GET READY NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY — Trump & Miller Planning All-Out White Nationalist Assault On Constitution, Rule Of Law, Asylum, Immigrants, & People Of Color!

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/08/trump-immigration-agency-head-1332660

 

Trump White House plots amped-up immigration crackdown

The purge of Homeland Security leaders will allow the president to shift direction on policy.

President Donald Trump’s dramatic purge of Homeland Security leaders is about more than personnel: It helps clear the way for him to take controversial new steps to curb illegal immigration, including an updated version of his furiously criticized family separation policy.

Leading the new charge is Trump’s top White House immigration aide Stephen Miller, who wants tent cities to house migrants on the border and is pressing to extend the amount of time U.S. immigration officials can detain migrant children beyond the current 20-day limit imposed by a federal judge. Miller wants to force migrant parents arrested at the border to choose between splitting apart from their children or remaining together indefinitely in detention while awaiting court proceedings, according to five people familiar with the plans.

Those hard-line policies could get new traction after a major staffing shakeup at the Homeland Security Department over the past several days. Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned Sunday and Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was ousted Monday. Those moves came after the White House on Friday unexpectedly withdrew its nominee for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ronald Vitiello. Other officials could be on the chopping block in coming days, according to three other people familiar with the White House’s considerations.

The dramatic proposals and leadership purge are politically risky — family separation has sparked more political anger than almost any other issue in Trump’s presidency — and come as Trump has alarmed his fellow Republicans with abrupt threats to kill Obamacare and to shut down the border. But Trump is determined to make immigration central to his reelection push, betting that he can once again energize his core conservative voters on a promise to secure America’s borders.

Trump and Miller have become increasingly frustrated as the number of Central American migrants massing at the southwest border surges to levels not seen in a decade. Now Miller — who’s even started calling mid-level federal officials to demand they do more to stem the influx — will have a new opportunity to pursue his tougher approach amid the leadership vacuum at DHS.

Trump said Sunday that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would become acting DHS secretary. Other top DHS positions currently filled by acting officials will be the deputy secretary, ICE director, inspector general and administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Three of those jobs lack a nominee from the White House.

Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a plan to send certain non-Mexican asylum seekers back to Mexico while they await a resolution to their case. The order will not be effective until Friday evening, which allows the administration a chance for a quick appeal.

Still, Miller has a set of new policies he wants to try, according to the five people familiar with the plans, including a “binary choice” between separation or joint detention for families, an idea that first surfaced in the run-up to the midterm elections. Miller also wants to fast-track the regulation that would allow migrant children to be detained for longer than the 20-day limit. He’s eager to finalize the so-called public charge rule, which could block immigrants from obtaining a green card if they’ve received public benefits in the past or are deemed likely to do so in the future.

In addition, Miller has pressed for the federal government to set up tent cities along the border, so that cases can be swiftly resolved — and migrants with non-meritorious claims can be deported.

He’s also pushing for the purge at DHS to continue.

“If you lose Claire, and John, and Francis, I don’t know where that leaves us. But it’s not in a good place,” this person said.

At least some of the personnel moves are getting pushback from immigration restrictionist groups, who like Cissna’s approach.

Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization that seeks lower levels of immigration, said he’s confounded by reports that Cissna may be removed from his post at USCIS.

“He’s great. He’s worked in this issue for years, he’s extremely knowledgeable,” Beck said. “He’s exactly the type of person who needs to be in DHS in leadership.”

But Miller has pressed Cissna, unsuccessfully, to launch more experimentally and legally questionable policies, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Cissna’s defenders contend that he tried to adhere to the law while Miller pressed to overstep legal boundaries.

“If they push out the uber-competent guy that the left hates because he’s getting things done within the law and the right loves because he’s actually being faithful to the president’s campaign promises, they’re even bigger idiots than we already know,” one former DHS official said.

Eliana Johnson, Gabby Orr, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

 

SCOFFLAWS STUFFED AGAIN: U.S. Judge Finds Trump’s “Remain In Mexico” Program Illegal – Orders Halt! – Malicious Incompetence, Illegal Gimmicks Thwarted – We Need A Government That Follows The Laws!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-program-forcing-asylum-seekers-to-remain-in-mexico-while-awaiting-court-hearings/2019/04/08/68e96048-5a42-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html?utm_term=.137c9c2e12a3

April 8 at 5:46 PM

A federal judge on Monday blocked an experimental Trump administration policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through the immigration court system, a major blow to President Trump as border crossings have surged to their highest point in more than a decade.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco enjoined the Migrant Protection Protocols policy days after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pledged to expand the program. The policy began in January.

Trump has justified blocking asylum seekers from entering the United States by claiming that many asylum seekers are trying to carry out a scam — that they are coached to file false asylum claims knowing that they will be released into the country because of a lack of detention bed space. The administration had hoped to keep more asylum seekers in Mexico — and off U.S. soil — while they await court hearings on their claims.

Migrants who reach U.S. soil — including areas that are outside U.S. border barriers but inside U.S. territory — have the legal right to seek asylum. They generally are either held in detention facilities to await rulings in their cases or are released into the United States.

The policy had been one idea to stem the flow of migrants into the country, but Seeborg said his order ending the policy will take effect at 5 p.m. on April 12. Within two days, he said, the 11 migrants named in the lawsuit must be allowed to enter the United States, and the administration may not implement or expand the program.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a “very important decision” on an “unpredecented” attempt to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil.

“What it will mean is that nobody else can be sent to Mexico,” said Judy Rabinovitz, an ACLU lawyer. “They can’t enforce this policy.”

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As I had predicted!

PWS

04-08-19

TRUMP & HIS ENABLERS IGNORE THE REALITY THAT EVENTUALLY WILL DWARF HIS BOGUS BORDER CRISIS: “The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone. . . . If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/06/us-mexico-immigration-climate-change-migration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Lauren Markham reports for The Guardian:

The northern triangle of Central America, the largest source of asylum seekers crossing the US border, is deeply affected by environmental degradation

‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’
‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’ Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

Media outlets and politicians routinely refer to the “flood” of Central American migrants, the “wave” of asylum seekers, the “deluge” of children, despite the fact that unauthorized migration across the US borders is at record lows in recent years. Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing, but perhaps this tendency to lean on environmental language when describing migration is an unconscious acknowledgement of a deeper truth: much migration from Central America and, for that matter, around the world, is fueled by climate change.

Yes, today’s Central American migrants – most of them asylum seekers fearing for their lives – are fleeing gangs, deep economic instability (if not abject poverty), and either neglect or outright persecution at the hands of their government. But these things are all complicated and further compounded by the fact that the northern triangle of Central America – a region comprising Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and the largest sources of asylum seekers crossing our border in recent years – is deeply affected by environmental degradation and the impacts of a changing global climate.

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‘Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration.’ Photograph: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images

The average temperature in Central America has increased by 0.5C since 1950; it is projected to rise another 1-2 degrees before 2050. This has a dramatic impact on weather patterns, on rainfall, on soil quality, on crops’ susceptibility to disease, and thus on farmers and local economies. Meanwhile, incidences of storms, floods and droughts on are the rise in the region. In coming years, according to the US Agency for International Development, countries in the northern triangle will see decreased rainfall and prolonged drought, writ large. In Honduras, rainfall will be sparse in areas where it is needed, yet in other areas, floods will increase by 60%. In Guatemala, the arid regions will creep further and further into current agricultural areas, leaving farmers out to dry. And El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?

This September, I travelled to El Salvador to report on the impacts of the US government’s family separation policy. I’d been to El Salvador many times before, but never to the Jiquilisco Bay, a stunning, shimmering and once abundant peninsula populated by mangroves and fishing communities and uncountable species of marine life. It is also one that, like many places in El Salvador, and like many places in the world, is also imperiled by climate change. Rising sea levels are destroying the mangrove forests, the marine life that relies on them, and thus the fishermen who rely on that marine life to feed themselves and eke out a meager economy.

I met a man there named Arnovis Guidos Portillo, a 26-year-old single dad. Many people in his family were fishermen, but they were able to catch fewer and fewer fish. The country’s drought and devastating rainfall meant that the area’s farming economy, too, was suffering. The land was stressed, the ocean was stressed, and so were the people. Arnovis got into a scuffle one day at a soccer game, which placed him on a hitlist with a local gang. He had been working as a day laborer here and there, but the drought meant there was less work, and it was hard to find work that didn’t require crossing into rival gang territory. If he did, he would be killed. So he took his daughter north to the United States, where border patrol agents separated them for two months, locking them up in different states and with zero contact.

desert
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‘People really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land.’ Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration. An unstable planet and ecosystem lends itself to an unstable society, to divisions, to economic insecurity, to human brutality. When someone’s home becomes less and less livable, they move elsewhere. Wouldn’t each and every one of us do the same?

This week, the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer published a series of pieces about the impacts of climate change in the Guatemalan highlands, where farmers are struggling to grow crops that they have been farming there for centuries. “In most of the western highlands,” Blitzer wrote, “the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when.” A few years ago, I reported from Guatemala’s dry corridor, several hours away from where Blitzer was reporting, where persistent drought had decimated the region’s agriculture, and particularly the coffee crop, on which roughly 90% of local farmers relied. It was a wildly different landscape from the one Blitzer described, but it faced the same problem: if you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?

It’s abundantly clear that climate change is a driver of migration to the US – we have the data, we have the facts, we have the human stories. Still, the Trump administration has done nothing to intervene in this root cause. In fact, the US government has systematically denied the existence of climate change, rolled back domestic regulations that would mitigate US carbon emissions and thumbed its nose at international attempts – such as the Paris accords – to curb global warming.

Now, in his latest futile, small-minded and cruel attempt to cut migration off at the neck (something we know is not possible – an unhealthy societal dynamic must be addressed at the root, just like with a struggling tree or crop), Donald Trump announced last week that he would cut all foreign aid to the northern triangle. It’s a punitive move, and one that – just like building a wall, separating families, locking people up indefinitely, and refusing asylum seekers entry across the border – is a petty intimidation tactic that will do nothing to actually curb forced migration.

In fact, cutting aid to Central America will do quite the opposite, for as much waste and imperfections as there are in international aid, aid in Central America has been vital for creating community safety programs, job skills development and government accountability standards. It has also helped with drought mitigation and supporting climate-resilient agricultural practices. In other words, foreign aid to Central America – a place unduly hit by climate change – is supporting the kind of climate change resiliency that will keep people from having to leave in the first place.

Because people really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land, particularly when that land proves itself again and again to be hostile to migrants’ very existence. People don’t want to be raped along the route north, or die in the desert, or have their child ripped away from them by the border patrol, or be locked up indefinitely without legal counsel, without adequate medical care, with no idea what will happen to them and when. Who would risk this if things were OK back home? People like Arnovis leave because they feel like they have to.

Eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials convinced Arnovis to sign deportation papers with the promise that, if he did, he would be reunited with his daughter and returned to El Salvador. But he was shooed on to a plane back home without her. It took a tremendous amount of advocacy, but, after months locked up in the US, she, too was returned home. They are now back together, which is a good thing, but the fundamental problem hasn’t changed: he can’t find work. His society is ill. So is the planet, and the land and sea all around him.

Today, there are 64 million forced migrants around the world, more than ever before. They are fleeing war, persecution, disaster and, yes, climate change. The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone.

Migration is a natural human phenomenon and, many argue, should be a fundamental right, but forced migration – being run out of home against one’s will and with threat to one’s life – is not natural at all. Today, whether we choose to see it or not, climate change is one of the largest drivers of migration, and will continue to be for years to come – unless we do something about it. If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.

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Quote of the Day: “Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.” 

One week ago, I was a guest participant in an Environmental Justice Seminar here at Lawrence University taught by Professor Jason Brozek of the Government Department. I was inspired by the students’ collective degree of knowledge, thoughtfulness, informed dialogue, and commitment to addressing this pressing problem. “Environmental Due Process” is certainly an important facet of the mission of the “New Due Process Army.”

PWS

04-08-19

THE ART OF JUSTICE: Retired Judge Polly Webber Combines Passions For Justice, Art, Family With Inspiring Triptych!

https://napavalleyregister.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/evy-warshawski-the-arts-landscape-a-retired-judge-polly-webber/article_11ecd2c1-5be4-51aa-b295-955f910edc45.

The Arts Landscape

Evy Warshawski, The Arts Landscape: A retired judge Polly Webber creates a refugee narrative

  • Updated

Immigration is a complicated issue.

Rarely a day goes by when we’re not hearing about it, reading about it, talking about it and shaking our heads at our leaders’ constantly shifting laws, policies and reforms. Like the unpredictability of Napa’s weather, the myriad issues surrounding immigration keep us constantly guessing about the outcomes.

Newish-to-Napa resident Polly A. Webber has been in the thick of immigration law for more than three decades.

Her resumé reads like a “Who’s Who” on the subject. She served 21 years as a trial level administrative judge in San Francisco, rendering oral and written decisions for more than 19,000 cases. She also served as national president of the American Bar Association-affiliated American Immigration Lawyers Association and held faculty positions at Santa Clara University School of Law and Lincoln Law School in San Jose. In private practice for 18 years, she has written articles for distinguished legal publications and earned a plethora of awards and accolades earned throughout her legal career.

During her last 10 years on the bench as well as in retirement, Webber has been creating fiber works, through rug hooking and yarn arts, describing her artistry as “a form of meditation” and a way “to get out of my head.”

“There is a pressing need for immigration reform in the United States,” Webber has written. “The Dreamers captured the hearts of a majority of Americans, and the taking of the children captured their outrage. It is time to bring this issue forward whatever way possible. This is my small contribution.”

Webber calls her folk art inspired, refugee-themed triptych of rugs “Refugee Dilemma.” Each wall hanging pays tribute to the thousands of people all over the world who flee and seek refuge from their places of origin.

The first in the series, “Fleeing from Persecution,” was completed in August, 2017. The image portrays Webber’s interpretation of the iconic, but now extinct, set of traffic signs used in San Diego – ostensibly meant to protect fleeing refugees. The plea “help us” appears in Spanish, Mayan, Haitian, Arabic, Pashto, Somali, Sudanese, Russian and English.

“I used marbled red and brown wool for the silhouettes,” Webber said, “to make them more human and universal. The white outline around the figures is a technique found in Russian art.”

“Caught in the Covfefe,” completed in December, 2018, portrays a border patrol officer taking a young girl from her undocumented mother, who pleads in Spanish, “Don’t take my daughter!” Webber describes the image: “An officer’s face is hooked in pure white, an institutional and domineering color, and he is given an almost robotic stance. The mother is frenzied, understandably, and the child is traumatized. The chicken wire fence around them with its barbed wire atop, and the borders around the rug are all done to project the feeling of being trapped. With the more open border at the top, there is hope.”

The most recently-completed rug in September, 2018, “Safe Haven,” illustrates two Central American women and their children in a place of relative safety. “For some,” Webber explains, “this is still aspirational, while others have succeeded. Their smiles are tired smiles, but full of hope. The pattern for this rug was developed from a rug my aunt, Emma Webber, hooked decades ago from a 1950s UNICEF card. Knowing how much my aunt would have appreciated this group of rugs, I wanted to honor her as well.”

Webber has hooked upwards of 25 rugs and often uses patterns made from photographs or draws images freehand. She’s “hooked” her brother’s home and a portrait of her parents with materials consisting of 100 percent wool cloth cut into strips about 1/4 inch thick.

“There are a number of wine country rug hooking groups in Santa Rosa, “ said Webber, “and we sit around and hook with other people. There are also camps that bring in specialized teachers and cutters, and it’s a true art form to go to these places.”

“I poured my heart and soul into these rugs,” Webber said, “and I still think assimilation and advocacy are important parts of the refugee narrative. There may be one or two more rugs coming!”

For information, contact Webber at popster49@gmail.com.

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Art has always been a powerful form of social justice expression. Thanks for inspiring us with your art and your passion for justice, Polly!

PWS

04-07-19

TAL @ SF CHRON: Dems Start Talking Specifics On Immigration For 2020

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/2020-Democrats-grapple-with-immigration-message-13746205.php

2020 Democrats grapple with immigration message as border crossings surge

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — Democrats credit their 2018 midterm success to focusing on pocketbook issues and avoiding engaging with President Trump on immigration They may not have that luxury in 2020.

The U.S. is on pace to receive more migrants at the southern border — many of whom are seeking asylum — in fiscal year 2019 than in any year in over a decade. At current rates, more than 750,000 migrants would either be caught trying to cross the border illegally or show up at a valid crossing without authorization to enter. The Trump administration says it is unable to handle the influx, and photos of migrants held in pens under a bridge in El Paso last month made national headlines.

But aside from condemning Trump’s immigration policies as cruel contributors to the problem, Democrats have largely avoided talking about border-security ideas. Most of the party’s presidential candidates have focused on expanding access to health care and other economic measures intended to boost the middle class, and have touched on immigration only in broad strokes.

But that could change very soon — and should, some experts say.

“Trump wants to turn the 2020 election into a debate between GOP border hawks and Democratic open borders-types,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice. “Democrats would be wise to turn the debate into Trump’s cruelty and incompetence versus Democrats’ practical solutions. … I think it’s a time for serious people to step up with serious ideas.”

Trump threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico before backing away from the idea last week. But he’s made clear that just as they were in 2016, immigration issues will be at the center of his 2020 campaign. On Friday, the Trump campaign released a video consisting of comments from Democratic presidential contenders downplaying the situation at the border, with text declaring, “Democrats do not want to keep Americans safe.”

Democrats consistently attack Trump’s immigration comments and agenda, but tend to limit discussion of their own policies to promoting paths to citizenship for sympathetic populations of undocumented migrants. Some worry that if they don’t have a clear plan to address the increasing numbers of asylum seekers at the border, Trump could ride the issue to victory again.

“This is going to be the cannon fodder for the Trump campaign and for Republicans in general,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., a senior member of Congress’ Progressive Caucus and Hispanic Caucus. “I think that we need to be proactive. … The hard edge is going to want nothing but Trump’s policy, of which there is none. I think the vast middle are looking for somebody taking the lead to try to solve the issue, as opposed to continuing to use it” politically.

Two of former President Barack Obama’s top communications strategists agreed.

“We need to go on offense as soon as humanly possible,” former Obama national security spokesman Tommy Vietor said last week on the “Pod Save America” podcast. “We can’t sit back and say just, ‘No wall, no fence,’ and let him hammer us until (the) election.”

Former Obama chief speechwriter Jon Favreau added, “The point that Democrats don’t make enough is, we always say that his immigration policy is cruel, which it is, but it’s also dumb. It just doesn’t work.”

Although Grijalva has not endorsed any of the Democratic candidates for president, he praised former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro for releasing a formal immigration policy last week, making him the first candidate to do so.

Castro’s proposal includes the Democratic staples of offering a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers” — young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors — as well as the broader undocumented population. It would rescind many Trump administration policies, including the ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries and other nations, and pour money and diplomatic resources into the Central American nations that many of the migrants are fleeing.

Castro also proposes progressive positions like breaking up Immigration and Customs Enforcement and redistributing its functions. He also would make it no longer a crime to cross the border illegally, leaving it up to immigration courts to handle the civil offenses related to being in the country without authorization.

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke comes from the border city of El Paso, but when he served in the House, he played no leadership role in immigration debates. O’Rourke wrote a Medium post last week on the issue and offered a set of 10 proposals that included expanding legal immigration and investing in border infrastructure and Central America.

Other candidates have also spoken up about immigration, without making it a central theme of their campaigns. The Chronicle reached out to the major declared candidates for their policies, and all the ones who responded supported a pathway to citizenship for at least some undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. But none offered many specifics about what they would do at the southern border, other than encouraging aid to Central America.

California’s Kamala Harris has engaged on the issue as a senator, questioning the Department of Homeland Security on its policies and being an outspoken advocate of Dreamers. Last week, she introduced a bill that would allow Dreamers who are temporarily protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act to be paid for work in congressional offices. She frequently cites her own life story as the child of two immigrants. But as a candidate, Harris has said little about her border policy proposals and has made economic issues her signature.

A spokeswoman for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said he would reform the immigration system while “enforcing our laws and securing our borders in ways consistent with our values.”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wants a “humane and secure” system that “dismantles inhumane deportation programs,” restructures ICE and puts “the sanctity of families at the forefront,” according to his campaign.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren supports comprehensive immigration reform, reversing cuts in aid to Central America and “making sure we provide the support needed so mamas don’t have to flee with their babies for their lives,” according to an aide.

The lack of engagement by the presidential field is indicative of broader soul-searching within the party, including in the House. Progressive Caucus co-chairwoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said she is part of a group working on “principles” for the party. O’Rourke’s successor in his House seat, Rep. Veronica Escobar, said she spoke to the Democratic caucus during a recent closed-door meeting about the need to come up with a plan.

“The Trump administration does everything it can to fuel the flames of fear and discord and xenophobia, and we have to demonstrate an alternative to that,” Escobar said. “So I do think presidential candidates need to lean in.”

But not every Democrat thinks going on offense on immigration would be wise. Swing district Democrats largely avoided the issue in the 2018 midterms — they were “queasy” at the idea of getting near it, Grijalva said — and some Democrats hope to repeat their success by side-stepping it again, at least for now.

“We had a 35-day national conversation about border security, and it ended with Donald Trump engaging in an unconditional surrender,” said New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a member of party leadership, referring to the partial government shutdown over border wall funding. “The 116th Congress, from the perspective of House Democrats, will continue to be about lowering health care costs and enacting a real infrastructure plan, and trying to do those two things in a bipartisan fashion.”

He said Democrats’ focus in the presidential race should be distinguishing themselves in the primary. “It’s not necessarily clear to me that in that context there’s a lot of daylight on immigration,” Jeffries said. “Once somebody emerges as a Democratic nominee, then there will be an opportunity to lay out a contrasting vision with the xenophobe-in-chief Donald Trump.”

Hillary Clinton’s former campaign press secretary, Brian Fallon, who now runs the left-aligned advocacy group Demand Justice, argued that Democrats should avoid debating on Trump’s terms.

“In 2020, Donald Trump can be expected to do the same thing that he did leading up to the 2018 midterms, which is try to manufacture political controversies on his issues,” Fallon said. “Getting wrapped around the axle on the terrain that he wants to fight on is a losing strategy, and he would love the first, second, and third issue in October of 2020 to be immigration. And if we are trying to choose our preferred issue, it should be health care.”

A senior aide for Trump’s re-election campaign confirmed that Trump would again be running on a border security message.

“He’s made that a cornerstone of his campaign since Day One — that’s not going to change,” said the aide, who requested anonymity to speak more freely. “Democrats are denying the crisis at the border. They want to see who can go the furthest left as they try and not address the issue at hand. They want to abolish ICE, they want to tear down existing barriers, they want to decriminalize border crossings. At what point are we addressing what is a true crisis at the southern border?”

One risk for Democrats is letting the loudest and most progressive voices define the issue for the party, said Ali Noorani, executive director of the moderate immigration advocacy group the National Immigration Forum. Many progressives, for example, want to abolish ICE, a proposal that could be unpopular with swing voters.

“I think the challenge for the party writ large, whether it’s the presidential candidates or Congress, is the perception that Democrats are just against whatever Trump is for on immigration, and a lot of the political conversation is sucked up by the progressive element in the House,” Noorani said.

The 2020 candidates should quickly articulate their own vision on the issue, he added. “Otherwise, Trump will define the Democrats’ position for them.”

Some Republicans join Democrats in believing Trump has left room in the middle with his aggressive immigration agenda. GOP strategist Kevin Madden, a veteran of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, said Trump’s immigration message hurt Republicans with suburban swing voters in the midterms, and that “pragmatism” would sell.

“It can’t just be reflexive opposition,” Madden said. “If you know this debate is going to take place, why would you wait until the president starts attacking you to come up with your plan and your message? You have to have an anticipatory self-defense on this so you have a greater opportunity to win the middle.”

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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A rational, humane, generous immigration policy that benefits the economy while rejecting the politics of bombast, hate, racism, and ignorance should be a winner in 2022 just like it was in 2018. That’s particularly true because Trump and the GOP have self destructed on health care, another winning issue for the Dems.

As I mentioned last week, I think the immigration policy agenda offered by Julian Castro is where America must go sooner or later to survive and prosper. He might not be the candidate, but his common-sense, fact-based proposal could be the “winning ticket.”

PWS

04-07-19

MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=c0589a9f-92f8-4e10-98e2-b19dd6e8d7ee

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

McALLEN, Texas — Federal immigration officials dropped the first group of several dozen asylum seekers — all Central American parents with children — at the downtown bus station early in the day.

They dropped more throughout the day, all of them Spanish speakers in need of food, medicine and guidance from volunteers.

Jose Manuel Velasquez, 24, cradled his squirming 3-year-old-daughter, Sofia, as volunteer Susan Law advised him how to reach Oklahoma City, where he hoped to join his cousin. He was one of thousands of asylum seekers trying to leave the border region this week to reach friends, family and immigration court hearings in other parts of the country.

Ahead of President Trump’s Friday visit to California,volunteers along the border helped hundreds of asylum seekers who had been released from U.S. custody. Cities are pitching in, but helping the migrants has mainly fallen to volunteers whose resources were already at a breaking point from responding to a slew of new immigration policies.

On Thursday in McAllen, the U.S. released 700 migrants to crowded nonprofit shelters and dropped others at the bus station. Some arrived at the station with confirmation numbers to claim tickets paid for by relatives. Many arrived confused.

Law, a volunteer with the group Angry Tias and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley, said the constant arrivals this week made volunteers’ work “more overwhelming.”

The 73-year-old, a retired human resources director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, sat with one parent after another Thursday. She explained each step of their bus trip, highlighting connections on a stack of maps.

She reviewed their paperwork, reminded them to keep their addresses updated and attend immigration court, and shared lists of free legal services at their destinations.

Many eastbound buses arriving in McAllen on Thursday were already packed with those released in El Paso and San Antonio. The wait time for migrants released to shelters to make it onto a bus has stretched to two days, according to Eli Fernandez, a volunteer at a nonprofit shelter.

Migrant advocates have suggested that recent mass releases at the border were intended to create chaos and give Trump something to point to when he argues that there is a national emergency.

Border Patrol officials have said their resources were strained by people crossing into the U.S. and asking for asylum. The officials have asked for millions more in funding to run temporary holding areas in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency team arrived in the valley this week, meant to support Border Patrol operations and nongovernmental groups, a FEMA spokeswoman said. But many volunteers said they hadn’t been contacted by the agency.

Trump policies blocking asylum seekers led volunteers to found Angry Tias and Abuelas about a year ago, after U.S. officials blocked asylum seekers at a border bridge south of McAllen. They brought food and supplies to the bridge and kept helping migrant families once Border Patrol started separating them. As immigrant parents were released, the volunteers shifted to the bus station to assist Catholic Charities, which runs a nearby shelter.

Most volunteers in Angry Tias and Abuelas are local, some are winter Texans, and others out-of-state visitors.

Luis Guerrero, a retired firefighter, remembers a 4-year-old Salvadoran girl explaining why she and her parents had to flee to the U.S.: Armed men had broken into their house and demanded money. “If you stay here,” Guerrero told the couple, “make sure your daughter gets therapy.”

Many of the migrants are from poor, rural areas and need the most basic help, volunteers said.

A young Honduran mother paid attention Thursday as Law traced the route she would follow to join her sister, a legal resident who migrated years ago and settled in Memphis, Tenn. Olga Lara had brought her 3-year-old, Alva, but left her 13-year-old daughter, Lilia, in Honduras with Lara’s mother.

Lara, 29, said she hoped to learn to read, as her sister had, in the U.S. She doesn’t know how to spell her name. She has never attended school, she said, because her family couldn’t afford it.

Law ensured the woman was traveling with another migrant who could read, write and look out for her. Law also warned Lara and other female migrants about the risk of trafficking, advising them to stay in main bus terminals and avoid anyone who might try to persuade them to leave.

Lara tucked her ticket into her bra and her paperwork into a bag next to Alva’s Elmo doll. She was wearing a donated puffy jacket and sneakers that were stripped of shoelaces while she was in Border Patrol detention. Law ran to grab her some of the laces she keeps stashed at the bus station. Lara threaded them through her shoes and thanked the volunteer.

On Thursday, good Samaritans from local churches dropped by with books, toys and hot breakfast tacos for the migrants. But there were not enough tacos to go around. A van from the nearby shelter was delayed when it ran out of gas. A few families boarded buses without eating.

Volunteer Roland Garcia, a former U.S. Marine, loaned his cellphone to a single Salvadoran mother of three, a domestic violence victim, so she could contact family in Houston and book her bus ticket.

“If we could just get more volunteers to help these people,” he said. “To them, everything is new. Some of them don’t even know how to work the Coke machine.”

Garcia, 60, who used to be a truck driver, started volunteering after he ducked into the bus station a few months ago to wait during a delivery and saw the crowds. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and felt the need to do something meaningful. He’s already recruited other volunteers.

His friend Rafael Mendoza said volunteers counter misinformation some asylum-seeking families receive from staff in Border Patrol facilities: “You’re wasting your time, you’re going to lose your case, you’re not welcome here.”

“Our own agents are telling them that,” said Mendoza, 59. “It’s very discouraging.”

The Catholic Charities shelter was packed Thursday, even after opening a second site when the Border Patrol started releasing large groups of families two weeks ago. The shelter’s halls were full of parents with small children who had not bathed in days while being held in chilly Border Patrol cells, where they said they caught colds.

Honduran Eulogio Erazo Varela said his 3-year-old daughter developed a fever while they were held for almost a week, first in a Border Patrol cell — what migrants call a hielera, or icebox — then behind a chain-link fence in a converted warehouse.

He was relieved to meet volunteers at the bus station Thursday. He said they treated him kindly as he prepared to catch a bus to Memphis — unlike Border Patrol agents, he said, who didn’t provide much treatment or help.

Many of the volunteers, including Law, had caught the migrants’ colds. But they were determined to keep helping. Law has driven a few migrants whose families could afford tickets to the airport, and hoped to recruit more volunteer escorts to help them navigate air travel in coming weeks.

Law recalled a migrant mother she met Wednesday, confused by her bus itinerary until the volunteer walked her through it in Spanish. Afterward, the woman said she would have been lost without Law’s help.

“That’s what keeps me going,” Law said.

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

Ironically, government by the worst among us (“kakistocracy”) is bringing out the best in many others. Along with the efforts of the “New Due Process Army,” it’s certainly reason to hope for a better future for America and for mankind!

PWS

04-07-19

 

TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!

TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judges (Retired)

In short, families are coming to ports of entry and crossing the border to turn themselves in to be screened for credible fear and apply for asylum under our existing laws. That’s not a “border crisis;” it’s a humanitarian tragedy. It won’t be solved by more law enforcement or harsher measures; we’re actually quite fortunate that folks still believe in the system enough to voluntarily subject themselves to it.

Most don’t present any particular “danger” to the U.S. They are just trying to apply for legal protection under our laws. That’s something that has been denied them abroad because we don’t have a refugee program for the Northern Triangle. This Administration actually eliminated the already inadequate one we had under Obama.

Certainly, we have enough intelligence to know that these flows were coming. They aren’t secret. There was plenty of time to plan.

What could and should have been done is to increase the number of Asylum Officers and POE Inspectors by hiring retired Asylum Officers, Inspectors, adjudicators, and temps from the NGO sector who worked in the refugee field, but no longer have anything to do overseas since this Administration has basically dismantled the overseas refugee program.

A more competent DOJ could also have developed a corps of retired Immigration Judges (and perhaps other types of retired judges who could do bond setting and other functions common to many judicial systems) who already “know the ropes” and could have volunteered to go to the border and other places with overloads.

Also, working closely with and coordinating with the NGOs and the pro bono bar would have helped the credible fear process to go faster, be fairer, the Immigration Courts to function more fairly and efficiently, and would have screened out some of the “non viable” cases.

For some, staying in Mexico is probably a better and safer option, but folks don’t understand. Pro bono counsel can, and do, explain that.

By treating it as a humanitarian tragedy, which it is, rather than a “fake law enforcement crisis,” the Administration could have united the private sector, border states, communities, and Congress in supporting the effort; instead they sowed division, opposition, and unnecessary litigation. I’m actually sure that most of the teams of brilliant “Big Law” lawyers helping “Our Gang of Retired Judges” and other to file amicus briefs pro bono would just as soon be working on helping individuals through the system.

A timely, orderly, and fair system for screening, adjudicating, and recognizing refugee rights under our existing laws would have allowed the Administration to channel arrivals to various ports of entry.

I think that the result of such a system would have been that most families would have passed credible fear and the majority of those would have been granted asylum, withholding, or CAT.

Certainly, others think the result would have been mostly rejections (But, I note even in the “Trump Era” merits approval rates for Northern Triangle countries are in the 18-23% range — by no means an insignificant success rate). But, assuming “the rejectionists” are right, then they have the “timely rejection deterrent” that they so desire without stomping on anyone’s rights. (Although my experience over decades has been that rejections, detention, prosecutions, and harsh rhetoric are ineffective as deterrents).

No matter who is right about the ultimate results of fair asylum adjudication, under my system the Border Patrol could go back to their job of tracking down smugglers, drug traffickers, criminals, and the few suspected terrorists who seek to cross the border. While this might not satisfy anyone’s political agenda, it would be an effective and efficient use of law enforcement resources and sound administration of migrant protection and immigration laws. That’s certainly not what’s happening now.

PWS

04-06-19

COURTS OF INJUSTICE: Lawyers’ Groups Rip Bias, “Asylum Free Zone” At El Paso Immigration Court!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03/us/el-paso-immigration-court-complaint/index.html

Catherine Soichet reports for CNN:

Lawyers slam ‘Wild West’ atmosphere in Texas immigration court

Immigration violations: The one thing to know

(CNN)Judges at an immigration court in El Paso, Texas, are undermining due process, making inappropriate comments and fostering a “culture of hostility” toward immigrants, according to a new complaint.

The administrative complaint, sent to the Justice Department on Wednesday and obtained by CNN, slams a number of allegedly recurring practices at the El Paso Service Processing Center court, which hears cases of immigrants detained at several locations near the border.
“El Paso feels like the Wild West in terms of the immigration system,” said Kathryn Shepherd, national advocacy counsel for the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign and one of the complaint’s authors. “There’s so little oversight. No one is talking about how bad it is.”
The complaint comes at a time of mounting criticism of the Justice Department-run courts that decide whether individual immigrants should be deported. And it comes as officials warn the number of cases those courts are tasked with handling is rapidly increasing with an influx of more undocumented immigrants crossing the border.
Among the allegations:
• Judges at the El Paso Service Processing Center court have “notably high rates of denial,” the complaint says, noting that the court granted less than 4% of asylum applications heard there between fiscal year 2013 and fiscal year 2017. Nationally, 35% of asylum cases in court are granted, according to the latest data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
• The complaint accuses judges in the court of making inappropriate comments that “undermine confidence in their impartiality” and are part of “a culture of hostility and contempt towards immigrants who appear” at the court. While hearing one case, a judge, according to the complaint, described the court as “the bye-bye place,” telling a lawyer, “You know your client is going bye-bye, right?” Another judge allegedly told court observers that “there’s really nothing going on right now in Latin America” that would provide grounds for asylum.
• Rules limiting evidence that can be presented at this court strip away due process, the complaint says. One judge’s standing order, for example, limits the length of exhibits that can be submitted to 100 pages. “This order is particularly harmful for individuals seeking protection whose cases are more complex or where country conditions are at issue,” the complaint says.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees US immigration courts, declined to comment on the allegations. Spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly confirmed that the office received the complaint letter on Wednesday.

An overwhelmed system

The allegations come amid mounting criticism of US immigration courts.
There are more than 60 immigration courts in the United States, and about 400 judges presiding over them. Immigration judges are hired directly by the attorney general and are employees of the Justice Department. They’re required to be US citizens, to have law degrees, to be active and licensed members of the bar and to have at least seven years of post-bar experience with trials or hearings, among other qualifications.
Prosecutors in immigration courts are employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the overall administration of the courts is the Justice Department’s responsibility.
Both immigrant rights advocates and immigration hard-liners agree the court system is struggling under a crush of cases — but they diverge widely in their proposals for fixing it.
More than 850,000 cases are pending in US immigration courts, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. And in a report released last month, the American Bar Association said the courts are “irredeemably dysfunctional and on the brink of collapse.”
The Trump administration has moved to hire more judges and to pressure them to finish cases more quickly, accusing immigrants and the lawyers who represent them of gaming the system and overloading it with frivolous cases.
President Donald Trump has also repeatedly questioned the need for an immigration court system to begin with. “We have to get rid of judges,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office, later explaining that he no longer wants to catch people trying to cross the southern border illegally and “bring them to a court.”
Advocates say the existing system denies due process and harms vulnerable people who have legitimate claims to remain in the United States but face an overwhelming number of obstacles to make their case. They’ve argued a major overhaul is necessary, proposing the creation of an independent court system that’s not part of the Justice Department.
In recent congressional testimony, Executive Office for Immigration Review Director James McHenry said his department had increased its number of case completions for the third consecutive year. And he said that every day, the office decides immigration cases “by fairly, expeditiously and uniformly interpreting and administering the nation’s immigration laws.”

‘The worst court in the country’

Lawyers argue the El Paso Service Processing Center facility is both a window into wider problems of the immigration system and a particularly egregious example.
“Immigration courts across the nation are suffering from many of the issues identified here,” the complaint alleges, “including the use of problematic standing orders, reports of inappropriate conduct from (immigration judges), and highly disparate grant rates which suggest that outcomes may turn on which court or judge is deciding the case rather than established principles and rules of law.”
But one reason advocates focused this complaint on this El Paso court, the American Immigration Council’s Shepherd said, was that it had the lowest asylum grant rate in the nation, based on statistics compiled from Justice Department reports over a five-year period.
Those figures, from annual fiscal year reports from 2013-2017, show the percentage of cases granted in the El Paso court has fluctuated in recent years, decreasing slightly from 2014-2016 and increasing slightly from 2016-2017. But for years, the figure has hovered at or under 5% — significantly below the national rate.
“If you look at the numbers, it’s the worst court in the country. But we wanted to understand really why that was the case,” she said. “What about El Paso, and what about how the judges conduct business in the court, makes it so hard to prevail?”
After researching that question and outlining their findings in the complaint, with the help of court observers and lawyers who regularly practice in the court, now Shepherd says they’re calling for the Justice Department to conduct its own investigation into the El Paso Service Processing Center court and other courts with similar problems.

Suggestions for improvement

An administrative complaint is a step in a formal grievance process used to bring issues to officials’ attention, Shepherd said, but does not trigger legal proceedings.
The complaint recommends a series of corrective measures, including providing more training on appropriate conduct for judges and requiring the Executive Office for Immigration Review to post publicly online any standing orders individual judges have issued.
No matter how officials respond, Shepherd said she hopes the complaint will be a jumping-off point for further research into how the court’s practices have affected people who were ordered deported there.
“It’s pretty overwhelming, actually,” she said, “if you think about the thousands of people who have passed through this immigration court and haven’t really had a chance to fight their case in a meaningful way.”

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

This isn’t Due Process! This isn’t justice! This is a farce, a fraud, and a parody of justice going on with the active encouragement and incompetent management of a Department of Justice that has abandoned due process and the rule of law in favor of  restrictionist “deny ‘em all, deport ‘em all” policies actively promoted by Trump, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and adopted by current Attorney  General Bill Barr.

This national disgrace and existential threat to our entire justice system and constitutional order will not end until the Immigration Courts are removed from the Department of Justice and reconstituted as an independent, fair, impartial court system dedicated to insuring fairness and due process for all, including the most vulnerable among us.

PWS

04-04-19

JULIAN CASTRO: A Democrat With A Sane & Sound Immigration Plan!

https://www.julianforthefuture.com/news-events/people-first-immigration-policy/

 

People First Immigration Policy

People First Immigration Policy

Immigration Policy Summary

1. Reforming our Immigration System

  • Establish an inclusive roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals and families who do not have a current pathway to legal status, but who live, work, and raise families in communities throughout the United States.
  • Provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and those under Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure, through the Dream and Promise Act of 2019, and defend DACA and TPS protections during the legislative process.
  • Revamp the visa system and strengthen family reunification through the Reuniting Families Act, reducing the number of people who are waiting to reunite with their families but are stuck in the bureaucratic backlog.
  • Terminate the three and ten year bars, which require undocumented individuals—who otherwise qualify for legal status—to leave the United States and their families behind for years before becoming citizens.
  • Rescind Trump’s discriminatory Muslim and Refugee Ban, other harmful immigration-related executive orders, racial profiling of minority communities, and expanded use of denaturalization as a frequently used course of action through the USCIS Denaturalization Task Force.
  • Increase refugee admissions, reversing cuts under Trump, and restoring our nation to its historic position as a moral leader providing a safe haven for those fleeing persecution, violence, disaster, and despair. Adapt these programs to account for new global challenges like climate change.
  • End cooperation agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and other such agreements between federal immigration enforcement agencies and state and local entities that erode trust between communities and local police.
  • Allow all deported veterans who honorably served in the armed forces of the United States to return to the United States and end the practice of deporting such veterans.
  • Strengthen labor protections for skilled and unskilled guest workers and end exploitative practices which hurt residents and guest workers, provide work authorization to spouses of participating individuals, and ensured skilled and unskilled guest workers have a fair opportunity to become residents and citizens through the Agricultural Worker Program Act.
  • Protect victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, ensuring these individuals are not subject to detention, deportation, or legal reprisal following their reporting these incidents.

2. Creating a Humane Border Policy

  • Repeal Section 1325 of Immigration and Nationality Act, which applies a criminal, rather than civil, violation to people apprehended when entering the United States. This provision has allowed for separation of children and families at our border, the large scale detention of tens of thousands of families, and has deterred migrants from turning themselves in to an immigration official within our borders. The widespread detention of these individuals and families at our border has overburdened our justice system, been ineffective at deterring migration, and has cost our government billions of dollars.
    • Effectively end the use of detention in conducting immigration enforcement, except in serious cases.Utilize cost-effective and more humane alternatives to detention, which draw on the successes of prior efforts like the Family Case Management Program. Ensure all individuals have access to a bond hearing and that vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, and members of the LGBTQ community are not placed in civil detention.
    • Eliminate the for-profit immigration detention and prison industry, which monetizes the detention of migrants and children.
    • End immigration enforcement raids at or near sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses.
  • Reconstitute the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) by splitting the agency in half and re-assigning enforcement functions within the Enforcement and Removal Operations to other agencies, including the Department of Justice. There must be a thorough investigation of ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Justice’s role in family separation policies instituted by the Trump administration.
  • Reprioritize Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to focus its efforts on border-related activities including drug and human trafficking, rather than law enforcement activities in the interior of the United States. Extend Department of Justice civil rights jurisdiction to CBP, and adopt best practices employed in law enforcement, including body-worn cameras and strong accountability policies.
  • End wasteful, ineffective and invasive border wall construction and consult with border communities about repairing environmental and other damage already done.
    Properly equip our ports of entry, investing in infrastructure, staff, and technology to process claims and prevent human and drug trafficking.
  • End asylum “metering” and the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, ensuring all asylum seekers are able to present their claims to U.S.officials.
  • Create a well-resourced and independent immigration court system under Article 1 of the Constitution, outside the Department of Justice, to increase the hiring and retention of independent judges to adjudicate immigration claims faster.
  • Increase access to legal assistance for individuals and families presenting asylum claims, ensuring individuals understand their rights and are able to make an informed and accurate request for asylum. Guarantee counsel for all children in the immigration enforcement system.
  • Protect victims of domestic and gang violence, by reversing guidance by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that prohibited asylum claims on the basis of credible fear stemming from domestic or gang violence.

3. Establishing a 21st Century ‘Marshall Plan’ for Central America

  • Prioritize high-level diplomacy with our neighbors in Latin America, a region where challenges in governance and economic development have consequences to migration to the United States, U.S. economic growth, and regional instability.
  • Ensure higher standards of governance, transparency, rule-of-law, and anti-corruption practice as the heart of U.S. engagement with Central America, rejecting the idea that regional stability requires overlooking authoritarian actions.
  • Enlist all actors in Central America to be part of the solution by restoring U.S. credibility on corruption and transparency and encouraging private sector, civil society, and local governments to work together – rather than at cross purposes – to build sustainable, equitable societies.
  • Bolster economic development, superior labor rights, and environmentally sustainable jobs, allowing individuals to build a life in their communities rather than make a dangerous journey leaving their homes.
  • Ensure regional partners are part of the solution by working with countries in the Western Hemisphere to channel resources to address development challenges in Central America, including through a newly constituted multilateral development fund focused on sustainable and inclusive economic growth in Central America.
  • Target illicit networks and transnational criminal organizations through law enforcement actions and sanctions mechanisms to eliminate their ability to raise revenue from illegal activities like human and drug trafficking and public corruption.
  • Re-establish the Central American Minors program, which allows individuals in the United States to petition for their minor children residing in Central America to apply for resettlement in the U.S. while their applications are pending.
  • Increase funding for bottom-up development and violence prevention programs, including the Inter-American Foundation, to spur initiatives that prevent violence at the local level, support public health and nutrition, and partner with the private sector to create jobs.

 

Finally a thoughtful, empirically-based, plan that stops wasting money, harming people, and limiting America’s future:  Moving us forward rather than “doubling down” on all of the worst failures and most dismal mistakes of the past.
Castro’s plan echoes many of the ideas I have been promoting on immigrationcourtside.com and reflects the “battle plan” of the “New Due Process Army.”  Most important, it establishes an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, the key to making any reforms effective and bringing back the essential emphasis on fulfilling our Constitutional requirement to “guarantee fairness and Due Process for all.”
While stopping short of recommending “universal representation,” something I would favor, Castro does:
  • Recognize the importance of increasing, rather than intentionally limiting access to counsel;
  • Promote “know your rights” presentations that help individuals understand the system, its requirements, their responsibilities, and to make informed decisions about how to proceed; and
  • Universal representation for children in Immigration Court (thus, finally ending one of the most grotesque “Due Process Farces” in modern U.S. legal history).
So far, Castro remains “below the radar” in the overcrowded race to be the 2020 Democratic standard-bearer. But, even if his presidential campaign fails to “catch fire” his thoughtful, humane, practical, and forward-looking immigration agenda deserves attention and emulation.
Many thanks to Nolan Rappaport for passing this along.
PWS
04-03-19

PROFESSOR CORI ALONSO-YODER EXPLAINS NIELSEN v. PREAP (Indefinite Immigration Detention)

https://www.gwlr.org/defining-the-in-nielsen-v-preap-the-court-relies-on-language-arts-to-justify-detention-of-immigrants/

Nielsen v. Preap, 586 U.S. ___ (2019) (Alito, J.).
Response by Cori Alonso-Yoder
Geo. Wash. L. Rev. On the Docket (Oct. Term 2018)
Slip Opinion | SCOTUSblog

Defining “the”: In Nielsen v. Preap the Court relies on language arts to justify detention of immigrants

What does “when” mean? Is it evident what the definition of “the” is? If you are generally comfortable that these words are clear and unlikely to generate controversy, please spare a few moments to consider the Court’s recent opinion in Nielsen v. Preap.1

At issue in the case was the meaning of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, a provision that addresses the detention and apprehension of noncitizens.2The titular respondent, Mony Preap, represented a class of individuals certified in the District Court for the Northern District of California whose case was joined to a separate class action out of the Western District of Washington (collectively, “the respondents”). Preap, a lawful permanent resident of the U.S., was detained by immigration officials in 2013, seven years after he had been released from criminal custody. Preap’s claim on behalf of the class challenged the government’s denial of an opportunity to seek bail under § 1226(c)(1), the so-called mandatory detention provision of 8 U.S.C. Under that provision, the Secretary of Homeland Security (“the Secretary”) “shall take into custody” certain categories of individuals who fall within four subsections set out at § 1226(c)(1)(A)–(D). Further, § 1226(c)(2) limits the opportunity of those described in section (c)(1) to seek release on bail to only a small category of individuals whose release is necessary for witness protection or cooperation with an investigation.3

Perhaps the only point on which all parties to Preap agreed was that the (c)(2) exception was not at issue here. Instead, Preap et al. argued that § 1226(c) was wholly inapplicable to them, and that their immigration proceedings should instead be viewed under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) which establishes the Secretary’s discretionary detention authority while also providing that she “may release the alien on . . .bond . . .or [] conditional parole.”4 While the respondents did not dispute that they fell under one of the categories set out at § 1226(c)(1)(A)–(D) (describing individuals who have committed certain crimes, who have engaged in certain terrorist activities, or who share certain family relationships with those who have engaged in terrorist activities), they argued before the lower courts that the description of whom is governed by § 1226 includes additional modifying language outside of the (A) through (D) subparagraphs.

Namely, the respondents argued that those subsections flow to and incorporate the remainder of the statutory language at (c)(1) which states that, “[t]he [Secretary] shall take into custody any alien who – [sets forth the classifications at (c)(1)(A)–(D)] when the alien is released.”5 Because the respondents were not detained until years after they were released from criminal custody, they contended that—and the lower courts up through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed—they were not governed by § 1226(c). This decision resulted in a circuit split with four other Courts of Appeals, leading the Supreme Court to grant review.

In a 5–4 decision authored by Justice Alito, the Court applies a theory of statutory construction heavily reliant on grammar and dictionary definitions to hold that the Ninth Circuit’s reading of § 1226(c) is not supported in the plain language of the statute. In a highly pedantic analysis likely to evoke images of AP English for some, the Court concludes, “[s]ince an adverb cannot modify a noun, § 1226(c)(1)’s adverbial clause ‘when . . .released’ does not modify the noun ‘alien,’ which is modified instead by the adjectival clauses appearing in subparagraphs (A)–(D).”6 Confident that the “‘rules of grammar govern’ statutory interpretation ‘unless they contradict legislative intent or purpose’”7 the Court proceeds to the dictionary to support its construction of § 1226(c). In holding that the respondents are brought under the authority of § 1226(c) the Court looks to the Webster’s definition of “describe” to discern its meaning. In so doing, the Court finds that the provision at (c)(2) narrows the opportunities for individuals “described” in (c)(1) to be considered for release to the exception for witness protection. The Court then finds support in Merriam-Webster’s definition of “the” to establish that (c)(1)’s reference to “when the alien is released” refers to the definite categories listed in (A)–(D), thereby refuting the respondents’ argument that this phrase functions as an additional modifier on whom (c)(1) reaches.8

Yet, when it comes to deciphering the meaning of the temporal aspect of that key phrase, the Court slams the dictionary shut. Instead, in a part of the decision joined only by a plurality of the Court, Justice Alito concludes that the meaning of “when” in “when the alien is released” was intended by Congress to set a temporal starting point, not a statute of limitation, establishing the earliest possibility during which the Secretary could detain a noncitizen (any time after release from criminal custody, but no sooner).

What the plurality of the Court declines to look up, the dissent is pleased to crack open. Writing for the four dissenting judges, Justice Breyer looks to the Ninth Circuit’s understanding of “when” to include the definitions “[a]t the time that,”9 or “just after the moment that.”10 But the dissent discards these meanings of “when” and their connotations of immediacy, relying instead on Oxford English Dictionary’s recognition that the word “only ‘[s]ometimes impl[ies] suddenness.’”11

Instead, the dissent largely avoids the debate on grammar, and focuses its discussion on the constitutional implications of the majority’s approach.12 Invoking his dissent in last term’s Jennings v. Rodriguez, Justice Breyer reaffirms his concern that immigration detention without the possibility for periodic bond review violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.13Drawing on Jennings and on the Court’s opinion in Zadvydas v. Davis,14 Justice Breyer would read a six month limit (as interpreted in Zadvydas and found in comparable parts of the immigration statute) into the meaning of the government’s authority to detain these individuals “when they are released.” In this way, Breyer would bring the individuals set out at §§ (A)–(D) within the ambit of § 1226(c)(1) only if they are detained within six months of release from criminal custody. Breyer explains that to interpret the statute otherwise would create a constitutional question that must be avoided. “The issue may sound technical,” Justice Breyer observes, but “[t]hese are not mere hypotheticals.”15 While the majority focuses on grammar and avoiding a potential burden to the government, the dissent is concerned about the immediate harms to individuals facing unreviewable prolonged detention for possibly minor offenses.

Having recently returned from providing legal services to immigrant detainees with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI), Justice Breyer’s concerns are particularly salient for me. In rural Georgia, SIFI staff work with individuals detained at the Stewart Detention Center.16 While SIFI aims to meet the needs of nearly two thousand individuals cycling in and out of the facility at any given time, the program’s pro bono legal representation is narrowly focused on securing bond or parole for eligible individuals. This narrow scope is still incredibly fraught, with routine denials of applications for bond and parole.17Even where immigrants appearing before the Stewart Immigration Court in Lumpkin, Georgia are afforded an opportunity for a bond hearing, only 34% of applications for release were granted between 2007 and 2018.18 Nationwide, the number is higher, but still less than 50%.19

As Justice Breyer observes, his outcome would not provide guaranteed release on bail, it would simply afford a noncitizen the opportunity to demonstrate why he should be released. The immigration court is then free to approve or (more likely) deny the application. The Preap majority declines to provide this opportunity, interpreting the statute to foreclose the possibility for these individuals to even try for release. The Court’s majority takes care to avoid deciding the constitutional issues that the dissent so gamely tackles head on. The result, long term detention of several categories of individuals without the opportunity for judicial review, should be justified with some stronger stuff than the mere diagramming of sentences.


Ana Corina “Cori” Alonso-Yoder is the Practitioner-in-Residence and Clinical Professor of Law with the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law. Professor Alonso-Yoder’s commentary on immigration law and immigrants’ rights has been featured by ABC News, The Atlantic, Washington Monthly, and The National Law Journal & Legal Times among others.


    1. No. 16-1363 (U.S. Mar. 19, 2019).
    2. 8 U.S.C. § 1226 (2012).
    3. Id. § (c)(2).
    4. Id. §§ (a)(2)(A)–(B).
    5. Id. § (c)(1) (emphasis added).
    6. Preap, slip op., at 2 (syllabus of the Court).
    7. Id. at 14 (majority opinion). Here the Court quotes A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts140 (2012) (which in turn cites Costello v. INS, 346 U.S. 120, 122–26 (1964)).
    8. Preap, slip op. at 14 ((“‘the’ is ‘a function word . . . indicat[ing] that a following noun or noun equivalent is definite or has been previously specified by context’” (quoting Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 1294 (11th ed. 2005))).
    9. Id. at 15 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (citing American Heritage Dictionary, at 1971).
    10. Id. (citing Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, at 2602).
    11. Id. (citing Oxford English Dictionary 209 (2d. ed. 1989)).
    12. Perhaps as an expression of his view on the level of grammatical expertise required to decide this case, Breyer refers to the individuals who fall under § 1226’s mandatory detention scheme as “‘ABCD’ aliens.” Id. at 3.
    13. Id. at 12 (citing U.S. Const. amend. V; Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. ___ (2018) (dissenting opinion)).
    14. 533 U.S. 678 (2001).
    15. Preap, slip op. at 4 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
    16. See Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI),Southern Poverty Law Center, https://www.splcenter.org/our-issues/immigrant-justice/southeast-immigrant-freedom-initiative-en.
    17. See Syracuse University, Report on Immigration Bond Hearings and Related Decisions for Lumpkin Immigration Court, TRAC Immigration Project, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/bond/.
    18. Id.
    19. Id. (searching bond data from all immigration courts between 2005 and 2018 which reflects that of 73,785 only 35,449 or roughly 48%, were granted).

Recommended Citation
Cori Alonso-Yoder, Response, Defining “the”: In Nielsen v. Preap the Court relies on language arts to justify detention of immigrants, Geo. Wash. L. Rev. On the Docket (Apr. 1, 2019), https://www.gwlr.org/defining-the-in-nielsen-v-preap-the-court-relies-on-language-arts-to-justify-detention-of-immigrants/.

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

Thanks, Cori, for this very clear and understandable analysis of this important case involving so-called “civil” immigration detention.

PWS

04-03-19

 

TRUMP’S LATEST ATTACK ON AMERICA, DUE PROCESS, & OUR CONSTITUTON! – Let’s Get Rid Of Judges!

https://apple.news/AIKJMMrCQT0-3ex8Gf1TDyA

CBS News reports:

President Trump reiterated a threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border after a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, saying he stands ready to take drastic action if the country doesn’t do more to curb illegal immigration. He also railed against the U.S. immigration system and said he wants to “get rid” of immigration judges who hear migrants’ cases.

“Security is more important to me than trade,” Mr. Trump said when asked about the severe economic impact of closing the border. “We’ll have a strong border or we’ll have a closed border.”

The president spoke after meeting in the Oval Office with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Last week, Mr. Trump tweeted threats to close the border if Mexico doesn’t do more to cooperate with the U.S. and slow the flow of migrants. But the commander-in-chief appeared to shift that timeline Tuesday, saying Mexico is assisting the U.S. more than it was even a few days ago. The president said he’s still “totally prepared” to close the border if necessary.

Along with a list of frustrations over immigration, however, Mr. Trump included immigration judges. U.S. immigration court backlogs are at all-time highs, with not enough judges to adjudicate the cases. That problem was exacerbated by the government shutdown earlier this year.

“We need to get rid of chain migration, we need to get rid of catch and release and visa lottery, and we have to do something about asylum. And to be honest with you, have to get rid of judges,” Mr. Trump said in his laundry list of frustrations with the U.S. immigration system.

Mr. Trump also walked back his insistence that the Republican Party will imminently introduce a new health care plan. Overnight, the president tweeted he would wait to hold a vote on his yet-to-be-envisioned health care plan until after the 2020 election. On Tuesday, the president said he will bring forth a plan “at the appropriate time.”

“We don’t have the House,” Mr. Trump said about the delay, which came after he said the Republican Party will become the “party of health care.”

Republicans failed to repeal and replace Obamacare in the two years they held the House and Senate.

Stoltenberg’s visit came as Mr. Trump tries to decrease the U.S. footprint abroad with his “America First” foreign policy. Mr. Trump has urged other NATO nations to increase their defense spending to agreed-upon levels, a stance many see as positive, but on Tuesday the president said defense spending will need to go higher than 2 percent. Currently NATO members agree to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense, but Mr. Trump, in a meeting alongside the secretary general, said that figure “may have to go up.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s close relationships with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin while criticizing U.S. allies has made some ally NATO nations distance themselves from the U.S. Last year, for instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany can’t rely “on the superpower of the U.S.” any longer to bring order to the world.

Before he became president, Mr. Trump declared NATO “obsolete.” He later revised that statement, saying he no longer believes that to be the case.

“I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete,” Mr. Trump declared during Stoltenberg’s visit in 2017.

When NATO was founded in 1949, there were 12 ally nations. Now there are 29. Last month, Mr. Trump suggested perhaps Brazil could be a part of NATO, though Brazil is largely in the southern hemisphere.

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

Trump simply doesn’t care about the Constitution or Due Process of law (except where he, his family, and their corrupt cronies are involved). Migrants seeking to apply for legal protections under our laws aren’t a security problem; Trump is! And, the idea that closing the border wouldn’t cause both an economic catastrophe and threaten our security just shows what an absurdist presidency Trump has foisted on the majority of Americans who did not want him in office in the first place.

PWS

04-02-19

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS TRUMP HAS BETTER OPTIONS ON THE BORDER

Family Pictures

Trump has better options to stop dangerous flood of asylum-seeking migrants

By Nolan Rappaport

trumpdonald_032718getty2_lead.jpg
President Donald Trump has not been able to stop a surge in illegal border crossings, which, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan, is at the breaking point. In February, more than 76,000 migrants were detained, the highest number in 12 years. Most of them were asylum-seeking migrants from Central America.
The State Department told CNN on Saturday that the United States is cutting off aid to those countries.
Apparently, Trump thinks he can gain some control over the situation by pressuring the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (known as the Northern Triangle) into assisting him with his efforts to secure the border.
I think he is mistaken. The amount of the aid he cut off is much smaller than the amount of money migrants from the Northern Triangle are sending home from jobs in America.
In 2017, migrants from the Northern Triangle who work in the United States sent billions of dollars home to their families. These remittancestotaled more than $5 billion for El Salvador, $4 billion for Honduras, and $8.68 billion for Guatemala. This was 20.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in El Salvador, 17.4 percent in Honduras, and 11.5 percent in Guatemala.
What is the aid supposed to do?
In 2016, the United States gave $131.2 million in aid to Guatemala, $98.3 million to Honduras, and $67.9 million to El Salvador, and Congress has appropriated about $2.1 billion for the program since then.
*********************************************
I encourage you to go on over to The Hill at the above link to read Nolan’s complete article.
I generally agree with Nolan’s observations, except for the idea of lengthening the time for family detention. Family detention is inhumane, unnecessary, expensive, and ineffective.
Why not just operate the asylum system in a fair and efficient manner? Fairly and efficiently administer the “credible fear” system in the Asylum Office as established by law. Give those who pass fair access to legal counsel and process their cases fairly and efficiently through the Immigration Courts. Remove the lower priority cases from the Immigration Court docket to allow priority processing of new asylum cases without long waits or increasing the backlogs. Give folks fair, impartial, and unbiased adjudications of their claims and  let the chips fall where they may.
Most of us who are familiar with the asylum system believe that under a fair, impartial, “depoliticized” system that focused on due process and asylum expertise, many, probably a majority, of the arriving cases would be granted asylum or protection under the Convention Against Torture. While the Administration claims otherwise, we can never know because they keep insisting on “gaming” the system against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle and using gimmicks to prevent individuals from getting the fair determinations to which they are entitled under law.
Trump’s White Nationalism is driving us towards a self-created international economic disaster. Why, when fair administration of our existing asylum system at the border is within our power and capability? Trump just lacks the will, integrity, and competence to make it happen.
PWS
04-02-19

TED HESSON @ POLITICO: What’s REALLY Happening At The Border — Not Surprisingly, It Bears Little Resemblance To Trump’s Largely False & Contrived “Panic Narratives” — Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) Says: “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”

https://politi.co/2FtPtru

Ted Hesson, Immigration, Pro — Staff mugshots photographed Feb. 20, 2018. (M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)

Ted Hesson reports for Politico:

The border crisis that President Donald Trump used to justify declaring a national emergency was never real, but a different crisis at the border is now starting to escalate as immigration officials hold hundreds of parents and children in makeshift facilities, including a parking lot.

During a press conference in El Paso, Texas, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan argued Wednesday that a surge of incoming Central American migrants has pushed the U.S. immigration system to a “breaking point” and that all available resources should be devoted to manage it.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), a freshman lawmaker who represents El Paso, fumed Thursday over the border situation — which she also described as a crisis — during an interview after leaving the House floor.

“They knew that the numbers would increase,” she said. “Why were they not planning?”

Here’s what’s really happening now at the border:

The president’s frequent claims that unprecedented numbers of undocumented migrants are streaming into the country remain untrue. (Twice as many came during the 1990s and early 2000s.) And President Trump’s caricature of border-crossers as violent criminals is still belied by study after study showing that immigrants in general, and undocumented immigrants in particular, commit fewer crimes than the native-born.

“We have a capacity crisis, if you want to think of it that way,” Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO. “We don’t have capacity to deal with the populations that they’re getting at the border right now.”

Border Patrol anticipates that it will apprehend more than 55,000 family members in March, by far the highest monthly total since such record-keeping began in fiscal year 2012. The warmer spring and summer months ahead will likely bring even higher numbers.

The adult men from Mexico who a decade ago constituted most border migrants were able to be returned more swiftly, often simply by walking them across the border. While they were detained, the men required comparatively little in the way of social or medical services.

Furthermore, a 2008 federal law and related bilateral agreement allowed the U.S. to repatriate Mexican unaccompanied minors rapidly. The law, called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, does not similarly authorize quick deportation for children from Central America.

By contrast, the greater volume of children among the new Central American migrants imposes on immigration agencies a need for more psychologists, nutritionists, educators and a host of others. Border officials contend that with the rise in families and children, more migrants have health issues than in the past.

Federal court orders in recent years have limited to 20 days the time children can be kept in detention, which means border agents often must release families into the interior. Such releases speed up processing, but demoralize agents and may encourage more migration, McAleenan argued.

The current migratory flow is also different because of the greater proportion of asylum applications at the border in recent years. Central American families arriving at the border frequently seek such refuge, which puts them into an immigration process that can take years to resolve.

The Trump administration argues that the asylum claims largely lack merit, but immigration court statistics don’t back that up. Roughly 25 percent of defensive asylum applications were approved by an immigration judge in fiscal year 2017, with 41 percent denied and 34 percent resolved in another manner, such as a withdrawn application.

Still, immigration hard-liners contend that lax asylum laws have been a magnet for Central Americans.

Mark Krikorian, director of the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, compared the current influx at the border to Europe’s migratory surge in 2015.

“We are seeing an Angela Merkel-style disaster on the border caused by loopholes in our laws that the Democrats refuse to even consider changing,” he said.

Democrats and advocates argue that the Trump administration’s response has exacerbated problems at the border.

Administration officials have known for months — arguably years — that more migrant families could trek to the United States, yet they appear to have been caught flat-footed.

During McAleenan’s press conference in El Paso Wednesday, reporters observed hundreds of parents and children held in a parking lot converted into a makeshift detention center.

“That’s their solution? That’s not a solution,” Escobar said. “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”

“They’ve been acting and responding in the same way over the last five years despite the change in the migration pattern,” she said.

The spending package approved by Congress in February included $192 million to construct a large processing center for migrant families in El Paso. The facility will house multiple agencies that deal with families in one building, but will take six months to a year to become functional, according to Escobar.

In the meantime, the Texas Democrat argues that if Trump truly deems immigration a national emergency, he should work harder to house and care for incoming migrants, perhaps with Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers or Red Cross assistance.

Under a January 2017 Trump executive order, federal immigration officials remain tasked with arresting and detaining as many migrants as possible, without a system of prioritization. Advocates contend the enforcement push has sapped resources that could be used to address the care and custody of newly arrived migrant families.

“They just detain any grandpa or mom that they find in the interior and they don’t prioritize who they should be putting in detention,” said Kerri Talbot, a director with the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Hub. “They don’t need any more money, they need a new strategy.”

Under its “zero tolerance” strategy, the Trump administration sought to prosecute all suspect border crossers for illegal entry. Children couldn’t travel with their parents to criminal detention facilities, so they were reclassified as “unaccompanied” and transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services Department. Thousands of families were split apart from April until June, only to see Trump reverse the policy and a federal judge order families reunited.

The administration also has sought to keep asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico for longer periods of time.

Using a practice known as “metering,” border officials have forced families to wait in Mexico, only accepting a certain number of asylum applicants at ports of entry each day.

“They’re afraid of waiting in Mexico until they can get in at the port,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “They’re balancing that against their desire to do it legally. And I definitely think its emboldening the smugglers to go to those who are waiting.”

McAleenan acknowledged during a December Senate committee hearing that metering could lead to an increase in the number of people attempting to cross the border illegally, saying it’s “certainly a concern.”

Still, the Trump administration has moved forward with a separate policy to keep asylum seekers in Mexico for extended periods of time.

The administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy — announced in late December and now implemented in several areas along the border — forces certain non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during the duration of an asylum case.

At the same time, the administration has moved slowly to disperse funding to address root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

POLITICO reported this week that hundreds of millions in aid dollars remain stalled at the White House budget office as aides wonder how seriously to take Trump’s threats to cut the funding.

“Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action,“ Trump tweeted Thursday. “Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!“

Trump’s unwise threat to “close” the Southern Border could turn a humanitarian situation into a self-created international crisis. And, Trump continues to be the “best friend” of smugglers, cartels, and gangs.
There is a clear and present threat to our national security. It’s not desperate refugees (mostly women, children, and families) seeking to exercise their legal rights; unfortunately, it’s our President.
PWS
03-31-19

DR. EDITH BRACHO-SANCHEZ @ CNN: Traumatizing Youth — Trump Administration Routinely Violates Wilberforce Act Protections For Vulnerable Kids — Their Outrageous Solution — Eliminate The Law!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/28/health/unaccompanied-minors-18th-birthday/index.html

Dr. Bracho-Sanchez writes for CNN:

(CNN)On your 18th birthday, immigration officials will come for you, a lawyer explained. You will be shackled, you will be placed in an orange jumpsuit, and you will be taken to jail. “But I need you to know you are not a criminal.”

This is how Allison Norris, toll litigation staff attorney at Americans for Immigrant Justice, prepares her teenage clients in federal migrant detention shelters who are nearing age 18 without the prospects of a suitable sponsor to whom they can be released.
One of these clients is Veronica, whose name has been changed to protect her identity for fear of retribution. At age 17, she arrived in the United States alone, fleeing sexual predators in El Salvador.
Between the time Veronica arrived and when she turned 18, just over four months, Norris says, she attempted to find a sponsor. But none of the family friends who applied met the extensive list of requirements of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in order for her to be released from the shelter for migrant children in South Florida where she was detained.
On her 18th birthday, she woke up scared, wondering what would happen to her, Veronica said. Norris’ detailed warnings had not exactly calmed her down.
At 8 a.m. on her birthday, immigration officials arrived at the shelter. She was placed in ankle shackles and put in a “very cold room” for hours before being taken into adult detention, Veronica said.
In the months that followed, Veronica describes feeling depressed, crying every day and losing hope. Because she wasn’t serving a specific sentence, she had no idea how long she’d spend in detention.
With hours to fill in a cell she shared with three older women, she relived in her mind the attacks she suffered in El Salvador.
“I didn’t know what was worse: to have died in El Salvador or to be locked up,” she said.
Veronica is part of a group of kids known as ORR age-outs. When unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States, they are placed in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, a humanitarian agency in nature.
Once they turn 18, teens are moved into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security — more specifically, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a law enforcement agency known as ICE. Migrant youth cannot, by law, stay in the shelters that housed them before they turned 18.
“I have interviewed the children right before they turn 18 and they go into these facilities,” said Yenis Castillo, a forensic psychologist with the nonprofit advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights. “All the kids I interview are terrified.”
In the weeks leading up to their 18th birthdays, Castillo said, she has seen teens act out, develop chronic headaches or high blood pressure, become depressed and even become suicidal.
“When people undergo trauma, they live in a constant state of alert, and on top of that, then we are sending them to prison,” she said.
Neha Desai, director for immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, has toured immigrant child detention centers across the country. “Everywhere I go, the kids that are in most extreme and visible distress are the ones that are approaching age-out. There’s so much anxiety in that period of time,” she said.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, passed in 2000 and reauthorized in 2008 and 2013, states that when unaccompanied immigrant children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement turn 18, ICE “shall consider placement in the least restrictive setting available after taking into account the [individual’s] danger to self, danger to the community, and risk of flight.”
“What we’ve seen is that they very rarely do,” said Xiaorong Jajah Wu, immigration attorney and deputy program director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. Wu oversees offices in Houston and Chicago, where she says it is the child’s attorney or child advocates who put forth alternatives to adult detention, “basically begging ICE not to take these kids on their 18th birthday.”
Wu said her team has not seen what they’d consider “any level of thought” being put into the decision of whether to take a migrant youth into adult detention.
In California, Lindsay Toczylowski, an immigration attorney and founder and executive director of the immigrant Defenders Law Center, says the move into adult detention has become the norm rather than the exception for teens over the past two years.
“What we’ve seen is a lack of discussion for ICE when deciding whether or not they are going to take a kid into custody,” she said. Toczylowski also worries about the way in which this is done, which she describes as “overkill,” considering that these are typically petite teens from rural communities in Central America who have committed no crimes.
Kate Melloy Goettel, senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, noted that “Congress really understood that these kids are vulnerable. And now we are just trying to get ICE to understand that they have obligations under the law to really try to find options other than detention.”
These options, Goettel explains, includes placement with family members, non-family sponsors, shelters, group homes and institutional placement.
Jennifer Elzea, press secretary for ICE, wrote in an email that “custody determination is made by ICE on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the totality of the individual’s circumstance, to include flight risk, threat to the public and threat to themselves.” Elzea acknowledged understanding the requirement that the agency consider the least restrictive setting available and to consider alternatives to detention.
Goettel is part of the team of attorneys at the National Immigrant Justice Center who, in March 2018, sued Homeland Security and ICE on behalf of two migrant teens who were placed in adult prisons when they turned 18. The lawsuit alleges that ICE “failed to consider them for placement in ‘the least restrictive setting available’ and to provide them with meaningful alternatives to detention, as required by amendments to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.”
According to documents obtained from the Office of Refugee Resettlement as part of the class-action lawsuit, 528 children aged out of custody in 2015. The number doubled to 1,044 in 2016, remained about the same at 1,091 in 2017 and, in the first half of 2018 alone, included 1,240 kids.
In November, Health and Human Services confirmed that there were a record 14,000 unaccompanied children in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody.
Since the lawsuit was filed, a judge required ICE to reassess the custody of the two original teens and place them in the “least restrictive setting possible.” In August, the court granted a motion for class action certification, meaning the lawsuit against Homeland Security is now on behalf of all unaccompanied migrant children in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement who “age out” when they turn 18.
When asked about the lawsuit, Elzea said, “ICE does not comment on pending litigation”
As for Veronica, she spent just over two months in adult detention. Norris, her attorney, says that a family friend with lawful status was able to get all required documents quickly, and Homeland Security released Veronica to live with her.
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But, Norris says, the process can take much longer for other teens, many of whom lose hope while in detention and ask to be sent back to their home countries.
“They fought all this way to come here, raised all this money to go on this very dangerous journey to escape horrific violence, and all of a sudden they’ve been in detention for three months, and they’re like ‘just send me back. I can’t take it anymore,’ ” she said.
    • ****************************************

    The obvious solution:  protect the kids; resist the Trump  Kakistocracy. That’s what the New Due Process Army does!

    PWS

    03-31-19

EMILY GREEN @ VICE NEWS: Trump Administration “Showcases” Its Human Rights Violations While Aiding Smugglers!

https://apple.news/ARQ1BQD60RuyG6WJ_oSXadA

Emily Green writes at Vice News:

Trump’s threats are backfiring and bringing more desperate migrants to the border

Families overwhelm facilities and end up behind concertina wire under a bridge in El Paso.

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EL PASO, Texas — Hundreds of migrants have spent days sleeping outside under the bridge connecting El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, wrapped in foil blankets to keep them warm during 50-degree nights. Some say they’ve been there up to five days, despite claims by immigration officials that they are being released in a day or two.

This is the new crisis at the border, one that the Trump administration seems eager to expose with immigration officials uncharacteristically open to allowing TV crews film the makeshift shelter.

On Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke showed up and asked border agents if the purpose if the shelter itself is a stunt. “Are we trying to send the message by having people in the open air, behind concertina wire and barbed wire and fencing with reporters allowed to go up and transmit these images,” he told VICE News. “It invites the question: are we trying to send a message by the way that we’re warehousing people at their most desperate moment?”

The president has championed hard-line immigration policies under the theory that they will deter Central American migrants from coming to the U.S. But instead of deterring migrants, Trump’s tough rhetoric may be doing the opposite: triggering a rush to the border by fueling a sense of “now or never” that has contributed to the highest number of undocumented migrants entering the U.S. in more than a decade.

“The more attention Central American migration gets, the more people start to panic and feel the door to the U.S. is going to close, and they should go now while they still have the chance,” said Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin.

The cycle is in overdrive.

More than 100,000 undocumented migrants are expected to cross the Southern border this month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, driven by an unprecedented number of parents coming with their children. Overwhelmed, the agency has diverted 750 agents from the major points of entry to the border itself to help with the surge, while acknowledging that the immigration system is at a “breaking point.”

On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirjsten Nielsen sent a letter to Congress asking for more funding for detention facilities along the border. She also said she would seek legislation that would make it easier to deport unaccompanied minors back to their home country and “allow” Central American migrants to apply for asylum in the U.S. from their home country.

On Friday, President Trump threatened on Twitter to “close the Southern Border” next week if Mexico “doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States.”

Even assuming Trump could “close the Southern Border” — billions of dollars of cross-border trade are at stake — and any attempt would likely end up in the courts and drag on for months. Meanwhile, Trump may be inadvertently spurring yet another mass wave of migrants, and in particular families.

Catch and release

Already, the initial wave of asylum seekers has snowballed. Because so many migrant families are arriving to the border at once, there is not enough space in detention facilities to hold them. As a result, most spend a few days in detention and are released. They are given a notice to appear at a future court hearing, but in the meantime they can start working and enroll their kids in school.

From their new homes around the U.S., these asylum seekers are relaying the news to friends back home: reaching the U.S. wasn’t so hard — especially if you come with kids, Leutert said.

“The larger the numbers the easier it feels”

“The larger the numbers the easier it feels. Because when you arrive in a large group of people you are processed very quickly. It’s become a selling point for smugglers. That if you show up with your whole family, you will be held for a couple of days and released to start your life.”

The message is being heard across Central America, including El Salvador where it reached the ears of Julio Hernández Ausencio, a farmer who was struggling to survive after a drought devastated his crops and made it impossible to support his family.

“I knew if I came alone they wouldn’t give me the opportunity to stay in the United States. But if they saw me enter with my little girl, they would give us the chance to start a new life,” said Hernandez.

Hernandez paid $7,000 for a smuggler to take him and his 11-year-old daughter to the U.S. He said it usually costs $7,500 per person, but because they wanted to turn themselves in to U.S. immigration officials instead of sneaking across the border they got a better price.

As officials struggle to cope with the crush of asylum seekers, Customs and Border Protection began this week releasing asylum-seekers instead of turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — returning to a practice Trump derisively called “catch and release” when he was a candidate and promised to end. Also, many asylum seekers are being released without ankle bracelets to monitor their whereabouts because there simply aren’t enough.

How crackdowns help smugglers

Andrew Selee, director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. said that at every turn Trump’s crackdown on migrants has turned into a selling point to smugglers, starting with the now-abandoned family separation policy.

“It created a new cycle of migration around the fact that the U.S. government could not separate families and children. The smugglers take news that people have already heard and sell it as truth,” he said.

Trump’s fixation on the migrant caravan in the fall may also play a role in the current spike of asylum seekers. The caravan was tiny compared to the overall number of migrants entering the U.S. Around 6,000 Central Americans travelled with the caravan; this week, federal agents apprehended 4,000 migrants crossing the border on a single day.

But the attention that Trump gave the caravan – including sending troops to the U.S. border to stop it – elevated its profile and highlighted a new way for Central Americans to reach the U.S. without paying smugglers.

Selee thinks smugglers responded by cutting prices and finding new ways of delivering families to the border, including via express buses that take a week or less. That’s contributed to the large groups of 100 or more migrants that have been turning themselves over to Border Patrol agents.

“Among some people in Central America there is this sense that if they are going to migrate, they better do it now because at some point the U.S. government will really succeed in stopping them,” Selee said.

But Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University who studies human smuggling and migration, disputed the idea that Trump’s policies have backfired. She said Trump’s goal is getting a wall built along the border – whether or not the wall stops Central American migrants.

“These new caravans have helped Trump make a point and support the further militarization at the border,” she said. As for the spike in migrants seeking asylum: “This is perfect for Trump. It’s helping him get his wall built. That’s the bottom line.”

Additional reporting by Roberto Feldman

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It’s all about “the wall,” a wasteful project with little real law enforcement value but lots of White Nationalist hate symbolism. Meanwhile, human lives and the humane values that were supposed to be embodied in our refugee and asylum laws are being trashed.

The shame is that with a real President and a better Administration the time, money, and effort being wasted on the wall and “built to fail” enforcement gimmicks could be re-channeled into actually addressing the problems driving forced migration, improving the asylum adjudication system, and harnessing they many positives that occur when forced migrants are treated fairly, respectfully, and welcomed into receiving countries.

PWS

03-30-19