🇺🇸⚖️STRAIGHT TALK FROM HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: “[F]or decades the BIA has enforced the offensive, outdated message to women seeking protection from such abuse that ‘this is not their world.’ The time has come to finally put an end to this sad substitute for true administrative appellate review.”

Trial by Ordeal — Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/4/6/the-bias-mansplaining-of-gender-based-asylum

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

The BIA’s Mansplaining of Gender-Based Asylum

“Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me

On April 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a published decision in Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland. The opening sentences of the decision are heartbreaking:

Since the age of five, Petitioner has been told that men will beat her if she does not submit. Her mother demanded that she learn how to do housework, how to accept spousal abuse, and how “to obey everything that [her] husband would say.” She beat Petitioner with various objects almost daily, in part to prepare her for future beatings from her husband.

But along with the darkness there was also hope. The decision’s opening paragraph concludes: “Yet Petitioner came to believe that ‘there should be equality in opinions[] and in worth’ between men and women. She became a teacher.”

Remarkably, over all the years that followed, the Petitioner’s hope survived the most brutal attempts to crush her into silence and submission. As her mother had foreseen, she endured unspeakable and repeated forms of physical and psychological torture, including beatings and rape, at the hands of her husband. Yet she continued to express the belief in her rights as an equal, and was brutally punished each time she did so, in an attempt to destroy the part of her capable of forming such belief. Neither the police nor her own family offered her any possibility of protection.

When she finally succeeded in escaping to the U.S., her abuse continued, merely transferred to the hands of another domestic partner with whom she had three children in this country. In 2017, our government deported both her and her latest abuser. Facing the prospect of continued harm in her native Mexico, her still unbroken hope guided her to the U.S. once again, where she was placed into removal proceedings.

Her hope was briefly rewarded when an Immigration Judge granted the Petitioner asylum, ruling that her persecution was on account of her feminist political opinion. The Immigration Judge alternatively held that asylum was warranted on account of the Petitioner’s membership in the particular social group consisting of “Mexican females,” which formed at least one central reason for her persecution.

It isn’t clear why ICE appealed the IJ’s decision. On appeal, the BIA acknowledged the Petitioner’s honesty and the ongoing, systemic nightmare of violence she endured because of her gender and unbroken belief that she possessed rights. And yet the BIA chose to act like a rubber stamp for the administration it served, and found a way to reverse the IJ’s well-reasoned decision. According to a concurring opinion of the circuit court, the BIA managed this by suggesting that the Petitioner’s brutal suffering was motivated by her “personal relationship” with her abuser. According to the concurrence, the BIA supported this conclusion by relying on the decision of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-.

Of course, asylum applications require an individualized analysis of the facts of the specific case under consideration. Matter of A-B- involved a different asylum seeker from a different country who experienced different facts than this petitioner. So in citing A-B- to reach a conclusion so at odds with the facts of this case, the BIA’s judges were signaling their choice of a specific policy objective over their duty to neutrally apply law to specific facts.

Among the facts the BIA chose to ignore was the opinion of an expert who drew “on more than three decades of research, writing, legal representation, and lawmaking” in support of her conclusion. The expert, Prof. Nancy Lemon of the Univ. of Cal. – Berkeley Law School, explained how all of the weapons at abusers’ disposal are “tied to social belief systems that ‘men are entitled to dominate and control women because the male sex is considered superior.’” Prof. Lemon went into great detail in explaining the political nature of the mistreatment. Of course, it mattered not to the Board.

In discussing this case, an esteemed colleague pointed to a decision that the same court issued more than three decades ago. In 1987, in an opinion authored by Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., a conservative Reagan appointee, the Ninth Circuit concluded that a Salvadoran woman subjected to repeated sexual abuse and other violence by a sergeant in the Salvadoran military had been persecuted on account of her political opinion where the abuser threatened to falsely label her a “subversive if she refused to submit to his abuse.”1 In the words of Judge Noonan, the fact that the persecutor gave the asylum seeker “the choice of being subjected to physical injury and rape or being killed as a subversive does not alter the significance of political opinion…” The decision reversed the conclusion of the BIA that “the evidence attests to mistreatment of an individual, not persecution,” precisely the same finding the Board used more than three decades later in denying Ms. Rodriguez Tornes of her grant of asylum.

In 1993, Justice Samuel Alito, then sitting at the Third Circuit, wrote that “we have little doubt that feminism qualifies as a political opinion within the meaning of the relevant statutes.”2 28 years later, the Ninth Circuit cited Justice Alito’s words in Rodriguez Tornes, adding that it had reached the same conclusion in its own unpublished 1996 decision.3 These were obviously not the decisions of liberal judges forwarding a political agenda. To the contrary, these judges were able to transcend political ideology by neutrally applying law to facts; this is what judges do. As a result, the law of asylum has progressed to increasingly provide asylum protection to victims of domestic abuse. Immigration Judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic administrations have followed suit, authoring well-reasoned decisions granting asylum in numerous cases of domestic abuse, including this one.

Yet over the same period of time, the BIA has stubbornly refused to budge from its 1980s position that domestic abuse is simply a personal matter not linked to a political opinion within society. In the words of Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-, the vile abuse was simply due to the abuser’s “preexisting personal relationship with the victim.”4

When a mother feels compelled to begin abusing her five year old daughter to prepare her to obey her husband one day, can the inevitable spousal abuse that follows really be dismissed as just a personal matter? And when the record contained Prof. Lemon’s evidence (because expert testimony is evidence) of “a correlation between patriarchal norms that support male dominance and violence against women by intimate partners,” what unsupported overconfidence did the BIA’s judges rely on in explaining that they know better?

The BIA decided this case during the Trump Administration. For those hoping that the change in administration will usher in a change in the Board’s view, it bears noting that neither the Clinton nor Obama administrations brought about a sea change in the Board’s approach to domestic violence claims. Under Clinton, the BIA issued Matter of R-A-,5 a precedent that essentially precluded the granting of asylum to domestic violence victims based on their membership in a particular social group. The decision was vacated by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who promised more enlightened regulations on the issue that never arrived. Similar regulations were rumored to be in the works under Eric Holder, but again did not materialize. The BIA’s one grudging concession to the political climate of the Obama era, Matter of A-R-C-G-, was later vacated by Jeff Sessions. While the BIA discussed a second decision under Obama expanding on the narrow holding of A-R-C-G-, it too never came to be.

Based on that history, it seems safe to say that without drastic action by Attorney General Merrick Garland, the BIA will continue issuing the same denials for the same reasons as before. For every individual such as Ms. Rodriguez Tornes who is able to succeed on appeal, there are countless more who merely end up as stratistics, deported to face more of the horrendous abuse that drove them here in the first place. The Ninth Circuit recently had to correct the BIA’s determination that attempted gang rape did not constitute persecution,6 and last year, reversed the Board erroneous rejection of a domestic violence victim’s particular social group on the grounds that it contained a few too many words.7 The BIA continues to be composed of the exact same group of judges who issued each of those decisions.

It is the role of the BIA to reach fair decisions by applying the applicable law to the individual facts. Doing so in the domestic violence context would require the Board to finally recognize opposition to systemic male oppression as a political opinion warranting asylum. Instead, for decades the BIA has enforced the offensive, outdated message to women seeking protection from such abuse that “this is not their world.” The time has come to finally put an end to this sad substitute for true administrative appellate review.

Notes:

Lazo-Majano v. INS, 813 F.2d 1432 (9th Cir. 1987).

Fatin v. I.N.S., 12 F.3d 1233, 1242 (3rd Cir. 1993).

Moghaddam v. I.N.S., 95 F.3d 1158 (9th Cir. 1996) (unpublished).

Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316, 339 (A.G. 2018).

22 I&N Dec. 906 (BIA 1999).

Kaur v. Wilkinson, No. 18-73001, __ F.3d __ (9th Cir., Jan. 29, 2021).

Diaz-Reynoso v. Barr, 968 F.3d 1070 (9th Cir. 2020).

Copyright 2021, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Republished by permission.

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

Different style, but the same message as I delivered yesterday about the BIA’s institutionalized racist misogyny and the strange tolerance that Attorney General Merrick Garland has exhibited to date for this type of grotesque judicial misconduct.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/04/06/%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8fbias-misogynistic-anti-asylum-ignore-the-experts-the-evidence-approach-%f0%9f%a4%ae-rebuked-again-9th-cir-slams-bia-big-time-in-rodriguez/

And, this is on top of the astounding, largely self-inflicted 1.3 million case backlog and total dysfunction generated by the BIA’s failures combined with the “maliciously incompetent” effort by DOJ politicos and EOIR bureaucrats to disguise a “deportation railroad” as “administrative review!” Leaving aside all the legal travesties, the mal-administration and waste of public resources alone would be more than enough to require the immediate replacement of EOIR “upper (mis)management” and the entire BIA with qualified judicial professionals and professional judicial administrators.

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Jeffrey and I are hardly the first to expose the charade of “appellate review” at the BIA. Two decades ago, following the “Ashcroft Purge,” administrative scholar and former GOP House Counsel Peter Levinson published his seminal work “The Facade of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudications” documenting the mockery of due process and legitimate judicial practices being foisted off on the public by DOJ politicos.

COURTSIDE HISTORY: LEST WE FORGET: THE “ASHCROFT PURGE” AT THE BIA IN 2003 DESTROYED THE PRETEXT OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AT EOIR FOREVER – HERE’S HOW! — Read Peter Levinson’s 2004 Paper: “The Facade Of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudications”

In the two decades since, legislators, DOJ Officials, and Article III Judges have done their utmost to ignore and paper over the glaring constitutional and administrative disasters identified by Peter. Not surprisingly, during that time the BIA and the Immigration Courts have descended into a slimy mass of disastrous bias, injustice, and judicial and administrative incompetence unequaled in American Justice since the heyday of the First Era of Jim Crow. (We are now in the “New Era of Jim Crow.”)

Of course, we need an independent Article I Immigration Court as a matter of the highest national priority. But, it’s not on schedule to happen tomorrow, even though it should! In the interim, Judge Garland could fix lots of the festering problems in this system. I gotta wonder if and when he is going to wake up and pay attention to the “assembly line injustice” being cranked out by “his” Immigration Courts?

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-21

☠️AMERICAN INJUSTICE: BIA “Double Doinks” Again — Normally “Gov. Friendly” 11th Cir. Finds “ICE-Owned & Operated” Jurists Violated Plain Statutory Language & Supremes’ Precedent In Failed Effort To Deport Former U.S. Citizen! — Another Bad Day For Deadly “Falls Church Clown Show” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️!

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

How horrible is today’s BIA? Well, there are endless examples documented in Courtside and the Jeffrey S.Chase Blog from my friend and Round Table colleague. But, here’s a particularly striking recent travesty from our friend Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca11-on-plain-meaning-hylton-v-atty-gen

The case is Hylton v. Att’y Gen. Here, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, hardly a hotbed of judicial liberalism or anti-Government sentiment, reamed the “Star Chamber BIA” for 1) misreading the plain statutory language, and 2) ignoring controlling Supreme Court precedent to reach an anti-migrant result.

This is merely the latest in a long line of screw-ups resulting from a powerful appellate body that lacks independence, expertise, and the institutional courage to uphold individual rights against the constant overreach of DHS Enforcement (characterized as “partners” by Sessions & Barr — how would you like to be tried by a “court” where the prosecutors and the judges are “in partnership” to extinguish your legal rights and humanity?)

Two major legal errors by supposed “expert judges” in the same case? Oh, and get this! This case misreading the “plain language” of the statute and dissing binding precedent from the Supremes, just to produce an (illegal) order of removal, was deemed so “routine” at the “Falls Church denial factory,” that it was handled by a single appellate “judge” — didn’t even merit consideration by a three-member panel!

That’s what the DOJ’s politically-motivated “deny and deport culture” produces. And, it’s not like this is an aberration; the BIA cranks out this sloppy garbage on a daily basis. Most of it doesn’t get caught by the U.S. Courts of Appeals, who all too often are on their own type of “autopilot” when it comes to the legal rights of migrants — many of them people of color!

For Judge Garland to be credible on any racial justice issue, and for EOIR to provide due process, we need radical, not incremental, change!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-21

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️🗽COURT REFORM: GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS WEIGH IN ON ARTICLE I — Emphasize Critical Due Process Need To Entirely Remove AG From Decision-Making Process!

Here’s the letter to Chair Zoe Lofgren of the House Subcommittee on Immigration:

FIJC

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera

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

Thanks to Professors Benitez and Vera for the great work for the NDPA that they are doing and the values they are instilling in their students. Just think what due process could look like in the Immigration Courts if all judges, trial and appellate, reflected those same values!

The concepts are actually very straightforward.

The Attorney General is a litigant before the Immigration Court. He or she can insert themselves in the process if they choose, to represent the Government as a litigant. But, the Attorney General should be treated as any other litigant — at arm’s length.
Individuals appearing before the Immigration Court are entitled to a fair and impartial independent adjudicator. As long as the Attorney General exercises control over the selection of judges, evaluates their performance, and can review and arbitrarily change their decisions, on his or her own whim, the system will remain unconstitutional and fundamentally unfair.

Interesting that law students see so clearly, recognize, and can articulate what Federal Judges, all the way up to the Supremes, legislators, and our Attorney General all fail to acknowledge and act upon. Hope for the future! But without better-qualified legislators, judges, and Executive Branch officials, will our justice system survive long enough to get to the future? Not without some very fundamental changes!

Every day, individuals have their constitutional, statutory, and human rights stomped upon, mocked, and abused by the broken Immigration Courts. Sometimes, Circuit Courts intervene to provide some semblance of justice in individual cases; other times they turn a blind eye to injustice and fundamentally unfair decision-making in the totally dysfunctional Immgration Courts.

But, nobody, but nobody, except members of the NDPA appears to be willing to recognize and act on the overall glaring constitutional and operational defects in the current Immigration “Courts” — that don’t resemble “courts” at all. That’s something that should concern and outrage every American committed to racial justice, equal justice for all, fundamental fairness, and constitutional due process!

EOIR and the U.S. Immigration Courts are an ongoing national disgrace — a festering sore upon democracy!🤮 Every day, they inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on those humans being abused by their fundamental unfairness and institutionalized chaos.!

How many ruined human lives ⚰️ and futures ☠️is it going to take for someone in the “power structure” to wake up and take notice!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-05-21

⚖️🗽WATCH, LISTEN TO PROFESSOR GEOFFREY HOFFMAN OF U. OF HOUSTON LAW DELIVER THE 2021 SKELTON LECTURE: “What Should Immigration Law Become?”

https://youtu.be/GvwuahGzZQ8

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

A few “takeaways” from one of America’s leading “practical scholars:”

Think about a new start with a “clean slate;”
Deportation is “state violence;”
Immigration Courts are constructed to provide Gov. with an unfair advantage;
No rules, no due process, no justice;
Kudos to the NDPA & the Round Table;
Trump Administration spent inordinate effort improperly skewing the law to insure everything is denied and remove equible discretion from IJs;
Good provisions that provided discretion in the past to alleviate hardship and injustice have been eliminated by Congress: suspension of deportation, JRAD, 212(c), 245(i), registry (not repealed but now virtually useless b/c of 1972 cutoff date).

👍🏼🗽Thanks, Geoffrey, and Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-04-21

🇺🇸⚖️ASYLUM IS THE LAW, NOT AN “OPTION” OR A “LOOPHOLE!” — Judge Garland’s Disturbing Failure To Publicly Stand Up For Rights & Humanity Of Asylum Seekers, & His Failure To End The Rabid Anti-Asylum Bias Of EOIR Stokes Humanitarian Misery, Scofflaw Behavior, & Moral Abdication @ Southern Border!🏴‍☠️ — Whatever Happened To The Scholarly, Humble Jurist Who Was Grateful That His Ancestors Were Rescued From Doom? ☠️— Are Refugee Women, Children, & Those Of Color Less Worthy Than His Family?🤮 — Why?

Four Horsemen — BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Felipe De La Hoz — Filipe De La Hoz
Investigative Journalist — Immigration
PHOTO: Twitter

Filipe De La Hoz in The Baffler:

This has been a bizarre conversation on a number of levels, not least because many interlocutors proceed from the assumption that permitting humanitarian migration is even a choice that the president gets to make. It is not: U.S. law lays out that any “alien . . . who arrives in the United States . . . irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum.” The statute enumerates certain exceptions, such as adults applying more than one year after entry and the existence of specific “safe third country” agreements (which formed another front in Trump’s efforts to gut asylum).

There are no exceptions, however, pertaining to considerations of the domestic political climate, or whether accommodating asylum seekers is deemed just too hard or, god forbid, conducive to others subsequently seeking help. Internationally, the principle of “non-refoulement” (literally non-return) holds that a state cannot “expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his [or her] life or freedom would be threatened,” as obligated by the United Nations’ 1967 protocol on refugees, of which the United States is a signatory. While the refugee definition itself is woefully outdated, the requirement to verify whether people fit the rubric before sending them away is absolute. These aren’t open questions, no matter how assertively they’re raised by political strategy hucksters and TV news hosts.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/asylum-is-not-an-open-question-de-la-hoz

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

Read the complete article, which makes many other valid points and corrects the daily errors and myths about asylum spewed forth by politicos and the “mainstream” media at the link.

Filipe gets it! But, Judge Garland apparently doesn’t! What’s wrong with this picture? Pretty much everything!

Is this how the DC Circuit Court of Appeals functioned when Judge Garland was on the bench. Is this what “due process” means in America? If not, why is Garland looking the other way as injustice rolls off his “judicial assembly line” in Falls Church?

For Judge Garland to be credible on any racial justice issue, and for EOIR to provide due process, we need radical, not incremental, change! It’s interesting that Biden is getting well-deserved kudos for nominating a very diverse progressive slate of Article III judicial nominees.

Yet, to date, EOIR, with more judges than Biden could appoint in four years, remains staffed and operating as if Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller were still in charge. And, non-diverse, anti-progressive would be an understatement for today’s Immigration “Courts.” For heaven’s sake, we still have an anti-due-process BIA churning out nativist precedents!

There is nary a “win” for an individual in the last four years of BIA/AG precedents. The BIA and the AG inevitably reject reasonable constructions of statutes presented by respondents in favor of inferior — even nonsensical — ones presented by DHS.

Sometimes, the BIA runs over clear statutory language, circuit precedents, regulatory requirements, or their own past precedents in the “race to remove.” Yet, in the “real” Federal Courts, even with a much more aggressively conservative composition, and their own often dismissive approach to immigrants’ rights, individuals prevail in published decisions almost every day! How outrageous is that!

I’ll believe that Judge Garland is serious about racial justice in America on the day that he 1) vacates every Trump-era AG precedent, and 2) removes the entire BIA and replaces them with a diverse group of progressive judges with human rights expertise and an unswerving commitment to due process. Appoint the “best and the brightest” as President Biden says!

Until then, I remain a skeptic and a strong critic of the just plain dumb, biased, and ill-informed approach to EOIR that has plagued past Dem Administrations.

It won’t be long until, predictably, the fallout from the so-called “border crisis” — unnecessarily hyped by the press and the GOP, but also stoked by the Biden Administration’s lack of expertise, preparation, and “Amateur Night @ the Bijou PR” — hits EOIR.

As of now, Judge Garland appears to be completely unprepared to handle it. So, here we go with another entirely preventable disaster brewing on top of the current grotesque dysfunction, institutionalized bias, and “worst practices” crippling democracy at the “retail level.” Judge Dana Marks said as much in an NPR interview recently. But, I nobody in charge appears to be paying attention! https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2021%2F03%2F26%2F981486753%2Fjudge-dana-marks-on-how-the-biden-administration-can-address-immigration-backlog&data=04%7C01%7Cegibson%40nylag.org%7C84cb037942e941a9fdf208d8f2ee428c%7C7a949b265bb44b6197ceb192e674d669%7C0%7C0%7C637526452442537480%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=4es4QSrVKwNB2WfgalWsQMYZppBI5nn985FaOvynr84%3D&reserved=0

It’s not rocket science! But, it does require a much much much more courageous and informed approach, along with common sense and some human decency. And, the “next gen” folks who could make it happen, are still “on the outside looking in.”

Meanwhile, the idiocy continues from the Garland SG’s Office. Handed a golden opportunity to abandon a totally boneheaded position on adjustment of status for TPS holders who qualify to immigrate legally, the Garland DOJ continues to press an irrational and illegal Trump interpretation; one that not only defies the plain language of the statute, but reaches a beyond stupid policy result that keeps hard-working folks who meet the qualifications for green card status in perpetual limbo — for no legal or rational reason whatsoever!

They could have taken the advice of renowned immigration expert and former Senior Executive at both the “Legacy INS” and DHS, Professor David A. Martin. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/03/14/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽professor-david-a-martin-explains-how-biden-administration-could-advance-its-immigration-agenda-by-abandoning-their-wrong-headed-position-before-the-supremes/

Instead, they have followed their morally vacant, “bad government,” and legally challenged predecessors in the Trump regime by taking a totally avoidable yet cruel and counterproductive stance that will actually increase EOIR backlogs while accomplishing nothing whatsoever of any value. Sounds like a lose, lose lose to me! https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law360.com%2Fimmigration%2Farticles%2F1368637%2Ffeds-back-green-card-limits-for-tps-holders-at-high-court&data=04%7C01%7Cegibson%40nylag.org%7C84cb037942e941a9fdf208d8f2ee428c%7C7a949b265bb44b6197ceb192e674d669%7C0%7C0%7C637526452442776422%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=6ZxLxyEb%2BKkjyGkfpSzAzj4e1QFmKWAB2Gn0%2BEzOwKc%3D&reserved=0

Sure, the tone-deaf Supremes’ GOP majority might buy it, since it furthers a culture of bias and de-humanization. But, that’s no excuse for what was supposed to be a smarter, more ethical, more humane Administration.

The case is Sanchez v. Mayorkas, and the lack of insight, common sense, and humanity with which Judge Garland has approached the most important topics in current American law — immigration/human rights/racial justice/social justice to date — remains appalling! There will be no racial justice in America until our leaders “connect the dots” between racist immigration policies, a racist-enabling Immigration Court, and degradation of people of color in all areas of the law!

Judge Garland could cut through all the BS by putting the right folks in charge of EOIR and turning them loose. We need a lot less talk and a lot more action!

Many of us out here have long supported social and racial justice, through good times and bad. But, we’re likely to remain unconvinced about the good faith and competence of the Biden Administration until we see radical due process and racial justice reforms at EOIR and the DOJ.

There are many folks who could solve America’s immigration problems in a humane, progressive, and efficient manner that advances and enhances due process. But, to date, Judge Garland short-sightedly refuses to put them in the game or even to publicly acknowledge the debilitating problems in his wholly-owned and incompetently operated courts! And, every minute of delay costs lives and credibility.

Here’s a very recent letter from Senator Gillibrand and other Senators requesting that Judge Garland turn his attention to the EOIR disaster/travesty.

https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Let.ImmigrationCourtReform.AGGarland.3.23.21.pdf

It’s a terrific letter. But, there is a major problem! All of this was well known long before the election! A number of us made the same points to the Biden Transition Team! Among other things, we emphasized the critical importance off “seizing the moment and hitting the ground running with a complete new approach at EOIR led by a team of available experts.”

The election was over in early November. Yet, here we are with the “same old, same old” failed anti-due process EOIR daily inflicting unnecessary pain, suffering, and abuse on migrants and their lawyers. Most of the same old DOJ unethical, legally questionable, defenses of the indefensible are still the order of the day. Some of the worst and most incompetent jurisprudence in modern American legal history, rendered in Garland’s name, is still being “outed” every week. There is no known plan for correction or even simple statement of awareness from Judge G.

Totally unacceptable! And the lack of preparation and basic competence is reflected in the problems the Administration has had at the border. A functional EOIR could and should have been part of reestablishing the rule of law at the border.

Instead, Judge Garland is making himself part of the latest chapter in America’s disgraceful and unnecessary failure to establish an asylum system that complies with due process and domestic and international laws. One that fulfills international treaty obligations, implements the generous protection objectives of the Refugee Act of 1980, rejects institutionalized racism, reflects the reality of forced migration, incorporates basic human values, and furthers the national interest.

It’s not rocket science; but it requires historical knowledge, recognition of the realities of human migration, legal competence, moral courage, and radical action that Judge Garland has yet to hint is within his capabilities. And, that’s bad news for American justice and humanity!

Inexcusable! But neither the issues of human migration nor the efforts of the NDPA to make the historically false, yet clear, promise of “due process and equal justice under law” a reality will go away, no matter how much Judge Garland and other “head in the sanders” in the Administration might want to believe and act otherwise!

Oh, yeah, don’t forget the heavy dose of overt misogyny that drove the Trump/Miller/Sessions/Barr/BIA “immigration jurisprudence” over the past four years. Yet, no repudiation from Judge Garland!

As I previously said, on “day one” Judge Garland would either repudiate or “own” the despicable treatment inflicted on female refugees and other migrants of color by the Trump kakistocracy. Until we see radical remedial action, Judge Garland now “owns” all the ugliness of the last four years. Our job becomes to let him escape neither responsibility nor the judgement of history for his failure of humanity and good judgement!

🇺🇸🗽🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-21

☠️⚰️POLITICOS, MEDIA CONTINUE TO GET THE BORDER WRONG — By Mary Giovagnoli In MS — “For the present, we must stop pretending that the U.S. can pick and choose when people will leave their countries and ask for asylum at our border.”👎🏻

Mary Giovagnoli · Senior Legal Counsel, Strategy and Special Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)
PHOTO: Medium.com

The Misery Trump Left at the Border Is Finally Being Revealed – Ms. Magazine
. . . .

Trump supporters and hangers-on boast the “success” of Trump’s immigration policies, demonstrated by the supposed drop in illegal entries. But this is merely an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to managing a very real problem. It was a giant sleight of hand which hid the actual number of people seeking entry into the U.S. Biden’s policies have pulled back the curtain and like so many other aspects of Trump’s administration, it is clear that the claims of success are nothing more than fantasies.

And yet the Biden administration is not off the hook. While it did agree to permit unaccompanied children to enter the U.S. despite the Title 42 ban, it did so following a preliminary injunction issued by a federal court last November. DHS continues to expel families, as well as single men and women, under the existing Title 42 order.

. . . .

Despite the clear moral and legal imperatives to stop Title 42 expulsions, the Biden administration is clearly worried that returning to pre-pandemic processing of asylum seekers will overwhelm the system. It is also clear that they fear a political backlash if critics are able to characterize the border as out of control.

Taking these final steps takes courage and political will. Those of us who support the rights of asylum seekers have to let the administration know that doing the right thing will not tarnish its reputation and that we will work even harder to ensure that making good on humane immigration policy is not political suicide.

Protecting asylum seekers is a woman’s issue of the first order. We must encourage and challenge both the administration and Congress to live up to U.S. obligations. We must turn out at the voting booth to support candidates and elected officials who act on behalf of asylum seekers. And we must push back, every way we can, against those who hope to weaponize the border in a callous effort to turn following the law into a political liability.

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

Read Mary’s complete article at the link. Many thanks to Judge Alex Manuel of the ABA’s National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary for passing this along.

Surprisingly, “forced migration,” is exactly what it says it is: “FORCED migration” — not optional! As I have pointed out before: “We can diminish ourselves as nation (and are doing so), but it won’t stop human migration.”

Refugees come, because that’s what refugees do. They often come when the world is in crisis, because that’s one of the primary reasons why refugees flee. They seldom come in an orderly manner because flight to save your life doesn’t lend itself to “regularity.” How many Jews perished in Nazi-controlled areas before and during WWII waiting for visas that were never going to come?

And, what brings refugees to our borders actually has little to do with inane statements of politicos, bureaucrats, border cops, and the media. One of the main consequences of illegally “closing the border to asylum seekers” is that large numbers simply enter between ports of entry. Those who used to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol are encouraged by our short-sighted policies and unwillingness to follow our own laws just to keep on going.

We’d certainly do much better if we “canned” all the Trump-era illegal, racist nonsense, reopened border ports to asylum seekers, and encouraged them to apply there or in locations abroad. But, to make that happen we would also have to review their claims in a timely, fair, and humane manner — not “rocket science,” yet something that largely has eluded our nation, particularly since 2014.

It’s achievable. But not without much better leadership coming from experts who actually know how to deal with refugee situations in a humane and effective manner. Failed bureaucrats and grandstanding politicos, those who usually “drive the train heading for a wreck,” can’t do the job! That’s been proved time and again! Why do we insist on repeating all our mistakes? Cruelty and threats simply aren’t effective.

To emphasize Mary’s concluding point about women’s concerns, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller made misogyny a focus of their vicious attack on people of color seeking asylum. It started with Sessions’s atrocious decision ignorantly and unlawfully targeting women refugees in Matter of A-B- and continued through Miller’s now-enjoined effort to unlawfully eradicate gender-based asylum grants. Never mind that women form the largest group of clearly identifiable refugees in the world and that femicide and violence against them driven by sexual antipathy and issues of control are rampant worldwide, particularly in the Northern Triangle.

But, a large problem here is that more than two months into the Biden Administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to repudiate Matter of A-B- and the other debilitating racist and misogynist “precedents” and grotesquely illegal anti-asylum policies of Sessions and Barr. Worse yet, he has neither stood up for the reinstatement of asylum laws and compliance with Constitutionally-required due process at the border, nor has he removed and replaced “his” Board of Immigration Appeals and taken steps to curb those of “his” Immigration “Judges” who are still engaged in furthering the Sessions/Barr White Nationalist, misogynist, anti-asylum agenda!

Interesting lack of action from a distinguished former Federal Judge who several months ago claimed great gratitude that his ancestors were given refuge from harm by the U.S. Is there some reason that those people of color and others now arriving at our borders and claiming legal protections under our laws are less deserving of fair, generous, and humane treatment?

Woman Tortured — Judge Garland’s View Of Proper Treatment of Women Seeking Asylum?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-21

BIDEN PLAN TO REFORM ASYLUM SYSTEM @ THE BORDER MAKES SENSE, BUT ONLY IF CORRECTLY IMPLEMENTED WITH THE RIGHT PERSONNEL — The Devil 👿 Is In The Details & Major Progressive Judicial Reforms @ EOIR ⚖️ Are A Prerequisite! — “Early Returns” On Actually Solving Immigration/Human Rights/Due Process Problems From “Team Biden” Not Encouraging!☹️

Frranco Ordonez — Franco Ordonez
White House Correspondent
NPR
PHOTO: Twitter

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/01/982795844/biden-administration-considers-overhaul-of-asylum-system-at-southern-border

Franco Ordonez reports for NPR:

President Biden’s top advisers promise “long-needed systemic reforms” to address a backlog of more than 1 million asylum cases in the immigration court system, which often keeps people applying for asylum waiting years to resolve their cases. That could mean some big changes to how asylum cases are processed at the southern border.

The plan the Biden administration is considering to speed up the process would take some asylum cases from the southern border out of the hands of the overloaded immigration courts under the Department of Justice and instead handle them under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, where asylum officers already process tens of thousands of cases a year, two people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak about administration plans told NPR exclusively.

Those familiar with the discussions say one outcome could be discouraging unauthorized migration. That’s because those who can argue for a certain fear of persecution are able to gain temporary residence and often a work permit as they wait out their cases.

. . . .

Advocates say they welcome a more efficient system, provided changes are not used as a way to expedite removals as the Trump administration did.

Eleanor Acer of Human Rights First says there are a host of reasons to allow asylum officers to conduct the first set of interviews and reduce the numbers, but she says it’s important that applicants have a chance to appeal to the court before being removed.

“The massive backlog must be dealt with,” she said. “But the answer to that problem is not to deprive asylum seekers of due process and a fair hearing, or to weaponize the asylum process to try to deter other people from seeking U.S. protection.”

The Biden administration has already ended two of the Trump administration’s programs, the Prompt Asylum Case Review and the Humanitarian Asylum Review Program, that were designed to quickly return Mexican and Central American asylum seekers suspected of having invalid claims.

POLITICS

House Passes 2 Bills Aimed At Overhauling The Immigration System

Department of Homeland Security officials declined to discuss plans to shift border cases to the asylum division.

But an administration official said last week they are now working on a number of policies and regulations to create “a better functioning asylum system.”

That includes establishing refugee processing in the region and strengthening other countries’ asylum systems.

Biden also resurrected the Central American Minors program that reunited children with parents who are in the United States legally.

The Biden administration is now seeking to “pick up the pieces” after the Trump administration, with a different set of policies that abide by U.S. law but also international obligations, Meissner said.

“We need to have access to asylum,” Meissner said, “but it needs to be done in a way that can be prompt and fair, not in a way that leads to waits of years and years and court backlogs.

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Why it could work:

Granting relief at the lowest level of the system is cost effective;
It’s easier to hire, train, and assign Asylum Officers than Immigration Judges;
Immigration Court time should be reserved for those cases where there is a real issue as to whether relief can be granted.

Why it probably won’t work:

Leadership is critical. Right now, there are only a few experts in government with the knowledge, proven leadership ability, organizational skills, and courage to lead this program.
- Two obvious names that come to mind are Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, currently USCIS Chief Counsel, and Judge Dana Leigh Marks, one of the “founding mothers” of U.S. asylum law and pioneer of the well-founded fear standard. Both are past Presidents of the NAIJ. Neither has yet been tapped for this assignment.
- By contrast, there are a number of experts in the private/NGO sector who could lead this effort. Obvious choices would be Judge Paul Grussendorf, former Immigration Judge, Asylum Officer, UN Representative, and professor; Professor Karen Musalo, Director, Center for Refugee & Gender Studies, UC Hastings Law; Eleanor Acer, Senior Director, Refugee Protection, Human Rights First (quoted in this article); Professor Michele Pistone, Creator and Founder of the VIISTA asylum training program at Villanova Law; Professor Phil Schrag, Co-Director of the CALS Asylum Clinic at Georgetown Law and author of Baby Jails and the upcoming release The End of Asylum; Michelle Mendez, Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations at CLINIC; or Judge Ilyce Shugall of our Round Table. But, nobody of that caliber has been tapped either.
- Without creative, dynamic, expert leadership, and a different approach to personnel, the program will be yet another bureaucratic failure. In case nobody has noticed, after four years of never ending abuse, gross mismanagement, and intentional misdirection by the Trump kakistocracy, the USCIS Asylum & Refugee program is also in shambles — demoralized, disorganized, leaderless, incredibly backlogged. An obvious untapped source is retired Asylum Officers and Adjudicators who could be brought back on a limited-term basis, intensively trained by experts from a “Better EOIR,” and who often are in a position to travel frequently and on short notice.

It’s not about deterrence. Already, this article speaks of “possible deterrent effect.” WRONG! The purpose of an asylum adjudication system is to provide fair, timely, generous adjudications of asylum eligibility in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.N. Convention and Protocol on which it is based, and the due process clause of our Constitution. We have never had such a system, which inevitably would be more orderly and efficient, but also result in many more grants.
- The main reason why we don’t currently have a functioning asylum system, and never have had the system that asylum seekers need and deserve, is that the system is at the mercy of a bogus Executive-controlled “court” system that time and time again has been compromised by politicos seeking who use it as an enforcement tool rather than an independent court of justice.
  - In 2014, the last year that I taught Refugee Law & Policy at Georgetown Law I “graded” the U.S. Asylum system at “B-.” Not as good as it should be, but not as bad as it could be.
  - Now I’d give it an “F.” Completely dysfunctional, highly arbitrary, and a tool of institutionalized racism and White Nationalism.
- The system is ineffective as a deterrent. There is no known basis to believe that quick and often arbitrary and wrongful “rejections” are an effective deterrent. That’s particularly true because rejections are seldom explained in a reasonable, understandable manner. So, to the extent that there is a “message” it’s that you got the wrong officer or the wrong judge on the wrong day or that the U.S. legal system is inherently unfair and should be avoided by hiring a smuggler to get you to the interior of the U.S. where, as a practical matter, you have a better chance of obtaining “de facto refuge.”
- The only “efficiency and leverage” that comes from the Asylum Officer system is in quickly identifying and consistently granting a substantial number of applications. That, and only that, does actually relieve the Immigration Court system of unnecessary cases. Otherwise, “non-grants” still have to go to the Immigration Courts for de novo review. I probably granted the majority of asylum cases “referred” from the Asylum Office. That leaves plenty of room to believe that a better trained and operated system with some positive guidance and effective supervision by better Immigration Judges and a truly expert BIA would achieve substantially higher grant rates and higher efficiency at the Asylum Office, thereby keeping many cases out of court and speeding the process for asylees to obtain permanent residence and eventually U.S. citizenship!

Some assumptions appear invalid. This article also repeats the unproven assumption that a fair, just, and efficient asylum system would result in rejection of the majority of cases. I doubt that.
- Prior to the Trump disaster, approximately 75-80% of asylum applicants at the Southern Border passed “credible fear.” That the majority of them never achieved asylum was due less to the lack of merit in their claims than to factors such as: 1) lack of a system to match asylum seekers with qualified counsel; 2) wrong-headed anti-asylum precedents from the BIA that were specifically directed against asylum seekers from Latin America — basically institutionalized racism in the guise of “enforcement;” 3) poor selection, training, and motivation of Immigration Judges some of whom simply did not treat asylum seekers fairly, nor were they given any incentive to do so.
- I granted asylum or other protection to many refugees from the Northern Triangle. I probably could have granted twice that number had the BIA precedents actually fairly and reasonably interpreted asylum law to specifically cover gender-based claims and claims arising from persecution by gangs basically operating “in lieu of government authorities” in most of the Northern Triangle.
- Additionally, an honest interpretation of the CAT by the BIA would have allowed life-saving protection to be extended to many others who lacked nexus but had a high probability of torture with Government acquiescence upon return. I believe that a return to the original Acosta-Kasinga line of asylum analysis and adoption of proper CAT interpretations along the lines set forth by the (exiled) dissenting judges in Matter of J-E- would result in grants of some type of protection (asylum, withholding, or CAT) in the majority of Southern Border cases coming from the Northern Triangle that passed credible fear or reasonable fear.
- Asylum, along with refugee status, is a key form of legal immigration to the U.S. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s NOT a “loophole.” It’s the law! Studies by groups of experts such as CMS have shown the huge benefits that refugees confer on the U.S. I have no reason to believe that asylum seekers as a group are any different.
- As long as we keep treating the reality of human migration and the strengths and humanity of asylum seekers as a negative rather than a positive, we will continue to fail, as we have for decades, to fully comply with either our own laws or international conventions.

A broken, dysfunctional, unfair EOIR will continue to drag American justice down. There must be de novo review of denials by EOIR and far, far more competent review and direction in the review of credible fear denials by EOIR. A better BIA could actually set binding precedents on “credible fear” and “reasonable fear.”
- Currently, EOIR is incapable of producing either consistently fair results (particularly for asylum seekers) or the inspired legal scholarship and leadership for the asylum system to be functional and held accountable. It’s going to require all new leadership, an all new BIA, elimination of all of the Trump-era precedents that impede fairness for asylum seekers, new merit-based selection criteria for Immigration Judges, professional administration from judicial experts, and an immediate slashing of the largely self-created “backlog” of 1.3 million cases by closing and removing from the docket every case more than a year old that doesn’t relate to a priority (most are folks who would be covered by Biden’s legalization program anyway; many are eligible for relief that USCIS could grant) to get EOIR in a position to provide the necessary legal guidance and system accountability for the Asylum Office. The absurdist notion that we could or would want to remove every one of the 10-11 million undocumented residents (many performing essential services that propped us up through the pandemic) is one of the “big lies” that has prevented rational reforms of our immigration system.
- In plain terms, EOIR needs an immediate “rebuild” with a new progressive, humanitarian judiciary of experts. There is no early indication that Judge Garland either understands that “mission-critical” need or has a plan for achieving it.

As we say in the business the “devil is in the details.” Right now, I can see neither the details nor the leadership in place or “in the pipeline” to solve the debilitating problems in our asylum system that actually are undermining the entire U.S. justice system.

Biden could fix it. But, I wouldn’t count on it. That means that the only real fix in the offing will be for the NDPA to force the Administration to “get it right” through aggressive, never-ending litigation as well as continuing to seek better legislators. Highly inefficient. Yet, sometimes it’s the only way to get the attention of those in power.

If nothing else, we’ll continue to make an important historic record of the cruelty and stupidity with which the current asylum system is being administered. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can always choose to follow our “better angels.” It just takes the courage and the good judgement to get the right folks in the right jobs to make it happen.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-01-21

🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!

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

The answer to the question posed is actually simple. As of today, DHS Enforcement and politicos at the DOJ “own” the so called Immigration “Courts” lock, stock, and barrel!

That’s an overt violation of the clear Fifth Amendment requirement that those whose lives and property are at stake be judged by a fair and impartial adjudicator — by definition one who is an expert in asylum law, human rights, and has demonstrated the ability to conduct fair hearings.

That’s also bad news for the Hispanic Community, because for the last four years those wholly owned “courts” have been operating with a clear bias against the civil and human rights of people of color, with Hispanic migrants and asylum seekers being a particular target — one that has adversely affected, even terrorized, Hispanic communities throughout the U.S. Hispanics are also grossly underrepresented among the “Immigration Judiciary” at both the trial and appellate levels, as well as on the Article III Bench — despite there being scores of Hispanic and other lawyers of color out here who would be head and shoulders above many of those currently holding these critical “life or death” judgeships!

The real questions are:

1) What can we do about it, and

2) How can we get Judge Garland and others in the Administration to listen, put an end to “Dred Scottification,” and get started on the task of bringing due process and fundamental fairness to a totally dysfunctional and dangerously biased system?

Tune in on April 7 to join the dialogue on how we can finally force the U.S. Government to make good on its unfulfilled, even mocked, Constitutional promise of due process for all persons!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-29-21

🛥🤮🤡CRUZIN’ WITH THE CANCUN COWBOY — Texas Insurrectionist Sen. Bravely Faces Down Unarmed Asylum-Seeking Women & Children From CBP Gunboat! — Man & His Party — Devoid Of Constructive Ideas — Audition For Comedy Documentary, As Real Threats To America From Their “Magamoron” Comrades Multiply & Folks Who, Unlike Cruz, Seek To Contribute To Our Society Are Left In Danger!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/27/ted-cruz-us-mexico-border-immigration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Erum Salam reports for The Guardian:

The Republican senator Ted Cruz has drawn criticism for taking a trip to America’s southern border as the conservative Texan politician once again became the butt of internet jokes and memes.

In the style of a wildlife documentary, Cruz captured his experience with the help of professional photographers and shared his recent journey to the US-Mexico border Thursday night on social media, where he aimed to shed light on what Republicans have dubbed a crisis.

Ted Cruz

@tedcruz

Live footage from the banks of the Rio Grande.

#BidenBorderCrisis

2:15 AM · Mar 26, 2021

20.8K

17.7K

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Sporting a dark green fishing shirt and matching baseball cap with the Texas flag, Cruz spoke at a press conference where he sought to paint a dramatic picture of his experience: “On the other side of the river we have been listening to and seeing cartel members – human traffickers – right on the other side of the river waving flashlights, yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol.”

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Despite his claims that the border situation is a direct result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, residents in the Rio Grande Valley have said no such crisis exists. In fact, the number of border crossings under the Biden administration largely mirror those under the former Trump administration. Cruz was accompanied by 18 other Republican senators including John Cornyn, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

After claiming he ran into heckling cartel members and saw a dead body floating in the Rio Grande, Cruz was derided by many, including the former congressman Beto O’Rourke who said: “You’re in a border patrol boat armed with machine guns. The only threat you face is unarmed children and families who are seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).”

. . . .

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

Read more at the link about the GOP’s complete farce — while much more courageous individuals, asylum seekers, are forced to risk their lives because the U.S. is incapable of administering our own asylum laws in a fair, responsible, and competent manner. Cruz & co apparently view this as a “photo op.” Actually, it’s a human tragedy for which history will hold Cruz and his racist party largely responsible, even if the voters fail to do so.

The best solution is to hire experts from the private/NGO/academic sectors; build a functioning asylum and refugee system that will process applicants fairly, generously, predictably, and efficiently; reopen legal ports of entry; establish a robust “on site” refugee program for the Northern Triangle; and work with the international community to alleviate the causes of forced migration. Figure out how new arrivals who qualify for legal status can help rebuild our economy moving forward. Develop a humane program for returning those who don’t qualify without endangering their lives, health, and safety.

An absolutely essential part of the solution is a new, “reimagined” EOIR, staffed with real judges who are experts in asylum, human rights, and due process. An EOIR that will “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best courts, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Judge Garland, where are you in American justice’s hour of dire need?

Imperfect as our current laws may be, they cover all of the foregoing. What we really need to do is follow our own laws with common sense, humanity, and a sense of urgency!

What we don’t need is more inane walls, more border enforcement directed against asylum seekers, and more cruel and illegal schemes to return refugees to back to danger without any due process. And, we certainly don’t need any more photo ops from Cruz and his GOP cronies.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-29-21

🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️⚖️BIDEN & WARREN BELIEVE IN A DIVERSE, PROGRESSIVE FEDERAL JUDICIARY — JUDGE GARLAND CONTROLS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT FEDERAL JUDICIARY NEXT TO THE SUPREMES — So, What’s He Waiting For? — Will He Reverse The Dems’ Maddening Failure To Grasp & Act On The Cosmic Importance & Game Changing Potential Of A Progressive Immigration Court, That Gets Beyond The Often White, Male, Enforcement, “Go Along To Get Along” Stereotypes & Showcases Diverse, Progressive “Practical Scholars,” Many Of Them Women & People Of Color?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-professional-diversity-federal-judges_n_605cbde5c5b67ad3871d9095o

Jennifer Bendery in HuffPost:

The Democratic senator has spent years calling for more public defenders and fewer corporate attorneys getting federal judgeships. Now Joe Biden agrees.

For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships.

“We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been largely in line with the prior statistics.”

Warren wasn’t talking about diversity in terms of demographics like race or gender; Obama made history on those fronts with his judicial nominees. She was talking about the problem with presidents and senators ― in both parties ― routinely picking corporate attorneys and prosecutors who went to Ivy League schools to be federal judges.

If you want the nation’s courts to reflect the people they serve, Warren has argued, we need judges who have been public defenders and civil rights attorneys, people familiar with the legal needs of everyday Americans who may be living on low incomes or otherwise marginalized. A diversity of legal professionals on the federal bench means more informed decisions on issues related to economic justice and civil rights.

At last, the times are catching up with Warren.

President Joe Biden is signaling he’s ready to make professional diversity central to his judicial selection process. He hasn’t nominated anyone yet, but White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to Democratic senators in December urging them to recommend court picks to the White House as soon as possible, and said that Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

Top Democrats in the House are putting a spotlight on the issue too, even though they don’t have a say in confirming federal judges.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to judicial diversity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a Thursday subcommittee hearing on this subject. “There are ways in which the federal judiciary of 2021 looks uncomfortably similar to the federal judiciary of 1921 … Somehow, despite all our progress, today’s federal judges remain, for instance, overwhelmingly male, white, former prosecutors or corporate lawyers who went to a handful of law schools.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

That’s basically a description of scores of immigration/human rights experts out here in the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”). Yes, they should be a primary source of appointees to the Article III Judiciary! Absolutely! But, they should also be appointed to the BIA and the Immigration Courts — now!

At present, the Immigration Courts are “administrative courts,” not part of the Article III Judiciary; therefore, Senate confirmation isn’t necessary. They are “administered” by a now “evil-clown-like” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ DOJ bureaucracy called “EOIR.” We need to get the right progressive scholars and “disciples of due process” on the Immigration Bench — immediately, without further delay!

Immigration Courts are one of most powerful tools in American law. Also, Constitution be damned, until we get a long overdue Article I independent Immigration Court, they are completely controlled by the AG — Judge Merrick B. Garland. This is a big, big deal — nearly 600 judgeships, almost the size of the entire U.S. District Court system, are at stake!

Sessions and Barr quickly figured: Why not aggressively weaponize EOIR to undermine American democracy, institutionalize racism and misogyny, and promote White Nationalist authoritarianism? And, that’s exactly what they did — to the max. Using EOIR judgeships to reward some of their unqualified, white, nativist buddies in the process was an “added bennie.”

Grim Reaper — G. Reaper Approaches ICE Gulag With “Imbedded Captive Star Chamber” Run By EOIR, For Their “Partner” Reaper
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

Even the totally incomprehensible incompetence with which they administered EOIR fulfilled their “negative dream.” Dysfunctional Immigration Courts became an important tool for debilitating the entire U.S. justice system and “Dred Scottifying” (dehumanizing) persons of color before the law.

Those with compelling cases for relief, many pending for years, were shuffled off to the end of the docket. Or, if they did get a hearing, incompetent or compromised “judges” at the trial and appellate levels often arbitrarily denied their claims for bogus reasons. This disgraceful mess of a “court” actually penalized those with strong cases for relief — many who should have been done and joined our society years ago instead linger in the largely self-created EOIR “backlog” of 1.3 million cases. Or, they are condemned to endless litigation to vindicate their rights in a system intentionally rigged against them.

Looking for the underpinning for the idea that people of color have reduced rights to vote, political participation, and that their lives don’t really matter? Look no further than the ongoing “Dred Scottification” of asylum applicants and other people of color in Immigration Court, now enshrined in a number of bogus “precedents” issued by White Nationalist AGs and their wholly-owned BIA!

And, their job was “easy as pie” following the indolent stewardship of their Dem predecessors. When the latter finally got around to filling judicial vacancies at EOIR, every couple of years, they handed them out almost exclusively to government “insiders” — like they were “length of service” pins! Better-qualified progressive, due-process-oriented, experts, scholars, advocates, and others in the private/NGO/academic sector — folks who actually could have brought badly needed professionalism, excellence, and order to a system careening out of control — were basically “shut out” by the Dems. Interesting way to reward your potential allies!

The Dems’ “diverse recruiting program” for the Immigration Judiciary was to advertise the positions for about 10 minutes on the “insider online bulletin board” known as “USA Jobs.” Then, after an average two-year long, excruciatingly wasteful and mindless “Rube Goldberg-designed evaluation” by layer after layer of bureaucrats — few, if any of them actual sitting Immigration Judges — participating, in most cases they basically just selected “the next ICE prosecutor, EOIR staffer, or OIL litigator up.” But, the “beauty” of this system is that with so many layers of bureaucracy involved, nobody could be held accountable for the actual selections! Talk about a “finger-pointers’ dream.”

Oh yeah, and of course there was no room for public input and/or participation in this process. Some of the newly anointed judges actually had rather less-than-stellar reputations in the immigration community at large. Many would have drawn blank stares if mentioned to a panel of acknowledged immigration and human rights experts. Few were “household names,” except perhaps in a negative sense. No matter to the Obama folks!

During the Obama Administration, I attended a so-called “training-session” at an Immigration Judge Conference — this was “in person,” although for a number of years we got “home-video grade” training CDs. There, curiously, one of these “newbies” was selected to “educate” a group of us, many of us with decades of experience in the field and some with actual teaching credentials under their belts. Our “instructor” referred to the Government as “us,” to the respondent and counsel as “them,” and bragged that “our big wins from OIL” would make it easier to deny asylum.

Other “instructors” parroted cringingly mind boggling mis-statements of asylum law — apparently designed to fit into OIL’s preferred litigation positions. And, incredibly, this was with the “founding mother” of U.S. Asylum Law, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who had argued and won the landmark “well-founded-fear” case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca before the Supremes, effectively muzzled and holding her head in the audience.

In 21 years on the bench, during “EOIR training,” I was lectured to by a variety of BIA Attorney Advisors, OIL Attorneys, politicos, DHS Officials, State Department Officials, Ethics Officers, stress managers, and an occasional NGO advocate. Never, did I get to hear my colleague Judge Marks’s views on the development of asylum law since Cardoza. Sure, that didn’t stop us from carrying on a dialogue elsewhere, as we did. But, we were pretty much “on the same page.” The folks who needed to hear what Judge Marks had to say didn’t.

Hon. Diana Leigh Marks — Hon. Dana Leigh Marks
U.S. Immigration Judge
San Francisco Immigration Court
Past President, National Association of Immigration Judges

And, we wonder why Dems inevitably screw up immigration law, and end up defending highly regressive actions and “designed to fail” policies — try “baby jails,” indefinite detention, and non-English-speaking toddlers “representing themselves” in Immigration Court. I kid you not! Each of the foregoing were things that the Obama DOJ vigorously advanced and defended before Federal Courts!🤮

Will Judge Garland figure it out before it’s too late? Or, as his Obama predecessors did, will he fritter away his time with “more sexy,” but actually far less important initiatives and lofty ideals that will be effectively undermined by failing to create a progressive, expert, well functioning, professional Immigration Judiciary.

Judge Merrick Garland — Judge Merrick B. Garland, U.S. Attorney General
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

Racial justice, equal justice, and due process for all persons in America start in the Immigration Court. And, right now they are dying there! If Judge Garland doesn’t pay attention, grasp the moment, aggressively clean house, and take the long overdue, radical, courageous actions to build a better Immigration Judiciary, the whole U.S. justice system might well come crashing down upon him! And, he will have only himself to blame!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! A Better EOIR for A Better Federal Judiciary! A Better Federal Judiciary For A Better America! Not rocket science! But, it does require vision, recognition of the problem, and the courage to solve it!

PWS

3-28-21

⚰️☠️👎🏻🤮ALL-MALE GOP PANEL OF 8TH CIR. GOES “FULL SALEM” ON SALVADORAN WOMAN — “If You Survive Your Ordeal, Woman, You Can’t Possibly Be a Refugee! Come Back And See Us After You’re Dead & Maybe We’ll Believe You,” Is The Wacko Message Delivered By Brain-Dead, Life-Tenured Male Jurists — American “Justice” Takes Yet Another Bizarre, Kafkaesque Turn As Judge Garland Silently Sits & Thinks Great Thoughts Without Taking Any Actions To End The Daily Abuses Against Humanity In His Name By Unqualified “Prosecutor-Owned & Operated Judges” & Ethically Challenged DOJ Attorneys Promoting Nonsense Before Federal Circuit Courts!

CELEBRATING WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH WITH THE BOYS FROM THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT!

https://ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/21/03/202248P.pdf

Guatemala-Pineda v. Garland, 8th Cir., 03-26-21

PANEL: SMITH, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and STRAS, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Arnold

Because you have to “see it to believe it” that these three guys actually graduated from law school and got promoted to the Federal Judiciary, the opinion is set forth in full here:

United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________

No. 20-2248 ___________________________

Yeemy Guatemala-Pineda

lllllllllllllllllllllPetitioner

v.

Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General of the United States1

lllllllllllllllllllllRespondent ____________

Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals ____________

Submitted: February 17, 2021 Filed: March 26, 2021 ____________

Before SMITH, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

After Yeemy Guatemala-Pineda entered the United States unlawfully, she applied for asylum so she wouldn’t have to return to her home country of El Salvador.

1Merrick B. Garland is serving as Attorney General of the United States, and is substituted as respondent pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43(c).

She feared that if she returned there gangs would persecute her because of her religious activities. After a winding course of immigration proceedings that began more than ten years ago, the Board of Immigration Appeals ultimately denied her request for asylum. We deny the petition for review since we think substantial evidence supports the BIA’s decision.

Guatemala-Pineda, whom we will call Pineda as her real name is Yeemy Michael Pineda, attempted to enter the United States in 2010 at age 22 but was apprehended by immigration authorities and charged with being inadmissible as an alien without proper documentation. See U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I). She conceded that the charge was true but applied for asylum, which protects, among others, refugees present in the United States who are unable or unwilling to return to their home country because they have a well-founded fear that others will persecute them on account of their religion. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101(a)(42)(A), 1158(b)(1)(A). Pineda testified before an immigration judge that she was a practicing Christian who had participated in a church project of door-to-door evangelization that specifically targeted gang members. She related that a handful of gang members had at one time “cornered” and “grabbed” her during a church function and tried to recruit her to their gang, explicitly telling her that they did not want to see her working with the church. Though they also threatened to “take [her] by force” and find her wherever she went, they did not otherwise physically harm her.

After that incident Pineda stopped attending church, opting instead to participate in religious services at other people’s homes. During one of these home services, Pineda testified, gang members appeared outside and demanded that the group stop singing. She believed they were the same gang members who had threatened her before; they specifically called her by name and said they were “coming for” her. Two weeks later, at another home gathering, gang members again appeared outside, announced they were armed, and demanded that she come outside

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or “they were going to get” her. The people inside threw themselves on the ground and waited about two hours until the gang members departed.

At that point, Pineda testified, she obtained a job selling clothes in San Salvador, which was about ninety minutes from her home. She explained that gang members did not bother or threaten her while at work, though one time she had to crouch down when she heard gunshots directed toward another person.

The immigration judge concluded that, even though Pineda had not demonstrated past persecution, she did have a well-founded fear of future persecution, and so granted her application for asylum. When the government appealed to the BIA, the BIA remanded the case to the immigration judge to consider, among other things, whether Pineda could reasonably relocate within El Salvador to avoid future persecution. On remand, Pineda testified that, if forced to return to El Salvador, she would return to her mother’s house because she had no other place to go. She noted that her entire family lives in the same city and that she could not relocate to another city as a single Christian woman. She also elaborated on her time working in San Salvador, explaining that she commuted alone and worked three to five days a week for a few months before leaving for the United States. Pineda also testified that, though she did not experience difficulties from gang members in San Salvador or while commuting, thieves did steal her paycheck three or four times and her cell phone twice, often while she was riding on a bus.

Pineda also presented testimony from an expert on Central American gangs. He testified that El Salvador is “the most violent country in the world for women” and that four things put Pineda “at not only high but very predictable risk” of harm should she return to El Salvador: her religious practices and activities, her past refusal to comply with gang demands, her flight from El Salvador to escape gang threats, and the ability of gangs to learn of her return. Further, he opined, Pineda would be at high risk anywhere in El Salvador because she is a young, single woman with no

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protective family network, making “internal relocation a very, very difficult proposition.”

The immigration judge again granted Pineda’s request for asylum, concluding that she had carried her burden to show that internal relocation was unreasonable, as “[s]he is a young single woman returning to a country the size of Massachusetts where abuse and violence against women is one of the principal human rights problems.” The judge acknowledged that Pineda had worked in San Salvador for three months without interference from gangs but pointed out that during that time she had been robbed of her paycheck or cell phone at least five times and “did not proselytize in the streets.” In sum, there were simply no other parts of the country “that are any better than the area that gave rise to [Pineda’s] original claim.” On appeal, however, the BIA pointed out that Pineda was able to avoid gang persecution while working in San Salvador. It also noted that, even though Pineda was the victim of crimes during her commute, it was unclear whether she could have avoided these and similar crimes by moving to San Salvador instead of commuting from her hometown. The BIA therefore remanded for the immigration judge “to reconsider the overall reasonableness of any relocation by the respondent throughout El Salvador.”

On remand, Pineda’s case was assigned to a different immigration judge. The new judge concluded, after receiving additional arguments from the parties and what he termed “extensive country condition evidence,” that Pineda had failed to shoulder her burden to show that she could not relocate elsewhere in El Salvador since she was able to avoid gang persecution while working in San Salvador. The BIA upheld that determination.

In her petition for review from that holding, Pineda challenges the determination that she failed to show she could not safely relocate to another part of El Salvador. We review both the BIA’s decision and the immigration judge’s decision to the extent the BIA adopted the findings or reasoning of the immigration judge. See

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Degbe v. Sessions, 899 F.3d 651, 655 (8th Cir. 2018). We will uphold the decision so long as substantial evidence supports it. See Cinto-Velasquez v. Lynch, 817 F.3d 602, 607 (8th Cir. 2016). When applying that “extremely deferential” standard, we will not reverse “unless, after having reviewed the record as a whole, we determine that it would not be possible for a reasonable fact-finder to adopt the BIA’s position.” See Eusebio v. Ashcroft, 361 F.3d 1088, 1091 (8th Cir. 2004).

Since Pineda does not contend that she has shown past persecution, she must show she has a well-founded fear of future persecution to prevail. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A); see also 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b). But “[a]n applicant does not have a well-founded fear of persecution if the applicant could avoid persecution by relocating to another part of the applicant’s country of nationality.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2)(ii). Because Pineda has not demonstrated past persecution, and the gangs she fears are not government or government sponsored, she bears the burden to show that relocation would not be reasonable. See id. § 1208.13(b)(3)(i). In these circumstances relocation is presumed to be reasonable. See id. § 1208.13(b)(3)(iii).

We hold that substantial evidence supports the BIA’s determination that Pineda could relocate to another part of El Salvador if forced to return. We believe that a reasonable factfinder could give substantial weight to the lack of gang harassment Pineda suffered while working in San Salvador for a number of months. Even if gangs generally have significant reach throughout the country and are able to locate people like her quickly, as Pineda maintains, the fact that they did nothing to her for months as she worked in San Salvador is hard to overlook. And even though the first immigration judge to preside over Pineda’s proceedings found that internal relocation would not be reasonable, that does not necessarily mean that substantial evidence did not support the second immigration judge’s decision. It might just go to show that the reasonableness of relocation in this case is one on which reasonable people could disagree.

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To bolster her case, Pineda emphasizes that she suffered other serious harm in San Salvador when she had paychecks and cell phones stolen from her. Pineda is right that, to prevail, she need not show that she suffered other serious harm on account of a protected ground, such as religion. See Hagi-Salad v. Ashcroft, 359 F.3d 1044, 1048 n.5 (8th Cir. 2004). But that other harm must rise to “the severity of persecution” for her to carry the day. Id. “Persecution is an extreme concept,” involving things like death or the threat of death, torture, or injury to one’s person or freedom. See De Castro-Gutierrez v. Holder, 713 F.3d 375, 380 (8th Cir. 2013). Pineda did not describe anything that occurred to her during her commutes to and from San Salvador or her employment there that approaches this high standard.

We therefore conclude that substantial evidence supports the BIA’s determination, considering that Pineda worked for months in San Salvador without trouble from gangs. Though we recognize that Pineda’s expert opined that she was at risk, we think the BIA did not unreasonably focus on there being no evidence that she was persecuted during the months she worked in San Salvador. We have upheld a decision on this kind of question based on less, as, for instance, where an asylum seeker had stayed in another part of a country without being harmed for five weeks. See Molina-Cabrera v. Sessions, 905 F.3d 1103, 1106 (8th Cir. 2018).

Though we sympathize with Pineda’s subjective fear of returning alone to a different part of El Salvador, we cannot say that the BIA’s relocation determination is unsupported by substantial evidence. Because we uphold this portion of the BIA’s decision, we do not consider whether substantial evidence supported the BIA’s conclusion that the government of El Salvador was unwilling or unable to control the gangs that Pineda feared.

Petition denied.

______________________________

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

No, it’s not, as Judge Arnold disingenuously claims “something on which reasonable people could disagree.” No reasonable adjudicator qualified in asylum law and due process could reach this ridiculously wrong result!

Naturally, not understanding asylum law (why would that be a requirement for an Article III Judge, just because it’s probably the #1 and certainly most hotly contested topic in Federal Civil Litigation these days), Judge Arnold and his “boys club” out on the Great Plains fail to give this credible respondent “the benefit of the doubt” to which she is entitled under UNHCR guidance.

Indeed, as I used to tell my former BIA colleagues, usually to little avail before launching another dissent, “if reasonable people could differ, the result should be clear — the respondent wins because she gets ‘the benefit of the doubt.’” Sadly, even at a time when the BIA functioned at a much much higher level than it does today, it was the Immigration Judge and immigration enforcement who often in practice got the “benefit of the doubt” from many of my former colleagues, not the asylum applicant.

As my friend Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Legal Community summed up: “Proves the point that ‘the only true refugee is a dead refugee.’” Unlike the various BIA Judges and Circuit Judges involved in this deadly travesty, Dan actually understands asylum law, due process, and human values.

One might fairly ask the question of why “practical scholars” like Dan are on the “outside” and lesser talents are on the Federal Bench at all levels? The answer has much to do with why there is an “institutionalized racism crisis” in today’s American justice system. “Trial By Ordeal,” really isn’t that great a “look” for 21st Century American Justice! (Any more than is institutionalized racism and “The New Jim Crow”).

Conveniently, this “gang of three” CJs showed little real understanding of 8 C.F.R. 208.13 as it existed at the time of the BIA’s second decision, which states:

adjudicators should consider, but are not limited to considering, whether the applicant would face other serious harm in the place of suggested relocation; any ongoing civil strife within the country; administrative, economic, or judicial infrastructure; geographical limitations; and social and cultural constraints, such as age, gender, health, and social and familial ties. Those factors may, or may not, be relevant, depending on all the circumstances of the case, and are not necessarily determinative of whether it would be reasonable for the applicant to relocate.

Just on the information regurgitated in their opinion, Ms. Guatemala-Pineda showed by expert witness testimony and by her own credible testimony and experiences that there is no “reasonably available relocation alternative” in El Salvador. There clearly is “ongoing civil strife” in El Salvador. And, anyone with even minimal knowledge of the country would know that (to put it charitably) the “administrative, economic, and judicial infrastructures” are somewhere in the zone between dysfunctional to non-existent. She also credibly pointed out why it would not be reasonable under the circumstances to require her to leave her mother’s home and move to San Salvador.

Forcing someone to commute to a job 90 minutes away, for 3-5 days per week work, in what is perhaps the most dangerous city in the country, during which she already suffered “three or four paycheck robberies and a cell phone robbery” in about three months — that’s a total of five robberies” in a relatively short span — is by no means a “reasonable internal relocation alternative” based on all relevant factors!

Additionally, that she felt unable to proselytize in accordance with her religious beliefs in San Salvador also indicates that relocation there is unreasonable. Freedom to carry out reasonable religious commitments without fear of harm is a fundamental human right.

Very interesting to compare how GOP Circuit Judges treated very clear interference with Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s ability to fulfill her religious beliefs in this case with how many GOP judges in the U.S. swoon over every minor interference with right wing religious beliefs — even those grounded in obvious bigotry — in the U.S. Here, by contrast, the GOP Circuit Judges fobbed off the interference with Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s evangelical activities — at one point she felt unable to worship publicly at her church — as of no particular concern.

Not to mention that Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s expert confirmed that:

El Salvador is “the most violent country in the world for women” and that four things put Pineda “at not only high but very predictable risk” of harm should she return to El Salvador: her religious practices and activities, her past refusal to comply with gang demands, her flight from El Salvador to escape gang threats, and the ability of gangs to learn of her return. Further, he opined, Pineda would be at high risk anywhere in El Salvador because she is a young, single woman with no protective family network, making “internal relocation a very, very difficult proposition.”

In plain terms, it’s only a matter of time before Ms. Guatemala-Pineda is persecuted, seriously harmed, or killed if returned to El Salvador. But, her life, as a woman of color, is obviously of little concern to the “gang of three.”

Let’s look at it another her way. Suppose we were tell Judges Smith, Arnold, and Staus that they had to relocate in a way that meant every third or fourth paycheck would be stolen and that they would be robbed of their cellphone every three months, with no recourse to a functioning police system. (Note that these dudes would be much better able to absorb such losses of income and expensive property than Ms. Guatemala-Pineda.) Or, that we were going to relocate their cushy ivory tower jobs to a place where they would be required to commute 90 minutes by public transportation every day. Or, that they might occasionally have to get down behind the bench to avoid rampant gunfire. Or, that they no longer could worship at their church of choice or openly engage in religious activities in their communities, but must limit themselves to “in-home worship” — not just during the pandemic, but permanently. Or, they had to live in a place where “GOP-Judiciacide” was at the highest level in the world and the police offered little or no protection, indeed were often involved themselves in abuse and killings of judges or turned a blind eye to the perpetrators.

Think our “tone-deaf group of guys in robes” would take a different view of “reasonable” if they put themselves in Ms. Guatemala-Pineda’s place and it were happening to them? You betcha!

A few other things to note about this gross miscarriage of justice:

Two panel members were appointed by Bush II, one by Trump;
Ms. Guatemala-Pineda originally won her case before the Immigration Judge, who after hearing all the evidence and carefully considering relocation found that Ms. Pineda has shown that there was no “reasonably available relocation alternative” in El Salvador;
The BIA baselessly remanded the case on ICE’s appeal to a new IJ to get the “preferred result” — a denial of relief and potential death sentence for a woman of color (See, e.g., Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions & Matter of A-B-);
In a functioning system staffed by asylum experts, this case could easily have been granted at the Asylum Office rather than kicking around the dysfunctional EOIR system for a decade — two merits hearings before the IJ — two appeals to the BIA — and Circuit Court review — all to REACH A CLEARLY INCORRECT AND UNJUST RESULT THAT NO TRUE ASYLUM EXPERT I KNOW WOULD AGREE WITH!
And, we wonder why EOIR has more than doubled the number of IJs yet still almost tripled their uncontrolled backlog to a mind-boggling 1.3 million cases! Ten years to turn an easy asylum grant into a denial (yet other cases are rushed through to denial on an assembly line without any real deli]beration or analysis) might give us a hint of why the system is totally dysfunctional and completely unfair (not to mention patently unconstitutional)!
- Since EOIR is known for its incompetent record keeping, I’m willing to bet that there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of additional “lost in space” files, warehoused somewhere that are simply “off docket” and unaccounted for.

Cases like this aren’t “academic exercises” — the judicial attitude that “screams off the pages” of this gross miscarriage of justice. They have real life, potentially deadly consequences for real humans beings, the most vulnerable of human beings, like Ms. Guatemala-Pineda. She has the same right to live as do the Circuit Judges, the BIA Judges, and the second Immigration Judge who got her case wrong!

After a decade, this monstrosity is the best our “justice system” can offer? Gimme a break! I think I could choose any three students over at the CALS Asylum Clinic at Georgetown Law who would run circles around the cavalier analysis of these three supposedly “senior jurists” in this case! Cases like this basically are indictments of our Article III system, not to mention the ongoing mockery of justice at EOIR.

The anti-asylum, anti-immigrant bias, incompetent adjudication, and systemic mis-management at EOIR are of monumental proportions! The gross inconsistencies, lack of overall immigration, human rights, sensitivity to racial justice, and “practical due process” expertise at the appellate level of the U.S. Courts and particularly at the Supremes is very disturbing and threatens the very existence and legitimacy of our legal system.

Judge Garland has the power to start fixing this, today! He must vacate all the bogus Trump-era anti-immigrant precedents; toss the entire BIA, and replace them with real judges who possess the required subject matter expertise and overriding commitment to due process and fundamental fairness; establish merit-selection criteria for Immigration Judges honoring experience representing asylum applicants in court, immigration knowledge, human rights expertise, commitment to due process for individuals under law, sensitivity to racial justice, and demonstrated practical problem solving experience.

Then, apply those criteria to new Immigration Judge selections as well as to retention decisions for all current Immigration Judges. And, for Pete’s sake, “can” the incompetent bureaucracy and get some real professionals in there who can run an independent court system — starting with a functioning nationwide e-filing system and some competent judicial training as well as assisting IJs in managing their own dockets rather than constantly interfering and trying to “micromanage” from Falls Church and the 5th Floor of the DOJ (a process known as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” honed by the Trump kakistocracy @ DOJ).

When you’re done, Judge Garland, you’ll have: 1) many fewer bad decisions heading off the the Courts of Appeals; 2) a functioning Immigration Judiciary of experts who can help keep order and provide helpful expert guidance to the rest of the now out of control system; and 3) a great source of “battle trained and proven” well-qualified, progressive judicial talent who can change the trajectory of the now often moribund (yeah, even some of the younger Trump appointees are basically “brain dead,” so the term fits) and dilatory Article III Judiciary and who are also available to fill other high-level policy positions with competence, common sense, and humanity.

You’d also go down in history as a judge who got out of the ivory tower and actually solved pressing problems, implemented our Constitution, and built a better, fairer court system that made a difference in human lives and the future of our nation. Perhaps, even something like “thorough teamwork and innovation, built the world’s best courts guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” That’s quite a legacy for future generations.

I can only hope Judge Garland finally pays attention to what’s happening across the river in Falls Church and takes immediate action to end the deadly and debilitating clown show 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ @ EOIR. Otherwise, I fear he will find himself buried in immigration litigation and his tenure mired in the muck of responsibility for grotesque racial injustice and “running” the worst, most incompetent, unfair, and blatantly unconstitutional “court” system in America!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Hey Hey, Ho Ho, The Deadly EOIR Clown Show ☠️🤡 Has Got to Go!

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt — “EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

Hey, maybe next year, we could all celebrate Women’s History Month with some decisions incorporating serious scholarship by progressive women judges that actually recognize, honor, and institutionalize relief from the unfair struggles faced by refugee women and people of color.

PWS

03-27-21

ROTTEN TOMATO 🍅🤮 THURSDAY: 9th, 5th, 8th Circuits Reject BIA’s Flawed Analyses!

Courtesy of Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis Immigration Community:

9th Cir. Says BIA Screwed Up PSG Analysis

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-asylum-el-salvador-social-group-acevedo-granados-v-garland

CA9 on Asylum, El Salvador, Social Group: Acevedo Granados v. Garland

Acevedo Granados v. Garland

“Petitioner Wilber Agustin Acevedo Granados (“Acevedo”), a native of El Salvador, petitions for review of the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming an order of removal and the denial by the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) of Acevedo’s application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). Acevedo’s petition is based on his fear that, if returned to El Salvador, he would face persecution or torture on account of his membership in a particular social group, defined based on his intellectual disability. The BIA rejected Acevedo’s claims on the ground that the proposed group definition was not cognizable. The BIA held that Acevedo’s proposed social group was not sufficiently particular, finding that the terms “intellectual disability” and “erratic behavior” rendered the proposed group “amorphous, overbroad, diffuse,[and]subjective.” The BIA further determined that the group was not a “meaningful social unit, distinct from the larger population of mentally ill individuals” in El Salvador. We conclude that the agency misunderstood Acevedo’s proposed social group, and thus grant the petition for review with respect to the claims for asylum and withholding of removal. The BIA and IJ treated the term “intellectual disability” as if it were applied by a layperson. Instead, that term as used in Acevedo’s application referred to an explicit medical diagnosis with several specific characteristics. Recognized that way, the clinical term “intellectual disability” may satisfy the “particularity” and “social distinction” requirements necessary to qualify for asylum and withholding of removal. However, because the IJ did not recognize the proposed social group before her, we remand to the agency for fact-finding on an open record to determine if the group is cognizable.”

[Hats off to Prof. Evangeline Abriel and her Certified Law Students Keuren A. Parra Moreno (argued) and Jared Renteria (argued)!]

2) 8th Cir. — BIA Goofs On “Aggravated Felony” Analysis

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca8-on-aggravated-felony-lopez-chavez-v-garland

CA8 on Aggravated Felony: h

Lopez-Chavez v. Garland

“In May 2017, an Immigration Judge (IJ) determined that Lopez-Chavez is ineligible for cancellation of removal because his 2006 federal conviction for illegal reentry in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 qualifies as an aggravated felony. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed the IJ’s ruling and dismissed Lopez-Chavez’s administrative appeal the following year. The question now before the court is whether Lopez-Chavez’s 2006 conviction qualifies as an aggravated felony under the INA, thus making Lopez-Chavez statutorily ineligible for cancellation of removal. We hold that it does not. … Because Lopez-Chavez’s 2003 Missouri marijuana conviction is not a categorical match for the corresponding federal offense in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(B), the 2006 conviction for illegal reentry under § 1326 does not qualify as an aggravated felony under § 1101(a)(43)(O). Accordingly, Lopez-Chavez is not statutorily ineligible for cancellation of removal. See 8 U.S.C. § 1229b. We grant the petition for review, vacate the BIA’s order, and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Andrew K. Nietor!]

3) 5th Cir. — BIA Blew “Categorical Approach”

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca5-on-categorical-approach-alejos-perez-v-garland

CA5 on Categorical Approach: Alejos-Perez v. Garland

Alejos-Perez v. Garland

“[T]o decide whether his 2018 conviction renders him removable, we need to determine whether we can parse MMB-Fubinaca from those other drugs; we decide that by determining whether Penalty Group 2-A is divisible. The government says it’s divisible, Alejos-Perez says not. … Because the government has not shown that the modified categorical approach is called for, we apply the categorical approach. … Because Penalty Group 2-A is not a categorical match, we must identify the appropriate result. … Once it’s clear that Penalty Group 2-A is not a categorical match to its federal counterpart, AlejosPerez “must also show a realistic probability . . . that the State would apply its statute to conduct that falls outside the generic definition of the crime” under federal law. We are unable to resolve that issue, because the BIA didn’t address it, and we can “only affirm the BIA on the basis of its stated rationale for ordering an alien removed from the United States.” … We thus remand for consideration of whether Alejos-Perez has shown a realistic probability that Texas would prosecute conduct that falls outside the relevant federal statute.”

[Hats off to Manoj Govindaiah and Maria Osornio of Raices Texas!]

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Significantly, the 5th Circuit’s rejection of the BIA’s analysis was written by very conservative Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee. Judge Smith wrote the majority opinion upholding the legally questionable injunction against President Obama’s “DAPA Program” — something many scholars believe to have been a entirely legitimate exercise of prosecutorial discretion. (The case later was lamely affirmed w/o opinion by an evenly divided Supremes.)

Even conservative Federal Judges not known for sympathy to immigrants and their legal rights appear to have grown weary of the BIA’s consistently sloppy attempts to rule against foreign nationals, regardless of the merits. This is the second rejection by the normally reliably pro-Government 5th Circuit in the last several weeks!

Ironically, one (former) Federal Judge who appears not bothered by the BIA’s defective jurisprudence is the current Attorney General, Judge Garland. He’d better get himself a “tomato resistant”🍅 raincoat to wear at work. This is just the beginning. His reputation and credibility will diminish every day that he fails to replace the BIA with competent jurists who will give migrants the fair and impartial treatment that our Constitution demands, but the DOJ’s “captive court” constantly fails to deliver!

And, leaving aside the legal ineptitude, there can be no excuse for the stunning level of dysfunction and incompetence in how one of the nation’s largest so-called “court” systems is administered by EOIR under DOJ. No tribunal in America issues more potential “death sentences” with less due process! Not exactly what Mies Van Der Rohe had in mind when he famously said “the less is more.”

Poor “Belly-Up Eyore.” He was forlornly, and apparently vainly, hoping to be “put out to pasture” after Judge Garland took over the helm at DOJ. Such high expectations!

But, he is already exhausted again by all the continuing “calls to duty on Courtside” after just 22 days of Judge Garland’s “where’s Falls Church” approach to the ongoing EOIR disaster/travesty! Judge, here’s the key; just think like it were your children or grandchildren, actual human beings, being orbited into the abyss without much attention to the law, our Constitution, common sense, or human decency! Maybe starting each day with a briefing on each Article III case that was wrongly decided in your name by the BIA and a live reading of each outrageous media story about disorder in your Immigration Courts would help raise your consciousness? Maybe you should speak with a few of the “customers” of your “courts” that put public service last. Men, women, children, and their lawyers are being abused out there every day by EOIR and you are legally and morally responsible.

You can’t lead the fight for racial justice in America while running a bogus court system that denies and mocks it on a daily basis!

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-24-21

☠️YET ANOTHER DEADLY, ⚰️ RIDICULOUS 🤡 EOIR MELTDOWN 🤮 OUTED! — Conservative 5th Circuit Excoriates BIA & Immigration Judge For Litany Of Errors In 38-Page Smackdown — Another Wrongful Denial Of Asylum To Honduran Exhausts Patience Of Even Normally Pro-Gov. Circuit Court!

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/18/18-60251.0.pdf

Morales Lopez v. Garland, 5th Cir., 03-19-21, unpublished

PANEL: Southwick, Graves, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges

OPINION BY: James E. Graves, Jr., Circuit Judge

KEY QUOTE:

Morales Lopez argues that the IJ improperly determined that she did not make a sufficient showing of past persecution and a well-founded fear of future persecution. Regarding past persecution, Morales Lopez argues that the IJ erroneously (1) required each incident of harm to rise to the level of persecution, (2) failed to consider all relevant incidents of harm, (3) required a showing of physical harm, and (4) failed to consider significant liberty deprivations suffered by Morales Lopez and her children. Morales Lopez further argues that (5) the substantial evidence compels a finding of past

10

Case: 18-60251 Document: 00515788451 Page: 11 Date Filed: 03/19/2021

No. 18-60251

persecution and (6) the IJ erred by failing to consider Morales Lopez’s psychological harm.

Regarding a well-founded fear of future persecution, Morales Lopez argues that the IJ erroneously (1) applied a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard instead of a reasonable-possibility standard; (2) failed to evaluate Morales Lopez’s fear of future persecution using the four-part test set forth in In re Mogharrabi; (3) conflated the past-persecution and well-founded-fear- of-future persecution analyses, (4) required Morales Lopez to offer direct proof of her persecutors’ motives, and (5) mischaracterized Ungar’s testimony. Morales Lopez further argues that (6) the substantial evidence compels a finding of a well-founded fear of future persecution.

Although we neither agree with nor reach all of Morales Lopez’s arguments, we agree with her overarching point: the IJ and the BIA improperly determined that Morales Lopez did not make a sufficient showing of past persecution and a well-founded fear of future persecution. We address Morales Lopez’s arguments in turn.

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

Judge James E. Graves, Jr. — Hon. James E. Graves, Jr.
U.S. Circuit Judge
Fifth Circuit
PHOTO: Wikipedia

Too bad this is unpublished. Once again, a Circuit Court has to provide the detailed analysis required by due process after the supposedly “expert” BIA commits error after error!

When they get below the “caption line” in an opinion, things go south fast for EOIR judges. I’d attribute that to a deadly combination of poor judicial selection, defective training, a “culture of prejudgement and denial,” large-scale overuse and misuse of the woefully inadequate and outdated “contemporaneous oral decision” format (not used by any other “court” for decisions of this importance and complexity), “haste makes waste” gimmicks, absurd “quotas,” inane “performance ratings,” constant political interference with decision-making, disastrously incompetent unprofessional docket management, and maliciously incompetent “leadership” from the DOJ. It’s an ungodly and inexcusable mess.

Sadly, my grim description doesn’t begin to capture just how embarrassingly unjust, unfair, dysfunctional, and just plain terrible EOIR’s “killer clown show” 🦹🏿‍♂️🤡 is. Not to mention that it is clearly unconstitutional, and a “living repudiation of due process” as currently constituted and operated. Put this pathetic imitation of a “court system”out of its misery before it causes any more destruction of human lives and irreparable damage to our justice system!

Judge Garland, where, oh where, are you in American justice’s hour of need? Stop this disgraceful mockery of justice, humanity, and common sense! Now!

In the meantime, as I had warned, Judge Garland’s previously sterling record as a jurist 👨🏻‍⚖️ is being tarnished daily by association with some of the worst jurisprudence out there, courtesy of America’s Star Chambers,🏴‍☠️ a/k/a “Clown Courts,” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ now wholly owned by HIM, and “operated” in HIS name!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Clown Courts🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ & Star Chambers☠️🏴‍☠️⚰️, Never!

PWS

03-21-21

👨‍⚖️⚖️BIA JUDGE EDWARD F. KELLY RETIRES, WILL CONTINUE TO TEACH AT GEORGETOWN LAW!

Courtside has learned that BIA Appellate Immigration Judge Edward F. Kelly has retired. Although his retirement will not become “official” until the end of this month, his “last day on the job” was yesterday, March 18.

He has been on the BIA since 2017, and with EOIR for 31 of his 34 years of Government service. He served in a number of management positions during my tenure as BIA Chair. He also was a Deputy Chief Immigration Judge immediately prior to his BIA appointment.

Judge Kelly will continue to teach “Refugee Law & Policy” (“RLP”) at Georgetown Law as an Adjunct Professor. That class has a long and distinguished history, having been taught in the past by,among others, Professor Andy Schoenholtz, Professor Susan Forbes Martin, the late Professor (and former EOIR Director and BIA Chair) Juan Osuna, and, of course me (2012-14).

Significantly, the students in RLP were the inspiration for the “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”). Many of them have gone on to make huge impacts on the law, human rights, and social justice literally worldwide (visiting foreign scholars were an integral part of the “RLP student body,” just as they have been in my current class “Immigration Law & Policy.”)

Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of retirement, Judge Kelly. Glad to have you as a faculty colleague at the Georgetown Law “Immigration Consortium” that includes, of course, CALS Asylum Clinic Co-Directors Professors Andy Schoenholtz, Phil Schrag, and others!

Here’s Judge Kelly’s bio from the Georgetown Law website:

Board Member, Board of Immigration Appeals, U.S. Department of Justice; Adjunct Professor of Law

Edward F. Kelly

B.A., Notre Dame; J.D., Notre Dame

Edward Kelly is currently an appellate immigration judge (Board Member) at the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative tribunal on immigration law in the United States and a component of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.

He has served in several immigration positions in the Executive Office for Immigration Review over the last thirty years, including tenures as Deputy Chief Immigration Judge, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, Acting Director of the Office of Administration, and senior legal advisor and attorney advisor to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

His experiences outside the agency include positions as an assistant counsel to the United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law, and as a high school teacher of humane letters at Trinity School at Meadow View, Falls Church, Virginia. Prior to his legal career, he served as a volunteer teacher with the United States Peace Corps in Gabon, Africa.

******

Let’s hope that Judge Garland does a better job with his initial Appellate Immigration Judge appointments than he did with his first Immigration Judge Appointment. It’s time to treat these appointments with the seriousness they deserve and to bring in the “best and the brightest” from the NDPA to turn the BIA around and return it to the noble mission of “through teamwork and innovation, being the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-19-21

👎🏻☹️GARLAND GETS OFF TO SHOCKINGLY BAD START AT JUSTICE: Progressive Candidates, Immigration Experts, Asylum Advocates Stiffed Again, As New AG Continues Tradition Of Appointing Prosecutors Without Immigration Experience Or Apparent Judicial Qualifications To Important Immigration Judge Positions!

Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community sends in the following item from the Coast Dispatch (Ocean City, MD):

https://mdcoastdispatch.com/2021/03/18/wicomico-prosecutor-appointed-fed-immigration-judge/

Wicomico Prosecutor Appointed Fed Immigration Judge

Mar 18,2021 by Shawn Soper

William McDermott

NOW HILL — Former Worcester County prosecutor and Wicomico County Deputy State’s Attorney William “Billy” McDermott has been appointed as a federal immigration judge by the U.S. Attorney General.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has appointed McDermott, 35, a resident of Girdletree, as a federal immigration judge assigned to the New York City Court effective March 28. McDermott, a Worcester County native who graduated from Snow Hill High School, served as deputy state’s attorney under former Worcester County State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby.

When Oglesby was appointed to the Worcester County Circuit Court bench in January 2018, McDermott, his top prosecutor, was appointed Ad Interim State’s Attorney for Worcester County. He announced he was running for the office full-time, but lost a narrow election to current Worcester County State’s Attorney Kris Heiser later in 2018.

McDermott was immediately picked up by the Wicomico County State’s Attorney’s Office, where he has served as lead prosecutor ever since before his appointment as a federal immigration judge this week. As deputy state’s attorney for Wicomico County, McDermott has prosecuted many important cases over the last few years, including the Jamel Gould homicide trial, the Brendon Fields homicide trial, the Jonathan Megee homicide trial, the Barbara Pilchard animal abuse trial and the Salisbury University hate crime graffiti case, for example.

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Outside the courtroom, McDermott has assisted in the creation of the new Prosecution Integrity Unit. He has also testified in Annapolis on several pieces of important public safety-related legislation and led the first annual Wicomico County State’s Attorney Summer Camp for youth.

“We are incredibly excited and proud of Billy’s appointment,” said Wicomico County State’s Attorney Jamie Dykes. “This may by the opportunity of a lifetime for him and his family, and we know that our country will be well-served by those qualities that will make him an excellent judge.”

. . . .

*********

Read the complete article at the link.

Short “honeymoon!” Most disappointing from an Administration and AG who claim a commitment to justice for asylum seekers and other migrants!

Nothing personal against Judge McDermott. He sounds like a decent guy. He might be well-qualified to be a U.S. Attorney, an official in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, or for dozens of other positions in the Federal Bureaucracy. He might even prove to be better than some of the Immigration Judges now on the bench.

But, the idea that he is the best qualified individual to be a U.S. Immigration Judge is facially absurd. Most of us could think of dozens of much better qualified candidates, just in the NY area.

As I always say, first impressions are lasting impressions. Sadly, Judge Garland has chosen to start by thumbing his nose at those of us committed to immigrant justice and a better Immigration Judiciary. I see no excuse for this tone-deaf appointment.

It looks like the only way the NDPA and the forces of equal justice will get Garland’s attention is by continuing to sue, sue, sue, resist, agitate, and win until we can force change! Sure, it’s dumb and counterproductive on the part of the Biden Administration. Sure, we expected better from Judge Garland.

But, hey, what else is new? If Democratic politicos ever took the time to understand EOIR and its potential for good or evil, we wouldn’t have the unmitigated mess we have today! And, there is no viable plan in place to fix it, nor have we seen the type of consciousness about the ongoing mockery of justice at EOIR necessary to start fixing the American justice system!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever. A “Built to Fail” Immigration Judiciary, Never!

PWS

03-18-21

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

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Tune in on April 7 to join the dialogue on how we can finally force the U.S. Government to make good on its unfulfilled, even mocked, Constitutional promise of due process for all persons!

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CELEBRATING WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH WITH THE BOYS FROM THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT!

Because you have to “see it to believe it” that these three guys actually graduated from law school and got promoted to the Federal Judiciary, the opinion is set forth in full here:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Hey Hey, Ho Ho, The Deadly EOIR Clown Show ☠️🤡 Has Got to Go!

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2) 8th Cir. — BIA Goofs On “Aggravated Felony” Analysis

3) 5th Cir. — BIA Blew “Categorical Approach”

You can’t lead the fight for racial justice in America while running a bogus court system that denies and mocks it on a daily basis!

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽Due Process Forever!

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Judge Garland, where, oh where, are you in American justice’s hour of need? Stop this disgraceful mockery of justice, humanity, and common sense! Now!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Clown Courts🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ & Star Chambers☠️🏴‍☠️⚰️, Never!

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