Fourth Circuit Case Law
Increasing Access to Pro Bono Counsel in Underserved Areas: Virginia as a Case Study
Working Across Disciplines: Best Practices for Attorneys and Mental Health Professionals in Asylum Seeker Evaluations
Country Conditions: From Page to Practice
CLE Credit and DOJ Accredited Representative Certifications
This event has been approved for 6.5 credit hours of CLE credit from Virginia and North Carolina. Attorneys seeking CLE credit must purchase tickets indicating that CLE credit is provided (indicated by “CLE” listed by the ticket type).
Attorneys from other jurisdictions who are not seeking CLE credit from Virginia or North Carolina are welcome to attend.
DOJ Accredited Representative certifications will be provided to those who register as DOJ Accredited Representatives seeking certification.
Zoom Webinar Information
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