Category: Backlogs

HERE’S WHAT THE DISHONEST SCOFFLAW OFFICIALS IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Many Who Escape From The Northern Triangle Are, In Fact, Refugees — When They Are Given Access To Competent Counsel & Fair Hearings Before Fair & Impartial Judges, They Often Succeed In Getting Protection! – Here’s Another “Real Life” Example!

“New Due Process Army” stalwart, Professor Alberto Benitez of the George Washington Law Immigration Clinic, reports:

Friends,
Please join me in congratulating Immigration Clinic student-attorney Megan Elman, and her clients, R-G, his wife, J, and their two kids, ages 10 and 5 respectively, R and L, from El Salvador.  This afternoon, after a two and a half-hour hearing, IJ Cynthia S. Torg granted the clients’ asylum application.
R-G was a maritime police officer, and because of that status, he and his family were threatened with death by mara gang members.  During an outing at the beach, the family had a gun pointed at them while being threatened. One of the maras told R-G that his order was only to tell him to move away, but he wished he had been given the order to kill him, because he would have preferred to cut off R-G’s head and hang it from  a tree.  Afterward, R and J tried to file a complaint with their local police, but were advised by the police not to bother and instead flee the country.  That night, unknown, masked, armed men appeared outside their house.  Eventually the men left, but the family decided to flee to the USA.
Congratulations also to Sarah DeLong, Jonathan Bialosky,  Solangel González, and Sam Xinyuan Li, who previously worked on this case. 
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Alberto Manuel Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law
Director, Immigration Clinic
The George Washington University Law School
650 20th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-7463
(202) 994-4946 fax
abenitez@law.gwu.edu
THE WORLD IS YOURS…
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Contrary to what the Trump Administration and EOIR Management would have you believe, these types of cases are neither unique nor extraordinary in their factual setting. I encountered lots of “slam dunk” Northern Triangle asylum, withholding, and/or CAT cases at the Arlington Immigration Court.
What is unusual is that these individuals; 1) got access to the hearing process, 2) had access to competent pro bono counsel, 3) had sufficient time in a non-detained setting to gather evidence in support of their applications, 4) were given sufficient time to fully present their cases in court, 5) didn’t have to wait many years for their final hearing, and 6) and perhaps most significantly, were fortunate enough to have a fair, impartial, and scholarly Immigration Judge like Judge Cynthia S. Torg, to decide their cases. I’d also infer from this description that the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel played a constructive role in critically, yet fairly and professionally, developing the facts so that the Immigration Judge could make an immediate decision and appeal could be waived.
Imagine how this case might have come out had it occurred in Atlanta, Charlotte, or El Paso where the Immigration Judges are notorious for prejudging asylum cases against the applicants and merely providing the “trappings of due process.” Or, if these individuals had been forced to “represent” themselves in a godforsaken so-called “detention court” unprepared, traumatized, and within a short time after arrival. Or, if the Immigration Judge had insisted on truncating the process to complete her “quota” of four cases per day. Or, if under the Trump regime, they had never been given access to the Immigration Court hearing process in the first place. Or, if the Assistant Chief Counsel had appealed to the BIA where delays are common and panels vary widely as to their commitment to a fair, impartial, and overall generous view of asylum law in accordance with their own (often cited, not always followed) precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi! Or, if after the fact, a political hack like Jeff Sessions had arbitrarily and unethically intervened to deny relief to satisfy his White Nationalist restrictionist “agenda.”
The truth is that many, perhaps the majority, of the Northern Triangle asylum cases could be efficiently and promptly granted by the USCIS Asylum Office. With the “reinstatement” of A-R-C-G- (recognizing domestic violence) and some positive precedents (when’s he last time you saw one of those from the BIA on asylum?) covering recurring situations such as this one, many more Northern Triangle asylum cases could be granted by stipulation of counsel following short hearings before the Immigration Judges.
On the flip side, in a fairer system, it would be easier for everyone to recognize situations that didn’t merit protection under the law after fair hearings. My experience in Arlington was that when I listened carefully and issued a clear and reasoned explanation of why protection could not be granted, the applicants often (not always) would waive appeal and accept my order as final. Actual, as opposed to cosmetic, fairness helps both sides to accept the decisions below.
That’s precisely what the biased Jeff Sessions has “disempowered” in this now inherently unfair court system. A system run by political officials in the Trump Administration (or any other Administration for that matter) can never be perceived as fair.
Issuance and enforcement of more positive precedents by the BIA (without the current political interference by the DOJ) would also lead to greater uniformity, as judges in places like Atlanta, Charlotte, El Paso, Stewart, etc., would be required to follow the asylum laws and apply them in the generous manner required by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca, rather than acting on their enforcement biases against asylum seekers and trying to “lead the league” in producing rote unfair removal orders to the delight of the DOJ politicos.
If restructured into an independent court system with Due Process as the one and only goal and a merit selection system for judges going forward, the Immigration Courts have the potential to make justice with efficiency the norm, rather than the exception. But, that’s not going to happen in the current  politically compromised and incompetently administered structure of EOIR within DOJ.
America needs an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution demands it! 
PWS
11-28-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

INSIDE EOIR: LA TIMES: Former EOIR Attorney Reveals Truth Of Sessions’s Ugly, Corrupt, Mean-Spirited, Attack On Judicial Independence & The Totally Demoralizing Effect On Judges & Other Dedicated Civil Servants – No Wonder This “Captive Court System” Is A Dysfunctional Mess Being Crushed Under An Artificially Created “Sessions Legacy Backlog” of 1.1 Million+ Cases With Neither Sane Management Nor Any End In Sight!

https://apple.news/AnkcqK5ITQ76IwHCZq2FnBw

I resigned from the Department of Justice because of Trump’s campaign against immigration judges

Gianfranco De Girolamo November 26, 2018, 3:05 AM

One of the proudest days of my life was Dec. 16, 2015, when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

I shed tears of joy as I swore allegiance to the United States at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with more than 3,000 other new Americans. I was celebrating a country that had welcomed me with open arms, treated me as one of its own and opened doors I hadn’t known existed. Just a few years before, in the remote village in southern Italy where I grew up, this would have been unimaginable.

Another of my proudest moments came just a year later, when I was awarded a coveted position in the U.S. Department of Justice. This happened in late November 2016, a few weeks after President Trump was elected.

Like many, I harbored reservations about Trump. But I did not waver in my enthusiasm for the job. In law school, l had learned about the role of civil servants as nonpolitical government employees who work across administrations — faithfully, loyally and diligently serving the United States under both Republicans and Democrats.

I was designated an attorney-advisor and assigned to the Los Angeles immigration court. There, I assisted immigration judges with legal research, weighed in on the strengths and weaknesses of parties’ arguments and often wrote the first drafts of judges’ opinions.

Soon enough, however, the work changed. In March 2018, James McHenry, the Justice Department official who oversees the immigration courts as head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, announced a mandate imposing individual quotas on all the judges. Each judge would be required to decide 700 cases per year, he said.

With these new quotas, which went into effect on Oct. 1, immigration judges must now decide between three and four cases a day — while also reviewing dozens of motions daily and keeping up with all their administrative duties — or their jobs will be at risk.

The announcement of the quotas in March was the first in a series of demoralizing attacks on immigration judges this year. In May, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, since fired by Trump, personally issued a decision that placed limits on the ability of immigration judges to use a practice known as administrative closure, which allows judges to put cases on indefinite hold, and which, in immigration cases, can be a tool for delaying deportation orders.

The Justice Department enforced the decision in July by stripping an immigration judge in Philadelphia of his authority in scores of cases for continuing to use administrative closure.

All this was in addition to a barrage of disparaging comments made directly by the president. In June, Trump tweeted that there is no reason to provide judges to immigrants. He also rejected calls to hire more immigration judges, saying that “we have to have a real border, not judges” and asking rhetorically, “Who are these people?”

The demoralizing effect on immigration judges was palpable. Morale was at an all-time low. I was new to civil service, but these judges, some of whom have served continuously since the Reagan administration, made clear that this was an unprecedented attack on the justice system.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion »

I’ve long admired the independence and legitimacy that the judiciary enjoys in the United States, so I found the attacks on judges deeply disturbing and troubling. They reminded me of Trump’s Italian alter-ego, Silvio Berlusconi, who spent most of his tenure as Italy’s prime minister fighting off lawsuits by delegitimizing and attacking the judiciary, calling it “a cancer of democracy” and accusing judges of being communist.

I voiced my concerns to my supervisors and directly to Director McHenry in a letter. Seeing no opportunity to make a positive difference and unwilling to continue to lend credence to this compromised system, I submitted my resignation in July, explaining my reasons in a letter.

This was not how I wanted to end my career in government. I had hoped to serve this country for the long haul. But I couldn’t stand by, or be complicit in, a mean-spirited and unscrupulous campaign to undermine the everyday work of the Justice Department and the judges who serve in our immigration courts — a campaign that hurts many of my fellow immigrants in the process.

Gianfranco De Girolamo was an attorney at the Department of Justice from 2017 to 2018.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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Thanks for speaking out Gianfranco! I published an earlier, at that time “anonymous,” letter from Gianfranco at the time of his resignation. I’m sure there are many others at EOIR who feel the same way.  But, they are “gagged” by the DOJ — threatened with job loss if they “tell the truth” about the ongoing legal farce and parody of justice within our Immigration Courts.

It’s a “closed system” at war with the public it serves, the dedicated attorneys who represent migrants, the essential NGOs who are propping up what’s left of justice in this system, and the very civil servants who are supposed to be carrying out the courts’ mission. What a horrible way to “(not) run the railroad.”

Someday, historians will dig out the whole truth about the “Sessions Era” at the DOJ and his perversion of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts. I’m sure it will be even worse than we can imagine. But, for now, thanks to Gianfranco for shedding at least some light on one of the darkest and most dysfunctional corners of our Government!

PWS

11-16-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  4. THE ROUNDTABLE IN ACTION: HON. ILYCE SHUGALL DELIVERS POWERFUL STATEMENT IN THE LA TIMES ON WHY SHE COULD NO LONGER SERVE AS A JUDGE IN OUR OBSCENELY DISTORTED AND UNFAIR U.S. IMMIGRATON COURT SYSTEM – “But nothing prepared me for the unprecedented, unfair and unworkable policies the Trump administration imposed on the courts and the immigration process.”

SESSIONS’S TOXIC WHITE NATIONALIST LEGACY OF BIAS AND MISMANAGEMENT CONTINUES TO HAUNT U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS – Inappropriate “Certifications” & Skewed Precedents Denied Asylum To Legitimate Refugees While Improperly Limiting Authority of Immigration Judges To Control & Manage Their Dockets – “Gonzo” Actions Diverted Attention & Resources From Pursuing Long-Overdue Improvements In Delivery of Due Process!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Jeff-Sessions-unfinished-legacy-of-reversing-13420329.php

Bob Egelko reports for the SF Chronicle:

In 21 months as the nation’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions affected no area of public policy more than immigration, from his “zero tolerance” orders to arrest and prosecute all unauthorized border crossers to establishing new rules speeding up deportations and limiting legal challenges.

But with his dismissal by President Trump the day after the Nov. 6 election, one part of Sessions’ immigration agenda remained unfinished: his reconsideration, and often reversal, of pro-immigrant rulings by the immigration courts, particularly on the rights of migrants seeking political asylum in the United States.

Because immigration courts are a branch of the Justice Department, the attorney general has the authority to review and overturn their rulings. Sessions used that authority at an unprecedented pace, reversing decisions that had allowed immigration judges to delay or postpone hearings to give immigrants time to apply for legal status, and eliminating grounds for asylum that were commonly invoked by migrants from Central America.

In October, he announced plans to reconsider a ruling that, if repealed, would keep thousands of asylum-seekers locked up even after they convinced hearing officers that they had a case for fearing persecution in their homeland.

A 2005 ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals allowed immigrants seeking asylum to be freed on bond after an immigration officer ruled that they have a “credible fear” of persecution if deported. They remain free until the immigration courts decide whether their fear of persecution is “well founded,” entitling them to asylum, a work permit and legal residence. If not, they can be deported.

That determination sometimes takes a year or longer. Immigration rights advocates and legal commentators say tens of thousands of asylum-seekers would be locked up for that period if the attorney general overturned the 2005 decision.

“It’s a dramatic change in policy … part of a pattern of efforts to implement the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy” that Sessions declared in April for unauthorized border-crossing, said Kevin Johnson, UC Davis law school dean and an immigration law expert.

This was “Sessions, on his own initiative, trying to rewrite immigration law,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired immigration judge, former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals and publisher of the ImmigrationCourtside blog.

Now the decision will be left to Sessions’ successor. Or maybe not.

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Go to the above link to read the rest of the story.

Sessions’s biased jurisprudence and his intentional mismanagement resulted in a largely artificial “backlog” of 1.1 million cases and a group of demoralized judges who are treated as assembly line workers on a deportation conveyor belt. This preventable disaster is a major contributor to the bogus crisis on the Southern Border.

Sessions admittedly built on and intentionally aggravated pre-existing problems left by the Bush II and Obama Administrations. Nearly two decades of abuse and misuse of the U.S. Immigration Court System by the DOJ for political aims often unrelated to due process and fairness won’t be resolved “overnight.”

But competent court administration combined with a return to an exclusive focus on delivering full due process with maximum achievable efficiency would certainly make an immediate difference and put the Immigration Courts back on track to fulfilling their noble (now abandoned) vision of “being the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” No rational observer would say that these courts are moving in that direction under Trump and his toadies at the DOJ and DHS.

PWS

11-26-18

Related posts:

  1. GONZO’S WORLD: THIS IS WHY HE STAYS: UNDERNEATH ALL THE “TRUMP NOISE” SESSIONS IS METHODICALLY ERADICATING DUE PROCESS, PERVERTING THE LAW, & TURNING ONE OF THE LARGEST FEDERAL COURT SYSTEMS INTO A “KILLING FLOOR” TARGETING OUR MOST VULNERABLE & DESERVING REFUGEES! — “[Sessions] is dumbing down the judges and treating them like assembly-line workers whose only job is to stamp out final orders of removal.”
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

BUZZFEED NEWS: Two Years Of Trump’s Bad Immigration Policies Predictably Culminate In Border Gassings!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/trump-blame-crisis-border-asylum

Adolfo Flores, Hamed Aleaziz, & Karla Zabludovsky for BuzzFeed News:

TIJUANA, Mexico — For Trump administration officials, an unprecedented confrontation at the US-Mexico border on Sunday invited an assessment that their policies have only exacerbated the problems of an overwhelmed immigration system whose court backlog has grown larger since Trump’s inauguration 22 months ago.

León Rodriguez, who headed the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency from 2014 to 2016, didn’t want to comment on the events on the ground, but said what happened at the border seemed to be “a foreseeable result of the US policy of placing every conceivable obstacle in the way of orderly legal migration and of not having a policy that [recognizes] the desperate circumstances driving migration.”

Mexican officials shared that negative assessment. Héctor Gandini, who will take over as spokesperson for Mexico’s Interior Ministry when Mexico swears in a new president on Saturday, said that the US use of tear gas on migrants attempting to cross illegally into the country was “not correct. We don’t want them to hound migrants.”

“You have to respect migrants’ human rights,” Gandini added.

For Josué Rosales, one of the migrants who took part in the ill-fated march to the border, what began as a journey of hope had turned into one of despair, one that promised weeks of more nights inside the tent he’s now sharing with his girlfriend on the grounds of the Benito Juarez stadium, where the caravan has been camped for days. He said he’s not ready to give up.

“I’m waiting to see if Trump comes to some type of agreement that allows us to cross,” Rosales said. “If he says no we’ll figure out another way to cross.”

The Trump administration faces a situation its best efforts have failed to control.

Administration officials have imposed a number of policies to discourage migrants from seeking to enter the United States. Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions personally rewrote key immigration court decisions to eliminate domestic violence and fear of gang violence as reasons for asylum to be granted. The administration imposed a controversial family separation policy that was intended to discourage parents from crossing the border with their children. Trump dispatched 5,800 US active-duty soldiers to the border in a show of force that many critics also claim was a blatant political ploy ahead of the midterm elections earlier this month.

Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuter

And yet border apprehensions are at the highest level yet of the Trump administration (though still at historically low levels), family detentions are at record levels, and the number of people granted asylum actually rose in the fiscal year that just ended, to the highest level in two decades.

In Tijuana, where the number of would-be asylum seekers is growing by the day, immigration attorneys and advocates describe a bottleneck system that makes asylum seekers wait weeks before they can seek to enter the US for refuge. That’s created an enormous backlog.

And the situation promises only to get worse as more people seeking to reach the US arrive in Baja California, the Mexican state that abuts California. Mexico’s interior ministry said there are 8,247 people now in Mexico who are traveling as part of so-called caravans from Central America. The vast majority of migrants — 7,417 — are in the cities of Mexicali and Tijuana. The other 424 are in a Mexico City shelter, 253 are in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, and another 153 are making their way north on their own. It’s unclear how many of them will ask for asylum.

Caring for the migrants is costing about $27,000 daily — money Tijuana’s mayor says the city does not have.

Sunday’s march to the border was intended to be peaceful, but it devolved into a frantic rush toward the border fence after the group, which numbered about 500, according to the Mexican interior ministry, was blocked from reaching the San Ysidro port of entry by a line of Mexican federal police.

Then after being blocked on the street in front of the Chaparral border crossing by metal barriers and another line of federal police with shields, a group walked to a train border crossing a few minutes away.

Several members of the group told BuzzFeed News they wanted to negotiate some type of agreement with the Trump administration that would let them enter the United States. Others said they hoped to be able to cross into the US as a group.

Instead, US border officers met them with tear gas and pepper balls, according to a statement from Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for border law enforcement.

CBP said its officers deployed the tear gas and pepper balls after some members of the group threw objects, including rocks, at agents while others tried to enter the United States illegally, some through a gap in the metal barrier along the railroad tracks.

Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuters

But not all immigration officers were willing to defend the US actions. One US asylum officer, who could not talk about policy publicly, said the confrontation likely was the result of the US’s inability or unwillingness to process asylum claims at the border daily. The officer said USCIS recently had told staff to be on standby to be sent to San Diego to help hear asylum claims.

“I’m just glad nothing worse happened,” the officer said. “I think it’s illegal that they closed the border. We cannot decide when we can close the border if there’s no state of emergency. For a couple dozen asylum seekers? That was not an emergency that should justify closing the border. I’m just relieved it wasn’t worse.”

Another government official, who works on the issue but does not make policy, blamed the Trump administration for the tensions at the border.

“Trump has broken the law by not having people at the border processed for months and months and creating a bottleneck there,” the official said. “Tear gassing children because maybe they’ll get into the US? Heaven forbid.”

Mexican authorities late Sunday were contemplating what to do next. In a press release, the interior ministry said Mexican police had retaken control of the area leading to the San Ysidro port of entry and that Mexican troops would not be deployed “despite the magnitude of the situation.”

A government official who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to reporters told BuzzFeed News that 30 migrants had breached the border and were promptly detained by CBP. The National Migration Institute said that it planned to deport as many as 500 others who attempted to cross into the US illegally but were unsuccessful. Since the first caravan entered Mexico on October 19, 11,000 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua have been deported.

The escalation at the border comes at a complicated time — the country’s embattled president, Enrique Peña Nieto, will conclude his mandate in less than a week.

BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month that the Trump administration was attempting to broker a deal that would force people to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases were processed. The Washington Post reported that incoming Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador’s transition team had agreed to this plan, but that report was disputed by the same officials it cited; they pointed out that López Obrador’s government would not take office for several more days. “There is no agreement of any sort between the future government of Mexico and the US government,” said a press release from López Obrador’s transition team.

Immigration promises to be a major challenge for López Obrador, who has pledged to give work permits and offer jobs to Central American migrants in Mexico. Detentions and deportations of migrants have increased steadily since 2014, when the government launched the Southern Border Program, shortly after a large wave of unaccompanied minors surged across the US-Mexico border.

Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

Sunday’s events were much different from the results of a spring caravan that arrived in Tijuana in late April with hundreds of asylum seekers. The group camped out on the grounds of the Chaparral border crossing for days after being turned away by CBP agents because the port of entry was at capacity. Over several days, small groups of asylum seekers were allowed into the US to make their claim, 93% of whom passed what’s known as a credible fear interview, a crucial first step in the asylum application process.

But that caravan was much smaller, at most 1,500 at its start in southern Mexico, than the thousands now waiting in Tijuana, and its members had been vetted by the NGO that led it, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, to weed out those whose asylum claims were likely to be found without merit by the time it reached the border. In the end, only 228 people sought asylum in a process that took just five days. Separately, other members of the caravan asked for asylum before and after those five days, putting the total number of asylum seekers at 401.

This time around, asylum seekers have been told they would likely have to wait weeks in Tijuana before they could ask the US for refuge because of a backlog at the border. The current expected wait to begin the process is now up to six weeks.

Delay at the border for requesting asylum is nothing new, but it’s been getting worse under Trump. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found recently that US immigration authorities’ inability to handle the number of people seeking asylum at ports of entry had forced migrants to cross illegally. But there’s little sign that US officials are planning to take steps to improve the wait times.

And the likelihood is great that those who must wait in Tijuana will find only that their frustration will grow in the coming months.

“It’s difficult because we came as one peaceful caravan and now we’re just waiting here without any results,” Rosales, the march participant, told BuzzFeed News. “We’re sitting in the sun, thirsty, hungry, with no resolution to our situation.”

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The Trump Administration created this artificial mess. The solution is hardly “rocket science:”
  • More USCIS Asylum Officers;
  • More pro bono private attorneys;
  • More U.S. Immigration Judges and staff;
  • Restoring authority to Immigration Judges to work with both parties before their courts to close and remove hundreds of thousands of “low priority” cases from the courts’ dockets, thus freeing up judicial time to work on asylum cases of more recent arrivals;
  • Restoring precedents that would allow refugees with documented cases of persecution on the basis for domestic violence and family relationships to be expeditiously granted, thus freeing up docket space for other types of cases.

No chance that the Trump Administration will do this voluntarily. But, there might be an opening for House Democrats to condition further immigration enforcement funding on improvements in the foregoing areas and an end to the Trump-created “border backups.”

PWS

11-26-18

 

Related posts:

  1. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  2. BUZZFEED NEWS: “Our Gang” Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase Blasts Nielsen’s Latest Disingenuous Attack On Legal Asylum Seekers — “Outrageous Move”
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

WITH SESSIONS GONE, EOIR DIRECTOR McHENRY TAKES POINT IN ALL OUT ATTACK ON DUE PROCESS, ASYLUM SEEKERS, IMMIGRATION JUDGES, AND REALITY!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.justice.gov_eoir_page_file_1112581_download&d=DwMFAw&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=Wq374DTv_PXfIom65XBqoA&m=vBNdG88wJjdA06Fq_GLujzYMJw5il7nmwzf2YZX_oFg&s=S0-8lFsHprZ1S04dwj_YVFuz8G6q_w-dZPmwquinIzI&e=

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Read the memo at the above link.

  • In his last out of touch missive, McHenry said that one year was a “reasonable period” for adjudicating an asylum application in accordance with Due Process. Now it’s six months or less!
  • The “statutory limit” in section 208 never had any basis in fact.  It was a number pulled out of thin air by Congress and has never been achievable.
  • In any event, Congress’s and EOIR’s attempt to place and enforce statutory limits on adjudication can never contravene Due Process.
  • Heck, when I was in Arlington, most “affirmative” asylum cases were more than six months from filing before they even got on my docket at Master Calendar.
  • For “defensive” filings (those asylum applications filed initially with the Immigration Court), there is no way that with 1.1 million cases already on the docket and scheduled, new cases could be fairly completed within six months without massive, massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” that will jack up the backlog even further.
  • Given the “docket overload” in  the Immigration Courts, there simply aren’t enough qualified attorneys (particularly pro bono attorneys) available to represent asylum applicants with six months or less to prepare. Many pro bono organizations can’t even schedule “intake interviews” within six months!
  • In the Sessions mold, McHenry, who has never to my knowledge adjudicated an asylum application in his life, is attempting to “duress” judges into choosing between upholding Due Process and their oaths of office and following unreasonable agency directives aimed exclusively at screwing asylum seekers and promoting more denials.
  • The cases are more complex than ever. If anything, the DOJ should be promulgating a “blanket exemption” from the six month period given the current overall circumstances.
  • The obtuse “two standard” interpretation is completely new; although the statute has been in effect for approximately two decades, nobody has ever interpreted that way before!
  • This is an obvious, heavy handed attempt by non-judicial officials at EOIR and DOJ to interfere with and direct the independent decision making responsibilities of the Immigration Judges.
  • This system is heading down the tubes! It’s a farce! If the Article IIIs don’t put an end to it, it will go down as one of the most disgraceful mockeries of our Constitution and the rule of law since the days of Jim Crow! Not to mention a total and intentional perversion of international protection standards.

PWS

11-19-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!
  3. REGIME’S NEWEST SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: BOGUS REGS THAT WOULD ILLEGALLY & UNNECESSARILY EXTEND THE GROUNDS OF “MANDATORY DENIAL,” DECREASE ADJUDICATOR DISCRETION, & SHAFT REFUGEE FAMILIES — Regime’s Outlandish “Efficiency Rationale” Fails to Mask Their Cruelty, Racism, Fraud, Waste, & Abuse – Julia Edwards Ainsley (NBC News) & Dean Kevin R. Johnson (ImmigrationProf Blog) Report
  4. TRUTH MATTERS: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: AILA Blasts EOIR’s False & Unethical Anti-Asylum Screed! — “Together, the document’s deceptive information and polarizing rhetoric further undermines the court system’s ability to be a neutral arbiter of justice and comes at a time when there is a severe lack of public confidence in its capacity to deliver fair and timely decisions. EOIR’s skewed portrayal only demonstrates the urgent need for Congress to create an independent court, separate from DOJ.”

EYORE FIDDLES WITH DOCKET AS ROME BURNS – Latest Bureaucratic Gobbledygook From Falls Church Shows Why EOIR Must Be Abolished & Replaced By An Independent Court, Run By Sitting Judges, With Professional, Apolitical Administration!

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1112036/download

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So, let’s see what’s really going on here, beneath all of the “Tower bureaucratese.”
  • Bureaucrats at Falls Church “Headquarters,” who are beholden to DOJ politicos, are setting the local Immigration Court docket priorities to the exclusion of sitting Immigration Judges, Respondents’ Counsel, NGOs and the members of the public who actually use the system;
  • But one party, the DHS, is effectively being given unilateral authority to establish the Immigration Courts’ “docket priorities;”
  • DHS also unilaterally decides which cases will be designated as “family units” and therefore “prioritized;”
  • EOIR notes that the prioritization of certain “aliens with children” cases between 2014 and 2017, also at the behest of DHS, was a MASSIVE failure that actually decreased productivity and significantly accelerated the backlog (what I refer to as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”);
  • Nevertheless, EOIR inexplicably decides to “double down” on a known failure just because their “partners” (Sessions’s term) at DHS essentially have ordered them to do so;
  • Why “Baltimore, but not Arlington;” “San Francisco, but not San Diego,” “Denver, but not Dallas,” etc.?
  • “EOIR remains committed to the timely completion of all cases consistent with due process” — Really?
    • Lead by enforcement guru Jeff Sessions and DHS, the Trump Administration has intentionally “artificially jacked” the “backlog” to over 1.1 million cases;
    • If the approximately 350 currently authorized Immigration  Judges were all on board and each met their 700 case “quota,” the Immigration Court could complete only about 250,000 cases per year;
    • If no additional cases were filed, and none of the judges left, the pending cases wouldn’t be completed until the latter half of 2023;
    • But of course, under the Trump Administration’s mismanaged and totally undisciplined enforcement program, new cases will be piled into the system without regard to its capacity and judges will continue to burn out and leave;
    • So, effectively, there is no cogent program for getting the backlog under control — ever;
  • What’s missing from this bureaucratic never-never land is any sense of fairness, competence, or meaningful participation by those most affected by the backlogs and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and who possess the most expertise at arranging dockets for fairness and efficiency: sitting Immigration Judges, Respondent’s Counsel, NGOs, and respondents themselves (along, of course, with the ICE Chief Counsel unencumbered by the “DHS Enforcement Wackos“);
  • Also glaringly absent: any requirement that the DHS justify their requests to prioritize the dockets or exercise any responsible “prosecutorial discretion” to take “lower priority ” cases off the dockets;
  • A “no-brainer” in a functioning independent court system would be requiring DHS to remove one (or more) “low priority” cases for each case they wish the court to “prioritize” or otherwise move ahead of other, older pending cases.

The rapidly failing and unfair system needs aggressive oversight and monitoring — from Congress (read the House) and the Article III Courts!

Ultimately, it will continue its “death spiral” until both the EOIR bureaucracy and the Administration politicos who abuse it are permanently removed from the equation  and an independent court, run by sitting judges with assistance from other court management professionals with meaningful public input is established. A strong, independent, efficient, unbiased U.S. Immigration Court will also help ICE carry out its law enforcement mission in a professional, legal, non-discriminatory, de-politicized, and humane manner, perhaps bringing enough rationality to the system to save that beleaguered agency from its critics.

PWS

11-18-18

 

Related posts:

  1. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Trump & His GOP’s Cowardly “War On Children” Should Outrage Every American! — Join The “New Due Process Army” & Fight To Save Humanity!

CRUEL, INHUMANE, INEFFECTIVE, WASTEFUL: New Report From CMS, KBI, & CBE Shows How Trump’s Racist Immigration Enforcement Policies Are Destroying & Dividing America, Not Protecting Us!

FINAL-Communities-in-Crisis-Report-ver-5

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

A report of the , Center forMigration Studies, and Office of Justice and Ecology

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Section 1: Introduction

A woman and her child waiting at the port of entry in Nogales, Sonora to be processed into the US asylum system. Photo: Greg Constantine.

KBI, CMS, and OJE Report November 2018Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and

Their Human Consequences

“My oldest son asks, ‘Where are my rights as a US citizen? Where is my right to live with my family and have a home?’”

— Mother of three US citizen children and wife of detained immigrant

“My husband called and said that he had a normal check-in like every year. He went like always, but this time they arrested him. I asked why if everything was going well. He had a clean record. He is a good father. He is working to help our kids get ahead. We have two children who are citizens and we are fighting for them, so that they are good people and professionals. I didn’t see any reason for him to get arrested.”

— Woman whose husband was deported

“In my preaching, I guide and insist that it is important to be aware of our rights, to not have fear, and to know that we all are God’s children and need a piece of land in this planet. I try to remind them that they are immigrants but also human beings before anything else and that all human beings have rights.”

— Priest

Executive Summary

In late 2017, the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), and the Office of Justice and Ecology (OJE) of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States initiated a study to examine the characteristics of deportees and the effects of deportation, and to place them in a broader policy context (Attachment A).1

The CRISIS Study (Catholic Removal Impact Survey in Society) included both quantitative and qualitative elements. During the first five months of 2018, KBI staff surveyed 133 deportees from the United States at its migrant shelter in Nogales, Sonora. Survey respondents were all Mexican nationals, all but one were men, and each had been living for a period of time in the United

1 KBI, which operates in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, seeks “to promote US/Mexico border and immigration policies that affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of binational solidarity.” KBI provides humanitarian assistance and accompaniment to migrants; social and pastoral education with communities on both sides of the border; and research and advocacy. CMS is a think tank and an educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers. CMS is a member of the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN), a global network of migrant shelters, service centers, and other institutions, and the Scalabrini Migration Study Centers. OJE of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and United States seeks to foster reconciliation on issues such as refugee protection, immigration, and economic, criminal, juvenile, and environmental justice.

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KBI, CMS, and OJE Report November 2018

States.2 They had resided in 16 US states, the majority in Arizona, followed by Nevada, California, and Utah. The survey sought information on their US lives, the removal and detention process, and the impact of removal on them and their families (Attachment B).

The study also included one interview with a deportee (via Skype) and 20 interviews with the family members of deportees and other persons affected by deportation in Catholic parishes in Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota. The parishes — which the report will not identify in order to ensure the interviewees’ anonymity — were chosen based on their geographic, demographic, and sociopolitical diversity, their connections to the agencies conducting the study, and their ability to facilitate access to deportees, their families, and others impacted by deportation.

The interviews explored: (1) the impact of removals on deportees, their families, and other community members; (2) the deportation process; and (3) the relationship between deportees and their families (Attachment C). They provided an intimate, often raw look at the human consequences of deportation.

Long Tenure, Homeownership, Legal Status, and Community Engagement

By and large, survey respondents had built their lives, made their homes, and established long and deep ties in the United States.

  • On average, they had lived in the United States for 19.9 years.
  • More than half (56 percent) first entered the country as minors (below age 18), and 21 percent below age 10.
  • Thirty-eight percent reported having legal status in the United States, including 14.3 percent who were lawful permanent residents (LPRs).
  • Twenty-six percent had been US homeowners.
  • Fifty-two percent had participated in church activities, 34.1 percent regularly attended church services, and 9 percent had participated in community organizations.Family and Economic Ties and the Consequences of DeportationSurvey respondents had established strong family and economic ties in the United States. Deportation mostly severed these ties, and divided, devastated, and impoverished the affected families.
  • Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents had US citizen children.3
  • The average age of respondents’ children living in the United States was 14.9 and 33 percent were 10 years old or less.
  • Forty-two percent had US citizen spouses or partners.4
  • Ninety-six percent had been employed in the United States.2 The report uses the phrase “interior removals” to refer to the deportation of persons who have been living in the United States for a period of time.
    3 Respondents were asked to list the age, residency, and citizenship status of up to five children.
    4 This figure refers to respondents with spouses or domestic partners.

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

  • On average, they had worked nearly 10 years in the same job and earned roughly $2,800 per month.
  • Respondents had an average of $142 in their possession at the time of their deportation.5
  • Deportees reported that they needed employment (78.2 percent), financial (68.4 percent), housing (56.4 percent), emotional (56.4 percent), and social integration (54.9 percent) assistance.
  • Most survey respondents reported that their spouse or partner in the United States did not have enough money to support their children (74 percent) or to live on (63 percent).
  • Respondents identified a range of close family members who depended on them financially prior to their deportation, including their mothers (72 percent), fathers (57 percent), and siblings (26 percent).
  • Forty percent reported having dependents with chronic health or psychological conditions, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and autism.
  • Nearly one-half (48.1 percent) said that their children — some of whom lived in the United States and some in Mexico — were experiencing difficulties in school.Plans to Return to the United StatesGiven the strong ties binding survey respondents to the United States, it comes as little surprise that:
  • Three-quarters (73.5 percent) reported that they planned to return to the United States.
  • Forty-five percent identified only a little or “not at all” with their country of birth.
  • Only one-third (35.4) percent reported feeling safe since their deportation.The Criminalization of DeportationThe Trump administration has regularly portrayed undocumented residents, migrants seeking to request asylum at the US-Mexico border, and deportees as criminals and security threats. Most survey respondents either had not been convicted of a crime or had committed an immigration or traffic offense prior to their deportation. Nevertheless, study participants described a deportation system that treated them as criminals and instilled fear in their communities.
  • Nearly one-half of respondents said they had not been convicted of a crime prior to their deportation.
  • Of the 37 respondents (51.4 percent) who reported having been convicted of a crime,6 more than one-third (35.1 percent) had been convicted of a traffic or immigration offense, 21.6 percent of a drug-related crime (including possession), and another 21.6 percent of a violent crime.75 Mexican pesos were converted into dollars using prevailing exchange rates on August 19, 2018.
    6 Only 72 respondents answered this question.
    7 The study classified these self-reported crimes based on the National Crime Information Center’s (NCIC) uniform offense codes.

3

4

KBI, CMS, and OJE Report November 2018

  • A high percent of respondents (65.2) reported that their deportation began with a police arrest, 30.3 percent reported having been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and less than 1 percent by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
  • The majority of apprehensions took place while respondents were driving (36.1 percent), at home (26.3 percent), or at work (6 percent).
  • Survey respondents spent an average of 96 days in immigrant detention. Most were detained for 30 days or less, and 17 percent were detained for 180 days or more.
  • Only 28 percent were able to secure legal counsel.
  • Roughly one-fourth of survey respondents reported spending no time in criminal custody and 22.6 percent spent a week or less prior to their deportation. However, 17.3 percent spent more than one year.RecommendationsThe CRISIS Study provides a snapshot of the Trump administration’s deportation policies and their effect on established US residents (deportees), families, and communities. In order to mitigate the harsh consequences of these policies and promote the integrity of families and communities, we make the following recommendations.

    To the Department of Homeland Security:

  • Issue prosecutorial discretion guidelines that de-prioritize the arrest and removal of long- term residents; persons with US family members; and those without criminal records or with records for only minor offenses.
  • Use detention only as a “last resort” and employ the least restrictive means necessary — including supervised release and other alternatives to detention (ATDs) — to ensure appearances in court, check-ins with immigration officials, and possible removal.
  • Adhere to ICE’s National Detention Standards, which recognize the need for access to legal counsel, generous family visitation guidelines, transparency regarding the location of detainees, and humane conditions of confinement.To Congress:
  • Pass broad legislation to reduce family-based visa backlogs; to align US legal immigration policies with the nation’s economic, family, and humanitarian interests; to legalize the undocumented parents of US citizens and LPRs and undocumented persons who entered as children; and to expand equitable relief from removal.
  • Appropriate funding to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice at levels that align with the recommendations in this report and that, in particular, assume the principled exercise of prosecutorial discretion, reduced use of detention, and expansion of community-based ATDs and legal orientation programs.
  • Reduce funding to ICE in light of its indiscriminate enforcement policies and their negative impact on the safety and integrity of US families and communities.

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

• Provide greater oversight of formal partnerships and collaboration between state and local police and ICE and CBP to ensure that these arrangements do not undermine community safety or lead to racial profiling.

To state and local police:

  • Collect data to measure the prevalence of pretextual police stops and arrests (intended to lead to removal) for minor criminal violations, with a focus on the extent to which such stops involve racial and ethnic minorities.
  • Limit collaboration with ICE and CBP to prevent local police from acting as immigration agents, to promote public safety, and to ensure that no group of residents fears reporting crimes or otherwise cooperating with the police.
  • Strengthen policies against racial bias in policing, and regularly train and evaluate law enforcement officers on adherence to these policies.
  • Adopt and implement policies — like municipal identification cards and driver’s licenses for the undocumented — that treat immigrants as full members of their communities.To faith communities:
  • Address the urgent priorities of immigrants, including the need for safe and welcoming spaces, deportation planning, transportation, access to legal representation, public safety, access to the police, and accompaniment to places where they might be vulnerable to arrest.
  • Prioritize pastoral service to immigrants and their families; fully incorporate them into all faith institutions, ministries, and programs; and educate nonimmigrant members and the broader public on the immense challenges facing immigrants.
  • Identify, collect, disseminate and implement best pastoral practices for accompanying and supporting deportees and their families at all stages of the removal process.
  • Advocate for the generous exercise of prosecutorial discretion; humane enforcement policies that prioritize family unity and cohesive communities; expanded legal avenues to regularized status; and strong citizenship policies.

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

Takeaways:

  • DHS must reinstate the use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”)  (of the type heavily used by every other law enforcement agency in America) in both enforcement actions and Immigration Courts;
    • Under the toxic “leadership” of former AG Jeff Sessions the discretion of both DHS and EOIR to use sensible “PD” was basically eradicated;
  • DHS Enforcement is over funded to the point where money and resources are routinely wasted on counterproductive politically motivated initiatives;
    • Congress should resist any further increases in DHS Enforcement funding until DHS shows better management, accountability, and reasonable use of existing resources.

PWS

11-13-18

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICY: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE!” — Also, ICE Intentionally Falsifies Court Hearing Dates — Where Is The Accountability?
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS TRUMP’S BORDER ORDER IS NQRFPT!

“NQRFPT” = “Not Quite Ready for Prime Time” (as some might remember from my days on the bench)

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/416195-trump-should-withdraw-his-asylum-proclamation

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Detention will continue to be a major problem, regardless.

Under the proclamation, DHS would not have to screen aliens to determine whether they have a credible fear of persecution for asylum purposes, but it would have to screen them to determine if they have a reasonable fear of persecution.

The United States is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, which prohibits expelling a refugee to a country where it is likely that he will be persecuted. Asylum just requires a well-founded fear of persecution.

This condition is met with the withholding of deportation provision in the INA for aliens who establish that it is more likely than not that they will be persecuted.

America also is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture (CAT), which provides that, “No State Party shall expel … a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Relief under these provisions is limited to sending the alien to a country where he would not be persecuted or tortured.

The proclamation should be withdrawn until these problems can be resolved.

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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article (I have just reprinted the concluding section above). It also was a “headliner” at ImmigrationProf Blog: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2018/11/president-trump-should-withdraw-his-asylum-proclamation.html

Nolan’s conclusion ties in nicely to my preceding posts that confirm, as Nolan points out, that CBP, the Asylum Office, the Immigration Courts, and probably the Federal Courts are woefully unprepared for the additional chaos and workload that is likely to be created by Trump’s shortsighted actions. Like most of what Trump does in the immigration areas it demonstrates a chronic misunderstanding of the laws, how the system operates, the reality of what happens at the border, and ignores the views of career civil servants and experts in the area. In other words, a totally unprofessional performance. But, that’s what “kakistocracy” is all about.

We’ll see what happens next. I expect a U.S. District court ruling on the ACLU’s suit to stop implementation of the Executive Order and the “Interim Regs” to be issued in the near future.

PWS

11-13-18

Related posts:

  1. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

JULIA PRESTON @ THE MARSHALL PROJECT: Unfinished Business – Sessions Leaves Behind An Unprecedented Man-Made Human Rights Disaster & A Demoralized, Rapidly Failing U.S. Immigration Court — “I’ve never seen an attorney general who was so active in the immigration sphere and in a negative direction,” said Daniel Kowalski!”

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/07/the-immigration-crisis-jeff-sessions-leaves-behind

Julia writes:

ANALYSIS

The Immigration Crisis Jeff Sessions Leaves Behind

Assessing the ousted attorney general’s legacy on President Trump’s favorite issue.

But anyone who was following Sessions’ actions on immigration had no doubt that he was working hard. Before he was forced to resign on Wednesday, Sessions was exceptionally aggressive as attorney general, using his authority to steer the immigration courts, restrict access for migrants to the asylum system and deploy the federal courts for immigration enforcement purposes.

Under American law, the attorney general has broad powers over the immigration courts, which reside in the Justice Department not in the independent federal judiciary. Sessions, who made immigration a signature issue during his two decades as a Republican senator from Alabama, exercised those powers to rule from on high over the immigration system.

While Trump complained about Sessions, on immigration he was an unerringly loyal soldier, vigorously executing the president’s restrictionist policies.

Sessions made it his mission to reverse what he regarded as a failure to enforce order in the system by President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress, despite plunging numbers of illegal border crossings and record deportations under the previous administration.

“No great and prosperous nation can have both a generous welfare system and open borders,” Sessions told a gathering of newly-appointed immigration judges in September. “Such a policy is both radical and dangerous. It must be rejected out of hand.”

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A primary goal he declared was to speed the work of the immigration courts in order to reduce huge case backlogs. But according to a report this week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, the backlogs increased during his tenure by 49 percent, reaching an all-time record of more than 768,000 cases. That tally doesn’t include more than 330,000 suspended cases, which justice officials restored to the active caseload.

“I’ve never seen an attorney general who was so active in the immigration sphere and in a negative direction,” said Daniel Kowalski, the editor of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin, a widely-used reference for lawyers. Kowalski said he’s been practicing immigration law for 33 years.

Here are some of Sessions’ measures that shaped the crisis the next attorney general will inherit:

  • He imposed case quotas on immigration judges, which went into effect Oct. 1, demanding they complete at least 700 cases a year. With compliance becoming part of a judge’s performance evaluation, the immigration judges’ association has said the quotas impinge on due process.
  • He made frequent use of the attorney general’s authority to decide cases if he doesn’t like opinions coming from the immigration courts. Sessions used that authority to constrain judges’ decision-making. He made it more difficult for them to grant continuances to give lawyers time to prepare, and he limited judges’ options to close cases where they concluded deportation was not warranted, as a way to lighten overloaded court dockets.
  • Sessions discouraged immigration judges from allowing prosecutors to exercise their discretion to set aside deportations for immigrants with families or other positive reasons to remain in the United States.
  • He issued decisions that made it far more difficult for migrants, like those coming in recent years from Central America, to win asylum cases based on fears of criminal gang violence, sexual abuse or other persecution by “private actors,” rather than governments.
  • In a policy known as zero tolerance, in April Sessions ordered federal prosecutors along the southwest border to bring charges in federal court against migrants caught crossing the border, for the crime of illegal entry. The policy resulted in parents being separated from their children, in episodes last summer that drew outrage until Trump ordered the separations to stop. But the prosecutions continue for illegal crossers who aren’t parents with children, swelling federal dockets and making it harder for prosecutors to pursue other border crimes, like narcotics and human trafficking, weapons offenses and money-laundering. In September, according to TRAC, 88 percent of the prosecutions in the Southern District of Texas were for an illegal entry misdemeanor; 65 percent of the cases in the Southern District of California were for the same minor crime.

Zero tolerance at the border

Under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, federal prosecutors in five border districts significantly ramped up the number of misdemeanor cases they filed against migrants crossing illegally this year, particularly in south Texas.

  • Sessions took the position that a program initiated by Obama, which gave protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who came here as children, was an overreach of executive authority. He declined to defend the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and praised Trump’s decision last year to cancel it. After federal courts allowed the program to continue, the Justice Department fought to bypass the appeals courts and get a hearing before the Supreme Court for its efforts to terminate the program.

Even though his relations with Trump soured early in his tenure, Sessions maintained a line of communication to the White House through Stephen Miller, a senior adviser. Miller was a senior staff member for Sessions in the Senate, and the two share similar views and goals for clamping down on immigration.

Lawyers and advocates say Sessions’ actions have politicized immigration court proceedings. “He stripped the judges of the authority to ensure due process and demonstrated how susceptible the courts are to the whim of politics,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, based in Chicago.

Advocates for immigration reform said a new attorney general should restore the flexibility of immigration judges to manage their own dockets to find efficient ways to reduce their caseloads. But they said Sessions’ tenure provided new arguments for Congress to move the immigration courts out of the Justice Department to the federal judiciary.

Gregory Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said, “The aggressive nature of his actions infringing on the independence of the courts has made the need for a new court system even more urgent.”

ORIGINALLY FILED Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 9:35 p.m. ET

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Go to Julia’s article at the above link to get the accompanying graphics and pictures.

The Immigration Court backlog reported by TRAC now is over 1.1 MILLION cases, with no end in sight. More disturbingly, there is no coherent plan for addressing these cases in anything approaching a rational manner, nor is there a plan for restoring some semblance of due process and functionality to the Immigration Courts. Like most Trump/Sessions initiatives, it’s “we’ll create the problem, make it much worse, then hinder the efforts of others to fix it.”

Three “no-brainers ” that Sessions wouldn’t do:

  • Working with the private bar, NGOs, states, and localities  to make legal representation  available to everyone in Immigration Court who wants it;
  • Letting U.S. Immigration Judges control their own dockets and make independent decisions, free from political interference; and
  • Removing hundreds of thousands of older cases of individuals eligible to apply for “Cancellation of Removal For Non-Lawful Permanent Residents” from the Immigration Courts’ active dockets and having them adjudicated by USCIS in the first instance.

Of course an independent Article I Immigration Court is an absolute necessity. But, that will take legislation. In the meantime, the foregoing three administrative steps would pave the way for an orderly transition to Article I status while promoting Due Process, fairness, and efficiency in the system.

But, I wouldn’t count on anyone in the “Current Kakistocracy” doing the right thing or actually implementing “good government.” If the Article IIIs don’t put an end to this travesty, it will continue to get worse and pull them down into the muck until we get “regime change.”

Ironically, Trump isn’t the only one who “hasn’t had an Attorney General over the past two years.” The majority of Americans haven’t had one either; while he might be on the verge of getting “his” Attorney General, the rest of us can only look forward to more pain and misery!

PWS

11-12-18

Related posts:

  1. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  2. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

GONZO’S WORLD: SNL BIDS ADIEU TO “EVIL ELF!” – See It Here!

https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/jeff-sessions-robert-mueller-robert-de-niro-kate-mckinnon-saturday-night-live.html

BROW BEAT

Jeff Sessions and Robert Mueller Say Their Goodbyes on Saturday Night Live, With a Little Help From Kate McKinnon and Robert De Niro

By MATTHEW DESSEM

Robert De Niro and Kate McKinnon embrace on SNL.
Friends to the end.
NBC

It’s been an emotional week for people who love Jeff Sessions, assuming such people exist. On the one hand, Donald Trump fired Sessions the day after the election in favor of an unqualified loyalist who used to sit on the board of a hilariously fraudulent patent marketing company. On the other hand, once Sessions skulks back to Alabama, Kate McKinnon will have no further reason to play him on Saturday Night Live, which will probably be good for his reputation. But there was no way SNL would let a walking caricature like Sessions leave the national stage without a kick in the ass on his way to the wings, so McKinnon glued on her Jeff Sessions ears this week for what might be the very last time:

Sketches like this one, in which one celebrity caricature after another marches in, does his or her thing, then leaves, almost always suffer from a lack of momentum. The payoff here, the surprise appearance of Robert De Niro as Robert Mueller, is no substitute for rising action, not least because De Niro’s performance isn’t exactly worthy of Taxi Driver. Some of the individual jokes are hilarious—see, e.g., Sessions’ mug-within-a-mug—but as a whole, the sketch feels like one damn thing after another, for much, much too long. In that sense, it brilliantly captures the essence of the Trump administration, with or without Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Best of luck to the cast member who has to squeeze into a bald cap to play Matthew Whitaker next week.

https://youtu.be/EGy-xpK-1mw

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

Kids in cages, weeping parents, families separated, refugees turned away, African-Americans brutalized by the police, domestic violence victims sent back to torture by their abusers, minority voters suppressed, prisons overflowing with minor offenders, American youth denied opportunities and threatened with removal, scientific evidence ignored, intentionally clogged courts, open season on the LGBTQ community, vigorous defense of hate speech (but not the right to protest), glorification of bias masquerading as “religion,” judges turned into border agents in robes, judges and lawyers publicly dissed, un-prosecuted corruption in government, rampant gun violence mostly generated by disgruntled White guys, journalists attacked, bogus efforts to keep migrants from knowing their rights, lies to Congress  — Man-o-Man, this Dude was just a barrel of laughs and good times! Unless, of course, you were one of the millions of men, women, and children in America who was permanently damaged or traumatized by his racist scofflaw approach to “justice” and his failure to enforce the Constitutional rights due to everyone in America. Not exactly “Janet Reno’s Dance Party!”

PWS

11-12-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

SESSIONS IS OUT @ DOJ – But, His Ugly Jim Crow Racist Legacy & Disingenuous Perversions Of The “Rule Of Law” Continue To Hang Like A Dark Cloud Over Our Nation & Our Moral Values!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/jeff-sessions-impact-immigration-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

From the moment Donald Trump introduced Jeff Sessions as the first member of the US Senate to endorse his candidacy for president, the two men have been bound by one topic: immigration.

“When I talk about immigration, and when I talk about illegal immigration and all the problems with crimes and everything else, I think about a great man,” Trump told a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, moments before he brought out Sessions.

Sessions made it clear that in Trump he, too, saw a kindred spirit. Politicians had long promised to do something about immigration, he said. “Have they done it? No, but Donald Trump will do it.”

Nearly three years after that February 2016 rally, Trump and Sessions on Wednesday parted ways, with Sessions turning in his resignation after a tumultuous term as Trump’s attorney general. While much of the commentary about Sessions’ departure turned on what will happen next to the special counsel’s Trump–Russia probe, it’s clear now that Sessions’ biggest impact during the Trump administration will be on immigration policy.

Though he lasted less than two years, Sessions made use of his limited time: He sued sanctuary cities and states. He recommended that the president rescind a popular program that protected immigrants from deportation (DACA) and later announced its end. He implemented a “zero tolerance” policy at the border that resulted in parents being separated from their children.

And, perhaps most consequentially, in his role overseeing the immigration courts, made monumental changes to the way judges could oversee their cases and rule on asylum claims.

“Sessions was a key driver and defender of the Trump administration’s … coordinated attack on unauthorized immigrants, asylum-seekers, and legal immigration,” said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “It seems likely that in his absence the administration’s enthusiastic drive for immigration reforms will be tempered.”

Though many of his efforts failed once they reached the federal courts — his Department of Justice suffered key losses on DACA and cutting off funding to sanctuary cities — Sessions was able to make changes without impediments over one key facet of the immigration system: the courts.

In his position as the boss of the country’s immigration judges, Sessions was able to refer cases to himself and then make legal precedent with his decisions. He did that eight times, restricting the instances in which individuals could be granted asylum and stopping judges from being able to indefinitely suspend cases and allow immigrants to remain in the country without a decision.

“Here is one group of judges who happen to be under his control. He could basically say ‘jump’ and they’d say ‘how high?’ He had total control. It was like a perfect storm of all these things coming together,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge.

After he restricted the ability of judges to set aside deportation cases, Department of Homeland Security attorneys were told to restart previously delayed cases, and thousands of cases poured back into the immigration courts.

And to push judges, Sessions instituted a quota on the number of cases they should consider every year and even told them in a speech to deliver a “secure” border and a “lawful system” that “actually works.” He cautioned them against allowing sympathy for the people appearing before them to color the orders they made.

Naturally, Sessions and the union for the immigration judges clashed over the moves, which included removing one judge from a high-profile case.

“We hope that the next attorney general will be more responsive to the issues and the challenges facing the immigration court, immigration judges, and the parties that come before the court,” said Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the union, the National Association of Immigration Judges, which represents around 350 judges.

For immigrant advocates, Sessions’ departure was welcomed. The ACLU called him the worst attorney general of modern history. The National Immigration Law Center tweeted that Sessions would be remembered for his “disregard of the Constitution” and “well-being of our communities.” The group Freedom for Immigrants said Sessions “never cared about justice. He only cared about making immigrants’ lives miserable.”

Supporters of a more restrictive immigration policy, however, lamented Sessions’ resignation. “Sessions’ resignation is undoubtedly a blow to the patriotic immigration reform community,” said Jeremy Carl, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“He has long been one of the strongest and most knowledgeable champions of our cause.”

Still, for many advocates, the fear was that Sessions’ impact on the system would be long lasting — regardless of who comes next.

“This attorney general has had a devastating impact on the immigration court system’s ability to provide fair decisions in the cases of individuals that come before them,” said Greg Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Under his tenure, there have been dramatic changes in policy that have undermined the integrity of the immigration court system and the independence of judges.”

Sessions’ legacy on immigration will go beyond the changes he’s made in the courts — his former Senate aide, Stephen Miller, is a key adviser to the president and will continue to take a key role in drafting and leading changes to the immigration system. But he won’t be able to replace Sessions, said the Migration Policy Institute’s Pierce.

“As Jeff Sessions showed us, the attorney general is in a unique position to enact wide-reaching changes on the immigration system,” she said. “Unless another like-minded individual is appointed to that office, the administration’s immigration reform efforts have lost a key tool.”

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

I’d sure like to believe that there won’t be another Sessions at the DOJ.  But, while Trump obviously views the primary role of the AG as protecting him, his family, and some of his cronies from the law, I can’t see him nominating anyone who doesn’t share his racist White Nationalist restrictionist views on immigration and civil rights. And, the GOP-controlled Senate is made up of spineless toadies who have happily confirmed a steady stream of unqualified and corrupt Trump appointees, including Sessions. I suppose the best we can hope for is that the next AG will have her or his hands full with the Russia investigation and other Constitutional showdowns Trump is likely to provoke, and therefore might put further destroying the U.S. immigration system on the back burner for a while. But, I wouldn’t count on it.

PWS

11-11-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

ELISE FOLEY @ HUFFPOST – Finally, There Will Be Some Meaningful Oversight Of Trump’s Racist, Xenophobic Immigration Policies! – It Won’t Stop, But Could Slow, The “Race To The Bottom!”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-house-immigration_us_5be2ec2fe4b0e84388924c3d

Elise writes:

The new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives can’t force President Donald Trump to abandon his efforts to crack down on asylum-seekers, migrant families and immigrants already living in the U.S. But it can make it harder for him to enact his agenda.

Whether through oversight, withholding funds or passing pro-immigrant bills and daring the Republican-controlled Senate and the president to shoot them down, Democrats now have leverage on immigration.

Republicans, of course, will still control the Senate after Tuesday’s midterms, and Trump will still be in the White House, where he has already cracked down on undocumented immigrants without congressional help.

Still, there were glimmers of hope around the country. Oregon voters rejected a ballot measure that would have ended the state’s “sanctuary” policies. Kansas gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach, a Republican who has spent years pushing hard-line immigration policies around the country, lost. So did Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Lou Barletta, who enacted an anti-immigrant policy years before as a mayor and recently defended separating families at the border. Several other Republicans who campaigned on immigration crackdowns lost too, which immigrant rights advocates held up as proof that Trump’s fear-based campaigning wasn’t the guaranteed winner he seemed to think it was.

And now that Democrats have taken control of the House, they can serve as a check on Trump’s immigration efforts.

Democrats are expected to launch investigations and conduct oversight on a number of Trump actions and policies ― something Republicans have so far declined to do. And immigrant rights groups will be pressing them to do so.

Tyler Moran, managing director of progressive group The Immigration Hub and a former Senate and White House staffer, pointed out several areas ripe for oversight. Those include the Trump administration’s family separations at the border, its deportation tactics, and its decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young undocumented immigrants and temporary protected status for certain nationalities of immigrants whose home countries suffered natural disasters or violence.

 Many of Trump’s immigration policies also require significant funding increases ― something a Democratic House is likely to fight. The Democrats have already vowed not to fund Trump’s wall along the southern border. Trump is expected to push for wall funding during the lame duck session while Republicans maintain control of both chambers, and has suggested a government shutdown in December if he doesn’t get what he wants.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told The Wall Street Journal ahead of the election that if Democrats should win a majority on Tuesday, they’d have more leverage to block wall spending even before they officially take over.

“Why would we compromise on the wall now?” she said.

Current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has pushed for more protections for undocumented immigrants.

BLOOMBERG
Current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has pushed for more protections for undocumented immigrants.

Democrats are also likely to push legislation that protects undocumented immigrants, particularly young immigrants, which could increase public pressure for Senate Republicans and Trump to back it.

Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, last year, but so far has been forced to keep it running by court orders that he is continuing to fight. Although Republicans opposed DACA, some have voiced support for some type of legislative measure that would keep its recipients ― so-called Dreamers who have lived in the U.S. since childhood ― from being deported.

But so far, Republicans haven’t actually supported measures that would do so, at least without simultaneously aiming to restrict legal immigration and ramp up deportation efforts.

Immigrant rights groups want a “clean” bill for Dreamers, called the Dream Act, that doesn’t include other measures. Democrats are expected to push for it, but past stalemates are likely to continue. More likely, Democrats could make a deal to protect Dreamers while also giving Trump something he wants, but not the whole spate of anti-immigrant measures Republicans tried, and failed, to pass earlier this year.

While Democrats gaining the majority was a good thing for supporters of immigrant rights, it required knocking out some moderate Republicans who could previously be claimed as allies on bipartisan legislation. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who unsuccessfully pushed for protections for undocumented young people, lost to a Democrat. So did Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), another Republican who called for legal status for Dreamers, although he spoke in more hawkish terms at an August fundraiser.

The defeat of bipartisan backers may be more of a symbolic loss than a substantive one. The Democrats who will take their place are likely to be even more reliable supporters of immigration reform.

Leading immigrant rights advocates, including Frank Sharry of America’s Voice, cheered Coffman’s defeat.

Even with the departure of the truly terrible Jeff Sessions, the situation is likely to remain grim. Trump’s dreams of legislation slashing legal immigration and eliminating the right to apply for asylum are DOA. Also, he’s not likely to get funding for expanding the New American Gulag, “the wall,” harassing Dreamers, or expanding already bloated, ineffective, and inhumane ICE civil enforcement. Oversight might even result in some accountability for human rights abusers like Nielsen.
But, as he has already shown, there is plenty of damage that Trump can do to the Constitution, human rights, the legal system, and our national values in the area of immigration “administratively.” It’s likely that he’ll look for a total sycophant in the Mike Pence mold for Attorney General. With the Senate firmly in GOP hands, there will be nobody to stop even more unqualified appointments. However, House oversight and budget control might be able to slow the pace of the abuses or at least make a public record for history and future action.
PWS
11-06-18

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: THIS IS WHY HE STAYS: UNDERNEATH ALL THE “TRUMP NOISE” SESSIONS IS METHODICALLY ERADICATING DUE PROCESS, PERVERTING THE LAW, & TURNING ONE OF THE LARGEST FEDERAL COURT SYSTEMS INTO A “KILLING FLOOR” TARGETING OUR MOST VULNERABLE & DESERVING REFUGEES! — “[Sessions] is dumbing down the judges and treating them like assembly-line workers whose only job is to stamp out final orders of removal.”
  3. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/jeff-sessions-donald-trump-resign-disgrace.html

Stern writes:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at the request of Donald Trump. He served a little less than two years as the head of the Department of Justice. During that time, Sessions used his immense power to make America a crueler, more brutal place. He was one of the most sadistic and unscrupulous attorneys general in American history.

At the Department of Justice, Sessions enforced the law in a manner that harmed racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. He rolled backObama-era drug sentencing reforms in an effort to keep nonviolent offenders locked away for longer. He reversed a policy that limited the DOJ’s use of private prisons. He undermined consent decrees with law enforcement agencies that had a history of misconduct and killed a program that helped local agencies bring their policing in line with constitutional requirements. And he lobbied against bipartisan sentencing reform, falsely claiming that such legislation would benefit “a highly dangerous cohort of criminals.”

Meanwhile, Sessions mobilized the DOJ’s attorneys to torture immigrant minors in other ways. He fought in court to keep undocumented teenagers pregnant against their will, defending the Trump administration’s decision to block their access to abortion. His Justice Department made the astonishing claim that the federal government could decide that forced birth was in the “best interest” of children. It also revealed these minors’ pregnancies to family members who threatened to abuse them. And when the American Civil Liberties Union defeated this position in court, his DOJ launched a failed legal assault on individual ACLU lawyers for daring to defend their clients.

The guiding principle of Sessions’ career is animus toward people who are unlike him. While serving in the Senate, he voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because it expressly protected LGBTQ women. He opposed immigration reform, including relief for young people brought to America by their parents as children. He voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He voted against a federal hate crime bill protecting gay people. Before that, as Alabama attorney general, he tried to prevent LGBTQ students from meeting at a public university. But as U.S. attorney general, he positioned himself as an impassioned defender of campus free speech.

While Sessions doesn’t identify as a white nationalist, his agenda as attorney general abetted the cause of white nationalism. His policies were designed to make the country more white by keeping out Hispanics and locking up blacks. His tenure will remain a permanent stain on the Department of Justice. Thousands of people were brutalized by his bigotry, and our country will not soon recover from the malice he unleashed.

His successor could be even worse.

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

Can’t overstate the intentional damage that this immoral, intellectually dishonest, and bigoted man has done to millions of human lives and the moral and legal fabric of our country. “The Father of the New American Gulag,” America’s most notorious unpunished child abuser, and the destroyer of Due Process in our U.S. Immigration Courts are among a few of his many unsavory legacies!

The scary thing: Stern is right — “His successor could be even worse.”  If so, the survival of our Constitution and our nation will be at risk!

PWS

11-06-18

Related posts:

  1. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  2. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”
  3. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  4. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!

GONZO’S WORLD – NEW TRAC DATA SHOWS SESSIONS’S IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN INTERFERENCE AND GROSS MISMANAGEMENT HAS “ARTIFICIALLY JACKED” THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG TO OVER 1 MILLION CASES! – And, That’s With More Judges — “Throwing Good Money After Bad!”

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/536/

Immigration Court Backlog Surpasses One Million Cases

Figure 1. Immigration Court Workload, FY 2018

The Immigration Court backlog has jumped by 225,846 cases since the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office. This represents an overall growth rate of 49 percent since the beginning of FY 2017. Results compiled from the case-by-case records obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the court reveal that pending cases in the court’s active backlog have now reached 768,257—a new historic high.

In addition, recent decisions by the Attorney General just implemented by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) have ballooned the backlog further. With a stroke of a pen, the court removed 330,211 previously completed cases and put them back on the “pending” rolls. These cases were previously administratively closed and had been considered part of the court’s completed caseload[1].

When the pending backlog of cases now on the active docket is added to these newly created pending cases, the total climbs to a whopping 1,098,468 cases! This is more than double the number of cases pending at the beginning of FY 2017.

Pending Cases Represent More Than Five Years of Backlogged Work

What does the pending case backlog mean as a practical matter? Even before the redefinition of cases counted as closed and cases considered pending, the backlog had reached 768,257 cases. With the rise in the number of immigration judges, case closures during FY 2018 rose 3.9 percent over FY 2016 levels, to 215,569. In FY 2017, however, closure rates had fallen below FY 2016 levels, but last year the court recovered this lost ground[2].

At these completion rates, the court would take 3.6 years to clear its backlog under the old definition if it did nothing but work on pending cases. This assumes that all new cases are placed on the back burner until the backlog is finished.

Now, assuming the court aims to schedule hearings eventually on all the newly defined “pending” cases, the backlog of over a million cases would take 5.1 years to work through at the current pace. This figure again assumes that the court sets aside newly arriving cases and concentrates exclusively on the backlog.

Table 1. Overview of Immigration Court Case Workload and Judges
as of end of FY 2018
Number of
Cases/Judges		 Percent Change
Since Beginning
of FY 2017
New Cases for FY 2018 287,741 7.5%
Completed Cases for FY 2018 215,569 3.9%
Number of Immigration Judges 338/395* 17.0%
Pending Cases as of September 30, 2018:
On Active Docket 768,257 48.9%
Not Presently on Active Docket 330,211 na
Total 1,098,468 112.9%
* Immigration Judges on bench at the beginning and at the end of FY 2018; percent based on increase in judges who served full year.
** category did not exist at the beginning of FY 2017.

Why Does the Backlog Continue To Rise?

No single reason accounts for this ballooning backlog. It took years to build and new cases continue to outpace the number of cases completed. This is true even though the ranks of immigration judges since FY 2016 have grown by over 17 percent[3] while court filings during the same period have risen by a more modest 7.5 percent[4].

Clearly the changes the Attorney General has mandated have added to the court’s challenges. For one, the transfer of administratively closed cases to the pending workload makes digging out all the more daunting. At the same time, according to the judges, the new policy that does away with their ability to administratively close cases has reduced their tools for managing their dockets.

There have been other changes. Shifting scheduling priorities produces churning on cases to be heard next. Temporary reassignment and transfer of judges to border courts resulted in additional docket churn. Changing the legal standards to be applied under the Attorney General’s new rulings may also require judicial time to review and implement.

In the end, all these challenges remain and the court’s dockets remain jam-packed. Perhaps when dockets become overcrowded, the very volume of pending cases slows the court’s ability to handle this workload – as when congested highways slow to a crawl.

Footnotes

[1] The court also recomputed its case completions for the past ten years and removed these from its newly computed completed case counts. Current case closures thus appear to have risen because counts in prior years are suppressed. Further, the extensive judicial resources used in hearing those earlier cases are also disregarded.

[2] For consistency over time, this comparison is based upon the court’s longstanding definition, which TRAC continues to use, that includes administratively closed cases in each year’s count. Under this standard, numbers are: 207,546 (FY 2016), 204,749 (FY 2017), 215,569 (FY 2018).

[3] The court reports that the numbers of immigration judges on its rolls at the end of the fiscal year were: 289 (FY 2016), 338 (FY 2017), and 395 (FY 2018). The 17 percent increase only considers judges who were on the payroll for the full FY 2018 year. See Table 1. For more on judge hires see: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1104846/download

[4] New court cases based upon court records as of the end of FY 2018 were: 267,625 (FY 2016), 274,133 (FY 2017), and 287,741 (FY 2018). Due to delays in adding new cases to EOIR’s database, the latest counts may continue to rise when data input is complete. TRAC’s counts use the date of the notice to appear (NTA), rather than the court’s “input date” into its database. While the total number of cases across the FY 2016 – FY 2018 period reported by TRAC and recently published by EOIR are virtually the same, the year-by-year breakdown differs because of the court’s practice of postponing counting a case until it chooses to add them to its docket.

TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.
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Yes, as TRAC notes, it has been building for many years. And there are plenty of places to place responsibility: Congress, the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, the DOJ, DHS, and EOIR itself.
But, there is no way of denying that it has gotten exponentially worse under Sessions. Ideology and intentional “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” as well as the same ineffective “terrorist tactics, threats, intentionally false narratives, inflammatory and demeaning rhetoric, and just plain willful ignorance” that Sessions employs in his immigration enforcement and prosecutorial programs are the main culprits. And, they aren’t going to stop until Sessions and this AdministratIon are removed from the equatIon. Not likely to happen right now.
So, if the Article IIIs don’t step in and essentially put this “bankrupt dysfunctional mess into receivership” by appointing an independent Special Master to run it in accordance with Due Process, fairness, fiscal responsibility, and impartiality, the whole disaster is going to end up in their laps. That will threaten the stability of the entire Federal Court system — apparently just what White Nationalist anarchists like Sessions, Miller, and Bannon have been planning all along!
Wonder if Las Vegas is taking odds on the dates when 1) the backlog will reach 2 million; and 2) the Immigration Court system will completely collapse?
The kakistocracy in action! And, lives will be lost, people hurt, and responsible Government damaged. More judges under Sessions just means more backlog and more injustice.
PWS
11-06-18

Related posts:

  1. GONZO’S WORLD: HE FIDDLES AS ROME BURNS! — Threats To Judges, Xenophobia, Racism, Cutting Corners, Dissing Respondents & Their Lawyers, Bogus Numbers, Aimlessly Adding Bodies Fail To Stem Tide Of Backlogged Cases In An Obviously Broken System — When Will Congress &/Or The Article IIIs Do Their Jobs By Restoring Due Process, Impartiality, & Competent, Apolitical Court Management To This Sorry Caricature Of A Court System?
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

CONTEMPT OF COURT: Trump Administration Asks Supremes To Short-Circuit Lower Federal Courts, End DACA!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-daca/trump-turns-to-supreme-court-to-wind-down-dreamer-immigration-program-idUSKCN1NB01D

Lawrence Hurley and Tom Hals report for Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow it to end a program introduced by former President Barack Obama that protects thousands of young immigrants who live in the United States without legal status.

FILE PHOTO: Activists and DACA recipients march up Broadway during the start of their ‘Walk to Stay Home,’ a five-day 250-mile walk from New York to Washington D.C., to demand that Congress pass a Clean Dream Act, in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

The day before congressional elections in which Trump’s harsh anti-immigration rhetoric has taken center stage, the administration urged the justices to throw out three lower court rulings that blocked Trump’s plan to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The policy has shielded from deportation immigrants dubbed “Dreamers” and given them work permits, though not a path to citizenship.

In a court filing, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the original DACA policy was introduced by Obama administration officials “even though existing laws provided them no ability to do so.” Now, it is lawful for the Department of Homeland Security to change course, he added.

“It is plainly within DHS’s authority to set the nation’s immigration enforcement priorities and to end the discretionary DACA policy,” Francisco said.

The Justice Department’s move was unusually aggressive in terms of procedure, asking the justices to take action even before intermediate federal appeals courts have ruled on the three lower court rulings. The administration says a final ruling is urgently needed.

If the Supreme Court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, agrees to hear the case, a ruling would likely come before the end of June.

Poll: Voter enthusiasm surges among U.S. Hispanics

Trump and his conservative political allies have made his hard-line policies toward immigration a key issue ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections that will determine if his fellow Republicans maintain control of Congress.

The Trump administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he bypassed Congress and created DACA, which offers protections to roughly 700,000 young adults, mostly Hispanics.

The administration is contesting three different district court rulings from judges in California, New York and the District of Columbia that told the administration to continue processing renewals of existing DACA applications while litigation over the legality of Trump’s action is resolved.

Reporting by Tom Hals and Lawrence Hurley, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

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The Administration shows its utter contempt for the Third Branch in two ways:

  • First, by essentially demanding to skip appealing the District Court orders to the Courts of Appeals, as all other litigants are required to do, they are expressing their contempt for the proper role of the Courts of Appeals;
  • Second, by publicly indicating that they “own” the Supremes and can get them to short-Circuit the system and do their bidding on demand.

A prudent Court would send Trump packing. Indeed, there is no reason whatsoever to allow the Government to circumvent the legal system here. Given that there are already 750,000 cases in Immigration Court, the 800,000 “Dreamers” aren’t going anywhere. Clearly, the Administration’s claim of “urgency” is totally bogus. Moreover, given the sympathetic circumstances of the Dreamers, there is no reason for the Court to rush on this one. It remains something that Congress eventually will have to solve, no matter how much they might want to avoid doing so.

We’ll see how this one plays out. It will tell us lots about the wisdom, integrity, and courage of the Supremes in the age of Trump.

PWS

11-05-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. JAMES HOHMANN @ WASHPOST DAILY 202 — TRUMP, GOP DON’T APPEAR SERIOUS ABOUT PROTECTING DREAMERS OR IMMIGRATION REFORM — RATHER, SEEK WAYS TO ADVANCE INTENTIONALLY DIVISIVE, RACIALLY BIASED, “FACT-FREE” WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA! — Plus, My Point By Point Analysis Of Why The Democrats Should “Hang Tough” On A Dreamer Deal!
  4. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!