Mexico – Page 21 – immigrationcourtside.com

“BIG MAC WITH LIES” — Acting DHS Sec. Kevin McAleenan Falsely Claims That 90% Of Asylum Seekers Abscond — Actual Court Records Show The Truth: “Most courts showed patterns very similar to national appearance rates — with represented families’ appearance rates close to 100 percent, and unrepresented families somewhat lower.”

Here’s what McAleenan told Congress:

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan testified Tuesday that 90 percent of asylum-seekers tracked under a recently instituted program skipped the hearings in which their cases were to be adjudicated.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, McAleenan explained that his department is hampered in its efforts to deter illegal immigration by U.S. laws that allow asylum-seekers to remain on U.S. soil under their own recognizance for months or even years while awaiting a hearing that the vast majority of them simply skip.

“Out of those 7,000 cases, 90 received final orders of removal in absentia, 90 percent,” McAleenan told Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), referring to the results of a recent DHS pilot program that tracks family units applying for asylum.

“90 percent did not show up?” Graham asked.

“Correct. That is a recent sample from families crossing the border,” McAleenan replied.

https://apple.news/A3pp8Hb9QSA2ZwNpyJnHmPQ

Here’s the truth as compiled by the nonpartisan TRAC on the basis of a case-by-case examination of actual court records:

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

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The latest case-by-case records from the Immigration Courts indicate that as of the end of May 2019 one or more removal hearings had already been held for nearly 47,000 newly arriving families seeking refuge in this country. Of these, almost six out of every seven families released from custody had shown up for their initial court hearing. For those who are represented, more than 99 percent had appeared at every hearing. Thus, court records directly contradict the widely quoted claim that “90 Percent of Recent Asylum Seekers Skipped Their Hearings.”

These findings were based upon a detailed analysis of court hearing records conducted by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. With rare exception virtually every family attended their court hearings when they had representation. Appearance rates at the initial hearing were 99.9 percent. One reason for these higher rates for represented families is that it is an attorney’s responsibility to keep on top of when and where their client’s hearing is scheduled, and communicate these details to them. Thus, even if the court’s notification system fails, the family still finds out where and when to appear for their hearing.

Under our current system, there is no legal requirement that immigrants actually receive notice, let alone timely notice, of their hearing. Given many problems in court records on attendance that TRAC found, and in the system for notifying families of the place and time of their hearings, these appearance rates were remarkably high. TRAC’s examination of court records also showed that there were nearly ten thousand “phantom” family cases on the court’s books. These were cases entered into the Immigration Court’s database system but with little information apart from a case sequence number. The date of the notice’s filing, charges alleged, and particulars on the family were all blank.

Most courts showed patterns very similar to national appearance rates — with represented families’ appearance rates close to 100 percent, and unrepresented families somewhat lower. Full details by nationality and court are available at:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/562/

In addition, a number of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through May 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

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

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

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

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

http://facebook.com/tracreports

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

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

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

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

Obviously, if McAleenan and the Administration were serious about court appearances, rather than spreading lies and creating chaos, they would work with the pro bono bar and NGOs to establish a universal representation program for asylum seekers. That would achieve nearly 100% compliance with hearing notices while promoting the rule of law and Constitutional Due Process. Not to mention that they should be investing in “quality control” in the issuance of the hearing notices, which all too often are erroneously addressed or improperly served.

Lawyers and improved notice as well as more professional adjudications that actually comply with the generous legal standards for asylum established by Congress and the Supreme Court would be much smarter and better investments than detention, more enforcement officers, bogus in absentia hearings (most based on defective notices), attempting to force asylum seekers to apply or wait in dangerous third countries without functioning asylum systems, and smearing lawful asylum applicants in support of totally unwarranted changes in the law.

Additionally, with lawyers and fair, impartial, and properly trained independent judges, many more of these asylum cases could be granted in short order, thus helping eliminate largely self-created Immigration Court backlogs and unnecessary appeals that burden the system as a result of the Administration’s constant malfeasance (a/k/a “malicious incompetence” resulting in “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”).

In the meantime, McAleenan’s lies, distortions, and misrepresentations under oath should certainly be grounds for a Congressional investigation into why he retains his current position and why DHS is using taxpayer money to falsify data to support a bogus attack on lawful asylum seekers.

Also interesting, but not surprising, that EOIR has 10,000 “phantom family cases” in its system.

PWS

06-19-19

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Trump, DHS Promise, “Reign Of Terror” Directed At Families In Ethnic Communities — “Orphaning” U.S. Citizen Children And/Or Feeding Them & Other Vulnerable Kids To MS-13 & Other Gangs As “Fresh Meat” America’s New Objectives! — But, The Law & Reality Could Be Problems For Trump & His Sycophants @ ICE!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-vows-mass-immigration-arrests-removals-of-millions-of-illegal-aliens-starting-next-week/2019/06/17/4e366f5e-916d-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html

Nick Miroff & Maria Sacchetti report in WashPost:

President Trump said in a tweet Monday night that U.S. immigration agents are planning to make mass arrests starting “next week,” an apparent reference to a plan in preparation for months that aims to round up thousands of migrant parents and children in a blitz operation across major U.S. cities.

“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump wrote, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Large-scale ICE enforcement operations are typically kept secret to avoid tipping off targets. In 2018, Trump and other senior officials threatened the mayor of Oakland, Calif., with criminal prosecution for alerting city residents that immigration raids were in the works.

Trump and his senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have been prodding Homeland Security officials to arrest and remove thousands of family members whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the “rocket docket.”

In April, acting ICE director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were ousted after they hesitated to go forward with the plan, expressing concerns about its preparation, effectiveness and the risk of public outrage from images of migrant children being taken into custody or separated from their families.

Vitiello was replaced at ICE by former FBI and Border Patrol official Mark Morgan, who had impressed the president with statements on cable television in favor of harsh immigration enforcement measures.In his first two weeks on the job at ICE, Morgan has said publicly that he plans to beef up interior enforcement and go after families with deportation orders, insisting that the rulings must be carried out to uphold the integrity of the country’s legal system.

“Our next challenge is going to be interior enforcement,” Morgan told reporters June 4 in Washington. “We will be going after individuals who have gone through due process and who have received final orders of deportation.

“That will include families,” he said, adding that ICE agents will treat the parents and children they arrest “with compassion and humanity.”

[New ICE chief says agency plans to target more families for deportation]

U.S. officials with knowledge of the preparations have said in recent days that the operation was not imminent, and ICE officials said late Monday night that they were not aware that the president planned to divulge their enforcement plans on Twitter.

Executing a large-scale operation of the type under discussion requires hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of U.S. agents and supporting law enforcement personnel, as well as weeks of intelligence gathering and planning to verify addresses and locations of individuals targeted for arrest.

The president’s claim that ICE would be deporting “millions” also was at odds with the reality of the agency’s staffing and budgetary challenges. ICE arrests in the U.S. interior have been declining in recent months because so many agents are busy managing the record surge of migrant families across the southern border with Mexico.

The family arrest plan has been considered even more sensitive than a typical operation because children are involved, and Homeland Security officials retain significant concerns that families will be inadvertently separated by the operation, especially because parents in some households have deportation orders but their children — some of whom are U.S. citizens — might not. Should adults be arrested without their children because they are at school, day care, summer camp or a friend’s house, it is possible parents could be deported while their children are left behind.

[Before Trump’s purge at DHS, top officials challenged plan for mass family arrests]

Supporters of the plan, including Miller, Morgan and ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence, have argued forcefully that a dramatic and highly publicized operation of this type will send a message to families that are in defiance of deportation orders and could act as a deterrent.

In this file photo from 2015, a man is detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. New raids could target a large number of immigrants in major cities. (John Moore/Getty Images)

According to Homeland Security officials, nearly all unauthorized migrants who came to the United States in 2017 in family groups remain present in the country. Some of those families are awaiting adjudication of asylum claims, but administration officials say a growing number are skipping out on court hearings while hoping to live and work in the United States as long as possible.

Publicizing a future law enforcement operation is unheard of at ICE. Trump administration officials blasted Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf last year for warning immigrants about an impending raid, saying she endangered agents’ safety.

“The Oakland mayor’s decision to publicize her suspicions about ICE operations further increased that risk for my officers and alerted criminal aliens — making clear that this reckless decision was based on her political agenda with the very federal laws that ICE is sworn to uphold,” then-ICE Deputy Director Thomas D. Homan said at the time.

Homan later retired, but last week Trump said Homan would return to public service as his “border czar.” On Fox News, Homan later called that announcement “kind of premature” and said he had not decided whether to accept the job.

Schaaf responded late Monday to the president’s tweet teasing the looming ICE roundups.

“If you continue to threaten, target and terrorize families in my community . . . and if we receive credible information . . . you already know what our values are in Oakland — and we will unapologetically stand up for those values,” she wrote.

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The pain, terror, racism, and disregard for human rights is real. But, the ability to summarily remove the “millions” of our fellow humans Trump claims as his objective might be limited by both reality (lack of resources) and the law.

Many of those with so-called “final orders” were tried “in absentia.” Many of those never received legal notice of their hearings. (All reputable studies show that asylum applicants who actually understand the system, have fair access to pro bono lawyers, and receive legally sufficient hearing notices appear at rates close to 100% of the time, even if they lose their cases).

If that is the case, and they can get lawyers, they can file a “motion to reopen” for lack of legal notice and receive a statutory stay of removal while both the Immigration Judge, and if denied, the Board of Immigration Appeals rule on the motion. And, the Immigration Courts are totally screwed up and backlogged due to Trump’s and the DOJ’s “malicious incompetence.” So, good luck with that.

Large numbers of deportees would also further destabilize the already “failed states” of the Northern Triangle thus insuring a continuing outward flow. Indeed, some of those deported might well “head north” again — only this time they won’t be dumb enough to entrust themselves to the U.S. legal system.

They will just disappear into the interior where their chances of being found again are probably less than their chances of being harmed in the Northern Triangle. No amount of authoritarian militarization of our internal police force is going to locate and remove 10-11 million people, most of them residing quietly and productively in our communities throughout America.

But, Trump has never been about results. (Nor has DHS for that matter). He’s all about White Nationalist hatred, racism, and appealing to a “base” that long ago abandoned the rest of America (the majority of us) and human values.

And let’s not forget the responsibility of Congress and the Article III Courts who for years have mostly overlooked the glaring Constitutional defects and clear incompetence and bias evident in the Immigration Court system as administered by the Department of Justice. It has taken the Article IIIs’ complicity in a legally defective system to produce these so-called “final orders” in the first place.

Every dead kid, broken family, and new forced gang recruit should be on their collective consciences. And, the primary result of the “New Reign of Terror” will undoubtedly be fear of cooperating with local police in solving crimes, thus making ethnic Americans “perfect victims” who have been abandoned by those who are failing in their legal duties to insure “equal justice for all.”

2020 might be our last chance to save our country and humanity. Don’t blow it! Who knows, the life you save might be your own!

PWS

06-18-19

JUSTICE BY OMAR THE TENTMAKER: Already A Circus, Trump & Barr Plan To Turn What’s Left Of America’s Immigration Courts Into A Traveling Tent Show!

https://apple.news/AAfRRMBVoRdSDB3MNFh7__w

Priscilla Alvarez & Geneva Sands reort for CNN:

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.

© 2019 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

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

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.

PWS

06-18-19

READ ERIC POSNER: The Right’s “New Human Rights” Incorporates Hate, Intolerance, Fear Of Others!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-administrations-plan-to-redefine-human-rights-along-conservative-lines/2019/06/14/5e456caa-8def-11e9-b162-8f6f41ec3c04_story.html

Posner writes in the WashPost:

The State Department recently published a brief, enigmatic notice announcing the formation of a new Commission on Unalienable Rights. With a modest budget of $385,074 and merely advisory powers, the commission received little attention beyond head-scratching over its strange name. Yet the significance of the endeavor should not be overlooked. It puts the government’s imprimatur on an assault upon one of the cornerstones of modern liberalism: international human rights.

According to the commission’s draft charter, its job will be to explore “reforms of human rights discourse where it has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights” — rights of the sort that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. upheld as ideals, the charter says.

This language may sound unusual to a modern ear, but it is easily translated. Start with that ungainly name of the commission. If “unalienable” sounds anachronistic, that’s because it is. Today, we normally use the word “inalienable.” But in the 18th century, the more common term was “unalienable.” The Declaration of Independence refers to “unalienable rights,” and there is little doubt the commission’s name is meant to recall that, in the words of the Declaration, the people are endowed with those rights “by their Creator.”

The State Department recently published a brief, enigmatic notice announcing the formation of a new Commission on Unalienable Rights. With a modest budget of $385,074 and merely advisory powers, the commission received little attention beyond head-scratching over its strange name. Yet the significance of the endeavor should not be overlooked. It puts the government’s imprimatur on an assault upon one of the cornerstones of modern liberalism: international human rights.

According to the commission’s draft charter, its job will be to explore “reforms of human rights discourse where it has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights” — rights of the sort that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. upheld as ideals, the charter says.

This language may sound unusual to a modern ear, but it is easily translated. Start with that ungainly name of the commission. If “unalienable” sounds anachronistic, that’s because it is. Today, we normally use the word “inalienable.” But in the 18th century, the more common term was “unalienable.” The Declaration of Independence refers to “unalienable rights,” and there is little doubt the commission’s name is meant to recall that, in the words of the Declaration, the people are endowed with those rights “by their Creator.”

This supposition is reinforced by the references to “natural law” and “natural rights,” terms that have also fallen out of fashion. In the 18th century, educated people used the phrases to refer to universal moral laws that transcended national boundaries and that generally (though not always) were thought to reflect God’s will. With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, these abstractions lost much of their grip on people’s loyalties.

Finally, there is “human rights discourse.” Normally, we refer to “human rights law,” embodied in numerous treaties that were negotiated and (mostly) ratified after World War II. With names like the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, these treaties purport to bar governments from mistreating their citizens. Yet “discourse” means “talk.” The implication here is that the human rights that people talk about are not, despite the treaties, actually law. They’re something else — advocacy. And this advocacy is wrong: It has “departed from . . . natural law and natural rights.”

The protections offered by modern “human rights law” differ from those of the “natural rights” regime of the 18th century. Those were (more or less) embodied in the British constitutional tradition, the common law, and the U.S. Bill of Rights: rights to political participation — freedom of speech, for example — and protection of person and property. Modern human rights are both broader and narrower, encompassing “economic rights” (for example, rights to work, to health care and to education), rights to not be discriminated against on the basis of race or ethnicity, and, according to some interpreters, expansive rights to reproductive freedom. Modern human rights law de-emphasizes property rights and, to some extent, speech rights. In a word, it’s lefty.

Modern human rights have also morphed into something like a system of universal moral values that transcends specific treaties. The United States, virtually alone among nations, has refused to ratify most of these treaties and accordingly is technically not bound by them. But much “human rights discourse” rejects the notion that countries can opt out of the rights system. Quite a few scholars and an occasional U.S. Supreme Court justice believe, to the intense irritation of conservatives, that left-leaning human rights treaties that the United States has never ratified nonetheless override American law. The influence of “foreign law” — including “human rights discourse” — has been apparent in Supreme Court opinions limiting the death penalty and striking down the criminalization of same-sex “sodomy.” Most of the offending decisions were written by the court’s most enthusiastic proponent of foreign law, then-Justice Anthony Kennedy. As the late justice Antonin Scalia put it : “The Framers would, I am confident, be appalled by the proposition that, for example, the American peoples’ democratic adoption of the death penalty . . . could be judicially nullified because of the disapproving views of foreigners.”

But today, other conservatives see an opportunity, and the Commission on Unalienable Rights is their declaration of intent. Its plainly stated goal is not just to wipe away the baleful foreign influence of human rights “discourse” but to revive (conservative) 18th-century natural law.

What does natural law require? Liberals, already dimly perceiving that they are about to be hoisted with their own petard, worry that natural law, in the hands of conservatives — specifically, Catholic conservative intellectuals, who kept alive the academic tradition of natural law long after mainstream secular intellectuals forgot what it was — means goodbye to reproductive rights and protections for sexual minorities. (ABC News reported that the Princeton professor Robert George, a prominent Catholic intellectual, natural-law theorist, and opponent of abortion rights and same-sex marriage, played a role in the creation of the commission; George did not respond to requests for comment from ABC or from The Washington Post.) The Commission on Unalienable Rights will, in other words, provide the ideological justification for the antiabortion foreign policy that the Trump administration has undertaken.

Natural law can also be used by conservatives to argue for expanded religious freedoms that override statutes with secular goals, and to push back against progressive government programs like universal health care. The “right to health,” a centerpiece of “human rights law,” is firmly rejected by natural-law theorists like George.

But the mission of the commission may be even bolder. If we take the idea of natural law seriously, it not only overrides statutes in foreign countries that protect abortion rights and respect same-sex marriage. It also overrides American laws that protect abortion rights and respect same-sex marriage. One can imagine a day when a Supreme Court justice, taking a page from Kennedy, invokes natural law — supposedly endorsed by the founders, after all, and embodied in the sacred Declaration — to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and to prepare the path for an even holier grail, the abolition of state laws that grant abortion rights.

Liberals hoped that human rights, sanctified by the sacrifices of the victims of totalitarianism, would provide common ground in a world of competing ideologies. But what human rights actually helped produce was a liberal international order that has offended a great many people who do not share liberal values. The backlash began years ago in authoritarian countries, in developing countries that saw human rights as an affront to their traditions and as a mask for imperialist goals, and in highly religious countries. These countries advanced interpretations of human rights law that conform with their values or interests but made little headway against dominant elite opinion. What is new is that the government of the world’s most powerful nation, long acknowledged (if grudgingly) as the leader of the international human rights regime, has officially signed on to that backlash. Most of the offending decisions were written by the court’s most enthusiastic proponent of foreign law, then-Justice Anthony Kennedy. As the late justice Antonin Scalia put it : “The Framers would, I am confident, be appalled by the proposition that, for example, the American peoples’ democratic adoption of the death penalty . . . could be judicially nullified because of the disapproving views of foreigners.”

But today, other conservatives see an opportunity, and the Commission on Unalienable Rights is their declaration of intent. Its plainly stated goal is not just to wipe away the baleful foreign influence of human rights “discourse” but to revive (conservative) 18th-century natural law.

But the mission of the commission may be even bolder. If we take the idea of natural law seriously, it not only overrides statutes in foreign countries that protect abortion rights and respect same-sex marriage. It also overrides American laws that protect abortion rights and respect same-sex marriage. One can imagine a day when a Supreme Court justice, taking a page from Kennedy, invokes natural law — supposedly endorsed by the founders, after all, and embodied in the sacred Declaration — to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and to prepare the path for an even holier grail, the abolition of state laws that grant abortion rights.

Liberals hoped that human rights, sanctified by the sacrifices of the victims of totalitarianism, would provide common ground in a world of competing ideologies. But what human rights actually helped produce was a liberal international order that has offended a great many people who do not share liberal values. The backlash began years ago in authoritarian countries, in developing countries that saw human rights as an affront to their traditions and as a mask for imperialist goals, and in highly religious countries. These countries advanced interpretations of human rights law that conform with their values or interests but made little headway against dominant elite opinion. What is new is that the government of the world’s most powerful nation, long acknowledged (if grudgingly) as the leader of the international human rights regime, has officially signed on to that backlash.

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

Professor Posner confirms what folks like me have been saying for some time now: under Trump and his version of the GOP, America aspires to go from being a defender of human rights to being a leading abuser of those rights.

Forget the attempted “slight of hand” redefinition of human rights by a White Nationalist minority who has seized control of our Government. Kids in cages, abusing women, enabling gangs and cartels, suspending due process, blocking access to voting, dehumanizing the Hispanic and LGBTQ communities, greed, selfishness, grift, undermining the hard earned rights of African Americans, and promoting and protecting religious bigotry, among other disreputable developments, neither conforms to any version of human rights nor represents the views of the majority of Americans.

Make no mistake about it. No matter how flawed , the human rights instruments crafted as a result of “liberal Western democracy” in the post-World War II era have saved millions of human lives and prevented unfathomable additional human carnage. Undoubtedly, that makes Trump and some of his supporters supremely unhappy.

Those of us who continue to maintain the “quaint” view that all persons are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (no matter how imperfectly conceived and disingenuously implemented by our Founding Fathers) had better wake up and join the battle! For, Trump and his far right minority zealots have every intention of reversing the results of World War II and making the hate, bias, disregard for truth, toxic nationalism, and contempt for the majority of the world’s humans exhibited by the “the then losers” the new international norm.

Don’t let them turn back the clock to 1939 in 2019!

PWS

06-18-19

DUE PROCESS: 9th Cir. Might Be Afraid Of Trump, But U.S. Immigration Judge Scott Simpson Isn’t!

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2019-06-14/judge-orders-dhs-to-keep-man-in-u-s-for-immigration-hearings-instead-of-returning-to-mexico

Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune and LA Times:

Judge orders U.S. to hold asylum seeker

Doubtful about his mental state, jurist prevents migrant from being sent to Mexico.

By Kate Morrissey

SAN DIEGO — An immigration judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to keep a Honduran asylum seeker in the United States while he waits for his court proceedings, instead of returning him to Mexico again under a Trump administration program.

Judge Scott Simpson said that after evaluating the man’s mental competence in a special hearing on Friday, he found that the man would need safeguards in his case to ensure due process. He ordered one put in place immediately: to remove the man from a program known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols and more widely as “Remain in Mexico.”

“I find that he lacks a rational and factual understanding of the nature of the proceedings,” Simpson said in issuing his order.

This is the first time that a judge has made such a ruling since the program was implemented in January, according to advocates who have been monitoring immigration court proceedings.

The program requires certain asylum seekers from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to wait in Mexico while their cases progress in immigration court. The man has been waiting in Tijuana as part of the program for several months.

A Customs and Border Protection guide for officials implementing the program says that migrants with known physical or mental health issues should not be included.

“It’s a big deal that a judge recognized that there was a predatory nature to having put this person in the ‘Migrant Persecution Protocols,’ ” said Ian Philabaum of Innovation Law Lab, calling the program a name used by some immigrant rights advocates. “He wasn’t going to have a chance, and now he gets a chance.”

At the man’s first hearing in March, Simpson quickly became concerned that the man might have a mental competency issue that would make him ineligible for the program or require other protections. He ordered DHS to evaluate the man’s mental state.

Simpson asked government attorneys at each hearing after that whether the man’s mental state had been evaluated and whether the government believed he should continue to be included in the program.

Each time, the government attorney responded that the man should continue in MPP.

Still skeptical, Simpson told Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney Dan Hua to be prepared to give details Friday about DHS’s evaluation of the man before he was returned to Mexico. When the judge came into court Friday morning, Hua was not able to answer that question.

“The government’s inability to provide that information is simply not excusable,” Simpson said. He gave Hua 30 minutes to find out answers.

Hua said immigration officials at the port of entry had evaluated the man each time he’d come to court, meaning that as of Friday, he’d been evaluated four times.

The attorney could not produce evidence showing what the evaluation observed or what standard it used when the judge pressed for more details.

Philabaum said that fact was significant.

“That assessment of the mental competency was performed on four different occasions, and on four different occasions, according to the U.S. government attorney, their assessment was he was perfectly competent to proceed with his immigration case representing himself,” Philabaum said. But in the man’s “first hearing, it took the immigration judge approximately two minutes to realize there was an issue of competency here.

“Whatever type of standard that CBP has instituted to assess the competency of an individual to be eligible, according to the immigration judge today, it has failed.”

DHS officials, CBP officials and Department of Justice officials did respond to a request for comment.

Simpson decided to do his own evaluation of the man’s mental state under an immigration court precedent known as the Matter of MAM.

He listed the rights that the man has, such as the right to present evidence and the right to question witnesses. He asked if the man understood his rights.

“Um, yes. I need more,” said the man through a Spanish interpreter. “I need more because here I only have some letters, some birth certificates. They’re not translated into English yet.”

“Sir, I’m the immigration judge in your case. It’s my job to decide whether you can stay in the United States,” Simpson said. “In your own words, tell me who am I and what’s my job.”

“I cannot understand you,” the man responded.

In the end, the man was only able to appropriately respond to simple questions such as the date and what city he was in. He told the judge he had not had much schooling and couldn’t read or write.

ICE later confirmed the man is pending transfer to the agency’s custody. He could be taken to an immigration detention facility or released “on parole” into the U.S. to a sponsor while he waits for his next hearing.

Simpson said that depending which option the government chooses, other safeguards may be necessary, including providing an attorney for him if he’s detained.

Morrissey writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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

Every day the human carnage mounts as the 9th Circuit continues to “sponsor” Trump’s illegal, deadly, and unconstitutional “Remain in Mexico Program.” Interesting how a few non-life-tenured Immigration Judges in San Diego and one courageous U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of California seem to be the only Federal officials interested in either the rule of law or the Due Process Clause of our Constitution. Go figure!

Congrats to Judge Scott Simpson for standing up for the rule of law and the rights of the most vulnerable in the face of massive dereliction of duty by those higher up the line.

Sadly, unlike the 9th Circuit, Judge Simpson lacks authority to enjoin further violations of the law and human rights by the Trump Administration. How many more human beings will suffer, be wronged, and perhaps die as a result of the 9th Circuit’s complicity in scofflaw behavior having little or nothing to do with protecting our borders or any other legitimate policy end and everything to do with punishing and dehumanizing those who seek justice under our laws.?

PWS

06-17-19

DERELICTION OF DUTY: 4th Cir. Exposes BIA’s Incompetence & Anti-Asylum Bias, Yet Fails To Confront Own Complicity — SINDY MARILU ALVAREZ LAGOS; K.D.A.A., v. WILLIAM P. BARR

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/172291.P.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0V6wyNPGePFSgscsU5Qw-PQxasjIHuwnGXYQr4RraWbpMse6GOc4bAJqY

DIAZ, 4th Cir., 06-14-19, published

PANEL: GREGORY, Chief Judge, and DIAZ and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge

KEY QUOTE:

Sindy Marilu Alvarez Lagos testified credibly that she and her then-seven-year-old daughter, natives and citizens of Honduras, were threatened with gang rape, genital mutilation, and death if they did not comply with the extortionate demands of a Barrio 18 gang member. Unable to meet those demands and fearing for their lives, Alvarez Lagos and her daughter fled to the United States, where they sought asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.

Now, almost five years later, an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals have issued a total of three separate decisions denying Alvarez Lagos’s claims. The government defends none of those decisions, including the most recent, which came after we agreed, at the government’s request, to remand the case for reconsideration. Instead, the government admits that errors remain, but argues that we should leave them unaddressed and simply remand once again so that the agency may have a fourth opportunity to analyze Alvarez Lagos’s claims correctly.

We decline that request. A remand is required here on certain questions that have yet to be answered, or answered fully, by the agency. But we take this opportunity to review the agency’s disposition of other elements of Alvarez Lagos’s claims. For the reasons given below, we reverse the agency’s determination with respect to the “nexus” requirement for asylum and withholding of removal. And so that they will not recur on remand, we identify additional errors in the agency’s analysis of the “protected ground” requirement for the same forms of relief, and in the agency’s treatment of Alvarez Lagos’s claim under the Convention Against Torture.

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

It’s partially on the Article IIIs. Great decision in many ways. But, this type of injustice occurs daily in our unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts. How many Central American asylum applicants get this type of representation—Steve Shulman of Akin Gump for a pro bono lawyer, Tom Boerman as an expert? Not very many.

How many can be this persistent, particularly if detained or sent to Mexico to wait? Almost none! I think that if these respondents were in “Return to Mexico” they would have long ago been forced to give up and accept “Death Upon Return.”

This case should have been a “no brainer grant” five years ago. Could have been done at an Asylum Office (under a more rational system) or by DHS stipulation. THIS abuse of the legal system and gross waste of public resources by DHS and DOJ is the reason why we have unmanageable Immigration Court backlogs, not because asylum applicants and their representatives assert their legal rights.

The Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) didn’t even bother to defend any of the EOIR actions here! So, after five years why is it “Due Process” for the Fourth Circuit to give the BIA yet another opportunity to come up with bogus reasons to deny asylum.

An Article III Court fulfilling its oath to uphold the laws and Constitution could have ordered this case to be granted and either exercised contempt authority against those at DOJ responsible for this mess or ordered an independent investigation into the judicial incompetence and bias evident here. At the least, the court should have removed any judge having had a role in this abomination from any future proceedings involving these respondents.

Cases such good as this also illustrate the continuing dereliction of duty by Article III Courts who continue to “go along top get along” with the absurdly unconstitutional position that unrepresented asylum applicants can receive “Due Process” in today’s overtly unfair and biased Immigration Courts. The Due Process clause applies to all persons in the U.S., and the right to a fair asylum hearing exceeds the rights at stake in 98% of the civil litigation and most of the criminal litigation in the Federal Courts. If the Article III Courts actually viewed asylum applicants as “persons,” that is “fellow human beings,” rather than dehumanized “aliens,” this farce would have ended decades ago! Folks represented by Steve Schulman and Akin Gump can’t get a “fair shake” from EOIR; what chance does any unrepresented applicant have?

You reap what you sow, and what goes around comes around! If Article III Courts want to be taken seriously and respected, they must step up to the plate and stop the systematic bias against asylum applicants (particularly women and children from Central America) and the abuses like this occurring every day in our unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts!

History is watching and making a record, even if those wronged by the Article IIIs all too often don’t survive or aren’t in a position to confront them with their dereliction of legal duties and the obligations human beings owe to each other.

PWS

06-17-19

CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!

https://apple.news/Au_bQMKN3QxmsBKokkqyP3w

Sarah Ruiz’s-Grossman reports for HuffPost:

U.S. NEWS

06/12/2019 05:25 PM EDT

Cages With ‘Kids’ Pop Up Around NYC To Protest Immigrant Detention

The art installations were meant to bring awareness to the horrific conditions children and other migrants face at the southern U.S. border.

Some people in New York City were confronted with an alarming image as they walked down the street on Wednesday morning: a chain-link cage on the sidewalk containing a child-size mannequin wrapped in a foil blanket, with audio playing of migrant children crying.

More than 20 cages were placed around Manhattan and Brooklyn ― from Union Square to the Barclays Center sports arena ― as part of a campaign called #NoKidsInCages by immigration nonprofit RAICES and ad agency Badger & Winters.

It was meant to draw Americans’ attention to the children and other migrants being held in alarming conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Speakers in the cages played the viral recording released by ProPublica last summer of kids wailing for their “mamá” and “papá” after having been separated from them at the border as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

“We want to bring this back to the consciousness of the American people,” RAICES CEO Jonathan Ryan told HuffPost. “One of the many unfortunate consequences of the repeated traumatic stories coming from the border is that, as horrified and angry as people have been, we also become desensitized. It’s important for people … to be confronted with the reality that this is about children, human beings, whose lives are forever affected.”

“This is being done in our name by people who we elected,” he added. “And if we don’t do something to stop this, this will become who we are.”

About two dozen cages were dropped around the city from about 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., Ryan said. By midafternoon most of them had been taken down by police or city employees, with three remaining around 2 p.m., per Ryan. The New York Police Department confirmed to HuffPost that more than half a dozen cages had been removed around Manhattan, but did not respond to questions as to why.

The online campaign associated with the installations recalls the family separations under President Donald Trump’s hard-line zero-tolerance policy, which led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents last year. The policy sparked protests nationwide and was reversed by executive order in late June. But a January report from the Department of Health and Human Services found the administration may have separated thousands more kids from their families than was previously known, and it did not know how many or whether they were reunited.

RAICES also wants people to become aware of other issues migrants face, Ryan said.

He noted undocumented immigrant families are still separated “routinely” at the border, including when migrant kids are split from other guardians like uncles and aunts or older siblings. Separations occur inside the country too, he said, when a child’s undocumented mom or dad is arrested by immigration agents, for instance in a workplace raid.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended over 109,000 people at the border in April ― more than double the number of migrants detained during that month last year. A majority of the migrants apprehended were either families traveling together or unaccompanied kids.

A Department of Homeland Security watchdog, reporting on Border Patrol facilities in El Paso, Texas, found last month that detained migrants were kept in dirty and extremely crowded conditions, forcing some people to stand on toilets to get some breathing room.

Last week, Trump said he reached an agreement with Mexico that includes “rapidly” returning to Mexico anyone who crosses the border seeking asylum in the U.S. Advocates are concerned about the dangerous conditions in cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, where more migrants will now be forced to wait as their claims are processed.

“When the American people hear stories of this problem being fixed by the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, it hasn’t been fixed, it’s just further from their view,” Ryan said. “The suffering will only increase.”

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

Ah, life in the ivory tower of the Article III Federal Judiciary, where you seldom are confronted with the human faces or ugly reality of your abuses and failures to protect the human rights of others.

The “Remain in Mexico” Program is an ongoing affront to our Constitution, the rule of law, and simple human decency for which the judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who are enabling this ongoing humanitarian outrage and giving it “legal cover” should be held fully morally and historically accountable!

PWS

06-13-19

9TH CIRCUIT JUDGES COMPLICIT IN HUMAN RIGHTS & LEGAL VIOLATIONS INFLICTED ON TERRIFIED TEEN ASYLUM APPLICANTS: Reuters Study Exposes How Disingenuous Article III Judges Are Letting Trump Administration “Get Away With Potential Murder” Under Clearly Illegal, Unconstitutional, & Incompetently Administered “Remain In Mexico” Abomination!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-returns-exclusive/exclusive-asylum-seekers-returned-to-mexico-rarely-win-bids-to-wait-in-u-s-idUSKCN1TD13Z

(Reuters) – Over two hours on June 1, a Honduran teenager named Tania pleaded with a U.S. official not to be returned to Mexico.

Immigration authorities had allowed her mother and younger sisters into the United States two months earlier to pursue claims for asylum in U.S. immigration court. But they sent Tania back to Tijuana on her own, with no money and no place to stay.

The 18-year-old said she told the U.S. official she had seen people on the streets of Tijuana linked to the Honduran gang that had terrorized her family. She explained that she did not feel safe there.

After the interview, meant to assess her fear of return to Mexico, she hoped to be reunited with her family in California, she said. Instead, she was sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration policy called the “Migrant Protection Protocols”(MPP), which has forced more than 11,000 asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border for their U.S. court cases to be completed. That process can take months.

Tania’s is not an unusual case. Once asylum seekers are ordered to wait in Mexico, their chances of getting that decision reversed on safety grounds – allowing them to wait out their proceedings in the United States – are exceedingly small, a Reuters analysis of U.S. immigration court data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) shows.

. . . .

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

Read the full description of the Trump Administration’s judicially enabled all out assault on the legal, Constitutional, and human rights of vulnerable asylum seekers at the above link.

A complicit panel of 9th Circuit Judges vacated a proper lower court injunction that was preventing this type of intentional child abuse by the Trump Administration. Here’s that panel’s “head in the sand” opinion in Innovation Law Labs. https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Innovation-Law-Lab-19-15716.pdf.

It’s worth noting that almost every “ameliorating exception” described in the first paragraph of the panel’s opinion is demonstrably untrue — children and those clearly in danger are being returned and the “discretionary parole” is largely a fraud that seldom is granted — according to the Government’s own data (which likely is also falsified or manipulated to some extent to mask or distort abuses). In other words, a “three-reporter panel” of Reuters is more interested and capable of getting to truth than a panel of life-tenured judges.

Oh, that it could be these judges’ kids or grandkids separated from family and sent to live on the mean streets of Tijuana while pursuing their legal rights under US law. Really, how do these child abusers and human rights scofflaws hiding in judicial robes sleep at night?

Guess the can’t hear the screams and moans of those whose rights they are failing to protect and whose human dignity they reject. I’ve heard eyewitness accounts and seen video evidence from the pro bono lawyers courageously (and sometimes at the risk of their own health and safety) trying to protect the lives and rights of asylum seekers at the Southern Border from these abuses of human rights that are enabled by “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a the disingenuously named “Migrant Protection Protocols”). The truth is no secret for those who actually seek it rather than to ignore it.

Complicit Article III Judges and Government lawyers are keys to Trump’s “dehumanization” program. History must hold them accountable for their abuses of humanity.

PWS

06-13-19

ANALYSIS: Trump Lays Another Egg On Immigration — Everybody Loses, But It Could Have Been Much, Much Worse

By Paul Wickham Schmidt for immigrationcourtside.com

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 be the “best that we can be,” rather than just “not as bad as we might have been?”

ABUSE OF POWER: Eleanor Acer Of Human Rights First Blasts Administration’s Latest Scheme Promoting A Massive Hemispheric Violation Of Human Rights!

https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/press-release/mexico-border-deal-avoid-tariffs-would-endanger-lives

June 06, 2019

Mexico Border Deal to Avoid Tariffs Would Endanger Lives

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Refugee Protection

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.

For more information see Human Rights First’s blueprint: The Real Solution: Regional Response Rather than Border Closures, Mass Incarceration, and Refugee Returns. To speak with Acer contact Corinne Duffy atDuffyC@humanrightsfirst.org or 202-370-3319.

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

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!

PWS

06-07-19

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION INTENDS TO PUNISH MIGRANT KIDS! No Education, Recreation, Legal Help For Those in Kiddie Gulag! — How’s That Likely To Work Out For America?

https://apple.news/AcqynTMA8TqGuaYtxnsPw6g

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

POLITICS

06/05/2019 09:24 PM EDT

Trump Administration To Deprive Migrant Kids In Shelters Of English Lessons, Legal Aid

Immigrant advocates say the government is using child welfare rights as a political lever to secure more funding.

Unaccompanied immigrant children in government detention centers across the U.S. will no longer have English classes, recreational programs or legal aid, according to Department of Health and Human Services emails first obtained by The Washington Post.

The shelters will “begin scaling back or discontinuing” the funding for “activities that are not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation” due to an influx of unaccompanied children crossing the border and a lack of funding, Evelyn Stauffer, a spokesperson for HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, told HuffPost.

The move could be illegal ― immigrant kids in custody must be taught English five days a week and have at least one hour of recreation time per day, under the terms of the 1997 Flores court settlement. But immigrant rights advocates fear the Trump administration is using child welfare rights as a political bargaining chip to secure funds from Congress. The administration has urged Congress to approve billions more in funding for the U.S.-Mexico border, including emergency funds that would increase shelter capacity and pay for part of President Donald Trump’s wall.

“It’s beyond the pale to threaten to take away the most basic protections [for children],” said Neha Desai, director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law. “Once again this administration is using children as pawns for their broader political goals.”

And while the administration is blaming a border crisis and lack of government funds for these program cuts, immigrant rights experts said the government has itself to blame.

The number of unaccompanied immigrant children coming to the border and being placed in government custody reached a record high of 11,000 in May, and the number of kids in shelters has increased by 57% since last year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

There’s no doubt these numbers are stretching government resources, and HHS likely needs more funding to deal with this growing population. But immigrant youth advocates told HuffPost that the government has responded by enacting inhumane policies that exacerbate the system’s problems, such as family separation and sharing information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“This is a management crisis,” said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “These policies create chaotic and dangerous situations and harm children.”

Rather than tackling the root issues that are spurring immigrants to flee their home countries, the Trump administration has responded with draconian policies to deal with border apprehensions that do not work as deterrents, said Cory Smith, vice president of policy, advocacy and communications at Kids In Need of Defense, a group that provides legal representation to unaccompanied kids.

“I think there’s a lot of the policies that have manufactured a crisis and are self-inflicted wounds,” Smith said.

Desai said that if shelters maintained by HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement ran efficiently and released kids promptly ― as they are required to do by the Flores settlement ― it would free up money for the kinds of programs the department is now cutting. Instead, kids are spending an average of roughly 66 days in detention, according to an HHS official, which is close to double the average length of stay before Trump took office.

The amount of time children spend in detention began increasing last May after the government began separating families, sending 3,000 more kids into unaccompanied children’s shelters.

And though the zero tolerance policy ended last June, the government is still separating families on a smaller level, which is unnecessarily adding to the volume in detention centers. “A lot of children in ORR custody should not be there in the first place,” Brané said. “We have a disturbing numbers of family separations [still] occurring.”

Last May, the government further prolonged shelter stays by requiring that everyone in a sponsor’s household be fingerprinted before they could be released. The Trump administration has since rescinded this requirement, but it still shares sponsor information with ICE, which immigration advocates say has made undocumented sponsors afraid to come forward for fear of being arrested and deported.

In February 2018, HHS reopened a temporary unlicensed shelter in Homestead, Florida, to handle an influx of kids crossing the border, which costs more than $1.2 million a day. In a recent court filing, some children described being held in Homestead for more than six months due to major inefficiencies with the case management process, such as having their sponsors rejected without explanation and having their cases passed to multiple managers.

Smith said depriving children of legal aid could also keep them in shelters for longer, since they won’t have reminders of when to show up to their court dates, or guidance about how to navigate difficult decisions.

Peter Schey, one of the lead attorneys representing detained children as part of an ongoing lawsuit, has contacted the government about how nixing educational, recreational and legal programs violates child welfare standards. He said that if the policy is not promptly withdrawn, his team will ask a U.S. District Court to block its implementation.

“I think these policy changes are heartless and unnecessarily cruel,” he said. “They plainly violate both federal laws and the Flores settlement.”

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

More Trump sleaziness. The Trump Administration appears to be pretty creative when out comes to finding money for building useless and unauthorized “walls.” Not so much when it comes to the welfare of children.

Idle hands, unoccupied minds, pent up energy, time on their hands: sounds like another “Trump generated recruiting opportunity” for gangs and bullies!

How low we have fallen as a nation to accept this kind of conduct from our “government.”

PWS

06-06-19

BLOWN OPPORTUNITY: THE GLOBAL COMPACT FOR SAFE, ORDERLY & REGULAR MIGRATION WAS AMERICA’S BEST CHANCE TO LEAD ON A GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT ISN’T GOING AWAY — Trump’s Mindless White Nationalism Made The U.S. Walk Away From A Deal We Probably Need More Than Any Other Country!

http://www.afsa.org/immigration-debate

Former U.S. diplomat David Robinson writes in The Foreign Service Journal:

Closing the distance between legal requirements and humanitarian instincts is a global, rather than national, enterprise.

BY DAVID ROBINSON

Thirty-two years of diplomatic service taught me a number of things. One is that wherever politics and society seem irredeemably dysfunctional, it is not an accident. It is, at some level, intentional. Someone has a vested interest in continuing the chaos. Someone is getting rich, or powerful, or both; and even the most zealous reform efforts will likely fail unless those interests are mollified or neutralized.

The immigration debate follows that lesson. It is shrill, jumbled, disjointed, often illogical—and largely irrelevant to the reality it claims to address. A big, beautiful wall across our southern border may do little to stem the flow of drugs, criminals, terrorists and even unauthorized migrants into the United States—but its promise is pure gold. Like all the other sharp notes in this performance—including the travel ban, chain migration and anchor babies—the cacophony surrounding the wall helps both supporters and opponents puff out their chests and strut their virtue.

The only losers are those who have more than a partisan or emotional interest in resolving the conflict, including actual immigrants and the communities that receive them. They should not expect a resolution to their real and pressing concerns anytime soon.

Yet the scope of irregular migration today—with upward of 65 million people on the move—is such that it cannot be pushed aside. At the same time, no single country can respond adequately on its own. Diplomacy in the interest of fashioning international agreements to manage the problem is the only viable approach.

Legal Requirements vs. Humanitarian Instincts

Public talk about immigration reminds me of every discussion I ever heard in a Bosnian coffee shop during my 2014-2015 tenure as principal deputy high representative, and earlier as a refugee officer. It invariably begins and ends with an impassioned reference to some horrific event that obscures rather than illuminates the issue at hand. Both sides illustrate strongly held opinions with graphic examples excoriating the other point of view. Anti-immigrant zealots demonize immigrants as rapists and murderers; the other extreme sanctifies them as innocent victims of circumstance or malice. Both points of view are dehumanizing. They rely on stirring but distorted images to carry their arguments rather than on real people with complex motives and histories. Their aim is to capture the moral high ground, not to solve the problem.

Focusing on national immigration reform as a response to that wave is neither comprehensive nor realistic.

But manipulating imagery does not change the facts. Immigration has no inherent moral value, and immigrants are neither more nor less virtuous than anyone else. They were pushed or pulled from their homes by a host of different reasons from personal ambition to cataclysmic disaster. Some are victims, some are opportunists; some should be welcomed, some rejected. What separates migrants and non-citizen immigrants from their citizen neighbors is vulnerability. Regardless of wealth, stature or origin, immigrants are at the mercy of authorities and systems over which they have little or no influence. Their voices and images may be emotionally affecting, but their future is beyond their control.

That dependency drives the conflict about immigration reform, setting the rule of law against humanitarian impulse. It also opens the door to diplomacy. National laws deciding who may and may not enter a country always produce inequities; they always leave on the outside someone who has a legitimate need for entry but lacks the appropriate legal category or political timing to gain it. Visa classifications, refugee protocols and asylum guidelines cannot keep pace with global trends—from criminal violence and global warming to new definitions of marriage and family composition. Immigration liberalizers point to the law’s deficiencies and appeal to values over statutes, while build-the-wall advocates tout the law as the final, unyielding authority. The debate has turned into a name-calling melee as the number of migrants and intending immigrants continues to grow.

My own views on migration evolved in two parts. As a junior consular officer in the Dominican Republic, I scrupulously followed the rules and kept away from America’s shores the “wretched refuse” desperate enough to believe our own mythology. Years later, as a refugee officer, I met humanity’s outcasts in the makeshift places they sought shelter. The memory of a refugee child from Kosovo haunts me still. Who had the right to confine a 10-year-old boy behind a chain link fence? Legally, the government of Macedonia, whose border he had crossed; morally, nobody. It is shocking to me that I may now encounter that same scenario in the United States: legally permitted, morally repugnant.

Unproductive Approaches to Irregular Migration

Erasing that image and closing the distance between legal requirements and humanitarian instincts is a global, rather than national, enterprise. No single country has the political or social bandwidth to respond adequately to the growing demands and pressures of irregular migration. Sixty-five million people on the move do not fit into existing categories, either legal or humanitarian. Neither will they be deterred by piecemeal border controls. Focusing on national immigration reform as a response to that wave is neither comprehensive nor realistic. It is akin to promoting air conditioners as the answer to climate change. The problem will just continue to grow until it overwhelms efforts to avoid it.

Equally unproductive is treating irregular migration as principally a development challenge. Initiatives to reduce poverty or end conflict may have merit in their own right, but they are a long-term gamble, at best, and seldom include migrants in their plans and programs. The Dadaab complex in Kenya, a “temporary” shelter to hundreds of thousands of refugees for three decades, is a case in point. By any rational measure, Dadaab is a development challenge rather than a humanitarian crisis, but that transition never happened. In the meantime, its occupants remain in limbo, deprived of relatively normal and productive lives. Those who are able will continue to migrate and seek their futures elsewhere, including in the United States.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, though nonbinding, marks the first comprehensive effort to address human mobility at the global level.

Sidestepping the challenge of irregular migration leads nowhere. The only realistic starting point for effective, palatable reform is to accept shared responsibility for managing migration in the first place. We cannot eliminate the reasons large numbers of people move unexpectedly, nor can we isolate ourselves from their impact. We can, however, build agreements and networks across borders that establish the norms and rules for their treatment and that address the concerns of the communities that encounter them. We can, through diplomatic agreements, impose a semblance of order on what has become chaos.

There is precedent for this approach. The 1951 Refugee Convention and the subsequent regional agreements it prompted have created a durable framework for the protection of people fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in other countries. They make refugee protection a duty under international law and prohibit forcible return home. The agreements also establish common criteria for adjudicating refugee claims. The regime is imperfect and under stress, but it works. It measures progress, clarifies disputes and assigns responsibility. It is also the basis for a web of public and private, national and international agencies working to implement and improve it. Until recently, the United States was its most generous and reliable supporter.

A Necessary First Step

Extending the principles of protection and due process beyond refugees to all vulnerable migrants seemed within reach as recently as the United Nations General Assembly in 2016. All 193 member-states approved the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants that, among other actions, called for a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The compact was approved in December 2018. Although nonbinding, it marks the first comprehensive effort to address human mobility at the global level. It extends human rights norms and development goals to previously disregarded people while reaffirming the prerogative of every country to enforce its own laws. While not a permanent solution to runaway migration, the compact is a necessary first step toward diplomatic problem-solving. It is a meeting place, not a traffic cop, and shifts the needle away from blame toward shared responsibility.

Predictably, however, storm clouds gathered early. The United States was the first to jump ship, citing the paper-thin excuse that the compact interfered with sovereign law enforcement even though it explicitly reaffirms state sovereignty on all immigration decisions. A transparently flimsy excuse made even before the document had been fully drafted, it nevertheless emboldened others to follow. By the time the compact came to a vote, 29 countries had abandoned the effort, leaving 164 to endorse it.

Washington’s position on almost any significant issue signals either permission or caution; and at best, when directed skillfully, it compels action.

This backtracking is significant because it reflects pernicious nationalism as much as supposed flaws in the compact itself— such as signaling climate change as a trigger for migration and encouraging the use of detention only as a last resort. Politically manipulated fear of migrants from “shithole countries” (as our president has called them) and Muslim refugees from war zones had advanced a narrative that facts, no matter how twisted, simply did not support. Yet while the threat may be fake news, proclaiming it worked to the advantage of politicians and pundits who trade on isolationism, supremacy and ignorance.

It may not be unusual for countries to walk away from nonbinding agreements, and often their absence goes unnoticed. The United States is an exception to that rule; its absence is always felt and its presence is almost always required for meaningful international agreements to take root. An ambassador from a Middle Eastern country sitting next to me in Geneva in December 2011 groaned and shook his head when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared to the packed audience that gay rights are human rights. I asked him why he had come, knowing the direction of the speech in advance. He smiled, shrugged and said: “The American Secretary of State. Of course I’m here. But I don’t like it.” He didn’t have to like it, but he did have to deal with it—as long as the United States and its allies continued to press the point.

Diplomatic Leadership

While a Secretary of State’s moral and diplomatic authority may be less compelling today than it was then, it still matters. Influence is not optional for the United States. Washington’s position on almost any significant issue signals either permission or caution; and at best, when directed skillfully, it compels action. Not supporting the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is a missed opportunity to set a global agenda that is too complex and ambitious to thrive without U.S. diplomatic and financial support. There are signs of hope, mainly in Africa, in countries that have embraced the compact and are building the legal and humanitarian framework it promotes. They may have some regional success; but globally their influence is no match for the challenge they face.

So the question remains: Where will the global leadership come from? Humanitarian imperatives and rule of law requirements are still on a collision course. The administration apparently hopes the problem will go away if we hide behind a wall. It will not. The rational choice is to join ranks with those seeking a coordinated response to the challenge. That is the direction American diplomacy should take and American diplomats should endorse.

David Robinson retired as a career member of the Senior Foreign Service in 2017, after a 32-year career. In addition to serving as ambassador to Guyana from 2006 to 2008, he served as assistant secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations and coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization from 2016 to 2017. Ambassador Robinson was also a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration from 2009 to 2013, and special coordinator for Venezuela in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2008 to 2009. He previously served as principal deputy high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement; as assistant chief of mission in Kabul; and as deputy chief of mission in La Paz and Asunción. Currently he is associated with the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

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

The total failure of Trump’s arrogantly ignorant White Nationalist immigration policy is a great illustration of the truth of what Robinson says. Without “regime change” and a smarter, more courageous, leader willing to cooperate with other nations in addressing migration in a humane, realistic, and mutually beneficial manner, our immigration and refugee policies will continue to founder and fail.

PWS

06-05-19

RUDE AWAKENING? — Some In GOP Finally Concerned About Idiotic Actions Of White Nationalist “Tariff Man” — But Don’t Expect Much Action Given GOP’s Endemic Cowardice In The Face Of Trump!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/us/politics/republicans-mexico-tariffs.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fcatie-edmondson&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Catie Edmonson & Maggie Haberman report for the NY Times:

June 4, 2019

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.

[Mr. Powell’s comments sent a signal that the central bank was watching Mr. Trump’s trade wars warily.]

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.”

A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

Leaving the lunch, lawmakers complained they were facing too many such hypotheticals. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, asked the lawyers what the precedent for imposing tariffs through an emergency declaration would be. His question was left unanswered. In fact, since the National Emergencies Act was signed in 1976, it has never been used to impose tariffs on a single country.

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said he “would not be inclined to vote on a tariff against a friend,” but ventured that “what you’re likely to see is the Mexican government and our government finding some way to work on this collaboratively and not reach a tariff.”

Others were less convinced.

“He’s committed to this,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, who spoke with Mr. Trump on Sunday and was sure the president would proceed with the tariffs, regardless of the concerns. “He’s serious as four heart attacks and a stroke. He’s moving forward.”

Opponents of the tariffs would use the same motion of disapproval that they tried to use to block the president from grabbing federal money for a border wall that was not appropriated for that purpose. That motion did pass Congress with significant Republican support, but not enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s veto.

Mr. Johnson warned White House officials that they should not count on a veto override vote going the same way. But Mr. Trump has supporters, and Republicans, especially in the House, have been loath to oppose him on immigration. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, once a moderate on immigration policy, took to Twitter to say the president was within his rights to use tariffs to force Mexico’s hand.

Marco Rubio

✔@marcorubio

The law provides @potus broad authority to control transactions with other nations if there is an unusual & extraordinary threat to the national security &/or economy of the U.S.. Unlawful migration & drug flow transiting through #Mexico into U.S. clearly poses such a threat.

1,347

6:28 PM – Jun 3, 2019

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Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, expressed support for the president, as did Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is up for re-election in 2020 and faced blistering criticism after flip-flopping this year on whether he would vote to disapprove the president’s emergency declaration to build the wall.

“I think Mexico could help us solve the crisis down at the border,” Mr. Tillis told reporters. “What’s the tax on handling 80,000 additional illegal immigrants coming across the border, housing them, adjudicating them? You’ve got to look at the total cost of the prices.”

If a revolt comes to pass, it would start in the Senate, but House Republicans would have to join the effort to overturn a veto.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus, declined to forecast whether the House would try to block the tariffs on Mexico.

“The administration’s tariff policy is erratic and all over the place,” he said. “We will see what the Senate Republicans ultimately decide to do, but we will certainly strongly consider proceeding in a way that is appropriate and consistent with our legislative powers.”

Mr. Trump seemed unimpressed when a reporter noted that Mexican officials said that they had increased the number of migrants they had apprehended coming into their country from elsewhere in Central America. He offered no specifics on what it would take to keep the tariffs from being imposed.

“Look, millions of people are flowing through Mexico,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s unacceptable.”

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.

PWS

06-05-19

TRUMP UNINTERESTED IN SOLVING CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRATION ISSUES: While Mexico & Others Propose Regional Effort To Improve Conditions, Trump Responds With Racist Rants & “Guaranteed To Fail” Enforcement!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/31/trumps-mexico-tariffs-show-he-has-no-interest-solving-immigration-crisis/

Leon Krauze writers in the Washington Post:

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.

The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has shown unparalleled compliance with the White House’s punitive demands. It has increased the number of agents at its southern border, agreed to hold asylum seekersand dramatically increased deportations of potential asylum seekers.

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.

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

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.

PWS

06-03-19

O’ROURKE’S IMMIGRATION PLAN FEATURES INDEPENDENT ARTICLE I IMMIGRATION COURT — Every Serious Democratic Candidate Needs To Include This “Must Do” Priority!

Beto_O_Rourke_Immigration_Plan

IN OUR OWN IMAGE
Beto O’Rourke’s Plan for Rebuilding Our Immigration and Naturalization System To Make It Work Better for Our Families, Our Communities, and Our Economy
Above all else, immigration is about people – not just those who have recently arrived or those yet to come, but the kind of people we choose to be. Since the Founding, the compact we made as a nation was to welcome the oppressed, the persecuted, and the hopeful from all over the world because we recognize that immigrants enrich every aspect of our society with their determination and genius. Each successive generation of Americans has included immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, strengthening this nation that we share.
The current administration has chosen to defy this American aspiration, drafted into our Declaration of Independence, welded into the welcome of our Statue of Liberty, and secured by the sacrifices of countless generations. Instead, the current administration is pursuing cruel and cynical policies that aim to sow needless chaos and confusion at our borders. It is manufacturing crises in our communities. And it is seeking to turn us against each other. When this is done in our name, with our tax dollars, and to our neighbors, we not only undermine our laws, hold back our economy, and damage our security – we risk losing ourselves.
But at this moment of peril, we have a chance not only to reverse course but to advance a new vision of immigration that more fully reflects our values. As a fourth-generation El Pasoan, Beto uniquely recognizes the urgency of fixing our broken immigration and naturalization system. Rooted in his experience serving the largest binational community in the Western Hemisphere – one that draws its strength and prosperity from its rich heritage of welcoming immigrants – Beto is proposing a new path forward to ensure we honor our laws, live up to our values, and once again harness the power of a new generation of immigration toward our shared prosperity.
Beto’s plan, which would represent the most sweeping rewrite of our nation’s immigration and naturalization laws in a generation, is built on three key pillars:
1. On day one of his presidency, Beto will use executive authority to stop the inhumane treatment of children, reunite families that have been separated, reform our asylum system, rescind the travel bans, and remove the fear of deportation for Dreamers and beneficiaries of programs like TPS.
2. Beto will also immediately engage with Congress to enact legislation – focused on the key role families and communities play – that will allow America to fully harness the power of economic growth and opportunity that both immigration and naturalization will bring to our country’s future.
3. Finally, Beto’s plan would strengthen our partnership with our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. We need to refocus on supporting democracy and human rights and invest in reducing violence because the only path to regional security runs through a more democratic and prosperous Latin America.
I. ENDING THE CRUEL AND CYNICAL POLICIES THAT CREATE CHAOS AT OUR BORDERS AND IN OUR COMMUNITIES ON DAY ONE

The current administration’s cruel and cynical policies are sowing needless chaos and confusion at our borders and in our communities. On day one of his presidency, Beto will take immediate executive action to end these practices and replace them with policies that conform to our laws and values, restore order and process to our asylum and immigration systems, and refocus our tax dollars on smart security. Those executive actions will:
● Reform the asylum system and reunite families. The current asylum system is ineffective, inefficient, illegal, and immoral. Those traveling vast distances to escape extreme violence and crushing poverty are being met by a militarized cruelty and manufactured chaos that separates families, detains children, and deliberately extends the backlog of those who require processing. We must change both the culture and processes for handling asylum claims.
An O’Rourke administration will ensure lawful and humane conditions at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities, including access to medical treatment, mental health care, social workers, and translators, and restore orderly and prompt processing of people seeking refuge under our nation’s asylum laws. As president, Beto will:
o Rescind the current administration’s executive orders that seek to maximize detention and deportation, including former Attorney General Sessions’ radical re- interpretation of asylum law that seeks to deny protection to women and children fleeing domestic violence and escaping from deadly gangs.
o Mandate an end to family separations at the border and illegal policies like “metering” and “Remain in Mexico.”
o Issue an executive order to require detention only for those with criminal backgrounds representing a danger to our communities and eliminate all funding for private, for-profit prison operators whose incentive is profit, not security.
o Ensure that people have the tools to navigate our immigration court system by scaling up community-based programs and family case management, which is nearly one-tenth the cost of detention and ensures that people attend their courts hearing and that they know what is expected of them.
o ReinstatetheCentralAmericanMinorsprogram–allowingchildrenwithparents in the U.S. to apply for refugee status from their home countries – and other regional refugee resettlement efforts, working with the international community to process cases in the region and commit to resettling in partner countries.
o Take immediate steps to upgrade and increase staffing in the asylum system, streamline how cases move through the process, and provide timely and fair asylum decisions, while laying the foundation for a more fundamental reform to the immigration court system that restores due process and ensures equal access to justice, including by:

▪ Increasing court staff, clerks, interpreters, and judges;
▪ Making the courts independent under Article I, rather than administered
by the U.S. Department of Justice;
▪ Ending policies that prevent judges from managing their dockets in the
most effective way;
▪ Expanding the Legal Orientation Program (LOP) to ensure that everyone
knows how to navigate our immigration system;
▪ Deploying up to 2,000 lawyers to the border and funding a robust right to
counsel; and
▪ Developing approaches to resolve asylum cases outside of the court system,
such as by allowing USCIS Asylum Officers to fully adjudicate cases when conducting Credible Fear Interviews to prevent referring more cases into the backlogged courts.
o Personally lead a public-private initiative to bring humanitarian resources to the border.
● Rescind the discriminatory travel bans, which defy our nation’s Constitution and values.
● Immediately remove the fear of deportation for Dreamers and their parents and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) beneficiaries, and begin work towards a permanent legislative solution.
● Refocus on smart security. The current administration is distracting CBP and other law enforcement personnel from focusing on actual threats and undermining their efficacy by pulling resources away from them – all in pursuit of a wall that we do not need, does not work, and will not make us safer. As President, Beto will:
o Immediatelyhaltworkontheborderwall–andhisfirstbudget,andeverybudget, will include zero dollars for this unnecessary wall;
o Immediatelybooststaffingtoexpandinspections,reducewaittimes,andincrease our capacity to detect illicit drugs – for instance by pursuing a targeted two-prong strategy that focuses on fentanyl shipments coming through our ports and our mail system – and other contraband, as well as modernizing our ports; and
o Immediately prioritize cracking down on smugglers and traffickers who exploit children and families by working with our regional partners.

IN OUR OWN IMAGE
The following are first-hand testimonials from immigrants in El Paso and across America
Daisy, Dreamer
El Paso, TX
“I came to this country when I was under two years old and have been here for 21 years. I have two younger brothers – one is a United States citizen and one is DACA, like me. I’ve been here longer than I can remember, but because of my status I couldn’t qualify for federal loans to help pay for community college. So I worked two jobs – one full-time job and one part- time job at the same time as taking classes year-round to get my associate’s degree, and now I’m enrolled in the University of Texas, El Paso, where I’m studying computer science and want to go into cybersecurity. After I graduate, I’m thinking about maybe trying to support the US military in cybersecurity or networking – but I can’t work on a base if I don’t have legal immigration status.
“All my friends and memories are here in America. Everything I’ve worked for and contributed to is here and I want to continue building my life and career in the only place I’ve known to be home.”
David, Dreamer
El Paso, TX
“I arrived in the United States when I was 13 years old with my mother after we lost our home during Hurricane Wilma. Since I’ve come here, I’ve always pushed myself to be the best I can be. I’ve worked hard in school, pursued my passion in math and science, and now I’m studying computer science at UTEP while also working at a solar company. When I graduate, I want to use my degree to better this country and society.
Some of modern society’s most important inventions are the result of immigrants – such as Google and Tesla. This innovation only happened because people came to this country and were given a chance. America should embrace the investments, benefits and diversity that immigrants bring, because we can help this country reach its greatest potential.”
II. STRENGTHENING OUR FAMILIES, COMMUNITIES, AND ECONOMY BY REWRITING OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS IN OUR OWN IMAGE
As President, Beto will push to rewrite our nation’s immigration and naturalization laws in our own image. These laws have not been meaningfully modernized in decades, despite the efforts of multiple administrations. But we have the chance to chart a new course that more fully vindicates the promise of this nation of immigrants. Beto will work with Congress to achieve that vision. He will reunite families and ensure they have a chance to contribute more to our economy and our communities – and pursue the American Dream. He will put workers and employers on a level playing field to, together, tap into the opportunity immigration presents for our economic growth and shared prosperity. And he will do that while boosting the security and functionality of our borders.
This is not just right but also essential to our shared prosperity. Immigrants from every corner of the world – those who came here on student visas and those seeking refuge from persecution – have been a key driver of our economic growth. They have been responsible for nearly one-third of all new small business, one-fifth of all Fortune 500 companies. And achieving immigration reform will be critical to unlocking our future success – creating at least 3 million jobs over the next decade, adding $2 billion to state and local tax revenues each year, and cutting the deficit by at least $1 trillion over the next 20 years.
Naturalization, too, promises economic gains. A recent study of 21 U.S. cities found that if all eligible immigrant residents were to naturalize, incomes would increase by $5.7 billion,

homeownership would rise by over 45,000, and tax revenues would grow $2 billion. The same study showed GDP would grow by $37 to 52 billion per year if half of those eligible nationwide naturalized.
In his first hundred days, Beto will put the full weight of the presidency behind passing legislation that:
● Creates an earned pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people that is more efficient than previous proposals and includes an immediate path for Dreamers and beneficiaries of programs like the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) programs.
● Strengthens our families, communities, and economy by prioritizing family unity – a hallmark of our best traditions – through provisions that:
o Reuniteimmigrantfamiliesseparatedbylengthyvisabacklogs;
o Revisepreferencecategoriesandcapstoprioritizefamilyunity;and o Removebarstore-entryandstatusadjustmenttosupportfamilies.
● Establishes a new, first-of-its-kind community-based visa category. Beto’s proposal will create a brand new category whereby communities and congregations can welcome refugees through community sponsorship of visas. This program will supplement the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which will be rebuilt and restored to align with America’s tradition of welcoming vulnerable refugees from around the world.
● Increase the visa caps so that we match our economic opportunities and needs – for work, education, investment, and innovation – to the number of people we allow into this country. This also means legislation that will:
o Ensure that industries that depend on immigrant labor have access to a program that allows workers to legally come here and legally return to their home country with appropriate labor and mobility protections;
o Address the green-card backlog and provide opportunities for those awaiting resolution to work and contribute, while immediately recapturing the over 300,000 green cards that have gone unused due to bureaucratic delays to support our high-growth industries of the future;
o Promote STEM education by granting foreign-born students more flexibility to stay in the U.S. and gain employment after graduating; and
o Allowforeign-bornentrepreneursandU.S.patentholdersthechancetostayinthe United States to grow their business, create jobs and raise families that will go on to enrich our country.

● Make naturalization easier for the nearly 9 million immigrants who are currently eligible for citizenship. If we are to reestablish our reputation as a nation that welcomes immigrants, we must make it easier for those already here to become full-fledged citizens. This means pursuing legislation that:
o Makesnaturalizationfreeforallwhomeetthelegalrequirementsforcitizenship;
o Eliminatesapplicationbacklogs;
o Reforms the application process so that individuals are mailed a pre-filled application form as soon as they meet the legal requirements for citizenship;
o Increaseslegalservicesfundingforthosewhoneedit;and
o Establishesequaltreatmentofallcitizens–naturalizedandnative-born–rejecting the current administration’s effort to create new barriers to naturalization and stoke fears around de-naturalization.
● Bolster security and functionality of the border where trade and travel occur. Beto will draw on his lived experience at the border to push for legislation that actually supports our law enforcement and our border communities in advancing the nation’s security and protection from all threats. This includes three steps:
o Increasing Personnel: Immediately stop the smuggling of drugs and prevent human trafficking across the border by hiring, training, and assigning additional CBP personnel at land border crossings;
o Strengthening Infrastructure: Investing in smart, long-term border security by improving existing ports of entry and constructing new ones, investing in evidence-based, cost-effective technology, and supporting federal grant programs that provide resources to both state and local law enforcement and our border communities; and
o AddressingFailures:Ensuringthatweremainanationoflawsbyaddressingvisa overstays through better tracking of and notification to visa holders and fully harmonizing our entry-exit systems with Mexico and Canada.
● Ensure transparency and accountability in law enforcement, including ICE and CBP. Beto will also continue to champion and build upon his previous proposals to:
o CreateanindependentBorderOversightCommission,anOmbudsman,andBorder Community Liaison office;
o Create a uniform process for tracking and preventing migrant deaths along the border; and

o Increase accountability from ICE and CBP personnel through improved training and continued education courses.
IN OUR OWN IMAGE
The following are first-hand testimonials from immigrants in El Paso and across America
Jose Ochoa, business owner
Santa Teresa, NM
“I was born and raised in Mexico and studied engineering. In 2003, I moved to Juarez and worked for multiple global companies in their engineering and packaging operations, but after three years, I knew I wanted to start my own company. One of my colleagues and I teamed up and we opened our own businesses – one in Juarez and one in El Paso – embracing the binational relationship and trade partnership between the United States and Mexico. Today, that company employs nine people in El Paso, and I recently started my third business in America: a consumer electronics corporation established in New Mexico with an e- commerce presence and a physical store in Texas.
“In 2017, our El Paso business, Global Containers & Custom Packaging, was named Exporter of the Year by the El Paso Small Business Administration. Small businesses are the top generators of our economy – we want to generate value, impact our communities and keep employing more people. And if I can help other entrepreneurs and immigrants to be successful here in America – that’s what makes me happy.”
Jose David Burgos, MD, doctor and business owner
El Paso, TX
“I was born in Venezuela as the son of Colombian immigrants. I studied medicine in Venezuela, but because of the political climate there, I came to the United States in 2005, enrolled in school and started preparing for my medical boards while doing research at the University of South Florida. I then had the chance to do my residency at Texas Tech, where I also worked as a professor of internal medicine and after that I started working at the University Medical Center in El Paso. Now, I serve as Medical Director at UMC and have opened two medical clinics in the area, including an urgent care facility. My family also recently opened a restaurant in El Paso.
“Both my wife and I are immigrants and we both had the opportunity to become American citizens. It was a lengthy and painful process, but I am grateful that we have been able to make a positive impact in our community and bring positive change to the area. I am living proof the American Dream is alive, and now I am able to support and encourage other hardworking physicians who are looking for the same chance.”
III. RESTORING OUR STANDING AND ENSURING REGIONAL SECURITY BY BEING A PARTNER FOR PROSPERITY AND SECURITY IN LATIN AMERICA
Consistent with this broad vision, Beto’s plan strengthens our partnership with our neighbors throughout the Western Hemisphere and will be implemented alongside partners in the Northern Triangle and across the region. His foreign policy will increase our engagement within the hemisphere, elevate the importance of Latin America, refocus on supporting democracy and human rights, end our failed war on drugs, and invest in reducing violence and combating climate change, because the only path to regional security runs through a more democratic and prosperous Latin America.
● Join with the people of the Northern Triangle to fight violence and poverty and bolster our shared security and prosperity. Beto will bring a whole of government approach to our investment in the Northern Triangle, recognizing that what we have done in the past is not enough. We must convene our regional partners to do more, faster, if we are serious about reversing the instability that drives forced migration. This means:

o ConveninganewandimprovedPartnershipforProsperityandSecuritybycalling upon our allies and friends across the Americas to form a regional alliance dedicated to creating stability and economic prosperity across the continent, beginning in the most precarious countries;
o Investing $5 billion in the region primarily through non-governmental organizations, community groups (such as Municipal Crime Prevention Committees) and congregations, and public-private partnerships, while galvanizing new financial support from Canada, Mexico, and other international partners, and transforming the development approach that these resources advance, by
▪ Supporting community-based violence prevention strategies and encouraging an end to militarized public security and the global war on drugs – which has become a war on people and fails to recognize the real threat of addiction;
▪ Promoting democratic infrastructure, labor rights, civil rights, and human rights;
▪ Supporting the growth of small-scale farming and access to markets;
▪ Providing agricultural technical support to increase adaptation to climate
change and improve the use of natural resources;
▪ Elevating job, training, and educational opportunities for youth;
▪ Strengthening strategies to address the specific needs of women and girls;
▪ Improving access to health care, clean air, and clean water; and
▪ Supporting adoption of crop insurance and catastrophic insurance, especially as a powerful tool in the face of a changing climate.
● Address systematic impunity, corruption, and weak institutions. Beto will also be firm with the economic and governing elites of the Northern Triangle, who must do their part. For too long these elites have benefited from the status quo. Real change will require their full engagement and, as President, Beto will demand it. That means if they want access to the United States – to do business, to vacation, to send their kids to college – they must commit to ending corruption and self-dealing. They must pay their taxes and invest in their broader communities. They must hold their elected officials accountable.
● Strengthen Mexico and Latin America’s capacity to contribute to regional security, by supporting the United Nations’ Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) work and the development of strong asylum and refugee protection systems in Mexico and across the region, to manage migration flows from the Northern Triangle, specifically by:

o WorkingwithUNHCRtoexpandthecapacityofMexico’srefugeesystemandto collaborate with Mexico on asylum seekers who are both traveling to and through Mexico; and
o Launching a regional resettlement initiative, including building a safe and comprehensive repatriation and reintegration program.
IN OUR OWN IMAGE
The following are first-hand testimonials from immigrants in El Paso and across America
Evelyn, survivor of human trafficking
Silver Spring, MD
“I came to this country when I was 9 years old. I had no idea that I didn’t come here legally, and I was forced into modern-day slavery for the next seven years. With the help a local church and law enforcement, I was able to escape the system I was forced into, get a visa, and I eventually became a naturalized citizen. I got my GED, went to community college, saved money, and in 2016 received my Bachelor’s Degree. Becoming a naturalized citizen enabled me to do more work helping survivors of human trafficking find jobs and start new lives for themselves. It also enabled me to travel across the United States and abroad to educate people about human trafficking and how many people who come to this country and don’t have legal status are victims of violence or horrible situations often without anywhere to turn.”
Carlos G. Maldonado, J.D., immigration lawyer
El Paso, TX
“I came to the United States from Quito, Ecuador when I was 16 without knowing a word of English. I had always wanted to become either a doctor or a lawyer, but after navigating the difficult and complicated immigration system myself, I knew I wanted to go into law to help others have the chance to start and build their lives in America too.
“It took me almost 18 years to finally be able to become a United States citizen. For the first 13 years I was here – even though I had finished law school and was here legally – I never once left the country because I feared I wouldn’t be able to return or that it would slow down my immigration process. I finally became a U.S. citizen in 2018 – and that day was the best day of my life. It was honestly a dream come true. I was relieved, happy and thankful all at the same time. I am so honored today to be able to say that I am an American, and I’m honored that through my work every day I am able to help others navigate the immigration process and have a chance at the American Dream too.”

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Immigration cannot be successfully addressed or reformed without correcting the current unconstitutional and totally dysfunctional Immigration Court system and replacing it with an independent Article I Immigration Court that complies with our Constitution and guarantees constitutional due process as well as efficient, professional, de-politicized judicial and docket administration.

As our current failed Immigration Court system proves every day, all of our legal and constitutional rights are meaningless without a fair, independent, and impartial forum in which to vindicate them. Injustice to one is injustice to all!

PWS

06-01-19

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