Hispanics – Page 88 – immigrationcourtside.com

NY TIMES: Trump Actually Fired Jeff Sessions Over Mueller Appointment — Pence & Others Talked Unglued Prez Out Of Accepting Resignation! — Trump’s Intent To Obstruct Russia Investigation Clear If Report Accurate!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/us/politics/jeff-sessions-trump.html?smid=tw-share

Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report:

“WASHINGTON — Shortly after learning in May that a special counsel had been appointed to investigate links between his campaign associates and Russia, President Trump berated Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an Oval Office meeting and said he should resign, according to current and former administration officials and others briefed on the matter.

The president blamed the appointment of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, on Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation — a move Mr. Trump believes was the moment his administration effectively lost control over the inquiry. Accusing Mr. Sessions of “disloyalty,” Mr. Trump unleashed a string of insults on his attorney general.

Ashen and emotional, Mr. Sessions told the president he would quit and sent a resignation letter to the White House, according to four people who were told details of the meeting. Mr. Sessions would later tell associates that the demeaning way the president addressed him was the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.

The Oval Office meeting, details of which have not previously been reported, shows the intensity of Mr. Trump’s emotions as the Russia investigation gained steam and how he appeared to immediately see Mr. Mueller’s appointment as a looming problem for his administration. It also illustrates the depth of antipathy Mr. Trump has had for Mr. Sessions — one of his earliest campaign supporters — and how the president interprets “disloyalty” within his circle of advisers.

Mr. Trump ended up rejecting Mr. Sessions’s May resignation letter after senior members of his administration argued that dismissing the attorney general would only create more problems for a president who had already fired an F.B.I. director and a national security adviser. Mr. Trump once again, in July, told aides he wanted to remove Mr. Sessions, but for a second time didn’t take action.

. . . .

The president relented, and eventually returned the resignation letter to Mr. Sessions — with a handwritten response on it.

For Mr. Sessions, the aggressiveness with which Mr. Trump has sought his removal was a blow. The son of a general store owner in a small town in Alabama, Mr. Sessions had long wanted to be the nation’s top federal law enforcement official or to serve in another top law enforcement or judicial post. He earned a reputation in the Senate as someone tough on immigration, and was the first senator to back Mr. Trump in the presidential campaign.

But their relationship began to deteriorate little more than a month after Mr. Trump was sworn in as president, after Mr. Sessions’s announcement that he was recusing himself from the Russia inquiry caught Mr. Trump by surprise.

The president spent months stewing about the recusal. In a July 19 interview with The Times, Mr. Trump said he never would have appointed Mr. Sessions to be attorney general if he knew he was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Trump called the decision “very unfair to the president.”

Days after the Times interview, Mr. Trump told aides he wanted to replace Mr. Sessions. Some of the president’s aides, not sure if Mr. Trump really wanted the attorney general gone or was just working through his anger, were able to delay the firing until the president’s anger passed.

But Mr. Trump continued his public attacks in the days that followed, including taking to Twitter to call him “weak” — a word that is among the harshest criticisms in Mr. Trump’s arsenal.

Administration officials and some of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers have puzzled at Mr. Sessions’s decision to stay on. But people close to Mr. Sessions said that he did not leave because he had a chance to have an impact on what he sees as a defining issue of his career: curtailing legal and illegal immigration.

In recent weeks, he has spearheaded the effort to undo what he believed to be the Obama administration’s dangerously lenient immigration policies, including the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals program.

Mr. Sessions had no illusions about converting Mr. Trump to his side of the argument — Mr. Trump remains deeply ambivalent — and he had no illusions about repairing a damaged relationship he had once regarded as a friendship. But he told people he felt he had successfully pushed the president toward ending the Obama immigration policy, and thought it had given him increased leverage in the West Wing.

The president agreed to terminate the program, and on Sept. 5 Mr. Sessions stood alone at a lectern — a moment that seemed to be a significant victory for the attorney general.

But his satisfaction was fleeting. Mr. Trump quickly undercut Mr. Sessions in a tweet by saying he would reconsider whether or not to end the program, leading the attorney general to tell allies that he was frustrated that the president had muddled months of work leading to the announcement of the new policy.

On Wednesday evening, Democrats announced they had reached a deal with the president to quickly extend protections for young undocumented immigrants.

On Thursday morning, taking a vastly different position from the one Mr. Sessions had announced, the president tweeted about the need for protections for people brought here “through no fault of their own.”

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

I’m not in favor of publicly humiliating any human being, even Jeff Sessions. But, my sympathy is tempered by Sessions’s willingness to lie and humiliate migrants, Hispanics, African Americans, and members of the LGBTQ community, among others, in pursuit of his obscene White Nationalist agenda. In other words, to pick on the most vulnerable members of our society, rather than using the laws to protect them and advance the cause of justice, including social justice (a concept that Sessions has never grasped).

Trump’s reasons for firing Sessions were unethical and wrong. But, Sessions is already the worst and least qualified Attorney General in modern history. When he finally departs the Department of Justice, of his own volition or otherwise, it will be a relief to all Americans who believe in the Constitution and a diverse, humane, inclusive society. The only question is whether the damage that Sessions is doing at Justice and to the Department’s credibility can ever be repaired after the debacle of his tenure finally ends.

PWS

09-14-17

THE HILL: N. RAPPAPORT SUGGESTS LEGISLATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR LONG-TERM “TPSers!”

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/350668-with-dreamers-out-bring-immigrants-under-temporary-protection-status-in

Nolan writes:

“The Temporary Protected Status program (TPS) provides refuge in the United States to more than 300,000 aliens from a total of 13 countries: El Salvador, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

They are supposed to leave when it is safe for them to return to their own countries, but it can take many years for conditions in their countries to improve. The need for TPS can last for decades.

It does not include a path to permanent resident status, but should aliens who have lived in the United States for decades be required to leave when their TPS is terminated?

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) says that at some point they have been here so long that they should be allowed to remain permanently: “There should be some rational way to transition people who have been here for a long time … who because of the length of their stay have basically become valued members of our community.”

. . . .

An alien is free to apply for other types of immigration status while he has TPS.

So, should congress make permanent resident status available to TPS aliens when conditions in their countries keep them here an exceptionally long time?

I agree with Lofgren that at some point, TPS aliens have been living here so long that it no longer makes sense to send them back to their own countries.

The best solution would be to change the TPS provisions to make some form of permanent status available when aliens are forced to remain for exceptionally long times because conditions in their countries do not improve, but that might not be possible.

One of the TPS provisions imposes a limitation on consideration in the Senate of legislation to adjust the status of aliens who have TPS. It provides that it shall not be in order in the Senate to consider any bill or amendment that provides for adjustment to lawful temporary or permanent resident status for TPS aliens, or has the effect of amending the TPS provisions in any other way.

This restriction can be waived or suspended with an affirmative vote from three-fifths of the senators, which is known as a “supermajority vote.”

But there is an alternative that would not require changing the TPS provisions.

The Registry legalization program, which was established in 1929, makes lawful permanent resident status available to qualified aliens who entered the United States before January 1, 1972; have resided in the United States continuously since such entry; and have good moral character.

An update of the registry cutoff point is long overdue. It has not been changed since it was set at 1972, by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA).

The change would apply to all undocumented aliens who can meet the eligibility requirements.”

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

Read Nolan’s complete article, which contains a very succinct and helpful explanation of TPS which I omitted above, over at The Hill.

I think that Nolan has hit it on the head here! There is virtue in using existing administrative processes to deal with new issues. And, as he points out, “Registry” is there for the taking, and it’s been 30 years since it was updated!

Recollection: Understandably, we didn’t see very many “Registry” cases during my tenure at the Arlington Immigration Court (2003-16). But the rare ones we did receive always received “waivers” of the “no business at lunch rule” because they always involved such interesting human stories. I never came across one myself. But, I think that my colleagues who did always felt like they had discovered a “nugget of gold” in the least expected place! It would also help the Immigration Courts because most of the Registry cases (like the TPS cases) could be adjudicated over at USCIS, thereby reducing “docket pressure.” Bring back Registry! Yea Nolan!

PWS

09-14-17

“DREAM DEAL” DESCENDS INTO TYPICAL TRUMP CHAOS WITHIN 24 HOURS! — Who REALLY Knows What’s On His Mind?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-border-wall-daca_us_59ba570ee4b0edff971983ee?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Elise Foley and Willa Frej report for HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump gave a series of conflicting statements on Thursday about how he hopes to deal with young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, muddying the waters over whether he will support their bid to gain eventual citizenship and whether he will demand a border wall in exchange.

Trump’s comments, made both to reporters and on Twitter, came after leading Democrats in Congress said they had reached an informal deal with the president on legislation to help so-called Dreamers, or undocumented young people who entered the country as children.

Last week, Trump put the fates of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers up in the air by rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted two-year work permits and deportation relief.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Wednesday that they had reached an agreement with Trump to tie measures to grant Dreamers legal status to border security measures, but not to a wall. They said Trump had made clear he would continue to demand a wall, and that they had told him they would oppose it.

Trump denied that a deal had been made, although he initially did not dispute key details of what the Democrats had said. But later, he said Dreamers’ fates would be tied to the construction of a border wall, even if it’s not part of legislation that addresses Dreamers.

“We have to be sure the wall isn’t obstructed, because without the wall, I wouldn’t do anything. … It doesn’t have to be here but they can’t obstruct the wall if it’s in a budget or anything else,” Trump told reporters in Florida, according to a pool report.

He added that he would “only do it if we get extreme security, not only surveillance but everything that goes with surveillance,” Trump said. “If there’s not a wall, we’re doing nothing.”

The president also created more confusion by suggesting that he might not support allowing Dreamers to eventually gain citizenship. That would destroy any hope of a deal with Democrats, who want Trump to support the Dream Act, which would allow undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children to eventually become citizens.

“We’re not looking at citizenship,” he said. “We’re not looking at amnesty. We’re looking at allowing people to stay here.”

That doesn’t necessarily preclude eventually supporting Dream Act-style measures, however. The bill would not grant citizenship immediately; it would allow Dreamers to gain legal status that would make them eligible for eventual citizenship ― so there’s potential that Trump could eventually back such measures and still claim they were not the “amnesty” he opposes.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump said in a series of tweets that any deal on Dreamers would be contingent on “massive border security,” although he didn’t specify that it had to include a wall. He added that the wall is “already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls” and would proceed.”

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

And, the beat goes on! I knew that sanity couldn’t last long in the “Age of Trump.”

PWS

09-14-17

DEAL OR NO DEAL? — You Can’t Tell With “The Donald” — But He Didn’t Really Deny That Something Is “In Play” With The Dems!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-border-wall-daca_us_59ba570ee4b0edff971983ee

Willa Frej reports for HuffPost:

“President Donald Trump denied on Thursday that he had made a firm agreement with Democrats on immigration, but did not dispute key details from the deal ― namely, that protection for young undocumented immigrants wouldn’t be tied to his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Trump said that any deal on Dreamers ― undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children ― would be contingent on “massive border security,” but did not specifically say it had to be the wall.

He later said that the wall is “already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls” and would proceed.

Trump also told reporters outside the White House on Thursday that “the wall will come later.” Asked if he favors amnesty, the president replied that “the word is DACA.”

The president also seemed to throw cold water on concerns that he wanted to deport beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, which the administration decided earlier this month to end.

Trump’s Thursday comments followed a dinner he held the previous evening with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.). Following the meeting, they announced that the president agreed to a border security plan that would offer protections to the 800,000 Dreamers, and that the wall was not part of the deal.

Pelosi and Schumer released a statement Thursday clarifying their announcement from the night before, confirming that no final deal had been put in place.

Yet they added, “While both sides agreed that the wall would not be any part of this agreement, the President made clear he intends to pursue it at a later time, and we made clear we would continue to oppose it.”

Many of Trump’s staunchest supporters, including Fox News Host Sean Hannity and conservative commentator Ann Coulter, quickly lashed out at reports that president seemed to be softening his stance on immigration.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later tweeted that “excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to,” but a spokesman for Schumer shot back that, while the wall wasn’t dead yet, it wasn’t part of this deal specifically.

This story has been updated to include Trump’s additional comments to reporters and a statement from Pelosi and Schumer.”

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

You know you’re on the right track, Mr. President, when you are being criticized by racist, national embarrassments Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) (how come the GOP hasn’t banished this guy for his unapologetically racist and xenophobic views? — Yeah, he has a Constitutional right to spout his poisonous lies on and off the floor of Congress, and the folks in his Congressional District have a right to elect him to publicly represent their racism, lack of decency, and lack of judgment. — But, that doesn’t entitle him to membership in one of our two major political parties.)

And ignoring the rancid input of AG Jeff Sessions and his White Nationalist clone Stephen Miller on anything touching on immigration or national security would also be wise. Just see where this “Demonic Duo” is going and head the other way as fast as you can.

Along with Bannon, Sessions and Miller are at home on the wrong side of history, particularly racial and migration history. The President already got bad legal advice, based on bogus ideological reasoning, from Sessions in terminating DACA. Now he is having to put distance between himself and the markedly xenophobic anti-DACA narrative that Gonzo set forth when gleefully announcing an end to DACA and cheerfully throwing 800,000 American lives into turmoil. What a guy!

PWS

09-14-71

BREAKING: CAN WE BELIEVE THIS? — NBC Reports That Trump & Dems Cut Deal To Save Dreamers Over Dinner!!!

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/politics/Ryan-Deporting-Young-Immigrants-Not-in-Nations-Interest-444252723.html

Jill Colvin reports:

“President Donald Trump told lawmakers Wednesday that he’s open to signing legislation protecting thousands of young immigrants from deportation even if the bill does not include funding for his promised border wall. But Trump remains committed to building a barrier along the U.S.-Mexican border, even if Democrats say it’s a non-starter.
Trump had dinner with Sen. Chuck Schumer and top Democrat Nancy Pelosi Wednesday night, and they reached a deal on DACA, according to a joint statement by the democrats.
“We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides,” the statement read.
Trump, who was deeply disappointed by Republicans’ failure to pass a health care overhaul, infuriated many in his party when he reached a three-month deal with Sen. Schumer and House Democratic Leader Pelosi to raise the debt ceiling, keep the government running and speed relief to states affected by recent hurricanes.

Trump ended the program earlier this month and has given Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix before the so-called “Dreamers'” statuses begin to expire.
“We don’t want to forget DACA,” Trump told the members at the meeting. “We want to see if we can do something in a bipartisan fashion so that we can solve the DACA problem and other immigration problems.”
As part of that effort, Trump said he would not insist on tying extending DACA protections to wall funding, as long as a final bill included “some sort of border security,” said Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, who attended the meeting.

“He said, ‘We don’t have to have the wall on this bill,'” recalled Cuellar. “He said: ‘We can put that somewhere else, like appropriations or somewhere.’ But that was very significant because a lot of us don’t want to tie DACA and the wall. We’re not going to split the baby on that one. So he himself said, ‘We’re not going to put the wall tied into this.'”
Trump has made a sudden pivot to bipartisanship after months of railing against Democrats as “obstructionist.” He has urged them to join him in overhauling the nation’s tax code, among other priorities.
“More and more we’re trying to work things out together,” Trump explained Wednesday, calling the development a “positive thing” for both parties.

“If you look at some of the greatest legislation ever passed, it was done on a bipartisan manner. And so that’s what we’re going to give a shot,” he said.
The “Kumbaya” moment appeared to extend to the thorny issue of immigration, which has been vexing lawmakers for years. Funding for Trump’s promised wall had been thought to be a major point of contention between Republicans and Democrats as they attempted to forge a deal.
Democrats have been adamant in their opposition to the wall, but both Pelosi and a top White House staffer indicated Tuesday that they were open to a compromise on border security to expedite DACA legislation.

White House legislative director Marc Short said during a breakfast that, while the president remained committed to the wall, funding for it did not necessarily need to be linked directly to the “Dreamers” issue. “I don’t want us to bind ourselves into a construct that makes reaching a conclusion on DACA impossible,” he said.”

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

I have to admit that I’m stunned by this swing of the pendulum. But, I’m pleased and relieved for the great Dreamers if it works. The Devil is often in the details, particularly with immigration.

On this occasion, I’ll have to agree with the President that bipartisan legislation putting the best interests of the country first is a good thing, and a smart way for the President to get credit for some legislative achievements.

We’ll have to see what happens, But, it’s nice to end the day on a more optimistic note.

PWS

09-13-17

UPDATE:

The Devil is indeed in the details! According to this more recent article from Sophie Tatum at CNN (forwarded by my friend and fellow insomniac Nolan Rappaport) the “deal” is far from done and the White House version of the meeting is not the same as the Schumer-Pelosi statement:

“White House press secretary Sarah Sanders immediately pushed back on the idea the wall would be dropped.
“While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to,” Sanders said.
White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short confirmed that the President and Democrats agreed to work to find a legislative fix for DACA, but he called Democrats’ claim of a deal that would exclude wall funding “intentionally misleading.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/13/politics/chuck-schumer-nancy-pelosi-donald-trump/index.html

Stay tuned!

PWS

09-14-17

DEMS ARE “PIPE DREAMING” IF THEY BELIEVE THAT TRUMP’S SUPPOSEDLY HISTORICALLY LOW POLL NUMBERS WILL ADD UP TO DEM VICTORY AT POLLS — Without Any Charismatic Leader Or Hugely Popular Program, Dems Appear Slated To Wander In The Wilderness Until Trump Destroys The Entire Country!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/13/teflon-trump-democrats-messaging-242607

Edward-Isaac Devore writes in Politico:

“Democrats tried attacking Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. They’ve made the case that he’s ineffective, pointing to his failure to sign a single major piece of legislation into law after eight months in the job. They’ve argued that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that his campaign was in cahoots with Russia.

None of it is working.

Data from a range of focus groups and internal polls in swing states paint a difficult picture for the Democratic Party heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. It suggests that Democrats are naive if they believe Trump’s historically low approval numbers mean a landslide is coming. The party is defending 10 Senate seats in states that Trump won and needs to flip 24 House seats to take control of that chamber.

The research, conducted by private firms and for Democratic campaign arms, is rarely made public but was described to POLITICO in interviews with a dozen top operatives who’ve been analyzing the results coming in.

“If that’s the attitude that’s driving the Democratic Party, we’re going to drive right into the ocean,” said Anson Kaye, a strategist at media firm GMMB who worked on the Obama and Clinton campaigns and is in conversations with potential clients for next year.

Worse news, they worry: Many of the ideas party leaders have latched onto in an attempt to appeal to their lost voters — free college tuition, raising the minimum wage to $15, even Medicare for all — test poorly among voters outside the base. The people in these polls and focus groups tend to see those proposals as empty promises, at best.

Pollsters are shocked by how many voters describe themselves as “exhausted” by the constant chaos surrounding Trump, and they find that there’s strong support for a Congress that provides a check on him rather than voting for his agenda most of the time. But he is still viewed as an outsider shaking up the system, which people in the various surveys say they like, and which Democrats don’t stack up well against.”

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Don’t forget that Trump has seldom “polled well” except among his base. He never really crossed the 50% mark in any credible polls (assuming that any polls were in fact credible, something cast into doubt by the 2016 Election) even on Election Day. But, that hasn’t stopped him from becoming President and won’t necessarily stop him from being a 2-term President.

If nothing else, Trump has proved that a fanatic base, properly distributed across the U.S., can allow him to exploit the peculiarities of the US system to win elections without ever being “the people’s choice.” According to this article, there is little reason to believe that voters will hold either Trump or the GOP accountable for their lackluster performance at governing. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the GOP will wake up the morning after the November 2018 Elections with even bigger majorities in the House and Senate.

PWS

09-13-17

ATTN: “NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY” & ALL INTERESTED ATTORNEYS: Pro Bono Immigration Lawyers Needed In NOVA — Training Will Be Provided By Catholic Charities Legal Services!

Our minister, Pastor Deborah Porras of Beverley Hills Community Methodist Church in Alexandria, VA sent me the following:

———- Forwarded message ———
From: NOVASanctuaryCongregationsNetwork <novasanctuarycongregationsnetwork@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 1:16 PM
Subject: Seeking attorneys for pro bono immigration cases
To: NOVASanctuaryCongregationsNetwork <novasanctuarycongregationsnetwork@googlegroups.com>

Please pass the following on to attorneys who may want to help with pro bono immigration cases:

Are you a lawyer? Would you like to use your legal skills to help keep our immigrant neighbors safe? One of the most pressing needs we hear from immigrant organizations in the DC area is “more lawyers” – and with DACA recipients now needing to look at what other options they may have to remain in the country, the need for legal services is especially great right now.

The All Souls (Unitarian) Church Sanctuary Movement Support Committee is sponsoring a training for lawyers who are interested in volunteering on a pro bono immigration case. Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services will provide the training, coordinate case assignments, and support volunteers who are handling cases.

Immigration Legal Services Training
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
6:30-8:45 p.m.
All Souls Church Unitarian
1500 Harvard Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009
The training will include a general overview of immigration law as well as specific information on U visas for immigrants who have been the victim of a crime. Volunteers will be initially assigned to cases involving U visas.
Volunteers must be lawyers who are currently licensed to practice and may not be federal employees. If you’re interested in volunteering, click here to register for the required training, or contact Maya Hermann at hermann.maya@icloud.com.
—
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “NOVASanctuaryCongregationsNetwork” group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to novasanctuarycongregationsnetwork+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to novasanctuarycongregationsnetwork@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/novasanctuarycongregationsnetwork/66f7c2fb-6ef2-427b-b6e8-3f7efb9cc3cf%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
—
Sent from Pastor Deborah with blessings!

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

There is no greater due process need in America today than the need for pro bono lawyers to represent migrants appearing before the USCIS and in the U.S. Immigration Courts. Unlike criminal cases, Government appointed counsel is not available to those facing removal from the US, even if they have been here for decades or have green cards.

Lawyers make a difference! In Immigration Court represented migrants are 5 to 17 times more likely to “win” their cases than are those who are forced to appear without counsel. I’m sure the same is true before USCIS in the area of “U” visas for victims of crime. The “U” visa process is complicated and requires meticulous documentation and effective presentation. I personally can’t imagine how anyone could successfully navagate this process without a highly competent lawyer!

Note: In my “cut and paste” I wasn’t able to reproduce the “live” links in the original e-mail. So those interested should contact Maya Hermann at her e-mail address in bold above!

PWS

09-13-17

TAL KOPAN AT CNN: WE’LL SOON LEARN IF THERE IS ANY LIMIT TO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S BAD IMMIGRATION POLICIES: Hundreds Of Thousands Of U.S. Workers & Families In “TPS” Status Anxiously Await Word Of Their Fate!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/politics/next-daca-tps-temporary-protected-status/index.html

Tal reports

“To qualify for protections from El Salvador, recipients must have lived in the United States since 2001, and for Honduras, it’s 1998, meaning any revocation of the program would upend lives built in the United States for nearly 20 years.

Lawmakers have been pressing the Trump administration to preserve temporary protected status for the countries whose deadlines for redesignation are coming up soon, citing the communities that would be harmed. At a meeting in July with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly indicated he could end Haiti’s status but hadn’t made a decision on Central America.

In addition to the humanitarian concerns, supporters of the program point to analyses that show an economic impact from revoking it.

“If El Salvador terminates, literally 260,000 eligible workers will fall out of the workforce at the stroke of midnight on whatever day that happens,” Rodriguez said.

An analysis by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which advocates for pro-immigration policies, found that deporting all the immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti who have temporary protected status would cost $3.1 billion and take away $6.9 billion in contributions to Social Security and Medicare and $45.2 billion to the gross domestic product over a decade. Turnover costs for their employers would total nearly $1 billion.

“There’s different elements to the concern,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California. “First, in the case of people who’ve been here a considerable period of time, people become members of their community, and so … a couple decades later, you own businesses, you have families, you have grandchildren, you’re kind of part of our situation here.”

Lofgren said the designated countries often remain in dire straits, and sending people back to them would be “unwise.”

The program is one of the issues that Congress needs to tackle as part of immigration reform because insisting on keeping recipients’ status temporary becomes untenable, she said.

“There should be some rational way to transition people who have been here for a long time, and in the case of these people, they’ve been here in legal status, who because of the length of their stay have basically become valued members of our community,” Lofgren said. “That’s a matter of a change of immigration law.”

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

Read Tal’s complete article at the link.

Terminating TPS would further de-stabbilize the U.S. Immigration Court system because many, probably the majority of TPS recipients have court cases that were “administratively closed” and therefore taken off that Court’s docket (currently totalling more than 610,000 cases with some hearings already scheduled four or more years in the future). Merely the preliminary act of “moving to re-calendar” the TPS cases all at once could crash the court system, given its current non-automated, largely manual, paper intensive procedures and lack of any e-filing.

If hundreds of thousands of individuals were returned to El Salvador it would likely de-stabllize the country and lead to collapse and internal chaos. Additionally, loss of “remittances” sent to El Salvador by legally working TPS individuals in the U.S. would almost certainly send the El Salvadoran economy into a tailspin. For that reason, a prior plan during the Clinton Administration for a phase-out of Salvadoran TPS led to panicked entreaties from the Salvadoran Government to the Administration to leave the TPS program in place.

From my perspective as an Immigration Judge, TPS was one of the “smartest” programs ever. It allowed many deserving individuals with difficult asylum cases that would have taken many hours of hearing time to be removed from the court docket with minimal work for the Immigration Court and our overburdened staff. Even “de novo review” of a TPS denial could ordinarily be accomplished in a 30 minute “short block” of hearing time rather than a 3-hour “full block” hearing.

TPS combined efficient adjudication by USCIS with needed work authorization for American families, while “demurring” on the more difficult questions of green card status or a path to citizenship. It also had an effective enforcement mechanism. Those relatively few TPS individuals who committed a felony or two or more misdemeanors were arrested, placed in detention, stripped of status, and in most cases removed from the U.S. promptly under the policies placed in effect by the Obama Administration.

PWS

09-11-17

THE ECONOMY: What America REALLY Needs: More Legal Workers, No More “Gonzo” Immigration Enforcement — More Immigrant Workers Needed To Save Our Economy — And They Don’t Have To Be Rocket Scientists & PhDs: Construction & Service Industries That Support US Economy Need “Entry Level” Workers!

http://host.madison.com/wsj/business/wisconsin-businesses-grapple-with-a-growing-worker-shortage/article_3ef1000e-c18b-5f72-bbcd-720ee2456111.html#utm_source=host.madison.com&utm_campaign=%2Femail%2F&utm_medium=email&utm_content=26CD42536544E247751EC74095D9CEDC67E77EDB

The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) reports:

A Madison restaurant has raised pay for entry-level chefs in recent years more than 50 percent to $14 an hour, but still closes on Sunday evenings — not because of a lack of customers, but because workers are scarce.

Those and countless other stories across Wisconsin are symptoms of a growing worker shortage that is expected to worsen over the next decade, according to Wisconsin State Journal interviews with dozens of employers, economists, advocacy group experts and state political and economic development officials.

“We are right at the brink of the crisis,” said Ann Franz, director of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance in Green Bay. “There just aren’t enough human beings in Wisconsin with baby boomers retiring. Just driving down the road there are constantly signs hiring. I’ve seen them on billboards: ‘Come to our car dealership and buy our car. Come so we can give you a job.'”

Employers from a broad range of industries are reporting difficulty finding workers — and not only for skilled professionals such as nurses, welders and computer programmers, who require a strong education and training system, but also for workers with a high school diploma and some additional training at restaurants, farms, construction sites, factories, senior care facilities, retailers and other businesses.

“I would call it Wisconsin’s mega-issue,” said Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business group, which recently found 77 percent of members surveyed had difficulty finding workers, up from 53 percent two years ago. “All other issues, they may be important, but they are subordinate to workforce.”

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

In this context, terminating DACA, thereby depriving existing productive American workers of work authorization, is not only cruel, but also crazy. And supporting the RAISE Act — specifically designed by White Nationalist restrictionists to lower legal immigration while limiting the remaining opportunities largely to White, English speaking individuals with college degrees — is simply insane.

Legal immigration is good for America in many ways (beyond the economy) and we need more, not less, of it. Indeed, had we developed a more rational and realistic legal immigration system, most of the Dreamers and their families would have been admitted in an orderly fashion under the legal system years ago.

Guys like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who worked as an effective legislative minority to block sensible immigration reform through parliamentary maneuvers, are now falsely claiming that deportations, “gonzo” arbitrary enforcement, and a reign of terror are the only solutions to a fake crisis that they largely created.

But, in fact, there is no crisis. Most of the 11 million migrants here without documentation are working hard, in jobs we need, part of American families, English speaking or learning English, and fitting well into American communities. Indeed, they are far less disruptive to society than are ICE’s arbitrary and fear spresding enforcement policies. That’s certainly the case here in Alexandria and Northern Virginia. And even more of them would pay taxes if we simply made it easy for them by granting legal status.

The relatively small minority of undocumented migrants who are engaging in anti-social behavior can be identified and removed with some reasonable readjustment of existing resources. For example, more money allocated to the U.S. Immigration Courts, training, technology, community-based policing, and focused “smart”enforcement instead of wasteful and inhumane detention, unfocused arbitrary enforcement, unneeded walls, and filling prisons with minor immigration violators. ICE prosecutors should be authorized and encouraged to use their discretion to prioritize their Immigration Court dockets with a focus on due process and bettering society while recognizing that judicial time will always be both precious and limited.

The current scare tactics and dire, but false, scenarios being pushed by the Trump Administration will neither aid our economy nor serve America’s real needs. They would make us both less safe and less great as a nation.

PWS

09-10-17

NYT: THE “ANTI-DREAMERS'” (KNOWINGLY) FALSE NARRATIVE!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/politics/why-common-critiques-of-daca-are-misleading.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Linda Qiu writes:

“Defenders of President Trump’s decision to rescind an Obama-era immigration policy that shielded young immigrants from deportation have offered misleading critiques of the program.

They say the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, known as DACA, led to a humanitarian crisis on the border, put native-born Americans out of work and conferred legal status to recipients. Here’s an assessment.

DACA does not specifically grant legal permanent residency or citizenship, but there are pathways for recipients.
Conservative news personalities have suggested that DACA leads to citizenship or that recipients are eligible. These claims require more context.

DACA grants recipients work permission and protects them from deportation, but it alone does not confer citizenship or legal permanent resident status. They are not granted legal status, according to the Department of Homeland Security, though their removals are deferred.

But, according to immigration data, just under 40,000 DACA recipients have obtained “green cards,” or legal permanent residency, and over 1,000 have become American citizens. This is possible because DACA recipients can change their immigration status through a legal basis other than DACA (like marrying an American citizen).

While immigration law bars people who overstayed their visa from returning to the United States for three or 10 years, depending on how long they have resided here unlawfully, DACA halts recipients’ accrual of “unlawful presence.” So someone who obtained DACA status before the re-entry penalty was triggered would remain protected from it.

DACA recipients who entered the country illegally cannot apply for residency the same way as people who entered legally and overstayed their visas. They can, however, apply for “advance parole,” which gives recipients permission to travel outside the United States under special circumstances and is not specific to DACA. When they return to the United States, they enter legally, opening up other avenues for legal status.

It’s misleading to suggest that DACA triggered a wave of migration from Central America.
In a statement, Mr. Trump blamed DACA for spurring “the massive surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America,” a claim echoed by his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and other Republican lawmakers. But the link between DACA and the humanitarian crisis in 2014 is largely anecdotal and overstated.

Nearly 70,000 children, overwhelmingly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, tried to cross the United States border alone in the 2014 fiscal year. They would not have qualified for DACA, a program for undocumented immigrants brought in before age 16 who had been living in the United States since 2007.

There were certainly reports of children who listed American immigration policy as having prompted their solo journeys. The Obama administration’s clarification that the minors were not eligible for DACA also suggests a need to swat away the notion. And researchers have noted the possibility that DACA might have given migrants hope that the United States could provide future reprieve from deportation.

Still, it’s a stretch to say DACA was the single or even the main motivating factor behind the surge in migrant children reaching the border. For one, Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran applications for asylum to other Central American countries increased by 1,185 percent from 2008 to 2014, showing that the children were seeking relief not only in the United States.

More significant drivers of the migration were violence, poverty, gang presence, economic opportunity and the desire to be reunified with family, and “it remains unclear if, and how, specific immigration policies have motivated children to migrate to the United States,” according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

Department of Homeland Security data also shows that the surge in unaccompanied minors preceded President Barack Obama’s June 2012 DACA executive order. The number of apprehensions began to rise in January 2012 and plateaued from June 2012 to January 2013, before increasing and then peaking in May and June of 2014.

The evidence that DACA recipients have displaced native-born workers is lacking.
According to Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than four million unemployed Americans in the same age group as DACA recipients “could possibly have those jobs” held by DACA recipients. And Mr. Sessions was more emphatic: The executive order “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.”

While it’s certainly possible that there are individual cases of an employer hiring a DACA recipient instead of an American citizen, the claim of a widespread trend is unproved.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that trends in foreign-born and native-born unemployment rates have not changed with DACA. For example, the unemployment rate for natives who had attended college was lower than their foreign-born peers both before and after 2012, while the unemployment rate for natives without a high school diploma has consistently been higher than the foreign-born population.

Similarly, DACA appears to have had no discernible effect on the number of total job openings or those specifically in white collar industries — where DACA recipients are more commonly employed — which have been steadily rising since mid-2009. Economists dispute the overarching argument that less immigration leads to more jobs for Americans.

The defense that Mr. Trump’s order does not open up DACA recipients to deportation is false.
Rescinding DACA will not lead to the “mass deportation of people,” the conservative radio host and author Laura Ingraham said in an interview on Fox News. Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, argued on CNN that the “only folks that are subject to deportation right now are those that have engaged in criminal activity.”

Mr. Jordan’s claim is false. The Department of Homeland Security has been clear that officials will potentially arrest and deport any undocumented immigrant without protected status, regardless of a criminal record. Though undocumented immigrants with criminal records still make up the majority of immigration arrests, noncriminal arrests more than doubled in Mr. Trump’s first 100 days as president, compared to the same time period in 2016.

Immigration lawyers say it’s too early to tell whether DACA recipients, who had to provide personal information to officials to apply for the status, will especially be at risk after Mr. Trump’s order. Previously, their information was “protected from disclosure” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for the purpose of enforcement. The order, however, notes that information “will not be proactively provided to ICE and CBP,” and the president has said that former recipients would not be a priority for deportation.

“It’s very unclear to me whether U.S.C.I.S. will share that information if ICE affirmatively asks,” said Kate Voigt of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, referring to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is clear, though, that Mr. Trump’s order rescinding DACA opens recipients up to deportation.”

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

Truth is that DACA is good for the U.S. But, truth seldom, if ever, enters into the restrictionist White Nationalist narrative.

PWS

09-10-17

SURPRISE! – GONZO LIES: “2017 is on pace for the second-lowest crime rate since 1990 — and near-record low murders” — Sessions Fabricates “Crime Wave” To Support White Nationalist Anti-Hispanic, Anti-Black Political Narrative! –“It’s irresponsible to incite public panic based on falsehoods, and it makes our police officers’ jobs harder.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/09/06/2017-is-on-pace-to-have-the-second-lowest-crime-rate-since-1990-and-near-record-low-murders/?utm_term=.d5c197d6052e

Philip Bump reports in the Washington Post:

“At his swearing-in as the nation’s top law enforcement official in February, Attorney General Jeff Sessions picked up a thread that had run throughout Donald Trump’s campaign for president: America is experiencing an alarming crime wave.

“We have a crime problem,” Sessions said. “I wish the rise that we are seeing in crime in America today were some sort of aberration or a blip. My best judgment, having been involved in criminal law enforcement for many years, is that this is a dangerous, permanent trend that places the health and safety of the American people at risk.”

Preliminary analysis of crime data from the nation’s 30 largest cities released by the Brennan Center for Justice on Wednesday suggests that it isn’t. According to the center’s overview of crime and murder data, 2017 is on pace to have the second-lowest violent crime rate of any year since 1990.

From the report:

The overall crime rate is projected to drop by 1.8 percent to the second-lowest point since 1990.
The violent crime rate is projected to fall by 0.6 percent, also to the second-lowest point in over 25 years. (The lowest rate was in 2014.) “This result,” the report’s authors write, “is driven primarily by stabilization in Chicago and declines in Washington, D.C., two large cities that experienced increases in violence in recent years.”
The murder rate is projected to be down 2.5 percent, on-par with the rate in 2009.

Explore the center’s data for each of the country’s largest cities.

While there was indeed a national uptick in violent crime and murder during 2015 and 2016, one of the underrecognized drivers of those shifts was the sharp increase in killings in two cities, Chicago and Baltimore, which combined made up more than half of the increase in murders in large cities from 2014 to 2017. This year, the number of murders in Chicago alone is expected to drop 2.4 percent. But it’s declines in New York, Houston and Detroit that are driving the overall decrease.

Inimai Chettiar, director of the justice program at the center, told The Post that the analysis suggested two things.

“First, the long-term trend toward safer cities isn’t going anywhere,” Chettiar said over email. “The evidence conclusively shows there is currently no national crime wave. Second, short-term fluctuations in crime are often driven by local factors.”

There are several cities that reinforce that point. The murder rate in Charlotte, doubled over the first half of 2017, for example, even as it fell sharply in other places.

Chettiar addressed Sessions’s concerns directly.

“Our data leads us to believe that the upticks in 2015 and 2016 were likely short-term fluctuations,” she wrote, noting that “not enough research has been done to identify the exact catalyst.”

The center, which is a part of the New York University School of Law, shared its report with Ronal Serpas, a former New Orleans police superintendent who now co-chairs an organization focused on reducing incarceration rates.

“In contrast to what we have been hearing from the president and attorney general, this new data from police departments shows that all measures of crime and murder are in decline this year,” Serpas said in a statement provided to The Post. “It’s irresponsible to incite public panic based on falsehoods, and it makes our police officers’ jobs harder.” Both Serpas and Chettiar noted that in places where violent crime had increased the Trump administration’s focus was best placed on that crime — as opposed to immigration violations, for example.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions stands waiting during a meeting with the Fraternal Order of Police in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in March. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

As the Trump campaign and then the Trump presidency cited localized increases as examples of the crime threat that Trump pledged to solve, independent observers frequently noted that, despite the uptick in crime in recent years, overall levels were still near recent lows following the sharp drop of the last 20 years. The Brennan Center’s analysis suggests that this trend will continue, leading the administration to a no-doubt vexing problem:

Is it too soon to claim credit?

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

I’ve noted many times before that Session’s disingenuous, xenophobic, White Nationalist focus on immigration enforcement actually makes the country less safe from crime. This report confirms that.

Moreover, with his “morbid fixation” on spreading a false narrative on immigration, Sessions has abandoned the real law enforcement functions of the DOJ, particularly in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, police brutality, prison reform, protection of the LGBTQ community, right-wing hate groups, domestic violence, and effectively combatting gangs, drug cartels, and human traffickers. As I’ve noted before, the latter three groups have been energized and empowered by Sessions’s focus on janitors, maids, gardeners, Dreamers and other “collaterals” — even dissing legal immigrants ands implicitly U.S. citizens of ethnic and immigrant heritage — rather than working on nuanced solutions to real law enforcement problems. By sowing unnecessary fear, mistrust, and terror among law-abiding productive members of migrant communities, he has basically “green-lighted” them as targets for crime, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, and gang recruitment. Ironically, this is a scenario I heard many times from individuals seeking refuge from third world countries: “I can’t go to the police because they won’t help and might even abuse or arrest me with impunity.”

Sessions is destroying the hard work of of community policing in ethnic communities in many cities throughout the U.S. One reason that many jurisdictions abandoned the “Safe Communities” program pushed by the Obama Administration is because they found it was a misnomer: busting undocumented workers and minor offenders actually did not make communities “safer.” Rather than learning from history, Sessions is doubling down on past failures. “Irresponsible” might be too kind a word to describe the Trump-Sessions White Nationalist legal agenda.

PWS

09-09-17

“JRUBE” IN WASHPOST: DEPT OF IN–JUSTICE: Under “Gonzo Apocalypto” White Nationalist, Xenophobic, Homophobic Political Agenda Replaces “Rule Of Law” — Latest DOJ Litigation Positions Fail “Straight Face” Test: “making up rules willy-nilly so as to show its rabid xenophobic base it is adhering to its promise of racial and ethnic exclusion!” — Read My “Mini-Essay” On How Advocates and U.S. Courts Could Restore Justice & Due Process To Our Broken U.S. Immigration Courts!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/09/08/trump-is-getting-rotten-legal-advice-and-once-again-it-shows/?utm_term=.e34528c36b2c

Jennifer Rubin writes in “Right Turn” in the Washington Post:

“The 9th Circuit gave the back of the hand to the argument that the Trump administration could borrow a definition from another section of the immigration statute to exclude grandmothers. The Supreme Court had used mothers-in-law as an example of a close familial relationship it wanted to protect. The 9th Circuit judges wrote: “Plaintiffs correctly point out that the familial relationships the Government seeks to bar from entry are within the same ‘degree of kinship’ as a mother-in-law.” It’s hard to make a case that grandmothers would not qualify. It does not appear that the government even made a good-faith effort to apply the Supreme Court’s direction.

On one level, it’s shocking that a Republican administration that is supposed to be a defender of “family values” would take such a miserly position. But, of course, family values are of little consequence to an administration that is more than willing to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, auguring for the breakup of intimate family relations (e.g., one sibling gets deported but American-born siblings remain).

The 9th Circuit also looked at the administration’s argument that a refugee with a formal assurance of settlement lacks a bona fide relationship with some entity or individual in the United States. The court set out the laborious screening process refugees undertake (making a mockery of the notion these people are a security threat) and noted that after all those steps are completed the refugee gets a sponsorship assurance “from one of nine private non-profit organizations, known as resettlement agencies.” The 9th Circuit held: “The Government contends that a formal assurance does not create a bona fide relationship between a resettlement agency and a refugee, and stresses that ‘[t]he assurance is not an agreement between the resettlement agency and the refugee; rather, it is an agreement between the agency and the federal government.’ But the Supreme Court’s stay decision specifies that a qualifying relationship is one that is ‘formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading [the Executive Order].”’”

Again, one cannot help but come away with the impression that the government is throwing up every half-baked idea it can find to limit the number of people entering the country, regardless of the national security risk or the hardship its action inflicts. The Trump administration is plainly reasoning backward — deny as many people as possible admittance and then think up a reason to justify its position.

In its fixation with keeping as many immigrants out of the United States as possible, the Trump administration cannot claim to merely be following the dictates of the law. (Gosh it’s out of our hands — “Dreamers” and grandmas have to go!) It is making up rules willy-nilly so as to show its rabid xenophobic base it is adhering to its promise of racial and ethnic exclusion. It’s hard to believe seasoned career Justice Department lawyers agree with these arguments. In its oversight hearings Congress should start grilling Attorney General Jeff Sessions as to how he comes up with his cockamamie legal arguments and whether political appointees are running roughshod over career DOJ lawyers.

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

Read Rubin’s full article at the link.

Mini-Essay:

TIME FOR ACTION ON THE BROKEN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS — IF CONGRESS WON’T ACT, THE FEDERAL COURTS MUST

Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

If nothing else, the Trump Administration has given me a new appreciation for the Post’s “JRube.” She certainly has “dialed up” Gonzo’s number and exposed what’s behind his pompous, disingenuous misuse of the term “rule of law.”

No chance that a GOP Senate with Chuck Grassley as Judiciary Chair is going to hold Gonzo accountable for his daily perversions of “justice.” But, at some point, Federal Courts could begin sanctioning DOJ lawyers for willful misrepresentations (the Hawaii arguments before the 9th contained several) and frivolous positions in litigation. It’s possible that some DOJ lawyers all the way up to Gonzo himself could be referred by Federal Judges to state bar authorities for a look at whether their multiple violations of ethical standards should result suspension of their law licenses.

Another thought kicking around inside my head is that Gonzo’s actions and his public statements are starting to make a plausible case for a due process challenge to the continued operation of the U.S. Immigration Courts.

As with school desegregation, prison reform, and voting rights, a Federal Court could find systematic bias and failure to protect due process. That could result in something like 1) a requirement that the DOJ submit a “due process restoration” plan to the court for approval, or 2) the court appointment of an independent “judicial monitor” to run the courts in a fair and unbiased manner consistent with due process, or 3) the Federal Courts could take over supervision of the US Immigration Courts pending the creation of an Article I (or Article III) replacement.

High on the list of constitutionally-required reforms would be ending the location of courts within DHS detention facilities. All courts should be located in areas where adequate pro bono counsel is reasonably available and accessible. Immigration Courts should be located outside of DHS facilities in buildings accessible to the public with reasonable security requirements. Immigration Judges must be required to continue cases until pro bono counsel can be retained. Alternatively, the Government could provide for appointed counsel.

Another obvious due process reform would be to strip the Attorney General of his (conflict of interest) authority to establish or review precedents and operating procedures for the U.S. Immigration Courts. Along with that, the DHS should be given an equal right to appeal adverse BIA appellate decisions to the Courts of Appeals (rather than seeking relief from the AG — clearly an interested party in relation to immigration enforcement).

There also should be an immediate end to the appointment and supervision of U.S. Immigration Judges by the politically-biased AG. U.S. Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Immigration Judges should be appointed on a strict merit basis by either an independent judicial monitor or by the U.S. Courts of Appeals until Congress enacts statutory reforms.

The current U.S. Immigration Court system mocks justice in the same way that Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions mocks it almost every day. There might be no practical way to legally remove Gonzo at present, but the Federal Courts could step in to force the U.S. Immigration Courts to undertake due process reforms. The current situation is unacceptable from a constitutional due process standpoint. Something has to change for the better!

PWS

09-09-17\

PETULA DVORAK IN WASHPOST: DISHONEST LEADERS SOW “FALSE FEARS” WHILE IGNORING REAL THREATS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/what-happens-when-a-presidency-runs-on-fakefears-real-fears-are-ignored/2017/09/07/83ead004-93d1-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html

Dvorak writes:

Fake fear is our new leader.

Washington’s new ruling class is not governing with compassion, common sense, measured research, knowledge of history or the future. Theirs is a doctrine of fake fears. And these same people also have a problem with things we should actually be afraid of.

Let me explain.

Fake Fear: The “bad hombres” President Donald Trump talked about during the campaign last year begot this week’s DACA repeal thing. Trump wants us to be afraid of these immigrants, and he’s ready to trash the lives of more than 800,000 Americans looking for a path to legal residency by killing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The truth is that these immigrants, brought here as children by their parents, “have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans of the same age and education level,” according to a report issued last week by the nonpartisan CATO Institute.

Real Fear: Hurricanes. You know them — from Katrina to Harvey to Irma — millions of people and billions of dollars tell you hurricanes devastate lives, cities and industries.

But Trump refuses to fear them. Earlier this year, he proposed a budget that slashed about $667 million for the disaster preparedness programs run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That budget also proposed $6 billion in cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps rebuild homes and hospitals.

The fake fear administration also killed a post-Katrina rule requiring building projects eligible for federal funding to take such measures as elevating structures in flood zones away from the reach of rising water before they get government cash. And they did this just in time for hurricane season.

But hey, the $108 billion in damage and the 1,800 lives lost in Hurricane Katrina must not mean much when it your moral compass is fake fear.

Fake fear: The apparent crime wave that Attorney General Jeff Sessions keeps warning Americans about.

“We have a crime problem,” Sessions said in February. “I wish the rise that we are seeing in crime in America today were some sort of aberration or a blip. My best judgment, having been involved in criminal law enforcement for many years, is that this is a dangerous, permanent trend that places the health and safety of the American people at risk.”

But the facts say otherwise.

This year is on pace to have the second-lowest violent crime rate of any year since 1990, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice this week that analyzed statistics from the nation’s 30 largest cities.

Real fear: Though we’ve seen more and more horrifying videos of civilians being shot by police officers, we still have little comprehensive data that shows how often this happens and how agencies can prevent these tragedies.

“What we really need to know is how many times police shoot people, not just how many of those people die,” David A. Klinger, a criminal justice professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis who studies police use of force, told The Washington Post earlier this summer.

The Post began compiling this information in 2015, relying on local news, social media and our own reporting.

This is a real fear for real people. This is true whether you’re a black man, such as beloved cafeteria worker Philando Castile, who was doing nothing wrong when he was killed in Minnesota last year by a nervous police officer. And it’s true if you’re a white woman, like nurse Alex Wubbels, who was seen in a viral video last week being roughed up and arrested by a Utah detective for simply doing her job. The fake fear people seem to have little interest in addressing this problem.

The FBI’s weak, self-reporting system that has been the only way to track this was called “embarrassing and ridiculous” by fired FBI director James B. Comey.

Fake fear: Muslims in America. Trump’s attempts at a travel ban, fulfilling his campaign promise of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” have reinforced a growing and misplaced Islamophobia throughout our country. We’ve seen the fake-fear sentiment in workplaces, in small-town councils trying to mess with mosques that have been peaceful and unnoticed for years, and I even saw it one of my sons’ sports teams this summer.

The truth is, from 2008 to 2016, right-wing extremists carried out twice as many terrorist attacks on U.S. soil than Islamist extremists, according to a recent report from The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal.

Real Fear: White supremacists in America. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin that said white supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement.”

They issued this statement just a couple months before the protests in Charlottesville, where an avowed Nazi sympathizer was arrested after a car drove into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. There is no mistaking that was real.

We deserve real care and real concern from our leaders when it comes to real fears. There’s no shortage of them.

Let’s start by calling out #FakeFears when we see them. Washington is full of those these days, too.

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

Dvorak succinctly captures what White Nationalist governance and propaganda is all about: fear, loathing, lies. Too cowardly to address real problems because that might offend the “White Nationalist base” that put and keeps them in power.

PWS

09-08-17

IN HARVEY’S WAKE: GONZO’S ANTI-DREAMER POLICIES LIKELY TO CAUSE MORE LASTING DAMAGE TO HOUSTON THAN STORM: Homes & Businesses Can Be Rebuilt — Ruined Lives, Dashed Dreams, & Destroyed Trust Can’t: “how suffering can needlessly be inflicted!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/opinion/daca-trump-hurricane-harvey-.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region%C2%AEion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Lacy M. Johnson writes in the NY Times:

“HOUSTON — As the floodwaters rose in my west Houston neighborhood after Hurricane Harvey landed, my husband and many of our neighbors pulled boats through waist-high water, knocked on doors and plucked people from their submerged houses. They rescued elderly couples, young roommates, families who do not speak English. There was no checking of IDs, no debate on whether a life was worth saving.

All across the city, as catastrophic flooding threatened to drown us, regular people risked their lives to help others. Alonso Guillen, a radio host and D.J. who lived in Lufkin, Tex., two hours from Houston, brought a boat and a group of friends here to join in those efforts. He was on that boat, saving people he had never met before, when it capsized last Wednesday and he drowned. Alonso Guillen died a hero, if not an American citizen. He was a Dreamer, a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and like the nearly 141,000 other Dreamers in Texas, he followed the requirements of the program — to stay in school or be gainfully employed — and had never been convicted of a crime. More than that, Texas was his home.

Around the time Alonso Guillen was buried in Lufkin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced President Trump’s decision to cancel the DACA program, saying that “enforcing the law saves lives, protects communities and taxpayers, and prevents human suffering.” Instead, what the announcement shows is how suffering can needlessly be inflicted.

The end of DACA means that hundreds of thousands of people nationwide will lose their eligibility to work. As many as 80,000 Dreamers in the greater Houston area alone could be deported to countries where they have no relationships, where they do not even speak the language. It is the disaster of this decision — more than the hurricane — that threatens to tear our city apart.

. . . .

Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the choice to end DACA “the compassionate thing.” But this decision doesn’t look like any kind of compassion I’ve seen in Houston, where everyone I know has chosen to open their homes to strangers, to feed them, clothe them, raise money for the restoration of their homes. Even people whose own houses were destroyed are helping others in the ways they can.

. . . .

The conversation about what comes next, how to rebuild and how to engineer a more equitable city, is a long one and is now only beginning. Tomorrow, some of us will choose to prepare meals, to join a work crew, to deliver donations on a flatbed truck. We’re planning to fight like hell for every single one of our Dreamers — to keep them where they are already home.”

Lacy M. Johnson is the author of “The Other Side: A Memoir” and the forthcoming essay collection “The Reckonings.”

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

Hurricanes are “acts of God” (aggravated by anti-science politicians and unwise, greed-driven choices in urban development). But, empowering White Nationalist restrictionists and their gonzo views and policies on immigration is purely a man-made disaster that can be reversed at the ballot box. (That’s why White Nationalist Kris Kobach and his Voter Suppression Commission is working so hard to restrict suffrage!)

PWS

09-08-17

JULIA EDWARDS AINSLEY & ANDREW BLANKSTEIN AT NBC: Weather Forces ICE To Cancel Mega-Bust!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-plans-mega-largest-immigration-raid-operation-its-kind-n799691

“WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had planned nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as “the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,” an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But after NBC News reported the plans late Thursday, the agency issued a statement saying it had cancelled nationwide enforcement actions due to Hurricane Irma and the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.

. . . .

It is not unusual for ICE operations to target immigrants by the hundreds or even low thousands. The higher-than-usual target number may have been partially driven by an effort to reach a deportation goal by the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, one of the officials said.

The cancelled operation comes on the heels of Trump’s controversial decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that allows some immigrants who were brought into the United States as children to stay.

ICE had been planning the operation internally since mid-August and had instructed officers in the field to target adults deemed to be gang members or perpetrators of serious crimes, said one of the officials. Other undocumented immigrants not suspected of crimes may have been swept up in the raids as “collateral,” the official said.

Immigration agents often only arrest one-quarter to one-half of the target population due to the difficulty of locating individuals and getting them to open their doors to agents.”

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

Read the full story at the link.

Yup, gotta jack up those fiscal year-end numbers with plenty of “collaterals.” Year-end performance bonuses could be at risk here!

Of course, a more rational factor might be that we’re not going to be able to rebuild and recover from multiple major hurricanes without the help of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Gonzo’s fabrications notwithstanding, there aren’t enough other American workers available with the skills and work ethic to get the job done. And, if Gonzo has his way, the worker shortage will become chronic and tank our economy. But, ruining America is well worth it to build the White Nationalist Empire that Trump, Bannon, and Sessions envision.

Also, congratulations to the fantastic Julia Edwards Ainsley on starting her new gig at NBC News! Julia formerly was the Washington Reporter for Reuters. Different organizations, same incisive reporting!

PWS

09-07-17

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: