"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.
This month, in case you missed it, there were several news headlines that once again proved that immigration is not just good for the U.S. economy, but freaking amazing. I’m not exaggerating – just take a look at the glorious reports revealed in February:
A Congressional Budget Office report found that, “The labor force in 2033 is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration. As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”
The most powerful economic rebound post-pandemic in the world is thanks to immigration in the U.S. The Washington Post reported, “About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.” Impressively, the surge in hires of immigrant workers filled “unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.”
Even The New York Times piled on: “A resumption in visa processing in 2021 and 2022 jump-started employment, allowing foreign-born workers to fill some holes in the labor force that persisted across industries and locations after the pandemic shutdowns. Immigrants also address a longer-term need: replenishing the work force, a key to meeting labor demands as birthrates decline and older people retire.” The report also features a City Council president and member of the Plumbers and Steamfitters union in Indiana who says he would welcome migrants with open arms as his union is in desperate need of members.
Despite so many economists, industry and business leaders, and fellow Americans clamoring for immigrants to come to America and live and work in a small town in the middle of nowhere or somewhere, our politicians are stuck in the quicksand of deterrence, slowly sinking into policy and politics that muddle speeches and don’t make anyone want to save them.
Don’t get me wrong– I do want to save President Biden but, buddy, we need to work on those talking points. While I agree border communities and immigration officials are in dire need of resources and should be provided the proper funding and manpower, President Biden’s continual push for the Senate bipartisan bill was half futile. I get the political jab; use it, in fact, as it works against Republicans. But for the love of God stop trying to push the bill forward. It’s dead. Start planting the messaging seeds for better, more galvanizing solutions that address the border, resource welcoming communities, and deliver legal pathways. And above all center the economic and cultural contributions of Dreamers and immigrant families that Trump is eager to deport.
Humanizing the narrative is always a winning strategy. Recognizing the rewards of immigration and the hard work of immigrants, both in policies and messaging, speaks to those persuadable voters that Biden and Democrats must win over.
Where have you gone, John Fetterman? I roll my lonely eyes at you.
Now here’s someone who’s actually sinking. Yesterday, Senator John Fetterman (PA), on an apparent quest to prove he’s a tough border security hawk, said he would support H.R. 2 except for its aim to terminate DACA. He claims to have analyzed the bill, and if he did, then I am stupid for having ever thought he was a decent guy who understood the importance of immigration in America.
As a reminder, H.R. 2 is basically a Stephen Miller wet dream (I apologize for the imagery): it would (1) end legal representation for unaccompanied children and deport them faster, (2) shut down the asylum system, (3) give any DHS secretary the authority to deny every single migrant the right to seek asylum (in other words, permanent Title 42), (4) jail and detain immigrant families, (5) eliminate humanitarian parole, (6) punish and defund faith-based organizations and NGOs for supporting newly-arrived migrants, and (7) jail and penalize immigrants who overstay their visa. (Imagine if that last one were in place when Fetterman’s wife and mother-in-law had arrived in the U.S.)
Neither H.R. 2 nor the Senate bipartisan bill are “grand bargains” unless it’s a deal scored by a used car salesman hiding the 20% annual interest rate. When immigration is decidedly incredible for the economy, when immigrants are proudly working and thriving alongside their fellow American, when those seeking freedom and opportunity are willing to risk their lives for a leg up to work – work! – when businesses and communities are desperate for immigrants to fuel their future, our leaders should be grand-standing with a 21st century plan that embraces immigration and immigrants for all that they can do for America.
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Thanks for speaking truth to power, Beatriz!
While Trump and Biden trade barbs and disgracefully try to ”one up” each other as to who can be the most cruel, cowardly, and dumb on “bogus border security,” the real humanitarian and asylum processing crises go unaddressed; the most vulnerable continue to suffer at the hands of a country they want to help while saving their own lives. This is a potential “win-win” that our politicians refuse to embrace!
Texas will appeal to the too-often-lawless Fifth Circuit, so this saga is only beginning. But, at least this time the “good guys” struck first and won the opening round.
This is the “reward” that both parties have in mind for migrants who have helped our economy thrive through difficult times. Doesn’t seem right, smart, or rational! PHOTO: Public Realm
Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economicrebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.
That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire. Economists and labor experts say the surge in employment was ultimately key to solving unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.
“Immigration has not slowed. It has just been absolutely astronomical,” said Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “And that’s been instrumental. You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible.”
Yet immigration remains an intensely polarizing issue in American politics. Fresh survey data from Gallup showed Americans now cite immigration as the country’s top problem, surpassing inflation, the economy and issues with government. A record number of migrants have crossed the southern border since President Biden took office, with apprehensions topping 2 million for the second straight year in fiscal 2023, among the highest in U.S. history. Cities like New York, Chicago and Denver have struggled to keep up with busloads of immigrants sent from Texas who are overwhelming local shelters.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
There are also lots of practical ideas out here for fixing the asylum processing system and other helpful, humane border initiatives that don’t invest exclusively in expensive, cruel, and proven to ultimately fail “uber-enforcement only!” See, e.g.,https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/solutions-humane-border-policy.
Still, politicos of both parties and most media are on a completely different page, unhappily!
“I went through dozens of reports, scores of articles, on the discussion of this migration bill, and the reporters talked to zero migrants and zero migrant rights groups.”
In recent weeks, longtime media analyst Adam Johnson has been looking through scores of articles and analyzing Democrats’ rhetoric to see how the border was being framed. One of the texts he looked at was the emergency national security supplemental bill that emerged for a vote on the Senate floor. This bipartisan border bill had been at the negotiation table for months, and it included provisions for military aid for Ukraine and Israel. The bill was ultimately voted down, after Donald Trump rejected it and the Republican Party followed suit. In our conversation, Johnson talks about his deep dive into the coverage surrounding the deal, and he speculates on what that means in this election year: that Democrats have entered new political terrain around the border and immigration enforcement. This interview is based on articles Johnson wrote for The Real News (“Media ‘Border Deal’ Coverage Erases Actual Human Stakes”) and The Nation (“The Democrats’ Hard-Right Turn on Immigration Is a Disaster In Every Way”), both places that he contributes to regularly. He also wrote “Top 10 Media Euphemisms for Violent Bipartisan Anti-immigrant Policies,” at his Substack, The Column. Johnson cohosts the popular podcast Citations Needed, where they discussed the border on their February 21 edition. Johnson’s media analysis spans back nearly a decade, much of it for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
Adam Johnson
Let’s start with the “border deal.” In The Real News you write that it dehumanizes migrants. Can you tell us a little bit about what the border deal is, and some key points about the coverage?
It’s a Republican border deal by framing and admission. Senators Chris Murphy, Tina Smith, and Mark Warner have framed it as a Republican border deal. Almost entirely. It is a 90 to 95 percent Republican deal in nature. They’ve repeatedly said that Republicans demanded XYZ and they gave them XYZ. This is how they’re framing it, because otherwise the hypocrisy gotcha doesn’t really work.
Can you clarify what you mean by “hypocrisy gotcha”?
If it’s not an overwhelming Republican bill, then the idea that they’re abandoning their won bill in service of Trump—which has been their primary gotcha—doesn’t make sense.
But let’s look at the substance of what the bill is.
Among other things, it has $8 billion in emergency funding for ICE, which more than doubles ICE’s enforcement budget. Do you remember “abolish ICE,” back five years ago or so?
It includes $3 billion in increased detention, a mechanism to shut down the border, and $7 billion to Customs and Border Protection, including the continuation of Trump’s wall. And so this is both objectively and how the Democrats describe a far-right Republican bill. That’s the appeal of it.
And the clever idea behind this is that a typical triangulation, that is, if you take a right-wing policy and adopt it as your own, you therefore take away that issue a little quicker come election time. It is for those who view politics as merely a game to be won rather than a moral terrain to advance the greatest good of all people. If you were to take this logic to its extreme, Democrats could also support an abortion ban or decertify the 2020 election. I mean, where does it end? President Biden could get that face-off surgery and become Trump himself.
. . . .
All this is laundered through euphemism, which I wrote about on my Substack and in The Real News, where I talk about the various ways in which the human costs are obscured. According to the International Organization for Migration, the U.S.-Mexico border is the deadliest land crossing in the world. And so if you double the enforcement, and triple the broader security apparatus, bring in more surveillance drones, more weapons, invariably more people will die. There is a real human cost to this type of militarization.
. . . .
Keep in mind, too, that Biden in 2020 mobilized a lot of the immigration activists who opposed Trump’s policies. He rode that wave to pick up a lot of young votes, a lot of progressive voters, a lot of people who are sympathetic to or adjacent to immigrant communities. And this cruel policy shift has really moved them to the right. In the days after Democrats embrace this hard-right bill, Trump began to double down on things like internment camps, shipping off immigrants, because he has to differentiate himself from the Democrats, at least rhetorically.
We’re gonna have this fortress America mentality. No one wants to deal with any of the underlying issues. And we have to deal with global inequality. No one wants to deal with climate change. That’s too egg heady and academic and difficult. We’re just going to do what we always do, which is cops and cages. And cops and cages are the solution to every social ill, whether it’s homelessness, crime, or whatever. That’s the order of the day. The bipartisan consensus. Democrats and Republicans both want it. The worst place for a vulnerable group to be is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus.
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Many Border Chronicle readers are interested in shifting the narrative. But how do you shift the narrative? Is it just too entrenched?
Some members of Congress have pushed back on this. But I think they’ve been pretty quiet. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed back in an interview, but I don’t think she’s really tweeted about it. Once you have this “we have to defeat Trump in 2024 above all else,” then everybody shuts up and goes along with it.
And I think that’s absolutely wrong. I think now is the time to stand up to this demagoguery. Adopting a Republican bill is not the solution. And, hopefully, if enough people stand up to this, then it can become politically costly for Democrats to continue doing this.
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Read the full report at the link.
The worst place for a vulnerable group to be is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus.
These days, on immigration issues the term “bipartisan consensus” is actually a euphemism for “Dem giveaway of others’ rights to GOP nativists.” And, of course, even after the giveaway, the GOP shows absolutely no interest is such one-sided “bipartisanship” because Der Fuhrer tells them they must vote it down.
Yet, the disingenuous media and pundits keep misusing the term “bipartisanship” as if it had real meaning! And, although holding power in two of the three political branches, while the GOP struggles mightily to cling to its narrow margin in one, Biden and the Dems “wimp out” time after time on immigration, human rights, and racial justice.
The GOP proudly advertises that it has no values beyond whatever Trump wants on any particular day.
By contrast, Dems claim to have values. But a campaign being run against those professed values and their own core voters suggests that they too have become a “transactional party of no enduring values.”
Does America really need two political parties that stand for nothing beyond gratuitous cruelty to others and getting elected?
“Go along to get along.” Unhappily, that’s what today’s Dems appear to stand for.
Frankly, that has been at the heart of many of the problems at EOIR, particularly in Dem Administrations that were afraid of taking the bold and sometimes controversial actions necessary to change culture, institutionalize due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices. Current AG Merrick Garland is a classic example of this failed Dem model. As a result, EOIR is a dramatically dysfunctional and unjust agency.
Will the Democratic Party keep mindlessly following in EOIR’s footsteps? What’s it going to take for the next generation of Democrats to halt the slide into moral vapidity and political irrelevance?
“The Dems’ wrong-headed “Miller Lite” approach to immigration and the border would leave Casey scratching his head. With “major league talent” available, they have put an “amateur night at the Bijou” team on the field for what is perhaps the most important season in modern American history! PHOTO: Rudi Reit Creative Commons
As a former president of the United States excoriates immigrants for “poisoning the blood” of our country, as the governors of Texas and my current home state of Florida bus and fly migrants to points north — including my hometown, Chicago — my thoughts turn to baseball.
. . . .
While that inhospitable bunch has been villainizing migrants and refugees as a strain on U.S. resources, I have been marveling at how much foreign-born players have enlivened (and enriched) baseball in recent decades. Far from being poisoned, the sport has been rejuvenated by infusions of immigrants from Ohtani to Soto to Ronald Acuña Jr., Yordan Álvarez, Ha-Seong Kim, the Cubs’ Seiya Suzuki and so many others.
As these non-White non-Americans wow — and earn — millions with their transcendent talents, in a sport still emerging from its startlingly racist past, bigoted fictions about the “blood of our country” are being exposed. It’s true that baseball is still struggling with exploitative international recruiting practices, decreasing numbers of U.S.-born Black players and a lack of diversity among its executive ranks. Yet the increasing number of foreign-born major leaguers now counted among the best in the game’s long history dispels the self-aggrandizing myth that the United States possesses any monopoly on excellence.
The Republican presidential front-runner might argue that undocumented migrants and refugees aren’t elite athletes and are instead “animals” arriving from “s—hole countries.” But such dehumanizing insults are not only guilty of offensive fixation on national origin, ethnicity and race. They also mistake a person’s predicament for a person’s potential.
This is made plain by the origin stories of some of baseball’s biggest stars. Those same players who fashioned makeshift mitts out of milk cartons and cardboard, who rose to the game’s highest levels through arduous, harrowing and near-tragic journeys, might have languished on the other side of a barbed and militarized wall if this country’s right wing had its way.
The politicians who would build those walls, who attack immigrants for supposedly burdening our national resources, need only consider baseball’s explosive growth into a $10 billion industry and the financial value of Ohtani alone to the Dodgers — some estimate the team could make more than $1 billion off his deal over the course of a decade — to see that industries and economies thrive by inclusion, not exclusion.
Even so, ideologues seek to end inclusive practices in private industry and public education. They guarantee endless winning and new revolutions by promising to slash resources and wall off our country — all while whiffing on the most rudimentary of winning principles understood by most every baseball fan in America:
Great teams are made great by deep, diversified rosters. They are built on investment in both homegrown and international talent. And there are no curses except those that are self-inflicted by cheap, regressive thinking.
As the Republican presidential primary churns toward that party’s national convention, coincidingthis July with baseball’s annual All-Star Game, all of this will be evident to anyone ready to take a break from the campaign, take a seat in the bleachers and take in the world’s greatest ballplayers thriving at America’s game.
Jaswinder Bolina is a poet and essayist. His latest book is “English as a Second Language and Other Poems.”
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Read the full op-ed at the above link!
“Mistaking a person’s predicament for a person’s potential!” That’s exactly what Biden’s new-found attacks on asylum seekers and their advocates (his 2020 supporters!) are doing!
It’s painful to watch the errors pile up and the game slipping away from the Dems! 😣 Meanwhile, rather than being out there helping unify and re-elect Biden and Harris, advocates are marshaling their resources and considerable energy to fight tooth and nail in courts against the Administration’s apparent bone-headed intention to violate asylum law and human rights with illegal asylum bars! Energizing former core supporters to fight against your inane and immoral actions during an election year: A “strategy” that only inept, tone-deaf Dem politicos could love!
This paper examines the staffing needs of the US Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), as it seeks to eliminate an immigration court backlog, which approached 2.5 million pending cases at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2023. A previous study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) attributed the backlog to systemic, long-neglected problems in the broader US immigration system. This paper provides updated estimates of the number of immigration judges (IJs) and “judge teams” (IJ teams) needed to eliminate the backlog over ten and five years based on different case receipt and completion scenarios. It also introduces a data tool that will permit policymakers, administrators and researchers to make their own estimates of IJ team hiring needs based on changing case receipt and completion data. Finally, the paper outlines the pressing need for reform of the US immigration system, including a well-resourced, robust, and independent court system, particularly in light of record “encounters” of migrants at US borders in FY 2022 and 2023.
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Wow! This is beyond amazing! Kudos and thanks to Don and Brendan for this incredibly helpful and informative analytical tool. Get the full report and access to all the charts and interactive features at the above link!
Just yesterday, my friend, Arizona “practical humanitarian” Robb Victor, was asking about how legislators and policy makers could do better planning for hiring Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers to reduce the backlog and address processing problems at the border. This is for you, Robb!
As Don and Brendan cogently point out, hiring alone can’t solve the problem! America needs positive, due-process-oriented, reforms to our legal immigration system embracing the reality and the economic power of robust orderly refugee and asylum acceptance and increases in legal immigration of all types.
The longer we ignore the need for these positive changes, and embrace the dangerous and defective myth that we can or should continue the failed program of attempting to enforce our way out of the migration realities and opportunities of the 21st century, the longer the disorder and grotesque waste of human lives and fiscal resources by our nation will continue.
Merrick Garland doesn’t worry about injustice in his courts! But, YOU should PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
THIS WEEK IN “GARLANDING” — True Tales From The “Twilight Zone” Of American Justice!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
February17, 2024
garland ( gar’ land) v.t. [garlanded, garlanding] [dv. USAG Merrick Garland via Prof. Laurence Tribe] m. inflict injustice by one in charge, often through inattention, inaction, or dithering. (Ex 1. I pray the judge won’t garland my case. Ex 2. My client was garlanded and deported to death. Ex 3. They will be garlanding asylum applicants at the U.S. border.)
By all accounts, President Biden and his White House were outraged this week when they were garlanded by the “Hur report.” Ironically, three years of complaining by some of Biden’s core supporters who helped elect him in 2020 about being systematically “garlanded” at EOIR brought not so much as a raised eyebrow from the WH. Indeed, they might now be viewed as just a preview of Biden’s “Miller Lite” dissing of his supporters and human lives at the border with his inanely enthusiastic support of an attempted human rights “fire sale” by Senate Dems! Obviously, it’s quite a different story when things come full circle and the “chickens finally come home to roost.”
You might think that’s hard to top! But, you would be wrong! Let’s get started on this week’s trip around “the land where due process and fundamental fairness fear to tread!”
The project focused on pretrial hearings that can encompass pleadings, scheduling and other technical matters. The average observed hearing ran under four minutes, a rapid-fire pace to cover all of a hearing’s required steps.
Judges advised people of their rights in only 18% of the observed hearings. Most often, this involved reading rights to everyone in a group instead of individually.
Immigration courts are required to provide interpretation in the preferred language of the individual appearing at a hearing at no cost to the individual. The court frequently failed to provide Central American Indigenous language interpretation. This impacted roughly four out of five individuals who preferred to speak in a Central American Indigenous language.
In about one in five observed hearings, the individual was not represented by an attorney.
Of course, one might wonder why it is the responsibility of the ACLU to ferret out things that Garland should have discovered and corrected himself. But, no matter. Those poor souls whose lives and future are in the hands of the Omaha Immigration Court can expect to be garlanded.
2) Shenanigans in Chicago
Dan Kowalski reports:
IJs hide the ball; find the secret list or lose your case
Friends,
Immigration court practitioners in many cities now face a new hurdle: find, and adhere to, a secret list of IJ procedural preferences (requirements, actually)…posted, in one case, in the “pro bono room” of one court. NOT online anywhere. Oh, and it changes frequently, and without warning. See the attached sample from Chicago.
Practitioners have complained to EOIR, so let’s see what happens.
I have a funny feeling that PWS may have a thing or two to say about all this.
Indeed I do, my friend, indeed I do. This one hits “close to home.”
Back in 2006 my friend and Round Table colleague Judge John Gossart of Baltimore headed a group of IJs who took on the monumental task of writing the first Immigration Court Practice Manual (“ICPM”). Based on Judge Gossart’s own “local court rules and best judicial practices” developed over decades, the ICPM built on the success of the award- winning BIA Practice Manual, created and issued during my tenure as BIA Chair.
One of the key features of the ICPM is thatIt superseded and erased all then-existing “local rules.”
Those few of us IJs who did public education events — under the watchful eye of our HQ “handlers” — were encouraged to tout and promote the ICPM as the “definitive guide” to successful practice before the courts, which, of course I dutifully did as reflected in my speeches from those days. I believe we even had “Q&A” sessions with the local immigration bar to promote and explain the ICPM.
Now, after years of gross mismanagement under Trump and Biden, things have come full circle. The oft-conflicting, idiosyncratic, and frequently inaccessible or counterintuitive “local rules” that the ICPM was created to eliminate evidently have returned with a vengeance.
Meanwhile, the very substantial amount of time, resources, credibility, and effort that went into creating, distributing, and implementing the ICPM has been a colossal waste of taxpayer resources because the last two Administrations have failed in their duty to competently and professionally administer EOIR!
And let’s not leave out Congress! If ever there were a need for a new, independent, professional, expert Article I Court System it’s EOIR. Yet, although Dems have introduced bills, the GOP has expressed no interest in Article I, nor has it been a priority for Congressional leadership and the Administration. It wasn’t even “on the radar screen” during the failed Senate “debate” on the immigration system.
Both Chicago Immigration Court practitioners and those IJs, current and past, who devoted their professional time and energy to the ICPM have been garlanded.
3) ADR On Steroids In Virginia
A long-time DMV immigration lawyer told the “Courtside I-Team” this week:
I routinely have MCHs listed as “in person” that are actually by Webex (I had one today). I also have an Individual on Thursday listed as Webex, but I received an email at 4:00 PM today stating that this was an error, and it was actually in person. I replied that I could not attend in person, as I have too many other cases and family issues to rearrange my schedule at the last minute. We’ll see what happens, but all this is typical of an agency that could care less about applicants, practitioners or due process of law. Take care.
For decades, practitioners and experts had been begging DOJ and EOIR to enter the 21st century with automation. Dishearteningly, now that automation has belatedly arrived at EOIR, it’s being used to severely diminish customer service rather than improve it!
It seems that every whim, irrationality, inefficiency, and inconvenience that developed at EOIR over years has now been “automated” to maximize the trauma and stress inflicted on those appearing before these broken courts. As this example points out, that has led to “Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) on steroids!”
And here’s why automated ADR is such a powerful tool! Some practitioners have told me that it allows EOIR to unilaterally schedule them to be in three or four different courts at the same time, with almost no notice. Then, it’s up to the lawyer to file individual“motions to reschedule” to clean up EOIR’s mess.
Sometimes they are granted, sometimes denied without any rationale. All of this leads to more work and case shuffling but, importantly, without ever getting to the merits of any case!
Meanwhile, the backlog grows exponentially and the stress levels on the private bar and the staff ratchet up.
There might be surer ways to destroy a court system, but none come immediately to mind. This is garlanding at its best!
4) Another “F” In “Immigration Law 101” From The 3rd Circuit
“[W]e conclude that the BIA, in deciding his CAT claim, failed to consider evidence favorable to Herrow. For that reason, we will remand his petition as it applies to that claim. … Herrow claims that the BIA and IJ erred in denying his CAT claim and in finding that (1) he is unlikely to face torture and (2) the Somali government would not acquiesce in such torture. Because the BIA and IJ ignored evidence favorable to Herrow, we will grant his petition in part and remand for a more comprehensive review of the evidence. … To establish a likelihood of future torture, the record must demonstrate an aggregate risk of torture to the noncitizen that exceeds fifty percent. In making this determination, the IJ must address what is likely to happen to the petitioner if removed, and whether “what is likely to happen amount[s] to the legal definition of torture.” In answering these questions here, the BIA and IJ found that Herrow did not demonstrate a likelihood of torture. We conclude, however, that this determination could not have been made if all the evidence presented by Herrow had been properly considered.”
Being wrongfully denied CAT is no small matter, particularly if the USG is threatening to send you to Somalia. Lets get a glimpse of what happens in Somalia, courtesy of the latest report from our State Department:
Government security forces, including NISA and the Puntland Intelligence Agency (PIA), detained boys and adult men in the same facility and threatened, beat, and forced them to confess to crimes, according to Human Rights Watch. There were reports of rape and sexual abuse by government agents, primarily members of the security forces. The Human Rights Center, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO), reported two Somaliland police officers, area commissioner Hassan Ismail and Mustafe Yusuf Dheere, raped Nimo Jama Hassan on June 4 in Caynabo (see sections 1.g. and 6).
Al-Shabaab imposed harsh treatment and punishment on persons in areas under its control (see section 1.g.).
Torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment at the hands of clan militias, some of which were government-affiliated, remained frequent. A strong and widespread culture of impunity continued, due mainly to clan protection of perpetrators and weak government capacity to hold the guilty to account.
You might think that would lead Garland and his subordinates to take extra care to get these cases right. But, you would be wrong. Dead wrong in many cases. “Good enough for government work” is the touchstone of garlanding.
By all accounts, Garland was a stellar student during his Harvard Law days. But, not so much some of his EOIR judges at the trial and appellate levels, particularly some of the “Sessions/Barr holdovers” who appear to have been appointed to the bench primarily because they were viewed as likely to deny protection without regard to law or facts. (I’ll concede that Barr and Sessions were wrong about some of their appointments who turned out, perhaps againstthe odds, to be fair judges.)
Far too many EOIR judges receive “Fs” from the Courts of Appeals on the basics of immigration and asylum law, even though most mistakes never get to the Article III Courts or manage to otherwise wend their way through the system, thereby endangering lives.
Mr. Herrow was garlanded, but survived (at least for now) thanks to the work of his lawyers and the Third Circuit.
Well, folks, that’s this week’s wrap from Gar-Land, “the land that justice forgot!” But, stay tuned to Courtside for future updates on garlanding and its victims!
What’s on the horizon: In March, a final report expected from AILA Ohio on systemic racism at EOIR! Should be a great read!
Asylum seekers walk along the border wall near Sasabe in 34-degree weather after snowfall on February 10. (Photo credit: David Damian Figueroa)Todd Miller Border Correspondent The Border Chronicle PHOTO: Coder Chron
During the week, the term “border crisis” was featured prominently in the national airwaves in both political rhetoric and media coverage. Perhaps the term would be appropriate and accurate if it referred to people freezing in the snow and rain, or dying crossing the desert in the summer. Yet, even though thousands have died crossing the world’s most dangerous land border—including record numbers in the past two years—this is almost never mentioned in media reports on the “border crisis.” Instead, the most prominent “crisis” is the right wing narrative of an overrun, open border. Everything else follows. The Border Patrol is overwhelmed. The enforcement apparatus is overwhelmed. Washington is overwhelmed. An NBC headline alarmingly suggested that ICE and CBP might have budget shortfalls, or entirely run out of money (spoiler: that’s not going to happen). “Border crisis” has been used so frequently that it has become both abstract and mind numbing, a term deployed either to gain political points or to justify more funding for border and immigration enforcement, which has received more than a hefty $400 billion since DHS opened its doors in 2003. “Border crisis” rarely refers to people like the injured, sick, wet, and shivering asylum seekers at the border, who on Saturday included children and pregnant women.
Perhaps instead of portraying the border as in crisis, we should say that the border, by its very design, creates crisis. I thought about this on Monday when I went down with a group of Green Valley Samaritan volunteers to where the asylum seekers had crossed. The snow was gone, but the mud puddles were not. The makeshift camp where many of the 400 people had stayed was empty. I kneeled by a tent made of aluminum blankets where a single kid’s sandal was on the ground. I meditated on that sandal and wondered how many times I’d seen this same scenario over the decades in Arizona—a kid’s Mickey Mouse suitcase, a stuffed animal, a small pair of pants or a shirt—in places where people had camped. How many times had I seen the electrolyte bottles, black bottles, empty tin cans in desolate places of the desert where people couldn’t possibly carry enough water to get where they were going?
A child’s sandal left behind at the makeshift camp along the border near Sasabe on February 12. (Photo credit: Todd Miller)
The border is designed to create crisis; that is the deterrence strategy. Right next to the camp were two idly parked Caterpillar excavators, presumably used to construct the border wall. Staring at them over the tents and makeshift shelters, I assumed that it was machinery from Spencer Construction—a company that received more than $600 million in contracts from CBP in the summer—for “border maintenance.” Now Spencer construction crews cruise up and down the border road, “filling in the gaps” of the border wall, as the Biden administration puts it. They filled in one such gap much closer to Sasabe several months ago, and now people crossed much farther away. With its focus on enforcement, the now-rejected border bill would have injected $14.4 billion into CBP and ICE (on top of a 2024 budget that was already more than $28 billion), including more funds for wall construction. Also included in the bill was money dedicated to surveillance technology, such as more autonomous towers (in addition to the nearly 400 such towers already installed), and the further digitization of the border, including systems for taking DNA samples from border crossers, and ground and maritime drone systems (yes, boat drones). Detention Watch Network describes the bill’s proposed expansion of ICE’s detention and deportation apparatus as the “largest appropriation of funds for immigration detention custody and surveillance operations in ICE’s history,” which included a daily capacity for detainment rising from 34,000 people to 50,000. Mind you, many of ICE’s detention facilities are run by private companies, so, as with surveillance, the profit motive is always lurking behind the scenes.
In short, the bill was what GOP lawmakers wanted, yet they rejected it. Democrats such as Chuck Schumer and Kyrsten Sinema (or excuse me ex-Democrat, now independent) lamented that Republicans weren’t taking the border seriously—an accurate critique, since the bill was only offering more fortification, including an unprecedented provision that gave Washington the authority to shut down the border (though it was unclear what closing the border meant exactly). Even more confusing was that Donald Trump opposed ramping up enforcement. It all makes sense, however, when the election is considered: Trump wants to run against Biden on this issue, but he can hardly do that if Biden is pounding the iron fist. As ABC News reported, “Trump probably still does benefit politically from a protracted [and manufactured!] border crisis.” However, Senator Chris Murphy, who was the chief Democratic negotiator for the bill, wrote: “Republicans can’t claim that the border is in crisis and then vote against the bipartisan bill, written by their own leadership, that would fix the problem.” He concluded, “Quite simply, we risk losing the 2024 election if we do not seize this opportunity to go on offense on the issue of the border and turn the tables on Republicans on a key fall voting issue.” The Senate Democrats took Murphy’s challenge and went on the offensive with a slick video on Twitter showing Democrats as hardline border enforcers. For his part, Biden stated, “Every day between now and November the American people are going to know the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.” In other words, the so-called border crisis has become a race to see which candidate can better fortify the border.
As for the people freezing and in various states of medical distress, this border cold war (and the proposed border bill) only makes matters worse. On top of that, according to a press release by No More Deaths on Saturday, Border Patrol agents told the humanitarian aid organization that they were “informed of the situation,” of people stranded in potentially life-threatening conditions, “but did not plan to drive out to address it.” Volunteers began to transport people from the border wall to the Border Patrol substation, also known as its processing center, so refugees could turn themselves in. Volunteers reported that Border Patrol agents in Sasabe detained and threatened them, and took pictures of their driver’s licenses. At one point there was a “rolling roadblock” of Border Patrol trucks. One volunteer reported a situation in which two agents spoke to them at “yelling volume” that seemed to be “backed with a bunch of anger.” The agents told the volunteers that they were “breaking the law” and threatened to arrest them and impound vehicles. But the volunteers persisted, driving the 15 miles or so back to retrieve more people. More and more asylum seekers assembled in front of the Border Patrol processing center. Eventually, the school in Sasabe was opened as a temporary shelter for the night. By the end of the day, the humanitarian aid organizations evacuated every person from the border. On Sunday morning all migrants were in Border Patrol custody. And as Arizona Public Media reported, “Seemingly at odds with the aid workers’ account, Customs and Border Protection says they prioritized the humanitarian response to the migrants abandoned in the cold.”
By the time I arrived on Monday, the real crisis had come and gone. There was the shoe, the blankets now drying on the mesquite trees, the construction workers driving up and down the road in their vehicles, and a 30-foot border wall meant to push people further into the desert. No More Deaths and Samaritans volunteers cleaned up the mess in the aftermath. What played out was not just a battle between humanitarian aid and the Border Patrol. It was a battle over what the crisis really was.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Sigh! 😮💨
So, our brave nation and our courageous leaders are “existentially threatened” by a bunch of desperate unarmed people patiently waiting in misery to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol for asylum screening because our Government can’t process them in a fair and timely manner through legal ports of entry as required by law! That’s despite the relative predictability of flows of forced migrants and their slow progress toward the border.
If our “intelligence” services can’t foresee very public flows of forced migrants northward, and our nation can’t prepare to fulfill our legal and moral obligations to our fellow humans, Lord help us!
$600 million for annual “border maintenance,” but not enough trained Asylum Officers to screen asylum seekers at ports of entry? $28 billion for ineffective “deterrence,” but they can’t run resettlement programs that get asylum seekers and those granted asylum to the many places in the U.S. that need their skills? Gimmie a break!
This is the human face 😢 of our shameful and preventable bipartisan failure to meet our legal, humanitarian, and moral obligations to forced migrants at the border and elsewhere! No wonder cowardly politicos and complicit media don’t have the guts to “look their victims in the eye!”👁️ 🐥
And, the failed bogus bipartisan Senate bill that the Administration and many Dems tout and the media fawn over, would have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to solve this real humanitarian crisis at the border. Indeed, as almost all real border experts agree, it would have made the suffering and dereliction of duty by our Government immeasurably worse for these our fellow humans in need!
Thanks to folks like Todd Miller and Melissa del Bosque for bearing witness, speaking truth, and refusing to let our nation’s grotesque abuses of, and intentional misrepresentations about, forced migrants be swept under the carpet.
As the economy has improved and consumers have begun recognizing that improvement, Republicans have pivoted to attacking President Biden on a different policy weakness: immigration. After all, virtually everyone — Democrats included — seems to agree the issue is a serious problem.
But what if that premise is wrong? Voters and political strategists have treated our country’s ability to draw immigrants from around the world as a curse; it could be a blessing, if only we could get out of our own way.
Consider a few numbers: Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released updated 10-year economic and budget forecasts. The numbers look significantly better than they did a year earlier, and immigration is a key reason.
The CBO has now factored in a previously unexpected surge in immigration that began in 2022, which the agency assumes will persist for several years. These immigrants are more likely to work than their native-born counterparts, largely because immigrants skew younger. This infusion of working-age immigrants will more than offset the expected retirement of the aging, native-born population.
. . . .
Instead, GOP lawmakers scaremonger about the foreign-born, characterizing immigration as an invasion. As Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) dog-whistled last week, “Import the 3rd world. Become the 3rd world.”
America has historically drawn hard-working immigrants from around the world precisely because its people and economy have more often been shielded from such “Third World”-like instability, which Republican politicians now invite in.
Ronald Reagan, the erstwhile leader of the conservative movement, often spoke poignantly of this phenomenon. In one of his last speeches as president, he described the riches that draw immigrants to our shores and how immigrants in turn redouble those riches:
Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
Reagan’s words reflected the poetry of immigration. Since then, the prose — as we’ve seen in the economic numbers, among other metrics — has been pretty compelling, too.
Already the media are “at it again,” most attributing Democrat Tom Souzzi’s easy win over his GOP opponent for the House seat vacated by George Santos to his “move right” on immigration. But, as Catherine suggests above, “what if that premise is wrong?”
There is certainly support for a more nuanced view, both anecdotally and in polls.“Suozzi, [a voter]said, would ‘protect us but also be fair to those who are seeking asylum.’” https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/02/13/new-york-district-3-special-election-george-santos/. Sadly, and outrageously, the so-called Senate “compromise” border bill that Souzzi touted and which has become the “darling” of the tone-deaf mainstream media does neither. Not even close!
Yet, supposedly responsible journalists are falling all over themselves touting the benefits to Dems of a horrible “Miller-Lite” bill that essentially would have destroyed the right to asylum while turning the border over to cartels and smugglers to exploit some of the world’s most vulnerable who are victims of our own failings. Today’s wrong-headed WashPost editorial is a particularly egregious piece of such media sophistry. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/immigration-border-suozzi-mayorkas-special/.
So, here’s a more intellectually honest “rewrite” of today’s lead editorial:
POST EDITORIAL BOARD: Death, Murder, Rape, Torture, Assault, Robbery, Extortion, Kidnapping of Hispanics, Blacks, Other Forced Migrants A Small Price To Pay For Bipartisan Deal To Outsource Migration To Gangs, Cartels, and Traffickers!
We Must Not Only “Turn Away The St. Louis,” But Torpedo It So Every Man, Woman, & Child Goes To The Bottom Where They Will Be Effectively Deterred From Ever Again Invoking Our Laws & Moral Obligations!
Nowhere, and I repeat nowhere, are the voices of those with decades of actual hands on experience working with migrants at the border, and the voices of those migrants themselves, being heard and heeded in this “non-debate” that resulted not in a “compromise” but in a “human rights giveaway.” What gives us the right to arrogantly and immorally give away rights and human lives that are NOT ours in the first place as if they were “table favors at a political fundraiser?“
As Beatriz so pointedly said:
Hanging above our heads like a Florida cockroach threatening to fly into our faces was the fact that the Biden administration, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Chris Murphy, and Democrats who voted for the bill had officially moved the goalpost on immigration.
Thanks to the moral vapidity of Dem politicos and the Administration the “game” for the lives, rights, future, and human dignity of asylum seekers is now being “played” between the “Good Guys’”goal line and their ten yard line! We are being offered a “choice” between “cruel and stupid” and “crueler and dumber!” Certainly, the Dems and our nation could and should do better!
Supporting fairness, orderly processing, and actions that protect asylum and the community would be a far more prudent choice for Dems than the virulent “death to asylum craze” (the unstated part of which is that it also means “death to asylum seekers”) that currently seems to be “in vogue” with both parties and mindlessly hyped by the media.
It’s quite possible that Souzzi won not because of his extreme position on asylum, but because his position was “less extreme” that that of his GOP opponent and her openly xenophobic party. This conclusion is actually supported by polls that show that while most voters understandably want “order at the border,” they also want to protect the right to claim asylum and a fair process for doing so. See, e.g., https://wp.me/p8eeJm-9hU.
There is opportunity here for Dems to change minds and create a stronger coalition for asylum seekers and other immigrants. NGO experts like Beatriz Lopez need to partner with Congressional Dems who understand asylum and the border (like Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX)) to reach out and meet with Rep. Souzzi and others like him to explain practical solutions and useful changes at the border that would create order while maintaining and enhancing fair and timely asylum processing.
Beyond that, advocates must explain and model how migrants themselves can help resolve the problems facing Rep. Souzzi’s district and improve the quality of life for all. They must show how migrants are “part of the solution,” perhaps, for example, by establishing public-private partnerships that would involve migrant communities in constructing high-quality, attractive affordable housing that would help the entire community. Working on various civic improvement projects might also be a mutually beneficial option.
Advocates, NGOs, and political supporters of migrants must do more than just point to graphs and cite statistics about the long-term economic and societal benefits of immigration. They must actually model and create practical joint projects and expand opportunities for the benefit of migrants and the communities to which they have been relocated.
Problem-solving needs to be brought into the “here and now” rather than just being presented to U.S. communities as a vague promise of future benefits. My experience is that most people react to what’s before them today rather than than relying on a constructed view of tomorrow, now matter how attractive and statistically supported that future vision might be.
In addition to the misguided “Miller Lite nonsense” from the editorial board and, disappointingly, even the usually responsible and insightful Karen Tumulty, today’s WashPost contained useful observations from Eduardo Porter about the need to get migrants to places in the U.S. where they, their job skills, and their work ethic would be welcomed, appreciated, and useful.
But, both the Biden Administration and Congress have shamefully failed to convert this “low-hanging fruit” into reality. Even worse, that has allowed White Nationalist demagogues like Abbott and DeSantis to waste and divert millions in public funds to make the situation worse and to convert those who want to help America succeed and prosper into hapless “political footballs” being tossed back and forth between GOP nativists and wimpy Dem politicos who long-ago lost their moral bearings. Although NGOs and advocates are weary and overburdened, if they don’t take the initiative to make this happen, on at least some scale, the opportunity will be lost and the nativist myth-makers will prevail.
Only by modeling actual results in real time will we be able to demonstrate the fallacy and counterproductivity of the GOP’s nativist “burden myths.” There’s no time like the present to start!
To no one’s surprise, this past week the bipartisan border bill, creatively named “The National Security Act, 2024” and introduced by an all white cast of Senators, failed to pass the chamber. Many Democratic Senators who once stood beside immigration advocates at rallies to push back against the proposal fell in line with their president and voted in favor of a flawed and dangerous bill that would fall short of mitigating migration. None but the beltway nerds and press were paying attention to C-SPAN as the proposal died, triggering Democratic political operatives to salivate over the “gotcha” vote that’ll be used against Republicans on the campaign trail.
Beatriz Lopez Deputy Director Immigration Hub PHOTO: Immigration Hub
For many of us battle-tested, seasoned advocates, there was no true satisfaction at seeing Republicans implode or an undesirable proposal fall apart. Hanging above our heads like a Florida cockroach threatening to fly into our faces was the fact that the Biden administration, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Chris Murphy, and Democrats who voted for the bill had officially moved the goalpost on immigration.
‘Tis a slippery slope to empower the nation’s president to shut the border down to block asylum seekers and codify measures to make it nearly impossible to claim asylum and easier and faster to deport people back to dangerous conditions while hoping a developing nation with its own set of serious problems cracks down on vulnerable children and families seeking safety and refuge. To be okay with all of this means you’ve – as Isabel Wilkerson so aptly wrote – gone through a “process, a programming” to dehumanize both the issue and those at our doors, begging for shelter and freedom.
And look I get it. I’ve heard the rhetorical, exasperated questions: what else are Democrats supposed to do when migrants keep coming to the border? When Republicans keep hammering us on the border? And Chicago and New York are struggling to manage those bussed into the cities? And in a pivotal election year, these questions carry an extra ounce of GTFO.
And to them I say – I hear you. I’m listening. I’m worried, too. But I’m not concerned about the tenacity and brilliance of local leaders and NGOs on the ground working to help newly-arrived immigrants to settle in this powerful and abundant country. Or least of all anxious over visionary funders and creative mayors and governors seeking ways to welcome new settlers into regions eager for consumers and workers. I’m not even worried about Trump and Republicans relentlessly attacking Democrats on the campaign trail – it’s nothing new.
What I am truly troubled by is Democrats choosing flight over fight.
The current conundrum that President Biden and Democrats find themselves in goes beyond the challenges of global migration. Since 2017, Democratic messaging has been devoid of pro-immigrant messaging. Were it not because of the loud cries of a toddler separated from her mother and the incredible journalistic accounting that shook the soul of America did it spring even moderate Democrats into action. But, when it came to political advertising and a constant drumbeat of both values-based immigration messaging and Republican accountability on the issue, you had to search far and wide to find solid examples. Thanks to the David Shor’s of the political class, most Democrats chose to avoid the issue, leaving a vacuum gladly filled by Stephen Miller types.
The Democratic choice to neither proudly display their position on immigration or celebrate the immigration wins has left the American people believing they’re for “open borders” or wondering where they stand on the issue and have they done anything on it? What’s worse, they consistently fail to counter their opponent’s radical, Trumpian rhetoric and anti-immigrant ideas. While racist and radical media and online influencers, such as Tucker Carlson, yell anti-immigrant obscenities and the GOP spend millions upon millions trying to convince Americans that immigrants are bad people who are trying to replace them, infiltrate their communities with drugs and crime, and steal their jobs and social security, Democrats have responded by pivoting to other kitchen table issues.
The gradual damage of this messaging to America’s psyche and perception of the other – immigrants – has created the current moment. Now, even reporters from major news outlets are asking me why and how Trump dismantled our immigration system and what actions President Biden had taken to restore the system. The first question often leaves me baffled, for how quick we forget the heinous wrongs of the past, and the second is no surprise, just sad.
It’s really disappointing that not many people, reporters included, don’t know that the Biden administration has taken over 500 actions that have had such a positive impact on women, families, children and workers in the U.S.
No Democrat should be afraid of their immigration shadow. It’s time to stop running away or running to the right of the issue. You can be sensible without spite. Until Republicans can treat the cancer that is Trump, Democrats have to go to bat for the issue with gutsy resolve, bold solutions and radical empathy. They have to be in it for the short and long game. Like investing in an index fund or supporting reproductive rights or gay marriage, it’ll pay off to tell Americans and Republicans that Democrats stand for an immigration system that lives up to our values and meets our nation’s economic demands, that we’ll secure our border with smart and humane solutions – not band-aids that create chaos and jeopardize lives – that we’ll do whatever it takes to deliver a path to citizenship for Dreamers and hard-working immigrants who have waited too long for our government to act, and that we’ll fight like hell against Trump and anyone who threatens to separate families, deport our neighbors en masse, and divide our communities.
No one is immune to mistakes or bad votes. For Democrats, this is a moment to reflect and admit you fucked up. Now do better. Yes, use the vote to hold Trump and Republicans accountable – but don’t you dare use that bill as a model for legislation or campaign rhetoric.
You can’t out-Trump Trump.
Humanize the issue. Show courage and compassion. Talk solutions. Remind voters what and who you stand for and what’s at stake if Trump and anti-immigrant Republicans have it their way. Be disciplined and keep repeating. Throw some money behind that messaging. And I promise you, you’ll win.
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Thanks, Beatriz!
This should be required reading for every Dem politico!
Case in point: A very recent Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) study reaffirmed what those who work with migrants have always known: Directly contrary to the GOP and media myths, migrants of all types — regardless of status — are a huge source of economic growth for America. They will help fuel a $7 trillion boost in the U.S. economy over the next decade!See, e.g., https://time.com/6692645/immigration-economy-us-gdp-growth-cbo-report/.
But, you sure wouldn’t know this from the one-sided “debate” about migration going on today. The GOP spreads (and the media promotes, largely without critical analysis) blatant lies and myths about the largely fabricated and often self-created “burdens” of migration (see, Abbott, DeSantis). Yet rather than rebutting them and embracing truth, Dems basically look the other way and try to change the conversation.
This has caused them to “run away from” and “downplay” one of the Biden Administration’s most important positive achievements — functioning parole programs that move migrant flows from the “irregular” to the “regular!” Moreover, that processing takes place in advance, outside the United States, rather than adding to the border pressure or becoming part of the overhyped asylum backlog resulting from poor performance by Administrations of both parties and Congress over decades (but hugely aggravated by the Trump kakistocracy). Even the immediate work authorization problem is solved by the advance parole programs.
Are these programs perfect? No, they are far too limited both in terms of numbers and scope of eligible nationalities. They also don’t answer questions about the long-term fate of those paroled. But, they are certainly a step in the right direction that could be built upon and “model” the case for more durable long-term legislative expansions of visa programs.
The GOP’s irrational attacks on what is working and helps our country and the world shows just how little they care about solving problems or the long-term prosperity, stability, and strength of our nation. Yet, the largely indisputable benefits of parole and the willingness of the Administration to engage in creative and successful problem-solving gets scant mention from either the Biden campaign or Congressional Dems.
And, the media is no better. Given the current high-profile of immigration on the national scene, one might reasonably have expected “front page coverage” of the CBO report and findings, particularly since it directly contradicts many of the false claims raised by both parties during the recent failed “Senate compromise” proposal. Instead, even I had to do some “digging” to come up with articles featuring the CBO report.
Curiously, the GOP plays to the most extreme, dangerous, and unreasonable elements of its far right base.
Conversely, Dems run against the values and views of some of the most reasonable, dedicated, and energizing elements of their progressive base.
Blitzer’s villains include “[n]umerous U.S. institutions, bureaucrats, and presidents” who supported and enabled “savage governments responsible for vast numbers of people killed — many of them poor and Indigenous.”
Blitzer has particular contempt for “one of the most ineptly titled American officials ever — the State Department’s assistant secretary for human rights, Elliott Abrams — [who] tried to suppress information about the massacre of 978 people, including 477 children, in the Salvadoran village of Mozote.” Abrams, later was convicted of misdemeanors for withholding information from Congress in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal, but was pardoned by Bush I.
Among Blitzer’s unsung heroes are “relentless US. immigration advocates,” the late Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA) who “grasped all the nuances of U.S.-manufactured border crises,” and of course, an “array of migrants” who bravely persevered in the face of treacherous, dishonest, ill-informed, and often deadly U.S. immigration policies intended to “break them” and destroy their humanity. That disgraceful process continues today — on steroids!
The review ends on a perhaps unexpectedly optimistic note:
And yet, after reading Blitzer’s book, one can’t help but think that the impossible might be possible — that maybe, just maybe, this could be fixed. He’s not trying to lay out a set of policy solutions. He’s making a more nuanced plea, a rejection of the “selective amnesia” of politics in favor of a deeper understanding of how we — as a nation and as a region — got here.
It is a book with a “mission,” he writes, a nudge for U.S. decision-makers and a platform for voices on the other side of the border, a “kind of go-between: to tell each side’s story to the other; to find a way to bring the Homeland Security officials into the housing-complex basement; and to allow the migrants in the basement to participate, for once, in the privileged backroom conversations that decide their fate.”
Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen.
Manuel Roig-Franzia is a Washington Post features writer and formerly served as The Post’s bureau chief in Miami and Mexico.
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Following up on the last point — the “seldom-heard and never-heeded by our politicos and media” voices of those whose lives and humanity are threatened by our failed policies, this Thursday, Feb. 15, @ 3 PM EST, Immigration Law & Justice Network & The Hope Border Institute will present a free webinar, “Stop The War On The Border: Migrants Speak:
Stop the War on the Border: Migrants Speak – Detengan la Guerra en la Frontera: Migrantes Hablan
Date & Time
Feb 15, 2024 03:00 PM in
Description
ILJ Network and our partners invite you to participate in this webinar and hear directly from migrants in the northern Mexican border and the U.S. interior on how restrictions to asylum and humanitarian parole impact their lives.
ILJ Network y compañeros de coaliciones los invita a participar en este evento virtual para escuchar directamente de migrantes, ubicados entre la parte Norte de México y el interior de los Estados Unidos, acerca de cómo dichas restricciones al derecho de asilo y de parole humanitario impactan sus vidas.
Information you provide when registering will be shared with the account owner and host and can be used and shared by them in accordance with their Terms and Privacy Policy.
This is very timely! Rarely do we hear from those whose lives, dignity, and safety are being bargained away and devalued as if they were “commodities” at the disposal of disingenuous politicos and interests who have turned their misery and desperation into “profit centers” and political rallying cries.
🏈🏆Finally, on another topic, congrats to Coach Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, the rest of the Kansas City Chiefs, and “Chiefs’ Superfan” Taylor Swift on their second consecutive Lombardi Trophy and third in five seasons.As almost everyone in sleep-deprived America knows by now, KC outlasted the SF 49ers in yesterday’s Super Bowl ending with a thrilling overtime finish 25-22!
For everyone else, including my Green Bay Packers, it’s “wait till next season!”😎
Reena Diamante reports for the Spectrum News El Paso:
. . . .
“A president doesn’t have the unilateral authority to shut down the border. If a president did, the prior president would have done it,” said Alberto Benitez, director of the Immigration Clinic at George Washington University Law School. “Even the prior president, who had a particular perspective on immigration, never shut down the border. There needs to be buy-in from Congress that a border shutdown is necessary, which there never has been.”
. . . .
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You can read the full article at the link.
Professor Benitez modestly quipped that this was: “My five seconds of fame on Spectrum News!”
You are always in the “NDPA Hall of Fame,” my friend!
Liz Mineo, Staff Writer, interviews Professor Neuman in The Harvard Gazette:
. . . .
What should be done about border security, enforcement, and the immigration court backlog?
In terms of enforcement, there is no easy solution. A border fence is merely a symbol and no solution. Clearly, the adjudication system needs more resources, and adjustments to improve both efficiency and fairness. For both sides, justice delayed is justice denied, and that should be an important part of the focus.
Another priority, contrary to some claims, is to reduce reliance on detention. The U.S. is engaged in arbitrary detention of migrants who really don’t need to be detained; they could be subject to surveillance.
The country should also respect its international obligations not to send people back to countries where they will be persecuted, tortured, or killed. It cannot suspend its international obligations on that front, and it should not openly violate them, as it did under COVID.
What measures should be taken to reduce the flow of migrants into the U.S?
In terms of enforcement, the important point to stress is that this is not an issue that the U.S. can solve unilaterally. There must be a regional solution. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at the logistics of the problem that the solutions depend on cooperation with Mexico. Congress can’t just impose a solution and assume that Mexico will go along with it. More broadly, there are other countries that need to be involved in protecting refugees and in solving some of the problems that lead to migration.
Some experts say the asylum system is a parallel immigration system and that it should be revamped. What’s your take on this?
I’d like to use the term asylum broadly, not legalistically, to cover forms of protection from persecution, killing, and torture. The U.S. asylum system is too opaque and too inconsistent: Valid claims may be rejected, and claims that are made in perfectly good faith may turn out to be invalid.
On the other hand, some people seek desperately to come to the U.S. for reasons that are not covered by asylum, such as poverty, loss of livelihood, or to join family members. The system needs to winnow those claims out while remaining open to valid claims for protection. It would also benefit from greater clarity on which claims are valid, and from more consistent adjudication, but now, the system is not meeting its obligations to persecuted people.
Finally, what are your realistic hopes for changes in immigration policies?
For now, my hopes would be that any new legislation would increase funding and would help give the public the sense that the border situation is being addressed.
And meanwhile that the executive would use the authority that it already has to manage the situation better, including by negotiating with other countries. The executive should resist efforts that obstruct its compliance with its obligations.
There is danger that any new legislation would decrease protection, which would mean that we would be taking no steps forward, and several steps backward, and that nonetheless, issues about migration would remain just as divisive as they are now.
*************************
Read the full (edited) interview at the link.
“Decrease protection” seems to be a toxic bipartisan goal of Congress and the Administration. What’s preventing it? They can’t agree on the amount of cruelty, suffering, and dehumanization to inflict on vulnerable forced migrants who overwhelmingly seek only to have the USG process their legal claims for protection in a fair and timely manner! That reality has clearly been lost in the rancid, one-sided, often secret “negotiations” in Congress; the insipid statements of the Biden Administration promising more border closures, cruel, inhuman, degrading, expensive, and wasteful detention; and treacherous “bipartisan” abrogation of well-established “life or death” legal rights to fair consideration of claims!
Professor Neuman says “this is not an issue that the U.S. can solve unilaterally.” There is general consensus among migration experts on this fundamental truth! Yet, Congress and the Administration keep pretending otherwise, with little critical, informed “pushback” from the media.
Why isn’t Kristen Welker interviewing Professor Neuman and other migration experts, rather than making “Meet the Press” a “Foxlike Forum” for those promoting White Nationalist lies about the border and national security? Welker hasn’t bothered to inform herself about the human lives and human rights involved with forced migration at the border. Therefore, her feeble attempts to stop GOP nativist politicos from rambling on with their border myths are somewhere between ineffective to pathetic, but certainly must be maddening to anyone involved with assisting the actual humans seeking protection under our dysfunctional legal system!
Garland’s inexcusable failure to fix EOIR and get it working fairly, professionally, expertly, and in real time is a drag on the Biden Administration immigration policies and an existential threat to our democracy!
Laura Trask
Director of Development & Communications media@ayuda.com
Washington, D.C. (February 5, 2024) – Yesterday, Senate negotiators released language for the supplemental funding bill that would dramatically alter the U.S. asylum system in exchange for foreign aid and humanitarian assistance.
Ayuda joins immigrant communities and advocacy organizations across the country in strongly condemning this proposal that would lead to more families separated, children detained, and asylum seekers sent back to face persecution and even death.
Amongst many of the draconian changes proposed, this legislation would create a new authority, with narrow exceptions, that would allow officials to summarily expel asylum seekers. It would also restrict screening standards for asylum seekers and expedite asylum claims to the extent that many will not be able to access counsel or adequately represent themselves.
Ayuda and our partner organizations believe there are far more effective solutions to immigration policy failures. We call on the Senate to reject this framework, disentangle humanitarian assistance from changes that would eviscerate U.S. asylum law, and recommit themselves to building compassionate and humane immigration system.
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About Ayuda:
Ayuda provides direct legal, social, and language access services to low-income immigrants in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Since 1973, Ayuda has served more than 150,000 immigrants throughout the region. Ayuda is the only nonprofit service provider in the area that provides a wide range of immigration and family law assistance, social services, and language access support for all immigrants – including women, men, and children – from anywhere in the world.
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FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a proud member of the AYUDA Advisory Council.
I’m pleased to be part of an organization that stands up for human rights and the right to seek asylum and opposes scofflaw proposals to “punish” legal asylum seekers for the USG’s decades-long failure to establish a fair, accessible, timely asylum screening and adjudication system as required by law.
Many thanks to Paula Fitzgerald, Laura Trask, Alicja Johnson, and the rest of the “Due Process Team” at AYUDA for issuing this statement!
The Senate finally released the full text of its long-awaited bipartisan immigration bill on Sunday evening.
If passed, the bill would:
fund military support for Ukraine and Israel while defunding UNRWA
establish new emergency powers that would allow the president to shut down the border
create a higher threshold for credible fear interviews and new asylum pathways at the US-Mexico border
provide a pathway to green cards for Afghan refugees in the United States
expands electronic monitoring and immigrant detention
and make a range of other changes to the immigration system—some good for migrants, some bad
It also provides more funding to immigration agencies, including:
$440M for IJs
$12M to combat smuggling
$7B to CBP
$8B to ICE
$4B to USCIS
I read the bill tonight twice. I am still thinking through not simply the text of the bill, but what the bill represents as a vision for immigration change. What are the values that this bill represents? How would these provisions be implemented in practice? How would we measure the effects of these various changes?
Excerpt of the Senate Immigration Bill.
But don’t feel like you need to get too into the weeds here. The likelihood that the bill will live through the night is looking slim as people from across the political spectrum fight over pillows to smother the bill in its sleep tonight.
Prominent conservatives are already up in arms over the fact that the emergency border powers don’t kick in until several thousand encounters per day. They read the text as saying that anything less than 5,000 is, therefore, “acceptable”.
Most of these talking points align closely to Donald Trump’s goal of preventing the bill from moving forward (even though is captures many classic Republican immigration goals and very few of Democrats’) so that he can run on the “immigration crisis” in the next election.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said on a certain website that Shall Not Be Named:
I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, “the border never closes.” If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival.
Prominent progressives have also rejected the viability of the bill on grounds that it eviscerates asylum. Las Americas, an immigrant rights advocacy group in El Paso, Texas, released a statement tonight that included the following bleak assessment:
“Closing the border, creating a new ‘metering’ system, and debilitating our asylum laws will do nothing to address the underlying issues that force vulnerable children and families to flee their homes, seeking safety and a better life. Although the bill contains small silver linings, they come at too high a cost. This deal will ultimately subject more families to an unsafe migratory journey. They will be forced to wait on the other side of the border for days or even weeks, which will further expose them to those who will prey upon them as they try to navigate these impossible policies.
I’ve looked for supporters and so far, the only one I can find, are the folks at the Niskanen Center who released a statement tonight praising bipartisan efforts:
We applaud the bipartisan group of Senators who have invested weeks of hard work to negotiate a border security compromise. Despite facing opposition and resistance from their parties and leaders, Senators Chris Murphy, James Lankford, and Kyrsten Sinema have continued to work towards a solution palatable to Members on both sides of the aisle while ensuring that Congress can ultimately unlock much-needed supplemental funding to aid our allies.
I’m sure we’ll see the immigration bill in the news first thing in the morning, although the coverage is likely to be mostly negative.
My suggestion is, if you read this, you’ve probably given the bill as much attention as you need to give it for now. Don’t get too excited or upset. Spend your limited emotional energy on something else, because I don’t think this is going anywhere.
To access the full text of the bill, click the link below.
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Thanks, Austin! Sounds like prudent advice for conserving energy and focusing on the battle to save lives while maintaining good emotional health regardless of whether this bill or some version of it ever becomes law!
NDPA “Four Star General” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Charles Kuck reports:
My partner Danielle Claffey won yet ANOTHER Russian Asylum case the belly of the beast Atlanta Immigration Court.THIS is why lawyers are essential in asylum cases!
Danielle says:
Earlier this week, I had the great fortune of securing asylee status for a young Muslim girl from Russia, before an Atlanta immigration judge. Though she is young and was so quiet for the last year I was handling her case, in court, she was strong, confident, and provided vivid detail of what she went through for the entire 19 years of her life in Russia before fleeing for America. After the judge formally granted her asylee status, and the government waived appeal, the judge told her she was sorry for everything she went through in her home country. When the judge granted her case, and the interpreter translated the judge’s words, it was the first time I saw my client smile, followed by a big deep breath. She has carried a lot in her 21 years, but can now rest easy and pursue all of her dreams here in the U.S.
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Danielle M. Claffey, Esquire Partner Kuck Baxter LLC Atlanta, GA PHOTO: Kuck Baxter
Many congrats, Danielle, and thanks so much for sharing! With great representation, anything is possible, even in Atlanta!
THIS is actually the way Immigration Court could and should work on a regular basis from all involved! Teamwork for justice! Note that:
No appeal;
No petition for review;
No remand;
No “aimless docket reshuffling;”
No need to keep renewing work authorization;
Respondent feels welcomed and understood by U.S. justice system;
Respondent leaves courtroom on the way to a green card, eventual U.S. citizenship, and can fulfill full potential in society;
Models and rewards best practices and professional cooperation (by EOIR, ICE, and the private bar) in achieving “justice with efficiency;”
As Charles says, representation is essential; you bet; so, why hasn’t Garland worked WITH the pro bono bar, NGOs, and clinical educators to facilitate representation in every asylum case? (HINT: “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and its derivative “Expedited Dockets” — both “Garland specialties” — are major, DOJ-created, impediments to effective representation and are particularly discouraging and problematic for pro bono representatives!
“The BIA erred in affirming the IJ. The entirety of the BIA’s analysis about the motion to reopen was that Davis “has not established that evidence of his mental health issues and of his past and feared harm if returned to Liberia are new, previously unavailable, or would likely change the result in his case.” This one sentence alludes to the elements of a motion to reopen, but does not explain how they apply to Davis’s case. Neither the IJ nor the BIA met the requirements of reasoned decision-making. … Without an adequate explanation, this Court cannot conduct a meaningful review of the BIA’s September 30, 2022 order. … This Court grants Davis’s petition for review in case no. 22-3262, denies the petition for review in case no. 23-1229, and remands for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
[Hats off to Colleen Mary Cowgill, Joseph N. Glynn, Elaine Janet Goldenberg, Keren Hart Zwick, Zachary Scott Buckheit, Golnaz Fakhimi, David R. Fine, Kira Michele Geary, Haarika R. Reddy, Cynthia Louise Rice and Kate Thorstad!]
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Congrats to the NDPA team from Immigration and Disability Law Scholars.
But, this is an example of how Merrick Garland’s DOJ is failing the basics of American justice! Note that:
Two levels of EOIR flunk “Judging 101” — badly;
Inappropriate “defense of the indefensible” (and easily correctable) by Garland’s DOJ (OIL) asserting semi-frivolous jurisdictional argument;
Wastes Court of Appeals time on something Garland could and should have corrected and prevented from reoccurring;
Failure to follow Circuit precedent by both EOIR and OIL;
Failure to apply established standards;
Likely use of mindless “any reason to deny boilerplate” at EOIR;
Generates needless motion to reconsider;
After four years, two IJ hearings, two administrative appeals, a motion to reopen, a motion to reconsider, a trip to the Court of Appeals, case remains unresolved;
Competent EOIR Judges could have reopened the case and ruled on the merits in less time and using fewer resources than trying to mindlessly avoid providing the respondent with a reasoned decision;
In a system with three million pending cases these types of easily avoidable, sophomoric mistakes from supposedly “expert” judges are repeated over and over again— not always caught and corrected — leading to denials of due process and fundamental fairness and promoting backlog-building “aimless docket reshuffling!”
What if the the wonderful team at “Immigraton and Disability Law Scholars” could devote 100% of their time to representing vulnerable individuals at merits hearings in Immigration Court rather than having to correct avoidable mistakes by EOIR and OIL?
After three years in charge of EOIR, why hasn’t Merrick Garland, a former Court of Appeals Judge nominated to the Supremes:
Cleaned house at EOIR;
Brought in new, expert, dynamic, due-process-focused leadership;
Institutionalized best practices (see example 1 above);
Attacked system-wide anti-immigrant culture, lack of quality control, and unprofessional decision-making that continues to plague this critical “retail level” of American justice (see example 2 above);
Fixed OIL so that it will stop undermining justice in America by raising specious arguments and defending indefensible EOIR mistakes in the Article III Courts?
Merrick Garland’s “Alfred E. Neumann Approach” at EOIR: Indolent, inappropriate, ineffective! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
It’s not rocket science; it doesn’t require legislation (although Garland certainly should have been publicly pushing for Article I); it just takes a laser-focused commitment to due process, fundamental fairness, best practices, and efficient delivery of justice from what continues to be America’s worst “court system!”
Why that leadership and action isn’t coming from Garland is a question that everyone who cares about the future of American🇺🇸⚖️ justice should be asking every day! Fix the fixable! Model the best! That’s “Good Governing 101!”
