Legislation – Page 40 – immigrationcourtside.com

DON KERWIN @ CMS: The Darkness Of Trump’s White Nationalist Xenophobia Descends Over Ronald Reagan’s “City On The Hill!”

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

https://cmsny.org/publications/assault-on-refugee-protection-kerwin-9-30-19/

The Darkening City on the Hill: The Trump Administration Heightens Its Assault on Refugee Protection

NEW ESSAY | CMS Executive Director Donald Kerwin

In 2018, the global population of forcibly displaced persons reached a record 70.8 million, including 25.9 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum-seekers. The United States led the response to past refugee crises of a similar magnitude, as, for example, in the aftermath of World War II and the Vietnam conflict. Yet although the United States remains the largest donor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,[1] the Trump administration has sought to steer the country in a different direction. The United States now seems poised to become the global leader in refugee responsibility shunning and of exclusionary nationalist states, whose leaders the president regularly praises, fetes and seems to emulate. The administration’s recent actions have been particularly damaging to the nation’s identity, to the millions of forcibly displaced in search of safety and a permanent home, and to the ethic of responsibility sharing set forth in the Global Compact on Refugees, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly last December.

On September 26, 2019, the White House released two long-anticipated decrees. Its Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement requires that both states and localities consent to the resettlement of refugees in a particular locality. If either refuses to consent, the Order provides that “refugees should not be resettled within that State or locality,” except in very narrow circumstances that include prior notification of the president. States could bar refugee resettlement, for example, in cities that have been renewed by refugees and that badly want and need them. The Order purports to ensure that “refugees are resettled in communities that are eager and equipped to support their successful integration into American society and the labor force.” Yet significant coordination already occurs, and it can be strengthened without creating a state and local veto that would hamstring the federal government’s administration of this program. For many years, media sources and politicians, including the president, have railed against the refugee program’s putative insecurity and the burdens it imposes on communities. If implemented, the Order would further politicize refugee protection and diminish resettlement opportunities. Evisceration of the refugee program (not integration) seems to be the Order’s purpose, and would certainly be its result.

In addition, the Order seems to require states and localities to take an affirmative step – as part of a yet-determined process – to consent to refugee placement. In other words, they must “opt in” to the program. If they do not, then the federal government would deem the jurisdiction unacceptable for resettlement. In these circumstances, the enhanced federal consultation with states and localities and their “greater involvement in the process” of refugee placement would consist of nothing at all.

Also on September 26, the administration released the President’s annual Report to Congress on Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. This document announced the administration’s decision to limit refugee admissions to 18,000 in FY 2020, the lowest number in the 40-year history of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), lower even that the two years following the 9/11 attacks.[2] The Refugee Council USA explained the implications of this decision as follows:

This decision is unprecedented, cruel, and contrary to American humanitarian values and strategic interests. Historically, the United States has been the global leader on refugee resettlement, setting an average refugee admissions goal of 95,000 people annually. To slam the door on persecuted people while the number of refugees displaced globally continues to rise to historic levels upends decades of bipartisan tradition. It also abandons thousands of refugees in need of resettlement, leaving them in precarious, often life-threatening situations.

The Refugee Council USA also pointed out that the forthcoming Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for FY 2020 – which constitutes formal notice of the refugee ceiling – will further dismantle “the community-based infrastructure in the US, which has long welcomed the most in-need refugees and provided them the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety.” This infrastructure – which has been decades in the making – will take years to rebuild.

The administration’s rationale for historically low admissions are specious. The Report to Congress makes the obvious point that it would be more impactful to “resolve” refugee-producing conditions, than to resettle large numbers of refugees. Yet there is no reason why the United States cannot administer a robust resettlement program and address the causes of displacement through diplomacy. These two strategies complement each other. Resettlement is typically available for a relatively small number of particularly vulnerable refugees. UNHCR reports that 68 percent of its refugee submissions for 2018 “were for survivors of violence and torture, those with legal and physical protection needs, and particularly vulnerable women and girls. Just over half of all resettlement submissions concerned children.”

Moreover, the Trump administration has failed to wield US “[d]iplomatic tools – for example, foreign assistance, economic and political engagement, and alliance-building” to resolve refugee-producing conditions or to create the conditions that would allow refugees to return home safely and voluntarily. To the contrary, it has been consistently dismissive of these tools and has failed to create any new legal avenues for desperate persons to migrate. Instead, it has cut foreign aid to states that have generated the largest numbers of asylum-seekers in recent years, and it terminated the Obama-era Central American Minors program, which allowed qualifying children from Central America’s Northern Triangle states to enter the United States legally as refugees or parolees in order to join their legally present parents.

The Report to Congress also lauds the US commitment to asylum and to other protection programs, which it argues make the United States “the most compassionate and generous nation in history.” Yet the administration has systematically sought to weaken the US asylum system and its “temporary and permanent protection” programs for “victims of trafficking, humanitarian parole, temporary protected status, and special immigrant juvenile status.”

In particular, it has sought to rescind Temporary Protected Status for the overwhelming majority of its beneficiaries. It has used the cruelty of family separation and detention to deter asylum-seekers from coming. It has reduced due process protections by expanding the expedited removal process. It has also corrupted the expedited removal process by allowing Border Patrol agents – who lack sufficient training in refugee protection and who tend to be deeply suspicious of asylum claims – to assume the role of Asylum Officers and to determine whether asylum-seekers possess a “credible fear” and thus can pursue their claims. It has adopted numerous strategies to prevent and deter asylum-seekers from reaching US territory such as criminally prosecuting and detaining them, and limiting access to the system, including through interception in transit, crude turn-backs at the border, and metering (scheduling) requirements in Mexico for insufficient interview slots in the United States.

Other administrative initiatives will force asylum-seekers to abandon their claims. Under the Return to Mexico program (misnamed the “Migrant Protection Protocols”), for example, US asylum seekers need to wait in dangerous Mexican border communities, while their cases slowly wind through the US immigration system. Early reports indicate that the United States has returned some asylum-seekers to Southern Mexico, making it impossible for them to pursue their claims. The Trump-era Attorneys General have also tried to reject, by fiat, certain common asylum claims (such as those based on gang violence) and have sought to diminish the independence and rigor of the immigration court system. The administration has also sought to weaken protections based on child welfare principles – which it sees as enforcement “loopholes” – for unaccompanied refugee and migrant minors, and for other vulnerable groups.

As it did in announcing its (then) record low admission ceiling for FY 2019, the Report to Congress for FY 2020 argues that the “current burdens on the U.S. immigration system must be alleviated before it is again possible to resettle large number of refugees.” It is true that asylum applications to the United States have spiked in recent years. Yet as Susan Martin has argued, the United States has historically been able to meet significant demands on its asylum system and to resettle substantial numbers of refugees. In the early 1980s, for example, it received and settled 125,000 Cubans and many thousands of Haitians who had reached Florida’s shores. It also resettled more than 207,000 refugees in 1980 and nearly 160,000 in 1981. By FY 1994, it faced a backlog of more than 425,000 pending asylum applications, but it still resettled 113,000 refugees in 1994 and nearly 100,000 in 1995. Martin concludes that the Trump administration either is “far less competent than its predecessors in managing complex movements of people so it must make a tradeoff between resettlement and asylum” or, more likely, “it is using asylum as a thinly veiled excuse to reduce overall immigration admissions.”

Finally, the Report to Congress claims that the president “is taking new steps to make sure that the refugees that the United States welcomes are set up to succeed.” In support of this claim, it references the Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement, which (as discussed) effectively bars resettlement in states and localities that object or do not affirmatively consent to it. This measure, combined with the administration’s pitifully low admissions ceiling, will deny the possibility of admission and, thus, integration to countless refugees. The Order allows for the resettlement of “spouses and children” following to join refugees. However, the admissions cap will keep many resettled refugees indefinitely separated from their families and, in this way, will impede their integration.

As it stands, refugees have been remarkably successful in the United States without the administration’s “reforms.” A 2018 study by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) compared 1.1 million resettled refugees who arrived between 1987 and 2016, with non-refugees, the foreign born, and the total US population. It found that the labor force participation (68 percent) and employment rates (64 percent) of the 1.1 million refugees exceeded those of the total US population (63 and 60 percent), which consists mostly of US citizens. Refugees with the longest tenure (who arrived between 1987 and 1996) had integrated more fully than recent arrivals (from 2007-2016), as measured by: households with mortgages (41 to 19 percent); English language proficiency (75 to 55 percent); naturalization rates (89 to 24 percent); college education (66 to 32 percent); labor force participation (68 to 61 percent); employment (66 to 55 percent); and, self-employment (14 to 4 percent). Finally, the study found that refugees who arrived between 1987 and 1996 exceeded the total US population in median personal income ($28,000 to $23,000), homeownership (41 to 37 percent) and many other metrics.

To cap off the worst month in the 40-year history of the US refugee protection system, the US Supreme granted a stay on September 11, 2019 that ensured that the United States would, at least temporarily, reject most asylum claims from migrants who have passed through a third country (not their own) on their way to the US-Mexico border. It stayed a lower court order that enjoined the implementation of an interim final rule that will allow claims from such asylum-seekers to proceed only if they can show that they first sought and failed to receive asylum or Torture Convention protection in a third country.[3]

In the best of circumstances, the US asylum process is arduous and uncertain, and many persons who have fled violence and other dangerous conditions ultimately do not prevail in their claims. However, the rule would make it far more difficult even to access this system. It would bar most asylum claims to the United States, including almost all from Central America and other nations that have been the source of most US asylum applications in recent years. Although described as a “safe third country” measure, the rule evinces no concern for the safety of asylum-seekers, for their aspirations, or for the ability of refugee-producing states such as Guatemala or El Salvador to accommodate additional asylum requests. It also violates international law. The stay means that the rule will now go into effect, while the underlying legal challenges to it run their course. If upheld, the rule would eviscerate the US asylum system. In fact, this seems to be its purpose.

The administration’s policies raise the question: Why does the United States offer protection to refugees and asylum-seekers at all? In passing the Refugee Act of 1980, which established USRAP and harmonized US asylum standards with international law, Congress recognized “the historic policy of the United States to respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands,” and it encouraged “all nations to provide assistance and resettlement opportunities to refugees to the fullest extent possible.” For decades, there has been a bipartisan consensus that saving lives – as the US refugee program undeniably does – reflects and projects US ideals to the world. Moreover, refugees do not threaten or burden the nation: They renew it by exemplifying core US values, such as courage, endurance, and a love of freedom. Most refugees passionately identify with the United States, having found in it the security, opportunity and freedom denied them elsewhere. Robust refugee protection policies, the consensus held, serves the nation’s interests in global stability, diminished irregular migration, and increased cooperation on US diplomatic, military and security priorities. The program has also saved countless persons who risked their lives to work for and on behalf of the US government.

In his July 30, 1981 statement on US immigration and refugee policy, President Ronald Reagan committed to continuing “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and that shares “the responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.” He also acknowledged the importance of these policies to the nation’s interests. In his January 11, 1989 farewell address to the nation, Reagan spoke of the United States as a nation that had always stood as a beacon of freedom to the world’s refugees, but that this identity needed to be “rediscovered.” It needs to be rediscovered now as well, and before the Trump administration succeeds in fully dismantling one of the nation’s defining and proudest programs.

[1] The lion’s share of the UNHCR’s budget – more than three-quarters – goes to its refugee program.

[2] As is its wont, the administration skirted the law in setting the refugee ceiling prior to its statutorily mandated consultation with Congress on admissions. It insists that it still plans to consult with Congress, but to what substantive end is not clear.

[3] The administration misused the previously rare procedure of issuing an “interim final rule” to allow the asylum rule to go into effect prior to formal notice and comment rulemaking, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

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Thanks, Don, for shedding light on what will go down as one of the darkest chapters in modern U.S. history.

Also, as Don so cogently points out, support for refugee admissions used to be a bipartisan issue. Now, the ugliness and counter-productivity of Trump’s racist xenophobia has overtaken the GOP and made it an anathema to America’s future.

What would RR think? His optimism and braver view of America’s role in the world stands in sharp contrast to the darkness of Trump’s White Nationalist cowardice, ignorance, and weakness.

PWS

10-01-19

HOW CORRUPT? — Billy “The Smirking Sycophant” Barr Aiming To Overtake “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions & “John The Con” Mitchell As Most Lawless & Corrupt AG In My Lifetime! — Federal Courts Share Blame For Deterioration Of Ethical Standards! — Judicial Complicity Has Real Life Consequences!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/opinion/trump-william-barr.html

Michelle Goldberg writes in the NY Times:

Just How Corrupt Is Bill Barr?

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

SEPT. 26, 2019

TwitterFacebook

By now you have probably read the opening of the whistle-blower complaint filed by a member of the intelligence community accusing Donald Trump of manipulating American foreign policy for political gain. But the whistle-blower’s stark, straightforward account of stupefying treachery deserves to be repeated as often as possible.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the whistle-blower wrote. “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals. The president’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”

. . . . The whistle-blower’s complaint was deemed credible and urgent by Michael Atkinson, Trump’s own intelligence community inspector general, but Bill Barr’s Justice Department suppressed it. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion saying that the complaint needn’t be turned over to Congress, as the whistle-blower statute instructs. When Atkinson made a criminal referral to the Justice Department, it reportedly didn’t even open an investigation. And all the time, Barr was named in the complaint that his office was covering up.

Under any conceivable ethical standard, Barr should have recused himself. But ethical standards, perhaps needless to say, mean nothing in this administration.

In the Ukraine scandal, evidence of comprehensive corruption goes far beyond Trump. Former prosecutors have said that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, may have been part of a criminal conspiracy when he pressed Ukrainian officials to open an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Vice President Mike Pence is also tied to the shakedown of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, having met with him this month to talk about “corruption” and American financial aid. When this administration complains about Ukrainian “corruption,” it almost inevitably means a failure to corruptly pursue investigations that would bolster conspiracy theories benefiting Trump.

The whistle-blower wrote that White House officials moved a word-for-word transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky from the computer system where such transcripts were typically kept into a separate system for the most highly classified information. “According to White House officials I spoke with, this was ‘not the first time’ under this administration that a presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information,” the whistle-blower said.

According to Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law, any lawyers involved in hiding these transcripts might have done something illegal. “The rule is it is both unethical and a crime for a lawyer to participate in altering, destroying or concealing a document, and here the allegation is that the word-for-word transcript was moved from the place where people ordinarily would think to look for it, to a place where it would not likely be found,” said Gillers. “That’s concealing.”

Then there’s Barr’s personal involvement in the Ukraine plot. In the reconstruction of Trump’s call with Zelensky that was released by the White House, Trump repeatedly said that he wanted Ukraine’s government to work with Barr on investigating the Bidens. Barr’s office insists that the president hasn’t spoken to Barr about the subject, but given the attorney general’s record of flagrant dishonesty — including his attempts to mislead the public about the contents of the Mueller report — there’s no reason to believe him. Besides, said Representative Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor who now sits on the House Judiciary Committee, “the effort to suppress the existence of the phone conversation itself is an obvious obstruction of justice.”

But Barr’s refusal to recuse creates a sort of legal cul-de-sac. It’s only the Justice Department, ultimately, that can prosecute potential federal crimes arising from this scandal. Barr’s ethical nihilism, his utter indifference to ordinary norms of professional behavior, means that he’s retaining the authority to stop investigations into crimes he may have participated in.

“The administration of justice is cornered because the ultimate executive authority for that government role includes the people whose behavior is suspect,” said Gillers.

That makes the impeachment proceedings in the House, where Barr will likely be called as a witness, the last defense against complete administration lawlessness. “Just as the president is not above the law, the attorney general is not above the law,” said Raskin. “The president’s betrayal of his oath of office and the Constitution is the primary offense here, and we need to stay focused on that, but the attorney general’s prostitution of the Department of Justice for the president’s political agenda has been necessary to the president’s schemes and he will face his own reckoning.”

I hope Raskin is right. But until that day comes, people who care about the rule of law in this country should be screaming for Barr’s recusal, even if he won’t listen. He is now wrapped up in one of the gravest scandals in American political history. Can America’s chief law enforcement officer really be allowed to decide whether to criminally investigate misdeeds he might have helped to commit or to conceal? The answer will tell us just how crooked the justice system under Trump has become.

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Another serious transgression: This shockingly biased and corrupt Trump political toady is literally running the U.S. Immigration Courts into the ground while neither Congress nor the Article IIIs have the guts to require that migrants receive the “fair and impartial” adjudications to which they are entitled under the Due Process Clause of our Constitution.

Sure, Billy Barr is “the pits!” But those in Congress and the Article IIIs who are “letting him get away with murder” are equally to blame. Bullies like Barr take advantage of the “go along to get along” cowardice of those charged with holding them accountable.

Another example of how Barr’s DOJ has become an “ethics free zone:” Yesterday, before Judge Dolly Gee in the Flores litigation Barr’s DOJ lawyer August Flentje presented a totally disingenuous position.

“How can you as officer of the court tell me that the regulations are not inconsistent with the settlement agreement?” the judge asked a Justice Department lawyer. “Just because you tell me it is night outside does not mean it is not day.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/migrant-children-flores-court.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

But in the end, even Judge Gee, no “shrinking violet,” merely expressed her displeasure and ruled against the DOJ.

Why weren’t Flentje and his supervisors, all the way up to Barr, referred to their respective state bars for ethical violations and knowingly trying to mislead the court by presenting a frivolous “defense?” Would private counsel’s dishonesty before the court have been treated as leniently? At one time DOJ lawyers were expected to have higher ethical standards than the minimum. Now they have become ethical scofflaws.

But, as long as Federal Courts are unwilling to hold Barr & company ethically accountable, the dishonesty and disrespect for the system will continue to grow. When the Article IIIs find themselves in the middle of a morass of frivolous litigation and outright lies presented by the DOJ, they will have only themselves to blame for the deterioration of civility and ethical standards.

Indeed, the Supremes’ own shameful performance in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant, where they allowed the Solicitor General to unethically “short circuit the system,” dissolved a proper stay issued by a U.S. District Judge, and allowed an unconstitutional, illegal, not to mention immoral, program of racially targeted elimination of asylum opportunities sends a strong signal that the Supreme themselves have become part of the “ethics free zone.” Trump and Barr and their sycophantic subordinates have taken notice.

Chief Justice John Roberts might disingenuously moan the loss of civility and the dysfunction in the Legislative and Executive Branches. But, fact is, his Court’s unwillingness to fulfill their oaths of office by enforcing the Constitution and standing up for the rule of law by reinforcing it against Trump’s arrogant overreach is a major part of the problem. He and his spineless Supremes’ majority have essentially left America defenseless against the tyranny and corruption of Trump, Barr, and company.

And, as asylum applicants are abused, human lives are ruined, the Immigration Courts dissolve, and Trump’s betrayal of our nation unfolds each day, we see that there are “real life consequences” to the Supremes’ complicity.

09-28-19

MICHELLE HACKMAN @ WSJ: Immigration Judges’ Union Fights Back Against DOJ’s Heavy-Handed Attempt To Quash It! – Like The “Whistleblower,” The NAIJ Has Been Outspoken In Exposing Bias, Denial Of Due Process, & Improper Politization Of U.S. Immigration Courts By Corrupt DOJ!

Hon. A. Ashlley Tabaddor — Hon. A. Ashley Tabaddor
President, National
Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

https://apple.news/APq7A4ihtTZ280UVWJnfkNg

From the WSJ:

By Michelle Hackman

September 27, 2019, 10:00 a.m. EDT

WASHINGTON—The union representing the nation’s more than 400 immigration judges filed a labor complaint against the Justice Department, escalating an already tense situation between the Trump administration and the judges carrying out its immigration policy.

The judges—who unlike most other jurists work for the Justice Department—based their complaint on two recent incidents.

The most recent occurred in late August, when the Executive Office of immigration Review, which oversees the judges, included a link to a blog post on a white nationalist website in its daily news briefing emailed to all employees. The blog post in question described immigration judges using several racial and ethnic slurs, angering judges around the country and prompting a formal letter to the office’s director.

The other incident came in April, when the union sought clarification from the Justice Department on whether the judges’ positions made them regular employees or managers in the course of contract negotiations. The Justice Department didn’t respond to the query but later filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority to decertify the union, on the basis it considered the judges managers.

The union’s complaint was filed with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and could slow the Justice Department’s attempts to disband the union.

The judges’ union, known formally at the National Association of Immigration Judges, allows its leadership to fill a unique role as government employees empowered to criticize their employer and, by extension, the administration’s immigration policies.

The union has been outspoken about the government’s efforts to exert increasing political control over the nation’s immigration court system, narrowing the judges’ discretion around who can qualify for asylum.

Attorney General William Barr, for example, overruled the Board of Immigration Appeals in deciding people with family ties to gang targets or others with domestic violence claims couldn’t qualify for asylum. More recently, the administration has been temporarily allowed to enforce a rule disqualifying anyone for asylum if they traveled through a third country en route to the U.S. The rule faces further court challenges.

In its effort to move more quickly through a backlog of pending cases that has grown to more than one million, the Justice Department has also placed new quota requirements on the judges. It has pressed individual judges to move through cases faster, giving judges a one-year deadline to decide each case and setting a 700-case annual quota. Only about a third of judges are on track to meet that goal, according to A. Ashley Tabaddor, the union’s president.

The administration has also begun shifting cases to judges known to work quickly, sometimes handing cases to courts located far from where an immigrant is living. More recently, it has also begun diverting some judges from their normal duties to hear cases of the government’s “remain in Mexico” program, under which migrants who have claimed asylum must wait in Mexican cities while their cases make their way through the courts.

The government has set up makeshift tent courts at ports of entry to process these cases more quickly, and judges have been hearing cases using a videoconferencing tool. These courts, unlike most others in the country, aren’t open to the public or to journalists.

The union rebuked the tent courts’ closed conditions as “another glaring reason why the immigration courts have been deprived of key characteristics of what it means to be a court in the United States.”

The union has also argued that immigration courts should be given judicial independence, rather than answering to the Justice Department’s political leadership.

Write to Michelle Hackman at Michelle.Hackman@wsj.com

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Thanks, Michelle, for bringing into the national spotlight this important story about the DOJ’s improper influence over the U.S. Immigration Courts and their outrageous attempts to suppress and punish truth and dissent.

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration court enacted by Congress. Until that happens, vulnerable individuals will continue to have their most important rights denied by this unconstitutional parody of a fair and impartial court system. In the meantime, the Article III Courts continue to ignore the glaring constitutional defects that must be addressed before approving any more defective “removal orders” and denials of asylum and other relief emanating from these fatally defective “captive courts” that have been “redesigned” to function as part of the DHS enforcement apparatus.

PWS

09-27-19

TWO MORE FROM HON. JEFFREY CHASE EXPOSING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY & HOW THE COMPLICIT FEDERAL COURTS FURTHER THESE ABUSES! — “How innocent women and children resigning themselves to being severely beaten, raped, and killed in their home countries constitutes all problems being solved is beyond comprehension.”

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/9/16/the-cost-of-outsourcing-refugees

The Cost of Outsourcing Refugees

It seems perversely appropriate that it was on 9/11 that the Supreme Court removed the legal barrier to the Trump Administration’s most recent deadly attack on the right to asylum in this country. I continue to believe that eventually, justice will prevail through the courts or, more likely, through a change in administration. But in the meantime, what we are witnessing is an all-out assault by the Trump Administration on the law of asylum. The tactics include gaming the system through regulations and binding decisions making it more difficult for asylum seekers to prevail on their claims. But far uglier is the tactic of degrading those fleeing persecution and seeking safety here. Such refugees, many of whom are women and children, are repeatedly and falsely portrayed by this administration and its enablers as criminals and terrorists. Upon arrival, mothers are separated from their spouses and children from their parents; all are detained under dehumanizing, soul-crushing conditions certain to inflict permanent psychological damage on its victims. In response to those protesting such policies, Trump tweeted on July 3: “If illegal immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detention centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!”

How innocent women and children resigning themselves to being severely beaten, raped, and killed in their home countries constitutes all problems being solved is beyond comprehension.

Those in Trump’s administration who have given more thought to the matter don’t seek to solve the problem, but rather to make it someone else’s problem to solve. By disqualifying from asylum refugees who passed through any other country on their way to our southern border or who entered the country without inspection; by forcing thousands to remain exposed to abuse in Mexico while their asylum claims are adjudicated, and by falsely designating countries with serious gang and domestic violence problems as “safe third countries” to which asylum seekers can be sent, this administration is simply outsourcing refugee processing to countries that are not fit for the job in any measurable way. Based on my thirty-plus years of experience in this field, I submit that contrary to Trump’s claim, such policies create very large, long-term problems.

I began my career in immigration law in the late 1980s representing asylum seekers from Afghanistan, many of whom were detained by our government upon their arrival. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Afghans constituted the largest group of refugees in the world. At one point, there were more than 6 million refugees from Afghanistan alone, most of whom were living in camps in Pakistan. Afghan children there received education focused on fundamentalist religious indoctrination that was vehemently anti-western. The Taliban (which literally means “students”) emerged from these schools. The Taliban, of course, brought a reign of terror to Afghanistan, and further provided a haven for Al-Qaeda to launch the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The outsourcing of Afghan refugees to Pakistan was the exact opposite of “all problems solved,” with the Taliban continuing to thwart peace in Afghanistan up to the present.

Contrast this experience with the following: shortly before I left the government, I went to dinner with a lawyer who had mentioned my name to a colleague of his earlier that day. The colleague had been an Afghan refugee in Pakistan who managed to reach this country as a teen in the early 1990s, and was placed into deportation proceedings by the U.S. government. By chance, I had been his lawyer, and had succeeded in obtaining a grant of asylum for him. Although I hadn’t heard from him in some 25 years, I learned from his friend that evening that I had apparently influenced my young client when I emphasized to him all those years ago the importance of pursuing higher education in this country, as he credited me with his becoming a lawyer. Between the experiences of my former client and that which led to the formation to the Taliban, there is no question as to which achieved the better outcome, and it wasn’t the one in which refugees remained abroad.

In 1938, at a conference held in Evian, France, 31 countries, including the U.S. and Canada, stated their refusal to accept Jewish refugees trapped in Nazi Germany. The conference sent the message to the Nazis on the eve of the Holocaust that no country of concern cared at all about the fate of Germany’s Jewish population. The Trump administration is sending the same message today to MS-13 and other brutal crime syndicates in Central America. Our government is closing the escape route to thousands of youths (some as young as 7 years old) being targeted for recruitment, extortion, and rape by groups such as MS-13, while simultaneously stoking anti-American hatred among those same youths through its shockingly cruel treatment of arriving refugees. This is a dangerous combination, and this time, it is occurring much closer to home than Pakistan. Based on historic examples, it seems virtually assured that no one will look back on Trump’s refugee policies as having solved any problems; to the contrary, we will likely be paying the price for his cruel and short-sighted actions for decades to come.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

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https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/9/14/former-ijs-file-amicus-brief-in-padilla-v-ice

Former IJs File Amicus Brief in Padilla v. ICE

The late Maury Roberts, a legendary immigration lawyer and former BIA Chair, wrote in 1991: “It has always seemed significant to me that, among all the members of the animal kingdom, man is the only one who captures and imprisons his fellows. In all the rest of creation, freedom is the natural order.”1 Roberts expressed his strong belief in the importance of liberty, which caused him consternation at “governmental attempts to imprison persons who are not criminals or dangerous to society, on the grounds that their detention serves some other societal purpose,” including noncitizens “innocent of any wrongdoing other than being in the United States without documents.”2

The wrongness of indefinitely detaining non-criminals greatly increases when those being detained are asylum-seekers fleeing serious harm in their home countries, often after undertaking dangerous journeys to lawfully seek protection in this country. The detention of those seeking asylum is at odds with our obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which at Article 31 forbids states from penalizing refugees from neighboring states on account of their illegal entry or presence, or from restricting the movements of refugees except where necessary; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees at Article 9, para. 4 the right of detainees to have a court “without delay” determine the lawfulness of the detention order release if it is not.

In 1996, in response to an increase in asylum seekers at ports of entry, Congress enacted a policy known as expedited removal, which allows border patrol officers to enter deportation orders against those noncitizens arriving at airports or the border whom are not deemed admissible. A noncitizen expressing a fear of returning to their country is detained and referred for a credible fear interview. Only those whom a DHS asylum officer determines to have a “significant possibility” of being granted asylum pass such interview and are allowed a hearing before an immigration judge to pursue their asylum claim.

In 2005, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent decision stating that detained asylum seekers who have passed such credible fear interview are entitled to a bond hearing. It should be noted that the author of this decision, Ed Grant, is a former Republican congressional staffer and supporter of a draconian immigration enforcement bill enacted in 1996, who has been one of the more conservative members of the BIA. He was joined on the panel issuing such decision by fellow conservative Roger Pauley. The panel decision was further approved by the majority of the full BIA two years after it had been purged of its liberal members by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. In other words, the right to bond hearings was the legal conclusion of a tribunal of conservatives who, although they did not hold pro-immigrant beliefs, found that the law dictated the result it reached.

14 years later, the present administration issued a precedent decision in the name of Attorney General Barr vacating the BIA’s decision as “wrongly decided,” and revoking the right to such bond hearings. The decision was immediately challenged in the courts by the ACLU, the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the American Immigration Council. Finding Barr’s prohibition on bond hearings unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman issued a preliminary injunction blocking the decision from taking effect, and requiring bond hearings for class members within 7 days of their detention. The injunction additionally places the burden on the government to demonstrate why the asylum-seeker should not be released on bond, parole, or other condition; requires the government to provide a recording or verbatim transcript of the bond hearing on appeal; and further requires the government to produce a written decision with particularized determinations of individualized findings at the end of the bond hearing.

The Administration has appealed from that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On September 4, an amicus brief on behalf of 29 former immigration judges (including myself) and appellate judges of the BIA was filed in support of the plaintiffs. Our brief notes the necessity of bond hearings to due process in a heavily overburdened court system dealing with highly complex legal issues. Our group advised that detained asylum seekers are less likely to retain counsel. Based on our collective experience on the bench, this is important, as it is counsel who guides an asylum seeker through the complexities of the immigration court system. Furthermore, the arguments of unrepresented applicants are likely to be less concise and organized both before the immigration judge and on appeal than if such arguments had been prepared by counsel. Where an applicant is unrepresented, their ongoing detention hampers their ability to gather evidence in support of their claim, while those lucky enough to retain counsel are hampered in their ability to communicate and cooperate with their attorney.

These problems are compounded by two other recent Attorney General decisions, Matter of A-B- and Matter of L-E-A-, which impact a large number of asylum claimants covered by the lawsuit who are fleeing domestic or gang violence. Subsequent to those decisions, stating the facts giving rise to the applicant’s fear can be less important than how those facts are then framed by counsel. Immigration Judges who are still navigating these decisions often request legal memoranda explaining the continued viability of such claims. And such arguments often require both a legal knowledge of the nuances of applicable case law and support from experts in detailed reports beyond the capability of most detained, unrepresented, newly-arrived asylum seekers to obtain.

Our brief also argues that the injunction’s placement of the burden of proof on DHS “prevents noncitizens from being detained simply because they cannot articulate why they should be released, and takes into account the government’s institutional advantages.” This is extremely important when one realizes that, under international law, an individual becomes a refugee upon fulfilling the criteria contained in the definition of that term (i.e. upon leaving their country and being unable or unwilling to return on account of a protected ground). Therefore, one does not become a refugee due to being recognized as one by a grant of asylum. Rather, a grant of asylum provides legal recognition of the existing fact that one is a refugee. 3 Class members have, after a lengthy screening interview, been found by a trained DHS official to have a significant possibility of already being a refugee. To deny bond to a member of such a class because, unlike the ICE attorney opposing their release, they are unaware of the cases to cite or arguments to state greatly increases the chance that genuine refugees deserving of this country’s protection will be deported to face persecution

The former Immigration Judges and BIA Members signing onto the amicus brief are: Steven Abrams, Sarah Burr, Teofilo Chapa, Jeffrey S, Chase, George Chew, Cecelia Espenoza, Noel Ferris, James Fujimoto, Jennie Giambiastini, John Gossart, Paul Grussendorf, Miriam Hayward, Rebecca Jamil, Carol King, Elizabeth Lamb, Margaret McManus, Charles Pazar, George Proctor, Laura Ramirez, John Richardson, Lory D. Rosenberg, Susan Roy, Paul W. Schmidt, Ilyce Shugall, Denise Slavin, Andrea Hawkins Sloan, Gustavo Villageliu, Polly Webber, and Robert D. Weisel.

We are greatly indebted to and thankful for the outstanding efforts of partners Alan Schoenfeld and Lori A. Martin of the New York office of Wilmer Hale, and senior associates Rebecca Arriaga Herche and Jamil Aslam with the firm’s Washington and Los Angeles offices in the drafting of the brief.

Notes:

Maurice Roberts, “Some Thoughts on the Wanton Detention of Aliens,”Festschrift: In Celebration of the Works of Maurice Roberts, 5 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 225 (1991).

Id. at 226.

UNHCR,Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status Under the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees at Para. 28.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

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Thanks, Jeffrey, my friend, for courageously highlighting these issues. What a contrast with the cowardly performance of the Trump Administration, Congress, and the ARTICLE IIIs!

I’m proud to be identified with you and the rest of the members of our Roundtable of Former Judges who haven’t forgotten what Due Process, fundamental fairness, refugee rights, and human rights are all about.

Also appreciate the quotation from the late great Maurice A. “Maury” Roberts, former BIA chair and Editor of Interpreter Releases who was one of my mentors. I‘m sure that Maury is rolling over in his grave with the gutless trashing of the BIA and Due Process by Billy Barr and his sycophants.

PWS

09-24-19

HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE BLOG PRESENTS “THE FLORES EXHIBITS” – Truth, No Matter How Terrible & Disturbing, Is The Best Antidote To Notorious Human Rights Abuser “Big Mac With Lies” & His Truly Despicable Knowingly False Narratives & Immoral Actions! – “At this time when our nation is led by scoundrels, we are in need of heroes.”

Elora Mukherjee
“American Hero”
Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic
Columbia Law School

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/9/22/vjwdefjb62lfre600ktwsfj8q1dsab

The Flores Exhibits

“I’m held with my son in a cage. There are about 60 people in my cages, and more in some of the other cages. There are six cages in my area. They are all very, very full.”

The above words are part of “Exhibit 29,” which is read by my friend Lenni Benson, a professor at New York Law School and founder of the school’s Safe Passage Project, which provides representation to unaccompanied children in immigration court. The words are the sworn declaration of a 17-year-old girl, identified by the initial “L.”

There are 65 such declarations, each the actual statement of a child detained at border detention facilities in this country in June 2019. Recently, Waterwell, the wonderful civic-minded theater and film production company responsible for the immigration court based play The Courtroom filmed a number of actors, lawyers, clinical professors, advocates, and other interested individuals in a dark studio in the East Village in New York City. I was honored to be one of those filmed. We each sat at a simple table with the written exhibit and a glass of water, and under the direction of Waterwell’s Artistic Director, Lee Sunday Evans, each read a single declaration.

Article 37(b) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child states that “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.” A 1997 settlement agreement, known as the Flores Settlement, legally binds our government in limiting the length of time it can detain immigrant children, and holding the government to a standard of humane treatment under prescribed conditions of health, hygiene, education, and privacy. From the contents of the declarations, the Trump Administration has made a mockery of these rules.

Exhibit 3, read by David Gomez, the president of Hostos Community College, memorializes the words of a five year old from Honduras separated from his father upon arrival at the border, as he states “I have not been told how long I have to stay here. I am frightened, scared, and sad.” My fellow former immigration judge, Betty Lamb, read the statement of a 14 year old girl, who was taking care of two younger parentless girls (one of them 4 years old and sick), who said that she was holding the two in her lap as she spoke trying to comfort them. She then added “I need comfort, too. I’m bigger than they are, but I am a child, too.” (Exhibit 54).

At this time when our nation is led by scoundrels, we are in need of heroes. Towards this end, please take a moment to write down the name of Elora Mukherjee, a true hero. She is a clinical professor of law and Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She has devoted her career to aiding immigrant children, whom she began visiting in detention facilities in 2007, and litigating violations of the Flores Settlement. Watching her read her own 22 minute statement gave me nightmares. She described the overwhelming stench of the hundreds of detained children, who were very hungry and seriously traumatized. One six year old she tried to question ended up sitting in her lap crying inconsolably, until a guard eventually gave him a lollipop “as an incentive to bring him back to his cell.” (Exhibit 63). Many of the children were seriously in fear of the guards. A number of the children were sick.

I am a native-born American citizen. I have lived here my entire life. Yet I never felt more foreign than while watching these videos. I hope that readers of these words feel the same way. No government of a country that is truly ours, that reflects the morals and values that we possess and believe in, could ever treat children this way. And no decent, moral people, regardless of their political affiliation or their views on immigration, could ever support or approve of the government responsible for such treatment. These children will never get over this. It is one thing for children to arrive here already traumatized and be granted safe haven under our laws. It is entirely another matter for the government of this country to deliberately cause children to suffer in a way that will scar them for life.

Please visit the site of these powerful videos through this link. You can also view the one-minute trailer here. And then please, please help amplify by sharing through social media and email.

Thanks for this project go to Columbia Law School’s Center for Institutional and Social Change and Immigrants’ Rights Clinic; to Waterwell, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and Project Amplify; and to all those who participated as readers in the videos.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

(Below: iPhone photo of me filming my segment, taken by Elizabeth Lamb).

Go to Jeff’s blog at the link for the picture of him presenting.

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What kind of country tortures and torments vulnerable children in search of legal protection while actually employing their corrupt, cowardly, and totally dishonest abusers, like Kevin “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan, on the public payroll? Big Mac was at it again today, presenting a fictionalized defense of the Administration’s policy of promoting and encouraging human rights abuses, lying about the Flores settlement, and endangering the lives of refugee families!

McAleenan and his fellow immoral sycophants are a disgrace to America!

And, as I have said before, both Congress and the Federal Judges who have enabled these crimes against humanity by failing to take strong action to stop the Trump Administration’s abuse and to hold perpetrators like McAleenan legally accountable also share a major part of the responsibility!

PWS

09-23-19

BLOOD ON THEIR JUDICIAL ROBES! — WHEN A CORRUPT, XENOPHOBIC, RACIST GOVERNMENT IS ASSISTED BY COMPLICIT FEDERAL COURTS, HERE’S WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LIVES OF THE REFUGEES THEY ARE BETRAYING: “The MPP sends people back to Mexico, where many have been repeatedly victimized by organized criminals or other dangerous groups,” Clarens said. “Their access to the legal system in the U.S.—which had already been severely reduced by the Trump administration—is effectively cut off. MPP will force people to remain for a significant period of time in one of the most vulnerable and dangerous living situations they’ve ever imagined experiencing.”

https://apple.news/AHwi8LL9GT8qKZ3YHhAPcrQ

Leon Krauze reports for Slate:

The World

Mexico’s Capitulation to Trump Has Put Thousands of Lives in Danger

The Mexican foreign minister says his government has nothing to be ashamed of. He’s wrong.

September 20 2019 4:51 PM

In recent months, at least 3,000 immigrants have been sent back to towns along the Mexican border between Tamaulipas and Texas, one of the country’s most dangerous areas. What they have faced there defies the imagination. The city of Nuevo Laredo is a well-known hotbed of extortion and kidnapping. Immigrants make easy targets. “These people have been thrown into the lion’s den,” local journalist Daniel Rosas told me recently.

According to Rosas, President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program has been particularly harmful, placing thousands of immigrants in imminent danger. “If even us locals are going through a very difficult time dealing with violence here, just imagine what life is like for an immigrant who doesn’t have a home and doesn’t know anyone. This place is completely unsafe,” Rosas told me. In the city of Nuevo Laredo, Rosas described a Dantean scene in which people working for cartels are tasked with identifying and abducting immigrants, who are then taken away to safehouses where they are held for ransom.

“In Tamaulipas, migrants are the most vulnerable. They suffer every kind of abuse imaginable,” he told me. Rosas seemed particularly worried for women and children in Tamaulipas. “They are completely defenseless,” Rosas told me. “When they were waiting and trying to rest under the bridge, there were kids sleeping on cardboard, without any help. They live through sheer horror,” he said.

This nightmare is the predictable result of recent actions by governments on both sides of the border. Three months ago, faced with Trump’s tariff blackmail, Mexico’s government capitulated and agreed to a series of unprecedented measures to reduce the flow of Central American immigrants reaching the United States. Terrified by the possibility of a trade war, President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s administration deployed thousands of troops along Mexico’s southern border, gave control of the country’s immigration authority to an expert in incarceration and enforcement, and pledged full cooperation with some of Trump’s more controversial immigration policies. As part of the deal, Mexican government officials agreed to return to Washington every few months with evidence of results, a recurrent humiliating pilgrimage in search of Trump’s approval and a renewed deferral of the looming tariff threat.

Ten days ago, after his first assessment in Washington with Trump’s inner circle—and, briefly, the president himself—Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard gave a victorious but ultimately unfortunate news conference. Ebrard claimedthat the much-touted downward trend in the number of immigrants reaching the United States would likely be “permanent,” although historical trends suggest the flow of immigrants will likely increase during the fall. Ebrard then said the Mexican government had demanded new and strict gun control measures in the United States. The goal, Ebrard boasted, was to “freeze” gun trafficking along the border. This is disingenuous. Ebrard knows any sort of significant reduction in gun smuggling from the United States would require legislative measures that the Trump administration and the Republican Party will not pursue.

Ebrard then concluded by saying the López Obrador administration had nothing to apologize for on immigration. “We do not regret anything of what’s been implemented,” Ebrard said. “We haven’t done anything we should be ashamed of.”

He is wrong.

The Mexican government’s cooperation with Donald Trump’s punitive immigration strategy has created a calamity along the country’s northern border. Of the many complications, none is more potentially catastrophic than the broad implementation of Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The measure forces potential refugees to wait for months (or years) in Mexico for a slim chance at asylum in the United States. It has opened the door to the creation of a massive community of rootless and marginalized immigrants living in perilous limbo in some of Mexico’s most dangerous areas. There are now close to 38,000 immigrants waitingin Mexico because of MPP. After meeting with Ebrard, the White House announcedthe program would be expanded “to the fullest extent possible,” dramatically increasing the number of potential refugees returned to Mexico, many to regions of the country where they face almost certain peril.

No place seems safe, not even shelters run by religious organizations, one of the few reliable options in other border towns like Tijuana. In Nuevo Laredo, organized crime knows no bounds. Just last month, local pastor Aarón Méndez, who runs the “Casa del Migrante AMAR” shelter in the city, reportedly tried to protect a group of Cuban migrants from a group of abductors. They kidnapped Méndezinstead. No one has heard from him since.

Things aren’t much better in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. In recent years, the city has seen “open warfare” between rival cartels. American attorneyKristin Clarens, who has been traveling to the region over the past few months to assist potential refugees and make sense of the dire situation in the region, told me she has never met an asylum-seeking immigrant who felt safe in Mexico. “To the contrary,” Clarens said, “most of the people I’ve met described routine and regular acts of violence, such as kidnapping, assault, and extortion.” According to Clarens, migrants in Matamoros, like those in Nuevo Laredo, are facing a full-blown humanitarian crisis. “The heat is intense and unrelenting, and they lack access to sanitation, water, shade, food, and basic shelter,” she told me. “People hike down to the river and use the river to clean themselves, wash their clothes, and occasionally drink. Children and adults are sick and covered with bug bites and lesions.”

Like Rosas, Clarens believes “Remain in Mexico” has complicated the already formidable immigration challenge in the region. “The MPP sends people back to Mexico, where many have been repeatedly victimized by organized criminals or other dangerous groups,” Clarens said. “Their access to the legal system in the U.S.—which had already been severely reduced by the Trump administration—is effectively cut off. MPP will force people to remain for a significant period of time in one of the most vulnerable and dangerous living situations they’ve ever imagined experiencing.” Clarens thinks the crisis will likely worsen. “I know that Mexico can be a safe and stable place for many people, but impoverished and incredibly vulnerable Central Americans who are desperate for security and are leaving their countries of origin for the first time are not able to stay safe,” she told me.

If Mexico continues to quietly go along with the radical expansion of the MPP program, the number of immigrants waiting for asylum in the country could reach the hundreds of thousands. With Mexico’s official refugee agency operating on a ridiculous $1.3 million yearly budget, the López Obrador administration is not remotely ready for such an undertaking. The consequences could be severe. If that happens, Ebrard should be asked again if Mexico really has nothing to be ashamed of.

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Those who should really be ashamed are the cowardly life-tenured judges of the Supremes, the Ninth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit who as a group have utterly failed to protect migrants’ statutory, Constitutional, and Human Rights from lawless, invidious, and very intentional abuse by Trump’s White Nationalist regime and his DHS and DOJ sycophants.

Article III Federal Judges are absolutely immune from liability for their wrongdoing and abuses. But, they shouldn’t be immune from shame and the judgment of history for abandoning our system of justice and the most vulnerable it is supposed to protect at their greatest time of need. That’s basically the definition of legal incompetence and moral cowardice.

PWS

09-22-19

AS U.S. COURTS FAIL, DARTH VADER TAKES OVER ASYLUM OFFICE – Use Of CBP Agents As “Asylum Officers” Over Objection Flies In Face Of Statute & Shows Administration’s Utter Contempt For Cowardly ARTICLE IIIs Afraid To Stand Up For The Rule Of Law & For The Rights Of Vulnerable Asylum Seekers! — “They’re not trained and geared toward refugee protection, any more than I’m trained to go look for tracks in the desert and chase people.”

Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=34ad22a1-b89c-4dd4-8b5f-ac66ea536940&v=sdk

Molly O’Toole reports for the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Border Patrol agents, rather than highly trained asylum officers, are beginning to screen migrant families for “credible fear” to determine whether applicants qualify for U.S. protection, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

The first Border Patrol agents arrived in Dilley, Texas, last week to start training at the South Texas Family Residential Center, the nation’s largest immigrant family detention center, according to lawyers working there and several employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The move expands the Trump administration’s push for Border Patrol agents to take over the interviews that mark the first step in the lengthy asylum process. Border Patrol agents began training to conduct asylum interviews in late April, but agents have now deployed to family detention facilities for the first time.

As a result, Border Patrol agents — law enforcement personnel who detain migrant families at the border — will also have authority to decide whether those families have a “credible fear” of being persecuted in their home countries.

Customs and Border Protection has provided few details about the Border Patrol asylum training and has not publicly acknowledged whether agents have yielded significantly lower approval rates than federal asylum officers, but internal communications and other official documents obtained by The Times indicate early problems with the program.

The Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Neither the agency nor Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, responded to requests for comment by deadline.

Agents at Dilley are not wearing the Border Patrol’s well-known olive-green uniforms, and are identifying themselves to migrant families and children as asylum officers, said Shay Fluharty, an attorney with the Dilley Pro Bono Project, who has been in interviews conducted by the agents.

“It’s creating significant strain for our clients — not just because [agents are] unprepared and untrained,” Fluharty told The Times. “We understand that the intention is to significantly limit asylum officers who are conducting these interviews and have them be primarily conducted by Border Patrol.”

The Trump administration’s ultimate goal with the Border Patrol training program is to make it more difficult for migrants to win asylum, according to asylum officers, officials and lawyers, because White House officials believe agents will be more adversarial and less likely to approve asylum requests. Actual asylum officers work under Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security agency that administers the legal immigration system and benefits.

Under Homeland Security regulations, the credible-fear interview must be conducted in a “non-adversarial manner.”

Michael Knowles, special representative for the federal asylum officers’ union, said many members are concerned about the use of law enforcement personnel for crucial interviews with people seeking refuge. Neither the union nor its officers have been given official notice of or explanation for the shift, Knowles said.

“I don’t mean to denigrate the proper and legitimate role of Border Patrol, but it’s different,” Knowles said. “They’re not trained and geared toward refugee protection, any more than I’m trained to go look for tracks in the desert and chase people.”

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, confirmed that agents were undergoing training in which they conducted credible-fear interviews with family units. But he pushed back against the idea that Border Patrol agents would be “tougher” against asylum seekers.

“I’ve personally had conversations with both President Trump and Stephen Miller,” Judd said. “It’s always been my understanding that the reason to have Border Patrol agents do the credible-fear interviews is to ensure the asylum process begins at the earliest practicable moment…. The narrative being painted that Border Patrol agents will deport more persons doesn’t hold water.”

According to a Customs and Border Protection training timeline obtained by The Times, 10 Border Patrol agents from the El Centro sector in California began training to do credible-fear interviews in April, and by August a total of 60 agents were due to conduct their first credible-fear interviews. A new group started training in early September, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel.

The agents are all “nonbargaining employees,” meaning they are not members of a union.

The timeline states three times that “additional training will be required” if the Border Patrol role in asylum interviews expands to family units. Homeland Security officials also assured congressional staffers in August that the Border Patrol was not going to cover family units because of that requirement, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee aide told The Times. Department officials did not inform the committee they’d be deploying agents to family detention centers.

It’s unclear whether the agents sent to the detention center in Dilley received additional training, or whether any Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers will remain at the facility after they finish instructing the agents. Several officers have already been reassigned.

According to separate records obtained by The Times, as of last month, Border Patrol agents had completed 178 credible-fear screenings with asylum seekers from more than 15 countries — all of whom were single adults. Agents determined 54% met the credible-fear standard and 35% did not. They closed 11% of the cases without making a determination.

While the newly trained Border Patrol agents have yet to complete many screenings, that’s a far lower approval rate than is typical for initial interviews. Congress deliberately set a low standard for “credible fear” in order to ensure that the U.S. government did not return people to potential harm, and roughly 80% of asylum seekers pass the first interview.

Ultimately, only about 1 in 5 asylum seekers wins their case, according to the Justice Department. The Trump administration cites that disparity to argue that most asylum seekers have fraudulent cases, and the president frequently disparages asylum as a “hoax.” He also has lamented that Border Patrol and military personnel are restricted from getting “rough” with migrants.

Advocates argue that the disparity only shows how difficult it is to win the right to stay in the United States. With the backlog of immigration cases now surpassing 1 million, a final decision can take years.

The asylum division at Citizenship and Immigration Services has faced heavy pressure from the White House and from Ken Cuccinelli, who was named acting director of the agency in June.

John Lafferty, asylum division chief for six years, recently was reassigned to a service center and replaced on an acting basis by Andrew Davidson, who oversaw fraud detection.

Lafferty was outspoken about his directorate being forced to implement dramatic changes to U.S. immigration policy with what he said was little to no advance notice or consultation. Knowles, the union representative, called Lafferty’s reassignment “diplomatic exile.”

All decisions made so far by Border Patrol agents at the “credible fear” stage have been reviewed by a supervisory asylum officer before they were issued, according to the records obtained by The Times.

But critics of the training program worry that the administration will use it to get around requirements for asylum officers and supervisors to have special training and extensive experience — with comparatively inexperienced and less-trained Border Patrol agents in effect policing themselves rather than having their decisions reviewed by a Citizenship and Immigration Services supervisory officer.

Based on internal communications obtained by The Times, Border Patrol agents appear to have already stepped outside their allowed roles.

Last week, Ashley Caudill-Mirillo, deputy chief of the asylum division at Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote to leaders in the field stressing that agents could only screen credible-fear claims from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and “under no circumstances” should they interview Cubans.

“There are no exceptions to this rule,” she said, adding that officials “may follow up with you if it is found these assignments occurred in the event we are asked to explain.”

Fluharty said she and her colleagues have witnessed a range of issues. The handful of Border Patrol agents deployed to Dilley are all male, effectively preventing clients who’ve suffered from severe sexual or gender-based violence from requesting a female asylum officer.

Some agents are conducting interviews over the phone — a first at Dilley, where all screenings had previously been in-person — and with children as young as 6 years old. Other screenings are lasting far longer than normal, more than six hours.

And agents are consistently asking irrelevant questions, while leaving out the most critical ones, she said.

“It’s most difficult for families who have to share really traumatic experiences under really stressful circumstances,” she said, “And now with someone without the appropriate knowledge or training.”

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

Simply outrageous! This is a direct result of the stunning cowardice of the Supremes’ majority and U.S. Circuit Court Judges who have “tanked” by failing to take a strong stand against the Administration’s constant perversion of immigration statutes and constitutional Due Process and Equal Protection.

How spineless! Asylum Officers (and some U.S. Immigration Judges), who are mere Civil Servants, are willing to put their careers and livelihood on the line to speak up against the Administration’s abuses, but life-tenured Federal Judges who, unlike Asylum Officers, are protected from political retaliation are afraid to do their sworn duty!

The specific intent behind the Asylum Officer statutory requirement was to insure that impartial, specially trained asylum professionals, oriented toward protection, NOT LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS, handle the “credible fear” process.

Just think about the recent gender-based asylum grant described in yesterday’s blog.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/19/the-good-news-gender-based-asylum-claims-continue-to-win-in-the-post-a-b-era-the-bad-news-applicants-subjected-to-let-em-die-in-mexico-compl/

What’s the chance that a hastily trained Border Patrol Agent would recognize such a potentially successful claim in the “credible fear” process? Not much! This is a serious, life threatening, intentionally created defect in the system, reflecting malicious intent on the part of Trump and his DHS sycophants, that the Article IIIs are sweeping under the carpet by not requiring that the Trump Administration must follow the Constitution and the immigration statutes protecting asylum seekers.

PWS

09-20-19

PROFILE IN JUDICIAL COWARDICE: ARTICLE III’S DERELICTION OF DUTY LEAVES BRAVE ASYLUM APPLICANTS AND THEIR COURAGEOUS ATTORNEYS DEFENSELESS AGAINST RACIST ONSLAUGHT BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION! – “NDPA” Stalwarts Laura Lynch & Leidy Perez-Davis Blog Daily About What’s REALLY Happening At The Border As A Result Of JUDICIAL MALFEASANCE By Life-Tenured Federal Appellate Judges Who Were Supposed To Protect Our Rights, But Are Failing To Do So!

Here’s their blog from the “front lines” of the New Due Process Army’s battle to save lives in South Texas, updated daily:

https://thinkimmigration.org/blog/2019/09/16/due-process-disaster-in-the-making-a-firsthand-look-at-the-port-courts-in-laredo-and-brownsville/

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It’s beyond disgusting! Life-tenured judges who should know better becoming “Modern Day Jim Crows!” What truly horrible, negative “role models” for younger attorneys fighting for the rights of the most vulnerable and to uphold our Constitutional system.

Speaking of good role models (in addition, of course, to Laura and Leidy, who are among the “best ever”), Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg should be congratulated for having the courage to speak out forcefully in Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant on the “right side of history” and against their colleagues’ disgraceful dereliction of duty and betrayal of their oaths to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

And, there have been few greater enemies of the U.S. Constitution and the true “rule of law” than Trump and his band of political, bureaucratic, and judicial sycophants!

Due Process Forever, Cowardly Judging Never!

PWS

09-20-19

AMERICA THE UGLY: Here’s An “Inside Look” At The Illegal & Immoral “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” Program Engineered By Trump & His White Nationalists, Implemented By “Big Mac with Lies,” “Cooch Cooch” & Their Henchmen (& Women), & Enabled By Complicit 9th Circuit & 5th Circuit Judges With Encouragement From The Legally Challenged & Morally Untethered Supremes, Funded By YOUR Tax Dollars! – “We are better than this. The humanitarian crisis has not gone away it is just south of the border and worse than ever. In 24 years as a lawyer I have never seen so much extreme cruelty.”

Jodi Goodwin, Esquire
Immigration Attorney
Harlingen, TX

Immprof list subscribers: This post is from Jodi Goodwin, who is an immigration attorney in Harlingen, TX struggling to provide support to asylum seekers turned back due to the “Remain in Mexico” policy. This description is from a public post on her Facebook page, and she has given permission to share widely. Margaret Taylor

From Jodi:

Long post….please read. Especially if you are an immigration Judge or an ICE attorney.

Two days. 100 degrees. 100% humidity. And a beautiful rainbow to start our second day this weekend in Matamoros with Project MPP Matamoros. We saw about 80 plus principal applicants (that means we didn’t count spouses and children so the real reach is much higher) to help them understand immigration court proceedings and asylum applications.

But not just that….today I met with 5 pregnant or just had their babies in the last week women. One thrown back into Mexico after CBP had taken her to hospital to stop her contractions, one so heavily pregnant she spent 7 days in the hielera only to be sent to Mexico to give birth less than 12 hours after CBP threw her back. Another 13 weeks along dehydrated, sick, living in inhumane conditions on the streets of Mexico that she fainted and then began vomiting. No one from the Mexican authorities came to assist. Myself and some other refugees grabbed some chairs to make a makeshift bed, had her drink rehydration salts and used peppermint oil to bring her back after the fainting spell. More electrolytes, water, and a granola bar I had in my bag. It took about 40 minutes until her pupils returned to normal. Luckily, a Cuban refugee with some EMT training was barking orders for us to try to find the various things he thought could help her all while checking her vitals super old school style with a watch to count her pulse and listening for her breaths as she laid on the makeshift bed. I guess street lawyering means you are also a nurse/EMT. Glad I had the things the Cuban man was barking orders to find.

There are so many stories I can tell. MPP is wrong on a moral level. MPP is wrong legally.

Then there are all the court documents that have fake addresses where CBP puts in an address to a shelter that no one can get in. They are homeless. But the judges buy those fake addresses and use them to deport people. The “tear sheets” which are supposed to instruct refugees how to appear to court are either not given at all or given with wrong information telling them to appear at the bridge at the same time their hearing is supposed to start which ensures they will not make it to their hearing on time. Then there are those thrown back without even giving them their court documents. When they go to the bridge to ask about their paperwork they are told CBP doesnt handle that…..when in fact it is CBP who does! How in the world are refugees supposed to know when and where to go to court when CBP won’t even give them the court documents. And of course I can not fail to mention all the defects in the court charging documents….it goes on and on.

We are better than this. The humanitarian crisis has not gone away it is just south of the border and worse than ever. In 24 years as a lawyer I have never seen so much extreme cruelty. If you are a lawyer and have some time to work remotely on document preparation contact me. If you are a Spanish Speaking Immigration lawyer with asylum law experience, we could use you for 4 days of your life from Friday to Monday.

Jodi is a private immigration attorney, struggling to make a living as she tries to address this humanitarian crisis. Here’s her firm website with a contact form:

https://www.jodigoodwin.com/

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

Many thanks to my good friend Professor Margaret Taylor of Wake Forest Law for passing along Jodi’s message and request for help.

While I know that Jodi, Margaret, and other members of the “New Due Process Army” are “better than this,” it’s hard to say that about our country right now. After all, these U.S. Government sponsored attacks on the legal system, the rule of law, human rights, and human decency are happening right now, every day, “as we speak.”

Those carrying them out, like Trump, Miller, “Big Mac With Lies,” “Cooch Cooch,” Matt Albence, Bill Barr, and a host of other sleazy characters operate with total arrogance and impunity.

Appellate Judges of the 9^thCircuit, 5^thCircuit, and the Supremes, whose sworn duty is to uphold the rule of law against such attacks, have instead gone “belly up,” thrown away their moral compasses, and joined the abusers, cowardly hiding in their “Ivory Towers” from having to actually witness the terrors they are inflicting on the most vulnerable, needy, and deserving of our protection. A truly disgusting performance in judicial spinelessness and task avoidance. Don’t know how those “robed dudes” with lifetime sinecures sleep at night!

And, of course, under GOP Senate leadership, Congress, which could and should have acted by veto proof margins to rebuke Trump and restore the rule of law has functionally ceased to exist. The GOP has made human rights abuses and false racially charged narratives about immigrants part of its official party platform.

And the Dems are “running out the clock” on an impeachment debate that most folks have ceased to care about and which everyone and his brother knows is never going to happen. Where is the House-enacted “Immigration Reform Agenda” that could be a blueprint for future change?

PWS

09-18-19

CELEBRATE A “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MILESTONE! — Under Trump, Sessions, & Barr, Immigration “Courts’” “Active Backlog” Hits Million Case Mark! — 1,007,005 As Of August 31, 2019, Per TRAC, With Another 322,055 “Gonzo Specials” In Waiting! — Congress Take Note: More Judges = More Backlog Under Trump’s DOJ!

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/574/

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Immigration Court’s active backlog of cases just passed the million case mark. The latest case-by-case court records through the end of August 2019 show the court’s active case backlog was 1,007,155. If the additional 322,535 cases which the court says are pending but have not been placed on the active caseload rolls are added, then the backlog now tops 1.3 million.

During the first eleven months of FY 2019, court records reveal a total of 384,977 new cases reached the court. If the pace of filings continues through the final month of this fiscal year, FY 2019 will also mark a new filing record.

While much in the news, new cases where individuals have been required to “Remain in Mexico” during their court processing currently make up just under 10 percent (9.9%) of these new filings. These MPP cases comprise an even smaller share – only 3.3 percent — of the court’s active backlog.

As of the end of August, a total of 38,291 MPP cases had reached the court, of which 33,564 were still pending.

For the full report – including links to online query tools where readers can drill into countless additional details covering all 4.5 million court filings since FY 2001, the recent MPP component of these filings, and the court’s over 1 million active case backlog – go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/574/

Additional free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through August 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
http://trac.syr.edu

———————————————————————————
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to http://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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

The futility of throwing more money into this badly broken system has become obvious. Without an independent, Article I U.S. Immigration Court, run by judges who direct the activities of the administrators rather than being run by politicos, there simply will not be any semblance of competent professional management of this system, certainly not under this Administration.

The Administration stubbornly refuses to take the necessary step of responsibly exercising “prosecutorial discretion” to reduce the backlog to a manageable size without “gimmicks.”

It’s equally obvious that Congress needs to enact some type of realistic legalization program that will remove cases of individuals with a period of productive residency and their families from the “active” docket and forestall the further mess that would be created by the absolute insanity of the “Gonzo plan” of restoring properly “administratively closed” cases to the active dockets.

The system is calling out for help. Unfortunately, those cries are being ignored by both Congress and the Article III Courts who are the only ones currently capable of fixing the system.

PWS

09-18-19

TAL @ SF CHRON: Here’s What Migrants See When They Arrive At Immigration Court

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

Watch the videos introducing immigrants to U.S. courts

WASHINGTON — A man in a judge’s robe sits in a leather chair in front of an American flag and Department of Justice seal, looking into the camera. As he begins to talk, a woman’s voice translates into Spanish and Spanish subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen.

This is the video that will introduce immigrants to the U.S. courts where they will fight to avoid deportation.

The Chronicle has obtained copies through the Freedom of Information Act of four such videos, made by the Justice Department as part of its policy replacing in-person interpreters at immigrants’ initial court hearings. To date, the videos have been produced in English and Spanish dubbing, for detained immigrants and those who are free from detention.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Watch-the-videos-introducing-immigrants-to-U-S-14444720.php

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

Thanks, Tal, for exposing the cruel fiction of “justice” in the maliciously incompletely managed Immigration “Courts.”

PWS

09-20-19

WHERE “JUSTICE” IS A CRUEL FARCE: As Career Officials Continue To Flee Or Be Thrown Off The Ship, Restrictionists Tighten Political Control Over Immigration “Courts” — Institutions Created To Insure Due Process Now Being Weaponized To Eradicate It, As Congress & Article IIIs Shirk Their Constitutional Duties!

Katie Benner
Justice Correspondent
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/us/politics/immigration-courts-judge.html

Katie Benner writes in The NY Times:

By Katie Benner

Sept. 13, 2019

WASHINGTON — The nation’s immigration judges lost a key leader this week, the latest in a string of departures at the top of the system amid a backlog of cases and a migrant crisis at the southwestern border.

The official, David Neal, said that he would retire from his position as head of the judges’ appeals board effective Saturday. “With a heavy heart, I have decided to retire from government service,” Mr. Neal wrote in a letter sent to the board Thursday and obtained by The New York Times.

He gave no reason for his abrupt departure and asked his colleagues to “keep true to your commitment to fairness and justice.”

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No replacement has been announced, and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy to not do so on personnel matters.

Mr. Neal’s decision follows a shake-up at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the court system that adjudicates the country’s immigration cases, including asylum cases. It is part of the Justice Department, not the judicial branch.

Three of its senior career officials — MaryBeth T. Keller, the chief immigration judge; Jean King, the general counsel; and Katherine H. Reilly, the deputy director — all left their roles this summer. Ms. King stayed at the immigration office in a different post.

Mr. Neal’s departure also comes amid the backdrop of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb both illegal and legal immigration, which have taxed the immigration courts, the criminal courts and border patrols along the nation’s southwestern border and prompted long-running discontent among immigration judges that they are being used to expedite deportations.

As Mr. Trump has sought to suppress immigration and cut down on the number of people who claim asylum in the United States, he has notched two wins at the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, justices said in an unsigned order that amid an ongoing legal battle, the administration could bar most Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States if they passed through another country and were not denied asylum there. That decision will allow the administration to effectively bar migration across the southwestern border by Hondurans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and others who must travel through other countries to get to the United States.

And in July, the Supreme Court said that the Trump administration could use $2.5 billion in Pentagon money to build a barrier along the border with Mexico, which would help Mr. Trump fulfill a campaign promise to build a wall on the border to stop immigration.

Amid these hard-line policies, a vocal group of immigration judges — part of the larger total of about 400 judges and appeals judges — have been at loggerheads with the Trump administration for more than a year.

Leaders of the judges’ union have pushed back against the imposition of quotas that they have said would expedite deportations at the expense of due process. Under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, they accused the Justice Department of trying to turn the immigration courts into a deportation machine.

Mr. Sessions treated the judges “like immigration officers, not judges,” said Paul Schmidt, a former judge in the immigration courts.

Some judges have also bristled at a recent Justice Department decision that handed over the power to rule on appeals cases to the director of the office, a political appointee. The judges saw the move as an attempt to undermine their authority.

That decision also directly impacted Mr. Neal, demoting him “in practice,” by transferring his authority to decide appeals cases to the director of the office, said Ashley Tabbador, the president of the union that represents immigration judges.

“This regulation upends the entire system created to decide these cases,” Ms. Tabbador said. Should the new system run into problems, “the chairman would have been held accountable. I would have quit, too, if I were in David’s position.”

Though they are part of the Justice Department, many immigration judges view themselves as independent arbiters of the law and believe they must act within the confines of existing immigration statutes.

They have long deliberated over whether they should be part of the Justice Department — a debate that has intensified under President Trump.

Last month, tensions increased when a daily briefing that is distributed to federal immigration judges contained a link to a blog post that included an anti-Semitic reference and came from a website that regularly publishes white nationalists.

After the episode, the immigration review office said that it would stop sending the daily briefing and would not renew its contract with the service that provided it.

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

The farce taking place as the Trump DOJ politicos “remake” the Immigration Courts into a tool of DHS enforcement and repression of Due Process and fundamental fairness will go down as one of the darkest and most disturbing episodes in American legal history.

The inability or unwillingness of the other two branches of Government, Congress and the Article III Judiciary, to intervene and fulfill their Constitutional duties of protecting Due Process, fundamental fairness, equal protection, First Amendment rights of union members, and separation of powers show a catastrophic failure of American institutions that are charged with protecting and advancing all of our rights.

In the end, nobody including Trump’s tone-deaf supporters and enablers, will escape the adverse consequences of giving in to White Nationalist authoritarianism.

PWS

09-15-19

BRET STEPHENS @ NYT: “Blessed Are The Refugees” — Damned Be Trump & His Cowardly Group Of Refugee Abusers & Their Enablers!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/opinion/refugees-trump-america.html

A woman and her young daughter, no older than 6 or 7, are shopping for groceries in a corner store of a bombed-out city. It’s sometime around 1947. The war is over, the Germans are gone, the Gestapo is no longer hunting Jews. Some of their local henchmen have been imprisoned or shot. Many just took off their uniforms and returned to their former lives.

The mother speaks with the trace of a foreign accent. As she reaches for her wallet to pay, the grocer says: “Why don’t you people go back to where you came from?”

Where, precisely, would that even be? The woman had fled Moscow for Berlin as a girl, after the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 and arrested her father, who was never to be heard from again. Later, when still in her twenties, she had fled Berlin for Milan, sometime between Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 and Mussolini’s enactment of the racial laws in 1938.

She and her daughter were citizens of no country, living under a made-up name. They had nowhere to return, no place to go, no way to stay, and nothing they could do about any of it. To go back to the Soviet Union would have been suicidal. Israel did not yet exist. Germany was out of the question. America’s doors were mostly shut.

This was the life of a refugee in postwar, pre-reconstructed Europe. It changed dramatically the following year, when Harry Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act, marking the first time that U.S. immigration policy became actively sympathetic to the utterly dispossessed.

Thanks to the law, mother and daughter arrived in New York on Nov. 13, 1950, with only $7 between them, but without the weight of fear on their backs.

What Truman did became precedent for decisions by subsequent administrations to admit other refugees: Some 40,000 Hungarians fleeing Soviet tanks after 1956 (including a young Andy Grove, later the C.E.O. of Intel); hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing Castro’s repression after 1959 (including a young Gloria Estefan); as many as 750,000 Soviet Jews fleeing persecution by a succession of Kremlin despots (including a young Sergey Brin).

There were so many others. More than a million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians after the fall of Saigon. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians after Khomeini’s revolution. Over 100,000 Iraqis since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Similar numbers of Burmese. Altogether, some three million refugees have been welcomed by the U.S. since the Refugee Act of 1980, more than by any other country.

By almost any metric, America’s refugees tend to succeed, or at least their children do. Whatever they do to enrich themselves, they enrich the country a great deal more. Empirical data on immigrant success overwhelmingly confirm what common sense makes plain. People who have known tyranny tend to make the most of liberty. People who have experienced desperation usually make the most of opportunity. It’s mainly those born to freedom who have the knack for squandering it.

But beyond the material question of enrichment is the spiritual one of ennoblement. Of what can Americans be more proud than that we so often opened our doors to those for whom every other door was shut?

All of which makes this a moment of unique shame for the United States.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its xenophobia from its first days in office. The number of refugees arriving in the country plummeted from around 97,000 in 2016 to 23,000 in 2018. Last week, The Times reported that the White House was considering options to cut the numbers again by half, and perhaps even bring it down to zero.

As if to underscore the spirit of cruelty, the administration also declined to grant temporary protected status to Bahamians devastated by Hurricane Dorian. And the Supreme Court issued an order allowing for a new rule that effectively denies asylum protections for refugees arriving through a third country — a victory for executive authority when that authority is in the worst possible hands.

Critics of this column will almost certainly complain that the United States can’t possibly take everyone in — a dishonest argument since hardly anyone argues for taking in “everyone,” and a foolish argument since America will almost inevitably decline without a healthy intake of immigrants to make up for a falling birthrate.

Critics will also claim that “very bad people,” as Donald Trump likes to say, might take advantage of a generous asylum and refugee policy. Here again I’m aware of nobody advocating a “let-the-terrorists-come-too” immigration policy. Only a person incapable of kindness — a person like the president — can think that kindness and vigilance are incompatible, or that generosity is for suckers.

The mother and daughter whose story I told at the beginning of this column are, as you might have guessed, my own grandmother and mother. I thank God it was Harry Truman, not Donald Trump, who led America when they had nowhere else to turn.

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

There will be no America if Trumpism prevails, Bret.

PWS

09-14-19

BILL McKIBBEN @ TIME: Imagine A World Not Led By Trump & His Fellow GOP Climate Change Deniers! — Humanity Would Have At Least A “Fighting Chance” For Survival!

https://time.com/5669022/climate-change-2050/

BY BILL MCKIBBEN SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

IDEAS

McKibben is the author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? and a co-founder of 350.org

Let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice.

There was a point after 2020 when we began to collectively realize a few basic things.

One, we weren’t getting out of this unscathed. Climate change, even in its early stages, had begun to hurt: watching a California city literally called Paradise turn into hell inside of two hours made it clear that all Americans were at risk. When you breathe wildfire smoke half the summer in your Silicon Valley fortress, or struggle to find insurance for your Florida beach house, doubt creeps in even for those who imagined they were immune.

Two, there were actually some solutions. By 2020, renewable energy was the cheapest way to generate electricity around the planet—in fact, the cheapest way there ever had been. The engineers had done their job, taking sun and wind from quirky backyard DIY projects to cutting-edge technology. Batteries had plummeted down the same cost curve as renewable energy, so the fact that the sun went down at night no longer mattered quite so much—you could store its rays to use later.

And the third realization? People began to understand that the biggest reason we weren’t making full, fast use of these new technologies was the political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Investigative journalists had exposed its three-decade campaign of denial and disinformation, and attorneys general and plaintiffs’ lawyers were beginning to pick them apart. And just in time.

These trends first intersected powerfully on Election Day in 2020. The Halloween hurricane that crashed into the Gulf didn’t just take hundreds of lives and thousands of homes; it revealed a political seam that had begun to show up in polling data a year or two before. Of all the issues that made suburban Americans—women especially—uneasy about President Trump, his stance on climate change was near the top. What had seemed a modest lead for the Democratic challenger widened during the last week of the campaign as damage reports from Louisiana and Mississippi rolled in; on election night it turned into a rout, and the analysts insisted that an underappreciated “green vote” had played a vital part—after all, actual green parties in Canada, the U.K. and much of continental Europe were also outperforming expectations. Young voters were turning out in record numbers: the Greta Generation, as punsters were calling them, made climate change their No. 1 issue.

And when the new President took the oath of office, she didn’t disappoint. In her Inaugural Address, she pledged to immediately put America back in the Paris Agreement—but then she added, “We know by now that Paris is nowhere near enough. Even if all the countries followed all the promises made in that accord, the temperature would still rise more than 3°C (5°F or 6°F). If we let the planet warm that much, we won’t be able to have civilizations like the ones we’re used to. So we’re going to make the change we need to make, and we’re going to make them fast.”

Fast, of course, is a word that doesn’t really apply to Capitol Hill or most of the world’s other Congresses, Parliaments and Central Committees. It took constant demonstrations from ever larger groups like Extinction Rebellion, and led by young activists especially from the communities suffering the most, to ensure that politicians feared an angry electorate more than an angry carbon lobby. But America, which historically had poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other nation, did cease blocking progress. With the filibuster removed, the Senate passed—by the narrowest of margins—one bill after another to end subsidies for coal and gas and oil companies, began to tax the carbon they produced, and acted on the basic principles of the Green New Deal: funding the rapid deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, guaranteeing federal jobs for anyone who wanted that work, and putting an end to drilling and mining on federal lands.

Since those public lands trailed only China, the U.S., India and Russia as a source of carbon, that was a big deal. Its biggest impact was on Wall Street, where investors began to treat fossil-fuel stocks with increasing disdain. When BlackRock, the biggest money manager in the world, cleaned its basic passive index fund of coal, oil and gas stocks, the companies were essentially rendered off-limits to normal investors. As protesters began cutting up their Chase bank cards, the biggest lender to the fossil-fuel industry suddenly decided green investments made more sense. Even the staid insurance industry began refusing to underwrite new oil and gas pipelines—and shorn of its easy access to capital, the industry was also shorn of much of its political influence. Every quarter meant fewer voters who mined coal and more who installed solar panels, and that made political change even easier.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of McKibben’s essay at the link.

The 2020 election might be America’s and the world’s last, best chance for salvation from Trump and his anti-science, climate denying GOP cabal that is bent on destroying our air, water, resources, and health.

PWS

09-13-19

IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART CROUCH SYMBOLIZES AMERICA’S GROSS DISREGARD OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS & WELFARE!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/opinion/child-poverty-democratic-debate.html

Nicholas Kristof writes in The NY Times:

When a 2-year-old Guatemalan boy had trouble staying silent in an immigration courtroom, the judge pointed his finger at him.

“I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you,” the judge, V. Stuart Couch, a former Marine, yelled at the toddler in a 2016 hearing, according to a formal complaint shared by the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy and first reported this week by Mother Jones.

“Do you want him to bite you?” Couch asked.

The boy, his mom and their advocate were all soon sobbing. Couch later acknowledged that he “did not handle the situation properly,” according to the judge who investigated the complaint, Deepali Nadkarni.

Clearly, Couch didn’t have a child’s well-being in mind on that day. But ignoring the welfare of our young is a day-to-day problem in America, where our children are falling behind those in other wealthy countries.

On Thursday, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will debate. It would be a natural opportunity to provoke a national conversation on the subject. But a question about child poverty hasn’t been asked at a presidential debate in 20 years, not since a Republican primary debate in 1999, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.

Presidential candidates have been asked about the World Series, about cursing in movies, even about flag lapel pins more recently than they have been questioned about child poverty. We’ve had 147 presidential debates in a row without a single question on the topic (here’s a petition calling for more questions on the issue). I hope Thursday’s debate won’t be the 148th.

UNICEF says America ranks No. 37 among countries in well-being of children, and Save the Children puts the United States at No. 36. European countries dominate the top places.

American infants at last count were 76 percent more likely to die in their first year than children in other advanced countries, according to an article last year in the journal Health Affairs. We would save the lives of 20,000 American children each year if we could just achieve the same child mortality rates as the rest of the rich world.

. . . .

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

Read Kristof’s complete op-ed at the link.

Couch is one of America’s worst judges. One might therefore fairly ask why he recently was “rewarded” for his bias, unprofessionalism, and documented poor performance when Trump Sycophant Barr “elevated” him to the appellate bench? Perhaps, so he can abuse more women and children across the country?

But, as the Supremes and the GOP have decided to endorse and encourage child abuse, the question is whether the Dems can get it together to end the abuse before it’s too late for America and the world.

Child abusers like Trump, Couch, Barr, and the gang over at DHS are used to getting away with it. They are encouraged by a do nothing Congress, complicit Federal Judges, and a Trump base that has declared war on traditional American values and human decency. But, the consequences of their misconduct, and the unwillingness of the US political and legal system to stand up for children, won’t end well in the long run.

In the meantime, remember the names of the abusers and their enablers, some of them serving in our highest court and as GOP Senators and Representatives.

Child abuse is wrong!

PWS

09-12-19

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