"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Outrage after survivor of El Paso mass shooting deported to Mexico
Police reportedly stopped the woman due to a non-functioning brake light, took her to a local jail and then soon deported her
Kenya Evelyn in Washington
Published:
12:00 Monday, 01 February 2021
Follow Kenya Evelyn
A survivor of a Walmart mass shooting that killed 23 people in El Paso, Texas, and targeted Latino people has been deported to Mexico, triggering widespread outrage among activists and local politicians.
Police reportedly stopped the woman – who was not named in full – due to a non-functioning brake light, then took her to a local jail. She was then placed into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), where she was soon deported to Mexico.
Best
The legal defense team working on her behalf confirmed to local KVIA that city police arrested the woman, identified as just Rosa. She was booked into the El Paso county jail annex.
Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services told local KTSM that on Wednesday, the survivor was pulled over and, during the traffic stop, found to have two, five-year-old citations still outstanding.
By Friday morning, Rosa had been deported to Cuidad Juárez where she has remained ever since.
On a Saturday morning in early August 2019, a 21-year-old man walked into the El Paso Walmart Super Center and opened fire, first into the parking lot before taking aim at the store’s entryway. The attack killed 13 Americans, eight Mexicans and one German.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.
Undoubtedly, it’s hard to “get a handle” on the failed DHS bureaucracy — a more than willing enforcer of Trump’s cruel, White Nationalist, often illegal immigration agenda.
But, if the Biden Administration wants to change policy, they must find the right people to do just that — sooner, rather than later! Otherwise, like past Dem Administrations, they will end up with a file (or drive) full of reasonable policy memos that everyone ignores.
“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)Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras Artist: Monte Wolverton Reproduced under license
Last week, 9000 Hondurans were beaten and tear-gassed in Guatemala as they tried to make their way to the U.S. border. More will be coming. The Biden administration just introduced the most comprehensive immigration bill since Ronald Reagan and also hopes to embark on a new strategy for the Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
This is undisputedly good news for a region ravaged by two Category 5 hurricanes in 2 weeks and an economy devastated by the Covid pandemic. But, unless that aid directly addresses the rampant corruption that has taken hold in the region, it will not stop thousands of desperate people from fleeing countries that give them little hope to survive much less flourish.
Make no mistake, it is corruption that has stolen hope from the region. Elites steal from school and hospital budgets to fund political campaigns and line pockets. Politicians give family members and supporters coveted government positions that should go to those most qualified. Police are bribed and threatened to look away while drug traffickers and gangs shatter communities.
Until this staggering systemic corruption is dismantled and the education, health and security institutions strengthened, Central Americans have little reason to hope for a future in their own countries.
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden issued just one policy position for the Western Hemisphere and it was on Central America. In it he proposed a number of worthy initiatives, but one merits special consideration– a Central American anti-corruption commission that operates outside the control of the elites who are most threatened by its existence.
To be successful, this commission must learn from past experiences in Guatemala (CICIG), Honduras (MACCIH) and El Salvador (CICIES). While the first two enjoyed significant success, as soon as U.S. and local political pressure waned even a little, the local elites joined together to expel them.
. . . .
Authors! James D. Nealon is a former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras and Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security. Eric L. Olson is a Wilson Center Global Fellow. Kurt Alan Ver Beek is Co-Founder and President of the Association for a More Just Society – Honduras
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Easier said than done. Many of the corrupt governing elites in Central America have close ties to our Government. They aren’t lightly going to let foreign assistance, whether from governments, NGOs, or private agencies go anywhere but their own pockets.
Also, Republicans in Congress have shown no willingness to deal with the overt corruption, grafting, and grafting of the Trump regime.
But the article is spot on about two things. Most Central American migration is driven by political punishment and exploitation of the people by corrupt government elites and those allied with them (gangs, in many instances). Far from being “random violence” or “common crime” as many restrictionists and border bureaucrats claim, it’s simply a variation of classic political, ethnic, and social group persecution. Those fleeing this abuse are refugees. Only by abdicating the law, intentionally skewing it, and too often just overtly violating it (sometimes with the complicity of courts, sometimes in violation of court orders) has our Government been able to avoid granting them the legal protection they deserve.
Second, desperate refugees are going to continue to come as long as they perceive it’s safer here than in their broken home countries or any of the other countries they will have to cross to get there. No walls, prisons, death at the border, violations of domestic and international law, racist rhetoric, illegal deportations, child abuse, misogyny or or other cruel, inhuman, and immoral policies will stop human migration.
We know roughly how many have been illegally returned and imprisoned. We have some “guesstimates” as to how many additional border crossers our failed policies have killed.
But, we have little or no idea how many have taken to heart our message about the falseness of our claim to be a “nation of laws” and the readily apparent bankruptcy of our legal system. Undoubtedly, those who “get it” have or will in the future simply keep crossing the border until they die in process or get to the interior where their chances of melding in and surviving are much better than their chances of getting a asylum or other protections from an EOIR that still appears to be carrying out the Steven Miller White Nationalist agenda.
The “government policies” of actively discouraging and punishing asylum applicants who apply in an orderly way at the border is as insanely stupid as it is cruel and illegal. Actually, allowing individuals to apply for asylum at the border “regardless of status” is a hallmark of the Refugee Act of 1980!
A few thousand desperate refugees who walk here from Central America pose no realistic threat to America or our national security. They merely detract attention from the real threats: armed right wing insurrectionists launching a deadly attack on our Capitol, right wing domestic terrorists energized by Trump, and maskless “magamorons” running around spreading deadly disease.
Process those applying at the border promptly under the appropriate generous legal criteria after giving them access to trained asylum advocates. Admit those who qualify after proper health and security screening. Work with the UNHCR and NGOs on how to handle those who don’t meet refugee criteria. Just aimlessly returning them to danger zones in the middle of a pandemic is obviously a nonstarter. So, we’re going to need smarter people, with real expertise and a humanitarian outlook, working on better solutions. We know lots about what DOESN’T work. Now, we need to come up with what WILL work.
Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras Artist: Monte Wolverton Reproduced under license“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)
Here’s the opinion, with no discernible rationale for this unprincipled and irrational action:
Here’s the “death to children” ☠️⚰️ panel: Katsas, Rao, and Walker, Circuit Judges. As long as it’s not THEIR children . . . .
Bad things happen to countries that make child abuse an “official policy” and reward child abusers with lifetime judicial appointments!
The Biden Administration needs to move quickly to get a handle on what’s happening in their name at the border. Also, might want to take a look at the Government lawyers who defend the indefensible in Federal Court.
Better Judges For a Better America! No more child abusers on the Federal Bench!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Child Abusing Circuit Judges🤮, Never!
“The BIA erred in imposing evidentiary requirements of ongoing injury or treatment beyond the sexual assault itself in order to show persecution. Kaur’s credible testimony about the attempted gang rape is sufficient to show persecution. Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim. We grant Kaur’s petition for review and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
[Hats off to Douglas Jalaie!]
1st Calls Out Violation Of Regs, Incredibly Stupid Denial Of Reopening For Approved U Visa Petition Beneficiary Waiting For “Number:”
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
“Petitioner Carlos Antonio Granados Benitez seeks review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA” or “Board”) denial of his motion to reopen his removal proceedings and to remand to the immigration judge (“IJ”) for further consideration in light of the fact that he had been placed on a waiting list by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) for a U-1 nonimmigrant visa (“U visa”) pursuant to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (“VTVPA”), Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 1513(a)(2)(A), (b), 114 Stat. 1464 (2000) (codified as amended at 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(U)). Because we find that the BIA abused its discretion, in that it failed to render a reasoned decision that accords with its own precedent and policies, and it further failed to consider the position of its sister agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), we grant the petition. In so holding we join the views of the Seventh Circuit in Guerra Rocha v. Barr, 951 F.3d 848, 852- 54 (7th Cir. 2020).”
[Hats off to Paige Austin, with whom Philip L. Torrey, Make the Road New York, and the Harvard Law School Crimmigration Clinic were on brief, for petitioner, and Brian D. Straw, Gregory E. Ostfeld, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP on brief for ASISTA Immigration Assistance, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, National Network to End Domestic Violence, Safe Horizon, and Tahirih Justice Center, amici curiae!]
3rd “Perplexed” By BIA’s Ignorance Of “Equitable Tolling,” Own Authority:
“Hey, guys, ever hear of something called “equitable tolling?” “Nah, is it spelled D-E-N-I-E-D?” “Equitable TROLLING,” I’ve heard of that?”https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
“Because Nkomo properly raised equitable tolling before the BIA, the BIA erred in failing to consider her request for equitable tolling on the merits. We remand for the Board to do so in the first instance.”
“The BIA’s suggestion that it does not have the authority to make decisions on equitable grounds is perplexing. The BIA has authority to equitably toll the deadline for motions to reopen the precise relief Nkomo sought.”
Demeaning rape victims! ☠️🤮👎🏻 So, what else is new @ EOIR? “Gonzo” Sessions 🦹🏿♂️ set the tone for anti-asylum, racially motivated misogyny in Matter of A-B- and “his judges” have taken it from there! (I repeat my oft-made observation: What kind of “due process” system lets a characters like Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr “own” judges? How would you like to be a woman on trial for her life before a “judge” selected, directed, and “owned” by the likes of these men with clear records of “applied contempt” for equal justice? Sessions, Whitaker, Barr, & Jeffrey Rosen are gone — but their legacy of bias and injustice lives on @ EOIR!)
One of my esteemed Round Table 🛡⚔️ colleagues summed up the latest set of outrageous miscarriages of justice from Falls Church:
All of these decisions demonstrate the degree of careful and detailed analysis that these cases require.And yet the BIA couldn’t keep staff attorneys after McHenry capped them at GS-13 (entry level), and keeps increasing the monthly quotas for BIA staff attorneys.Plus of course the Board Members themselves are now all these types who only review the decisions to make sure they end in the word “dismissed.”
If you were trying to create a recipe for disaster, you couldn’t have planned it better.
I heard the latter comment twice yesterday from immigration/human rights/due process experts on opposite sides of our country who observe and participate in the system at various levels.
To quote Justice Sotomayor’s recent dissent: “This is not justice.”
Historical Footnote:One of my first actions as BIA Chair in 1995 was to establish a “GS-15 Career Ladder” for all Attorney Advisors at the BIA. This made the BIA competitive with the rest of the DOJ.
It allowed us to attract and retain not only “top talent” coming from the “DOJ Honors Program” (how I got my first job at the BIA in 1973), but also outstanding career attorneys who wanted an opportunity to do research, writing, and “applied scholarship” that made a difference in individuals’ lives. Indeed, at various times the BIA has had on its staff former Senior Executives seeking a “change of focus” to a career that allowed them to do the things they liked best about the law.
One of them was a former SES colleague at the “Legacy INS” who found in transferring to a GS-15 BIA Attorney Advisor position a career satisfaction, fulfillment, and sense of meaningful contribution that person had been missing in INS management at that time.
Reducing the top grade for Attorney Advisors is not only professionally and personally demeaning, it also marks the entire organization as “second class” and shows just how stupid and incompetent (and, in recent history, overpaid) EOIR “management” has become! And, as pointed out in my colleague’s comments above, it has not only adversely affected careers but the human lives in the balance on the BIA’s docket.
As I understood my “mission” from then Attorney General Janet Reno in 1995, the BIA was supposed to be about “attracting the best and the brightest judges and supporting them with the best and brightest staff.” Essentially getting it to function like the “12th Circuit” was a description mentioned during my interview process for the Chair job.
Sadly, now, it has become an assembly line of expediency, injustice, shoddy legal work, mindless “corner cutting,” unprofessional behavior, and human misery.
To repeat my colleague’s comment: “If you were trying to create a recipe for disaster, you couldn’t have planned it better.”
All of these cases should have been resolved in the foreign national’s favor without ever getting to the Courts of Appeals! Bad judging, grossly incompetent administration, and lack of qualified, dynamic, judicial leadership from respected “practical scholars” costs lives, produces unacceptable and unfair inconsistencies, and clogs the Article III Courts with unnecessary litigation.
Indeed, the First Circuit’s decision in Granados basically reveals OIL’s “smorgasbord” of bogus arguments to uphold the BIA’s incorrect decision as “without merit” — actually frivolous! There are deep problems @ DOJ resulting from the ongoing corruption and disregard for ethics and professional leadership from the now-departed kakistocracy! They go far beyond the mess at EOIR!
Sure hope that Judge Garland, Vanita Gupta, and their incoming team @ DOJ have a comprehensive plan for replacing the BIA and reforming EOIR! The human beings suffering in this disgracefully inept and abusive “court system” and their courageous, long suffering attorneys are counting on you! Think of it this way: What if YOUR daughter were the rape victim demeaned, dehumanized, and denied justice by EOIR?
Here’s the “initial analysis” of the latest White Nationalist BS from a Trump-appointed Judge:
Colleagues,
Some preliminary thoughts on today’s TRO are available on my blog, crimmigration.com, here.
César
—
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Professor of Law
University of Denver crimmigration.com
(he/him/his/el)
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Thanks, Cesar. Great analysis!
The White Nationalist, racist kakistocracy isn’t going to “go quietly into the night.” Paxton isn’t the brightest bulb out there, but the DOJ doesn’t have the legal talent available and lacks the expertise to defend America from the dangerous gang determined to destroy our nation and keep racism and inequality in force.
So, the Biden Administration had better get the smart, motivated, courageous folks who have been pounding the kakistocracy in court over the last four years “on the inside” and let them take on the Paxtons of the world while rationalizing the immigration system, implementing due process, and fighting institutionalized racism. This is a job for the pros, not more “Amateur Night at the Bijou.”
As the Migration Policy Institute has shown, the Trump-era changes to the immigration system numbered in the hundreds and consisted of dramatic reinterpretations of the laws alongside seemingly clerical changes, such as revised application forms for visas, higher fees and tighter deadlines in immigration courts — all to advance a maximalist enforcement agenda and slow down the ordinary gears of immigrant admissions. High-level White House advisers, working with knowledgeable allies in the Homeland Security and Justice departments, pushed out regulation after regulation to render asylum laws more restrictive and make it harder for noncitizens to present their case in immigration courts. Trump’s attorneys general exerted unprecedented authority to define asylum laws to severely limit claims by victims of domestic and gang violence, and to constrain immigration judges’ ability to grant relief and manage their dockets in a way that provides a semblance of due process.
. . . .
And yet, the new administration’s policy agenda will not be complete unless legislative proposals are accompanied by concerted executive action across the administrative state, and not just because ambitious legislation on any issue faces an uphill climb in a Senate with the narrowest of Democratic majorities. Even when it comes to pass, legislation emerges from a bargain, leaving issues unaddressed, introducing new concepts to be interpreted and creating new programs that demand administration. Changing the direction of our government requires not only executive vision, but also multilayered strategies that make their way through the bureaucracy and down to the ground — along with the stamina and patience to see them through.
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THE BATTLE FOR DUE PROCESS @ JUSTICE ISN’T OVER: Flailing, Failing Department Needs A Bureaucratic House-Cleaning, Now!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Jan. 24, 2021
Read Cristina’s complete article at the link. The book that she and Adam Cox wrote The President and Immigration Law along with that of my friend and colleague Professor PhilSchrag, Baby Jails, should be required reading for all incoming Biden-Harris officials.
A “democracy” that doesn’t understand how it came to run prisons for vulnerable kids and star chambers for legal asylum seekers, and how to end them immediately, can expect little success in achieving social justice, promoting economic equality and prosperity for all, or leading and advocating for democracy abroad.
It all starts with immigration. I can draw a straight line from the Muslim Ban, to the Roberts’ Court’s disgraceful and cowardly abdication of responsibility to stop it in its tracks (grotesquely undermining the many lower court Federal Judges who had courageously “mapped it out for them”), to GOP politicos running around undermining our free and fair elections, to “magamorons” and other traitor/crazies storming the Capitol. Folks “get” the abdication of moral responsibility and legal accountability when it is delivered by those who should be standing up for democracy.
The failure of career civil servants at all levels to “just say no” and rebel against these outrageous failures of Constitutional governance and simple human decency, combined with a horribly deficient Supremes’ majority that abandoned both legal legitimacy and moral leadership, created a beyond dangerous pattern that came very close to toppling two centuries of the “democratic experiment” and still has the future of our democratic republic “on the ropes.”
Just look at what happened at the DOJ in the final weeks of the regime! Government officials who knew better settled for “heading off” a President’s treasonous acts rather than exposing them to the public, the Vice President, and leaders of Congress (perhaps other than treacherous co-conspirator Kevin McCarthy) who could have taken action for the immediate removal of this “clear and present threat” to our national security from the office for which he was so completely unqualified. Who knows, they might even have stopped the insurrection!
Look at the failed and ethically vapid Solicitor General’s Office (once, but no longer, one of the “Jewels in the Crown” of Government) that time and time again moved forward to defend unethical and unconstitutional policies before a willing Supremes’ majority based on patently false narratives and obvious pretexts (not very convincingly) concealing the overt racist, White Nationalist agenda of Trump, Miller, and the other neo-Nazis who had seized control of large portions of our governing machinery. Who, with the disgraceful complicity of the Supremes, turned American asylum law from the life-saving humanitarian refuge it was intended to be to instead an ugly weapon of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, child abuse, death, torture, unjust imprisonment, and overall dehumanization of the most vulnerable among us! What’s wrong with this picture? Everything!
Checks and balances and the courage and integrity of a professional career civil service are supposed to halt abuses like this, even in the face of failure of one of our two major political parties and our highest Court to act with integrity and adhere to democratic norms! But, with a few exceptions, courageous folks like U.S. Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor, Col. Alexander Vindman, and others like them, it did not happen over the past four years. That nearly cost us our country! (Note that Tabaddor, Vindmin, and others like them were punished, with the disgraceful treasonists from the GOP looking on and actually cheerleading, for speaking out and upholding their oaths of office.)
Buried in the carnage of the departed regime are the many lives unnecessarily lost, futures ruined, and lasting trauma — trauma that will continue to adversely affect our nation far into the future — caused by failure to stop the kakistocracy’s unconstitutional, cruel, and inhuman abuses. From intentionally inept COVID policies, to “politicizing” masks, to deaths in detention, to unlawful deportations to torture, to unfair, clearly political misapplications of the death penalty (basically “legalized murder”), to officially-sanctioned misogyny — this damage can’t be swept away overnight.
Like legislative and judicial failures, bureaucratic failure comes at a cost — a huge one! The fact that it might be largely “out of sight, out of mind” to the arrogant, largely white, privileged, ruling elites and ivory tower “High Court” jurists doesn’t mean the harm isn’t real. Just that our society has enabled some in power to look away and avoid meaningful contact with the human wreckage and lasting pain and damage they have caused and or tolerated!
Already, we can see how the Biden-Harris Administration’s inexplicable failure to “take charge” at a broken DOJ is undermining the long-overdue and well-thought-out progressive immigration agenda they announced with such fanfare. Here’s what’s come to light in just the past few days at the broken and dysfunctional DOJ:
Seeking the illegal deportation to Haiti of a mentally ill individual denied due process by the EOIR kakistocracy;
Failure to repudiate scurrilous, misogynist attacks on well-known refugee woman “Ms. A-B-“ by unqualified then “acting” AG Jeffrey Rosen;
Issuance by the “EOIR Clown Show” of more false narratives and anti-migrant “precedents” — basically delivering the “big, public middle finger” to the new Administration and the AG-designate;
Release of a blockbuster investigative report on misogyny and misconduct within the Immigration Judiciary — with no response or plan for corrective action from the DOJ;
Appointment of a bunch of bureaucratic nobodies to “caretaker” duties at the DOJ — including one quickly found by reporters — but apparently missed by the incoming Administration — to have had ties to the grotesque child abuse program run by White Nationalist former AG “Gonzo” Sessions;
Release by the IG of a report showing the role of Sessions, Rosenstein, and other DOJ officials in “official child abuse” – without any promise of accountability for past or future misconduct;
A treasonous plot by the President, a GOP Congressman, and a corrupt DOJ political hack that, although thwarted, went unreported until uncovered by reporters from The NY Times!
To state the obvious, why weren’t folks with known integrity, courage, and ability — professional decision-makers with track records of upholding our Constitution — like Judge Ashley Tabaddor and her colleagues in the leadership of the National Association of Immigration Judges — put in charge of the DOJ debacle to “ride herd”on this mess, restore some integrity, and prevent any more damage until “Team Garland” arrives? Few folks at Justice know as much about the “inept DOJ bureaucracy and failure of justice at Justice” than the NAIJ leadership which has been “at war” with the kakistocracy for years!
The solutions are still out there. But, it will take boldness, courage, and some “quick thinking outside the box” by “Team Garland” to get this completely (and unnecessarily) unacceptable situation under control!
That begins with an immediate clean-up of the “immigration kakistocracy/bureaucracy” throughout Justice — starting with the “EOIR Clown Shown.” Bring in the immigration/human rights/due process experts and let them start fixing the problems!
Stop defending the unprofessional garbage being aimlessly tossed into the Federal Courts by the EOIR White Nationalist deportation factory still running under orders from Miller and Hamilton. Have all these cases reviewed by experts in immigration/human rights/due process and racial justice!
Fire anyone in the SG’s office who presents bogus arguments concerning fake “immigration emergencies” and illegally promulgated “regulations” to the Supremes. End the unethical practice of using one-sided “precedents” to develop anti-immigrant “litigating positions” for OIL.
Stop appointing unqualified individuals to precious Immigration Judgeships. Remove the entire BIA and replace it with real expert appellate judges unswervingly committed to fundamental fairness and due process for all. Replace “worst practices” with “best practices.” Stop the “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at EOIR. Cut the largely self-created Immigration Court “backlog.”
Bring in Professor Rodriguez, Professor Schrag, Professor Ingrid Eagly, Judge Dana Marks (who argued and won the landmark Cardoza-Fonseca case before the Supremes), Judge (and former BIA Judge and high-ranking DOJ official) Noel Brennan, Judge Amiena Khan, Judge Mimi Tsankov, Marielena Hincapie (NCIJ), Dean Kevin Johnson (UC Davis Law), and a “due process brain trust” of others like them! Let them start “kicking some tail,” fixing the problems, and restoring sanity, humanity, and due process to the broken immigration kakistocracy at DOJ. Now, before any more lives are lost or futures irrevocably ruined!
Let “practical scholars” like Rodriguez, Schrag, Eagly, and Johnson “turn their research and great thoughts into action.” “A little less talk, and a lot more action,” as Toby Keith would say!
The NDPA has already shown that it can out-litigate and out-strategize the Government immigration kakistocracy. In many ways, only the abject failure of the Supremes’ majority to stand up for the Constitution, rule of law, and human decency has prevented the NDPA from completely annihilating the kakistocracy, wiping out all of its misdeeds by judicial decree, and perhaps even holding criminals like Miller and Wolf accountable for their “crimes against humanity.”
Judge Garland is a smart person. The “smart thing” would be to get the “NDPA on the inside at Justice,” creating order from chaos and re-establishing justice @ Justice now!
Otherwise, smart or not, he’s likely to spend the bulk of his tenure as a “caption” on the never-ending avalanche of new legal actions filed against the deadly immigration bureaucracy by the NDPA. Because, I promise that the fight for due process in immigration and human rights isn’t over! It has just begun!
There is lots to be gained by working together to solve these problems. But if it takes litigation, continuing conflict, and a never-ending political and press crusade against an Administration I otherwise support to get the job done, so be it!
The battle isn’t over until the kakistocracy is removed, at every level, and due process, fundamental fairness, equal justice, and respect for human dignity — all both Constitutional and human rights — become a reality for all persons in America (including those physically present at our borders) rather than just the cruel, unfulfilled promises they have been to date.
Due Process Can’t And Won’t Wait! Due Process Forever!
PWS
01-24-22
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GO PACK GO!
Green Bay PackersAaron Rodgers Quarterback Green Bay PackersDevante Adams Wide Receiver Green Bay Packers
PRESIDENT BIDEN has served notice that his ambitious immigration plan is in the first rank of his priorities. Some of his program will be immediately implementable; some may get bogged down in Congress, where many Republicans will regard it as an occasion to brandish the word “amnesty,” red meat for their bases. No matter. Mr. Biden’s plan is in keeping with the United States’ best traditions. It responds to the challenge of population stagnation. It would reverse his predecessor’s extravagantly cruel policies. And it is now clear that when it comes to immigration, Mr. Biden is all in.
That courageous stance was not necessarily expected or politically expedient. Unity was the new president’s campaign theme and inaugural touchstone, yet few issues are as divisive as immigration. His evident readiness to tap his modest reserves of political capital for a slugfest on immigration is a signal that the United States has returned to its roots as a beacon for refugees and a humanitarian role model among nations.
The plan is also smart. The U.S. population growth rate in the just-ended decade was the lowest since the first national census in 1790, according to the Brookings Institution — lower even than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The number of Americans below the age of 18 actually shrank in the 2010s, by more than 1 million.
That stagnation, the product of an aging population and historically low fertility rates, cannot be reversed by immigration alone. But it will certainly be exacerbated, and has been in the past four years, by a policy hostile to newcomers. In President Donald Trump’s penultimate year in office, annual net immigration fell below 600,000, the lowest level in decades; it was more than 1 million in the final years of the Obama presidency.
What’s more, by proposing an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the nation’s 11 million unauthorized migrants — the centerpiece of his plan — Mr. Biden is attempting to align law and reality. By 2029, when they would be eligible for citizenship, most will have been in the United States for more than a quarter-century. At least 4 million are essential workers in construction, food processing, groceries, restaurants, agriculture and transportation — doing jobs critical to practically every American.
Mr. Biden is moving quickly where he can — fully reinstating the Obama-era program providing work permits and deportation protection for “dreamers,” young migrants brought to this country by their parents; rescinding Mr. Trump’s 2017 travel ban from majority-Muslim countries; halting construction of the southern border wall; and reining in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies. He has also signaled he will increase annual refugee admissions, which Mr. Trump poleaxed, and scrap a Trump administration rule that denies green cards to immigrants deemed likely to use public benefits such as food stamps.
Other measures will require congressional action. Under legislation Mr. Biden is sending to Congress, green cards conferring legal permanent residency would be granted to dreamers as well as to immigrants from strife- and disaster-wracked nations who have been here for years.
The president is also pushing tougher border security — in recognition that the new administration is not inviting a wave of new migrants, still less amid a pandemic — though not as a precondition for his immigration reforms. His more impactful, long-term strategy to dissuade new waves of illegal immigrants is a concerted aid effort to boost economies and contain crime in Central America.
Mr. Biden has laid out an immigration program that would genuinely put America first.
*****************
The GOP White Nationalists/Nativists/White Supremacists are shaking in their cowardly boots. Why?
Because in a diverse meritocracy with equal justice for all and government in the true national interest they would lose their corrupt advantages and disproportionate power over the lives and the future of the majority of Americans who don’t share their repulsive, racist views and did not support their traitor insurrectionist Fuhrer in his attempt to undermine democracy, disenfranchise voters (targeting disproportionately legitimate voters of color for disenfranchisement, while shrugging off the actions, antics, and influence of “magamoron” Q-Anon crazies, conspiracy theorists, and other fringe haters that he and his party relied upon to maintain power), and take over our government by force!
Four things that the GOP fears above all else: 1) democracy, 2) accountability, 3) equality, 4) truth!
President-elect Joe Biden will roll out a sweeping overhaul of nation’s immigration laws the day he is inaugurated, including an eight-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants without legal status and an expansion of refugee admissions, along with an enforcement plan that deploys technology to patrol the border.
Biden’s legislative proposal, which will be sent to Congress on Wednesday, also includes a heavy focus on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, a key part of Biden’s foreign policy portfolio when he served as vice president.
The centerpiece of the plan from Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris is the eight-year pathway, which would put millions of qualifying immigrants in a temporary status for five years and then grant them a green card once they meet certain requirements such as a background check and payment of taxes. They would be able to apply for citizenship three years later.
. . . .
The focus on Central America reflects the message that Biden has relayed to senior officials in the region: that he will advocate for policy changes aimed at what drives scores of migrants there to come to the United States illegally to seek safe harbor.
“Ultimately, you cannot solve problems of migration unless you attack the root causes of what causes that migration,” one official said, pointing to the various reasons — from economic to safety — that drive migrants to flee their home countries. “He knows that in particular is the case in Central America.”
Transition officials are aware of recent reports of the increased numbers of migrants at or heading to the border in anticipation of the end of Trump’s presidency, and urged them to stay in their home countries. They emphasized that newly arriving immigrants would not qualify for the legalization program that Biden proposes.
Biden wants to move the refugee and asylum systems “back to a more humane and orderly process,” the official said. But “it’s also been made clear that that isn’t a switch you flip overnight from the 19th to the 20th, especially when you’re working with agencies and processes that have been so gutted by the previous administration.”
Biden hopes to reinstate a program granting minors from Central America temporary legal residence in the United States. The Trump administration terminated the program in August 2017, officials said. The administration also wants to set up a reunification program for Central American relatives of U.S. citizens that would allow those who have been already approved for U.S. residency to be admitted into the country, rather than waiting at home for an opening. The program would be similar to ones that existed for Cubans and Haitians but also were ended by the Trump administration.
The Biden proposal also would put in place a refugee admissions program at multiple processing centers abroad that would better help identify and screen those who would qualify to be admitted as refugees into the United States.
As for border enforcement, the plan calls on the Department of Homeland Security to develop a proposal that uses technology and other similar infrastructure to implement new security measures along the border, both at and between ports of entry. Biden has long vowed not to expand the border wall Trump has marginally extended.
“This is not a wall; this is not taking money from [the Department of Defense],” a transition official said, referring to how Trump helped to finance his wall after pledging Mexico would pay for it. “It’s a very different approach.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
This is a welcome change from the poorly conceived, often ill-informed approach to immigration by the Obama Administration. It appears that Biden and Harris have actually “listened to the experts” and acted a accordingly.
The concentration on addressing the reality of Central American migration and dealing honestly and constructively with its root causes in a sensible and humane way is also refreshing. Using intelligence and technology to address real border security issues (as opposed to squandering resources on politically manufactured ones) also shows promise.
Julia Edwards Ainsley NBC Correspondent Justice & DHS Outside Justice Dep’t Photo: Victoria Pickering https://www.flickr.com/photos/vpickering/
Many of the latter wereenergized by the Trump/DHS program of White Nationalist racist fear-mongering and intentionally false anti-immigrant, anti-due-process narratives. That’s what “applied malicious incompetence” looks like — DHS and EOIR are two of the most egregious examples in a regime that raised it to an “art form.” It will take an aggressive and far-reaching “house cleaning” to get these agencies that have abandoned the common good and now operate “on the dark side” back on track.
The immediate “knee-jerk opposition” to rational, practical, fact-based immigration reform by notorious White Nationalist racist Sen. Tom Cotton (R-ARK) shows that Team Biden is on the right track to disavow the toxic institutionalized racism and biased policies of the Trump regime and move America along the path to racial justice and realistic, progressive immigration policies that will further the national interest and lead to a better future for all!
It’s a great, if long overdue, start to getting beyond Jim Crow and “Dred Scottification” and saving and enhancing our democracy! But, the proof will be in the results!
Biden, of course, will also face the formidable challenges of dealing with the human carnage left behind by the Trump regime’s disastrous mis-handling of COVID-19, economic inequality, the environment, racial justice, and foreign policy where American “prestige” has plummeted to levels not seen since the days of the Barbary Pirates.
He also must address a failing Federal Justice System that, particularly at its appellate levels, did not effectively stand up to the Trump regime’s unrelenting assault on human decency and American democracy. Indeed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a consistently competent and courageous Justice among our failing Supremes, offered this final harsh but true assessment of her GOP colleagues’ malfeasance in a death penalty case: “This is not justice.”https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/not-justice-justice-sonia-sotomayor-offers-fierce-dissent-death-penalty-n1254554
You could say that about almost everything in the departing, defeated White Nationalist regime!
I’ll note for the record that among other things, the Supremes’ tone-deaf majority has been responsible for letting bona fide asylum seekers rot in squalor in camps in Mexico while waiting for non-existent “due process,” and also authorized the imposition of potential death sentences and torture on asylum seekers within our jurisdiction without any whit of due process.
The GOP majority’s disgraceful failure to stand up for voting rights of African Americans, Latinos, and other voters of color has also deepened racial injustice in America and helped usher in a horrible “Jim Crow Revival” pushed, incited, and enabled by the GOP, “The Party of the Failed Insurrection.”
Any competent first-year law student might ask “How could this happen in America?” That’s a question that Roberts and his gang of fellow Trump enablers and apologists will have to answer before the “court of history!”
fl-undocumented-minors 2 – Judge Denise Slavin, former executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges in an immigration courtrrom in Miami. Mike Stocker, Sun Sentinel — Judge Slavin is a member of the Round Table of Former Immigration JudgesGW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina VeraDan Kowalski Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)MeYilun Cheng Writer PHOTO: Twitter
From “For Undocumented Immigrants, a Shot at Lawful Residency Requires Risking It All” by Yilun Cheng in Borderless Magazine:
. . . .
The risk has become even higher in recent years as the Trump administration filled the immigration court system with hardline judges, according to Paul Schmidt, a former judge at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. For years, legal groups have urged the government to hire judges from diverse backgrounds to guarantee fairness in the courts, but the situation has only deteriorated in recent years, Schmidt said.
. . . .
“The Obama administration was just negligent,” Schmidt said, suspecting that former president Barack Obama left dozens of vacant immigration judgeships when he left the White House. “The new administration got a chance to fill those positions with a far-right judiciary.”
. . . .
“It’s very much a law enforcement-oriented and not a due process-oriented judiciary,” Schmidt said. “It’s just a bad time to be an individual with a case in the immigration court right now, with a bunch of unsympathetic judges, political hacks pulling the strings, and inconsistent COVID policies.”
. . . .
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Read Yilun’s full article at the link.
In the article, my friend and Round Table 🛡⚔️ colleague Judge Denise Slavin gives an excellent description of how “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” operates in a bogus “court” system run by political hacks with enforcement (and in the defeated “regime” racist) motivations.
“Ready to try” cases, many of which could be granted or should be closed, are shuffled off to the end of the docket, some without any notice on the day of trial when the respondent, his or her lawyer, and often witnesses who have taken the day from work arrive only to find out that their case has been “orbited” into the “outer space” of the EOIR backlog.
Meanwhile, cases of individuals who haven’t had time to get lawyers or been granted the preparation time required by due process are put at the front of the docket to make denial of their cases easier for “judges” who have been told that they are basically functionaries of DHS enforcement. Sometimes, the very same lawyers who have had their years-old prepared cases arbitrarily reset to oblivion are then improperly pressured and required to go forward with cases they haven’t had a chance to properly prepare or document.
Often, individuals whose cases are improperly “accelerated” recieve inadequate notice, resulting in carelessly issued, illegal “in absentia” orders that could result in improper removal or at least require heroic efforts by lawyers to get the case reopened and restored to the docket. Meanwhile, the bogus “no-show” statistics caused by the Government’s improper actions are used to build an intentionally false narrative that asylum seekers don’t show at their hearings.
The truth, of course, is the exact opposite: When given a chance to get competent representation and when the system is explained to them in understandable terms, asylum seekers show up for the overwhelming majority of their hearings, regardless of the ultimate result of their cases.
As cogently studied and stated by highly-respected “practical scholar” Professor Ingrid Eagly of UCLA Law and her colleague UCLA empirical researcher Steven Shafer, in a recent published study:
Contrary to claims that all immigrants abscond, our data-driven analysis reveals that 88% of all immigrants in immigration court with completed or pending removal cases over the past eleven years attended all of their court hearings. If we limit our analysis to only nondetained cases, we still find a high compliance rate: 83% of all respondents in completed or pending removal cases attended all of their hearings since 2008. Moreover, we reveal that 15% of those who were ordered deported in absentia since 2008 successfully reopened their cases and had their in absentia orders rescinded. Digging deeper, we identify three factors associated with in absentia removal: having a lawyer, applying for relief from removal (such as asylum), and court jurisdiction.
I’d be willing to bet that at least an equal number of individuals with in absentia orders are illegally deported because they aren’t knowledgeable enough to reopen their cases, or their reopening motions are wrongfully denied but they lack to resources to pursue appeals, which often involve prolonged periods of dangerous and abusive detention.
Obviously, an Administration actually interested in solving problems (presumably “Team Garland”) would “can the false narratives and bogus enforcement gimmicks” and concentrate on getting asylum seekers represented and increasing and raising the quality of judicial review of detention decisions. The regime’s immigration kakistocracy, of course, has moved in exactly the opposite direction.
Cooperation and coordination with the private, often pro bono, bar, essential to any well-functioning court system, has become non-existent. In fact, it is actively discouraged by DOJ politicos and their “management toadies” at EOIR, who often have mischaracterized the private bar as “the enemy” or out to “game” the system. Perversely, of course, the exact opposite is true. The regime’s immigration kakistocracy has tried over and over to use illegal methods and bogus narratives to illegally and unconstitutionally “game” the system against legitimate asylum seekers and their hard-working attorneys (actually, the only “players” in this sorry game trying to uphold “good government” and the rule of law.)
As a result, the only way for the private bar to be heard is by suing in the “real” Article III Federal Courts. This has resulted in a string of injunctions and TROs against EOIR and DHS misconduct, illegal regulations, and unlawful policies throughout the country, further adding to the chaos and inconsistencies. It also has clogged the Federal Courts with unnecessary litigation and frivolous, often disingenuous or unethical, “defenses to the indefensible” by DOJ lawyers.
This is how a dysfunctional “court system” that actually is a veneer for out of control enforcement and institutionalized racist xenophobia builds backlog. The corrupt “leaders” of this dysfunctional and unconstitutional mess then blame their victims for the delays caused by gross Government mismanagement. In turn, they use this “bogus scenario” to justify further unconstitutional restrictions of immigrants’ rights, due process, and judicial independence.
It’s a “scam” of the highest order! One that actually harms ☠️ and kills ⚰️ people, harasses lawyers, undermines the rule of law, and wastes taxpayer resources. One that has brought disgrace upon the DOJ and undermines the entire U.S. Justice system🏴☠️. One that Judge Garland and his incoming team at the DOJ must immediately end and totally reform, while holding accountable those responsible for this gross miscarriage of justice, fraud, waste, and abuse.
This is not “normal Government” or a question of “differing philosophies.” It’s outright fraud, intentional illegality, abuse of Government resources, and instititutionalized racism. It must be treated as such by the Biden Administration.
During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a legislative proposal that would include a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, according to activists in communication with his transition team.
By CINDY CARCAMO, ANDREA CASTILLO, MOLLY O’TOOLE
January 16, 2021
During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to send a groundbreaking legislative package to Congress to address the long-elusive goal of immigration reform, including what’s certain to be a controversial centerpiece: a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status, according to immigrant rights activists in communication with the Biden-Harris transition team.
The bill also would provide a shorter pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protected status and beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals who were brought to the U.S. as children, and probably also for certain front-line essential workers, vast numbers of whom are immigrants.
In a significant departure from many previous immigration bills passed under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the proposed legislation would not contain any provisions directly linking an expansion of immigration with stepped-up enforcement and security measures, said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund, who has been consulted on the proposal by Biden staffers.
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Read the full story at the link.
This will present Judge Garland and Vanita Gupta @ DOJ with a timely, outstanding opportunity to get rid of the “EOIR Clown Show🤡,” replace it with a functioning expert judiciary 🧑🏽⚖️👨🏻⚖️⚖️ and competent judicial administrators, get the vast bulk of these cases off the largely “manufactured” backlog, and get the Immigration Courts and the BIA operating at or near “real time.”
That, in turn will give a new group of expert judges at the BIA, with practical asylum and human rights backgrounds, a chance to implement the fair, generous, consistent interpretation of asylum law intended under the Refugee Act of 1980 and to institute a fair and efficient U.S. asylum system that will serve humanity, honor and exemplify Constitutional due process, and advance our national interests.🗽🇺🇸
Should be a win-win-win for the country and refugees provided that the right, progressive, “steeped in due process and fundamental fairness” judicial talent is put in place to lead and direct the “new EOIR.” No more “Clown Show!” 🤡No more “Amateur Night at the Bijou!” 🤹 Time to give the immigration and human rights experts, a new generation of “practical scholars,” the chance to solve problems and lead the now-broken Immigration Courts to better days!
Not surprisingly, the current “Clown Show” 🤡 and “band of malicious incompetents”🦹🏿♂️ @ EOIR “management” are totally out of step — and actually mocking — the direction the Biden Administration is taking on immigration and asylum, even as their time runs out. At a minimum, that warrants immediate reassignment to jobs where they can do no further damage to the American justice system and those who rely upon it. For some who have actually aided and abetted the “human rights criminals” in the DOJ kakistocracy and squandered public resources on illegal gimmicks, further action and accountability could be necessary and appropriate down the line!
Trump RegimeTrump’s Legacy Kiddie GulagJeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com Republished under licenseJeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions “Police Brutality? What Police Brutality?”Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com, Republished under licenseStephen Miller & Count Olaf Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers“Gauleiter Muller & Eva Braun” Yuck it Up In The Comfort Of “Public Welfare Dole” While Looking Forward to Planning Together for More “Crimes Against Humanity,” Abusing Children, Dehumanizing Persons of Color, Spreading Lies & False Narratives, & Targeting World’s Most Vulnerable Refugees 🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿♂️ — Sure Looks Like “Welfare Fraud” to Me!
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon has called for the investigation and prosecution of current and former Trump administration officials afterthe Department of Justice Office of the Inspector Generalreleased “a disturbing report confirming that the Trump administration knew their zero tolerance policy would lead to family separations,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement.
“We finally have more answers about how this diabolical plan came to be,” Merkley said. “It is crystal clear that Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Chad Wolf, Kirstjen Nielsen and other senior Trump administration officials were not only fully aware that their policy would have traumatizing impacts on families, but also that their intention was to inflict that trauma as a means to deter people from coming to America in search of a better life.”
The senator added “it’s now confirmed that they committed perjury by lying to Congress about their intentions and actions in order to avoid accountability for their monstrous initiative.”
“The intentional infliction of harm on innocent children is unforgivable and has no place on our soil,” Merkley said Thursday. “The architects should be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for any crimes connected with both the atrocities and the cover-up.”
Merkleyreturned to the border 6 more timesand advocated for families to be reunited – and for people seeking refuge “from gang violence, murder, rape, and extortion in their home countries” be allowed to make their case – something the senator alleges the Trump adminitration has not allowed in keeping with the law.
“America is at its strongest when we embrace our historic role as a beacon of hope for persecuted people from around the world,” Merkley said. “I am determined to work with the Biden administration to ensure that we turn that vision into a reality, and to hold the perpetrators of the Trump administration’s cruelty fully accountable.”
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Couldn’t have said it better myself, Senator! Right on! Remarkable how all it takes is an armed insurrection against our Capitol and our democracy generated by the Traitor Prez and supported by far, far too many cowardly, anti-American members of his “Party of Treason” to get folks “thinking like Courtside.”
Even if the criminals described by the IG escape prosecution for their crimes, the new IG Report and the additional documents that certainly will come to light once the Trump kakistocracy is removed should provide enough evidence to keep these wretched fascist creatures and their families tied up in civil litigation for the rest of their miserable and worthless lives!
To date, only Senator James Langford (R-OK) has had the decency to apologize for his role in supporting Trump’s beyond bogus, treasonous, insurrectionist claims of “election fraud” or a stolen election. Where are the apologies from the rest of the cowardly GOP traitors and toadies who supported and/or enabled Trump and his band of racist thugs over the past four years? Why is scumbag Rep. Jim Jordan walking around with a bogus “Medal of Freedom” for spreading lies and encouraging sedition, rather than sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial?
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
“Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. Child abuser and racist plotter remains at large, after having the shameless audacity to run for the U.S. Senate again, being defeated by Magamoron “Coach TubbyTraitorville” (a blithering idiot who obviously got hit by one too many flying tackling dummy).
“Gauleiter Stepan Muller.” Hiding out on the public dole in the seat of corruption and insurrection (formerly and soon again to be known as the “White House”) with his repulsive “Eva Braun substitute” and carrying out more “crimes against humanity” to the end.
Rod Rosenstein. Hiding out, hanging his head in (belated, fake)shame and making the big bucks at King & Spaulding. Will need them after he is dismissed from his law firm, disbarred, and has to pay legal fees and damages to the families he traumatized.
Gene (No Relation to Alex) Hamilton. Still grifting on public welfare at the DOJ until next Wednesday. First cowardly “Waffern SS Member” to publicly take the “Nuremberg defense:” “I was only following Der Fuhrer’s orders.”But, he won’t be the last.
Donald J. “Big Loser/Traitor” Trump. Hiding out in White House basement and planning flightfrom DC after initiating botched coup attempt against his own Government.
Victims of Failed Regime’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” Already sentenced to a lifetime of pain, suffering, and trauma by Large Banana Republic that shirked its legal and moral duties.
Accountability for this “gang of White Nationalist thugs” is important!
Also, Judge Garland needs to look into the conduct of the DOJ lawyers who defended the regime’s transparent lies and false claims that there was “no child separation policy.” These turkeys 🦃 took no responsibility for their clients’ ongoing crimes and cover ups. Indeed, outrageously, they got away with making it the burden of the plaintiffs’ lawyers to reunite families the Government intentionally and illegally separated without any plans for reunification.
The invidious racist, unconstitutional motives of criminals like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Hamilton, and Rosenstein was no secret. Except for the degree of Rosenstein’s involvement, it was widely reported at the time. Trump was a well-established liar whose public statements and rationales should have been assumed false until proven true. (Ask yourself what would happen to a corporate lawyer who took at face value and presented to a court as “facts” or a “defense” in a civil suit false statements by a corrupt CEO with a long-standing record of fraud, racism, and dishonesty.)
Also, what was the a racist hack like Sessions (the report also reveals that he was as totally incompetent as a lawyer as he was devoid of human decency) doing running border enforcement programs that had intentionally been removed from the AG’s portfolio by Congress when DHS was created? How does that fit with “Gonzo’s” transparently unethical and unconstitutional actions as a “quasi-judicial officer” in interfering with due process at the EOIR Clown Show🤡/Star Chamber🦹🏿♂️?
This IG report is just the “tip of the iceberg” of the institutionalized racism and systemic misconduct that polluted the immigration kakistocracy at DOJ and DHS during the Trump regime. The failings of the U.S. Justice system from top to bottom, starting with the Supremes’ consistent failure to critically examine the regime’s transparent pattern of unconstitutional, racist, biased behavior culminating in an insurrection can’t be “swept under the carpet.”
Nor can their enabling of the White Nationalist immigration agenda of “Dred Scottification” pushed by unethical SG Noel Francisco! In a well-functioning democracy, the Trumpist thugs’ child abuse should have been stopped in its tracks. Thanks to the failure of legal, ethical, and moral leadership by Roberts and his righty GOP buddies, it wasn’t!
The entire beyond disgraceful and patently illegal “zero tolerance program” instituted by Gonzo was a grotesque misuse of public funds and abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Real crimes (the Trump regime has been an absolute boon to serious criminals from the Oval Office on down) went un-prosecuted and un-investigated. The conduct of U.S. Attorneys, Federal Judges, and U.S. Magistrate Judges along the border who shirked their duties and participated in the legal farce taking place in our criminal justice system also needs to be examined.
Those of us who lived through Watergate can see that this time around, under extraordinarily poor leadership generated by an anti-American GOP, the response of all three branches of our Federal Government to the overt threats to our Constitution and democracy posed by a dishonest Executive fell disturbingly below the bipartisan levels that saved our nation from Nixon.
That’s why the critical democratic standard of a “peaceful and orderly transfer of power” has fallen by the wayside and the Biden-Harris Inauguration will take place in an armed camp. Ironically, the man administering the oath to President Biden, Chief Justice John Roberts and his GOP colleagues on the Supremes bear a major responsibility for democracy’s peril and the pain and suffering of those like separated families whom they failed to protect from Executive abuses!
As I’ve said before, although it won’t happen, the resignations of Roberts and his fellow GOP Justices should be on President Biden’s desk on the morning of January 21. That would be a real start on healing, restoring democracy, and reinstituting human decency and respect for human lives and the rule of law in America.
(Let’s not forget that ethics-challenged Justices Thomas and Coney Barrett showed up at what essentially was a “MAGA campaign rally” at the White House on the eve of the election that eventually resulted in impeachable acts of insurrection and sedition by a patently dishonest and dangerous Chief Executive whose unfitness to govern was more than clear by that time. Honestly, it’s going to take more than a black robe to cover the shame of these dudes who stand for protecting and enabling tyranny and against justice for the people. If nothing else, it’s high time for a Democrat-led Congress to impose at least some minimal ethical standards on the Supremes, since they appear to have none to mention. That’s, of course, after they come to grips with the treason of GOP guys like Cruz and Hawley who should be expelled and barred from public “service” (treason?) for life.)
🇺🇸⚖️🗽👎🏻Due Process Forever! Cowardly thugs, 🥷🏻magamorons, 🦹🏿♂️ and their enablers, never!
*Roto-Rooter is the registered trademark of Roto Rooter Co.🪠🚽🧻
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”BIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons“Justice” Star Chamber StyleHon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports more good news for the NDPA, bad news for the EOIR kakistocracy🤡 🦹🏿♂️and the seedy DOJ lawyers 🦹🏿♂️clogging the Federal Courts with frivolous litigation engendered by the White Nationalist, nativist immigration agenda ☠️⚰️🏴☠️ at failed DOJ:
Hi all: The lesser asylum regs that were scheduled to take effect tomorrow were just blocked by a TRO and preliminary injunction granted in D.C. District Court (order to follow). These regs would have required certain respondents to file their I-589s within 15 days of the first Master Calendar hearing, and would have required EOIR to reject any I-589 which left even a single space blank, among other things.
Best, Jeff
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There needs to be a “day of reckoning” for DOJ lawyers who have “carried the water” for the racist kakistocracy @ the regime’s “Ministry of Nativist Propaganda & Crimes Against Humanity” (the Federal agency formerly known as the “Department of Justice”).
Illegal regulations, clogging the Federal Courts with frivolous positions, defending the actions of imposters impersonating Cabinet officers and other officials, inventing pretexts to cover invidious intent, targeting the most vulnerable among us have “real life” consequences.
There will be no “rebirth” at Justice unless “Team Garland”👨🏻⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸 deals with the xenophobia, racism, institutionalized cowardice, and criminal misuse of office and Government resources at the failed DOJ over the past four years.
That’s in addition to the “maliciously incompetent” mismanagement aspect of the unmitigated disaster @ EOIR which has (mis)used various illegal “gimmicks” to pour more mismanaged resources into creating astronomical, mostly unnecessary backlogs in our failed and beyond dysfunctional Immigration “Courts” (actually Star Chambers, masquerading as “courts”), in “partnership” with the out of control, White Nationalist enforcement kakistocracy @ ICE/DHS and violating the Constitution and human decency to boot! Really, could it be any worse?
The Trump/GOP insurrection🥷🏻 @ our Capitol is directly related to lack of accountability that let the Trump kakistocracy “get away with murder.” That’s why the Inauguration is being held in a city under military lockdown next week.
You can bet that the lies, “back-pedaling,” cover-ups, finger pointing, and avoidance of responsibility for the disintegration of democracy will be in full swing by the end of next week! Judge Garland will have to deal with it up front; he can’t “wait for Godot” as has been the problem with past Dem Administrations!
Today’s “DOJ” looks and “(mal)functions” like a Clown Show 🤡 repertory company playing “Theater of The Absurd” in a bad imitation of a Franz Kafka novel! If Judge Garland doesn’t want to become the “star” of this revolting exhibition, he’d better start cleaning 🧹 up and cleaning out 🪠on “Day 1.” And the EOIR “Tower of Babble” would be a great starting point for “Operation Clean Sweep”🧹!
There will be no real justice in America without a a “day of reckoning” @ Justice. It’s long, long, long, long overdue!
The Biden administration has said it may need 6 months to reverse Trump administration asylum policies and bring asylum seekers stranded in Mexico to safety. Tragically, some may not survive that long.
In her newest blog post, Legal Fellow Julia Neusner presents a heartbreaking portrait of the violence, discrimination, and trauma asylum seekers have endured under the Trump administration’s policies.
Julia writes about victims of these policies, including Ana and Jorge, an Afro-Cuban couple who were kidnapped after US border officers expelled them to Mexico under MPP. Armed men robbed them and forced them into a room covered in blood. Other kidnapping victims were moaning on the floor, some with severed body parts.
“They told us [a friend] would have to pay $4,000 for both of us, and if he didn’t, they would cut us up, part by part,” Ana recalled. “I lost control and started crying. My boyfriend pleaded with them, and they hit him with a gun. Then they beat me. It was horrible. We spent these days in hell.”
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON ASYLUM
On Wednesday, President Trump travelled to the southern border to tout his immigration record. In response, Human Rights First released a fact sheet outlining the Trump administration’s record on asylum: one defined by chaos, cruelty, and illegality.
From separating over 5,500 families to delivering people to life-threatening danger in Mexico to spurring the spread of COVID-19 by refusing the repeated pleas of epidemiologists to release asylum seekers and immigrants from detention, Trump’s real record is deep damage our asylum system.
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A key to “setting the record straight on asylum” is immediate removal of the “EOIR Clown Show” 🤡🦹🏿♂️ in Falls Church, a retraction of the gross lies and misleading anti-asylum, anti-lawyer narratives set forth in their White Nationalist nativist “Bogus Fact Sheets,” immediately cancelling the insane anti-due process, anti-lawyer procedures now in place, and setting the record straight on asylum law, including the toxic, unethical, and unconstitutional role of EOIR in actively undermining the legal rights and humanity of asylum seekers as well as being responsible for gross mismanagement of the Immigration Courts.
There are folks out there in the private/NGO/academic community who can get the job done, starting day one! Yeah, there are many other priorities; that’s a beyond compelling reason for bringing in the experts and empowering them to solve the problems, sooner rather than later! There really is no viable “later” here!
We simply don’t have six months to stop killing people and violating human rights on a daily basis! If we don’t make radical changes and take some calculated risks to end the abuses and mismanagement at EOIR, the SG’s Office, and DHS right off the bat, it will be too late for too many!
Maybe Judge Garland and his Executive Team need to spend a few days with some immigration practitioners and NGOs right now to see what’s happening in the “Star Chambers impersonating courts” that they will “own” in a few weeks. Maybe they should spend some time in the squalid migrant camps in Mexico, seeing what existence is really like for those to whom we have shirked our legal and moral responsibilities.
Ask themselves, would THEY subject THEIR families to such mistreatment? If not, then why hasn’t a plan been announced to end the deadly “EOIR Clown Show” 🤡🦹🏿♀️☠️ immediately and put some legitimate judges and competent managers who understand asylum law and immigration practice in place?
Judge Garland, with all due respect, when the incoming Administration tells lawyers, many working pro bono or low bono, who are risking their lives to save their clients’ lives in the “living Hell” of today’s U.S. Immigration Courtsto “be patient, we’ll get to you soon,” you are giving them a very clear and chilling message: THEIR LIVES, SAFETY, AND SANITY AREN’T YOUR PRIORITY — I/O/W, THEIR LIVES DON’T MATTER!
That’s neither an appropriate nor uplifting message to give to an embattled group whose support, assistance, ideas, creativity, and energy will be absolutely essential to your plans to “restore justice to Justice!”
The sad truth is that time does not, in fact, “heal all wounds,” and failures that kill and damage people for life can’t be “undone,”
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Allowing the “killer kakistocracy of scofflaws” to control the agenda while the incoming Administration “ruminates” and “hems and haws,” never!
“[W]e conclude that the BIA abused its discretion by denying E.A.’s motion to reopen. E.A.’s mother’s recent childbirth is a serious medical event, which coupled with E.A.’s minor age, her difficulty obtaining transportation, and her difficulty navigating the immigration system without assistance, constitute “exceptional circumstances” necessitating rescission of the in absentia removal order. … The BIA’s decision was also contrary to law, and therefore an abuse of discretion. … First, the BIA improperly considered E.A.’s age separately, rather than considering age alongside other factors, when determining that she had not shown that exceptional circumstances justified her failure to appear. Second, the BIA erred when it dismissed without adequate explanation E.A.’s evidence that she is eligible for SIJS. Finally, the BIA improperly stated that E.A. was required to present prima facie evidence that she was eligible for immigration relief as part of her motion to reopen. … For the foregoing reasons, we GRANT the petition for review, VACATE the removal order, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
[Hats way off to Rachel Naggar! Here is a link to the audio of the oral argument.]
“Salim Al Amiri, an Iraqi citizen, seeks relief from removal on the grounds of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). He premises his requests for such relief on the harm that he fears that he would be subjected to in Iraq at the hands of members of Iraq’s military or civilian insurgents operating in that country. Al Amiri contends that he has reason to fear he would be subjected to that harm on account of his work as a paid contractor for the United States Army during the war in Iraq, as in that role he educated U.S. soldiers about Iraqi customs and practices as they prepared for their deployment. We vacate and remand the ruling of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying his claims for asylum and withholding of removal, but we deny his petition insofar as it challenges the BIA’s ruling rejecting his CAT claim.”
Think how much better this system would function with expertjudges who treated asylum applicants fairly from the “git go,” granted protection wherever possible in accordance with the the Refugee Act of 1980 and the (more “woke”) Supremes’ precedent in Cardoza-Fonseca, provided clear, positive guidance on how valid claims could be documented and granted, and promoted and consistently applied best practices to achieve efficiency with maximum due process.
At first glance, although the issue is reopening rather than a continuance, E.A.C.A. undercuts McHenry’s nativist, insanely wasteful, and totally dishonest attempt to “raise the bar” for routine continuances for asylum applicants who need time to properly document and prepare their cases.
The “Deny – Deny Program” — deny due process, deny relief — that infects EOIR’s “Star Chambers” (impersonating “courts”) is a huge backlog builder that kills people and screws up Court of Appeals dockets in the process.
Reopening cases that should be reopened, getting to the merits, and getting the many properly grantable asylum cases represented, documented, and prioritized would be a huge step in reducing EOIR’s largely self-created and unnecessary “bogus backlog.”
Ultimately, many of the clearly grantable asylum cases being mishandled and wrongly denied at EOIR, at great waste of time and resources, not to mention unnecessary human trauma, could, with real expert judges at EOIR setting and consistently enforcing the precedents, be granted more efficiently and expeditiously at the Asylum Office and ultimately shifted to a more robust and properly run Refugee Program.
In the longer run, once EOIR is redesigned and rebuilt as a proper court with real, independent, expert judges, it might be appropriate to place the Asylum Offices under judicial supervision, given the grotesque abuses and corrupt, perhaps criminal, mismanagement of the Asylum Offices by USCIS toadies carrying out the regime’s racist, White Nationalist, unconstitutional agenda of hate and waste.
NOTE TO JUDGE GARLAND👨🏻⚖️:Please fix the EOIR mess, Your Honor, before it brings you and the entire US justice system crashing down with it! This is a national emergency, and a damaging national disgrace, NOT a “back burner” issue!
Here’s some additional E.A.C.A. analysis by my good friend and NDPA “warrior queen” 👸🏽Michelle Mendez @ CLINIC!
Michelle Mendez Defending Vulnerable Populations Director Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)
Subject: CLINIC MTR In Absentia Win at the CA6 on behalf of SIJS-Seeking UC (E. A. C. A. v. Jeffrey Rosen)
Greetings,
Sharing this win, E. A. C. A. v. Jeffrey Rosen, out of the CA6 by my amazing colleague Rachel Naggar who manages our BIA Pro Bono Project. This was an appeal of an IJ (Memphis) denial of an in absentia motion to reopen for a 13-year old unaccompanied child.
Interestingly, after oral argument, OIL filed a motion to remand the case (which Rachel opposed) and the CA6 denied that motion. Seems the CA6 really wanted to issue a decision on the merits and we are grateful for the decision. Here are some highlights from the decision:
SIJS
· “Notably, the IJ’s decision does not mention E.A.’s claims that she was eligible for SIJS.”
· FN 1: “As of the December 2020 Visa Bulletin, visas are available for special immigrants (category EB4) from El Salvador to adjust their status if their priority date is prior to February 2018. If DHS removes E.A. prior to approving her visa, she will be unable to apply for adjustment of status. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(27)(J).”
Totality of the Circumstances
· “Based on the totality of the circumstances, including E.A. mother’s recent childbirth, E.A.’s young age, E.A.’s mother’s failed attempts to obtain counsel to help change the address of E.A.’s hearing, and E.A.’s inability to travel from New York to Memphis for the hearing, we hold that E.A. established exceptional circumstances.”
· “Under the totality of the circumstances, E.A.’s young age is an important factor in determining whether exceptional circumstances exist.”
Exceptional Circumstances
· “E.A.’s mother’s recent childbirth is a serious medical condition that supports reopening. The statute defining ‘exceptional circumstances’ that justify reopening an immigration proceeding lists the ‘serious illness of the alien, or serious illness or death of the spouse, child, or parent of the alien’ as an example. 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(e)(1). Childbirth is a serious medical event that necessitates a recovery period.”
· “Instead of recognizing that childbirth is a serious medical condition, the BIA minimized the seriousness of childbirth and its impact on E.A.’s mother’s ability to bring E.A. to Memphis. […] Recovery from childbirth is exactly the type of circumstance that § 1229a(e)(1) was intended to cover.”
Prima Facie Eligibility
· “Finally, the BIA erred by stating that E.A. was required to prove prima facie eligibility for immigration relief. The BIA’s decision improperly states that E.A. is required to show at this stage prima facie eligibility for relief. The statute governing motions to reopen removal orders entered in absentia provides that the petitioner must ‘demonstrate[] that the failure to appear was because of exceptional circumstances.’ 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5)(C). In general, we have stated that ‘[a] prima facie showing of eligibility for relief is required in motions to reopen.’ Alizoti, 477 F.3d at 451–52. In the case of a motion to rescind a removal order entered in absentia, however, the BIA has held that ‘an alien is not required to show prejudice in order to rescind an order of deportation” or removal. In re Grijalva-Barrera, 21 I. & N. Dec. 472, 473 n.2 (BIA 1996); see also In re Rivera-Claros, 21 I. & N. Dec. 599, 603 n.1 (BIA 1996). This is consistent with the statute governing motions to rescind removal orders entered in absentia, 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5)(C), which does not list a showing of prima facie eligibility for relief from removal as a requirement to rescind in absentia removal orders. Rivera-Claros, 21 I. & N. Dec. at 603 n.1; see also Galvez-Vergara v. Gonzales, 484 F.3d 798, 803 n.6 (5th Cir. 2007) (declining ‘to affirm the IJ’s decision on the grounds that [the petitioner] has not shown that he was prejudiced by his counsel’s performance’ because ‘In re Grijalva-Barrera, 21 I. & N. Dec. at 473 n.2, provides that an alien need not demonstrate prejudice for his counsel’s erroneous advice to constitute an ‘exceptional circumstance’ justifying rescission of an in absentia removal order’); Lo v. Ashcroft, 341 F.3d 934, 939 n.6 (9th Cir. 2003) (‘follow[ing] the BIA’s usual practice of not requiring a showing of prejudice’ to rescind an in absentia order of removal). We now join our sister circuits and hold that E.A. is not required to make a prima facie showing of eligibility for relief in order to obtain rescission under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5) of the in absentia order of removal.”
Thanks to our entire Defending Vulnerable Populations team for supporting Rachel on the briefing, oral argument, and negotiations with OIL.
Gratefully,
Michelle N. Mendez | she/her/ella/elle
Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)
**********************
In addition to the “normal” overall White Nationalist, racist agenda that EOIR “management” has carried out under the defeated regime, there was a good deal of misogyny 🤮 involved in the BIA’s gross mishandling of the “pregnancy issue,” as described by the Sixth Circuit. This misogynistic trend can be traced back directly to the unconstitutional and unethical actions of mysogynist White Nationalist AG Jeff Sessions 🤮 🦹🏿♂️🤡in the “Matter of A-B- Abomination.” ☠️⚰️🏴☠️👎🏻
Biased, anti-migrant decision-making in support of bogus enforcement gimmicks and White Nationalist anti-democracy agendas builds backlogs and kills, maims, and tortures “real” people! Migrants are people and persons, not “threats” and “bogus statistics.”
The “dehumanization” and “de-personification” of migrants, with the connivance of the tone-deaf and spineless GOP Supremes’ majority, is a serious, continuing threat to American democracy! It must stop! Justices who won’t treat migrants physically present in the U.S. or at our borders as “persons” under our Constitution — which they clearly are — do not belong on the Supremes! ⚖️🗽🇺🇸
I can also draw the lines connecting George Floyd, institutionalized racial injustice, voter suppression, riots at the Capitol, and the “Dred Scottification” of asylum seekers and other migrants by EOIR!
HINT TO JUDGE GARLAND:Michelle Mendez would be an outstanding choice to lead the “clean up and rebuild” program at EOIR and the BIA once the “Clown Show” 🤡🦹🏿♂️ is removed!🪠🧹 Put experts with practical experience like Rachel Nagger and Christopher Linas onto the bench, on the BIA, the Immigration Courts, and the Article III Judiciary to get the American Justice system functioning again!
The “judicial selection system” for the Immigration Courts and the Article III Judiciary has failed American democracy — big time — over the past four years. Fixing it must be part of your legacy!
The folks who preserved due process and our Constitution in the face of tyranny are mostly “on the outside looking in.” You need to get them “inside Government” — on the bench and in other key policy positions — and empower them to start cleaning up the ungodly mess left by four years of regime kakistocracy🤮☠️🤡⚰️👎🏻. “Same old, same old” (sadly, a tradition of Dem Administrations) won’t get the job done, now any more than it has in the past! New faces for a new start!
And, it starts with better judges @ EOIR, which is entirely under YOUR control!An EOIR that actually fulfills its noble, one-time vision of “Through teamwork and innovation being the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” will be a model for fixing our failing Federal Courts — all the way up to the leaderless and complicit Supremes who failed, particularly in immigration, human rights, voting rights, and racial justice, to effectively and courageously stand up to the Trump-Miller White Nationalist agenda of hate and tyranny!
We are where we are today as a nation, to a large extent, because of the Supremes’ majority’s gross mishandling of the “Muslim Ban” cases which set a sorry standard for complicity and total lack of accountability for unconstitutional actions, racism, dishonesty, cowardly official bullying, and abandonment of ethics by the Executive that has brought our nation to the precipice! Life tenure was actually supposed to protect us from judges who wouldn’t protect our individual rights. In this case, it hasn’t gotten the job done! Better judges for a better America!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever! The EOIR Clown Show🤡🦹🏿♂️ ☠️⚰️Never!
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”“Justice” Star Chamber StyleBIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsBIA Members Celebrate After Dismissing Appeal Of Arbitrary & Capricious Continuance Denial To Asylum Seeker, Thus Achieving “Death Without Due Process” The “Ultimate White Nationalist Deterrent” To Legitimate Refugees https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
Check out the lies, false claims, bogus “reasoning,” and mis-statements in McHenry’s attempt to “redefine due process by encouraging judges to deny continuances to respondents.” Meanwhile, the real cause of many, perhaps most, “big time” delays and disorder in Immigration Court — “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” to accommodate improper DHS enforcement initiatives and politically motivated DOJ priorities, is swept under the rug and goes unaddressed.
Here’s an example of some amazing nativist, White Nationalist legal gobbledygook put out by the “Tower Toadies:”
The general standard for a continuance is good cause, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.29. By statute, however, “[i]n the absence of exceptional circumstances, final administrative adjudication of [an] asylum application, not including administrative appeal, shall be completed within 180 days after the date an application is filed.” INA § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii). “Exceptional circumstances” is a higher standard than “good cause.” PM 19-05, Guidance Regarding the Adjudication of Asylum Applications Consistent with INA § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii) (Nov. 19, 2018) at 2-3 (“A continuance does not automatically justify exceeding the 180-day timeline in INA § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii), however, because the statute’s ‘exceptional circumstances’ standard is higher than the ‘good cause’ standard for continuances.”). Thus, “if granting a continuance would result in missing the 180-day deadline, the Immigration Judge may only grant the continuance if the respondent satisfies both the good-cause standard of 8 C.F.R. §1003.29 and also shows the ‘exceptional circumstances’ required by INA § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii).” Id. at 2.
Translation: “Good cause” which is a constitutionally-based standard, actually means “exceptional circumstances” not “good cause” when dealing with asylum seekers, the most vulnerable among us, whose lives are in your hands. Therefore, the Constitution be damned, go ahead and deny the asylum applicant a legitimate continuance but claim that you had “good cause” for not finding “exceptional circumstances.” Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t bother to factor in the ongoing public health crisis and the lives of the individuals, attorneys, staff, and certainly not your own worthless life in reaching your pre-determined decision to deny a continuance. Denying asylum to refugees, for any reason, no matter how specious or disingenuous, outweighs human life and your meaningless oath to uphold the Constitution.
Sort of reminds me of “Gruppenfuhrer Rudy’s” famous “Truth isn’t truth” declaration to Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press!” Only in the kakistocracy is this type of absurdist “logic” considered normal and acceptable.
What a real judge might say: “Good cause” for a continuance exists where failure to grant one would make the proceedings fundamentally unfair or unduly impinge on a full and fair consideration of the respondent’s case. The need to grant a continuance to avoid a denial of constitutionally required due process is obviously an “exceptional circumstance.” This is especially true in dealing with applicants for asylum and others seeking protections from persecution and torture. Additionally, the ongoing public health crisis and the overriding need to protect the health and safety of those coming before you and your dedicated professional court staff should always be paramount in considering continuance requests.
No legitimate court system in America is mismanaged in this grotesque, nonsensical manner without considering the input, or indeed the health, safety, and lives, of either the parties appearing before the court or the judges themselves!
To be frank, Judge Garland, the EOIR Tower Kakistocracy is delivering you “the big middle finger”🖕 in advance. They are acolytes of the racist, White Nationalist, “myth based” xenophobic immigration agenda set forth by Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton. As far as they are concerned, you and your “return justice and professionalism to Justice” agenda can “go pound sand.”
While the EOIR kakistocracy might be openly contemptuous of your incoming leadership, your supporters our here in the New Due Process Army(“NDPA”) are also aware of what’s happening. For better or worse, your commitment to and effectiveness in restoring justice will be judged initially on the number of hours, minutes, and seconds it takes you to oust the current Clown Show 🤡🦹🏿♂️☠️in Falls Church, including the failed and compromised BIA; replace them with professional, independent judicial administrators and real judges with expertise in immigration, asylum, and human rights and a nationally-recognized, unswerving commitment to due process, best practices, and practical scholarship in support of social justice.
EOIR might not be the most “sexy” item on your incoming agenda, Your Honor. But, the fate of one of the largest, perhaps most important “Federal Court Systems” is probably the most important and consequential item on which your tenure ultimately will be judged. As all of us who have served the public know, many of our “achievements” that occupied so much of our time and attention in office are forgotten or disappear before the door closes behind us at the end of of our tenure. But, being the “Father of the Independent Immigration Court” 👨🏻⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸👍🏼😇— bringing in a group of experts to fix the current ungodly mess and then advocating tirelessly for Article I legislation — is the kind of lasting legacy of which you could be proud!
Judge Garland, you don’t want to “own” this national disgrace and mockery of our Constitution, rational, professional court administration, honest, competent civil service, and simple human decency — the obligations that we owe to our fellow humans. Please get some real judges and professional administrators over to Falls Church immediately, put the EOIR Clown Show 🤡🦹🏿♂️out of its misery, 🧹🪠 and end the crimes against humanity☠️⚰️ they are visiting on the most vulnerable among us and their attorneys! History (as well as the NDPA) is watching!
Best wishes for a due process⚖️ and best practices 👍🏼filled tenure! Be remembered for the justice you have promoted and the evil ☠️🦹🏿♂️⚰️👎🏻you have resisted and eradicated!
