Hispanics – Page 62 – immigrationcourtside.com

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS AT ICE

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/395646-theres-a-better-response-to-abuse-than-abolishing-ice

Nolan writes:

. . . .

ERO shouldn’t terrorize anyone, but it has to be able to arrest deportable aliens where they can be found.

The main reason for wanting to abolish ICE is likely to prevent undocumented aliens who are here for a better life from being deported.

But if ICE were to be abolished, its responsibilities would be assigned to another agency and Trump would require the new agency to implement the same policies.

Trump’s enforcement policies

President Barack Obama focused his immigration enforcement programprimarily on aliens who had been convicted of crimes in the United States, had been caught near the border after an illegal entry, or had returned unlawfully after being deported.

Once an undocumented alien had succeeded in crossing the border without being apprehended, he did not have to worry about being deported unless he was convicted of a serious crime. He was home free.

This created a “home free magnet” which encouraged more undocumented aliens to come and do whatever they had to do to cross the border.

Trump acknowledged this problem in his Executive Order, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States:

“We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”

He directed DHS “to employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all removable aliens.”

Nevertheless, he prioritized removing aliens who are inadmissibleon criminal and related grounds, on security and related grounds, and for misrepresentations, or who are deportable for criminal offenses or on security and related grounds, and removable aliens who:

Have been convicted of any criminal offense;

Have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;

Have committed acts that constitute a criminal offense;

Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or government application;

Have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits;

Are subject to a final order of removal but have not left the United States; or

In the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.

ERO officers are free to arrest aliens who are not in a prioritized category, but this wouldn’t be happening often if sanctuary policies had not required ERO officers to change their enforcement operations.

Sanctuary policies prevent local police departments from turning inmates over to ERO when they are released from custody, so ERO is spending more of its time looking for deportable aliens in communities. This resulted in arresting 40,000 noncriminal aliens in FY 2017.

But ERO should not be engaging in improper behavior to make these or any other arrests.

DHS has provided avenues for public feedback and complaints, and ICE has Community Relations Officers at every field office.

If you see an ICE officer doing something improper, report him. This is far more likely to improve the situation than calling for the abolishment of ICE.

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

Go on over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.

I agree with Nolan that ICE isn’t going anywhere under Trump.
I also agree that the essential functions of ICE will still need to be performed, regardless of the ultimate fate of the organization.
I think it’s great that the “Abolish ICE Movement” has focused more attention on the cruel, unnecessary, and highly counterproductive enforcement and prosecutorial policies of ICE under Trump.
Indeed, the counterproductive nature of the Trump/Sessions immigration enforcement is a major reason why a group of Senior ICE Agents who actually perform real law enforcement functions — anti-smuggling, anti-human trafficking, immigration fraud, anti-terrorism — want to ditch the ICE label, because they know it’s inhibiting cooperation with other agencies and communities and thereby diminishing real law enforcement.
Most true law enforcement professionals that I have known don’t want to be associated with a group that glorifies cruelty and de-humanizes ordinary people. Having ICE on your resume today wouldn’t be a plus for most folks interested in a legitimate law enforcement career.
While the “essential functions” of ICE will continue, lots of today’s ICE enforcement has little to do with “essential enforcement.” The latter would be targeted at criminals, fraudsters, spouse abusers, traffickers, and recent arrivals who don’t have applications pending.
The lack of any semblance of common sense and responsibility in ICE’s abusive refusal to exercise prosecutorial discretion and actually putting properly closed cases back on the docket is a major contributor to the absolute mess in today’s Immigration Courts.
It’s also a reason why the Immigration Court mess is unlikely to be solved until Congress, the courts, and/or some future Executive force some fundamental changes in ICE enforcement and prosecutorial policies to reflect the same type of prudent, respectful, and realistic use of judicial time and prosecutorial discretion that is employed, to some extent, by every other major law enforcement agency in the U.S.
It never hurts to complain. I’m a big fan of making a “running record” of misconduct.
But, in the Trump Administration a record is about all you’ll get. Nothing is going to be done to correct misconduct because misconduct comes from the top.
My experience with ICE Chief Counsel’s Office in Arlington was highly positive. The attorneys were overwhelmingly fair, smart, responsive, respectful, and part of the “team” with the private, bar, the courts, and the interpreters that made the justice system work in Arlington in the past.
Indeed, working with the Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office made me proud to have led the major reorganization that established the forerunner to the “Modern Chief Counsel System” at the “Legacy INS” during the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office was exactly what former General Counsels Dave Crosland, Mike Inman, Regional Counsel Bill Odencrantz, and I had envisioned when we planned and carried out the reorganization (over considerable internal opposition, I might add).
My overall experiences with the officers of ICE and it’s forerunner INS Investigations were positive. I found and worked with plenty of capable, dedicated, professional, and humane officers during my decades of dealing with immigration enforcement in some form or another.
All of that suggests that the major problems in ICE have arisen almost entirely under the Trump Administration. That’s because of truly horrible leadership from the top down.
ICE won’t improve until we get “regime change.” When that happens, ICE will have to be reorganized, reinvented, and “rebranded.” Professional management — one that pays particular attention to its relationship to local communities — must be reestablished. Sane enforcement and prosecutorial discretion policies will have to be reinstated.
My experiences with ICE suggest that the right people to lead an “ICE-type” agency in the future are likely already somewhere in ICE. They just aren’t in the right leadership and management positions. Maybe they will all quit before the end of the Trump Administration If not, they could serve as a “professional core” for rebuilding and reforming ICE.
I’m skeptical that so-called “Catch and Release” has a significant effect on what’s happening on the Southern Border.
In the first place, the current situation is “a self-created crisis” initiated by Trump & Sessions. Otherwise it’s pretty much normal migration.
Seeking asylum at the border isn’t “illegal migration” at all. It’s asserting an internationally recognized right. Detention and family separation are not appropriate responses to individuals seeking in good faith to exercise their rights.
In any event, the primary drivers of migration outside the visa system are: 1) unmet needs of the U.S. labor market, and 2) political, social, and economic conditions in foreign countries. So-called “Catch and Release” has no established effect on either of these “drivers.” See, e.g., https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/crisis-border-not-numbers.

PWS

07-08-18

THE UGLY AMERICAN: PUTIN’S PUPPET PRESIDENT DOUBLES DOWN ON CALLS FOR OVERTHROW OF U.S. CONSTITUTION!

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-renews-call-for-deporting-immigrants-without-due-process-aslyum.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Intelligencer%20-%20July%205%2C%202018&utm_term=Subscription%20List%20-%20Daily%20Intelligencer%20%281%20Year%29

Eric Levitz reports in NY Maggie:

Donald Trump has ordered Central American refugees to get off America’s “lawn.”

On Thursday, the president reiterated his desire to deport asylum seekers without providing them access to the American legal system — a proposal that would violate American law, multiple binding international treaties, and the U.S. Constitution.

“Congress must pass smart, fast and reasonable Immigration Laws now,” the president tweeted on July 5, when Congress was not in session. “Law Enforcement at the Border is doing a great job, but the laws they are forced to work with are insane. When people, with or without children, enter our Country, they must be told to leave without our … Country being forced to endure a long and costly trial. Tell the people ‘OUT,’ and they must leave, just as they would if they were standing on your front lawn. Hiring thousands of ‘judges’ does not work and is not acceptable – only Country in the World that does this!”

Trump’s remarks come as his White House struggles to resolve its (self-engineered) crisis of border-enforcement policy. The administration would like to criminally prosecute all migrants who commit the misdemeanor offense of crossing the U.S. border illegally — including those fleeing violence or persecution in their home countries, who have a right under U.S. law to cross our border and then turn themselves into immigration authorities for the purpose of registering an asylum claim.

But many asylum seekers come to the United States with children in tow — and federal law forbids the government from imprisoning migrant children for longer than 20 days. Thus, the administration adopted its infamous policy of separating migrant families — sending migrant parents to jail, while placing their children in (supposedly) less restrictive forms of confinement, or else with sponsor families. This led to our government willfully traumatizing hundreds of small children; which led to a broad, bipartisan backlash; which led Trump to sign an executive order instructing the federal government to jail migrant families together (in defiance of judicial rulings barring that practice).

There are practical ways of resolving the administration’s family-detention dilemma. Officially, the administration’s insistence on imprisoning asylum seekers is grounded in the belief that migrants who are allowed to await court proceedings outside of federal detention will simply abscond into the interior of the country (a.k.a. “catch and release”). But that worry could be resolved by providing asylum seekers with ankle monitors. The Department of Homeland Security has used such monitors to track a small portion of asylum seekers for two years now; and migrants with ankle bracelets have complied with court appearances 99.6 percent of the time. Outfitting all asylum seekers with ankle monitors — instead of detaining them — would save the federal government millions of dollars, while also resolving the humanitarian problems posed by family detention.

But if the Trump administration finds ankle monitors insufficiently cruel, it could at least throw its support behind expanding the ranks of immigration judges. If the government could rapidly process asylum claims, it would not have to detain families for months on end. Currently, the U.S. has 334 immigration judges; experts believe that hiring an additional 364 such judges would allow the courts to get through the large backlog of pending deportation cases. To that end, Texas senator Ted Cruz has put forward a bill that would bring the total number of immigration judges up to 750.

But Trump has denounced all viable solutions to the White House’s problem. The White House’s aversion to ankle monitors isn’t hard to understand — the administration has signaled that it believes treating migrants cruelly is an effective means of deterring future migrants. By contrast, the president’s loud opposition to hiring more immigration judges is simply baffling.

The United States already deports many undocumented immigrants without allowing them to appear before an immigration judge. In fact, expedited removals — which is to say, removal orders issued to individuals who have been ordered to leave the U.S. previously — account for the vast majority of deportations.

But both U.S. and international law prohibit the expedited removal of asylum seekers. And it’s unlikely that there are 50 votes in the U.S. Senate for repealing that law and breaking the relevant treaties — let alone, the 60 necessary for passage. Meanwhile, Trump’s broader proposal to deny migrants all forms of due process — and to simply eject them from the country like rowdy teens on a front lawn — would require a constitutional amendment to enact.

Given these facts, it’s hard to fathom why the president wouldn’t want to increase the pace of deportations by hiring more immigration judges — a measure that could ostensibly pass Congress if he put his weight behind it, and provided some minor concessions to Democrats.

And yet, this irrational intransigence is of a piece with Trump’s broader approach to immigration policy. The president has repeatedly refused to accept funding for his border wall because it wasn’t paired with steep reductions to legal immigration — which only 38 Senate Republicans support.

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

I agree with Levitz that Trump already appears to be winning the war on asylum seekers. Racist xenophobic zealot Jeff Sessions runs the Immigration Courts and the BIA. “Go along to get along” Article III courts like the Third Circuit and the Supremes are willing to “swallow their whistles” when it comes to outing overt racism, religious bigotry, and parodies of Due Process in our Immigration Courts. More “captive judges” would be a “cheap and easy” way of speeding up the deportation express while even adding a patina of “fake Due Process” so that the Article IIIs can more easily rubber stamp the results. Chief Justice John Roberts and his “Supreme Gang of Five” have already shown how easy it is to bury the Constitution when it comes to immigration.

And, don’t forget that Sessions is already well on the way to insuring that asylum applicants are removed without fair hearings. He essentially directed Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges to summarily deny all of the most viable claims coming from Hispanic refugees from Central America. Meanwhile, the Article III courts continue to adopt creative ways to ignore the obvious trashing of Due Process going on in the “credible fear” process.

But, even that isn’t enough to keep Trump’s White Nationalist base revved up. By calling outright for the overthrow of our Constitution, he is really casting light on what he, Sessions, and their fellow White Nationalist sycophants already are doing. That might be a mistake. It will further energize the resistance — the many Americans still willing to stand up for the Constitutional rights of everyone in America – even in the age of Trump.

Interesting, and not just a little discouraging, that so many of those who took an oath to uphold our Constitution aren’t willing to do so, while those outside of our corrupt government and weak-kneed courts are the only ones standing up for our Constitutional protections and individual rights!

PWS

07-06-18

3RD CIRCUIT’S JULY 4 MESSAGE TO ABUSED LATINAS: YOUR LIVES DON’T MATTER! – S.E.R.L v. Att’y Gen., JULY 3, 2018 — PLUS MY ESSAY: How “Go Along To Get Along” Judging Costs Innocent Lives!

172031p — SERL

S.E.R.L. v. Att’y Gen., No. 17-2031, 3rd Cir., July 3, 2018

HOLDING: Latinas fleeing persecution in the Northern Triangle can expect no protection under U.S. asylum laws in the Third Circuit.

PANEL: Circuit Judges Kent Jordan, Cheryl Ann Krause; Senior Circuit Judge Ira Morton Greenburg

OPINION BY: Judge Kent Jordan

KEY QUOTES:

S.E.R.L., a native of Honduras, seeks review of the denial of her application for asylum and statutory withholding of removal based on membership in a proposed particular social group that she characterizes as “immediate family members of Honduran women unable to leave a domestic relationship[.]”2 (Opening Br. at 21.) She fears persecution by two men, Jose Angel and Juan Orellana. Jose Angel abducted, raped, and continues to stalk one of S.E.R.L.’s daughters, K.Y.R.L. That daughter has already been granted asylum in the United States. Juan Orellana is S.E.R.L.’s stepfather and has repeatedly abused S.E.R.L.’s mother. S.E.R.L. fears that if she is removed to Honduras, both men will persecute her, Jose Angel because of her relationship to her daughter, and Juan Orellana because of her relationship to her mother. S.E.R.L. and two of her children fled here from Honduras in 2014. Within a month of their unlawful arrival, the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings pursuant to INA § 212(a)(6)(A)(i). S.E.R.L. conceded removability, and timely applied for asylum and statutory withholding of removal.4 In support of her claims for relief, she alleged past persecution and a fear of future persecution based on the relationships just noted.

. . . .

S.E.R.L. contends that the BIA’s change innomenclature from “social visibility” to “social distinction” is the only change the BIA has made to its test for assessing a“particular social group,” and, she says, that is a “distinction without a difference.” (Reply Br. at 5.) According to S.E.R.L., our decision in Valdiviezo-Galdamez forecloses application of the “particularity” and “social distinction”requirements. She also argues that the BIA plainly acknowledges that it has not changed course, nor has itprovided a “principled” explanation for why it continues to impose criteria we rejected in Valdiviezo-Galdamez. (Opening Br. at 31.)

In addition, those who have filed amicus briefs in this case point out that the BIA’s decisions in M-E-V-G- andW-G-R- could be read as inconsistent with certain other BIA decisions and contrary to the canon of ejusdem generis. Amici note, for example, that in W-G-R-, the BIA concludedthat “‘former members of the Mara 18 gang in El Salvadorwho have renounced their gang membership’ does not constitute a particular social group” in part because “the group could include persons of any age, sex, or background.”26 I. & N. Dec. at 221. Yet, even though the groups varied significantly across age, sex, and background, the BIA has also held that “Filipinos of Chinese [a]ncestry” constituted a “particular social group,” In re V-T-S-, 21 I. & N. Dec. 792, 798 (BIA 1997), and that “former member[s] of the national police” in El Salvador, Fuentes, 19 I. & N. Dec. at 662, likewise could be cognizable.15 And although the BIA expressly justified its new requirements as “[c]onsistent with the interpretive canon ‘ejusdem generis,’” M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 234, amici highlight that some of the enumerated grounds for persecution, including “political opinion,” and “religion,” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A), may themselves be thought of as amorphous, diffuse, or subjective and therefore as insufficient bases for PSGs under M-E-V-G-’s requirements.

Those critiques raise legitimate concerns. The BIA has chosen to maintain a three-part test for determining the existence of a particular social group, and it has discussed how the revised particularity and social distinction requirements are not a departure from but a ratification of requirements articulated in its prior decisions. M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. at 234. And the arguable inconsistencies in its precedent highlight the risk that those requirements could be applied arbitrarily and interpreted to impose an unreasonably high evidentiary burden, especially for pro se petitioners, at the threshold. At the same time, however, we recognize thatM-E-V-G- is a relatively recent decision and clarity and consistency can be expected to emerge with the accretion of case law. That process is aided by M-E-V-G- itself, which addressed the specific concerns we raised in Valdiviezo- Galdamez, and explained why the particularity and social distinction requirements are different from one another and necessary. We now consider each of those requirements, beginning with social distinction, to explain why, notwithstanding our concerns, we conclude that the requirements are reasonable and warrant Chevron deference.

. . . .

Although S.E.R.L. also relies heavily on Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), where the BIAhad held that “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” constituted a particular socialgroup, the Attorney General recently issued a decision overruling A-R-C-G-. See Matter of A-B-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018).

. . . .

At the same time, we are mindful of the role that courts can and must play to ensure that agencies comply withtheir “obligation to render consistent opinions,” Chisholm v. Def. Logistics Agency, 656 F.2d 42, 47 (3d Cir. 1981), including, as relevant here, review of BIA decisions for inconsistent application of M-E-V-G’s requirements to similarly situated petitioners, routine rejection of proposed PSGs without reasoned explanation, and the imposition of insurmountable evidentiary burdens that would render illusory the opportunity to establish a PSG. However, just as we will carefully examine cases on petition for review to guard against such dangers, we anticipate that the BIA will scrutinize the IJ decisions that come before it with those considerations in mind and with an eye towards providing clear guidance and a coherent body of law in this area.

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

3^RDCIRCUIT’S JULY 4 MESSAGE TO ABUSED LATINAS: YOUR LIVES DON’T MATTER! – S.E.R.L v. Att’y Gen., JULY 3, 2018 – How “Go Along To Get Along” Judging Costs Innocent Lives!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)

Judge Kent Jordan, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, and Senior Judge Ira Morton Greenburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit got together in Philly, ”our nation’s birthplace,” on July 3, 2018 to deliver an early July 4 message for courageous Latinas fleeing the Northern Triangle: Your lives don’t matter; we’re OK with femicide, rape, torture, and abuse of you and your children as long as it’s out of sight, out of mind in some foreigncountry where we don’t have to listen to your screams or come across your mutilated bodies!

These judges’ names and faces are worth remembering, since they went to such great lengths to avoid taking or acknowledging any legal or moral responsibility for their own actions. Obviously, they don’t want anyone to put names and faces with consequences.

While you wouldn’t recognize it from their 43 pages of intentionally legalistic, opaque, de-humanized, gobbledygook, there is actually a simple straightforward human tragedy behind their obfuscation and task shirking. Since they won’t tell it, I will.

“Ms. S.E.R.L”. (I’ll call her “Susana”) is a native and citizen of Honduras. Honduras is a patriarchal “failed state” with a corrupt and incompetent government that does little or nothing to control gang violence and violence against women, even encouraging it or participating in the abuses in many cases. By 2015, femicides in Honduras had far surpassed “epidemic levels.” For example, in 2013, one Honduran woman was murdered every fourteen hours!

Jose Angel abducted, raped, and continued to stalk Susana’s daughter “Karla.” Susana’s stepfather, Juan Orellana repeatedly abused Susana’s mother without any interference from the government. Juan also threatened Susana personally. Having witnessed what these men did to her closest relatives, her daughter and her mother, Susana reasonably believed that she would be next. Karla was granted asylum in the U.S. Susana fled to the United States with two other daughters and applied for asylum.

Since Karla was granted asylum in the U.S., Susana expected the same humane treatment, particularly since our Supreme Court once said that asylum laws should be generously applied to those with as little as a 10% chance of being persecuted. After all, Honduran women are a distinct, well-recognized class subject to essentially uncontrolled specifically gender-based violence in a patriarchal society. Additionally, the family members closest to Susana had already suffered severe harm in Honduras at the hands of two specific men. And, her daughter Karla was being allowed to stay.

The Immigration Judge supposedly believed Susana. However, he came up with some creative ways, pioneered by the BIA, to deny her protection. First, he found that she had no reason to fear harm because she hadn’t actually been harmed or killed by either Jose or Juan, despite the threats to her from Juan who obviously was capable of inflicting severe harm. Second, he found she didn’t fit within any “particular social group,” whatever that might mean on a particular day. The went on to make the amazing finding that being a Honduran woman would have nothing to do with the harm anyway.

Perhaps, the judge believed that Honduran men suffered the same high rate of femicide as did women. Or, maybe he believed that guys like Jose and Juan and Honduran society in general wouldn’t recognize that Susana was a Honduran woman closely related to two previously abused Honduran women. The judge observed that refugee laws weren’t meant to protect women like Susana from “generalized violence,” even though Susana’s claim wasn’t based on generalized violence but rather specific violence directed at her.

The judge basically told Susana to buck up and accept her fate. The judge appeared to have no idea what actually happens to women like Susana in Honduras. Susana appealed to the BIA which had very recently found that a virtually identical situation qualified a woman for asylum. But, the other woman wasn’t Susana, and the BIA found some reasons why it was OK to send Susana back to where she might reasonably expect be killed, raped, or abused by Jose and/or Juan.

Susana appealed to a “real court”, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Unlike the Immigration Judge and the BIA, judges on the Third Circuit don’t work for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jeff hates foreign nationals, women, and particularly brown-skinned foreign women fleeing from persecution in Central America. He thinks that they are all coming here for economic reasons and should just go stand in a line to immigrate. But, Jeff knows that the line doesn’t really exist, and that they will likely be killed or disabled shortly after return anyway. What Jeff really wants is an America where only nasty old White guys like him hold all the power and non-White folks stay away.

Judge Kent Jordan, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, and Senior Judge Ira Morton Greenburg decided Susana’s case. They recognized that the BIA had rewritten asylum law so that fewer individuals would be protected and more rejected. They also recognized that Jeff Sessions had further rewritten the laws so that women like Susana would have no chance of protection. They also knew that there were lots of good arguments against what the BIA and Jeff were doing and in favor of protecting Susana.

But the judges found another Supreme Court case saying that they really didn’t have to decide legal questions if Jeff Sessions and his subordinates had done it for them. They thought that it made sense to rewrite protection law so that very few people, particularly women of color, would be protected. According to their thinking, the asylum law is intended to reject, not protect. They also thought that because these were relatively new interpretations, Jeff and the BIA should have a chance to kill or harm as many Latinas as possible before they as judges might think about whether it was a good idea. Of course, by then, it would be too late for Susana and others like her. And, these judges don’t really have any intent or will to hold Sessions accountable anyway.

So, Judge Jordan, Judge Krause, and Judge Greenburg told Susana that she should be separated from her daughter Karla and go back to Honduras with her other daughters to die, be raped, be beaten, or whatever. They knew that she would receive no help from the Government. But, they just didn’t care. Because Susana and her daughters were not their daughters or granddaughters and they wouldn’t have to hear her screams or look at their dead bodies. But, history has recorded what they did. Let the slaughter of innocents commence.

Better, more courageous judges might have said the obvious: that “women in Honduras” are a particularized, distinct, immutable/fundamental protected group; that Susana is a member of that group; and that any reasonable person in her position would have an objectively reasonable fear of persecution if returned to Honduras.

They also could have castigated the BIA and Jeff Sessions for intentionally manipulating asylum law so as not to grant protection to some of the most vulnerable and needy refugees among us. But, this “Gang of Three’ who decided Susana’s case would have been happy pushing the St. Louisand its cargo of Jewish refugees from Germany back out to sea again. Any of the judges who looked at Susan’s case could have had spoken out for saving her life and the lives of her daughters. None did!

After abdicating their judicial functions to hold the Executive accountable, this “Gang of Three” dishonestly expresses concerns about consistency and not creating “insurmountable evidentiary burdens.” Get serious!

Everyone knows Jeff Sessions is ordering Immigration Judges to crank out more removal orders with little or no Due Process. He has publicly stated his disdain for asylum seekers and women asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle. He has made it clear that he intends to “deconstruct:” the entire U.S. protection system until the only “consistency” will be that nobody gets asylum. And with cases like his decision in Matter of A-B-and spineless “go along to get along” precedents like this from the Article III courts, Sessions is implementing his real plan – insuring that nobody who comes to the border and seeks asylum passes “credible fear” and even gets to an Immigration Judge hearing.

Judges like these can shirk their responsibilities and hide behind mountains of hollow words and legal platitudes. But, they won’t escape the judgement of history for their lack of courage, backbone, integrity, and their unwillingness to stand up for human rights and human decency in the face of tyranny.

Happy July 4, 2018 from Judge Kent Jordan, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, and Senior Judge Ira Morton Greenburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit! They can celebrate. But, for Susana, her family, and other vulnerable refugee like her, there will be no celebration. Indeed, they might not even live to see another July 4! That should make us all ashamed as a nation!

PWS

07-05-18

JULY 4, 2018 IN TRUMP’S UGLY AMERICA – FORMER CBP AGENT SAYS RACISM, BIAS, DISRESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE AND HUMAN DIGNITY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A PART OF THE “CBP CULTURE” – Disgracefully, Under Trump & Sessions, It’s Now A Key National Policy! — “In the aftermath of our nation’s outcry against family separation, it is vital that we direct our outrage toward the violent policies that enabled it.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/sunday/cages-are-cruel-the-desert-is-too.html

Francisco Cantu writes in the NY Times:

. . . .

After a month of outrage at the cruelty of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, last week we saw a stream of confounding and divergent statements on immigration: The president suggested depriving undocumented migrants of due process; Attorney General Jeff Sessions insisted that every adult who crossed illegally would be prosecuted; and the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection announced that families would once again be released together to await trial. Meanwhile, thousands of separated children and their parents remain trapped in a web of shelters and detention facilities run by nonprofit groups and private prison, security and defense companies.

It is important to understand that the crisis of separation manufactured by the Trump administration is only the most visibly abhorrent manifestation of a decades-long project to create a “state of exception” along our southern border.

This concept was used by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to describe the states of emergency declared by governments to suspend or diminish rights and protections. In April, when the president deployed National Guard troops to the border (an action also taken by his two predecessors), he declared that “the situation at the border has now reached a point of crisis.” In fact, despite recent upticks, border crossings remained at historic lows and the border was more secure than ever — though we might ask, secure for whom?

For most Americans, what happens on the border remains out of sight and out of mind. But in the immigration enforcement community, the militarization of the border has given rise to a culture imbued with the language and tactics of war.

Border agents refer to migrants as “criminals,” “aliens,” “illegals,” “bodies” or “toncs” (possibly an acronym for “temporarily out of native country” or “territory of origin not known” — or a reference to the sound of a Maglite hitting a migrant’s skull). They are equipped with drones, helicopters, infrared cameras, radar, ground sensors and explosion-resistant vehicles. But their most deadly tool is geographic — the desert itself.

“Prevention Through Deterrence” came to define border enforcement in the 1990s, when the Border Patrol cracked down on migrant crossings in cities like El Paso. Walls were built, budgets ballooned and scores of new agents were hired to patrol border towns. Everywhere else, it was assumed, the hostile desert would do the dirty work of deterring crossers, away from the public eye.

. . . .

Such defenses also gloss over the patrol’s casual brutality: I have witnessed agents scattering migrant groups in remote areas and destroying their water supplies, acts that have also been extensively documented by humanitarian groups.

The principle of deterrence is behind the current administration’s zero-tolerance policy. In an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Mr. Sessions, pressed on whether children were being separated from parents to deter crossers, conceded, “Yes, hopefully people will get the message.”

Administration officials have claimed that even this policy is “humanitarian,” in part because it may dissuade future migrants from bringing their children on the dangerous journey.

This ignores decades of proof that no matter what version of hell migrants are made to pass through at the border, they will endure it to escape far more tangible threats of violence in their home countries, to reunite with family or to secure some semblance of economic stability.

Policymakers also ignore that new enforcement measures almost always strengthen cartel-aligned human trafficking networks, giving them cause to increase their smuggling fees and push vulnerable migrants to make riskier crossings to avoid detection.

Jason De León, the director of the Undocumented Migration Project, argues that the government sees undocumented migrants as people “whose lives have no political or social value” and “whose deaths are of little consequence.”

This devaluation of migrant life is not just rhetorical: CNN recently revealed that the Border Patrol has been undercounting migrant deaths, failing to include more than 500 in its official tally of more than 6,000 deaths over 16 years — a literal erasure of lives.

The logic of deterrence is not unlike that of war: It has transformed the border into a state of exception where some of the most vulnerable people on earth face death and disappearance and where children are torn from their parents to send the message You are not safe here. In this sense, the situation at the border has reached a point of crisis — not one of criminality but of disregard for human life.

We cannot return to indifference. In the aftermath of our nation’s outcry against family separation, it is vital that we direct our outrage toward the violent policies that enabled it.

Francisco Cantú, a former Border Patrol agent, is the author of “The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border.”

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

Read Cantu’s full article at the above link.

BTW, when I was at the “Legacy INS” I was told the “Maglite hitting the migrant’s skull” version of the Border Patrol’s definition of “toncs.”

Cantu confirms what I have said many times on this blog. Far from keeping us safer, the cruel, inhuman, dishonest, and racist policies of Trump & Sessions actually “strengthen cartel-aligned human trafficking networks,” thereby making us markedly less safe. They also degrade us as a nation and as human beings by essentially assisting in the deaths of desperate and vulnerable refugees who are only required to use the cartels in the first place because of the willful failures, incompetence, dishonesty, and immorality of our Government officials administering refugee and asylum programs!

Focus on this ugly truth: Under Trump, Sessions, Miller, and their White Nationalist buddies, our government sees undocumented migrants as people “’whose lives have no political or social value’ and ‘whose deaths are of little consequence.'”

Celebrate July 4 by “just saying no” to the Trump regime! Join the New Due Process Army, and stop the ugliness of Trump, Sessions, Miller, and their White Nationalist cabal! Channel your outrage into saving the lives of the most vulnerable among us and resisting the Trump kakistocracy! Restore the optimistic, progressive, inclusive, idealistic vision of America set forth by our Founding Fathers in their Declaration of Independence!

PWS

07-03-18

THE HILL: NOLAN HAS SOME IDEAS ON HOW TO DEAL WITH FAMILIES AT THE BORDER!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/394201-trump-congress-have-options-on-the-table-to-prevent-family-separation

Here’s Nolan’s conclusion in The Hill:

. . . .

Perhaps Trump’s “no due process” approach is the best solution if persecution claims can be considered outside of the United States.

Letting them apply here isn’t working well.

As of April 2017, the average wait for a hearing was 670 days, and the immigration court backlog has increased since then. It was 714,067 cases in May 2018.

It isn’t possible to enforce the immigration laws if deportable aliens can’t be put in removal proceedings, and the judges are being pressed to spend less time on cases, which puts due process in jeopardy.

Relatively few asylum applications are granted, and even fewer will be granted in the future.

We need a politically acceptable way to reduce the number of asylum applicants to a manageable level.

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

Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article!

I agree with Nolan’s observation that pushing Immigration Judges to schedule more cases and spend less time on them puts due process in jeopardy. I also can see that Sessions intends to reduce asylum grant rates to about 0% by totally distorting the system until it is impossible for virtually anyone actually needing protection to get it.

As I have stated before, the problem isn’t the asylum law. The problem is the way Trump and Sessions have distorted and perverted asylum law and the Constitutional right to Due Process.

Asylum law is designed to protect individuals fleeing from persecution. We haven’t even begun to test the limits of our ability to give refuge. Indeed, at the time of the world’s greatest need, and our own prosperity, we have disgracefully turned our backs on accepting anything approaching a fair share of the world’s desperate refugees. We should be ashamed of ourselves as a nation! Refugees of all types bring great things to our nation and help us prosper. But, even if they didn’t, that wouldn’t lessen our moral and humanitarian obligations to accept our fair and more generous share of the world’s refugees.

And never forget that the backlog and the waiting times have little or nothing to do with fault on the part of asylum applicants. Many of them have also been unfairly screwed by the mess that Congress, the DOJ, DHS, and politicos have made of the Immigration Court system.

The backlog is almost entirely the result of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” which has been kicked into high gear under Sessions, exceptionally poor choices in docket management and bad prosecutorial decisions by DHS, and years of neglect and understaffing by Congress, as well as stunningly incompetent management of the Immigration Courts by the DOJ under the last three Administrations.

Here’s the truth that Trump and the restrictionists don’t want to deal with:

SOLVING THE SOUTHERN BORDER: It’s Not Our Asylum Laws That Need Changing — It’s The Actions Of Our Leaders Who Administer Them That Must Change!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)

Contrary to what White Nationalist liars like Trump & Sessions say, our U.S. asylum laws are not the problem. The politicos who misinterpret and misapply the law and then mal-administer the asylum adjudication system are the problem.

The current asylum laws are more than flexible enough to deal efficiently, effectively, and humanely with today’s bogus, self-created “Southern Border Crisis.” It’s actually nothing more than the normal ebb and flow, largely of refugees, from the Northern Triangle.

That has more do with conditions in those countries and seasonal factors than it does with U.S. asylum law. Forced migration is an unfortunate fact of life. Always has been, and probably always will be. That is, unless and until leaders of developed nations devote more time and resources to addressing the causation factors, not just flailing ineffectively and too often inhumanely with the inevitable results.

And the reasonable solutions are readily available under today’s U.S. legal system:

Instead of sending more law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges to the Southern Border, send more CBP Inspectors and USCIS Asylum Officers to insure that those seeking asylum are processed promptly, courteously, respectfully, and fairly.

Take those who turn themselves in to the Border Patrol to the nearest port of entry instead of sending them to criminal court (unless, of course, they are repeat offenders or real criminals).

Release those asylum seekers who pass “credible fear” on low bonds or “alternatives to detention” (primarily ankle bracelet monitoring) which have been phenomenally successful in achieving high rates of appearance at Immigration Court hearings. They are also much more humane and cheaper than long-term immigration detention.

Work with the pro bono legal community and NGOs to insure that each asylum applicant gets a competent lawyer. Legal representation also has a demonstrated correlation to near-universal rates of appearance at Immigration Court hearings. Lawyers also insure that cases will be well-presented and fairly heard, indispensable ingredients to the efficient delivery of Due Process.

Insure that address information is complete and accurate at the time of release from custody. Also, insure that asylum applicants fully understand how the process works and their reporting obligations to the Immigration Courts and to DHS, as well as their obligation to stay in touch with their attorneys.

Allow U.S. Immigration Judges in each Immigration Court to work with ICE Counsel, NGOs, and the local legal community to develop scheduling patterns that insure applications for asylum can be filed at the “First Master” and that cases are completed on the first scheduled “Individual Merits Hearing” date.

If there is a consensus that these cases merit “priority treatment,” then the ICE prosecutor should agree to remove a “lower priority case” from the current 720,000 case backlog by exercising “prosecutorial discretion.” This will end “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and insure that the prioritization of new cases does not add to the already insurmountable backlog.

Establish a robust “in-country refugee processing program” in the Northern Triangle; fund international efforts to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle; and work cooperatively with the UNHCR and other countries in the Americas to establish and fund protection programs that distribute refugees fleeing the Northern Triangle among a number of countries. That will help reduce the flow of refugees at the source, rather than at our Southern Border. And, more important, it will do so through legal humanitarian actions, not by encouraging law enforcement officials in other countries (like Mexico) to abuse refugees and deny them humane treatment (so that we don’t have to).

My proposed system would require no legislative fixes; comply with the U.S Constitution, our statutory laws, and international laws; be consistent with existing court orders and resolve some pending legal challenges; and could be carried out with less additional personnel and expenditure of taxpayer funds than the Administration’s current “cruel, inhuman, and guaranteed to fail” “deterrence only” policy.

ADDITIONAL BENEFIT: We could also all sleep better at night, while reducing the “National Stress Level.” (And, for those interested in such things, it also would be more consistent with Matthew 25:44, the rest of Christ’s teachings, and Christian social justice theology).

As Eric Levitz says in New York Magazine, the folks arriving at our border are the ones in crisis, not us! “And those families aren’t bringing crime and lawlessness to our country — if anything, we brought such conditions to theirs.”

That warrants a much more measured, empathetic, humane, respectful, and both legally and morally justifiable approach than we have seen from our Government to date.The mechanisms for achieving that are already in our law. We just need leaders with the wisdom and moral courage to use them.

PWS

06-23-18

I also take note of how EOIR under Sessions has disingenuously manipulated the asylum adjudication numbers to support a false narrative that most asylum claims are meritless.

The only “real ” number is a comparison of asylum grants to denials, not grants to the total number of cases involving asylum applications including the substantial number that were never decided on the merits. The fact that a case is disposed of in some other manner does not mean that the asylum application was meritless; it just means that the case was disposed of in another way.

Here are the “real” numbers from EOIR’s own Statistics Yearbook, before they were dishonestly manipulated under Sessions’s instructions to support his false claims about asylum seekers:

Asylum Grant Rate

Grants

Denials

Grant Rate

FY 12

10,575

8,444

56%

FY 13

9,767

8,777

53%

FY 14

8,672

9,191

49%

FY 15

8,184

8,816

48%

FY 16

8,726

11,643

43%

In 2016, the “real” grant rate was 38%. Even under Sessions in the partial FY 2018, the merits grant rate is 35%. That’s by no means negligible — one in three! And, remember folks, this is with asylum law that was already badly skewed against applicants, particularly those from the Northern Triangle with potentially bona fide claims. (But, admittedly, before Sessions recent rewriting of asylum law to improperly deny asylum and essentially impose death sentences or torture on vulnerable women fleeing from the Northern Triangle.)

And, in my experience, the vast majority of denied asylum seekers had legitimate fears of harm upon return that should have entitled them to some protection; they just didn’t fit our unrealistically and intentionally restrictive interpretations. By no means does denial of an asylum claim mean that the claim was frivolous!

The real question we should be asking is that with the refugee situation in the world getting worse and with continually deteriorating conditions in the Northern Triangle, how do asylum merits grant rates drop from 56% and 53% as recently as FY 2011 & 2012 to 35% in 2018? What those numbers really suggests is large-scale problematic behavior and improper influence within the DOJ and the Immigration Judges who are denying far, far too many of these claims. Some of that includes use of coercive detention in out-of-the-way locations and depriving individuals of a fair opportunity to be represented by counsel, as well as a number of BIA decisions (even before Sessions’s Matter of A-B- atrocity) specifically designed to promote unfairness and more asylum denials.

There is no “southern border crisis,” other than the unnecessary humanitarian crisis that Trump and Sessions created by abusing children. Nor is there a problem with our asylum laws except for the intentional failure of our Government to apply them in a legal, fair, and Constitutional manner. But, there is a White Nationalist, racism problem clearly manifesting itself in our immoral and scofflaw national leadership.

Everyone committed to fairness, Due Process, and maintaining America as a country of humane values should fiercely resist, in every way possible, suggestions by Trump, Sessions, and some in the GOP to further abuse Due Process and eliminate the already limited rights of the most vulnerable among us!

We need to say focused on the real threats to our national security and continued existence as a democratic republic: Trump, Sessions, and their cohorts and enablers!

PWS

07-02-18

PROFESSOR LINDSAY HARRIS: SEEKING ASYLUM IN THE US IS A PROTECTED LEGAL RIGHT! — SO WHY ARE TRUMP, SESSIONS, &. CO. PERVERTING THE LEGAL SYSTEM TO ABUSE CHILDREN, TORTURE WOMEN, & KILL ASYLUM SEEKERS WITHOUT A FAIR CHANCE TO PLEAD THEIR CASES?— Our Immoral & Lawless Leaders Are The Biggest Threat To The Survival Of Our Republic!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/seeking-asylum-isnt-a-crime-why-do-trump-and-sessions-act-like-it-is/2018/06/29/dc4cf136-7a7c-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html

The immigration system, if you believe President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is rife with fraud and abuse. And while Trump’s administration is hostile to all immigrants, it’s people seeking asylum whom he and his advisers most scorn. Sessions says “dirty immigration lawyers ” push their clients to make “fake claims” to trigger court proceedings that might allow them to stay in the United States. He seems to see the entire concept of asylum as a “loophole.”

Trump declared last weekend on Twitter that we should send migrants out of the country “with no Judges or Court Cases.” He says immigration laws are a “joke” and that it’s “ridiculous ” that people who appear at the border seeking asylum can’t immediately be sent back to where they came from.

In reality, immigrants who seek asylum are not criminals, even though they are now being charged as such. Their lawyers are simply giving them basic information. And the “zero tolerance” policy that led the administration for a time to separate children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border shows how radically Trump wants to change laws and practices, developed over decades, to provide a haven for people fleeing persecution and weed out undeserving claims. As it happens, most of those seeking admission at our southern border are not economic migrants seeking a better life but instead asylum seekers fleeing for their lives.

CONTENT FROM PRIME VIDEO

“When you have diverse views, it makes the outcome for all people better.” – Justice Anne McKeigRead More

Sessions is going to extraordinary lengths to break the system that distinguishes between asylum claims with merit and ones that should be denied. He has categorically declared that some people who used to be eligible for asylum, such as survivors of domestic abuse or gang violence, no longer are.

As an asylum lawyer over the past decade, I have represented women fleeing domestic violence, forced marriage, rape, genital cutting and more. I have represented girls forced into relationships with gang members and boys fleeing recruitment into gangs at gunpoint. I have represented lesbian, gay and transgender individuals from all over the world seeking protection from persecution by their communities or governments. A couple of months ago, my immigration clinic at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law represented a Honduran woman whose partner raped her twice daily, beat her while pregnant and bashed her head against a wall. She tried to escape within Honduras and even to El Salvador seven times, but each time, her partner found her and threatened her life. Her calls to the police were ignored. Ultimately, she fled to save her life, and an immigration judge granted her protection in April before Sessions changed the law. Thousands more in her situation may be categorically denied protection.

[Compassion for immigrant children can help. But it isn’t enough.]

Seeking asylum in the United States has never been easy, by design. But under Trump, it’s become arbitrarily harder — and impossible for some. Even before the 2016 election, border officials claiming allegiance to Trump began turning back asylum seekers in greater numbers. I recall clients who said a border official told them: “There is no asylum. Trump is going to be president, and you’ll all be sent home.” Since his inauguration, problems in the asylum system have only increased.

The first challenge for asylum seekers is just being able to apply. They must either be at the border or within the United States to claim protection — they cannot seek asylum from outside. Some enter the country with a tourist, study or work visa, but these are difficult to obtain. Others approach the U.S. border and ask for protection, or cross the border without permission and are detained by immigration officials before filing their asylum applications.

Under international law and a Clinton-era U.S. law known as “expedited removal,” officials must screen all individuals they encounter around the border for potential asylum claims. If someone indicates she is afraid to return to her home country, border officials must refer her to an asylum officer for a “credible fear” interview to decide whether she is eligible for asylum. Legally, the Border Patrol simply makes a referral for the interview; however, border agents without appropriate training are increasingly taking the law into their own hands. In early 2017, for example, Human Rights First documented 125 cases of Border Patrol agents unlawfully turning back asylum seekers. Lately, border officers tell asylum seekers to “come back later,” turning away one family nine times. This violates our legal obligation under Article 33 of the Refugee Convention and under our own Refugee Act not to return an asylum seeker to a place where she faces a threat to her life or freedom.

A “zero tolerance” policy is particularly problematic for asylum seekers. The Refugee Convention states that nations shall not penalize asylum seekers for irregular entry. Indeed, since 1987 , the Board of Immigration Appeals, our highest immigration tribunal has directed immigration judges to forgive irregular entry because of the circumstances of seeking asylum.

But asylum standards are becoming more restrictive. In June, Sessions reversed a grant of asylum for a Salvadoran woman fleeing domestic violence, single-handedly undoing two decades of progress for gender-based asylum claims. He also changed the standard for asylum to require not only that the government in a migrant’s home country is unwilling or unable to protect the asylum seeker from harm, but also that the government is actively condoning persecution by nonstate actors — a higher bar for applicants to meet. Asylum claims should be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, but Sessions’s order states that generally, those fleeing domestic violence or gang violence will not pass a credible-fear interview. The Justice Department has already circulated preliminary guidance to asylum officers to use the decision in future cases.

[Sessions is criminalizing immigration violations. That upends decades of history.]

The credible-fear interview is only the first step for asylum seekers. Next, they must present their case before an immigration judge and face an experienced prosecutor on the other side. An asylum seeker will probably wait several years for that day in court, given the backlog of more than 700,000 cases pending before the approximately 350 immigration judges. Most of the applicants won’t have lawyers: Immigrants in detention are represented only 14 percent of the time, and overall only 37 percent of immigrants have representation in their legal cases. Although asylum grant rates vary wildly depending on the judge or asylum officer, in the past decade, between 15 and 44 percent of claims were approved.

Trump’s family separation policy led to widespread mobilization of new advocates and voices expressing outrage and calling for reform. But this is no time to look away. Asylum claims must be decided on their individual merits, not with technicalities or categorical bars. Lives are at stake.

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

The Government violates asylum seekers’ rights at ports of entry.
Then the Government “criminalizes” asylum seekers who cross the border seeking to exercise their legal rights.
Courts and prosecutors are tied up on abusive, wasteful, racially motivated misdemeanor prosecutions of asylum seekers.
Real criminals like drug traffickers therefore go unprosecuted because the Government is too busy persecuting asylum seekers.
The Government manipulates asylum laws and leans on its “captive” Immigration Courts to deny asylum seekers their legal rights.
Meanwhile, the real culprits who are responsible for these racist-inspired attacks on our legal system and the human dignity of asylum applicants not only go unpunished but are the leaders of our Government.
Had enough of our Government’s disgraceful conduct? Join the New Due Process Army to fight for the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers. Harm to the least among us is harm to all!

PWS

07-02-18

PROFESSOR CASS SUNSTEIN WITH THE UGLY TRUTH: IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND TRUMPISM, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND ITS ANTECEDENT, NAZISM – Many Ordinary Germans Were Enthusiastic About Life Under Hitler Prior To The War – Fat, Happy, Satisfied, & Willfully Indifferent To The Torture & Suffering Of Their Fellow Human Beings – They Chose To Bury All Morality & Believe Reich Propaganda and Lies That Any Reasonable Person Would Have Known Were Untrue!

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/06/28/hitlers-rise-it-can-happen-here/?mbid=nl_hps_5b368db0384c1d5c5734bfbc&CNDID=48297443

Professor Cass Sunstein in the NY Review of Books:

It Can Happen Here

Cass R. Sunstein

JUNE 28, 2018 ISSUE

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

by Milton Mayer, with a new afterword by Richard J. Evans

University of Chicago Press, 378 pp., $20.00 (paper)

Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the Twentieth Century

by Konrad H. Jarausch

Princeton University Press, 446 pp., $35.00

‘National Socialist,’ circa 1935; photograph by August Sander from his People of the Twentieth Century. A new collection of his portraits, August Sander: Persecuted/Persecutors, will be published by Steidl this fall.

Liberal democracy has enjoyed much better days. Vladimir Putin has entrenched authoritarian rule and is firmly in charge of a resurgent Russia. In global influence, China may have surpassed the United States, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is now empowered to remain in office indefinitely. In light of recent turns toward authoritarianism in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines, there is widespread talk of a “democratic recession.” In the United States, President Donald Trump may not be sufficiently committed to constitutional principles of democratic government.

In such a time, we might be tempted to try to learn something from earlier turns toward authoritarianism, particularly the triumphant rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. The problem is that Nazism was so horrifying and so barbaric that for many people in nations where authoritarianism is now achieving a foothold, it is hard to see parallels between Hitler’s regime and their own governments. Many accounts of the Nazi period depict a barely imaginable series of events, a nation gone mad. That makes it easy to take comfort in the thought that it can’t happen again.

But some depictions of Hitler’s rise are more intimate and personal. They focus less on well-known leaders, significant events, state propaganda, murders, and war, and more on the details of individual lives. They help explain how people can not only participate in dreadful things but also stand by quietly and live fairly ordinary days in the midst of them. They offer lessons for people who now live with genuine horrors, and also for those to whom horrors may never come but who live in nations where democratic practices and norms are under severe pressure.

Milton Mayer’s 1955 classic They Thought They Were Free, recently republished with an afterword by the Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans, was one of the first accounts of ordinary life under Nazism. Dotted with humor and written with an improbably light touch, it provides a jarring contrast with Sebastian Haffner’s devastating, unfinished 1939 memoir, Defying Hitler, which gives a moment-by-moment, you-are-there feeling to Hitler’s rise. (The manuscript was discovered by Haffner’s son after the author’s death and published in 2000 in Germany, where it became an immediate sensation.)^* A much broader perspective comes from Konrad Jarausch’s Broken Lives, an effort to reconstruct the experience of Germans across the entire twentieth century. What distinguishes the three books is their sense of intimacy. They do not focus on historic figures making transformative decisions. They explore how ordinary people attempted to navigate their lives under terrible conditions.

Haffner’s real name was Raimund Pretzel. (He used a pseudonym so as not to endanger his family while in exile in England.) He was a journalist, not a historian or political theorist, but he interrupts his riveting narrative to tackle a broad question: “What is history, and where does it take place?” He objects that most works of history give “the impression that no more than a few dozen people are involved, who happen to be ‘at the helm of the ship of state’ and whose deeds and decisions form what is called history.” In his view, that’s wrong. What matters are “we anonymous others” who are not just “pawns in the chess game,” because the “most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large.” Haffner insists on the importance of investigating “some very peculiar, very revealing, mental processes and experiences,” involving “the private lives, emotions and thoughts of individual Germans.”

Mayer had the same aim. An American journalist of German descent, he tried to meet with Hitler in 1935. He failed, but he did travel widely in Nazi Germany. Stunned to discover a mass movement rather than a tyranny of a diabolical few, he concluded that his real interest was not in Hitler but in people like himself, to whom “something had happened that had not (or at least not yet) happened to me and my fellow-countrymen.” In 1951, he returned to Germany to find out what had made Nazism possible.

In They Thought They Were Free, Mayer decided to focus on ten people, different in many respects but with one characteristic in common: they had all been members of the Nazi Party. Eventually they agreed to talk, accepting his explanation that he hoped to enable the people of his nation to have a better understanding of Germany. Mayer was truthful about that and about nearly everything else. But he did not tell them that he was a Jew.

In the late 1930s—the period that most interested Mayer—his subjects were working as a janitor, a soldier, a cabinetmaker, an office manager, a baker, a bill collector, an inspector, a high school teacher, and a police officer. One had been a high school student. All were male. None of them occupied positions of leadership or influence. All of them referred to themselves as “wir kleine Leute, we little people.” They lived in Marburg, a university town on the river Lahn, not far from Frankfurt.

Mayer talked with them over the course of a year, under informal conditions—coffee, meals, and long, relaxed evenings. He became friends with each (and throughout he refers to them as such). As he put it, with evident surprise, “I liked them. I couldn’t help it.” They could be ironic, funny, and self-deprecating. Most of them enjoyed a joke that originated in Nazi Germany: “What is an Aryan? An Aryan is a man who is tall like Hitler, blond like Goebbels, and lithe like Göring.” They also could be wise. Speaking of the views of ordinary people under Hitler, one of them asked:

Opposition? How would anybody know? How would anybody know what somebody else opposes or doesn’t oppose? That a man says he opposes or doesn’t oppose depends upon the circumstances, where, and when, and to whom, and just how he says it. And then you must still guess why he says what he says.

When Mayer returned home, he was afraid for his own country. He felt “that it was not German Man that I had met, but Man,” and that under the right conditions, he could well have turned out as his German friends did. He learned that Nazism took over Germany not “by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler.” Many Germans “wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.”

Mayer’s most stunning conclusion is that with one partial exception (the teacher), none of his subjects “saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect.” Where most of us understand Nazism as a form of tyranny, Mayer’s subjects “did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now.” Seven years after the war, they looked back on the period from 1933 to 1939 as the best time of their lives.

Mayer suggests that even when tyrannical governments do horrific things, outsiders tend to exaggerate their effects on the actual experiences of most citizens, who focus on their own lives and “the sights which meet them in their daily rounds.” Nazism made things better for the people Mayer interviewed, not (as many think) because it restored some lost national pride but because it improved daily life. Germans had jobs and better housing. They were able to vacation in Norway or Spain through the “Strength Through Joy” program. Fewer people were hungry or cold, and the sick were more likely to receive treatment. The blessings of the New Order, as it was called, seemed to be enjoyed by “everybody.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

As a historical footnote, I crossed paths with Cass Sunstein at the DOJ during the Carter Administration in 1980-81, when he was an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel and I was the Acting General Counsel/Deputy General Counsel of the “Legacy INS.” About all I remember is that: 1) he was brilliant, 2) he wrote really well; 3) everyone had him pegged as among “the most likely to succeed;” and 4) we both had lots, lots more hair then.

I agree with pretty much everything Sunstein says. Except for one major point. I don’t think “it can happen here.” It is happening here!

Cass says “Thus far, President Trump has been more bark than bite.” Really! With all due respect, that seems like a view directly from the “Ivory Tower.”

Ask U.S. citizens children whose parents have been deported for no rational reason without any consideration of what will happen to those left behind; ask those children intentionally abused and probably damaged for life by the likes of Jeff Sessions; ask communities that have been terrorized by the Homan-led “ICE Gestapo” that strikes terror, performs few if any “real” law enforcement functions these days, while insuring that whole segments of the population are “easy marks” for crime and abuse; ask women and children refugees from Central American who are essentially being railroaded back to the “death camps” from which they fled by the noxious White Nationalist racists Trump, Miller, & Sessions, with the assistance of morally vapid sycophants like Nielsen and Kelly, without even the semblance of due process; ask Dreamers who are slurred by the always disingenuous Sessions while being held as hostages by Trump, and hung out to dry by the GOP Congress; ask the kids and families being held in the “New American Gulag” established by Sessions — combined with his intentional distortion of asylum law, they are basically being held in concentration camps waiting to be shipped off to death camps in the Northern Triangle! And we haven’t even gotten to Sessions’s absolutely outrageous, lawless, unconstitutional, and totally immoral plan to rewrite asylum law so that nobody who needs protection actually gets it! Or how about not taking any Syrian refugees, even though they are dying in refugee camps awaiting resettlement every day. Just because the actual deaths, rapes, torture, US-caused human trafficking, and other unspeakable abuses take place outside our national boundaries doesn’t mean that we aren’t just as responsible for them as the fat & happy Burghers of the Third Reich!

I wrote about Sunstein’s timely, yet totally disturbing, article in my response to a comment from my good friend, colleague, and fellow member of the “Gang of Retired Immigration Judges,” Judge Gus Villageliu in response to one of his “right on” comments today. Here’s what I said:

There is a great article by Professor Cass Sunstein about the parallels between Nazism and Trumpism. The key: Germans who supported Hitler were fat, happy, and satisfied with their lives under Nazism and were willfully indifferent to the torture and suffering of their fellow human beings. They happily accepted the Nazi propaganda that Jews were either traitors or had voluntarily left the country after being fairly compensated for their property. Even after the war, some ordinary Germans looked back on the 1933-39 era of Nazi rule as the best time of their lives.

Another key observation by Sunstein: resistance is never futile and every individual act of resistance, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem at the time, is important. The little acts and persistence add up over time.

In my view, they also establish an important record for historians and future generations. I want my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren to know where I stood in the era of Trump, Sessions, Miller & the rest of the White Nationalist neo-Nazis and their utterly disgusting perversion of Western Judeo-Christian values!

Due Process, tolerance, courage, standing up for the less fortunate, and recognizing the human rights and dignity of every person are eternal values that are always worth fighting for!

Join the New Due Process Army. Resist the White Nationalist Regime every step of the way. Force “go along to get along” courts (like the Supremes) to face up to the horrible immorality of their appeasement of the cruel, inhuman, and illegal actions of the Trump Administration. Write the historical record that even the Trumpsters and their followers won’t be able to escape so that we might never, ever again have a Neo-Nazi revival like the Trump Administration!

PWS

07-01-18

INSIDE AMERICA’S HORRIBLE WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME WITH TAL @ CNN: 1) Trump Never Planned To Reunite Children With Families; 2) Tom Homan Retires – Trump Sycophant Made ICE America’s Most Despised Agency; 3) Sessions Planning To Follow Child Abuse With Barrage Of Racist Lies, Massive Violations Of Constitution, Abuses Of Human Rights, & Vicious Attacks On Rights Of Vulnerable Brown-Skinned Refugees!

1) Government never had specific plan to reunify families, court testimony shows

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

In recent weeks, the government has stumbled trying to explain its plan for reunifying families in the wake of its much-criticized family separations policy at the border.

But newly reviewed court filings show that the byzantine system that has resulted in thousands of children separated for weeks and months from parents elsewhere in government custody was not an accident. It was always the design.

In fact, one of the women in an ongoing lawsuit over family separations can now was apparently one of the first separations that took place during a quiet pilot of the policy last year. The pilot program has been previously reported, but took on new attention on the heels of an NBC report about it Friday.

A government attorney admitted in court just days before the border-wide initiative was unveiled in early May that there was never a plan for parents like her to be proactively reunited with their kids.

And an analysis of the purported success of the pilot shows that the Department of Homeland Security’s justification that the program worked as a deterrent was likely based on dubious data.

A DHS official confirmed Friday that the agency first tested the policy of prosecuting parents caught illegally crossing the border in the El Paso sector in Texas from July to October of last year. The pilot had been previously reported, but was not widely known. NBC reported the effort anew Friday.

Ms. C, as she is known in court filings, was apprehended crossing the border illegally in late August 2017 and prosecuted in El Paso, according to court documents. She asked for asylum and in the midst of the legal process, the government took her 14-year-old son from her, sending him to a Health and Human Services facility in Chicago. They were separated for months.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/politics/family-separations-reunification-never-plan-court/index.html

2) Controversial ICE chief retiring, replacement expected to be named soon

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homan is serving his last day Friday, as the controversial face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration retires.

Homan’s final day was confirmed by spokeswoman Liz Johnson.

The polarizing face of the administration’s immigration enforcement, and a favorite of President Donald Trump himself, Homan had announced in April he would be taking his long-delayed retirement this month.

Homan has told the story of receiving the request to stay on as chief of ICE under Trump while celebrating at his going away party — a retirement that was deferred for a year and a half.

According to a source familiar, acting CBP Deputy Commissioner Ronald Vitiello is expected to be named acting director of ICE in Homan’s stead as soon as Friday.

Vitiello has been a familiar face for the media as well, often speaking with reporters about the President’s border wall project.

The White House has not responded to a request for comment.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/politics/tom-homan-retirement-replacement/index.html

3) Trump administration may further restrict asylum rights

By: Laura Jarrett and Tal Kopan, CNN

The Justice Department is considering a regulation that would prevent people from claiming asylum if they’re convicted of illegally entering the US, according to two sources familiar with the plans.

Such a rule would be a dramatic change in the landscape of US immigration law and could conflict with domestic law and long-standing international obligations.

The draft regulation was described to CNN as being in its very early stages and has not yet been submitted to the White House for review. Should it be implemented, it would likely result in immediate legal challenges from asylum-seekers and advocates.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

The proposal was first reported by Vox.

Current law allows migrants to raise an asylum claim at any lawful port of entry to the US, as well as between valid ports of entry where crossing to the US is illegal.

The Immigration and Nationality Act states that anyone who arrives in the US “whether or not at a designated port of arrival” may apply for asylum if he or she has a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Yet another part of the law gives Attorney General Jeff Sessions the leeway to regulate which offenses “will be considered to be a crime,” in which case asylum is not available.

How exactly the rule will be tailored and whether it will include any exceptions remains unclear.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/politics/trump-administration-asylum-draft-limit/index.html

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

Ah, America as a rogue state!

Join the New Due Process Army — Fight White Nationalism, Lies, Cowardice, and Bullying by Trump and his evil gang of immoral, scofflaw, racist “swamp monsters.”

PWS

06-30-18

NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY CONTINUES TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST ADMINISTRATION’S STUPID AND ILLEGAL ACTIONS & POLICIES! — Jesica Yanez On NPR — I Speak With Sally Kidd @ Hearst News TV!

Jessica Yanez leads Yanez Immigration Law in Greensboro, NC.

Here’s her bio:

About Attorney Yañez

Attorney Yañez earned a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Spanish from UNC Greensboro and her Juris Doctor Degree from Elon University School of Law.

Since founding her practice in 2012, she and her team of legal assistants have assisted individuals from approximately 40 different countries in a broad range of immigration matters including family-based petitions, waivers, consular processing, removal defense, U visas, VAWA, naturalization and asylum cases.

In 2016, Attorney Yañez became a NC Board Certified Specialist in Immigration Law. For more information about the benefits of hiring a Board-Certified Specialist, click here: http://www.nclawspecialists.gov/for-the-public/the-benefit-of-hiring-a-specialist/#standards.

Attorney Yañez also serves an Adjunct Professor of immigration law at Elon University School of Law.

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

Here is Sally Kidd, National Correspondent for Hearst News:

And, here’s the clip containing my interview:

http://www.wmur.com/article/president-trump-blasts-judicial-system/22003693

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

Thanks To Jessica and many other members of the NDPA for leading the charge against the Administration’ s cruel, immoral, and illegal policies!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-30-18

REVOLT @ ICE! – REAL LAW ENFORCEMENT PROFESSIONALS AT ICE RECOGNIZE THAT GONZO RACIST ENFORCEMENT POLICIES OF TRUMP, SESSIONS, & NIELSEN HARM LEGITIMATE LAW ENFORCEMENT, WASTE TAXPAYER MONEY, & DESTROY AGENCY’S REPUTATION AND EFFECTIVENESS – PETITION NIELSEN FOR SEPARATE AGENCY!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/seeking-split-from-ice-agents-say-trumps-immigration-crackdown-hurts-investigations-morale/2018/06/28/7bb6995e-7ada-11e8-8df3-007495a78738_story.html

Nick Miroff reports for the Washington Post:

The political backlash against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has turned so intense that leaders of the agency’s criminal investigative division sent a letter last week to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen urging an organizational split.

The letter, signed by the majority of special agents in charge of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigative Division (HSI), offered a window into growing internal tension at the agency as an “Abolish ICE” protest movement has targeted its offices and won support from left-wing Democrats.

Though ICE is primarily known for immigration enforcement, the agency has two distinct divisions: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), a branch that carries out immigration arrests and deportations, and HSI, the transnational investigative branch with a broad focus on counterterrorism, narcotics enforcement, human trafficking and other crimes.

The letter signed by 19 special agents in charge urges Nielsen to split HSI from ICE, because anger at ERO immigration practices is harming the entire agency’s reputation and undermining other law enforcement agencies’ willingness to cooperate, the agents told Nielsen.

[‘Quit your jobs’: Protesters confront ICE workers at Washington headquarters]

Since President Trump’s inauguration, the state of California and several of the country’s largest cities have barred their law enforcement agents from cooperating with ICE by declaring themselves “sanctuary” jurisdictions. That has made it increasingly difficult for HSI agents to fight drug cartels and conduct major criminal investigations in the country’s largest urban areas, the letter said.

“The perception of HSI’s investigative independence is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO’s civil immigration enforcement,” the agents wrote.

Trump took office promising to quickly deport “2 or 3 million” foreigners, and following his inauguration, ICE interior arrests jumped nearly 40 percent. In recent months, the agency resumed carrying out large-scale workplace raids, winning glowing praise from the president, who said Wednesday at a rally in North Dakota that ICE agents are “mean but have heart,” and that they are “liberating” U.S. communities from the MS-13 gang.

Trump officials say they fear the transnational gang, whose members the president calls “animals,” could take advantage of lax enforcement at the border.

In their letter to Nielsen, the agency’s top investigators painted a starkly different picture — telling her their crime-fighting capability is being stifled by politics.

“Many jurisdictions continue to refuse to work with HSI because of a perceived linkage to the politics of civil immigration,” the investigators wrote. “Other jurisdictions agree to partner with HSI as long as the ‘ICE’ name is excluded from any public facing information.”

In one indication of eroding morale, the special agents told Nielsen that making HSI its own independent agency “will allow employees to develop a strong agency pride.”

The letter, marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” was first reported by the Texas Observer, which posted a copy.

ICE’s acting director, Thomas D. Homan, has been a vocal Trump supporter and an enthusiast of the president’s immigration agenda. But he has announced his retirement and is stepping down this month. A nominee to replace him has yet to be named.

Nielsen has not publicly responded to the letter.

A senior ICE official in Washington said the HSI agents’ letter was “not well received” at the agency’s headquarters, calling it “ill conceived and poorly timed” at a moment when so many staffers feel besieged by the backlash.

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

Not surprisingly, a regime built on lies, racism, and White Nationalism isn’t going to be good at much except lies, racism, and White Nationalism. And, that’s the perfect description of the Trump Administration.

Good for these courageous ICE agents! Maybe that’s where a future Administration should look when it comes time to rebuild, rename, and rebrand ICE to shed it’s well-deserved “American Gestapo” reputation earned under Trump, Sessions, and Homan.

And, contrary to the truly idiotic statement by an “obviously chicken” DHS “senior official,” this “rebellion” is a timely and reassuring sign that folks on the inside understand just how toxic the Trump/Sessions dishonest and racist immigration enforcement policy is to real law enforcement, which requires widespread tactical use of “prosecutorial discretion,” intelligent deployment of resources, respect for the courts and judges’ time, a willingness to “just say no” to broken and counterproductive laws that unfairly target racial groups, and, most of all, strategies to gain and keep community trust.

Trump & Sessions are completely inimical to real law enforcement and national security. That’s why they, and not undocumented individuals who are hard-working members of our communities, are an existential threat to the security, welfare, and very continued existence of our republic.

No country can survive a kakistocracy over a long period of time! That’s one thing that Trump, Sessions, and their White Nationalist cronies prove every single day!

The majority of Americans did not vote for this evil “clown show” (and their tone-deaf, unprincipled supporters) to govern us. Somehow, we let an unprincipled minority without concern for the common good, honesty, morality, or human decency seize control. If we don’t take our country back soon through the ballot box, it might be too late!

Get out the vote! Remove all of the clowns and their enablers! Like my “new buddy” George Will said last week: nobody should vote for a Republican this November! (Although to be fair, Georgie detests Democrats — he just doesn’t fear them as much).

PWS

06-29-17

KAREN TUMULTY @ WASHPOST: “ASSEMBLY LINE JUSTICE” IS ALREADY THE NORM IN U.S. DISTRICT COURTS AT THE BORDER AS “GO ALONG TO GET ALONG” U.S. MAGISTRATE CONVICTS BEWILDERED AND DAZED NON-CRIMINALS WHILE MUTTERING MISLEADING PLATITUDES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-what-trumps-assembly-line-justice-looks-like/2018/06/27/16a67354-7a12-11e8-aeee-4d04c8ac6158_story.html?utm_term=.92044d40e736

MCALLEN, Tex.

When Magistrate Judge Peter E. Ormsby stepped into the federal courtroom here Tuesday morning, 75 defendants rose to their feet.

Their ankles were shackled, and they wore headsets through which the proceedings would be translated into Spanish. In the hallway, just beyond the door, was a pile of handcuffs that had been removed before they entered the courtroom.

Most of the defendants appeared dressed in the same filthy, sweat-saturated clothes they had been wearing two days before, when they were apprehended crossing the Rio Grande aboard rafts.

CONTENT FROM PRIME VIDEO

“When you have diverse views, it makes the outcome for all people better.” – Justice Anne McKeigRead More

In all but 11 of their cases, this criminal misdemeanor was the first time they had ever been found to have violated U.S. law.

Ormsby informed them his was not an immigration court. Many had already signed away their rights to further proceedings and had orders for what is known as “expedited removal.” They had done that before the 17 lawyers of the public defender’s office had met with any of them for the first time, just hours before.

The next two hours would see each one of them plead guilty and be sentenced, most to time already served.

With few exceptions, each case would be dealt with in under 75 seconds.

This was just the morning docket. It is what President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy looks like here, where busloads of recently detained migrants roll up to the federal courthouse several times a day. Ormsby invited me and a handful of other observers there to sit in the jury box, because there was no room anywhere else.

The president contends that even this assembly-line version of justice is more than what those caught entering the country illegally should get.

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

On that latter point, the president is correct — but it is for the reverse of the reasoning he offers. His zero-tolerance policy is putting even more stress on a legal system that already gives migrants far less than their day in court.

The outcome for many might be different if they had fuller access to the legal system, to which they are entitled in theory if not practice, and given an opportunity to make their case to stay in this country.

Trump has mocked proposals for adding to the number of immigration judges, who handle separate proceedings for those who want to remain.

“We have thousands of judges already,” he has claimed. That is incorrect. The number actually stands at fewer than 350 across the country. They are facing a backlog of more than 700,000 cases.

Just as critical as the scarcity of judges is the fact that so few migrants ever have a chance to consult an attorney.

Only about 14 percent of those who are detained have access to counsel, says American Bar Association President Hilarie Bass, who was here from Miami. She added that migrant adults with lawyers win slightly more than half their cases and get to stay in this country, while 9 out of 10 of those without representation lose and are deported.

For unaccompanied children, the disparity in outcomes is even greater. As Bass noted: “How can you ask a 12-year-old to walk into court and make a case for themselves?”

Under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, more migrants are being prosecuted and deported on the border, rather than being sent to other parts of the country where they can await trial while staying with relatives or others who can take them in. That has compounded the challenge, because it adds to the backlog in this region and makes it more difficult for migrants to find lawyers.

In the current crisis, platoons of lawyers are arriving weekly to volunteer their services, but there are not nearly enough, says Kimi Jackson, director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project. “What we need most here are Spanish-speaking immigration attorneys, particularly ones who can stay a little longer.” The need will remain for the foreseeable future, long after the journalists and cameras have moved on to the next story.

And even if help comes, it will be too late for most of those who appeared before Ormsby. As he worked his way through their cases, he expressed sympathy for the circumstances of poverty and violence that brought them from dangerous places in Honduras and El Salvador and Mexico to his courtroom. He wished them and their families well and urged them to go through the process of coming to the United States legally.

“Seeing the type of people you appear to be,” the magistrate added, “I hope that you will be successful with that.”

But everyone there knew that was a wish, and one unlikely to come true.

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

Mostly first offenders who didn’t belong in criminal court anyway.
Why would nonviolent first offenders be shackled in court?
Anybody understand what they are pleading guilty to?
Everybody understand that they have a right to a full trial at which the Government would have to prove guilt?
Anybody understand what a port of entry is?
Anybody just looking for an officer to apply for asylum?
Anybody realize there are strong legal arguments that criminal sanctions can’t be invoked against good faith asylum seekers under international treaties to which the U.S. is party?
Anybody know the name of their court-appointed lawyer?
Anybody have a chance to speak with their lawyer in private in Spanish?
Anybody have a “know your rights” presentation about the immigration system?
Anybody know what a “credible fear” interview is, how to request one from the DHS, and how to get review of a denial?
Anybody know that asylum applicants who pass credible fear can request bond?
Anybody understand the consequences of a conviction?
Anybody pressured to plead guilty to get their kids back or get out of detention?
Anybody know how the asylum process works and how to apply?
Anybody know how important lawyers are for asylum seekers and how to get in touch with local pro bono lawyers?
Anybody separated from kids?
Anybody know that the Government has been ordered by a more conscientious Federal Judge to reunite families?

We’ll probably never know the answers, because that might have exceeded Judge Ormsby’s 75 second attention span and cut into his productivity stats.

I’ve commented before on the Judge Ormsby’s judicial performance (or lack thereof).

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2E9

Judge Ormsby should be in line for a Jeff Sessions “Volume Is Everything — Due Process Is Nothing” award! He appears to be just the type of subservient judicial toady Trump & McConnell would love to have on the Supremes. And, I wouldn’t let the U.S. District Judges who are in charge of this judicial farce off the hook either.

Someday, the true history of the abuses of human values, human rights, and our Constitution now going on at our border under a White Nationalist regime will be written. And the “go along to get along” crowd will be held accountable for their conduct; by the judgment of history, if not by the law.

PWS

06-29-18

DUE PROCESS LIVES: JUDGE SABRAW FINDS SEPARATION OF FAMILIES VIOLATES CONSTITUTION — ORDERS DHS TO FIX IT W/IN 30 DAYS — MS. L- v. ICE – “The unfortunate reality is that under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property,” the judge wrote.

NY TIMES ARTICLE:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/politics/family-separations-congress-states.html?emc=edit_nn_20180627&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=7921388620180627&te=1

FULL DECISION:

full

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

The “Roberts Five” might have swallowed their whistles along with our Constitution. But, some Federal Judges still take their oaths of office seriously, even in the age of Trump. BTW, Judge Sabraw was appointed by George W. Bush.

PWS

06-27-18

I TAKE TO THE AIRWAVES TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION, DUE PROCESS, RULE OF LAW, ASYLUM, KIDS, HUMANITY, IMMIGRATION JUDGES! – Weekend Clips

1. NPR WEEKEND EDITION WITH SCOTT SIMON, JUNE 23, 2018

Click here:

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/23/622795409/a-former-immigration-judge-on-the-current-situation

2. WITH SOLEDAD O’BRIEN, JUNE 24, 2018

Click here:

http://matteroffact.tv/retired-immigration-judge-there-is-still-a-right-to-asylum-after-illegal-entry/

3. MSNBC, VELSHI & RUHLE WITH ALI VELSHI, JUNE 25, 2018

Click here:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fmr-immigration-judge-migrants-are-not-invaders/vp-AAz9ENo

PWS

06-26-18

TAL@ CNN: SESSIONS’S MOVES TO UNDERMINE DUE PROCESS IN IMMIGRATION COURTS NOT ENOUGH FOR TRUMP, WHO WANTS TO DO AWAY WITH CONSTITUTION — Huckabee Sanders Spouts Nonsense! (What Else Is New?)

Trump fumes over immigration courts Sessions has focused on

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

President Donald Trump in recent days has fumed about the immigration courts that handle cases of people seeking entry into the US.

But Trump’s fixation on the courts and the judges who staff them flies in the face of what his attorney general has been trying to do to reshape the courts to align with the President’s vision, including hiring more immigration judges and restricting asylum laws.

The President tweeted that those stopped at the border should be simply told they can’t enter, rather than going through the system.

“When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came,” Trump tweeted on Saturday.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday that “virtually all Americans” agree that drawn-out court proceedings don’t make sense for migrants who enter the country illegally. Trump, she said, “would certainly like to see more expedited removal.”

“Just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving due process,” she said.

The immigration courts decide whether immigrants have a legal right to stay in the US or should be deported — and those cases include people arriving at the border as well people from the interior of the US, who may or may not have had legal status at some point.

But Trump’s suggestion has several problems, including the fact that there are fewer than 350 immigration judges nationwide and the Justice Department has budgeted for only 100 more.

In addition, the suggestion that the immigration courts could be done away with altogether would likely fly in the face of the Constitution and a host of domestic and international laws that bestow rights on everyone in the US and crossing the border, regardless of whether they are citizens.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25/politics/trump-sessions-immigration-judges-courts/index.html

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

There is no Due Process without an impartial decision maker (lots of doubt as to whether any Immigration Judge working for Jeff Sessions can be considered “impartial”).
Jeff Sessions has nothing to do with virtue. His disingenuous, racist, White Nationalist policies are the polar opposite of “virtue.”
As the Supreme Court has said, Due Process takes time — sometimes a lot, sometimes less.
Trump’s outrageous proposals violate our Constitution, our statutory law, and two international conventions to which we are party.
There is no crisis for the United States, except the unnecessary one that Trump and Sessions have created with their lawless behavior.
But, there is a crisis in the Northern Triangle for which we are at least partially responsible.
The stakes for the refugees are literally life or death — Trump and Sessions’s dehumanizing rhetoric is beyond disgusting.
Even those who fail to qualify for protection after full hearings likely face rape, torture, extortion, severe beatings, mutilation, or death upon return. We actually should be protecting more, not fewer, of them.

PWS

06-25-18

A-R-C-G- RULING SAVED THE LIFE OF THIS WOMAN, HER CHILDREN, & OTHERS LIKE THEM – SESSIONS PLANS “DEATH ROW” FOR FUTURE REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN OF COLOR — Their Blood Will Be On Our Hands As A Nation If We Don’t Stop His White Nationalist Agenda!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/these-are-the-asylum-seekers-that-jeff-sessions-wants-to-turn-away_us_5b2b966ee4b0321a01ce5efb

Melissa Jeltsen reports for HuffPost:

BALTIMORE, Md. ― Aracely Martinez Yanez, 33, knows she’s one of the lucky ones. A deep scar that carves a line through her scalp, from crown to cheek, is proof of that fortune.

She got lucky when her abusive partner shot her point-blank in the head, and she survived.

She got lucky when she escaped her tiny village in Honduras. Local villagers blamed her for her partner’s death; he killed himself and their two young sons after he shot her.

She got lucky when she wasn’t harmed as she made the treacherous 2,000-mile journey to America.

And she got luckiest of all when she was granted asylum after she got here.

If she were to make her journey to America now, she would likely be turned away. Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that immigration judges generally cannot consider domestic violence as grounds for asylum. Sessions overturned a precedent set during the Obama administration that allowed certain victims to seek asylum here if they were unable to get help in their home countries.

Domestic abuse of the kind experienced by Martinez Yanez is endemic in Central America. In Honduras, few services for victims exist, and perpetrators are almost never held criminally responsible. One woman is killed every 16 hours there, according to Honduras’ Center for Women’s Rights.

For many victims, the United States is their best shot at staying alive.

While the exact numbers are not available, immigration lawyers have estimated that the Trump administration’s decision could invalidate tens of thousands of pending asylum claims from women fleeing domestic violence. Advocates warn it will be used to turn women away at the border, even if they have credible asylum claims.

“This administration is trying to close the door to refugees,” said Archi Pyati, chief of policy at Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit organization that works with immigrant women and girls who have survived gender-based violence. They represented Martinez Yanez in her asylum case. Travel bans, increased detention and family separation are all being used as tools to deter individuals from coming here, Pyati said.

Still, that will not stop women from coming. Because there are thousands of women just like Martinez Yanez, and their stories are just as harrowing.

CHERYL DIAZ MEYER FOR HUFFPOST

Aracely Martinez Yanez is pictured with her three daughters: Alyson, 4, Emely, 11 and Gabriela, 7. She holds her only photograph of her murdered sons: Daniel, 4, and Juancito, 6.

A Violent Start

Martinez Yanez grew up in a tiny village in Honduras with her parents and seven siblings. Her family made a living by selling homemade horchata, a sweet drink made from milky rice, and jugo de marañon, cashew juice. They also sold fresh tortillas out of their house. Her childhood was simple and happy.

But after she turned 15, a man in her village named Sorto became obsessed with her. At her cousin’s wedding, he tried to dance with her. She pushed him off: He was 15 years her senior, and gave her the creeps. A few days later, Martinez Yanez said, he waited outside her house with a gun and kidnapped her. He took her to a mountain and raped her repeatedly.

“I wanted to die,” she told HuffPost through an interpreter at her home in Baltimore on Tuesday. “I felt dirty. He said that I was his woman, and that I would not belong to anyone else.” As she told her story, she rubbed her legs up and down, physically uncomfortable as she recalled the terrible things that had happened to her.

Over the next six years, she said, Sorto went on to rape and beat her whenever he pleased. In the eyes of the village, she was his woman, just like he said. She got pregnant immediately, giving birth to her first son, Juancito, at 16, and her second son, Daniel, at 18. Sorto would come and go from the village, as he had a wife and children in El Salvador. But when he wasn’t there, she said she was watched by his family.

As for help, there were no police in her village, she said. She had seen what happened to other women who traveled to the closest city to report abuse: It made things worse. The police did nothing, and the abuser would inevitably find out.

“I felt like I was worthless, like I had no value,” she said.

A few years after her sons were born, she became friends with a local barber who cut her children’s hair. He was sweet and respectful, nothing like Sorto, she said. They began a secret relationship. Sorto had been gone from the village for a few years, and Martinez Yanez hoped she was free of him. Then she got pregnant. Scared that Sorto would find out, she fled to San Pedro Sula, a city in the north of the country. She didn’t tell anyone where she had gone.

But Sorto found her anyway. He called her on the phone and told her if she did not come back to the village within the next 24 hours, he would kill her family, she said. Martinez Yanez got on the next bus back.

A few days after she returned, she said, Sorto told her that he was taking her and their two boys to the river. He brought a hunting rifle with him. The family walked through the mountainside. Martinez Yanez recalled handing her children some sticks to play with, and crouching on the ground with them. Then she felt the rifle pressing into her head. The rest is a blank.

Sorto shot her in the back of the head, and killed her two sons, before shooting himself. Juancito was 6, Daniel was 4. Somehow, Martinez Yanez, five months pregnant, survived. She was hospitalized for months and had to relearn to walk and talk. She is still deaf in one ear, and has numbness down one side of her body.

When she returned home to the village, she said, people threw rocks at her and called her names. Someone fired a gun into her house. Someone else tried to run her over with a bicycle. The community blamed her for the killings because she had tried to leave Sorto, she explained. His family wanted to avenge his death.

“The whole village was against me,” she said. “Children, adults. I couldn’t go anywhere by myself.”

A few months later she gave birth to a girl, Emely, but she was overwhelmed with stress. On top of grieving the death of her two sons, learning to live with a traumatic brain injury, and caring for her newborn, she was constantly worried about being killed by people in her village.

It was too much. She eventually fled to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, but Sorto’s family found her there too, she said. In a last-ditch effort to save Martinez Yanez’s life, her family paid over $7,000, an enormous sum for the family, to a coyote, a person who helps smuggle people across the border to the U.S. Emely, who was now 2, had to stay behind. They couldn’t afford to send her, too.

Martinez Yanez made the heartbreaking decision to go alone.

The Journey To Freedom

She left in the middle of the night, traveling with a group of four or five people. They were transported in a van for part of the trip, and then in taxis.

There was very little to eat or drink, she said, and she barely slept. Her stomach was upset and she suffered from debilitating headaches. In Mexico, she almost turned back.

“I missed my parents and my daughter so much,” she said. “But the threats and the conditions that I knew were waiting for me in my village gave me the motivation to continue to the U.S. to be safe.”

It took them two weeks to get to the U.S. border. Then they waited two days before attempting to cross, she said. She was terrified that she would be caught by immigration officials and sent back. She crossed the border illegally in February 2009, and went to her uncle’s house in Houston, Texas, before traveling on to Annapolis, Maryland, where her brother lived.

Women like Aracely are saving their own lives.Kristen Strain, a lawyer who worked on Martinez Yanez’s asylum case.

Martinez Yanez didn’t know that she could apply for asylum as a domestic violence victim until a few years later, when she sought medical care for her head injury in Maryland. There, she was referred to Tahirih Justice Center.

Kristen Strain, an attorney who worked on her case, wrote the legal brief arguing that Martinez Yanez should be granted asylum.

Generally, applicants must show that the persecution they have suffered is on account of one of five grounds: race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Strain successfully argued that being a female victim of severe gender-based violence in Honduras counted as a particular social group for purposes of obtaining asylum.

“There simply aren’t laws in place that protect women like Aracely,” she said. “They have no recourse. It is accepted in their communities that women can be treated like men’s property.”

She said it took over a year to gather all the evidence for Martinez Yanez’s claim, which included a neurological evaluation, medical documents, news stories from Honduran papers about the shooting, dozens of interviews, and statements from friends and family in Honduras to corroborate her story.

“It is not as if it’s easy,” Strain said. “In addition to having to physically get here, which is harrowing and dangerous, women have to navigate a complex legal system that is difficult to understand, especially when they don’t speak the language. It’s hard for them to even know what their rights are, let alone find an attorney who can advocate for them.”

“Women like Aracely are saving their own lives,” she went on.

Martinez Yanez was granted asylum in 2013. Her daughter, Emely, was allowed to join her in 2014. While they talked on the phone regularly, the mother and daughter had not seen each other for five years.

CHERYL DIAZ MEYER FOR HUFFPOST

Martinez Yanez watches her daughters play outside the family’s Baltimore apartment.

A New Life

In her Baltimore home, more than 3,000 miles from the tiny village in Honduras where she was raised, Martinez Yanez likes to be surrounded by photos. They remind her of those she had to leave behind.

There’s one of her sister graduating college. Another of her parents beaming happily.

And then, hanging in the entrance to the kitchen, is a photograph of her with her two deceased sons. It is the only picture she owns of them. She brought it with her when she fled Honduras. When she spoke to HuffPost about her sons, she cried. She still doesn’t understand why they were killed.

Since she’s been in the U.S., Martinez Yanez has expanded her family. Emely, who is 11, now has two sisters: Gabriela, 7, and Alyson, 4.

“I’m very fortunate to be able to have my daughters with me,” she said. “I can’t ask for anything better to happen. I am so happy with my life.”

Martinez Yanez still struggles with the repercussions of being shot in the head. She is forgetful and can get confused easily. She said she has to put every appointment she has in her phone with an alarm, otherwise she’ll miss it.

She said she was grateful that she was granted asylum, and heartbroken for other women who may not have the same opportunity she did.

“I just feel so sad that other women in my situation, or even in worse situations than mine will not be allowed in the country anymore,” she said. “Here, I don’t have to hide or run away from anyone.”

So, without the interference of the DOJ politicos, here was an actual working system that helped get deserving cases granted and off the docket, conserved judicial resources, saved time, saved lives, and complied completely with Due Process. In other words, a smashing Immigration Court and U.S. system of justice “success story” by any rational measure!

That has all been disgracefully dismantled by Sessions. Now, following his perversion of the law in Matter of A-B-, He’s encouraging DHS and Immigration Judges to deny such cases without even hearing the testimony (even though every one of these individuals easily should qualify for the lesser relief of protection under the Convention Against Torture). That’s almost certain to result in appeals, prolonged litigation in the Courts of Appeals, and ultimately return of most cases to the Immigration Courts for full hearings and fair consideration.

At some point, not only is A-R-C-G- likely to be reinstated, but it is likely to be expanded to what is really the fundamental basis for these claims — gender as a qualifying “Particular Social Group.” It’s undeniably immutable/fundamental, particularized, socially distinct and clearly the basis for much of the persecution in today’s world!

In the meantime, however, those who don’t have the luxury of great pro bono representation, lack an attentive Circuit Court of Appeals, or who can’t get through the “credible fear interview” as it has now been “rigged for denial” by Sessions will likely be unlawfully returned to their home countries to suffer abuse, torture, and a lifetime of torment or death, along with those cute little kids in the pictures we’re seeing.

The White Nationalist, neo-Nazi regime of Trump, Sessions, and their enablers will be one of the most horrible and disgusting periods in our history. History will neither forget nor treat kindly those who failed to stand up to the racists and child abusers running and ruining our Government, and destroying many innocent lives in the process.

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never!

PWS

06-25-18

Asylum Grant Rate
	Grants	Denials	Grant Rate
FY 12	10,575	8,444	56%
FY 13	9,767	8,777	53%
FY 14	8,672	9,191	49%
FY 15	8,184	8,816	48%
FY 16	8,726	11,643	43%

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Join the New Due Process Army — Fight White Nationalism, Lies, Cowardice, and Bullying by Trump and his evil gang of immoral, scofflaw, racist “swamp monsters.”

Related posts:

About Attorney Yañez

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

1. NPR WEEKEND EDITION WITH SCOTT SIMON, JUNE 23, 2018

2. WITH SOLEDAD O’BRIEN, JUNE 24, 2018

3. MSNBC, VELSHI & RUHLE WITH ALI VELSHI, JUNE 25, 2018

Related posts:

Related posts:

A Violent Start

The Journey To Freedom

A New Life

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never!

Related posts: