"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Category: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador
An asylum-seeker from Honduras who presented himself at the southern border this summer seeking protection was forced to wait in Mexico until his court date in the United States. In case the government needed to contact him, a Border Patrol officer listed an address on his forms: “Facebook.”
The man, who asked to only be identified by his last name Gutierrez, told BuzzFeed News that shortly before he was sent back to Mexico along with his family, a Border Patrol agent asked him to confirm that a shortened version of his name was indeed the one he used on Facebook.
“I said ‘Yes, why?'” Gutierrez recalled. “The agent told me ‘Because that’s how we’re going to send you information about your court case.’ I thought that was strange, but what could I do?”
The form Gutierrez was given, called a Notice to Appear (NTA), is a charging document issued by the Department of Homeland Security that includes information on where an immigrant must present themselves for their first court hearing, and critically, should include an address where the applicant can be contacted if the time, date, or location of the hearing is changed.
If an immigrant fails to appear at court hearings they run the risk of being ordered deported in absentia by an immigration judge, which makes having accurate and detailed information on the forms crucial for asylum-seekers.
Gutierrez said he was never contacted about his case via Facebook and it’s unclear how DHS officials would contact an immigrant via social media.
A US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson did not respond to questions about why an agent would write “Facebook” as a known address, or whether the agency was using immigrants’ social media accounts as a way to inform them of any changes or updates to their hearings.
Attorneys and advocates working with asylum-seekers at the border, including those forced to wait in Mexico under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) said they’ve seen other notices with “Facebook” addresses, or no address at all.
“‘Facebook’ is the most egregious example of the Department of Homeland Security doing away with the aspect of proper notice,” Leidy Perez-Davis, policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association told BuzzFeed News. “Facebook is not an adequate way to serve an NTA.”
Perez-Davis said she’s heard from other attorneys who had viewed documents from immigrants with improper or inadequate addresses such as shelters, which are often already full or only allow immigrants to remain there for a few days. Asylum-seekers are often given initial US court dates months in the future.
“This is procedurally incorrect, but DHS has been doing it anyway because there hasn’t been oversight on insufficient NTAs,” Perez-Davis said.
An immigrant in Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), shows documents to a US border agent at Paso del Norte border bridge to attend a court hearing for asylum seekers.In June 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that an immigrant’s notice to appear was invalid because it didn’t have the date or location of his scheduled court appearance. Attorneys have pointed to the ruling to argue that NTAs with inadequate information should also be invalid.
The Trump administration policy, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” has seen more than 47,000 asylum-seekers sent back to the country, straining local resources that help immigrants in the border communities. In addition to facing violence, kidnappings, and discrimination, some immigrants live on the streets and rely on donations to feed themselves.
If an immigrant receives an improperly addressed notice to appear, they can challenge whether it was legally serviced in court, Perez-Davis said, giving an immigrant the chance to reopen their case if they do not appear at their scheduled hearing and are ordered removed in their absence.
“It goes back to the issue of due process,” Perez-Davis said. “They can’t initiate proceedings without telling someone the details of the proceedings.”
Zoe Bowman, a law student who interned with Al Otro Lado, a binational border rights project and legal service provider, said she saw at least five immigrant NTAs that had “Facebook” listed as the known address. The first of which she saw in May or June of this year.
“It’s wild,” Bowman told BuzzFeed News. “Some wouldn’t have any addresses listed at all.”
The US asylum process is not set up for cases to be fought from Mexico, making the issue uncharted territory for the US government, immigrants, and attorneys, Bowman said.
“The issues with the NTAs is just one branch of that,” Bowman said. “People are having to make things up as they go along.”
Many of the other asylum-seekers returned to Mexico along with Gutierrez left for their home countries almost immediately. Gutierrez tried to wait for his court date, but only lasted three weeks in Tijuana. Facing a months-long wait for their first court hearing without money or space in a shelter, Gutierrez said he decided to go back to Honduras with his family.
“Tijuana is dangerous, I can’t be traveling with my family to the bridge at 4 a.m.,” Gutierrez said of the early hour he was expected to appear at a border crossing for his hearing. “We were in Mexico without money or a place to stay, I couldn’t make my daughter suffer through that.”
Yup! This won’t go down as one the finest moments for America, the Executive, the Article III Courts, or any of the folks involved in implementing what can only be termed a program of blatantly illegal and overt human rights abuses.
Those of us fighting for our Constitution, human life, and the true rule of law appear to be losing the battle for the time being, given the cowardly and inept performances of those few institutions like Congress, the Supremes, and Article III Appellate Courts who could put an end to these travesties and require reform and compliance with the Constitution and the rule of law respecting treatment of refugee applicants.
But, we are making a legal and historical record of who stood up for human rights and who planned, executed, and enabled what can only be termed “crimes against humanity.”
This week’s coveted “Five Clown Award” goes jointly to the Supremes and Congress for their joint catastrophic failure to put an end to this illegal nonsense and reestablish Due Process and the Rule of Law.
Mexico’s Capitulation to Trump Has Put Thousands of Lives in Danger
The Mexican foreign minister says his government has nothing to be ashamed of. He’s wrong.
September 20 2019 4:51 PM
In recent months, at least 3,000 immigrants have been sent back to towns along the Mexican border between Tamaulipas and Texas, one of the country’s most dangerous areas. What they have faced there defies the imagination. The city of Nuevo Laredo is a well-known hotbed of extortion and kidnapping. Immigrants make easy targets. “These people have been thrown into the lion’s den,” local journalist Daniel Rosas told me recently.
According to Rosas, President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program has been particularly harmful, placing thousands of immigrants in imminent danger. “If even us locals are going through a very difficult time dealing with violence here, just imagine what life is like for an immigrant who doesn’t have a home and doesn’t know anyone. This place is completely unsafe,” Rosas told me. In the city of Nuevo Laredo, Rosas described a Dantean scene in which people working for cartels are tasked with identifying and abducting immigrants, who are then taken away to safehouses where they are held for ransom.
“In Tamaulipas, migrants are the most vulnerable. They suffer every kind of abuse imaginable,” he told me. Rosas seemed particularly worried for women and children in Tamaulipas. “They are completely defenseless,” Rosas told me. “When they were waiting and trying to rest under the bridge, there were kids sleeping on cardboard, without any help. They live through sheer horror,” he said.
This nightmare is the predictable result of recent actions by governments on both sides of the border. Three months ago, faced with Trump’s tariff blackmail, Mexico’s government capitulated and agreed to a series of unprecedented measures to reduce the flow of Central American immigrants reaching the United States. Terrified by the possibility of a trade war, President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s administration deployed thousands of troops along Mexico’s southern border, gave control of the country’s immigration authority to an expert in incarceration and enforcement, and pledged full cooperation with some of Trump’s more controversial immigration policies. As part of the deal, Mexican government officials agreed to return to Washington every few months with evidence of results, a recurrent humiliating pilgrimage in search of Trump’s approval and a renewed deferral of the looming tariff threat.
Ten days ago, after his first assessment in Washington with Trump’s inner circle—and, briefly, the president himself—Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard gave a victorious but ultimately unfortunate news conference. Ebrard claimedthat the much-touted downward trend in the number of immigrants reaching the United States would likely be “permanent,” although historical trends suggest the flow of immigrants will likely increase during the fall. Ebrard then said the Mexican government had demanded new and strict gun control measures in the United States. The goal, Ebrard boasted, was to “freeze” gun trafficking along the border. This is disingenuous. Ebrard knows any sort of significant reduction in gun smuggling from the United States would require legislative measures that the Trump administration and the Republican Party will not pursue.
Ebrard then concluded by saying the López Obrador administration had nothing to apologize for on immigration. “We do not regret anything of what’s been implemented,” Ebrard said. “We haven’t done anything we should be ashamed of.”
He is wrong.
The Mexican government’s cooperation with Donald Trump’s punitive immigration strategy has created a calamity along the country’s northern border. Of the many complications, none is more potentially catastrophic than the broad implementation of Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The measure forces potential refugees to wait for months (or years) in Mexico for a slim chance at asylum in the United States. It has opened the door to the creation of a massive community of rootless and marginalized immigrants living in perilous limbo in some of Mexico’s most dangerous areas. There are now close to 38,000 immigrants waitingin Mexico because of MPP. After meeting with Ebrard, the White House announcedthe program would be expanded “to the fullest extent possible,” dramatically increasing the number of potential refugees returned to Mexico, many to regions of the country where they face almost certain peril.
No place seems safe, not even shelters run by religious organizations, one of the few reliable options in other border towns like Tijuana. In Nuevo Laredo, organized crime knows no bounds. Just last month, local pastor Aarón Méndez, who runs the “Casa del Migrante AMAR” shelter in the city, reportedly tried to protect a group of Cuban migrants from a group of abductors. They kidnapped Méndezinstead. No one has heard from him since.
Things aren’t much better in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. In recent years, the city has seen “open warfare” between rival cartels. American attorneyKristin Clarens, who has been traveling to the region over the past few months to assist potential refugees and make sense of the dire situation in the region, told me she has never met an asylum-seeking immigrant who felt safe in Mexico. “To the contrary,” Clarens said, “most of the people I’ve met described routine and regular acts of violence, such as kidnapping, assault, and extortion.” According to Clarens, migrants in Matamoros, like those in Nuevo Laredo, are facing a full-blown humanitarian crisis. “The heat is intense and unrelenting, and they lack access to sanitation, water, shade, food, and basic shelter,” she told me. “People hike down to the river and use the river to clean themselves, wash their clothes, and occasionally drink. Children and adults are sick and covered with bug bites and lesions.”
Like Rosas, Clarens believes “Remain in Mexico” has complicated the already formidable immigration challenge in the region. “The MPP sends people back to Mexico, where many have been repeatedly victimized by organized criminals or other dangerous groups,” Clarens said. “Their access to the legal system in the U.S.—which had already been severely reduced by the Trump administration—is effectively cut off. MPP will force people to remain for a significant period of time in one of the most vulnerable and dangerous living situations they’ve ever imagined experiencing.” Clarens thinks the crisis will likely worsen. “I know that Mexico can be a safe and stable place for many people, but impoverished and incredibly vulnerable Central Americans who are desperate for security and are leaving their countries of origin for the first time are not able to stay safe,” she told me.
If Mexico continues to quietly go along with the radical expansion of the MPP program, the number of immigrants waiting for asylum in the country could reach the hundreds of thousands. With Mexico’s official refugee agency operating on a ridiculous $1.3 million yearly budget, the López Obrador administration is not remotely ready for such an undertaking. The consequences could be severe. If that happens, Ebrard should be asked again if Mexico really has nothing to be ashamed of.
Those who should really be ashamed are the cowardly life-tenured judges of the Supremes, the Ninth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit who as a group have utterly failed to protect migrants’ statutory, Constitutional, and Human Rights from lawless, invidious, and very intentional abuse by Trump’s White Nationalist regime and his DHS and DOJ sycophants.
Article III Federal Judges are absolutely immune from liability for their wrongdoing and abuses. But, they shouldn’t be immune from shame and the judgment of history for abandoning our system of justice and the most vulnerable it is supposed to protect at their greatest time of need. That’s basically the definition of legal incompetence and moral cowardice.
Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019) 1 SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 19A230 _________________
WILLIAM P. BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL. v. EAST BAY SANCTUARY COVENANT, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY [September 11, 2019]
The application for stay presented to JUSTICE KAGAN and by her referred to the Court is granted. The district court’s July 24, 2019 order granting a preliminary injunction and September 9, 2019 order restoring the nationwide scope of the injunction are stayed in full pending disposition of the Government’s appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of the Government’s petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is sought. If a writ of certiorari is sought and the Court denies the petition, this order shall terminate automatically. If the Court grants the petition for a writ of certiorari, this order shall terminate when the Court enters its judgment.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, dissenting from grant of stay.
Once again the Executive Branch has issued a rule that seeks to upend longstanding practices regarding refugees who seek shelter from persecution. Although this Nation has long kept its doors open to refugees—and although the stakes for asylum seekers could not be higher—the Government implemented its rule without first providing the public notice and inviting the public input generally required by law. After several organizations representing immi- grants sued to stop the rule from going into effect, a federal district court found that the organizations were likely to prevail and preliminarily enjoined the rule nationwide. A
2 BARR v. EAST BAY SANCTUARY COVENANT SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
federal appeals court narrowed the injunction to run only circuit-wide, but denied the Government’s motion for a complete stay.
Now the Government asks this Court to intervene and to stay the preliminary decisions below. This is an extraordinary request. Unfortunately, the Court acquiesces. Because I do not believe the Government has met its weighty burden for such relief, I would deny the stay.
The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security promulgated the rule at issue here on July 16, 2019. See 84 Fed. Reg. 33829. In effect, the rule forbids almost all Central Americans—even unaccompanied children—to apply for asylum in the United States if they enter or seek to enter through the southern border, unless they were first denied asylum in Mexico or another third country. Id., at 33835, 33840; see also 385 F. Supp. 3d 922, 929–930 (ND Cal. 2019).
The District Court found that the rule was likely unlawful for at least three reasons. See id., at 938–957. First, the court found it probable that the rule was inconsistent with the asylum statute, 94 Stat. 105, as amended, 8 U. S. C. §1158. See §1158(b)(2)(C) (requiring that any regulation like the rule be“consistent”with the statute). Section 1158 generally provides that any noncitizen “physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States . . . may apply for asylum.” §1158(a)(1). And unlike the rule, the District Court explained, the statute provides narrow, carefully calibrated exceptions to asylum eligibility. As relevant here, Congress restricted asylum based on the possibility that a person could safely resettle in a third country. See §1158(a)(2)(A), (b)(2)(A)(vi). The rule, by contrast, does not consider whether refugees were safe or resettled in Mexico—just whether they traveled through it. That blunt approach, according to the District Court, rewrote the statute. See 385 F. Supp. 3d, at 939– 947, 959.
Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019) 3
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
Second, the District Court found that the challengers would likely prevail because the Government skirted typical rulemaking procedures. Id., at 947–951. The District Court noted “serious questions” about the rule’s validity because the Government effected a sea change in immigration law without first providing advance notice and opportunity for public comment. Id., at 930; see also 5 U. S. C. §553. The District Court found the Government’s purported justifications unpersuasive at the preliminary-injunction stage. 385 F. Supp. 3d, at 948–951 (discussing statutory exceptions to notice-and-comment procedures).
Last, the District Court found the explanation for the rule so poorly reasoned that the Government’s action was likely arbitrary and capricious. See id., at 951–957; 5 U. S. C. §706. On this score, the District Court addressed the Government’s principal justifications for the rule: that failing to seek asylum while fleeing through more than one country “raises questions about the validity and urgency” of the asylum seeker’s claim, 84 Fed. Reg. 33839; and that Mexico, the last port of entry before the United States, offers a fea- sible alternative for persons seeking protection from persecution, id., at 33835, 33839–33840. The District Court examined the evidence in the administrative record and explained why it flatly refuted the Government’s assumptions. 385 F. Supp. 3d, at 951–957. A “mountain of evidence points one way,” the District Court observed, yet the Government “went the other—with no explanation.” Id., at 955.
After the District Court issued the injunction, the Ninth Circuit declined the Government’s request for a complete stay, reasoning that the Government did not make the required “ ‘strong showing’ ” that it would likely succeed on the merits of each issue. ___ F. 3d ___ (2019), 2019 WL 3850928, *1 (quoting Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U. S. 770, 776 (1987)). Narrowing the injunction to the Circuit’s borders, the Ninth Circuit expedited the appeal and permitted
4 BARR v. EAST BAY SANCTUARY COVENANT SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
the District Court to consider whether additional facts would warrant a broader injunction. 2019 WL 3850928, *2– *3.
The lower courts’ decisions warrant respect. A stay pending appeal is “extraordinary” relief. Williams v. Zbaraz, 442 U. S. 1309, 1311 (1979) (Stevens, J., in chambers); see also Maryland v. King, 567 U.S. 1301, 1302 (2012) (ROBERTS, C. J., in chambers) (listing stay factors). Given the District Court’s thorough analysis, and the serious questions that court raised, I do not believe the Government has carried its “especially heavy” burden. Packwood v. Senate Select Comm. on Ethics, 510 U. S. 1319, 1320 (1994) (Rehnquist, C. J., in chambers). The rule here may be, as the District Court concluded, in significant tension with the asylum statute. It may also be arbitrary and capricious for failing to engage with the record evidence contradicting its conclusions. It is especially concerning, moreover, that the rule the Government promulgated topples decades of settled asylum practices and affects some of the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere—without affording the public a chance to weigh in.
Setting aside the merits, the unusual history of this case also counsels against our intervention. This lawsuit has been proceeding on three tracks: In this Court, the parties have litigated the Government’s stay request. In the Ninth Circuit, the parties are briefing the Government’s appeal. And in the District Court, the parties recently participated in an evidentiary hearing to supplement the record. In- deed, just two days ago the District Court reinstated a na- tionwide injunction based on new facts. See East Bay Sanc- tuary Covenant v. Barr, No. 4:19–cv–4073, Doc. 73 (ND Cal., Sept. 9, 2019). Notably, the Government moved to stay the newest order in both the District Court and the Ninth Circuit. (Neither court has resolved that request, though the Ninth Circuit granted an administrative stay to allow further deliberation.) This Court has not considered
Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019) 5
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
the new evidence, nor does it pause for the lower courts to resolve the Government’s pending motions. By granting a stay, the Court simultaneously lags behind and jumps ahead of the courts below. And in doing so, the Court side-steps the ordinary judicial process to allow the Government to implement a rule that bypassed the ordinary rulemaking process. I fear that the Court’s precipitous action today risks undermining the interbranch governmental processes that encourage deliberation, public participation, and transparency.
***
In sum, granting a stay pending appeal should be an “extraordinary” act. Williams, 442 U. S., at 1311. Unfortunately, it appears the Government has treated this exceptional mechanism as a new normal. Historically, the Government has made this kind of request rarely; now it does so reflexively. See, e.g., Vladeck, The Solicitor General and the Shadow Docket, 133 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming Nov. 2019). Not long ago, the Court resisted the shortcut the Government now invites. See Trump v. East Bay Sanc- tuary Covenant, 586 U. S. ___ (2018). I regret that my colleagues have not exercised the same restraint here. I respectfully dissent.
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Justice Sotomayor’s dissent says it all, but, alas, in vain.
09-11-19 will be remembered as the day that justice, human rights, and human decency died in America!
Shame on Justices Breyer and Kagan for “going along to get along” with the dismantling of the Refugee Act of 1980. The “blood of the innocents” will be on their hands and the hands of their five colleagues.
The “Dred Scottification” (or “dehumanization”) of immigrants, Latinos, and other minorities that Justice Breyer once predicted, yet lacked the guts to speak out against in this case, is now in full swing. It will increase unabated, now that the Supremes’ sellout to authoritarian racism is assured. And don’t expect “Moscow Mitch” and his gang of toadies to put up any opposition.
The American justice system has been dismantled. But history will remember the roles of each of those “Black Robed Cowards” who participated in its demise.
With this atrocious decision, the Supremes have basically made themselves irrelevant to the battle for fairness and individual rights under the Constitution. As I have suggested before, self-created irrelevance might come back to haunt them.
President Donald Trump’s plan to force Mexico to stem the flow of migrants across the southwest border of the U.S. appears to be working. Border arrests, a metric for illegal crossings, plummeted to 51,000 in August, according to preliminary government fig…
Trump’s “methods” are highly problematic in terms of human lives and legal requirements. Also, since the “enforcement only” approach fails to deal with the causes of forced migration, I doubt that the “success” will be sustainable in the long run.
E.J. Dionne, Jr. Opinion Writer Washington PostDavid Miliband Chief Executive International Rescue Committee
E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes in the Washington Post commenting on a recent speech by David Miliband, Chief Executive of the International Rescue Committee:
. . . .
“A new and chilling normal is coming into view,” Miliband concluded. “Civilians seen as fair game for armed combatants, humanitarians seen as an impediment to military tactics and therefore unfortunate but expendable collateral, and investigations of and accountability for war crimes an optional extra for state as well as nonstate actors.”
But these evils cannot be isolated from the larger political corrosion in the rest of the world — and this includes the long-standing democracies themselves. “The checks and balances that protect the lives of the most vulnerable people abroad,” he said, “will only be sustained if we renew the checks and balances that sustain liberty at home.”
This isn’t simply about aligning principle and practice. More fundamentally, when governments abandon a commitment to accountability domestically, they no longer feel any obligation to insist upon it internationally. It’s no accident, as Miliband noted, that under President Trump, the United States “has dropped the promotion of human rights around the world from its policy priorities.”
He pulled no punches: “The new order is epitomized in the photo of Russian President [Vladimir] Putin and Saudi Crown Prince [Mohammed bin] Salman high-fiving each other at the G-20 meeting in Argentina in November last year. With Syria in ruins, Yemen in crisis, and political opponents like Boris Nemtsov and Jamal Khashoggi dead, theirs was the embrace of two leaders unencumbered by national institutions or by the fear of international law.”
Miliband acknowledged the mistakes of an earlier era (including the Iraq War) but argued that “accountability, not impunity” was on the rise in the 1990s, when there was “an unusual consensus across the left-right divide” about “the need for global rules.” We have said goodbye to all that.
In 2002, Samantha Power, later the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, published “ ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,” a book that stirred consciences about the world’s obligations to helpless people unprotected — and often targeted — by sovereign governments.
Nearly two decades on, we are numb, distracted and inward-looking.
Miliband understands that democratic citizens, grappling with their own discontents, will be inclined to look away from the travails of others “until there is a new economic and social bargain that delivers fair shares at home.”
But an Age of Impunity not only poses immediate dangers to millions confronting violence far away. It also corrodes the sense of obligation of the privileged in wealthy nations toward those left behind. When anything goes, no one is safe.
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Read the complete article at the above link.
The key point here for Americans who have been “tone deaf” to Trump’s (and his toadies at DHS, DOJ, DOS, and elsewhere) gross abuses of the rule of law, human rights, and human dignity is the following: “When anything goes, no one is safe.”
There’s a migrant crisis at the U.S. border. And there’s only one way to end it
The image of a father and his two-year-old daughter, their corpses face down in the mud on the banks of the Rio Grande, illustrates one part of the crisis on the southern border of the United States. The nightmarish conditions for migrants, with many held in severely overcrowded U.S. detention facilities, are another chapter. And then there’s how the U.S. Congress, paralyzed by distrust between Democrats and Republicans, waited until last week to vote additional funding aimed at improving life in those holding pens.
But the most revealing thing about the migration issue, and its solution, are the words of Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador.
On Monday, the same day funerals were held for Oscar Alberto Ramirez and his daughter Valeria, Salvadorans who drowned while trying to ford the river that marks the border into the promised land, Mr. Bukele was asked about the reason for the tragedy.
“People don’t flee their homes because they want to,” he said in English. “People flee their homes because they feel they have to. Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.
“We can spit blame to any other country but what about our blame? I mean, what country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador. They fled our country. It is our fault.”
And also: “If people have an opportunity of a decent job, a decent education, a decent health-care system and security, I know forced migration will be reduced to zero.”
That’s the issue, in a nutshell. Problem and solution.
If President Donald Trump was serious about fixing the crisis on his country’s southern border, instead of playing it for political advantage, he’d be listening to Mr. Bukele.
The people of El Salvador are hardly to blame for what has happened to their homeland. The Central American country and neighbouring Honduras and Guatemala are corrupt, economically depressed and violent. In 2016, El Salvador had the world’s highest murder rate. Honduras was second. It’s why so many feel they have no choice but to leave.
In May, U.S. authorities took more than 144,000 migrants into custody at the southern border. That means more people crossed from Mexico to the United States in one month than have crossed into Canada at the Roxham Road unofficial crossing point in three years. The vast majority crossing the U.S.-Mexico border did so between official posts, as Mr. Ramirez and his daughter attempted to do. Most came to make a refugee claim.
The flow of migrants entering the United States in May was roughly three times as high as it was during the Obama administration. The surge is driven by people from the so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. As Mr. Bukele correctly described it, misery spurs migration.
But El Salvador is not doomed to forever be a land of misery. Consider that nearby Costa Rica has long been peaceful, democratic and relatively prosperous. And Panama, a dictatorship just a generation ago, has made big strides and is now level with Costa Rica. The United Nations Human Development Index ranks both countries ahead of Brazil, Mexico, China and nearly all of Latin America and the Caribbean. El Salvador is far behind. But change is always possible.
In 2018, Mr. Trump famously said he wanted fewer immigrants from “shithole countries.” To put it in words Mr. Trump can understand, the way to stop people from fleeing crappy countries is to make them less, you know, crappy.
Mr. Bukele, the son of Palestinian immigrants, has a dream of turning El Salvador into a place that draws investment and people, rather than chasing them away. It’s part of the reason why he said what he said about his country’s responsibility for migration. He wants and needs Washington’s help.
If the United States were serious about stemming the flow of migrants, it would be crafting a Marshall Plan for Central America. It would be helping the Northern Triangle achieve better government and more development and investment.
Instead, Mr. Trump earlier this year announced that, as punishment for sending so many migrants, he would cut aid to the Northern Triangle. His administration quietly backed away from the pledge, but the message has been sent. Enlightened self-interest is not on this President’s menu.
Professor Kate Cronin-Furman University College, London
Professor Kate Cronin-Furman writes in the NY Times:
The debate over whether “concentration camps” is the right term for migrant detention centers on the southern border has drawn long-overdue attention to the American government’s dehumanizing treatment of defenseless children. A pediatrician who visited in June said the centers could be compared to “torture facilities.” Having studied mass atrocities for over a decade, I agree.
At least seven migrant children have died in United States custody since last year. The details reported by lawyers who visited a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Tex., in June were shocking: children who had not bathed in weeks, toddlers without diapers, sick babies being cared for by other children. As a human rights lawyer and then as a political scientist, I have spoken to the victims of some of the worst things that human beings have ever done to each other, in places ranging from Cambodia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Sri Lanka. What’s happening at the border doesn’t match the scale of these horrors, but if, as appears to be the case, these harsh conditions have been intentionally inflicted on children as part a broader plan to deter others from migrating, then it meets the definition of a mass atrocity: a deliberate, systematic attack on civilians. And like past atrocities, it is being committed by a complex organizational structure made up of people at all different levels of involvement.
Thinking of what’s happening in this way gives us a repertoire of tools with which to fight the abuses, beyond the usual exhortations to call our representatives and donate to border charities.
Those of us who want to stop what’s happening need to think about all the different individuals playing a role in the systematic mistreatment of migrant children and how we can get them to stop participating. We should focus most on those who have less of a personal commitment to the abusive policies that are being carried out.
Testimony from trials and truth commissions has revealed that many atrocity perpetrators think of what they’re doing as they would think of any other day job. While the leaders who order atrocities may be acting out of strongly held ideological beliefs or political survival concerns, the so-called “foot soldiers” and the middle men and women are often just there for the paycheck.
This lack of personal investment means that these participants in atrocities can be much more susceptible to pressure than national leaders. Specifically, they are sensitive to social pressure, which has been shown to have played a huge role in atrocity commission and desistance in the Holocaust, Rwanda and elsewhere. The campaign to stop the abuses at the border should exploit this sensitivity and put social pressure on those involved in enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Here is what that might look like:
The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.
This is not an argument for doxxing — it’s about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won’t (or can’t) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens.
The midlevel functionaries who make the system run are not as visibly involved in the “dirty work,” but there are still clear potential reputational consequences that could change their incentives. The lawyer who stood up in court to try to parse the meaning of “safe and sanitary” conditions — suggesting that this requirement might not include toothbrushes and soap for the children in border patrol custody if they were there for a “shorter term” stay — passed an ethics exam to be admitted to the bar. Similar to the way the American Medical Association has made it clear that its members must not participate in torture, the American Bar Association should signal that anyone who defends the border patrol’s mistreatment of children will not be considered a member in good standing of the legal profession. This will deter the participation of some, if only out of concern over their future career prospects.
The individuals running detention centers are arguably directly responsible for torture, which could trigger a number of consequences at the international level. Activists should partner with human rights organizations to bring these abuses before international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council. They should lobby for human rights investigations, for other governments to deny entry visas to those involved in the abuses, or even for the initiation of torture prosecutions in foreign courts. For someone who is “just following orders,” the prospect of being internationally shamed as a rights abuser and being unable to travel freely may be significant enough to persuade them to stop participating.
When those directly involved in atrocities can’t be swayed, their enablers are often more responsive. For-profit companies are supplying food and other material goods to the detention centers. Boycotts against them and their parent entities may persuade them to stop doing so. Employees of these companies can follow the example of Wayfair workers, who organized a walkout on Wednesday in protest of their company’s sale of furniture to the contractor outfitting the detention centers. Finally, anyone can support existing divestment campaigns to pressure financial institutions to end their support of immigration abuses.
Many Americans have been asking each other “But what can we DO?” The answer is that we call these abuses mass atrocities and use the tool kit this label offers us to fight them. So far, mobilization against what’s happening on the border has mostly followed standard political activism scripts: raising public awareness, organizing protests, phoning our congressional representatives. These efforts are critical, but they aren’t enough. Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.
Dr. Cronin-Furman is an assistant professor of human rights.
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“The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.”
That includes attorneys who defend indefensible policies in Federal Court as well as Federal Judges all the way up to the Supremes who fail to stand up for Due Process for individuals, and who insist on treating Trump’s overt attacks on our Constitution, democracy, and human dignity as within the scope of “normal” Executive actions rather than intentional and dishonest abuses requiring censure and strong, courageous, unconditional disapproval.
Hi all: I volunteer on Tuesday nights at a free immigration law clinic run by the New Sanctuary Coalition, based in Judson Church In Greenwich Village, NYC. As you can imagine, fear has been running high since the announcement of multi-city raids. Micah Bucey, a minister at Judson, composed the following non-denominational centering prayer that is now recited before each clinic. I share with you for inspiration:
Spirit of Resistance,
You who are beyond the capacity of any border or name,
You who stretch beyond the indignity of any cage
You who envelop us in the power to persist, to protest, and to rehumanize, //
As we bring our passion and our pain to this place,
We offer gratitude for small gatherings that do monumental things,
We offer gratitude for a fierce community that unbuilds walls
And we offer gratitude for dreams of the world we are creating. //
We ask that you
Refresh us with new breath and energy for the long haul,
Guide us through fear, frustration, and panic,
Expand our hearts to envelop all those who pass through this room tonight and all those who have yet to make it to this room,
Ignite the fire of our faith in the truth that love knows no borders. //
Help us to never forget
That ICE is meant to melt,
That you cannot deport a movement,
And that the moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice if we keep bending it together. //
Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week.
The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.
She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.
“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”
Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby, who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.
The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment ― and its alleged neglect ― of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.
Immigration authorities say they’re overwhelmed; activists say they’re not trying hard enough.
“It’s intentional disregard for the well-being of children,” Gialluca said. “The guards continue to dehumanize these people and treat them worse than we would treat animals.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Associated Press reported this week that children in border facilities don’t have adequate access to food, water, soap or showers. On Tuesday, a Justice Department attorney argued in court that the government should not have to provide detained children with soap, toothbrushes or beds.
The AP report is based on interviews a group of lawyers conducted with hundreds of children in three Texas-based Border Patrol stations last week as part of the Flores settlement ― an agreement that outlines conditions for detained children. The lawyers say children are also being held in these facilities for longer than the 72-hour limit the settlement specifies, and in some cases up to three weeks.
Lawyers are particularly concerned about the spread of illness inside Border Patrol facilities, which can sometimes turn fatal. Five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December, some of whom were initially diagnosed with a common cold or the flu. The processing center in McAllen, known as Ursula, recently quarantined three dozen migrants who were sick after a 16-year-old died of the flu at the same facility.
Children and their parents told lawyers that in some cases they didn’t have any access to medical treatment in Border Patrol facilities despite being visibly ill. Gialluca spoke with one 16-year-old mother whose toddler had the flu, but was told by a guard the child “wasn’t sick enough to see a doctor.” She said others also reported being denied medical attention despite having critically sick babies.
Medical experts say that because children have less developed immune and respiratory systems, their symptoms can escalate quickly if they aren’t properly treated.
Dr. Julie Linton, the co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, previously told HuffPost that children can’t recover from illnesses in Border Patrol facilities. These centers are described as “hieleras” ― Spanish for iceboxes ― because of their freezing temperatures, and migrants describe sleeping on floors under bright lights that shine 24/7, with nothing but Mylar blankets to keep warm.
Gialluca met one 16-year-old mother whose 8-month-old baby was sick with the flu and forced to sleep outside for four days at the McAllen Border Patrol station. The mother said the guards took the clothing off the baby’s back, leaving her in a diaper, and forced them to sleep on concrete without a blanket.
A sick 2-year-old girl was shivering in a T-shirt and had shallow breathing, according to Mike Fassio, a Seattle-based immigration attorney who visited Ursula.
“I was very, very concerned,” he said, adding lawyers spoke with immigrants in a room outside of the facility. “When she left us, I knew she was going back to a place that was cold, crowded and unsanitary.” Fassio noted that guards referred to the children as “bodies.”
Some children were so exhausted they fell asleep during the interviews, said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who spoke with kids at a facility in Clint, Texas. Long met a 3-year-old boy who was dirty with matted hair and was being taken care of by his 11-year-old brother. She said that more than 10 sick children were being quarantined in cells.
While the group of roughly eight lawyers and interpreters at Ursula were supposed to be interviewing children about conditions in the facilities, they also ended up asking guards and government officials to bring kids to the hospital because they were so worried about their state. Gialluca added that she and her colleagues interviewed only a small portion of migrants in the facility, which is the largest processing center in the U.S. and can hold up to 1,000 people. She believes the number of migrants in need of hospitalization is likely much higher.
Government officials have blamed horrific conditions at detention facilities on the fact that Congress has not yet passed an emergency funding package that would include almost $3 billion to help care for unaccompanied migrant children. But Gialluca says border officials shouldn’t need more resources to treat immigrants like human beings.
“Money isn’t keeping guards from allowing people to access toilets,” she said. “Money isn’t causing guards to take clothing and medicine away from children.”
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Nicole Goodkind Political Reporter, Newsweek
Here’s Another report from Nicole Goodkind at Newsweek on the “malicious incompetence” and intentional misallocation of resources by Trump and his DHS sycophants that is willfully endangering kids’ lives as part of a cheap White Nationalist political stunt:
8-YEAR-OLD MIGRANTS BEING FORCED TO CARE FOR TODDLERS IN DETENTION CAMPS
A team of lawyers conducted 60 interviews with migrant children being held in an El Paso, Texas, detention camp and found conditions to be dismal.
Fifteen of those in the holding center had the flu and 10 more are quarantined with illness, according to the lawyers, who first gave the data to the Associated Press. Three infants are being detained alongside their teenage mothers, and many children are under the age of 12.
“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one teenaged girl told the lawyers in an interview. The boy was not wearing a diaper and his shirt was covered in mucus, she said.
Law professor Warren Binford, who aided in the interviews, said she witnessed an 8-year-old girl caring for a 4-year-old child who was very dirty, the girl was unable to get the boy to take a shower. She also described the children she interviewed as sleep-deprived, often falling asleep while speaking with her.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, to the AP.
The lawyers were inspecting the facility as part of the Flores agreement, which resulted from a landmark 1985 case that established that facilities where minor migrants are held must be kept “safe and sanitary.”
A representative of the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian, argued Tuesday that safe and sanitary conditions don’t necessarily have to include toothbrushes, soap or towels for children.
Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS MAJOR ICE RAIDS FOR SUNDAY
U.S. immigration authorities plan to raid Miami, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles and other cities. They intend to arrest up to 2,000 families, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans told The Washington Post. The orders reportedly come directly from President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the president tweeted: “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
Officials told The Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security agency plans to hold families in hotel rooms until they are deported. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan is allegedly targeting families that have completely dropped out of the court process, but has warned that the operation could lead to further cases of families being separated.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore confirmed the raids on Friday, saying that about 140 families in southern California will be targeted in pre-dawn raids early next week. The chief also made clear that the raids are done on a federal level and that the police department will not be involved.
On Thursday, Carla Provost, chief of the United States Border Patrol argued that the Department of Homeland Security was not receiving enough money to properly care for migrants on the southern border, and that was leading to terrible conditions in detention centers. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to $4.6 billion in emergency funds for what the Trump administration has referred to as a “border crisis.”
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro questioned how the agency could afford mass raids while asking for more money Friday. “The Trump Administration says it needs more money (supplemental bill) for the situation at the border yet they may be starting massive immigration raids next week. So how do you have the money for that if you’re running out of money ICE?” he tweeted.
“These potential raids are a disgusting political ploy to stoke fear and rile up Trump’s base for 2020,” wrote Sandra Cordero, Director of Families Belong Together, an immigration advocacy group, in a statement. “Past raids have left children alone and afraid in empty homes, praying they won’t be left to care for younger siblings by themselves, with no idea if they’ll see their parents again. This is yet another flagrant disregard for the welfare of children on behalf of a cruel administration bent on fomenting fear and creating chaos.”
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Come on, Carla, cut the BS and butt covering. The “mix” of arrivals at the Southern Border began to shift to refugee families from the Northern Triangle back in the summer of 2014. So, CBP and DHS have had five years to prepare for this “change” which is actually “old news.”
More “old news” is the increased flow of asylum seekers with kids which began back before Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for CBP and DHS to bring back retired asylum officers and adjudicators and reassign other adjudicative personnel to the border to insure prompt, orderly, safe, and efficient processing of asylum applicants at ports of entry, thus eliminating the incentive (or necessity) for folks to turn themselves in after crossing the border between ports.
Also, plenty of time to work with NGOs, pro bono groups, states, and communities to insure representation and proper placement of family groups in various locations throughout the country without panic or “dumping.”
Another bogus claim spread by Trump, Provost, and the rest of the sycophants: that the prevalence of kids among new asylum arrivals is somehow totally a response to the Flores settlement (which actually has been in effect for decades).
Undoubtedly, with the Trump Administration’s active assistance, unscrupulous smugglers and coyotes are encouraging some folks to bring children as the only way to have a shot at fair processing under the tilted U.S. asylum system promoted by Trump. Indeed, as I have observed before, the Trump Administrations has consistently been a “best friend” to gangs, smugglers, traffickers, cartels, and druggies seeking to “jack up” profits by further exploiting the human misery caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent “ approach to immigration, effective law enforcement, and humanity generally. https://apple.news/AFQw_eqcHSZCYxUznmP0wpQ
Undoubtedly, some of these unscrupulous individuals are telling families to travel with kids. But, the truth is that according to the UNHCR, over one-half of today’s refugees are children. https://www.unhcr.org/children-49c3646c1e8.html.
So, the prevalence of children among new arrivals should properly been seen as part of a sad worldwide trend that Trump and his cronies disgustingly have done everything possible to encourage, exploit, and aggravate. It most certainly is not primarily caused by the Flores settlement or by giving soap, toothbrushes, blankets, or medical care to children being abused in the “DHS Gulag” administered in part by disingenuous folks like Provost.
Any honest observer of what’s going on knows that the majority of the asylum applications that passed credible fear probably could have been granted (or given protection under the Convention Against Torture — “CAT”) by the Asylum Office without even going to Immigration Court under the proper generous interpretation of our asylum laws, an honest interpretation of CAT that reflects the true conditions in the Northern Triangle, and a very “doable” change in procedures.
Only dishonest fools in the Trump Administration (and a few from the Obama Administration) would maintain that gender isn’t a social group subject to widespread persecution in the Northern Triangle, deny that gangs have assumed the role of quasi-governmental entities thus making most of the harm they inflict on resisters “political persecution,” and make the beyond ludicrous claim that the corrupt failed states of the Northern Triangle have either the ability or much real interest in protecting those subject to persecution.
And, Carla, why aren’t you out there today registering a public protest of the waste of time and funds in ICE going after families with ridiculously inappropriate “raids” when everyresource could and should be focused instead on providing humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving at the Southern Border?
This racist-inspired “Sunday Morning Reign of Terror” directed at U.S. ethnic communities is specifically designed to return helpless families to the very dangerous countries from which they originally fled! Thus, Trump and his phony DHS are intentionally feeding “fresh meat” to gangs and cartels and insuring that the cycle of northward migration, no matter how dangerous, will continue until everyone who needs to leave its either gone or dead (the latter apparently the “solution” favored by Provost, Trump, Morgan, McAleenan, Miller, and others).
Provost, McAleenan, Morgan, and their co-conspirators are all participants in a cynical scheme to intentionally “crash” the asylum system, rather than competently administering it. They are intentionally endangering the lives of children and other vulnerable asylum seekers, many entitled to legal protections, to promote, along with GOP restrictionists, totally bogus, dishonest, and completely unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions of the precious, life-saving right of refugees to seek asylum in the U.S.
It’s an unbelievably dishonest and cowardly scheme, and a complete breach of both oaths of office and public trust. It might be that those who long ago abandoned American values will lap up this insult to human values and human dignity.
But, there are plenty of us out here who know and understand exactly what you are doing. We will not only resist it, but will be historical witnesses to your cruel, inhuman, and unlawful schemes and gimmicks to “abuse and kill the innocent.” And, we’ll be keeping count.
Kirk Semple Reporter, NY TimesPaulina Villegas Reporter, NY Times
By Kirk Semple and Paulina Villegas
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican authorities are investigating the death of a teenage migrant from El Salvador who was shot and killed after the truck she was in ran a government checkpoint.
Witnesses have told investigators in the state of Veracruz, where the shooting happened last Friday, that a truck carrying the 19-year-old woman and other migrants bound for the United States border passed through a government checkpoint and that people wearing police uniforms gave chase in a police car and shot at the truck, said Jorge Winckler Ortiz, the attorney general of Veracruz.
Two other migrants in the truck were wounded in the shooting, officials said.
The incident occurred amid a Mexican government deployment of security forces to assert greater control of migration toward the United States, part of a dealthat President Andrés Manuel López Obrador struck with President Trump earlier this month to fend off a threat of tariffs.
The possibility that the Mexican police may have killed the teenager has reaffirmed the fears of migrants’ advocates and human rights experts, who worry that the security forces, being rushed into migration control, are ill-prepared for the task.
Trump admin considers temporary courts along the southern border
5:44 PM EDT June 17, 2019
Washington
The Trump administration is considering building temporary courts along the southern border as part of an effort to expand its policy of returning some asylum seekers to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, according to two administration officials.
The US recently struck an agreement with Mexico that included expanding the policy, which, the administration argues, serves as a deterrent since it keeps migrants waiting in Mexico, instead of within the US.
Site assessments have been completed for almost all the ports of entry to determine where such temporary immigration courts, described by sources as “soft-sided,” would be needed, according to an administration official.
The facilities could be used to conduct hearings via video teleconference, which has previously been used by immigration courts elsewhere in the country, the official said.
The deal to expand the “Remain in Mexico” program across the border earlier this month came amid threats to impose tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t bolster enforcement.
Mexico, the joint declaration said, would authorize the entrance of asylum seekers, and offer jobs, health care and education to those individuals. In return, the US must expedite the asylum adjudication process. Consideration to erect immigration courts, which are overseen by the Justice Department, appears to be a step in that direction.
Migrants who are sent to Mexico to await their court hearings return to the US through a port of entry along the southern border to then be transported to their hearing. The temporary courts would allow migrants to have their hearings near or at the port, rather than being bussed miles away, said the official.
It also would likely help alleviate the caseload at San Diego and El Paso immigration courts, which have been taking these cases.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review referred questions about the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols program to the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS official confirmed that the temporary structures are being considered, adding that the crisis has strained the immigration courts along the border. The administration has repeatedly requested additional immigration judges to chip away at a massive backlog that’s led to cases being scheduled years down the road.
The “Remain in Mexico” policy began in January and immediately received pushback back from immigrant advocates and lawyers who argue that it puts migrants who are predominantly from Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and seeking asylum in the US in harm’s way.
As of May, the US had returned around 6,000 people to Mexico to await their court hearings. The number of migrants falling under the policy appears to be doubling over time, but it is unclear how many additional people have been added to the program since the agreement with Mexico was struck.
One of the locations actively working toward implementing the program is the Rio Grande Valley region in Texas, the busiest sector for arrests of people illegally crossing the border, a senior Border Patrol official told CNN.
Before the program can get underway in the region, officials need to first have the infrastructure in place, including logistics for court hearings. The US also needs to engage with Mexico and ensure its government is willing to receive migrants across the border, said the official.
Like other administration immigration policies, returning migrants to Mexico has also been challenged in court.
In May, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue returning some asylum seekers to Mexico for the time being. A panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, while split on some issues, listed a number of factors that went into the decision, including risk of injury in Mexico and negotiations between the US and Mexico.
Not surprisingly, no mention of guaranteeing attorney access, effective notice, or reasonable access to legal resources for those retuned to Mexico. Trump is emboldened by a dysfunctional Congress under Mitch McConnell and complicit Article III Courts like the 9th Circuit, unwilling to put an end to this grotesque perversion of our statutory laws, our Constitution, and human rights. It’s also a recipe for more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and bigger backlogs in Immigration Courts. But undoubtedly, Trump will blame others for the problems he has created.
Alexandria, VA, June 9, 2019.After a week of petulance, threats, and self-created drama, Trump produced a resounding trade and immigration dud. Faced with advisors telling him that he was endangering the economy, the only thing propping up his sagging popularity, a potential rebellion among GOP legislators, and an unexpectedly tough and resolute Mexico, Trump backed off of his insane and blatantly illegal plan to ignore U.S. asylum obligations and thereby rocket the U.S. to the upper echelons of international scofflaws and human rights violators.
The latter scheme, known as “safe third country,” would have mis-designated Mexico and, incredibly, Guatemala, two clearly “unsafe” countries to do the U.S.’s job by processing tens of thousands of asylum applications from those fleeing the Northern Triangle. Neither of the two countries has a viable, fair, and effective asylum adjudication system and both have major safety and human rights issues.
Instead, Trump accepted a vague compact by which Mexico and the U.S. basically agreed to do what they had already been doing without taking any decisive or effective action to address the actual humanitarian crisis in the Northern Triangle that Trump and his flunkies have consistently mischaracterized as a “law enforcement emergency.” Indeed, the New York Times reported that most of Mexico’s “unprecedented steps” had already been worked out in secret with deposed DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen months ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/us/politics/trump-mexico-deal-tariffs.html. Those interested can read the summary of the agreement prepared by Trump’s own State Department here. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-us-mexico-tariffs-declaration-20190607-story.html.
To be sure, desperate and vulnerable asylum seekers, particularly women and children, will continue to abused, raped, beaten, extorted, obscenely tortured, and killed with impunity and little if any recourse as a result of this week’s actions. But, at least for now, the U.S. and Mexico are maintaining much of the basic framework of domestic and international protection laws.
Contrary to the lies and false narratives spread by Trump and his DHS cronies, U.S. law is not filled with “loopholes.” Rather, it is a fairly straightforward implementation of the international protection regime and treaties that have been in effect since World War II to prevent another holocaust from occurring on our watch.
If anything, since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.S. has watered down its asylum commitment somewhat by adding a legally tenuous “credible fear” process to “pre-screen” arriving asylum applicants in mass migration situations. However, to date, the DHS under Trump has been too incompetent, misdirected, and frankly downright stupid to utilize this streamlined screening process fairly and efficiently.
By treating a somewhat predictable humanitarian refugee flow as a bogus “law enforcement problem” and mindlessly shoving cases into a “captive” court system that they already had abused, mismanaged, and destroyed, the Administration lost effective control. In panic, they have tried to blame the refugees, Democrats, Mexico, Obama, judges, the media, and even the truly hapless failed states of the Northern Triangle for their largely self-created human and operational disaster.
The first of the “unprecedented steps,” involves Mexico sending approximately 6,000 National Guard troops to the Guatemalan border to control illegal crossings. Never mind that the Mexican National Guard is a recent creation that exists largely on paper. Also, forget that Mexico has a questionable record of controlling corruption and systematic human rights abuses among its existing police and military forces.
The U.S., a much larger, better organized, and more prosperous country than Mexico, has resorted to militarizing the border, mass incarceration, family concentration camps, kids in cages, malicious criminal prosecutions, family separations, walls, fences, overt political interference in the asylum adjudication system, and violating international protection norms. These “gonzo” enforcement efforts not only failed to stem the tide, but have actually aided smugglers and traffickers and increased the flow of migrants.
Will newly minted, untrained Mexican troops succeed where the might of the U.S. has failed miserably? Don’t count on it.
Also, the last time I checked, it appeared that most of the Mexican coast and some parts of the U.S. are reasonably accessible by boat from the Northern Triangle. So, assuming that the Mexicans could “shut down” their land border with Guatemala, why wouldn’t smugglers “take to the sea?” How’s that Mexican Navy?
The second “unprecedented step,” is a continuation and expansion of the existing “Remain in Mexico Program.” This toxic gimmick punishes those who have been legally determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution by making them remain in some of the most dangerous locations in the world where they are intentionally and illegally impeded in many ways from pursuing their U.S. asylum claims from Mexico. To date, this program has only been implemented in a few locations, like San Diego where it has been an unmitigated failure according to a report from Kate Morrissey of the San Diego Union-Tribune. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/06/06/cruel-yet-really-stupid-trumps-remain-in-mexico-policy-denies-due-process-while-creating-court-chaos-enfeebled-judges-fume-as-aimless-docket-reshufflin/.
The results of this ill-advised effort by Trump to circumvent U.S. asylum laws reads like a “legal toxicology report:” “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” mass confusion, lack of information, insufficient and deficient hearing notices, massive violations of the statutory right to be represented by counsel, no opportunity to fairly prepare, document, and present asylum claims, interference with the attorney-client relationship by DHS, and few actual case completions to name just a few of the many abuses. And, how will an already dysfunctional EOIR deal with yet another round of “new priorities” and more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling?”
A Federal District Judge actually enjoined this circus before it could get rolling. But, a “tone-deaf panel” of the Ninth Circuit allowed Trump’s assault on the rule of law to go forward, at least for now.
Nevertheless, the case remains pending with the Ninth Circuit. As EOIR’s rushed and sloppy work product starts to accumulate on their docket and the bodies and horror stories start to pile up in Mexico, more responsible Circuit Judges might actually force the Administration to comply with the law and the Constitution, not to mention simple human decency.
Mexico has pledged to “accept and protect” those sentenced to remain there. But, the Mexican border locations to which individuals are forced to return are dangerous for a reason. Presumably, if Mexican can’t maintain safety and order for its own citizens, it won’t do any better for vulnerable asylum seekers.
Finally, in third “unprecedented step,” Mexico and the U.S. agreed to promote the “Comprehensive Development Plan launched by the government of Mexico in concert with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras” to create “prosperity, good governance and security in Central America.” This part of the agreement makes the most sense. But “promoting” in this case appears limited to using development funds that were “already in the pipeline” in both countries. In other words, nothing really new here.
This was a golden opportunity for the U.S. to show real leadership by dramatically increasing its investment in bringing stability and prosperity to Mexico and Central America. Additionally, we could have created incentives (rather than threats) and benchmarks for Mexico to improve its asylum adjudication system and human rights performance. Partnering with non-governmental-organizations and legal assistance groups on both sides of the border also would bring much needed expertise in resolving asylum issues to the table.
But, that would have taken a President with vision, empathy, compassion, courage, competency, intelligence, and creative problem solving ability. Trump is the exact antithesis of all of these qualities.
Consequently, sooner or later we can expect Trump’s “latest egg” to fail, like all of his other gimmicks and maliciously incompetent schemes on immigration. Our “child president” will undoubtedly then embark on a new barrage of lies, false narratives, idiotic tweets, idle threats, blame shifting, insults, racist dog whistles, and general nonsense aimed at diverting attention from his own failures as a leader and more critically, as a human being.
Innocent people will be harmed and die, America and Mexico will be embarrassed and diminished, and the world will be a worse place. But, until America figures out how to use its democratic institutions to remove the kakistocracy, the disaster will continue. That it could have been worse, is only small consolation.
Why not strive to bethe “best that we can be,” rather than just “not as bad as we might have been?”
New York City—In response to reports that the Mexican government is planning to make a deal with the United States to avoid tariffs threatened by President Trump, Human Rights First’s Eleanor Acer issued the following statement:
President Trump is trying to bully another country into endangering the lives of vulnerable men, women, and children, who want nothing more than to live in freedom and safety. Mexico and Guatemala are not—in a legal or practical sense—safe countries for many refugees. In Mexico too many refugees face kidnapping, assault, and murder.
People seeking refuge are not required to seek asylum in the first country they set foot in. In fact, many face grave dangers in neighboring countries, as well as serious risks that they will be returned to their country of persecution.
Such a plan would not only makes a mockery of U.S. law and treaty commitments, but would also return refugees to places where their lives are in danger. It is yet another abdication of leadership, setting an abysmal example for other countries around the world.
Instead of more attempts to block and punish people seeking refuge, the United States needs real solutions that restore order and uphold America’s refugee laws and treaty commitments, including:
Tackle the root causes pushing people to flee the Northern Triangle countries through a targeted strategy that leverages both diplomacy and aid, focusing on effective programs that reduce violence, combat corruption, strengthen rule of law, protect vulnerable populations and promote sustainable economic development.
Launch a major initiative to enhance the capacity of Mexico and other countries—which are already hosting growing numbers of refugees—to provide asylum, host, protect, and integrate refugees, along with a robust regional resettlement initiative that provides orderly routes to the United States and other countries while safeguarding asylum.
Immediately end the dysfunction at the border, and instead launch a public-private humanitarian initiative and a long overdue case management system to actually manage asylum cases.
Fix the asylum and immigration court adjudication systems to provide fair, non-politicized and timely decisions.
As usual, Trump’s outrageously illegal and immoral proposal relies on:
Bullying weaker countries;
A gullible public;
A cowardly GOP Congress;
Complicit courts.
A simple perusal of the country condition materials publicly available on the EOIR and Department of State websites shows that the idea that either Mexico or Guatemala are “safe” countries where refugees “would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection,” as required by U.S. law, is preposterous.
Mexico’s asylum adjudication system is plagued by bribery, corruption, and incompetence. It adjudicated only about 10, 000 cases in the last reported period, denying the overwhelming majority. Moreover, gangs and cartels operate freely throughout the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico. Our State Department Report acknowledges that the same organized gangs who force people to leave the Northern Triangle can also harm them in Mexico.
Guatemala is a highly corrupt country basically without a functioning asylum adjudication system. It is a major sender of asylum applicants to other countries. The Guatemalan Government is unable to maintain order and protect its own citizens, let alone refugees from nearby countries.
Also, we are encouraging Mexico and Guatemala to use troops and military force against asylum seekers — something our own laws do not permit.
Essentially, the Trump Administration seeks to “get away with murder.” In two years they have turned the U.S. from a leading defender of human rights to a major international human rights violator. So, why are we allowing our Government to get away with such dishonest, morally bankrupt, and illegal proposals?
Even if these corrupt proposals go into effect, it seems doubtful that they will stem the follow of refugees in the long run. While there might be a short term downturn, eventually smugglers will adjust to the new policies and desperate individuals will find different routes to the United States. They will be more dangerous, so more will die.
Perhaps we will see “Central American Boat People” and more deaths at sea. Maybe there will be more “Golden Ventures.” More deaths at the border will be inevitable as smugglers seek to evade the Border Patrol and get to the interior. Perhaps the human smuggling action will switch to the even longer U.S. Canada border. How about a “Northern Wall” from the Atlantic to the Pacific?
As long as the U.S. stubbornly refuses to acknowledge and address the causes of migration it will continue, in extralegal channels as necessary and as the market “push pull factors” determine. More focus on barring refugees means less focus on drug smugglers and others who present a real threat to our safety and security.
Also, smugglers will be able to change a premium — so those who are willing to take the risk and outsmart the new system will reap even higher profits than the increased ones Trump has already conferred upon them with his maliciously incompetent policies to date. Finally, walls, jails, cages, abuses, family separations, prosecutions, racist rhetoric, armed violence, tariffs, exploitation, massive violations of our Constitution and international laws, or whatever won’t stop desperate refugees from coming. But we will eventually convince refugees to give up on the U.S. legal system and just find ways to get beyond the border and lose themselves in the interior. No enforcement system, no matter how cruel, repressive, expensive, and lawless will be able to get rid of more than a fraction of those who don’t want to be found after reaching the interior.
Moreover, if Trump’s actions succeed in destabilizing Mexico, then Mexican migration, which has actually been a negative flow recently, will resume in large numbers, also adding to the pressure on our borders. The worse things get in Mexico, the less likely that the Mexican Government will stop their citizens from heading north. So, there is every reason to believe that Trump’s “malicious incompetence” will make things even worse for everyone — but particularly for those who are most vulnerable — desperate asylum seekers!
Another future possibility to ponder: Tired of being publicly bullied, humiliated, and dealing with a dishonest unreliable idiot and his incompetent sycophants, Mexico and Canada will “wise up” and cut a trade deal with China that really gives them leverage and puts the squeeze on the U.S. And, why wouldn’t China love a chance to establish factories just across our Northern and Southern borders that could also serve as “listening posts” and repositories for hijacked U.S. technology? Maybe the EU and India could also be cut into the deal.
We are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!
Catie Edmonson & Maggie Haberman report for the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — Republican senators sent the White House a sharp message on Tuesday, warning that they were almost uniformly opposed to President Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, just hours after the president said lawmakers would be “foolish” to try to stop him.
Mr. Trump’s latest threat to impose 5 percent tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico, rising to as high as 25 percent until the Mexican government stems the flow of migrants, has prompted some of the most serious defiance in the Republican ranks since the president took office.
Republican senators emerged from a closed-door lunch at the Capitol angered by the briefing they received from a deputy White House counsel and an assistant attorney general on the legal basis for Mr. Trump to impose new tariffs by declaring a national emergency at the southern border.
“I want you to take a message back” to the White House, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, told the lawyers, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Cruz warned that “you didn’t hear a single yes” from the Republican conference. He called the proposed tariffs a $30 billion tax increase on Texans.
“I will yield to nobody in passion and seriousness and commitment for securing the border,” Mr. Cruz later told reporters. “But there’s no reason for Texas farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small businesses to pay the price of massive new taxes.”
The president’s latest foray into a global trade war has troubled economists and roiled stock and bond markets. The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome H. Powell, hinted on Tuesday that the central bank could cut interest rates if the trade war started to hurt the economy. The remarks sent stocks higher for their strongest day in months.
But senators were mindful of the long-term stakes for their home states.
Texas would be hit the hardest by the proposed tariffs on Mexican products, followed by Michigan, California, Illinois and Ohio, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A 25 percent tariff would threaten $26.75 billion of Texas imports.
“We’re holding a gun to our own heads,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
If Mr. Trump were to declare an emergency to impose the tariffs, the House and the Senate could pass a resolution disapproving them. But such a resolution would almost certainly face a presidential veto, meaning that both the House and the Senate would have to muster two-thirds majorities to beat Mr. Trump.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said he warned the lawyers that the Senate could muster an overwhelming majority to beat back the tariffs, even if Mr. Trump were to veto a resolution disapproving them. Republicans may be broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s push to build a wall and secure the border, he said, but they oppose tying immigration policy to the imposition of tariffs on Mexico.
“The White House should be concerned about what that vote would result in, because Republicans really don’t like taxing American consumers and businesses,” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Trump, just hours before at a news conference in London with the British prime minister, Theresa May, said he planned to move forward with imposing tariffs on Mexican imports next week as part of his effort to stem the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.
“I think it’s more likely that the tariffs go on, and we’ll probably be talking during the time that the tariffs are on, and they’re going to be paid,” Mr. Trump said. When asked about Senate Republicans discussing ways to block the tariffs, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think they will do that.”
He said, “I think if they do, it’s foolish.”
Republicans are still holding out hope that the tariffs can be avoided. Mexico’s foreign minister is leading a delegation to Washington this week to try to defuse the situation with the Trump administration. A White House meeting with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday could prove pivotal.
“There is not much support for tariffs in my conference, that’s for sure,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. “Our hope is that the tariffs will be avoided, and we will not have to answer any hypotheticals.”
Catie Edmondson reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from London. Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Emily Cochrane and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from Washington.
Rubio’s pro-Trump tweet seems pretty off-base. Other than the fact that Trump is incompetently using Border Patrol on a self-created emergency that could be handled by Inspectors and Asylum Officers at ports of entry, allowing Border Patrol Officers to focus on more important law enforcement duties, there doesn’t appear to be any known connection between families from the Northern Triangle turning themselves in and applying for legal asylum under our laws and “drug smuggling.” Nor do such individuals who turn themselves in present any known threat to either national security or our economy (particularly since Trump plans to bar them from working unless and until they actually receive asylum under a system he has intentionally skewed against them). Indeed, smugglers would have to be pretty stupid to use individuals who intended to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol at the border as “drug couriers.”
On the other hand, Trump’s incompetent handling of the border situation, his gross misuse of national emergency and tariff authorities, and his attacks on trade with Canada and Mexico, two of our major allies and trading partners, does promise to threaten both our econommy and our national security. Rather ironic that the asylum applicants are the ones using our legal system while Trump is the one trashing it in multiple ways.
Sen. Tillis also seems out of bounds. Individuals have a right to apply for ayslum. Undoubtedly, the number of individuals now applying could be processed fairly and legally for much less than Trump’s tariffs would cost U.S. consumers, not to mention the money wasted on useless walls, unnecessary detention, and misuse of American troops. Even spending some money on helping Mexico improve its system and joining Mexico’s initiative to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle would be more cost effective than tariffs.
Why would Tillis expect Mexico, a smaller and poorer country, to do a better job of stopping the flow than the U.S. has? How would he expect Mexico to process all the migrants without major human rights violations? Wouldn’t wrecking the Mexican economy, along with our own, restart the flow of Mexicans going north that actually has been reversed in recent years? Pretty scary how little the GOP understands about migration and sound immigration policies.
When policy is made based on irrational factors such as White Nationalism, racism, contempt for foreign countries, and disregard for human rights, bad things are going to happen. But, I’m still not betting on the GOP to stand up to Trump. Lots of grumbling; but, in the past, such grumbling has seldom been turned into action.
Even by President Trump’s pyrotechnic standards, his announcement on Thursday that he will impose a sweeping 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods coming into the United States unless Mexico stops the flow of illegal immigration is unprecedented. The threat is unjustifiably heavy-handed and will further erode cooperation in bilateral relations as the contentious debate over immigration spills into areas that had been successfully compartmentalized.
Above all, Trump’s threat illustrates his absolute disinterest in reaching a sensible understanding.
Late on Thursday, López Obrador answered Washington with a long letter that included a lecture on American history, a brief declaration of discrepancy with Trump’s methods and a mellifluous plea for productive and urgent dialogue. Good luck with that.
Trump’s latest salvo also illustrates the profound rift in the different approaches to solve the humanitarian crisis that first began in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Early last week in Mexico City, Alicia Bárcena, head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, revealed an ambitious development project for Mexico’s southeast and the troubled Northern Triangle.
“Why do people choose to leave?” Bárcena asked. “The lack of a basic source of income and economic opportunity is one of the main reasons.” She went on to explain how inequality, violence and global warming have also fueled the emergency. Bárcena then suggested what she called an “innovative” solution to the problem: Rather than focus on punishing measures to deter immigration, the region should instead emphasize growth through cooperation. López Obrador, sitting a few feet away, nodded. “This plan is important because it goes to the heart of the matter,” López Obrador later added. “People emigrate out of necessity. There’s no other way but to cooperate in search of development.”
But López Obrador’s words belied his own government’s actions.
Contrary to Trump’s unfounded complaints, Mexico has actually implemented myriad other, more bruising ways to try to stem the flow of immigrants toward the United States. In a somewhat schizophrenic policy, it has simultaneously slashed funding for the agencies assigned to handle refugees within the country while executing some of the most punitive schemes put in place by the Trump administration. Not exactly development-oriented actions.
Still, López Obrador insists that the only long-term solution to the current immigration crisis lies in opening new areas of opportunity for the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who decide to migrate. All three Northern Triangle countries seem to agree: Diplomats for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador surrounded López Obrador for Bárcena’s presentation in Mexico City.
The problem, of course, is the one country missing from this seemingly unanimous show of goodwill: the United States.
For six months now, López Obrador has tried to persuade the Trump administration to invest billions in Central America rather than just focus on enforcement. Just a few days after Bárcena’s impassioned announcement, López Obrador dispatched Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard to sell Trump’s team on regional development. Ebrard didn’t go far. While he did meet with acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin K. McAleenan and Jared Kushner, he was snubbed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who canceled a previously scheduled meeting with his Mexican counterpart. Ebrard flew back empty-handed.
Is Mexico being naive? Clearly. To acquiesce to an investment project for Central America would require a complete about-face in Trump’s hostility toward the region. Before Trump announced that he will suspend all aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as punishment for their supposed inaction to prevent the migrant exodus, the United States had assigned slightly more than $180 million in funding for the three countries combined in 2019, less than 2 percent of the amount Mexico would like to see the United States provide the area through aid and investment in the coming years.
Getting Trump to invest seems like a long shot. Just how long? The White House isn’t exactly masking his invective.
Aside from the drastic imposition of tariffs, the Trump administration is also apparently considering limiting the ability of potential migrants to request asylum in the United States if they have traveled by land through Mexico, a radical change that could create an unmanageable bottleneck and humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions for Mexico’s unprepared and underfunded government agencies.
As if that weren’t enough, consider McAleenan’s visit to Central America this week. McAleenan did indeed carry with him a message of collaboration, but certainly not in the areas Ebrard and Bárcena might have hoped for.
On Wednesday, McAleenan met with the Guatemalan Ministry of Government to sign a formal memorandum of cooperation that focuses almost exclusively on enforcement. “Both countries have agreed to take concrete actions necessary to combat the scourge of human trafficking and smuggling, interdict illicit drug trafficking, and target illegal trade and financial flows,” the Department of Homeland Security explained in a statement. “This will include law enforcement training and collaboration to improve criminal investigations.”
The region’s long-term development merited only the vaguest of mentions. In theory, DHS said, the agreement will “improve the ability of both countries to identify and better understand” the root causes of immigration. That’s a long way from the kind of commitment needed to rebuild an impoverished, violent and drought-stricken region.
On Wednesday, I asked a spokesman for Mexico’s foreign ministry about the development plan’s outlook if the Trump administration ultimately declines to join. “Their support is important,” he told me. “But we don’t need the United States. This is our plan.”
This bravado is misguided. The United States is not just another actor in the current drama. Without it — or worse, with the Trump administration as rabid antagonist — a regional bet on Central America’s future will face impossible odds.
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The issue can’t be solved without addressing the forces that are sending migrants north;
The U.S. bears considerable responsibility for Central America’s current problems;
Therefore, U.S. acceptance of responsibility and meaningful participation in the solution is essential;
Any solution will require the U.S. to accept a robust number of those forced to flee the Northern Triangle;
A solution will take time; the longer the Trump Administration dawdles, the more the problems leading to forced migration will fester and grow;
Unilateral law enforcement, gimmicks, and threats can’t solve the problem and are in fact proving to be counterproductive;
The Trump Administration’s current approach is not only spectacularly unsuccessful, but will sow regional resentment against the U.S. for decades to come.
