👨🏽‍⚖️⚖️BIDEN NOMINATES HON. DAVID ESTUDILLO, FORMER IMMIGRATION/HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER FOR US DISTRICT JUDGE , WD WA! — The Daily Kos Reports

 

Hon. David Estudillo
Hon. David Estudillo
Washington State Judge
Nominee for USDC WD WA
PHOTO: YouTube

 

 

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As I always say: “Better Judges for a better America!” This a step forward, although we still have a long way to go to repair the extensive damage inflicted on the Federal Judiciary by Trump & McConnell.

Moreover, as I will discuss below, one of America’s most important (and readily “improvable”) judiciaries, one completely controlled by the Biden Administration, the U.S. Immigration Court, has actually taken steps backward in terms of progressive appointments under Garland. It’s like a new coach taking over in the 4th quarter of a game his team is losing 48-7 and saying “OK, let’s spot them another 17 points before we start playing to win!” Incredible, yet, sadly, true!

As the latest census shows an increasingly diverse America, the Article III Federal Judiciary remains an embarrassing backwater of “non-diversity.” This was intentionally aggravated by Trump & McConnell who, as noted above, elevated primarily White ultra right wing men, many with thin or questionable qualifications, to the Federal Bench!

As stated above:

It is crucial that the more than 1.1 million immigrants and nearly 1 million Latinx people in Washington feel that they are represented on the courts by people who share their experiences and identities.

Evidently, AG Merrick Garland and his team @ DOJ haven’t gotten that message. So far, Garland’s appointments to the Immigration Court, and the composition of his BIA, look more like Stephen Miller’s, Billy Barr’s, and Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s “skewed whitewashed vision” of America than they do the real America. That’s particularly true when you consider the American communities whose lives and futures are existentially affected (primarily adversely) by substandard and biased EOIR decisions that continue to be cranked out under Garland. This is despite a few moves by Garland to “kill off” the most horrible of the many bad precedents cranked out by the AG and the BIA during the Trump regime.

Judge Estrada sounds like just the type of individual that Garland should be appointing to the U.S. Immigration Court and the BIA. Compare Judge Estrada’s experience, qualifications, and “real life” background and human engagement with the lackluster profiles of Immigration Judges recently appointed by Garland and with many of those appointed to the Immigration Court and the BIA over the past two decades.

There are plenty of diverse, extraordinarily talented, courageous, practical experts out there in the NDPA to reform and improve the EOIR Judiciary at all levels! Many haven’t applied in the past (or have had their applicants rejected in favor of lesser-qualified candidates) because of the White Nationalist, xenophobic, nativist tone set by Sessions and Barr. Indeed, I spoke over the weekend to one of the leading progressive immigration/human rights experts in America who felt that way. Obviously, I encouraged that “NDPA superstar” to submit the applications — not just for EOIR but also for the Article III Judiciary which also needs to get its act together on human rights, immigration, and racial justice.

Garland & team need to reform and improve the selection criteria, involve outside expert input, and then actively recruit the “best and the brightest” from the NDPA to remake and elevate the Immigration Judiciary! As I have mentioned before, my colleagues in the Round Table and I have done more outreach, cajoling, inspiring, and recruiting among the progressive immigration and human rights community to apply for EOIR jobs than have those at DOJ and elsewhere in the Administration whose job it should be to do just that! It’s ridiculous, and it’s wrong!

No wonder things continue to be an ungodly mess at EOIR despite mountains of blueprints, action plans, and other readily achievable reform recommendations and proposed improvements produced by practical experts in the immigration/human rights/racial justice community! The Immigration Judiciary cries out for diverse, progressive, talented, practical scholar “role models” drawn from the NDPA! 

Lucas Guttentag, are you listening somewhere out there? Don’t get co-opted by the DOJ bureaucracy that overall failed to stand up to Trump and his gang of insurrectionists! Don’t let the new leadership at DOJ “de-prioritize or back burner” essential, long overdue, achievable EOIR reforms! Expose “Obamathink revolution by evolution” as the ridiculous and dangerous nonsense that it is (and always was)! Fight for your ideals, speak out, and shake up this disastrously broken and unfair system with the progressive change we need! At this point in your distinguished career, what do you have to lose? Those who consciously chose “not to rock the boat” at EOIR in the past, when human lives, due process, and human dignity were at stake, now share in the responsibility for its sinking!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-16-21

☠️⚰️ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN DIGNITY, & DUE PROCESS DON’T MATTER —Trumpist USDJ Shafts Asylum Seekers Of Color By Reinstating “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” (a/k/a MPP) Directed Against Asylum Seekers Of Color!

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — Some Life-tenured Federal Judges abuse  their privileged positions to insure that this is what “due process” will look like for asylum seekers of color!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

 

Here’s the decision from U.S. District Judge MATTHEW J. KACSMARYK in Texas v. Biden: 

remain in Mexico decision

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Judge Kacsmaryk was appointed to the bench by Trump & McConnell in 2019. He is a former Federal prosecutor, deputy general counsel of a right wing religious group, and member of the Federalist Society. His nomination was (obviously unsuccessfully) opposed by more than 200 prominent civil rights, religious tolerance, and human rights groups.

Here’s an excerpt from their letter in opposition addressed to the Senate:

On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Hum­­­­an Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations committed to promoting and protecting the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States, I write in strong opposition to the confirmation of Matthew Kacsmaryk to be a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas.

Nominees to the federal courts must be committed to respecting the law, Constitution, and core American values of justice, fairness, and inclusivity.  Mr. Kacsmaryk does not meet this standard.  He is an anti-LGBT activist and culture warrior who does not respect the equal dignity of all people.  His record reveals a hostility to LGBT equality and to women’s health, and he would not be able to rule fairly and impartially in cases involving those issues.

https://civilrights.org/resource/oppose-confirmation-matthew-kacsmaryk-u-s-district-court-northern-district-texas/

Interestingly, the letter was signed by none other than Vanita S. Gupta, then President & CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and currently the Associate Attorney General of the U.S. 

Gupta and her colleagues had Judge K “pegged” as an unqualified righty bigot then! But, with the lineup currently in place at the 5th and the Supremes, it remains to be seen whether there is any effective short-term remedy for his grotesque abuses of power and human rights.

Judicial appointments are important! Maybe it’s time for Gupta and others at DOJ to treat Immigration Judge and BIA appointments as such!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Better Federal Judges for a better America!

PWS

03-14-21

JUDGE HANEN (SD TX) THROWS DACA BACK INTO DOUBT! — Says Original Program Illegal, Bars New Apps, But Rules Gov. Can’t Pull The Rug Out From Under Those Currently Protected, For Now!

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

https://reut.rs/36VDoK9

Mica Rosenberg reports for Reuters:

NEW YORK, July 16 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge in Texas on Friday blocked new applications to a program that protects immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation but said the hundreds of thousands of people already enrolled would not be affected until further court rulings.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, arguing it was illegally created by former President Barack Obama in 2012.

Hanen found the program violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it was created but said that since there were so many people currently enrolled in the program – nearly 650,000 – his ruling would be temporarily stayed for their cases until further court rulings in the case.

“To be clear,” the judge said, the order does not require the government to take “any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA recipient.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of Mica’s article at the link.

The obvious solution is legislation. But, the GOP is likely to oppose any reasonable proposal, and the Dems might not have the votes to “go it alone.”

Stay tuned!

PWS

07-16-21

🤮🏴‍☠️👎🏽RACE-BASED CHILD ABUSE & SEXUAL ABUSE OF KIDS MUST STOP — Demand An End To Scofflaw Behavior By Our Government!

Crimes Against Humanity
Thomas Cizauskas Crimes against humanity
Creative Commons License — The Biden Administration promised to stop these crimes committed by our Government, but hasn’t.

https://www.newsweek.com/we-fled-honduras-fearing-our-lives-immigration-officers-abused-my-child-opinion-1605760p

Daniel Paz writes in Newsweek:

“Welcome to hell.”

 

Those were the words I heard from an immigration officer not long after I entered the United States near El Paso, Texas in May 2018. I thought I had just reached safety with Angie, my 7-year-old daughter. I was wrong.

Once we arrived at the border, immigration officers processed me and my daughter at a detention facility, and led us to a crowded cell packed with 50 to 60 other families. It smelled terrible—like urine—and everything was gray. We were so cold. They didn’t even offer us one of the cellophane blankets you see on TV. I had to take my shirt off to wrap it around Angie and keep her warm. I was shivering.

pastedGraphic.png

The journey to this point had been excruciatingly painful. Fearing for our lives, we had to make the decision to flee. I had a good life in Honduras. I was a businessman and I owned my own home. I knew it would be hard to leave everything I worked so hard to build behind. Starting a new life in a new country with a different culture wouldn’t be easy. But desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. Hope of reaching a safe place for my family kept me going.

At the detention center, many fathers began hearing rumors that immigration officials were going to take our children away from us. Take them where? Take my daughter? To another cell? A new facility? On the inside I was panicking, but I knew I needed to show strength for my daughter. I needed to be brave and prepare her if the rumors were true. You will contact your grandparents in Ohio, I told Angie.

In the cell, we practiced memorizing their phone numbers, repeating them over and over. To be extra safe, I then wrote the numbers with a ball-point pen on my daughter’s arm, her belly, her foot and on the inside of her jeans hoping she’d have the chance to make a phone call before immigration officials washed off the ink.

Then my nightmare happened. They came to take our children. I witnessed pain, agonizing cries and a deep sense of helplessness. Some of the immigration officers joked as they handcuffed the parents. Others expressed a cruelty I never would have expected. Rather than trying to ease our pain, they were somehow enjoying their power. As if they believed their actions were the right thing to do. I don’t know how anyone believes separating a child from a parent is right.

. . . .

While being transferred to a detention facility for children, an immigration officer sexually abused her. When she fought back, the officer threatened her, saying if she told anyone she would never see her parents again. Then Angie witnessed the same officer sexually abuse two girls who were even younger than her. Angie stayed quiet about the experience even months after we were reunited.

We were reunited after several weeks, though the separation felt eternal. The Angie the U.S. government returned to me is not the same girl they took out of my arms in that detention center. She cannot forget what happened to her. And she wants me to share what happened to her because she is worried the officer who abused her is still an immigration official. We do not know the officer’s name—let alone whether the officer is still working in government.

“What if that officer is still hurting other kids?” Angie asked me.

As a father I want to tell Angie not to worry. That is why I am asking President Joe Biden to act. Reuniting families and making sure they have immigration status in the U.S. is critical—but it is not enough. The government can make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of asylum seekers who are being turned away at the border right now. All asylum seekers should be allowed to seek protection and refuge in the U.S. without fear.

The government must also investigate every allegation of sexual abuse and mistreatment by immigration officers. Those officers must immediately be identified and removed from their positions so they cannot hurt anyone else. President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice together have the ability to ensure that families like mine can begin to heal.

It is hell to leave your home and risk everything so your child can be safe. It shouldn’t be hell once you have reached what you thought would be a safe haven.

After entering the United States to seek safety, Daniel Paz and his daughter were separated for several weeks. Paz and his family were reunited in 2018 and have since won asylum. He is a committed advocate for other families who have faced similar trauma.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

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Who would have thought that nearly six months into the Biden Administration our Government would still be abusing asylum seekers and ignoring the Constitution, mocking the rule of law, and degrading humanity?

So, how is it that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke intend to combat racism and unequal justice in America when they have failed to re-establish the rule of law for asylum seekers at the border and continue to run an unjust and grossly mismanaged “court system” @ EOIR filled with too many “Miller Lite” judges?

Tell the Biden Administration and Judge Garland that we need progressive reforms, now! EOIR would be a great starting place!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-21

🇺🇸🗽A JULY 4 SMORGASBORD OF PATRIOTIC MUSINGS ON THE STATE OF OUR 245-YEAR-OLD DEMOCRACY!

🗽Emigrating to the U.S.? Here are Some Helpful Hints

By Diane Harrison

 

Moving to the United States is an exciting transition. Sometimes people who are new to the U.S. may not understand some of the culture and perspectives of its citizens. For immigrants preparing to make the big move, there are some things to keep in mind that will help ease the transition. Immigrationcourtside.com shares a few in the guide below.

The U.S. is a Melting Pot

The U.S. values independence and freedom to live with a variety of liberties.This translates into a unique melting-pot culture of diversity.

 

1. Americans originate from all over the world; 44.8 million immigrants lived in the U.S. as of 2018.

2. The U.S. values religious freedoms and human rights above all else. A lot of families are interfaith, meaning one spouse may be of the Jewish faith while their partner is Buddhist or Christian. There are interfaith communities that support the spiritual needs of many religions under one roof as a way to unite people.

Our Politics Vary

One of the most interesting aspects of U.S. politics is the diversity of our parties, and all voters coming together to elect constituents through a fair electoral process.

 

3. There are three political parties in the U.S.; Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Each of these parties value democracy but have differing beliefs about how it is best accomplished.

4. Our political system relies on the democractic process of voting for elected officials. Qualified immigrants can apply for voting ability.

Getting and Sending Support

The U.S. offers programs to assist immigrants in need of assistance in everyday life. If an immigrant does not need assistance but wishes to send funds to loved ones back home, there are reliable ways to facilitate that need.

 

5. There are companies that offer funds transfers at reasonable rates. If there were family in India for example, immigrants could relax knowing that their funds were being sent safely.

6. U.S. citizens are charitable and enjoy sharing their blessings with others. During holiday seasons such as Hanukkah and the Christian holiday of Christmas, Americans are particularly generous, providing gifts, food, and assistance to people in need, including immigrant populations from around the world.

Immigrants Have Rights and Benefits

Those who have immigrated to the U.S. have rights and systems in place to support their needs, and these have been developed as a way to reduce poverty among immigrant populations.

 

7. Immigrants who are working on assimilation in the U.S. may find that our resources and benefits are helpful. You are not on your own, so reach out for support.

8. For legal representation, immigrants can reach out and access free or reduced-cost attorneys.

9. Immigrants own and operate 1 in 5 U.S. businesses. You can do it, too.

10. Register your business as an LLC with the state to help protect yourself from liability.

11. People who have made the move to the U.S. may wish to become residents and can follow these logical steps toward citizenship.

 

Moving to the United States is exciting and thrilling, but it can also be scary and overwhelming. However, knowing what to expect can help alleviate some of that stress.

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5 ways to engage with immigrants this week! — From Immigrant Food:

https://mailchi.mp/4f1861b1de43/5-ways-to-engage-with-immigrants-this-week-10077018?e=16814f5ced

 

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Immigration Doesn’t Just Mean Coming To America. These 4 Books Are Good Reminders.

Author Ocean Vuong recommends four books on the immigrant experience — but he wants to de-center America in these stories: “Immigration is a species-wide legacy,” he says, and always has been.

Read in NPR: https://apple.news/AHF0mzKuBSD2sndcvfNlLXw

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The Founding Debtors and their slaves 

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=ec5606cc-8bcf-4912-9774-cc57daf2c71e&v=sdk

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Los Angeles Times: My family’s reparations dilemma

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=9f5502fd-5db8-41ad-80cd-63981fc4361a&v=sdk

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This week’s GOP clown is Paul Gosar — and the ringmaster isn’t doing anything to stop him

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/02/paul-gosar-kevin-mccarthy-clown-show/

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The Fourth is for Complainers: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/03/fourth-is-complainers/

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Inclusion is patriotism of the highest order

The Founders entrusted us with the tools to fix what they were unwilling to repair.

Opinion by Darren Walker

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/02/inclusion-is-patriotism-highest-order/

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On July 4, recognize the Black and Indigenous soldiers who helped win the Revolutionary War

George Washington’s army might not have been able to beat the British without Black and Indigenous men. It’s time to set the record straight, for all Americans.

Opinion by Bonnie Watson Coleman

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini

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St. Louis Newspaper Bashes GOP, Josh Hawley For ‘Contempt’ Of Democracy:

“Plenty of words come to mind to describe … actions by one of America’s two major political parties,” the editorial reads. “‘Patriotic’ is nowhere among them.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/josh-hawley-capitol-insurrection-democracy-contempt-st-louis_n_60e13699e4b0e01b6b1eeef7

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The panic over critical race theory is an attempt to whitewash U.S. history – The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/critical-race-theory-history/2021/07/02/e90bc94a-da75-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html

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Critical race theory’s opponents are sure it’s bad. Whatever it is.

The movement’s critics demonize it, then dismiss it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/critical-race-theory-law-systemic-racism/2021/07/02/6abe7590-d9f5-11eb-8fb8-aea56b785b00_story.html

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Maybe it’s time to admit that the Statue of Liberty has never quite measured up:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/statue-of-liberty-replica/2021/06/30/ed288c96-d77f-11eb-bb9e-70fda8c37057_story.html

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Today’s GOP:  Only the Incompetent Need Apply:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opinion/republicans-incompetence.html

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WHEN BAD PUBLIC OFFICIALS ARE NEGATIVE ROLE MODELS: A Run-In With Donald Rumsfeld When I Was In College Changed The Course Of My Life

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-princeton-encounter_n_60de4430e4b0e01b6b1c6b89

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What does it mean to be American? Ask an immigrant

We are at an inflection point. After the departure of Trump, his xenophobia and racism continue to shape how we understand both immigration and what it means to be American. How do we challenge this worldview?

One way is to recognize that because xenophobia is an inextricable part of systemic racism in the U.S., it must be fought alongside racism. We need to examine and protest the unequal treatment of immigrants as part of this structure. We must counter the narratives that identify immigration as a threat with facts: COVID-19 is not the “Chinese virus.” Immigrants are essential workers, constituting 17% of the civilian labor force. About two-thirds of Americans say that immigrants strengthen the country.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=69fd3116-862c-4d16-914c-2c974205a5d5

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Special thanks to Diane Harrison for her always thoughtful, informative, and accessible “Health Care PSA” contribution to the “July 4, 2021 Edition of Courtside.”

The quote about unequal justice in the last item by Erika Lee underscores the dis-service that AG Garland is doing by failing to eradicate the “Dred Scottification” of migrants, primarily those of color, in our Immigration Courts.

His unwillingness to date to make the obvious personnel moves necessary to replace inadequate and weak judges and administrators with a diverse group of progressive experts who would bring due process, fundamental fairness, and racial and gender equality to our broken, biased, and dysfunctional Immigration Courts will continue to make American democracy fall well short of our stated ideals! The failure of the Biden Administration to “connect the dots” between racism and institutionalized xenophobia, particularly at EOIR, is highly disappointing, to say the least!

🇺🇸🗽Due Process Forever! Happy July 4!🎆🎇

PWS   

07-04-21

HISTORY/POLITICS — STRUCTURAL RACISM IS DEEPLY INGRAINED IN OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM — “DRED SCOTTIFICATION” IS STILL ALIVE & WELL IN TODAY’S DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRANT “JUSTICE” SYSTEM!

Julissa Arce
Julissa Arce
NATIONAL BEST SELLING AUTHOR, SPEAKER, SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCATE AND FORMER WALL STREET EXECUTIVE
PHOTO: JulissaArce.com

This video short by Julissa Arce, Activist, Writer, and Producer says it all:

https://blog.unidosus.org/2021/07/01/the-structural-racism-of-our-immigration-system/

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In my Georgetown Law Immigration Law & Policy class, we recently talked about the racist roots of naturalization policy set forth in the Naturalization Act of 1790 with my friend and colleague Professor Cori Alonso Yoder. Obviously, the racism of our “Founding Fathers” went well beyond the institution of slavery. 

Cori Alonso Yoder
Professor Cori Alonso Yoder
PHOTO: Google Scholar

Naturalization was a “whites only” proposition that transcended status as free or enslaved. White foreign nationals who had resided here for two years could be citizens. Free African Americans, Native Americans, and other free people of color could not become U.S. Citizens even if they had been born here and lived here for their entire lives. Yup, you don’t have to think too deeply to recognize the overt racism there!

Not to mention that America was literally built on the backs of enslaved African Americans whose free labor also supported a number of the white Founding Fathers, their white families, their often lavish lifestyles, and their sometimes endemic fiscal irresponsibilities. See, e.g., T. Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of Independence whose estate had to sell off slaves to pay his debts.

No wonder White Supremacists, including many ignorant and dishonest pols, don’t want the truth of our nation’s history taught. The truth isn’t always pretty. And, it often has little to do with the various White Nationalist myths and skewed narratives foisted upon us.  

Since those bogus myths exclude or distort the roles of the majority of today’s Americans, the “truth deniers” are going to have a tough time shoving their “whitewashed” version of American history down our throats in the long run! (That’s true, even though the “forces of ignorance, racism, bias, and thought suppression” on the right have been quite active lately and, shamefully, have succeeded in writing some of their racist nonsense into state and local laws). An honest reckoning with our past, including our past mistakes, is necessary for us to move forward into a better future. 

One has only to look at Justice Alito’s mythologized version of America set forth in his recent majority opinion suppressing the voting rights of African Americans and other minorities, and to read Justice Kagan’s cogent rebuttal of his legal sophism, to see that “Dred Scott” is still alive at the Supremes! Sad, but true and something we all have to deal with. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/voting-rights-arizona-court/

It’s not the first time our legal system has refused to carry out the clear mandate of the 15th Amendment against attacks by states trying to suppress the political power of their African-American citizens. One would like to think it will be the last. But, that’s unlikely given the current composition of the Supremes, Congress, and many state legislatures.

There might be no immediate solution for the Supremes, Congress, and state legislatures. The political process simply takes time, and the forces of regression have found and exploited all of the “anti-democratic seams” in our institutions that give them political power beyond their numbers.

However, there is one potentially powerful court system out there that progressives could reform and reconstitute NOW into a judiciary committed to due process, fundamental fairness, best practices, and equal justice for all persons in the United States regardless or race, creed, or status. So far, the Biden Administration and AG Garland have been both tone deaf and remarkably inept at transforming the Immigration Courts into the better judiciary needed for our future! Progressives need to “raise hell” until the Biden Administration fixes the one now-dysfunctional Federal Court system that they actually control!

The future will belong to those unafraid to face the sometimes unattractive realities of our collective past, to respect and honor those who fought through the mistreatment and injustice inflicted upon them, and learn from our history rather than denying or rewriting it! It will also belong to those wise, courageous, and bold enough to take advantage of opportunities for improving American justice that are staring them in the face. So far, Dems have shown themselves not up to the job in the Immigration Courts. Until they are, racial justice and sustained progress in America are likely to remain illusions.

 🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-02-21

THE EVER-AMAZING NICOLE NAREA @ VOX “GETS IT” — Too Bad The Folks Running Immigration Policy Don’t! — “Knowledge about US deportation and detention policy didn’t have any significant effect on their intentions to migrate. . . . it made them more likely to think outcomes and legal procedures in the American immigration system are unfair.” 

Nicole Narea
Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22451177/biden-border-immigration-enforcement-detention-deportation

Nicole writes @ Vox News: 

President Joe Biden has taken some steps toward reversing his predecessor’s legacy of broad, indiscriminate immigration enforcement, including a recent announcement that it will no longer detain immigrants at two locations under scrutiny for alleged abuses.

But Republicans are adamant that increased immigration enforcement be a prerequisite to any broader immigration reform.

“There’ll be no immigration reform until you get control of the border,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Roll Call last month.

There are now nearly 40 percent more people in immigration detention compared to when Biden first took office, and his administration is continuing to turn away most migrants arriving on the border under pandemic-related restrictions put in place by his predecessor, President Donald Trump, which have led to the expulsions of more than 350,000 people this year alone.

But research shows that the threat of detention and deportation in the US doesn’t dissuade migrants from making the journey to the southern border, especially if they are victims of violence and may be seeking to escape the “devil they know” in their home countries.

“Managing migration at the border, particularly the kind of migration we’re seeing now, from a strictly deterrence, enforcement lens is just not sustainable in the long run and is not having the impact that people think it should have,” Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said. “That’s why we need to rethink our paradigm for how we talk about migration and everything that we do at the border.”

. . . .

Knowledge of US immigration detention, however, did have an unintended effect on survey takers in Ryo’s experiment — it made them more likely to think outcomes and legal procedures in the American immigration system are unfair. That is worrisome, given that perceptions of fairness are significant predictors of people’s willingness to obey the law and cooperate with legal authorities, Ryo said.

“We really ought to be concerned about the extent to which generating these kinds of perceptions of unfairness can backfire in terms of more people disregarding our laws and undertaking that dangerous journey in order to get to our border and try to cross it,” she added.

. . . .

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

First, let me congratulate Nicole on her spectacularly high level reporting and mastery of the English language: Clear, accessible, well-organized, informative, persuasive. Compare Nicole’s prose with the vapid, often misleading nonsense and gibberish spouted by legislators, government officials, bureaucrats, and right wing White Nationalist shills of all types. Just yesterday, Trump and his pathetic “wannabe” Greg Abbott were down at the border spouting their unadulterated, fact-free, racist  blather and restrictionist nonsense (when Trump wasn’t rambling on incoherently about the “Big Lie” or himself). I encourage everyone to read Nicole’s full article at the link! 

“Enforcement only doesn’t work” has been one of the key “themes” of Courtside since “Day 1.” The answer has also been clear — due process, fundamental fairness, racial equity, practical scholarship leading to durable solutions. 

The converse of “enforcement only doesn’t work” is also true:  A more realistic, more generous legal immigration system that advances due process and equality while taking advantage of “market factors” that attract and drive migration would also lead to more efficient and effective enforcement. Many, perhaps the majority, of those we are now wasting time and money on cruel and ultimately futile attempts to detain, deter, and remove would actually be a huge benefit to our nation if they were allowed to migrate legally on either a permanent or temporary basis.  

I’ve been saying for a long time now that convincing folks that our legal system is basically bogus — falsely promising a fairness and dignified treatment we aren’t delivering — merely serves to drive migrants to enter the “extralegal” or “black market” system that helps support our economy. The real “beneficiaries” of “mindless immigration enforcement” and a dysfunctional legal system are smugglers, cartels, and exploitative employers. Also, obviously, corrupt GOP politicos benefit from having a permanent, disenfranchised, traumatized, largely non-White “black market labor pool” to prop up their economy while serving as an easy target to “whip up” their racist base. 

Bad policies, driven by ignorance, myths, bias, cowardice, and racism will continue to produce lousy results — for the migrants and for our nation. Smarter, more courageous, more intellectually honest legislators and public officials are necessary. Whether voters will be wise enough to elect them remains to be seen.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-01-21

 

⚠️🚸V.P. HARRIS IS GOING TO THE BORDER: SHE SHOULD TALK WITH THE REAL VICTIMS OF HER GOVERNMENT’S, ILLEGAL, WRONG-HEADED, IMMORAL, AND INEFFECTIVE BORDER DETERRENCE POLICIES — Avoid The CBP “Dog & Pony Show,” & The GOP’s Cowardly “Gunboat Cruz” — Cross Over The Border, View The Human Rights Catastrophe We Have Created, Understand People Have A Right To Seek Legal Refuge, & Fix The Legal Asylum System At Ports Of Entry & Immigration Courts With Humane, Practical Experts! — “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.” — Stop Blaming, Shaming, & Dehumanizing The Victims & Start Fixing Our Asylum System & Solving The Problems That Force Them To Migrate!

“Floaters”
“Sadly, over the last two decades the US has been unable to get beyond this vision of ‘deterrence’ of legal asylum seekers.“ — Floaters — “How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris
Vice President of the United States. — “So far, she hasn’t gotten beyond the mistakes of the past, either. Taking a tour with CBP won’t help.”
(Official Senate Photo)

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/06/17/vice-president-kamala-harris-us-mexico-border-immigration-unaccompanied

J.D. Long-Garcia writes in America Magazine:

Last week, Ms. Harris traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei and expressed the Biden administration’s goal to “help Guatelmalans find hope at home.” During a press conference on June 7, she told Guatemalans thinking of making the journey north to the United States: “Do not come. Do not come.”

pastedGraphic.png“O.K., that’s like saying, ‘Stay home and die,’” according to the Rev. Pat Murphy, a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. “That message is falling on deaf ears.”

If Ms. Harris does travel to the border, Father Murphy said, she should be sure to make a visit to the Mexican side. “If she just stays on her side, she’s not going to find much,” he said.

In Tijuana, Ms. Harris would see a camp of 2,000 asylum seekers near the port of entry, Father Murphy said. “If she looked a little further, she would see the people who are victims of violence in Tijuana and Mexicali and other places,” he said. Migrants may be eager to escape bad situations in their home countries, Father Murphy said, but they often do not understand how difficult conditions at the border are “until they’re stuck in the middle of [a border city] with no place to go.”

“You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials. You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

At diminished capacity because of the pandemic, migrant shelters are full. The United States has started to accept some vulnerable people, like families with children with an illness or those being persecuted because of their sexual orientation, Father Murphy said. But there are also hundreds deported every day.

He believes if the vice president did decide to visit the border, it would be worth her while. “You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials,” Father Murphy said. “You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

. . . .

Donald M. Kerwin
Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Donald Kerwin, the executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York, also noted that people have a right not to migrate—to stay in their home country. He sees immigration policy as an arena for a fruitful convergence of Catholic social teaching, international law and contemporary human rights principles.

The Biden administration’s recognition of the forces that drive migration should be applauded, but it can address root causes while re-establishing humane asylum policies at the border.

“States are responsible for ensuring that people can flourish at home,” he said. “But it’s an empty right at this point in many communities in the Northern Triangle countries. They’re facing impossible conditions, caused by natural disasters, climate change, gang violence and extraordinary poverty. So people have a right to flee those impossible conditions and seek lives that are worthy of human dignity. In some cases, that means leaving their countries.”

When they do leave their home countries, people have the right to seek protection wherever they can find it, Mr. Kerwin said. “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.”

The United States needs a functioning refugee resettlement system, an asylum system and robust humanitarian programs to address the conditions in Central America that are driving people to migrate, he said. “They’re not in place right now,” Mr. Kerwin said, “and until they are in place, people will reluctantly, at a terrible cost…continue to migrate.”

If Ms. Harris visits the border, Mr. Kerwin suggested she speak with migrants that have entered the United States, starting with the children. “Find out why they’ve come, what drove them to the United States and also see what their situation is currently, in often overcrowded facilities,” he said. “At that point, it would be clear as day that these folks are not a problem. These folks fled terrible problems, but they themselves are not the problem.”

Earlier this month, more than 20 bishops, Vatican representatives and leaders of Catholic organizations met for an emergency immigration meeting at Mundelein Seminary, outside of Chicago. Mr. Kerwin, who attended the meeting, said organizers displayed notes written by immigrant children, often addressed to God.

“It’s clear from reading these notes that these are lovely children, who miss their parents and worry about them and are in difficult situations that are not of their own making. And that the United States should do right by them,” he said. “And the right thing is to protect them and reunify them with family members.”

Chloe Gunther, America intern, contributed to this story.

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

Read the full article at the link.

Politicians of both parties are averse to the truth. They don’t have the courage and backbone for it! But the truth is quite simple, if somewhat “inconvenient.”  

Unless and until we can solve the problems driving refugees to flee the Northern Triangle, we will have to take more of them. We should welcome them through an orderly legal system, including a robust, properly staffed, and honestly administered legal refugee and asylum system. 

Alternatively, we could continue our current policies of immorally and illegally killing some on the journey, “snuffing” some in the desert (where their bodies might never be found and “counted”), and enriching smugglers and cartels who will eventually get many determined survivors into the interior. 

There, they will join our highly exploitable, yet politically expedient for both parties (for differing reasons), “extralegal population.” A  limited number will be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and be arbitrarily removed by ICE, usually at costs that far exceed any demonstrable benefits. Even fewer will commit misconduct leading to their arrest and removal.

But the bulk of them will blend in somehow and do what’s necessary for themselves and their families to survive, as has been happening for decades and generations. They will also enrich and improve our nation in ways both predictable and unpredictable. Some will eventually find it possible and advantageous to return to their nations of origin, most won’t. 

It would be far better for both the migrants and our nation, not to mention humanity as a whole, if we included the bulk of those forced to come here in our legal immigration system. But, whether we are enlightened enough “to do it the right way” or not, they will come as long as the alternatives are starvation, death, unspeakable abuse, and unending despair. 

Migration is both our oldest and most persistent human phenomenon and an essential survival skill for humanity. It’s going to take more than inane walls, cruel and illegal imprisonment in American Gulags, unworkable laws, mindless, yet expensive, enforcement, nativist rhetoric, bad judges, and cowardly politicians sending “don’t come” messages to make them “die in place.” Our politicians might be not be bright or brave enough to face reality — but, I guarantee that the forced migrants we like to dehumanize and look down upon are much smarter, braver, more aware, and far more creative, adaptable, and capable than we think!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-21

 

‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/6/21/first-steps

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

First Steps

On June 16, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally, mercifully vacated three decisions that formed a key part of the Trump administration’s unrelenting attack on the law of asylum.1  Matter of A-B-,  issued by Jeff Sessions in June 2018, took aim in particular at victims of domestic violence.2  Matter of L-E-A-, issued the following year by William Barr, sought to undermine protection for those targeted by gangs due to their familial ties.3  And on January 14, 2021, six days from the end of the Trump Administration, acting A.G. Jeffrey Rosen issued a second decision in A-B-, gratuitously criticizing the method for determining nexus in asylum claims employed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, while conveniently evading that court’s review of the original decision in the case through remand.4

Garland’s action restores the law to where it stood prior to June 11, 2018, but only for the time being.  Proposed rules on the subject (which Garland referenced) are due by October 30, when they will first be subjected to a period of public comment.  If final rules are eventually published, it will occur well into next year.

As we sigh in collective relief and celebrate the first steps towards correcting our asylum laws, let’s also take note of the imperfect place in which the case law stands at present.

As to domestic violence claims, the BIA’s 2014 decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- (which Matter of A-B- had vacated) has been restored as binding precedent.5  That decision was issued at a time when (as now) regulations addressing particular social groups were being contemplated by DHS and EOIR.6  While A-R-C-G- was an extremely welcome development, the Board used it to recognize a rather narrowly-defined group: “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship.”  In a footnote to the decision, the Board declined to address the argument of several amici (including UNHCR) that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone.  Although A-R-C-G- led to many grants of asylum, some immigration judges relied on the limited scope of the group’s definition to deny claims involving slightly broader variations, in particular, where the victim was not legally married, but nevertheless in a domestic relationship that she was unable to leave.  While the BIA reversed some of those denials in unpublished decisions, it declined to speak to the issue through binding precedent.

As to Matter of L-E-A-, Garland’s recent action returns us to the BIA’s original opinion in that case.7  While the decision acknowledged that families constitute particular social groups (a point that was not in dispute, having been universally recognized for some 35 years and stipulated to by DHS), the BIA still denied asylum by invoking a legally incorrect standard for establishing nexus that it has continued to apply in all family-based asylum claims.

For these reasons, the content of the forthcoming regulations will be extremely important in determining the future of asylum in this country.  While a return to the test for social group cognizability expressed in the BIA’s 1985 precedent in Matter of Acosta tops most regulation wish lists, I will focus the discussion here on a couple of more specific items necessary to correct the shortcomings of Matter of A-R-C-G- and Matter of L-E-A-.

First, the regulations need to explicitly recognize that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone.  In its 2002 Gender Guidelines, UNHCR identified women “as a clear example of a social subset defined by innate and immutable characteristics, and who are frequently treated differently than men,” and whose “characteristics also identify them as a group in society, subjecting them to different treatment and standards in some countries.”8  However, over the nineteen years since those guidelines were issued, the BIA has consistently avoided considering the issue.

The peril of defining gender-based groups in the more narrow manner employed by the BIA has been addressed by two distinguished commentators, who explain that such practice results in “constant re-litigating of such claims,” sometimes creating “an obstacle course in which the postulated group undergoes constant redefinition.”9  And of course, that is exactly what has happened here, as A-R-C-G- gave way to A-B-, which led to differing interpretations among different courts until Garland’s recent reset.  The above-mentioned commentators further decried the “nitpicking around the margins of the definition” resulting from the narrow approach when the true reason for the risk of persecution to the applicant “is simply her membership in the social group of ‘women.’”10  Regulations recognizing gender alone as a particular social group would thus provide clarity to judges and asylum officers, eliminate the wastefulness of drawn out litigation involving “nitpicking around the margins,” and bring our laws into line with international standards.

But as L-E-A- demonstrates, recognition of a group alone does not guarantee asylum protection.  In order for a group’s recognition to be meaningful, the regs must also address an ongoing problem with the BIA’s method for determining nexus, or whether persecution is “on account of” the group membership.

The BIA is accorded deference by Article III courts when it reasonably interprets immigration laws, provided that the meaning of the language in question is ambiguous.  However, the “on account of” standard included by Congress in defining the term “refugee” is quite clear; its meaning is long established, and in fact, is not particular to immigration law.

The Supreme Court referenced this standard last year in a non-immigration case, Bostock v. Clayton County.  The Court explained that the test

incorporates the “‘simple’” and “traditional” standard of but-for causation…. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened “but for” the purported cause….In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.11

In a 2015 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit applied this exact test in the asylum context to conclude that persecution was on account of family, determining that the petitioner’s “relationship to her son is why she, and not another person, was threatened with death if she did not allow him to join Mara 18.”12  But for some reason, the BIA has felt entitled to reject this established standard outside of the Fourth Circuit in favor of its own excessively restrictive one.

Had the proper test for nexus been employed in L-E-A-, asylum would have been granted.  Under the facts of that case, once the familial relationship is removed from the equation, the asylum-seeker’s risk ceases to exist.  However, the BIA instead imposed an incorrect test for nexus requiring evidence of an “animus against the family or the respondent based on their biological ties, historical status, or other features unique to that family unit.”13

As a former circuit court judge, Garland is particularly qualified to recognize the error in the Board’s approach, as well as the need to correct its course.  The problem is compounded by the particular composition of the BIA at present.  For example, of the ten immigration judges who were promoted to the BIA during the Trump administration, nine denied asylum more than 90 percent of the time (with the tenth denying 85 percent of such claims).  Three had an asylum denial rate in excess of 98 percent.14

This matters, as those high denial rates were achieved in part by using faulty nexus determinations to deny asylum in domestic violence claims, even before the issuance of Matter of A-B-.  This was often accomplished by mischaracterizing the abuse as merely personal in nature, referencing only the persecutor’s generally violent nature or inebriated state.  The analysis in those decisions did not further examine whether gender might also have been one central reason that the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted.

One BIA Member appointed under Trump recently found no nexus in a domestic violence claim by concluding that the persecutor had not targeted the asylum seeker because of her membership in the group consisting of “women,” but rather because she was his woman. There is no indication in the decision that the Board Member considered why the persecutor might view another human being as belonging to him and lacking the same rights he seems to enjoy.  Might it have been because of her gender?

Without a correction through published regulations, there is little reason to expect different treatment of these claims moving forward.  Let’s hope that the Attorney General views his recent action as only the first steps on a longer path to a correct application of the law.

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

Notes:

  1. Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 307 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- III”); Matter of L-E-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 304 (A.G. 2021) (“L-E-A- III”).
  2. 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018) (“A-B- I”).
  3. 27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019) (“L-E-A- II”).
  4. 28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- II”).
  5. 26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014).
  6. The regulations under consideration at that time were never issued.
  7. 27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017) (“L-E-A- I”).
  8. UNHCR, Guidelines on International Protection: Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (May 2002) at para. 30.
  9. James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014) at 442.
  10. Hathaway and Foster, supra.
  11. Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1739 (2020).
  12. Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).
  13.  L-E-A- I, supra at 47.
  14. See TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) Immigration Judge Reports https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/.Republished with permission.

 

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

Without progressive intervention, this is still headed for failure @ EOIR! A few things to keep in mind.

    • Former Attorney General, the late Janet Reno, ordered the same regulations on gender-based asylum to be promulgated more than two decades ago — never happened!
    • The proposed regulations that did finally emerge along the way (long after Reno’s departure) were horrible — basically an ignorant mishmash of various OIL litigation positions that would have actually made it easier for IJs to arbitrarily deny asylum (as if they needed any invitation) and easier for OIL to defend such bogus denials.
    • There is nobody currently at “Main Justice” or EOIR HQ qualified to draft these regulations! Without long overdue progressive personnel changes the project is almost “guaranteed to fail” – again!
    • Any regulations entrusted to the current “Miller Lite Denial Club” @ the BIA ☠️ will almost certainly be twisted out of proportion to deny asylum and punish women refugees, as well as deny due process and mock fundamental fairness. It’s going to take more than regulations to change the “culture of denial” and the “institutionalized anti-due-process corner cutting” @ the BIA and in many Immigration Courts.
    • Garland currently is mindlessly operating the “worst of all courts” — a so-called “specialized (not) court” where the expertise, independence, and decisional courage is almost all “on the outside” and sum total of the subject matter expertise and relevant experience of those advocating before his bogus “courts” far exceeds that of the “courts” themselves and of Garland’s own senior team! That’s why the deadly, embarrassing, sophomoric mistakes keep flowing into the Courts of Appeals on a regular basis. 
    • No regulation can bring decisional integrity and expertise to a body that lacks both! 
    • Any progressive who thinks Garland is going to solve the problem @ EOIR without “outside intervention” should keep this nifty “five month snapshot of EOIR under Biden” in mind:
      • Progressive judges appointed to BIA: 0
      • Progressive judges appointed to Immigration Court: 0
      • Progressives installed in leadership positions @ EOIR permanently or temporarily: 0
      • Billy Barr Selected Immigration Judges Appointed: 17
      • “Miller Lite” holdover individuals still holding key positions @ EOIR: many (only two removed to date)
      • Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of respondent: 2
      • Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of DHS: 9

That’s right, folks: Billy Barr and Stephen Miller have had more influence and gotten more deference from Garland at EOIR than have the progressive experts and advocates who fought tirelessly to preserve due process and to get the Biden Administration into office. How does that a make sense? 

Miller Lite
“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color — Finally vacating two grotesquely wrong anti-female, anti-asylum precedents hasn’t ended the “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” for migrants and their advocates at Garland’s foundering DOJ!

Progressives, advocates, and NGOs must keep raising hell until we finally get the “no-brainer,” long overdue, obvious, personnel, legal, structural, institutional, and cultural changes at EOIR that America needs! Waiting for Judge Garland to get around to it is like “Waiting for Godot!” Perhaps worse — I don’t recollect that anyone died waiting for Godot!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

PWS

06-22-21

🤮👎🏽ULTIMATE HIPOCRACY: EVEN AS AMERICA FINALLY CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH HOLIDAY, DRED SCOTT & INSTITUTIONALIZED RACIST DEHUMANIZATION REMAIN REALITIES FOR BLACKS & OTHER MIGRANTS OF COLOR AT EOIR & DHS — Imprisonment Without Trial, Bogus Bonds, Mistreatment In The New American Gulag, Jim Crow “Courts,” No Rule Of Law,  Still Realities For Those Of Color Exercising Legal Rights In Broken System!

 

“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice, Supreme Court, March 1857, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)

“Congress is entitled to set the conditions for an alien’s lawful entry into this country and that, as a result, an alien at the threshold of initial entry cannot claim any greater rights under the due process clause.”

Justice Samuel Alito, Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. ___ (2020)

Dred Scott
Dred Scott (circa 1857)
Public Realm — Black asylum seekers and other migrants aren’t celebrating the continuing disgraceful “Dred Scottification of the other” in Mayorkas’s “New American Gulag” and Garland’s “Miller Lite” Immigration “Courts” that aren’t “courts” at all!

 

 

Rowaida Abdelaziz
Rowaida Abdelaziz
Immigration Reporter
PHOTO: Twitter

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/institutional-racism-immigration-system_n_60cbc554e4b0b50d622b66d7

By Rowaida Abdelaziz in HuffPost:

Yacouba, a political activist in Ivory Coast, knew if he didn’t immediately flee his home country, he wouldn’t survive.

After being threatened, attacked and tortured by people sympathetic to those in power, Yacouba fled his country in 2018. He went to Brazil for a few years, then made a perilous trek through Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico before finally arriving in the United States.

The journey was one of the two most challenging periods of his life. The second was being detained as a Black immigrant in the U.S.

As the nation celebrates Juneteenth — a day commemorating the emancipation of African Americans who had been enslaved in the United States — as a federal holiday for the first time, Black Americans and immigrants are fighting to dismantle institutional racism, including within the immigration system. Black immigrants are disproportionately detained, receive higher bond costs, and say they face racist treatment within detention centers.

Recognizing and celebrating the emancipation of slaves is vital, activists say ― but continuing to take down systemic racism needs to come with it.

“From an immigration perspective, Black immigrants face disproportionate levels of detention and exclusion,” Diana Konate, policy director at the advocacy group African Communities Together, said Thursday on a press call. “These can be life-threatening, as Black immigrants often get deported back to unsafe and dangerous conditions. While we celebrate the victories, we keep in mind that a lot of work remains.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Rowaida’s article at the link.

Every day that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke drag their collective feet on ending “Dred Scottification,” racial bias, and xenophobia at EOIR diminishes their credibility on all racial and social justice issues. To date, Garland has appointed zero (O) progressive judges at EOIR, has only scratched the surface of the White Nationalist bias in decision-making in the Immigration Courts, and has failed to re-establish due process and the rule of law for Blacks and other migrants of color at the border.

Justice Alito and his colleagues in the majority disgracefully basically “dressed up” the core of Dred Scott dehumanization and bias in “21st century faux constitutional gobbledygook and intentional, disingenuous fictionalization!” Make no mistake: asylum seekers applying at our borders with their lives and humanity at stake are “persons” subject to our jurisdiction and are entitled to full Constitutional due process and statutory rights that are being denied to them every day, currently by the Biden Administration.

While Alito & Co. are wrong, DEAD WRONG in all too many cases, nothing in their dishonest and misguided “jurisprudence” prevents Garland from providing due process to individuals, regardless of status, in Immigration Court and to ending the racism and dehumanization underneath both the mess at EOIR and the cowardly abdication of duty by the Supremes’ majority in Thuraissigiam! In human rights, you either solve the problem or become part of it. And, experts, journalists, and historians are making a permanent record of the actions of the Supremes and the Biden Administration when democracy and racial justice are under stress!

You don’t have to look very far to “connect the dots” between Alito’s dismissive attitude toward the human rights of Asians and other asylum seekers of color and the increase in hate crimes directed against Asian Americans and unfair policing of African Americans. Once courts and government officials endorse “dehumanization of the other based largely on ethnicity” the “protections” and “distinctions” of citizenship tend to also vanish. If the lives of migrants of color can be declared worthless, what difference does citizenship mean for those of the same ethnic heritage that Alito deems below humanity? Obviously, the  Trump kakistocracy’s attack on migrants of color was just a “place holder” for their attack on the rights of all persons of color in America! 

How can Garland’s DOJ demand racial justice in state law enforcement while operating America’s most notorious “Jim Crow Court System?”

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism — He still “rules the roost” at Garland’s EOIR!

It’s time for all civil rights and civil liberties organizations to join forces in demanding an end to bias and “Dred Scottification of the other” in Garland’s disgracefully dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.” Not rocket science!🚀 Just human decency, common sense, available (yet ignored) progressive expertise, and Con Law 101!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-21

🏴‍☠️PERSECUTED TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUAL DIES ⚰️IN EL SALVADOR WHILE HARRIS, GARLAND, & MAYORKAS FAIL TO RE-ESTABLISH LEGAL ASYLUM SYSTEM, MAKE LONG OVERDUE REFORMS!☠️ — VEEP Apparently Can’t Grasp Why Refugees Refuse To Stay In Countries Where They Are Likely To Be Persecuted & Die — The “Easily Fixable” Part Of The Problem Is NOT Thousands Of Miles Away In Foreign Countries, But With Garland’s & Mayorkas’s Inexcusable Failures To Act On Progressive Reforms Of Our Existing Legal System For Asylum Seekers!

Grim Reaper
“This Dude loves the ‘Miller Lite’ approach to asylum by Garland and Mayorkas, as well as Harris’s latest tone-deaf ‘victim shaming.’” Keeps him (as well as human smugglers) in business! Reaper Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

 

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=25ce5cef-76d6-4701-9193-3d887d407397&v=sdk

Marcos Aleman reports or AP  in the LA Times:

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador — Rejected by her family, Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez fled her coastal village in 2014, the first of a series of forced displacements across El Salvador. She had hoped that in the larger city of San Miguel she could live as a transgender woman without discrimination and violence, but there she was threatened by a gang.

She moved away from San Miguel, then back again in a series of forced moves until the 27-year-old was shot to death April 25, sending shock waves through the close-knit LGBTQ community in San Miguel, the largest city in eastern El Salvador.

“Zashy was desperate; her family didn’t want her … and the gangsters had threatened her,” said Venus Nolasco, director of the San Miguel LGBTQ collective Pearls of the East. “She knew they were going to kill her. She wanted to flee the country, go to the United States, but they killed her with a shot through her lung.”

One day after Del Cid’s slaying, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris identified anti-LGBTQ violence in Central America as one of the root causes of migration in the region during a virtual meeting with the president of neighboring Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. She is visiting Guatemala and Mexico this week.

Transgender migrants were present in the Central American caravans that attempted to reach the United States border in recent years, fleeing harassment, gang extortion, violence and police indifference to crimes against them. Even in those large migrant movements, they say they faced harassment.

Things had been rough during Del Cid’s first stint in San Miguel. She had been living in a neighborhood where, as in many parts of the country, the MS-13 gang was the ultimate local authority. Gang members began to harass her, then brutally beat her, breaking her arm in 2015, Nolasco said.

“They warned her to leave, but she didn’t listen,” Nolasco said.

Del Cid moved in with Nolasco in the same neighborhood. One day, the gang grabbed Del Cid again.

“They took her, they wanted to kill her,” Nolasco said. “I begged them not to kill her, to let her go and she would leave the neighborhood.”

Del Cid moved back to her hometown, but her family rejected her again. She tried to please them, but she couldn’t, Nolasco said. Del Cid joined a church, got a girlfriend and had a baby girl, but could not maintain that life, she said.

She returned to San Miguel, where initially things seemed to go better. In 2020, Del Cid received humanitarian and housing support from COMCAVIS TRANS, a national LGBTQ rights organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Del Cid rented a home and opened a beauty salon there. She hired another woman to help her and was participating in an entrepreneurship program. She was preparing a business proposal to move the salon into its own space.

But Del Cid was shot in the back walking alone at night down the street. Passersby tried to help her and took her to a hospital, where she died. So far, police have made no arrests, and Nolasco believes that like other hate crimes in the country, “it will be forgotten; they’re not interested in what happens to us.”

Laura Almirall, UNHCR representative in El Salvador, said Del Cid’s killing frightened her community and saddened everyone who knew her.

“She was excited about her new plans and her new life. And unfortunately and tragically, everything came to an end,” she said.

Nolasco said that in San Miguel, some 70 miles east of the capital, the transgender community endures constant harassment from intolerant residents and gangs. They have rocks thrown at them, are beaten and are victims of extortion. If they go to police to make a report, they are insulted and demeaned. “Don’t come here to claim rights, because there are no rights for you,” police tell them, Nolasco said.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link. 

Despite some legal nonsense from EOIR and sometimes from uninformed Circuit Judges who have never represented asylum seekers and know little of actual conditions in the Northern Triangle, neither El Salvador nor the other Northern Triangle governments are “willing and able” to protect most individuals suffering gender-based and other forms of persecution. Decisions claiming otherwise are, in most cases, legally wrong and disingenuous to boot.

The U.S. asylum system needs expert Asylum Officers at DHS and progressive expert Immigration Judges at EOIR. Babbling (misleadingly) about “sealed borders” won’t take the place of telling Garland and Mayorkas to stop screwing around, bring in progressive experts, and fix the U.S. asylum system before more die! V.P. Harris could have taken the first necessary step toward “fixing the Southern Border” without even leaving DC.

How are we going to promote the rule of law in other nations when we ourselves are unwilling to exhibit honesty and follow the law with respect to the most vulnerable in the world seeking legal refuge at our borders?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS 

06-09-21

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS THINKS RULE OF LAW DOESN’T APPLY TO RICH NATION THAT ILLEGALLY TURNS DESPERATE REFUGEES AWAY, SUGGESTS GUATEMALANS SHOULD DIE IN PLACE! — “Deterrence Statement” Won’t Stop Migration, Won’t Appease Nativist-Restrictionists, But Will Cost Her Support From Human Rights Progressives Who Helped Elect Her!  — There Will Be No Workable Solutions At Our Southern Border Without a Functional, Robust Legal Asylum System That Complies With Due Process!

Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris
Vice President of the United States — She thinks that laws are for others and that platitudes solve problems.
(Official Senate Photo)

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS THINKS RULE OF LAW DOESN’T APPLY TO  RICH NATION THAT ILLEGALLY TURNS DESPERATE REFUGEES AWAY, SUGGESTS GUATEMALANS SHOULD DIE IN PLACE! — “Deterrence Statement” Won’t Stop Migration, Won’t Appease Nativist-Restrictionists, But Will Cost Her Support From Human Rights Progressives Who Helped Elect Her!  — There Will Be No Workable Solutions At Our Southern Border Without a Functional, Robust Legal Asylum System That Complies With Due Process!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

June 9, 2021

Every individual, regardless of status, has a legal right to apply for asylum at our border. This law was enacted on 1980 to carry out our legal obligations under the U.N. Convention and Protocol on the Status of Refugees, to which we have been party since 1968. 

Right now, the U.S. has neither a legal asylum system operating at ports of entry nor does it have a functioning refugee program in Central America. Borders were illegally closed and legal immigration avenues were suspended by the White Nationalist Trump Administration on various pretexts involving false narratives about COVID, labor market impact, and national security, among others. At one point Trump even made the absurdist claim that America is “full!”

The Biden Administration has peddled rhetoric about re-establishing legal immigration. But, to date they have neither re-established the rule of law for asylum seekers at our Southern Border nor have they instituted an operational refugee program for Central America. 

How bogus is the Biden/Harris continuation of the COVID facade for closing the border? Well, I didn’t hear much mention from Harris in Guatemala of COVID as a reason not to come or any promise to restore the legal asylum system once the “fake COVID emergency” is resolved.

So, there is no legal way for those in Guatemala and other countries to seek refuge in the U.S. Ignoring requests from experts and humanitarian NGOs, the Biden Administration has also stubbornly failed to repeal biased “precedents” from the Trump DOJ designed to make it difficult for refugees fleeing Latin America, particularly women, to qualify for legal protection despite the fact that their lives and safety will be in danger if returned. 

Our scofflaw actions actually leave refugees needing protection no choice but to cross the border surreptitiously. We have suspended the rule of law for legal asylum seekers, while dishonestly claiming that they, not we, are the “law breakers.” After nearly 50 years in and sometimes out of the immigration bureaucracy, I know bureaucratic doublespeak when I hear it.

Remarkably, Vice President Harris seems to have cribbed her public statements on Guatemalan asylum from Gauleiter Stephen Miller. Even more astoundingly, Miller’s influence on the Biden Administration’s failing immigration policies, particularly at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR, continues to far exceed that of the diverse coalition of progressive experts, human rights advocates, and civil rights leaders who helped elect Biden and Harris! Talk about disrespect and being taken for granted!

In other words, America has totally “welched” on our legal and moral obligations to refugees and asylum seekers. Yet, incredibly, Harris warns them to stay in places where their lives and safety are in immediate danger, rather than taking a calculated risk of finding safety in the United States.

Since the U.S. no longer has a rule of law for asylum seekers or refugees, this usually means trying to enter with the aid of paid smugglers who offer them something the U.S. is unwilling to provide — a realistic possibility of refuge in time to save their lives! It’s certainly “not rocket science!” But, disturbingly, it appears to be above Harris’s pay grade!

As smugglers point out, the possibility of getting to the interior of the U.S., and there finding “do it yourself” refuge in our intentionally-created and often exploited “underground population,” actually far exceeds the chance of being granted asylum, even when we had a “somewhat” functioning asylum system. That’s largely because our law has long been improperly politically “gamed” (by Administrations of both parties) against asylum seekers from Central America. 

So, nobody actually knows how many would qualify for asylum under a fair and unbiased system. We’ve never had the moral courage to set up such a procedure. Instead, we have used imprisonments, family separations, racist rhetoric, criminal prosecutions, and skewed legal denials from “captive courts” tilted in favor of DHS enforcement as “deterrents” to desperate refugees from our own Hemisphere.

Our nation fears complying with our own laws! Not much of a “profile in courage” here!

The Vice President concedes that the “in place” assistance she is offering to individuals in some of the world’s most corrupt and lawless countries is unlikely to have any impact for years to come. And, that’s assuming that the Biden Administration’s aid plan is better than those that have failed in the past, which it well might be. It certainly will be better than the insane cruelty and improper “enforcement only” efforts of the Trump Administration.

She is correct that most, but not all, Guatemalans would prefer to live in Guatemala if that were possible. But, the problem she insists on “papering over” is that survival in Guatemala currently is not reasonably likely for many Guatemalans. Unless and until Congress creates a more realistic legal immigration system, there is simply no realistic opportunity for many Guatemalans other than to apply for asylum at the border. 

While asylum law would not cover them all, a proper interpretation and application through a re-established and meaningfully reformed system, overseen by expert judges (currently eschewed by Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts) could admit many more legally and timely than the current non-existent system or past ones intentionally skewed against asylum seekers in a futile, improper attempt to use the legal process as a “deterrent.” It would also encourage and motivate asylum seekers to apply at legal ports of entry rather than crossing surreptitiously.

Yet Harris’s “clear message” (of non-hope) to the oppressed people in the Northern Triangle is for them to “die in place,” while awaiting long-term solutions that might or might not ever happen. Meanwhile, the world’s richest nation lacks the will and determination to re-establish a legal asylum screening and adjudication system at our Southern Border. 

Harris also wants the desperate masses “yearning to breath free” to know that the beacon of freedom no longer burns in America. We think it would be better if they died where they are, largely out of our sight and out of our mind.

We resent their efforts at survival, forcing us listen to their screams at our border for help that we prefer to deny (in violation of our legal obligations). We are bothered by the stench of the dead and annoyed by the news media’s incessant reporting on the Administration’s continuing failures of legality and humanity. Better (for us, not them) if they don’t come.

It’s an interesting “lesson” on racial and immigrant justice, as well as gender justice, from a Vice President who apparently prefers “inspiring” future generations to taking the tough, courageous moral and legal stands necessary to preserve and protect the current ones!

The Vice President might be correct on the rudiments of a better and more realistic long-term migration and economic plan for the Northern Triangle. But, her failure to recognize the essential first step of making the existing legal asylum asylum system work, and her unwillingness to tell Garland and Mayorkas to stop the foot-dragging and start complying with our laws and our Constitution, will doom her efforts long before they could ever have any positive impact.

The Southern Border is a big challenge. The solution has eluded all of Harris’s male predecessors, including her current boss, for the last half-century. 

It requires an end to “Milleresque” platitudes and an honest recognition of the human realities of forced migration. It cries out for a strong knowledgeable leader who will re-establish the legal asylum system already in the law, insist that for the first time in our history it be operated by experts with robust humanitarian protection goals, real progressive expert judges, and full constitutional due process. It demands an end to the mindless dehumanization and demeaning of asylum seekers and recognition that those granted asylum are legal immigrants, a source of strength, and a benefit to our nation, not a phenomenon to be demonized and feared.

It requires a robust refugee program in the Northern Triangle that takes the pressure off the border asylum system until needed changes in the legal immigration system can be pushed through Congress and the longer-term improvements in infrastructure and governance in the Northern Triangle take effect.

It also requires a leader with the comprehensive knowledge and moral courage to defend robust legal refugee and asylum systems and more legal immigration from the onslaught of racially-charged, myth-based attacks from White Nationalists and nativists that are sure to follow. She would also have to deal with pushback from an entrenched immigration bureaucracy and weak leadership from Garland and others who have continued to feed the problems rather than solve them.

Unfortunately for Vice President Harris, our nation, and, most of all, the forced migrants whose lives and humanity are on the line every day, right now the job appears to be bigger than the person.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-09-21

`

TRASVINA RESTORES “PD” @ ICE; 6TH CIR. REJECTS CASTRO-TUM! BUT GARLAND’S FAILURES @ EOIR CONTINUE TO HAMPER BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, CAUSE CONFUSION, INCREASE BACKLOGS!  — “In performing their duties, including through implementation of this memorandum, OPLA attorneys should remain mindful that ‘[i]mmigration enforcement obligations do not consist only of initiating and conducting prompt proceedings that lead to removals at any cost. Rather, as has been said, the government wins when justice is done.’” 

John D. Trasvina
John D. Trasvina
Principal Legal Adviser
ICE — Finally, some common sense, practical scholarship, leadership, and “good government” from someone in the Biden Administration’s Senior Immigration Team! Not surprisingly, it’s from one of the few who has actually “walked the walk” on the relationship between racial justice and immigrants’ rights. He appears to be the “right person” for ICE. Would he have been a better choice to clean up the mess at DOJ?
PHOTO: Wikipedia

 

https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/opla/OPLA-immigration-enforcement_interim-guidance.pdf

   MEMORANDUM FOR: FROM:

SUBJECT:

May 27, 2021 All OPLA Attorneys

John D. Trasvifia Principal Legal Advisor

JOHN D TRASVINA

DigitallysignedbyJOHN0 TRASVINA

Date:2021.05.27 07:04:19 -07’00’

Interim Guidance to OPLA Attorneys Regarding Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities

On January 20, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order (EO) 13993, Revision ofCivil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities, 86 Fed. Reg. 7051 (Jan. 20, 2021), which articulated foundational values and priorities for the Administration with respect to the enforcement of the civil immigration laws. On the same day, then-Acting Secretary ofHomeland Security David Pekoske issued a memorandum titled, Review o fand Interim Revision to Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities (Interim Memorandum).

The Interim Memorandum did four things. First, it directed a comprehensive Department of Homeland Security (DHS or Department)-wide review of civil immigration enforcement policies. Second, it established interim civil immigration enforcement priorities for the Department. Third, it instituted a 100-day pause on certain removals pending the review. Fourth, it rescinded several existing policy memoranda, including a prior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office ofthe Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) memorandum, as inconsistent with EO 13993.2 The Interim Memorandum further directed that ICE issue interim guidance implementing the revised enforcement priorities and the removal pause.

On February 18, 2021, ICE Acting Director Tae D. Johnson issued ICE Directive No. 11090.1,

1

On January 26, 2021, a federal district court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) enjoining DHS and its components from enforcing and implementing Section C ofthe interim Memorandum titled, Immediate JOO-Day Pause on Removals. See Texas v. United States, — F. Supp. 3d —, 2021 WL 247877 (S.D. Tex. 2021); see also Texas v. United States, 2021 WL 411441 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 8, 2021) (extending TRO to February 23, 2021). On February 23, 2021 , the district court issued an order preliminarily enjoining DHS from “enforcing and implementing the policies described in … Section C.” Texas v. United States, 2021 WL 723856 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 23, 2021). In light of the expiration of the 100-day period described in Section C, that case has been dismissed as moot. Similarly, in light ofthe preliminary injunction, and the fact that the 100-day period described in the Interim Memorandum has now expired, this interim OPLA guidance does not implement Section C of the Interim Memorandum.

2 The Interim Memorandum revoked, as inconsistent with EO 13993, the memorandum from former Principal Legal Advisor Tracy Short, Guidance to OPLA Attorneys Regarding the Implementation ofthe President’s Executive Orders and the Secretary’s Directives on Immigration Enforcement (Aug. 15, 2017). OPLA attorneys should no longer apply that prior guidance.

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Office o fthe Principal Legal Advisor

U.S. Department of Homeland Security 500 12th Street, SW

Washington, DC 20536

U.S. Immigration

and Customs Enforcement

www.1ce.gov

1

  OPLA Guidance Regarding Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities Page 2 of 13

Interim Guidance: Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Priorities (Johnson Memorandum). And, on May 27, 2021, Acting General Counsel Joseph B. Maher issued a memorandum titled, Implementing Interim Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities (Maher Memorandum). In accordance with these memoranda, and pending the outcome of the Secretary’s review and any resulting policy guidance, I am providing this additional interim direction to OPLA attorneys to guide them in appropriately executing the Department’s and ICE’s interim enforcement and removal priorities and exercising prosecutorial discretion.

Prosecutorial discretion is an indispensable feature of any functioning legal system. The exercise ofprosecutorial discretion, where appropriate, can preserve limited government resources, achieve just and fair outcomes in individual cases, and advance the Department’s mission of administering and enforcing the immigration laws ofthe United States in a smart and sensible way that promotes public confidence. In performing their duties, including through implementation ofthis memorandum, OPLA attorneys should remain mindful that “[i]mmigration enforcement obligations do not consist only of initiating and conducting prompt proceedings that lead to removals at any cost. Rather, as has been said, the government wins when justice is done.” 3 As a result, they are both authorized by law and expected to exercise discretion in accordance with the factors and considerations set forth in the Interim Memorandum, the Johnson Memorandum, the Maher Memorandum, and in this guidance at all stages of the enforcement process and at the earliest moment practicable in order to best conserve prosecutorial resources and in recognition o f the important interests at stake.

I. Enforcement and Removal Priority Cases

The Johnson Memorandum identifies three categories of cases that are presumed to be enforcement and removal priorities for ICE personnel. Subject to preapproval from supervisory personnel, other civil immigration enforcement or removal actions also may be deemed priorities. OPLA attorneys assigned to handle exclusion, deportation, and removal proceedings are directed to prioritize agency resources consistent with those presumed priorities and other matters approved as priorities under the Johnson Memorandum or by their Chief Counsel. The presumed priority categories are:

1. NationalSecurity.Noncitizens.4 whohaveengagedinoraresuspectedof

3 Matter ofS-M-J-, 21 l&N Dec. 722, 727 (BIA 1997) (en bane). In remarks delivered at the Second Annual Conference of United States Attorneys more than 80 years ago, Attorney General Robert H. Jackson said, “[n]othing better can come out of this meeting of law enforcement officers than a rededication to the spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor. Your positions are ofsuch independence and importance that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement you can also afford to be just Although the government technically loses its case, it has really won ifjustice has been done.” Robert H. Jackson, The Federal Prosecutor, 24 J. AM. JUD. Soc’Y 18, 18-19 (1940).

4 Consistent with ICE guidance, this memorandum uses the word “noncitizen” to refer to individuals described in section 10l(a)(3) ofthe Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). See Memorandum from Tae Johnson, ICE Acting Director, Updated Terminologyfor Communications and Materials (Apr. 19, 2021). OPLA attorneys should familiarize themselves with this ICE guidance and use the appropriate terminology set forth therein when engaged in outreach efforts, drafting internal documents, and communicating with stakeholders, partners, and the general

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

  OPLA Guidance Regarding Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities Page 3 of 13

ten-orism or espionage or terrorism-related or espionage-related activities, or whose apprehension, arrest, or custody, is otherwise necessary to protect the national security ofthe United States..5

2. Border Security. Noncitizens who were apprehended at the border or a port ofentry while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States on or after November 1, 2020, or who were not physically present in the United States before November 1, 2020.

3. Public Safety. Noncitizens who have been convicted of an “aggravated felony,” as that term is defined in section 101(a)(43) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), or who have been convicted ofan offense for which an element was active pa1ticipation in a criminal street gang, as defined in

18 U.S.C. § 52 l(a), or who are not younger than 16 years of age and intentionally participated in an organized criminal gang or transnational criminal organization to further the illegal activity ofthe gang or transnational criminal organization; and are determined to pose a threat to public safety.6

Neither the presumed priorities nor the guidance regarding other priority cases subject to preapproval are intended to require or prohibit taking or maintaining a civil immigration enforcement or removal action against any individual noncitizen. Rather, OPLA attorneys are expected to exercise their discretion thoughtfully, consistent with ICE’s important national security, border security, and public safety mission. Civil immigration enforcement and removal efforts involving a noncitizen whose case fits within the three areas just listed are presumed to be a justified allocation ofICE’s limited resources. Enforcement and removal efforts may also be

justified in other cases, under appropriate circumstances. 7 Prioritization of finite agency

public. Formal legal terminology (e.g., “alien,” “alienage”) should continue to be used by OPLA attorneys when appearing before judicial and quasi-judicial tribunals, and when quoting or citing to sources of legal authority or other official documents like immigration forms.

5 For purposes of the national security presumed enforcement priority, the tenns “terrorism or espionage” and “terrorism-related or espionage-related activities” should be applied consistent with (I) the definitions of”terrorist activity” and “engage in terrorist activity” in section 212(a)(3)(B)(iii)-(iv) of the INA, and (2) the manner in which the term “espionage” is generally applied in the immigration laws. In evaluating whether a noncitizen’s “apprehension, arrest, and/or custody, or removal is otherwise necessary to protect” national security, officers and agents should determine whether a noncitizen poses a threat to United States sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests, or institutions. General criminal activity does not amount to a national security threat.

6 In evaluating whether a noncitizen currently “pose[s] a threat to public safety,” consideration should be given to the extensiveness, seriousness, and recency ofthe criminal activity, as well as to mitigating factors, including, but not limited to, personal and family circumstances, health and medical factors, ties to the community, evidence of rehabilitation, and whether the individual has potential immigration relief available. See Johnson Memorandum at 5.

7 As reflected in the Johnson Memorandum, Field Office Director (FOD) or Special Agent in Charge (SAC) approval is generally required in advance ofcivil immigration enforcement or removal actions taken by ICE officers and agents in cases other than presumed priority cases. Where exigent circumstances and public safety concerns make it impracticable to obtain pre-approval for an at-large enforcement action (e.g., where a noncitizen poses an imminent threat to life or an imminent substantial threat to property), approval should be requested within 24 hours following the action. See Johnson Memorandum at 6.

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

  OPLA Guidance Regarding Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities Page 4 of 13

resources is a consideration in all civil immigration enforcement and removal decisions, including but not limited to the following:

• Deciding whether to issue a detainer, or whether to assume custody of a noncitizen subject to a previously issued detainer;

• Deciding whether to issue, reissue, serve, file, or cancel a Notice to Appear (NTA);

• Deciding whether to focus resources only on administrative violations or conduct;

• Deciding whether to stop, question, or arrest a noncitizen for an administrative violation of the civil immigration laws;

• Deciding whether to detain or release from custody subject to conditions or on the individual’s own recognizance;

• Deciding whether to settle, dismiss, oppose or join in a motion on a case, narrow the issues in dispute through stipulation, or pursue appeal in removal proceedings;

• Deciding when and under what circumstances to execute final orders of removal; and

• Deciding whether to grant defe1Ted action or parole.

This non-exhaustive list ofcivil immigration enforcement and removal decisions identifies opportunities at every stage ofthe process to ensure the most just, fair, and legally appropriate outcome, whether that outcome is a grant of relief, an order of removal, or an exercise of discretion that allows the noncitizen to pursue immigration benefits outside the context of removal proceedings. This memorandum provides interim guidance regarding the following enforcement decisions within OPLA’s purview: filing or canceling an NTA; moving to administratively close or continue proceedings; moving to dismiss proceedings; pursuing appeal;

joining in a motion to grant reliefor to reopen or remand removal proceedings and entering stipulations; and taking a position in bond proceedings, as discussed below..8 While discretion may be exercised at any stage of the process and changed circumstances for an individual denied prosecutorial discretion at one stage may warrant reconsideration at a later stage, discretion generally should be exercised at the earliest point possible, once relevant facts have been established to properly inform the decision.

8 While resources should be allocated to the presumed priorities enumerated above, “nothing in [the Interim M]emorandum prohibits the apprehension or detention ofindividuals unlawfully in the United States who are not identified as priorities herein.” Interim Memorandum at 3. See also Johnson Memorandum at 3 (“[J]t is vitally important to note that the interim priorities do not require or prohibit the atTest, detention, or removal ofany noncitizen.”); Maher Memorandum at 3 (“Neither the presumed priorities nor the guidance regarding other priority cases subject to preapproval are intended to require or prohibit taking or maintaining a civil immigration enforcement action against an individual noncitizen.”). OPLA may dedicate its resources to pursuing enforcement action against a noncitizen who does not fall into one of the presumed enforcement priorities where the FOD or SAC has approved taking enforcement action in the case, where the NTA-issuing agency has exercised its own discretion to prioritize the noncitizen for enforcement under the Interim Memorandum, or where the ChiefCounsel, in their discretion, decides that OPLA resources should be committed to the case.

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

  OPLA Guidance Regarding Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities Page 5 of 13

This memorandum is intended to provide guidance pending completion ofthe DHS-wide comprehensive review of civil immigration enforcement and removal policies and practices contemplated in the Interim Memorandum. To that end, additional guidance will be fo1thcoming.

II. Prosecutorial Discretion

OPLA will continue to fulfill its statutory responsibility as DHS’s representative before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) with respect to exclusion, deportation, and removal proceedings. See 6 U.S.C. § 252(c). In that capacity, prosecutorial discretion plays an important role in OPLA’s enforcement decision making. The following general guidance on prosecutorial discretion should inform how OPLA attorneys apply the enforcement priorities of DHS and ICE.

OPLA attorneys may exercise prosecutorial discretion in proceedings before EOIR, subject to direction from their chain ofcommand and applicable guidance from DHS. In exercising such discretion, OPLA attorneys will adhere to the enduring principles that apply to all o f their activities: upholding the rule oflaw; discharging duties ethically in accordance with the law and professional standards of conduct; following the guidelines and strategic directives of senior leadership; and exercising considered judgment and doing justice in individual cases, consistent with DHS and ICE priorities.

Prosecutorial discretion is the longstanding authority o f an agency charged with enforcing the law to decide where to focus its resources and whether or how to enforce, or not to enforce, the law against an individual. In the context of OPLA’s role in the administration and enforcement of the immigration laws, prosecutorial discretion arises at different stages of the removal process, takes different forms, and applies to a variety ofdeterminations. As the Supreme Court explained more than two decades ago when discussing the removal process, “[a]t each stage the Executive has discretion to abandon the endeavor . . . .”.9

OPLA’s policy is to exercise prosecutorial discretion in a manner that furthers the security ofthe United States and the faithful and just execution ofthe immigration laws, consistent with DHS’s and ICE’s enforcement and removal priorities. While prosecutorial discretion is not a formal program or benefit offered by OPLA, OPLA attorneys are empowered to exercise prosecutorial discretion in their assigned duties consistent with this guidance. Among other decisions, the exercise of discretion also generally includes whether to assign an attorney to represent the department in a particular case. See 8 C.F.R. § 1240.2(b) (creating expectation that DHS will assign counsel to cases involving mental competency, noncitizen minors, and contested removability, but that otherwise, “in his or her discretion, whenever he or she deems such assignment necessary or advantageous, the General Counsel may assign a [DHS] attorney to any other case at any stage of the proceeding”) (emphasis added). OPLA Chief Counsel are permitted to exercise this discretion on my behalf, in appropriate consultation with their chain of command.

In determining whether to exercise prosecutorial discretion, OPLA should consider relevant aggravating and mitigating factors. Relevant mitigating factors may include a noncitizen’s length

9 Reno v. Am.-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U.S. 47 1, 483-84 ( 1999). FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

  OPLA Guidance Regarding Civil Immigration Enforcement and Removal Policies and Priorities Page 6 of 13

of residence in the United States; service in the U.S. military; family or community ties in the United States; circumstances ofarrival in the United States and the manner oftheir entry; prior immigration history; current immigration status (where lawful permanent resident (LPR) status generally warrants greater consideration, but not to the exclusion ofother noncitizens depending on the totality ofthe circumstances); work history in the United States; pursuit or completion of education in the United States; status as a victim, witness, or plaintiff in civil or criminal proceedings; whether the individual has potential immigration relief available; contributions to the community; and any compelling humanitarian factors, including poor health, age, pregnancy, status as a child, or status as a primary caregiver ofa seriously ill relative in the United States. Relevant aggravating factors may include criminal history, participation in persecution or other human rights violations, extensiveness and seriousness ofprior immigration violations (e.g., noncompliance with conditions of release, prior illegal entries, removals by ICE), and fraud or material misrepresentation. Where a criminal history exists, OPLA should consider the extensiveness, seriousness, and recency ofthe criminal activity, as well as any indicia of rehabilitation; extenuating circumstances involving the offense or conviction; the time and length ofsentence imposed and served, ifany; the age ofthe noncitizen at the time the crime was committed; the length oftime since the offense or conviction occurred; and whether subsequent criminal activity supports a determination that the noncitizen poses a threat to public safety. These factors are not intended to be dispositive or exhaustive. Discretion should be exercised on a case-by-case basis considering the totality ofthe circumstances.

Requests for prosecutorial discretion may be made in accordance with the instructions provided in Section IX of this guidance. Where a request for prosecutorial discretion is made, the OPLA attorney handling the case must document that request in PLAnet, identifying the requester and the substance of the request and uploading any supporting documentation consistent with standard operating procedures (SOPs). 10 Based on my experience working with you over the past few months, I believe strongly in the professionalism, legal skill, and judgment of OPLA’s attorneys, working through their supervisors to advise our clients and manage an enormous workload with limited resources. I trust and expect that all OPLA field attorneys, under the leadership ofourChiefCounsel, will work strenuously to ensure the timely and appropriate exercise ofdiscretion in meritorious removal cases. That being said, given the tremendous importance of achieving just and correct outcomes on these issues, it is entirely pe1missible for any OPLA attorney to raise prosecutorial discretion decisions through their chain ofcommand to OPLA headquaiters (HQ) for additional review or discussion.

Appropriate exercises ofprosecutorial discretion are in the mutual interest of both the person benefitting from the exercise ofdiscretion and the government itself. This mutual interest is no less significant because a noncitizen does not affirmatively request prosecutorial discretion. In the absence of an affirmative request for prosecutorial discretion by a noncitizen or a noncitizen’s representative, OPLA attorneys should nonetheless examine the cases to which they are assigned to determine independently whether a favorable exercise ofdiscretion may be

10 If the case involves classified information, the OPLA attorney must transmit such information only in accordance with the DHS Office ofthe ChiefSecurity Officer Publication, Safeguarding Classified & Sensitive But Unclassified Information Reference Pamphlet (Feb. 2012, or as updated), and all other applicable policies governing the handling ofclassified information.

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

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appropriate. This affirmative duty to evaluate assigned cases is central to an OPLA attorney’s job. Chief Counsel should include in their local SOPs ways to address these cases including how

OPLA attorneys should document their affirmative consideration ofprosecutorial discretion in PLAnet.

III. Notices to Appear

When a legally sufficient, appropriately documented NTA has been issued by a DHS component consistent with the component’s issuing and enforcement guidelines, 11 it will generally be filed with the immigration court and proceedings litigated to completion unless the Chief Counsel exercises prosecutorial discretion based on their assessment of the case. 12 As prosecutorial discretion is expected to be exercised at all stages of the enforcement process and at the earliest moment practicable, it may be appropriate for the Chief Counsel to conclude that a legally

sufficient, a ro riatel documented administrative immi ration case warrants non-filin of an

NTA_ (b)(S) (b)(5)

(b)(S) Where an NTA is issued but not filed with the immigration court pursuant to this section, OPLA should document the reasoning for this position in PLAnet and the OPLA Field Location should work with its local Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Field Office to cancel the NTA and inform the noncitizen of the cancellation. 13

IV. Administrative Closure and Continuance of Proceedings

In the past, OPLA had broad authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion by agreeing to

administrative closure of cases by EOIR. However, due to conflicting court of appeals decisions

11 This includes NTAs submitted to OPLA by ICE operational components as well as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for review. “Appropriately documented” in this context means that, in OPLA’s litigation judgment, sufficient information has been provided by the NTA-issuing component to carry any DHS burden of proof. See INA§ 240(c), 8 C.F.R. § 1240.8.

12 Separate and apart from the enforcement priority framework outlined in the Interim Memorandum and Johnson Memorandum, certain noncitizens have an established right to be placed into removal proceedings. See, e.g., 8 C.F.R. §§ 208. l4(c)(l) (requiring referral for removal proceedings ofa removable noncitizen whose affirmative asylum application is not granted by USCIS); 216.4(d)(2) (requiring NTA issuance to noncitizen whose joint petition to remove conditional basis ofLPR status is denied by USCIS); 216.S(f) (same; USCIS denial ofapplication for waiver of the joint petition requirement). In other cases, USCIS may issue an NTA on a discretionary basis to a noncitizen who wishes to pursue immigration benefits before the immigration court. Although such cases do not fall within the priority framework, absent an affirmative request by the noncitizen prior to the merits hearing for the favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion to dismiss removal proceedings, OPLA attorneys should generally litigate them to completion. If such noncitizens are ordered removed, requests for prosecutorial discretion would then most properly be made to ERO for evaluation in accordance with the Department’s and ICE’s stated priorities.

13 The NTA cancellation regulation vests immigration officers who have the authority to issue NTAs with the authority to also cancel them. 8 C.F.R. § 239.2(a). The regulation expresses a preference for certain NTAs to be cancelled by the same officer who issued them “unless it is impracticable” to do so. Id. § 239.2(b). Given the enormous size ofthe EOIR docket, current OPLA staffing levels, and complexities associated with routing any significant number ofNTAs back to specific issuing officers stationed around the country, it would be impracticable to require OPLA attorneys to do so. By contrast, the local ERO Field Offices with which OPLA Field Locations routinely interact are well suited to assist with this function promptly and efficiently.

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on the validity ofMatter ofCastro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018) (limiting administrative closure by EOIR adjudicators to circumstances where a previous regulation or judicially approved settlement expressly authorizes such an action), the availability ofadministrative closure as a form ofprosecutorial discretion for ICE and a tool ofdocket management for EOIR is limited in certain jurisdictions for certain types of cases. 14 Nevertheless, OPLA retains authority to handle pending cases on EOIR’s docket by deciding whether to agree to a continuance for “good cause shown” under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.29, see also Matter ofL-A-B-R-, I&N Dec. 405 (A.G. 2018) (interpreting this regulation), and whether to seek, oppose, or join in a motion for dismissal of proceedings pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(c).

The presumed priorities outlined above will be a significant factor informing the position that OPLA attorneys take in response to continuance motions made by noncitizens in removal proceedings. Indeed, given the comprehensive review of immigration enforcement and removal policies and practices directed by Section A ofthe Interim Memorandum, OPLA attorneys are authorized to take the general position that “good cause” exists in cases in which noncitizens who fall outside the presumed priorities seek to have their cases continued to await the outcome of that comprehensive review. 15 Continuing cases in these circumstances may conserve OPLA resources in cases where the ultimate arrest, detention, and removal of a noncitizen are unlikely. Accordingly, while immigration judges (Us) will make case-by-case assessments whether continuance motions are supported by “good cause shown” under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.29, and OPLA attorneys should assess each continuance motion on its own terms, in the absence ofserious aggravating factors, the fact that a noncitizen is not a presumed priority should weigh heavily in favor of not opposing the noncitizen’s motion. Before opposing a continuance in such cases, OPLA attorneys should confer with their supervisors. The reason for opposing the motion should also be documented in PLAnet.

V. Dismissal of Proceedings

With approximately 1.3 million cases on the immigration courts’ dockets nationwide, and the varied procedural postures of such cases, including many set for future merits hearings on re.lief or protection from removal, OPLA will cover, at a later date and in a comprehensive fashion, how to address the potential dismissal ofproceedings consistent with its limited resources and DHS and ICE guidance. The size ofthe court backlog and extraordinary delays in completing cases impede the interests ofjustice for both the government and respondents alike and underminepublicconfidenceinthis importantpillaroftheadministrationofthenation’s

14 Compare Hernandez-Serrano v. Barr, 981 F.3d 459 (6th Cir. 2020) (agreeing with Castro-Tum), with Arcos Sanchez, 2021 WL I774965, — F.3d — (3d Cir. 2021) (rejecting Castro-Tum and finding that EOIR regulations giving broad case management authority to its adjudicators includes administrative closure authority), Meza Morales v. Barr, 973 F.3d 656 (7th Cir. 2020) (Coney Barrett, J.) (same), and Romero v. Barr, 937 F.3d 282 (4th Cir. 2019) (same). Notwithstanding this variation in circuit law, administrative closure remains available under Castro-Tum for T and V nonimmigrant visa applicants. See 8 C.F.R. §§ I214.2(a) (expressly allowing for administrative closure for noncitizens seeking to apply for T nonimmigrant status), 1214.3 (same; V nonimmigrant status).

15 This does not imply that “good cause” cannot exist in cases ofnoncitizens who fall into the presumed priority categories or are otherwise a civil immigration enforcement or removal priority. OPLA attorneys retain discretion to, as appropriate, agree to continuances in such cases.

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immigration laws. In advance of future guidance, cases that generally will merit dismissal in the absence of serious aggravating factors include:

I. MilitaryServiceMembersorImmediateRelativesThereof16

A favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion (i.e., concurrence with or non-opposition to a motion for dismissal ofproceedings without prejudice) generally will be appropriate if a noncitizen or immediate relative is a current or former member (honorably discharged) of the Armed Forces, including the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Space Force, or a member of a reserve component of the Anned Forces or National Guard, particularly if the individual may qualify for U.S. citizenship under sections 328 or 329 ofthe I N A . _1 1

2. Individuals Likely to be Granted Temporary or Permanent Relief

When a noncitizen has a viable avenue available to regularize their immigration status outside of removal proceedings, whether through temporary or pennanent relief, it generally will be appropriate to move to dismiss such proceedings without prejudice so that the noncitizen can pursue that relief before the appropriate adjudicatory body. 18 This may be appropriate where, for instance, the noncitizen is the beneficiary of an approved Form 1-130, Petition for Alien Relative, and appears prima facie eligible for either adjustment of status under INA section 245 or an immigrant visa through consular processing abroad, including in conjunction with a provisional waiver of unlawful presence under 8 C.F.R. § 212.7(e), immediately or in the near future; appears prima facie eligible to register for Temporary Protected Status (TPS);.19 or is a child who appears prima facie eligible to pursue special immigrant juvenile status under INA section 101(a)(27) and 8 C.F.R. § 204.11. In such a circumstance, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion itselfcan help to promote the integrity ofour immigration system by enhancing the ability of certain noncitizens to come into compliance with our immigration laws.

3. Compelling Humanitarian Factors

The favorable exercise ofprosecutorial discretion- including agreeing to dismissal of proceedings without prejudice-generally will be appropriate when compelling humanitarian factors become apparent during NTA review or litigation of the case. While some factors will weigh more heavily than others, this can include cases where, for instance, the noncitizen has a serious health condition, is elderly, pregnant, or a minor; is the primary caregiver to, or has an

16 See Email from Kenneth Padilla, DPLA, Field Legal Operations, to all OPLA attorneys, Refresher Guidance Regarding United States Veterans and Military Service Members in Removal (Nov. 18, 2019).

17

citizenship. See ICE Directive 16001 .2, Investigating the Potential U S. Citizenship o fIndividuals Encountered by

Relatedly, OPLA attorneys must continue to follow ICE guidance related to the evaluation of claims to U.S. ICE (Nov. 10, 2015).

18 DHS regulations expressly contemplate joint motions to tenninate removal proceedings in appropriate cases in which the noncitizen is seeking to apply for U nonimmigrant status. See 8 C.F.R. § 214.14(c)(I)(i).

19 Stipulation to TPS in such cases may also be an option, in the exercise ofdiscretion. Cf Matter ofD-A-C-, 27 I & N . D e c . 5 7 5 ( B I A 2 0 I 9 ) ( d i s c u s s i n g d i s c r e t i o n a r y a u t h o r i t y o f I J s t o g r a n t T P S ) ; S e c t i o n V I I , i n fr a .

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immediate family or household member who is, known to be suffering from serious physical or mental illness; is a victim ofdomestic violence, human trafficking, or other serious crime;.20 came to the United States as a young child and has since lived in the United States continuously; or is party to significant collateral civil litigation (e.g., family court proceedings, non-frivolous civil rights or labor claims).

4. Significant Law Enforcement or Other Governmental Interest

Where a noncitizen is a cooperating witness or confidential informant or is otherwise significantly assisting state or federal law enforcement, it may be appropriate in certain cases to agree to the dismissal ofproceedings without prejudice. “Law enforcement” in this context includes not only conventional criminal law enforcement, but also enforcement of labor and civil rights laws. In exercising discretion related to law enforcement equities, OPLA attorneys should be guided by the perspectives of the relevant investigating agency components (e.g., the Office ofInspector General, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Libe1ties, Depa1tmentofJustice Immigrant and Employee Rights Section, Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, other federal agencies, ERO, Homeland Security Investigations, and any relevant state counterparts). Additionally, such law enforcement entities may have tools at their disposal that OPLA does not, including stays of removal, deferred action, T and U nonimmigrant status law enforcement certification, and requests for S nonimmigrant classification. In any event, national security, border security, and public safety are paramount in deciding whether to continue litigating removal proceedings.

5. Long-TermLawfulPermanentResidents

A favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion should also be considered for LPRs who have resided in the United States for many years, paiticularly when they acquired their LPR status at a young age and have demonstrated close family and community ties. Dismissal ofsuch cases that do not present serious aggravating factors will allow the noncitizen to maintain a lawful immigration status and conserve finite government resources.

When OPLA agrees to dismissal of removal proceedings as an exercise ofprosecutorial discretion in the categories above, the reasoning for this position should be recorded in PLAnet.

VI. Pursuing Appeal

In our immigration system, DHS initiates removal proceedings while IJs and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) exercise the Attorney General’s delegated authority to adjudicate issues ofremovability and reliefand protection from removal. OPLA attorneys continue to possess the discretion to take legally viable appeals ofIJ decisions and make appropriate legal arguments in response to noncitizen appeals and motions..2 1 Appellate advocacy should generally

20 See generally ICE Directive No. 10076.1, Prosecutorial Discretion: Certain Victims, Witnesses, and Plaintiffs (June 17,2011).

21 OPLAheadquartersdivisionsshouldcontinuetocoordinatewithimpactedDHSOfficeoftheGeneralCounsel (OGC) headquarters and component counsel offices when preparing briefs and motions in significant litigation.

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focus on priority cases- national security, border security, and public safety. Of course, other considerations, such as significant aggravating and mitigating factors and the need to seek clarity on an important legal issue, are appropriate for OPLA attorneys to take into account, consistent with direction from their respective Chief Counsel.

Consistent with any local guidance issued by their respective Chief Counsel,.22 OPLA attorneys may waive appeal in a case that is not a priority. OPLA attorneys may also decline to appeal where there is little likelihood ofsuccess before the BIA. While OPLA attorneys may reserve appeal to ensure the articulation ofa fully reasoned decision by an IJ to help inform whether the appeal should ultimately be perfected, OPLA attorneys may also waive appeal, where appropriate, in the interest ofjudicial efficiency and in recognition of limited resources.

OPLA Field Locations generally coordinate appellate advocacy before the BIA with the Immigration Law and Practice Division (ILPD)..23 OPLA Field Locations and ILPD should continue to work together, along with any other relevant OPLA HQ divisions, to craft strong and nationally consistent appellate work product. Again, in committing OPLA resources to perfecting appeal and drafting appellate pleadings, Field Locations and ILPD should focus their efforts on presumed priority cases. Furthermore, to ensure efficiency in litigation, OPLA attorneys should generally limit briefing schedule extension requests before the BIA and should not request briefing extensions in detained matters without prior approval from a supervisor. However, it is permissible to agree to briefing extension requests filed by non-detained noncitizens whose cases are not presumed priorities.

VII. Joining in Motions for Relief and Motions to Reopen and Entering Stipulations

In order to conserve resources and expedite resolution of a case- as well as where doing so would fulfill the duty to do justice and achieve the best outcome- OPLA attorneys have the discretion to join motions for relief (oral or written), consistent with any local guidance issued by their respective Chief Counsel. An OPLA attorney should be satisfied that the noncitizen qualifies for the reliefsought under law and merits reliefas a matter ofdiscretion or qualifies

22 ChiefCounsel should review existing local practice guidance to ensure that it confonns to current interim enforcement priorities and amend such guidance where necessary. Similarly, any new local practice guidance should conform to this memorandum and the presumed priorities.

23 See Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, Promoting Excellence in OPLA ‘s Advocacy Before the Board o fimmigration Appeals (Feb. 22, 2016); Email Message from Kenneth Padilla and Adam Loiacono, Final Rule – Appella..t.,e,,.,..,,,,._ _,

Procedures and Decisional Finality in Immif!ration Proceedinf!s; Administrative Closure (Jan. 22, 2021).l(b)(S) b)(S)

(b)(S) IFurther, special procedures apply in the context ofnational security and human rights violator cases. See Email Message from Rjah Ramlogan, OPLA Supplemental Guidance on the Proper Handling ofNational Security and Human Rights Violator Cases (May 28, 2015), as supplemented and modified by OPLA Memorandum, Proper Handling o f OPLA National Security (NS) Cases (May 21, 2015) and OPLA Memorandum, Proper Handling ofOPLA Human Rights Violator (HRV) Cases (May 2I, 20I5).

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24

under law for protection from removal when agreeing to such motions.. Such decisions to join

in motions should be made in a manner that facilitates the efficient operation ofOPLA Field Locations in immigration court. The same applies with respect to narrowing disputed issues through stipulation in order to promote fair and efficient proceedings.

OPLA intends to address in future.guidance when to join in motions to reopen cases with final removal orders. In the meantime, OPLA should continue addressing requests for joint motions to reopen on a case-by-case basis, giving favorable consideration to cases that are not priorities and where dismissal would be considered under Section V, supra.

VIII. Bond Proceedings

OPLA attorneys appearing before EOIR in bond proceedings must follow binding federal and administrative case law regarding the standards for custody redeterminations. 25 OPLA attorneys should also make appropriate legal and factual arguments to ensure that DHS’s interests, enforcement priorities, and custody authority are defended. In particular, in bond proceedings OPLA attorneys should give due regard to custody determinations made by an authorized immigration officer pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 236. l(c)(8), while not relinquishing the OPLA attorney’s own responsibility to consider and appropriately apply the factors and considerations set forth in the Interim Memorandum, the Johnson Memorandum, the Maher Memorandum, and this guidance. Where a noncitizen produces new information that credibly mitigates flight risk or danger concerns, OPLA attorneys have discretion to agree or stipulate to a bond amount or other conditions of release with a noncitizen or their representative, and to waive appeal of an IJ’s order redetermining the conditions ofrelease in such cases..26

24 See, e.g., INA §§ 208 (asylum), 240A(a) (cancellation of removal for certain pennanent residents), 240A(b) (cancellation of removal and adjustment of status for certain nonpermanent residents), 240B (voluntary departure), 245 (adjustment ofstatus), 249 (registry). Additionally, OPLA attorneys represent DHS in cases where noncitizens apply for withholding of removal under INA section 241(b)(3) and protection under the regulations implementing U.S. obligations under Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). See, e.g. , 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16-.18. Withholding and CAT protection both impose significant burdens ofproof(i.e., qualifying mistreatment must be “more likely than not” to occur). When a noncitizen moves to reopen their proceedings to pursue such non-discretionary protection, and the motion is supported by evidence that strongly suggests the noncitizen will be able to meet their burden, OPLA attorneys should ordinarily not oppose reopening and can also consider joining in such motions, as resources permit

25 See, e.g., Matter ofR-A-V-P-, 27 l&N Dec. 803, 804-05 (BIA 2020) (assessing whether respondent had met burden to demonstrate that he did not pose a risk of flight in INA section 236(a) discretionary detention case); Matter ofSiniausl«is, 27 I&N Dec. 207 (BIA 2018) (addressing interplay between flight risk and dangerousness considerations in INA section 236(a) discretionary detention case involving recidivist drunk driver); Matter of Kotliar, 24 l&N Dec. 124 (BIA 2007) (discussing general parameters of INA section 236(c) mandatory detention).

26 DHS and EOIR regulations recognize that, as a prerequisite for even being considered for discretionary release by an ICE officer under INA section 236(a), a noncitizen “must demonstrate to the satisfaction ofthe officer that such release would not pose a danger to property or persons, and that the [noncitizen] is likely to appear for any future proceeding.” 8 C.F.R. §§ 236.1(c)(8), 1236.l(c)(S) (emphasis added). Additionally, prior to agreeing to non­ monetary conditions of release, OPLA attorneys should consult with their local ERO Field Offices to ensure that such conditions are practicable (e.g., GPS monitoring, travel restrictions).

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IJ custody redetermination decisions that are factually or legally erroneous are subject to appeal to the BIA. Decisions on whether to appeal or to continue to prosecute an appeal should be guided by the presumed priorities and the sound use of finite resources. See Section VI, supra. It may also be appropriate for an OPLA Field Location to seek a discretionary or automatic stay under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.l 9(i) in conjunction with a DHS bond appeal, particularly where issues of public safety are implicated. OPLA Field Locations should work closely with ILPD and other relevant OPLA HQ divisions to identify instances where use ofthis authority may be warranted..27

IX. Responding to Inquiries

Each OPLA Field Location should maintain email inboxes dedicated to receiving inquiries related to this memorandum, including requests for OPLA to favorably exercise its discretion, and socialize the existence and use ofthese mailboxes with their respective local immigration bars including non-governmental organizations assisting or representing noncitizens before EOIR. OPLA Field Locations and sub-offices should strive to be as responsive to such inquiries as resources permit.

X. Oversight and Monitoring

This memorandum serves as interim guidance, and OPLA’s experience operating under this guidance will inform the development of subsequent guidance aligning with the outcome of the comprehensive review directed by the Interim Memorandum. It is therefore critical that prosecutorial discretion decision-making information be promptly and accurately documented in PLAnet and that SOPs be implemented to ensure consistent PLAnet recordkeeping. Field Legal Operations (FLO) should issue such SOPs within two weeks ofthis memorandum. FLO’s regular review ofPLAnet and the SOPs will form the basis ofrecommendations on process improvements, if and as necessary.

Official Use Disclaimer

This memorandum, which may contain legally privileged information, is intended For Official Use Only. It is intended solely to provide internal direction to OPLA attorneys and staff regarding the implementation of Executive Orders and DHS guidance. It is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create or confer any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by any individual or other party, including in removal proceedings or other litigation involving DHS, ICE, or the United States, or in any other form or manner whatsoever. Likewise, this guidance does not and is not intended to place any limitations on DHS’s otherwise lawful enforcement of the immigration laws or DHS’s litigation

prerogatives.

27 Existing OPLA guidance on automatic and discretionary stays remains in effect. See, e.g., Barry O’Melinn, Revised Proceduresfor Automatic Stay ofCustody Decisions by Immigration Judges (Oct. 26, 2006).

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

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https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/

21a0127p-06.pdf

Garcia-DeLeon v. Garland, 6th Cir., 06-11-21, published

PANEL: MOORE, CLAY, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.

KEY QUOTE:

Here, we squarely confront this question and conclude that 8 C.F.R. § 212.7(e)(4)(iii), in conjunction with 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii), provides IJs and the BIA the authority for administrative closure to permit noncitizens to apply for and receive provisional unlawful presence waivers. Administrative closure is “appropriate and necessary” in this circumstance for the disposition of Garcia’s immigration case. Absent administrative closure, Garcia and other noncitizens in removal proceedings who are seeking permanent residency would be unable to apply for a provisional unlawful presence waiver despite the authorizing regulation.

Permitting administrative closure for the limited purpose of allowing noncitizens to apply for provisional unlawful presence waivers pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 212.7(e)(4)(iii) will not lead to non-adjudication of immigration cases. Thus, the concern raised in Hernandez-Serrano that a general authority to grant administrative closure results in non-adjudication of immigration cases is not present. Administrative closure for the purpose of applying for a provisional unlawful presence waiver “bring[s] an end to the removal process” and permits “the non-citizen [to] voluntarily depart the U.S. for an immigrant visa appointment abroad.” Pet. Br. at 14. Generally, a noncitizen will, upon USCIS’s approval of their provisional unlawful presence waiver, seek to recalendar and terminate their removal proceedings. See, e.g., Romero, 937 F.3d at 287 (“Romero advised that if his case were administratively closed, then once the waiver had been approved, he intended to move to re-calendar and terminate removal proceedings so that he could then go through the consular process in Honduras.”); see also Ariel Brown, Immigr. Legal Res. Ctr., I-601A Provisional Waiver: Process, Updates, and Pitfalls to Avoid, at 7 (June 2019), https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/i- 601a_process._updates._and_pitfalls_to_avoid_june_2019.pdf (advising noncitizens to move to recalendar and then terminate their removal proceedings upon approval of their provisional unlawful presence waiver or upon receiving their immigrant visa). 

**********

After five months, John Trasvina is the first Biden Administration senior official in to take any responsible, practical steps to deal with the out of control Immigration Court backlog of 1.3 million that continues to grow under Garland’s flailing non-leadership at DOJ. But, he can’t do it by himself.

Without some progressive reforms at EOIR (and I’m NOT talking about an ill-thought-out uncoordinated “Dedicated Docket” or putting more Barr picks on the already compromised Immigration Bench, both of which are likely to build backlog and further reduce quality from its already “sub-basement levels”), the backlog and systemic denials of due process in Garland’s failed Immigration Courts will continue to grow.

That means some new progressive leadership at EOIR and some progressive judges at both the trial and appellate levels. Judges who know how to “leverage” PD with recalcitrant attorneys on both sides.

It also requires an immediate recession by Garland of Sessions’s abominable precedent Matter of Castro-Tum that has been panned by experts and rejected, at least in some form, by every Circuit that has considered it. Additionally, as a practitioner just reminded me, it will depend on whether Trasvina has the will, status, and power to force compliance on what are likely to be some resistant ICE Chief Counsels and Field Office Directors. In the past, local DHS officials have sometimes simply ignored or undermined PD policies with which they disagreed. So, stay tuned!

The quote from the Trasvina memo in the headline above comes from Matter of S-M-J-, 21 l&N Dec. 722, 727 (BIA 1997) (en banc), a leading “Schmidt BIA” case! Compare this with the White Nationalist absurdist nonsense put out by Sessions about prosecuting every case, no matter how absurd, marginal, or counterproductive, to a conclusion. Sessions spewed forth total, unadulterated BS! 💩

No, and I mean NO, other law enforcement agency in America (save the Trump DHS) operates in such an irresponsible, dishonest, and unrealistic manner! Particularly one whose bad policies and lack of self-restraint helped build a largely unnecessary backlog of 1.3 million cases. Indeed, according to the latest TRAC report, a simply astounding 96% of pending Immigration Court cases involve individuals without criminal charges! https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/quickfacts/?category=eoir. This suggests that with competent  leadership at DOJ and EOIR the backlog could be, and already should have been, dramatically slashed without adversely affecting ICE’s legitimate enforcement priorities!

“The  government wins when justice is done.” Wow! What a novel idea! Sounds like something right out of one of my old speeches to newly-hired INS prosecutors when I was the Deputy General Counsel at INS.

Probably, no coincidence that BIA Appellate Judge Michael J. Heilman, who wrote S-M-J-, once worked with me at INS General Counsel (although, as the record will show, by the time we both became “independent appellate judges” at a BIA that for a brief time functioned more like a “real court of independent experts” — as opposed to the current “deportation railroad” —  our views often diverged).

The 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th Circuits have rejected Sessions’s, malicious, racist, incorrect and idiotic, backlog-building decision in Castro-Tum. At the time of the Trasvina memo it appeared that the 6th Circuit was “trending in favor of” Castro-Tum, but the more recent 6th Circuit case featured above emphatically rejects Castro-Tum as applied to those seeking “provisional waivers.” 

So, the 6th is a little confusing. As I read it, there is no Administrative Closing for those approved for SIJS status and waiting for numbers. But, Administrative Closing is available for a “provisional waiver.” This doesn’t make any sense to me. But, what really doesn’t make sense is the unnecessary confusion caused by Garland’s failure to act and his continuation of improper White Nationalist, anti-due process, “worst practices” instituted by his Trumpist predecessors. 

To my knowledge, no Circuit has endorsed Castro-Tum in its entirety. Yet, Garland inexplicably and mindlessly has neither vacated Castro-Tum nor has he directed OIL to stop defending this legally incorrect, backlog-building, due-process-killing “Sessions-Miller” bogus “precedent.” “Part IV” of the Trasvina memo describes the unnecessary confusion and potential for more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” caused by Garland’s failure to rescind Castro-Tum and reinstate “Administrative Closing” as an essential docket management (and due process) tool in Immigration Court.

Trasvina “gets it” (at least so far). Garland, Monaco, Gupta, Clarke, not so much! Maybe Trasvina should have been the AG!

As a practitioner recently put it:  “Repubs are bold, Dems are wimps when it comes to EOIR!” To date, Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke seem determined to follow in the footsteps of their ineffective predecessors! If they don’t get smarter, braver, bolder, and much more aggressively progressive, they will continue to fail American democracy in our hour of great need!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-05-21

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, 🚀 BUT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION LACKS EXPERT PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP WHO “GETS IT” — Will VP Harris Be Able To Break Out Of The “Death Spiral” ☠️ Of “Proven, Guaranteed To Fail” Racist Immigration Deterrence? — “It’s Groundhog Day at the border, and Biden is mindlessly laying the foundation for more problems in a few years. We’ve watched it all play out before. Immigration deterrence doesn’t work.” 

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”. — “The reality of racial justice and the rule of law for people of color at our Southern Border is rather sobering, as the Biden Administration fails to usher in needed progressive reforms. How many more people will die because this Administration won’t follow the Constitution, The Refugee Act, and our international obligations? We’ll never achieve racial justice so long as dehumanization of people of color is our official policy, carried out by a broken and dysfunctional DOJ!”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris
Vice President of the United States — “Will she be able to get beyond the mistakes of the past and put rationality, humanity, and the rule of law in place at the Southern Border. So far, the results of her leadership are NOT encouraging for those who believe in progressive, humanitarian, legal policies.”
(Official Senate Photo)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/03/immigration-mexico-guatemala-kamala-harris-biden-border-reform/

Opinion by James Fredrick in WashPost

June 3 at 3:44 PM ET

James Fredrick is a multimedia journalist based in Mexico City and covers migration, crime, politics and sports.

. . . .

Obama tried deterring migrants with his characteristic lawyerly tact. Trump did it with his cruel, petty impulsiveness. Biden is doing it with his folksy toughness. The styles are different, but the results of immigration deterrence will always be the same.

We’re trapped in this cycle because the U.S. government refuses to listen to migrants. Having met hundreds of migrants during my years reporting in Mexico and Central America, it’s obvious why deterrence doesn’t work: What’s at home is worse than anything the United States could threaten. Most migrants don’t want to leave home. But they do because violent death or crippling destitution is all that’s left.

Failing to actually come up with a solution, we of the “greatest country on Earth” become tremendously feeble and defensive at the arrival of a few thousand immigrant children. But there is another way.

We must treat immigration as a civil and humanitarian issue, not a criminal one. Criminalizing people fleeing violence, persecution, climate change or economic hardship exacerbates these problems. So decriminalize border crossings and rebuild border facilities as welcome centers, not jails. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents at the border should be social workers, not cops.

If Trump’s family separation atrocity showed us anything, it’s that millions of Americans want to help immigrants in need. The United States should cooperate more with these groups. There are already large networks around the country that can provide housing, food, legal services, education and medical services to immigrants. Why rely on expensive armed border agents instead of willing, motivated humanitarian groups?

Immigration laws should also address the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to decriminalizing border crossings, our immigration laws rely on outdated quotas and corrupt, abusive worker programs. Asylum law is a relic of the Cold War and doesn’t reflect the world today.

Finally, Washington should stop making the problems worse with bad foreign policy. Despite numerous abuses, scandals and criminal allegations involving Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, the Biden administration refuses to denounce him, though many think he is responsible for the conditions Hondurans are fleeing. In fact, Biden administration officials are working with Hernández to try to prevent Hondurans from fleeing. He’s just one example in a long history of U.S. meddling to prop up corrupt, abusive, U.S.-friendly regimes. No amount of U.S. dollars in aid can make up for bad foreign policy.

President Biden can’t stop the crisis today. After all, he helped create it. But he can make sure this is the last “border crisis” we face.

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

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

Ah, “mindlessly” — one of my favorite terms, usually applied these days to Garland and his inept team at DOJ! Actually, Frederick isn’t the only one to figure this out! 

The problem remains, as I have stated over and over, the toxic failure of the Biden Administration to bring progressive experts in immigration, human rights, civil rights, and “applied due process” into Government and empower them to solve the problems! It’s bizarrely compounded by the disgraceful unwillingness of those few in the Biden Administration, like Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, who actually know better, to speak up for racial justice, social justice, human rights, and human dignity at the DOJ! 

Unless VP Harris wakes up, convinces her boss, and brings in the progressive experts, she’s headed for the abyss, taking thousands of vulnerable refugees and, perhaps, American democracy down with her! 

Refusal to listen: to migrants, their representatives, experts, our “better angels,” and common sense! The same problems, over and over, Administration after Administration, decade after decade! The same “built to fail” policies repeated! 

The truth is in front of the Biden Administration! But, like Garland, Mayorkas, and others leading the way over the cliff, Biden and Harris can’t see it! They appear to have “tuned out” those desperately trying to keep them from plunging over the precipice! So tragic, so unnecessary, so threatening to American democracy and the future of humanity!

🇺🇸🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-05-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯

 

Gender Violence in Central America
Gender Violence continues to to be endemic in Latin America! Yet, shockingly, its victims, refugee women of color, can expect little protection in Garland’s Immigration Courts still applying Jeff Sessions’s inaccurate, misogynistic precedent in Matter of A-B- and continuing to be staffed by too many “judges” selected or promoted by the Trump Administration because of their perceived willingness to support anti-asylum policies targeting many women of color! Recently Garland outraged progressives by appointing 17 “Miller/Barr Holdovers” to powerful, life or death, Immigration Judge positions while eschewing better-qualified progressive experts from the private sector who could bring diversity and gender and racial justice to his dysfunctional Immigration “Courts!” 
PHOTO: UNHCR website

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/06/03/abuse-of-women-and-children-at-root-of-immigration-crisis/

Abused women at border
Migrant women carry children in the rain at an intake area after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, late Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. The U.S. government continues to report large numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with an increase in adult crossers. But families and unaccompanied children are still arriving in dramatic numbers despite the weather changing in the Rio Grande Valley registering hotter days and nights. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)(Gregory Bull)
Natalie Gonnella-Platts
Natalie Gonnella-Platts
Director, Women’s Initiative
George W. Bush Institute
PHOTO: Bush Institute
Jenny Villatoro
Jenny Villatoro
Associate, George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative
PHOTO: George W. Bush Institute

By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:

When U.S. Border Patrol found him in the Texas desert, 10-year-old Wilton was crying, “they abandoned me.” Exhausted and alone, his image went viral — a poignant visual of the struggle faced by thousands seeking safety.

But Wilton’s story actually began in Nicaragua when his mother, Meylin, wasn’t able to get legal protection from an abusive partner. Mother and son fled to the United States, seeking asylum, but were expelled under a public health rule and sent to Mexico, where they were kidnapped, according to an account in El Pais. Meylin’s brother in Miami could pay only half the ransom — enough for Wilton alone to be released.

Although Meylin was ultimately released and reunited with her son, the tale that led to Wilton’s arrival at the border as an unaccompanied minor isn’t unique. It illustrates the fact that gender-based violence, revictimization and lack of justice affect children, families and communities thousands of miles away. It also highlights the importance of a safe and legal pathway into the United States for survivors of gender-based violence and other asylum-seekers. For many, arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum is the only legal pathway available.

Immigration reform in the United States is essential to assuring that we have a secure and efficient border, a system flexible enough to handle changes in migrant flows, and the capacity to treat each migrant with dignity. But more needs to be done in the migrants’ home countries, too, so that they are not forced to flee for their safety in the first place.

Any comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform should address gender inequity and gender-based violence.

They are not siloed issues to acknowledge only when horrific stories of femicide and human trafficking force us to pay attention. Rather, they are deeply entangled with broader challenges of corruption and poverty. Proposed solutions shouldn’t overlook the impact of gender-based violence on migrant flows, economic development, education and health.

Fourteen of the 25 most dangerous places for women are in the Western Hemisphere, including countries within Central America. Patriarchy and gang violence subject women and girls to abhorrent actions of abuse and control.

Honduras and El Salvador saw some of the highest incidences of femicide within Latin America in 2019, at rates of 6.2 and 3.3 per 100,000, respectively. In Guatemala, adolescent girls are at a high risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.

COVID 19-related lockdowns are being exploited by gangs looking to strengthen control: El Salvador alone has seen a 70% increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic. And lockdowns have forced vulnerable individuals to stay in close proximity to their perpetrators. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported an increase in intrafamily violence, with El Salvador reporting an increase in intrafamily femicides as well.

Justice systems and access to services need to be strengthened to ensure adequate protection for all under the law. Legal protections often are inhibited by weak institutions, corruption and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators.

According to a 2017 national survey, two-thirds of Salvadoran women over the age of 15 have experienced violence, but only 6% have ever reported it. While laws against child marriage exist across the region, in some countries about 1 in 3 young women are in a union before age 18. Post-trauma support and efforts that inform Central American women of their rights and agency are critical interventions that could help women like Meylin.

Females have been disproportionately affected by the devastating impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, but the status of women and girls is chronically overlooked in response efforts, exacerbating the risk of violence.

Women and girls must be seen and heard. Greater focus on gender and age-disaggregated data collection and in tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of legal systems is crucial. And women and their lived experiences need to be more fully represented at all leadership levels.

Finally, direct outreach to local communities should be a priority for U.S. government and private sector-led programs. This includes resource and capacity support for advocates and organizations that serve as lifelines for those affected by violence, often at great personal risk. Engagement with men and boys is equally imperative.

How can anyone be expected to thrive when her day-to-day priority is simply to survive? The United States needs to recognize that gender-based violence and gender inequity drive migration.

Immigration reform must include strategies to address the root causes of migration from Central America in effective and lasting ways to prevent situations like Wilton’s and Meylin’s. Women and girls must be front and center in these solutions.

Natalie Gonnella-Platts serves as the director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.

Jenny Villatoro is an associate for the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative.

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

“Deterrents” and illegally abusing asylum seekers DON’T WORK! It’s not that difficult a concept. Indeed, these misguided attempts at deterrence have been failing consistently under Administrations of both parties for the past four decades. One would think that an “enlightened nation” would try a different approach rather than simply repeating the costly failures of the past in various forms.

What we need are functioning refugee and asylum systems, led and staffed by progressive experts, operating from INSIDE Government, that will grant status to qualified refugee women in a fair and timely manner and set favorable precedents even while separately addressing the endemic problems in the “refugee-sending countries.” Of course, it will result in more legal immigration of refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. That’s a good thing for both us and those individuals, not something to be feared or unlawfully and dishonestly “deterred!”

With stagnating population growth, we should welcome and facilitate legal immigration of courageous, talented, dedicated refugee women from all countries and their children through the refugee, asylum, and a much more robust legal immigration system! 

Debi Sanders
Debi Sanders ESQ
“Warrior Queen” of the NDPA
PHOTO: law.uva.edu

Thanks to NDPA warrior-queen Debi Sanders for sending in this item. This report should be great evidence for those litigating to halt the Garland misogyny mess at EOIR and, sadly, to some extent in U.S. Courts of Appeals that have chosen to sweep both reality of what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and the patent unconstitutionality of a system governed by bogus precedents entered or promoted by AG’s affiliated with DHS Enforcement who also packed and reshaped the immigration “judiciary” in the image of nativist restrictionists! However, compelling as it is, the report only adds to the existing body of documentation of the dishonest approach by Administrations of both parties to Latin American asylum claims, particularly those of women and children.

For Pete’s sake, first and second year law students know that the EOIR travesty is unconstitutional! Why are life-tenured Article III Judges covering it up? Hopefully, history will take note of their mal-performance on the bench! These guys are life-tenured! So, what’s their excuse for not upholding the Constitution against clear Congressional and Executive abuses?

Hard for me to say this. But, former President George W. Bush is doing more for human rights, gender rights, civil rights, and immigrants rights’ than Garland or anyone else at the Biden DOJ! At least he speaks out publicly for the humanity and contributions of migrants and for their fair and generous treatment, which is more than any member of the Biden Administration has done as they continue to mistake softening the rhetoric with taking firm action to reverse White Nationalist policies and replace them with readily achievable progressive ones.

George W. Bush
030114-O-0000D-001.President George W. Bush. Photo by Eric Draper, White House. “Why is this guy willing to speak up for immigrants’ rights . . . .

Meanwhile, despite pleas from nearly every expert, progressive, human rights, immigrants’ rights, and gender rights group in the U.S., Garland continues to allow Sessions’s wrong, toxic, and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B – to remain in place and threaten the lives of female refugees while ignoring the misogynistic, anti-asylum, culture inculcated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR that continues to flourish and daily dish out abuse to migrants and their representatives without meaningful consequences. 

Judge Merrick Garland
“ . . . while this guy continues to apply misogynistic precedents, eschew progressive experts, recycle failed ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ gimmicks, and allow the Trump-era anti-asylum culture to continue to flourish at EOIR and DOJ?” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

What, indeed, is someone like AAG Vanita Gupta doing with herself at Garland’s anti-progressive, and anti-due-process mess at DOJ? Why are folks like her and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke there in the first place if they aren’t going to stand up to Garland’s tone-deaf, inept approach to gender rights, human rights, and racial justice @ EOIR? How, on earth, do you lead a “Civil Rights Division” while turning a blind eye to grotesque violations of civil and human rights going on daily in your “Boss’s” wholly owned “court” system that functions like no “real court” in America? What’s DAG Lisa Monaco doing presiding over a gender disaster at EOIR? It’s straight out of “Jim Crow!” 

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism, still right at home at Garland’s EOIR!
Woman Tortured
“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — “Do Garland, Monaco, Gupta, & Clarke work in ‘sound-proofed offices’ where they can’t hear our tortured screams and moans? What’s wrong with those guys? We’re suffering and dying while they are fiddling and diddling!”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And, I wouldn’t say that Vice President Harris is looking very good either, as she “swallows the whistle” on notorious scofflaw human rights violations that she was well aware of from her time in the Senate! Doesn’t anyone in the Biden Administration have the backbone to speak up for human rights, human decency, and restoring the rule of law? Is it REALLY our position that following the Constitution, our statutory laws, and the international treaties to which we are party is beyond the capabilities of the U.S. Government? If so, what, may I ask, is the difference between us an any third world dictatorship where laws have no meaning?

Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris. “Our first African-American, AAPI, child of immigrants VEEP seems curiously deaf and indifferent to the gross abuses being heaped on migrants and women of color at EOIR and at our Souther Border! What’s her excuse for turning her back on the progressive, human rights, gender equality groups that helped put her in office. Why is she remaining silent as Garland continues to appoint Billy Barr’s hand-selected non-progressive, non-diverse Immigration Judges to a life-determining “judiciary” that the Biden Administration wholly controls? How can you create a progressive, diverse, Article III Judiciary that will promote racial equity when you’re unwilling to apply those values and selection criteria to a huge judiciary that you actually control? What message are you sending to ‘next generation progressive attorneys of color’ when you allow Garland to ignore them in favor of lesser qualified candidates? Why aren’t you out there actively recruiting more attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups for the Immigration Judiciary rather than allowing Garland to use same-old, same old bogus “USA Jobs Phantom recruitments?” Lots of unanswered questions here!
Vice President of the United States
(Official Senate Photo)

I can’t figure it out! But, I do know that Garland’s lousy stewardship at EOIR, failure to speak out for fundamental fairness, usher in progressive changes, and restore due process @ EOIR has reached “crisis proportions” affecting our entire justice system and threatening democracy!

Hopefully, progressive advocacy, human rights, and civil rights groups will keep up the pressure and demands for long, long, long overdue and readily achievable changes at EOIR: in leadership, precedents, culture, and administration of justice! (Get this: Garland just created yet another bogus “Dedicated Docket” without a functional e-filing system to make it work! That’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling 101,” as anyone who has actually had to deal with the mess in his Immigration Courts could tell him. But, he’s apparently not interested!) Right now, it’s an unmitigated “disaster zone” continuing to spiral downward!

There is a direct link between the “Dred Scottification of the other” that Garland countenances at EOIR and the overall failure of our justice system to deal effectively with institutionalized racism! The U.S. has a long, disreputable history of treating women and persons of color as “non persons” under the Constitution. Much of it traces to our immigration laws where “the others” are routinely dehumanized, stereotyped, demonized, and abused by those who falsely claim to be furthering the “rule of law!” We will NOT achieve racial justice for all in America until we deal with the festering wounds intentionally inflicted on women, children, and people of color in our immigration system, at EOIR, and illegally continuing at our borders! 

By choice, Garland now “owns” the misogynistic, anti-due-process, anti-asylum disaster @ EOIR. Make him deal with it in a constructive way!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Garland’s continued tolerance of misogyny and the anti-due-process, anti-asylum culture at EOIR, NEVER! Stop Garland’s continuing misogynistic nonsense before more refugee women and people of color needlessly die! What’s it going to take finally to get some “real justice @ Justice?”

PWS

06-05-21