"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen Announces Historic Action to Confront Illegal Immigration
U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent this bulletin at 12/20/2018 10:42 AM EST
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 20, 2018
Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen Announces Historic Action to Confront Illegal Immigration
Announces Migration Protection Protocols
WASHINGTON – Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen announced historic action to confront the illegal immigration crisis facing the United States. Effective immediately, the United States will begin the process of invoking Section 235(b)(2)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Under the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), individuals arriving in or entering the United States from Mexico—illegally or without proper documentation—may be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings.
“Today we are announcing historic measures to bring the illegal immigration crisis under control,” said Secretary Nielsen. “We will confront this crisis head on, uphold the rule of law, and strengthen our humanitarian commitments. Aliens trying to game the system to get into our country illegally will no longer be able to disappear into the United States, where many skip their court dates. Instead, they will wait for an immigration court decision while they are in Mexico. ‘Catch and release’ will be replaced with ‘catch and return.’ In doing so, we will reduce illegal migration by removing one of the key incentives that encourages people from taking the dangerous journey to the United States in the first place. This will also allow us to focus more attention on those who are actually fleeing persecution.
“Let me be clear: we will undertake these steps consistent with all domestic and international legal obligations, including our humanitarian commitments. We have notified the Mexican government of our intended actions. In response, Mexico has made an independent determination that they will commit to implement essential measures on their side of the border. We expect affected migrants will receive humanitarian visas to stay on Mexican soil, the ability to apply for work, and other protections while they await a U.S. legal determination.”
Background
Illegal aliens have exploited asylum loopholes at an alarming rate. Over the last five years, DHS has seen a 2000 percent increase in aliens claiming credible fear (the first step to asylum), as many know it will give them an opportunity to stay in our country, even if they do not actually have a valid claim to asylum. As a result, the United States has an overwhelming asylum backlog of more than 786,000 pending cases. Last year alone the number of asylum claims soared 67 percent compared to the previous year. Most of these claims are not meritorious—in fact nine out of ten asylum claims are not granted by a federal immigration judge. However, by the time a judge has ordered them removed from the United States, many have vanished.
Process
Aliens trying to enter the U.S. to claim asylum will no longer be released into our country, where they often disappear before a court can determine their claim’s merits.
Instead, those aliens will be processed by DHS and given a “Notice to Appear” for their immigration court hearing.
While they wait in Mexico, the Mexican government has made its own determination to provide such individuals humanitarian visas, work authorization, and other protections. Aliens will have access to immigration attorneys and to the U.S. for their court hearings.
Aliens whose claims are upheld by U.S. judges will be allowed in. Those without valid claims will be deported to their home countries.Anticipated Benefits
As we implement, illegal immigration and false asylum claims are expected to decline.
Aliens will not be able to disappear into U.S. before court decision.
More attention can be focused on more quickly assisting legitimate asylum-seekers, as fraudsters are disincentivized from making the journey.
Precious border security personnel and resources will be freed up to focus on protecting our territory and clearing the massive asylum backlog.
Vulnerable populations will get the protection they need while they await a determination in Mexico.
Thanks to “Our Leader” Judge Jeffrey Chase for making this happen!
Retired Immigration Judges and Former Member of the Board of Immigration Appeals Statement on Grace v. Whitaker
December 19, 2018
Today’s decision in Grace v. Whitaker provides a lesson in what it truly means to return to the rule of law. In a 107-page decision, Judge Sullivan reminded the current administration of the following truths: that more than 30 years ago (in a decision successfully argued by our former colleague,Immigration Judge Dana Marks), our nation’s highest court recognized that the purpose of the 1980 Refugee Act was to honor our international treaty obligation towards refugees, and that the language of that treaty was meant to be interpreted flexibly, to adapt to changes over time in the agents, victims, and means of persecution, and to be applied fairly to all. The decision affirms that our asylum laws are meant to be applied on an individual, case-by-case basis and not according to a predetermined categorical rule. The decision wisely considered the interpretation of the UNHCR Handbook, and afforded it greater weight than the personal agenda of a former Attorney General in determining our legal obligations to afford protection to refugees who are victims of domestic violence.
The decision imposes a permanent injunction on DHS from applying the awful decision of the former Attorney General in Matter of A-B- in its credible fear determinations. This reasoned decision will prevent this administration from continuing to deny women credibly fearing rape, domestic violence, beatings, shootings, and death in their countries of origin from having the right to their day in court. We applaud Judge Sullivan’s just decision, as well as the truly heroic efforts of the lawyers at the ACLU and Center for Gender and Refugee Studies that made such outcome possible. We also thank all of the attorneys, organizations, judges, experts, and others whose contributions lent invaluable support to this effort.
Hon. Steven R. Abrams
Hon. Sarah M. Burr
Hon. Teofilo Chapa
Hon. George T. Chew
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Cecelia M. Espenoza
Hon. Noel Ferris
Hon. John F. Gossart, Jr.
Hon. Rebecca Jamil
Hon. William Joyce
Hon. Carol King
Hon. Elizabeth A. Lamb
Hon. Margaret McManus
Hon. Charles Pazar
Hon. George Proctor
Hon. John Richardson
Hon. Lory D. Rosenberg
Hon. Susan Roy
Hon. Paul W. Schmidt
Hon. Polly A. Webber
**********************************************
Thanks to Jeffrey and the rest of the “Gang” for speaking out so promptly and forcefully!
After the death of seven-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, the US Department of Homeland Security asked parents to “not put themselves or their children at risk attempting to enter illegally”. Instead they urged: “Please present yourselves at a port of entry and seek to enter legally and safely.”
But what the US authorities failed to acknowledge after the young girl’s death just after she was taken into US custody, was just how difficult it is to ask for asylum at any port of entry into the US along the sprawling border with Mexico.
Those seeking asylum – like Guatemalan migrants Jakelin and her father – face a difficult task in actually making a claim, something that often forces migrants to instead risk their lives in illegal treks across the desert. This is especially true at the more than 40 smaller border crossings, such as the one nearest to where the Maquins crossed.
Advocates say it has become increasingly and deliberately difficult to claim asylum at these remote spots. Migrants are often illegally turned away, despite a constant threat of violence from drug gangs, traffickers, smugglers and even the local police. They say that it is only when local activists try to exert pressure on border officials that asylum claims are logged. When no one is watching, it becomes almost impossible.
Advertisement
Just take Alberto’s example. If Alberto, who does not want his real name used out of a fear of retribution, had known the extent of cartel control in the small Mexican border town before he showed up there one month ago, he says he never would have come.
“I would have stayed in Mexico City and asked for asylum there,” he said. But by the time he was kidnapped, thrown out of a truck with a bag over his head, and told he would be killed if the men with guns ever saw him again, it was too late. Alberto had to seek asylum immediately.
Alberto spent a sleepless week at a northern Mexican shelter, trying to figure out how to present an asylum claim. He heard from a Nicaraguan man that the nearest US port of entry, Lukeville, was not accepting claims and that border agents had thrown out the man by his shirt collar. But Alberto tried anyway. On 28 November, he presented himself to make a claim with accompaniment from the shelter. He too was turned away, after officials told him Lukeville was not a 24-hour port of entry and despite his fears he could be killed for hanging around on the border.
A sign warns against illegal smuggling and immigration near Lukeville, Arizona. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Antelope Wells, the closest port of entry to where Jakelin and her father crossed, receives possibly the least amount of traffic of any port of entry across the US-Mexican border. “There is literally nothing there,” said Nia Rucker of the New Mexico American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Those who monitor the border describe just how hard making a claim there can be. Juan Ortiz, a University of Arizona PhD candidate, took the four-hour drive from Tucson on 17 December to see Antelope Wells for himself. The two border officers on duty that day told him they would discourage people from seeking asylum there at a port with such limited capacity.
Experts and advocates up and down the border share a similar skepticism of small border posts. Though US border officials say asylum seekers are being accepted at all border ports of entry, activists who have tested the system paint a similar picture of US officials unwilling or unable to accept asylum claims – no matter that the administration is asking migrants to present themselves there.
Francisco Lemus of the Aguilas del Desierto was told at Tecate, California, that claims could only be processed in San Ysidro or Calexico. Christina Patiño Houle of the Equal Voices Network said Progreso, Texas, had not been accepting claims, nor had Roma, Texas, last time she checked. Instead they were sending asylum seekers to Hidalgo, Texas, the border town to Reynosa, which has been dubbed “the migrant kidnapping capital” of Mexico.
At other small posts such as Sasabe, Arizona, and Del Rio, Texas, local advocates had not heard of any migrants recently seeking asylum.
Activists with legal not-for-profits simply do not have the resources to consistently monitor these remote outposts.
Mayor Ramón Rodríguez Prieto of Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua, has not yet even tried to pressure officials across the border in Columbus, New Mexico, to accept asylum claims. Three weeks ago three separate families showed up to his small municipal shelter reporting that they had been turned away.
Further south, in Piedras Negras, Catholic priest José Guadalupe Valdés Alvarado, or “Padre Pepe”, feels as if he himself is responsible for keeping the Eagle Pass, Texas, port of entry open. He runs the migrant shelter there and some days only one person is let in, others up to 10.
Border agents have told Valdés Alvarado that whether the port of entry accepts asylum seekers depends on whether he maintains order, that no one storms the wall or tries to cross the river. So the priest works hard, educating migrants on credible fears, pre-screening them before taking their names. The border agents’ word is not a guaranteed assurance, though: as an approaching caravan of migrants began to dominate headlines before the US midterm elections Eagle Pass stopped accepting asylum claims for the better part of a week.
Activists supporting the port of entry between Agua Prieta and Douglas, Arizona, also felt the impact of the caravan. The small, under-the-radar port had shuttled families with young children up to 10 at a time. But the number of asylum seekers received dropped substantially in mid-November. And when they began to bring a group of Central American transgender women to present themselves for asylum, the number of accepted claims lowered to just two per day.
Local attorney Perla Ramos said that all of a sudden, asylum seekers had to wait all night outside to enter the facility. Some women became ill, others got sick in the cold desert air.
Ramos isn’t afraid of Douglas closing its doors entirely. Groups on either side of the border have strong connections between churches, legal clinics and other solidarity organizations. They will try to keep a trickle of claims flowing.
But elsewhere on the border, Alberto has moved on. With outside support, Alberto was safely transported to a larger port of entry with legal teams, clergy, shelter coordinators and others ensuring that asylum claims there were being accepted. He was placed on a list, his number was called, and he is now awaiting an asylum hearing in detention.
He hopes it will work: “I mean, if I don’t get in now, I’m going to have to try again.” He admitted he feels that he has no other options. “If I didn’t die this time, I probably will next time. I don’t want that. It’s just really hard,” he said.
**********************************************
Where’s the accountability when the Government is the one breaking the law? Given the advance intelligence, the amount of attention on the border, and the obscene amounts of money wasted by this Administration on “publicity stunts” like “troops to the border,” pursuing frivolous litigation, abusive and useless prosecutions, child separation, unnecessary detention, and aimlessly placing cases of immigrants who aren’t going anywhere on already overloaded court dockets, (not to mention the bogus “Wall” a/k/a “Trump’s Folly”) the processing “problems” could be solved.
What’s it going to take to make this Administration obey the law?
Former USBP Agent Francisco Cantu writes in the LA Times:
Ever since the U.S. Border Patrol admitted that Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl seeking asylum with her father, had died in their custody, government officials have been trying to deflect blame for her death.
What is clear so far, according to news reports, is that Jakelin and her father turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents on Dec. 7 along with 163 other migrants in the New Mexico desert. According to a Department of Homeland Security incident report, they were screened at a remote substation and found to be in good condition. DHS cannot confirm whether Jakelin consumed food or water at the facility, but eight hours later, she became “feverish and vomiting” on a transport bus headed for the Lordsburg Border Patrol station. She was met by Border Patrol emergency medical technicians who twice revived her, recorded her temperature at 105.9 degrees and called for a helicopter to El Paso’s Providence Children’s Hospital, where she died about 27 hours later.
The U.S. government claims Jakelin had journeyed for days through the desert without food and water and was beyond help before she was taken into custody. However, her father says he saw to it that she was eating and drinking. The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics says her death was without doubt preventable. But Department of Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen blames the victim in this “heartwrenching” story: “This family,” she said on Friday, “chose to cross illegally.”
A Customs and Border Protection spokesman insisted to the Washington Post that “Border Patrol agents took every possible step to save the child’s life under the most trying of circumstances.” That may well be technically true. But even if individual Lordsburg agents rushed to save Jakelin’s life, it won’t erase another truth: The institutional culture of the Border Patrol regularly dismisses even the most basic needs of detained migrants.
In early 2009, when I arrived at my first Border Patrol duty station in Arizona, I was assigned to a training unit and placed under the supervision of senior agents selected to coach newcomers like me. When I read about Jakelin’s death, I couldn’t help but recall the night our training unit first apprehended a group of migrants.
My memories from this night are not precise. I remember the group of migrants was small, maybe eight to 10 people, all of them adult males. We picked them up in the open desert not far from the area’s lone highway, and I can no longer recall how long they had been walking or how many days they might have been without food or water.
What I do remember with certainty is what happened at the processing center. The men had noticed that I spoke fluent Spanish and asked me for water. I went to a nearby storeroom, grabbed a case of bottled water, and was about to walk through the door to the processing room when one of my training agents blocked the way.
What are you doing? she asked me. I told her I was bringing water to the group we brought in. They’ll be fine, she said, come join us in the computer room. But they asked for water, I said, gesturing at the door. It wouldn’t have taken more than a second for me to drop off the water.
Her face and tone changed. Leave it, she ordered, “They’ll live.”
As strange as it may sound, I don’t remember if I obeyed her or what I ended up doing with the water, but I never forgot the message I was given that night: Don’t dare be soft.
Senior agents like her lamented the end of the “old patrol” when migrants weren’t so “coddled” and agents could get away with “tuning up” detainees who got out of line. Callousness toward migrants is evident even in the language agents use to refer to them: “aliens,” “illegals,” “bodies” or “toncs” (a term with disputed origins, which some say means “temporarily out of native country,” though others say it alludes to the sound of a Maglite hitting a migrant’s skull).
As agents-in-training, we were taught to carry ourselves as hardened law enforcers and to treat migrants as lawbreakers. We were told to regard migrant requests with suspicion — if they asked for something or complained, they were likely trying to take advantage of us. We were meant to offer our captives the bare minimum and pass them on like a hot potato — field agents passed migrants to transport agents, who passed them to processing agents, who passed them to bus contractors, who passed them to sector headquarters, where they would be immediately deported or thrust into the immigration detention system.
After more than a year of working as a field agent, I signed up for emergency medical technician training. When I was called to help, agents usually described a migrant’s situation with dismissal and annoyance: This one keeps complaining about blisters, this one claims she needs medication, this one won’t shut up about seeing a doctor. Migrants, the thinking went, always bore responsibility for their own misfortune — an attitude echoed in Nielsen’s insistence last week that Jakelin’s family “chose to cross illegally.”
There will be an investigation into Jakelin’s death, but in broad terms its causes are clear enough: heedlessness, a lack of compassion, poor accountability at the border. Since January 2010, San Diego’s Southern Border Communities Coalition has cataloged at least 81 deaths at the hands of U.S. border agents, and since 2000, more than 6,000 have died as a result of “deterrence” policies that force migrants to cross in remote and dangerous areas, like the one Jakelin and her father passed through.
What happened to Jakelin is not an aberration, but rather the predictable outgrowth of the dehumanizing practices that define U.S. border policy. It will not be enough to conduct an audit of the Lordsburg Border Patrol station and shuffle its hierarchy, or to increase the ranks of Border Patrol EMTs and give them pediatric training. We must demand, instead, that the entire culture of cruelty that underlies our border enforcement system be remade.
Francisco Cantú was as an agent for the U.S. Border Patrol from 2008-12. He is the author of “The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border.”
********************************************
I represented the Border Patrol for a number of years at the “Legacy INS” when I was the Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel. Among other things, I taught Search and Seizure Law at the Border Patrol Academy and visited a number of Border Patrol Stations. I rode along on patrol, flew in helicopters, walked the border at night, even went off the tower on a zip line during one basic training session at Ft. Polk.
Overall, I enjoyed working with the agents. I thought they were dedicated and hard-working, doing a largely thankless job for which they received insufficient salary and credit, and overall doing it well. I learned from hearing their stories and questions based on “law in action.”
One of the things that the late INS General Counsel “Iron Mike” Inman and I achieved was starting a “Sector Counsel” program in some of the busier sectors so that the agents could get some “on site” legal advice and assistance dealing with U.S. Attorneys and Federal Courts.
That’s not to say that there were no “bad moments.” I did notice an overall “lost battalion” mentality, particularly among some of the older supervisors. Their attitude toward me and my colleagues in the Legal Program probably fluctuated with how much trouble they were in and how much they needed our help to bail them out.
I remember one particularly tense moment visiting a station where some of the officers were under investigation for Civil Rights violations. I accepted their offer of a cup of coffee. When the agent left the room to get it, my friend and then Western Regional Counsel the late Bill Odencrantz whispered: “I wouldn’t drink that if I were you, Schmidt.”
I also recognized that patterns of behavior were probably different when “visitors from headquarters” were there. Undoubtedly, we saw and heard what they wanted us to see and hear when we were riding in the patrol cars, flying in helicopters, or looking through surplus Vietnam era “infrared night scopes” at the folks crossing the border. And, I do remember hearing the second of the two definitions offered by Cantu for the term “toncs.” I think it actually came up in connection with one of the internal investigations in which I was involved.
As I judge, I tended to view the Forms I-213, “Reports of Deportable Alien,” from CBP with “healthy skepticism,” knowing the pressures and conditions under which they were prepared. I also observed over time that many of them said the same things in the same words, much like the “canned paragraphs” that my colleague the late Judge Lauri Steven Filppu used to rail against during my time at the BIA.
As with ICE, in the future there needs to be better professional leadership and training at CBP, as well as a more focused mission. “Culture change” is critical to an effective, cost-efficient, humane, and professional immigration enforcement strategy. However, my experience is that such “culture change,” while not impossible, is a “hard nut to crack,” even under the best of circumstances.
It won’t be achieved simply by “messages from on high.” And, it certainly isn’t going to come under a leader who constantly sends racially charged xenophobic messages and encourages false narratives, dehumanization, and White Nationalism.
Brianna Rennix & Nathan Robinson write in The Guardian:
There are still unknown facts about the death of Jakelin Caal, the seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in the custody of US border patrol. Jakelin became seriously ill while being bussed to a detention center located about 90 miles from the New Mexican desert where she and her father were picked up. US officials have blamed Jakelin’s father, insisting that Jakelin had not had food or water for days when she arrived and that Jakelin’s father signed a form asserting she was healthy when she arrived.
Jakelin’s father has insisted that this is false – that his daughter had been eating and drinking, that they hadn’t undertaken the kind of long desert crossing portrayed in the press, and that the form the US cites was in English, a language he does not speak.
We do know that Jakelin did not receive treatment for 90 minutes after she began showing symptoms. In the coming days, more information about Jakelin’s death may emerge that will allow us to determine what US officials knew, whether they reacted quickly or not, and whether the medical care she received was adequate.
But these questions are almost secondary, because US responsibility for the suffering of migrant children is already very clear. When asked about Jakelin, a White House spokesman replied: “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country? No.” This attempt to shift blame on to desperate parents ignores critical facts.
First, border patrol, aware that the desert is more difficult to monitor, deliberately seeks to make the desert crossing more deadly for migrants. They have been repeatedly caught destroying stashes of water left in the desert by humanitarian groups, and an investigation by No More Deaths concluded that this was “not the deviant behavior of a few rogue border patrol agents, [but] a systemic feature of enforcement practices in the borderlands”.
An ex-border patrol agent has written about how he once gave water to a four-year-old boy after he found a family lost in the desert. A fellow officer arriving on the scene then kicked the jug out of the child’s hands, saying, “There’s no amnesty here.”
Second, it’s impossible to look at migration without its context. Caal was an indigenous Mayan who came from severe poverty in the village of Raxruhá. It’s worth remembering that the United States has been a direct cause of the conditions of indigenous Guatemalans over the last half century. Many Americans have forgotten the 1954 coup in which the US overthrew the country’s reformist government, leading to decades of US-backed authoritarian rule. They have also forgotten this country’s role in providing financial and military support for a genocidal government that massacred Guatemala’s indigenous population by the tens of thousands during that country’s civil war. Contemporary conditions in Guatemala are in significant part our responsibility.
The United States has actually made it more likely that immigrants will choose to brave the desert, by closing down other options. During the overland journey from Central America to Mexico, many people are beaten, robbed, kidnapped and sexually assaulted on the journey, by everyone from cartel members to Mexican immigration police. It is, indeed, a dangerous journey to bring a child on, but there are often few other options even for those who wish to legally seek asylum.
The US has imposed massive carrier fees on airlines who allow people to board without visas, even if they are doing so for the purpose of entering the asylum process. And the Trump administration, for all that it performatively wrings its hands over the welfare of children, has also systematically cancelled the few existing programs that allowed a small number of endangered minors to come to the United States to seek asylum without needing to make the perilous trip through Mexico.
Men crossing with their children, as Jakelin’s father did, face a particularly difficult set of options. There are not dedicated facilities to detain dads together with their kids, and separations of fathers from children happened under both Obama and Trump. Last year, a father hanged himself in his cell after his child was ripped from his arms.
It’s difficult for migrants to obtain reliable information about their options, because the government, for political reasons, publicly denies that it continues to “catch and release” migrants at the border, or that it is continuing to separate families. (In reality, both practices are happening regularly.) Migrants rely on word-of-mouth intelligence, or the questionable say-so of coyotes, to understand what will happen to them when they cross the border. A dad who wanted to avoid any chance of being separated from his child might be advised to cross at a remote location where border patrol was less likely to catch them.
Finally, while Jakelin Caal fell ill on a bus and not in a DHS holding facility, it’s worth mentioning that conditions in DHS custody are truly terrible. A child died earlier this year shortly after leaving the South Texas Family Residential Center, where hundreds of women and children – including pregnant women and people with serious health conditions – are confined in close quarters, more than an hour’s drive from any hospital that can provide specialist care. At border holding cells, adults and children are regularly forced to sleep on hard concrete floors, drink contaminated water, sit in their own filth, and endure physical and psychological abuse from border guards. The very facility where Jakelin was held had previously been cited for contaminated water.
Jakelin Caal’s case shows the disturbing human reality of Central American migration. But far beyond her tragic death, US policies and practices continue to contribute to the pain and misery of tens of thousands of desperate families.
Brianna Rennix is an immigration lawyer and an editor at Current Affairs. Nathan Robinson is the editor of Current Affairs
ON FRIDAY, after a 7-year-old girl died in Border Patrol custody, a White House spokesman called on Congress to “disincentivize” Central American migrants from undertaking the perilous northward trek to the United States. In fact, there is just such a plan in the works, one already presented to President Trump, that has the makings of an effective long-term strategy for reducing the migrant flow, as well as tensions at the border. Mr. Trump would be wise to embrace it.
The plan is the brainchild of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was sworn into office Dec. 1. He has proposed what amounts to a Marshall Plan for Central America — $30 billion over five years in job-creating economic development assistance. The details remain unknown, but the idea is eminently sensible: Along with insecurity and gang violence, the major driver of migration from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala is a massive opportunity deficit.
Mr. López Obrador outlined his vision to Mr. Trump on the phone recently and solicited U.S. participation. No word yet from the White House on the president’s response. However, incensed by the convoys of Central American migrants that made their way to the southern border this fall, he has specifically threatened to close down the border and sever existing aid to Central America, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars annually. And his usual instinct on foreign aid is: Why should we?
As it happens, there’s a compelling answer to that question, which the president himself has thrust into a spotlight by pushing to have Central American asylum seekers remain in Mexico while their cases work their way through U.S. courts. If Mr. Trump signs on to Mr. López Obrador’s vision for reviving Central America with an ambitious aid plan — one that would also serve U.S. interest as a means to “disincentivize” migration — that could be just the sweetener Mr. López Obrador needs to go along with Mr. Trump’s asylum plan.
This could be the start of a beautiful friendship, or at least a constructive alliance, between a pair of populist presidents who happen to be ideological opposites but whose goals on Central American migration should be aligned. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. López Obrador has his own reasons to discourage migrants who, in the case of the thousands who have reached Tijuana with the caravans, have become an increasingly unpopular local irritant. And even before the caravans, those who traversed Mexico were a magnet for exploitation and crime at the hands of human traffickers and other predators.
Hundreds of miles of existing barriers at the border haven’t stopped the flow of migrants, and neither will Mr. Trump’s wall, if it is ever built. The most effective long-term way to tackle the migrant problem is to do so at the source, in Central America. Mr. López Obrador is on the right track in grasping that. Mr. Trump would do well to join him, and strike a deal that would advance both leaders’ agendas.
*************************************************
Attacking the problem at its source seems to be a win-win for everyone, including migrants, most of whom probably would prefer to stay if their native countries if they could live in relative safety, support their families, and see a future for their kids. Pretty much what all of us want. They could probably get some help and support from the UNHCR, which also strongly favors resolving humanitarian refugee situations near the area they originally arose.
This fall, after national outrage over the Trump White House’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy forced it to begrudgingly wind down the practice of separating families at the border, administration officials began looking for a new method of implementing xenophobia as official government policy. They found it, apparently, by recruiting volunteers to serve as temporary guardians of unaccompanied minors—and then, if volunteers’ background checks indicated that they were undocumented, detaining those people and preparing them for deportation.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 170 individuals who offered to open up their homes—again, to children, many of whom were in federal custody because of the aforementioned separation policy, and who were otherwise forced to live in tent camps and converted warehouses until their immigration status could be resolved—have been arrested over the past few months for their displays of kindness. Of that group, 109 had no criminal record whatsoever.
On Thursday, The Washington Postreported the death of a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who, along with her father and a larger group of immigrants, turned herself in to Border Patrol agents in a remote area of New Mexico last week. More than eight hours later, she began having seizures; first responders found that she had a fever of 105.7 degrees and hadn’t had food or water in days. She went into cardiac arrest and died of shock and dehydration shortly thereafter.
The agency’s response, which is laden with all the meaningless corporate bromides typically deployed to convey the appearance of sincerity, is more or less “tough shit”:
I suppose the events of this year should have dispelled the notion that when it comes to immigration, anyone associated with this regime would be inclined to momentarily suspend their prejudices to do a kind and decent thing. Yet somehow, the disgracefulness of DHS’s sting operation is still astonishing. The purpose of releasing kids to “qualified adults” is to make life better for innocent children, victims of a broken system in which they have no voice; literally the only relevant question is Will this person provide a safe place for them to live? But the administration cannot stop itself, this time preying on the basic human instinct to care for children, all in the service of rounding up a few more brown people.
The Chronicle notes that the number of children in custody has increased over the past few months—a trend observers blame on the spike in these background-check arrests. This means that despite the official end of the family-separation policy, more kids are being held in overcrowded jails, because their captors have cut off the power of otherwise willing caretakers to do anything about it. If you are lucky and don’t die in Border Patrol custody, a different set of government policies ensures that you’re still going to languish there for the foreseeable future.
There are bills on Capitol Hill that would bar DHS from doing this sort of thing. In the Senate, nine Democrats have signed on to the Families Not Facilities Act, first introduced in November, while in the House, 39 Democrats and two Republicans—both of whom just lost their re-election bids—are co-sponsors of an analogue. “Right now, unaccompanied children are being held in detention facilities or living in tent cities due in part to potential sponsors’ fear of retribution from ICE,” said California senator Kamala Harris in November. “This is an unacceptable obstacle to getting these children into a safe home, and we must fix it.”
The power of bigotry lies in the persistence of those who implement it—in their willingness to commit to it at all times, no matter the circumstances, no matter how dangerous or unconscionable, so as to never invite uncomfortable questions about why bigotry is acceptable in the first place. Death becomes just a risk that prisoners choose to assume, and volunteer caregivers open themselves up to the possibility of becoming prisoners as well.
What the Trump administration does is force Americans to fight for things that should be uncontroversial, common-sense humanitarian principles; we now spend so much time reacting to a new set of atrocities that there is no energy left for anything else. It is a policymaking war of attrition, and its goal is less to change people’s minds than it is to wear them out.
*******************************************
Yup. Well said!
There is only one “right side of history” on this one. Sure it’s exhausting and frustrating to spend energy that should be spent on improving the system for everyone instead resisting gross violations of legal, Constitutional, and human rights engineered by a White Nationalist regime. But, that’s what the New Due Process Army, “Our Gang,” and many others on the right side of history are all about!
Julie Hirshfield Davis and Michael Tackett report for the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday vowed to block full funding for the government if Democrats refuse to embrace his demand for a border wall, saying he was “proud to shut down the government for border security” in an extraordinarily public altercation with Democratic congressional leaders at the White House.
“If we don’t have border security, we’ll shut down the government — this country needs border security,” Mr. Trump declared in the Oval Office, engaging in a testy back-and-forth with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, even as they repeatedly asked him to keep their negotiating disputes private.
“It’s not bad, Nancy; it’s called transparency,” Mr. Trump snapped after one such interjection by Ms. Pelosi, who appeared to trigger the president’s temper when she raised the prospect of a “Trump shutdown” over what she characterized as an ineffective and wasteful wall.
“The American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything, and that we should not have a Trump shutdown,” Ms. Pelosi said.
. . . .
Mr. Trump had begun the day appearing to soften his stance somewhat on the wall. In a series of morning tweets, he falsely stated that substantial sections of the “Great Wall” on the southwestern border that he has long championed have already been completed, and he suggested that his administration could continue construction whether Democrats fund it or not.
That would be illegal, but it suggested that he was looking for a way to keep the government funded past Dec. 21, even if Democrats balk at wall funding.
. . . .
“People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of the messages. “If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!”
. . . .
It was not clear what Mr. Trump was referring to. American troops he dispatched to the border on the eve of midterm congressional elections as part of what the president called an effort to head off a migrant “invasion” have put up concertina wire along existing fences and barriers, but the administration has yet to spend much of the $1.3 billion Congress approved for border security last year. Under restrictions put in place by Congress, none of that money could be used to construct a new, concrete wall of the sort the president has said is vital.
The president does not have the legal authority to spend money appropriated for one purpose on another task, such as wall-building.
In a joint statement on Monday night, Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi warned that the country could not afford a “Trump Shutdown.”
Read the rest of Julie’s and Mike’s report at the above link.
“Duh,” walls as an effective means of national security went out of vogue about the beginning of the fifth century CE. But, of course, you would have to understand something about history to know how useless walls currently are as a defensive mechanism (as opposed to one for keeping subjugated people “in” like the Berlin Wall). Ironically, some of the same folks who cheered the destruction of the Berlin Wall idiotically cheer for “Trump’s Folly.”
While a wall might kill some more migrants and force smugglers to change routes and raise fees accordingly, in terms of border security it’s a classic case of “good money after bad.” Indeed, the Government would do well to stop treating refugees and other would be migrants as “criminals” to instead concentrate on stopping drug smugglers, human traffickers, terrorists, and fraudsters who actually mean to do our country harm, rather than coming in to pick our crops, make our food, build our houses, care for our sick, elderly, and children etc.
Totally contrary to Trump’s false narrative, most of those arriving at our Southern Border by “caravan” these days are not threats to the U.S. At worst, some are desperate individuals who probably face some real dangers in their home countries but don’t fit our rather arcane, restrictive, and unduly legalistic applications of refugee and asylum laws. The ones who belong should be screened, let in, and assimilated. The ones who don’t, after having a fair opportunity to present their claims for refuge, should be returned in a humane and respectful manner.
Yes, there appears to be a very small number of “bad guys” who have “infiltrated” the caravans, probably as much to prey on the vulnerable migrants as to reach the U.S. The current system appears more than adequate to identify these individuals and block their entry or promptly remove them. And, the system could and would work even better if the Administration separated border security functions from asylum adjudication functions. But, that might not provide “red meat” to a political base.
So, perhaps we can look forward to a “Trump Shutdown” over “Trump’s Folly!”
The House GOP’s near-total abdication of any oversight role has done more than just shield President Trump on matters involving his finances and Russian collusion. It has also resulted in almost no serious scrutiny of the true depths of cruelty, inhumanity and bad-faith rationalization driving important aspects of Trump’s policyagenda — in particular, on his signature issue of immigration.
That’s about to change.
In an interview with me, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee vowed that when Democrats take over in January, they will undertake thorough and wide-ranging scrutiny of the justifications behind — and executions of — the top items in Trump’s immigration agenda, from the family separations, to the thinly veiled Muslim ban, to the handling of the current turmoil involving migrants at the border.
“We will visit the border,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who is expected to chair the committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security, told me. “We will hold hearings in committee on any and all aspects of DHS. … We will not back off of this issue.”
This oversight — which could result in calling for testimony from Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — will include scrutiny of the administration’s justifications for its policies. Importantly, Thompson tells me Democrats will seek to grill officials on what went into Trump’s public statements on various aspects of the issue, many of which are falsehoods.
Migrant caravan crisis escalates with tear gas at border fence
U.S. authorities fired tear gas at members of a Central American migrant caravan who had rushed the fencing along the U.S. border with Mexico on Nov. 25.(Video: Drea Cornejo , Blair Guild/Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters/The Washington Post)
To be clear, Trump has used these rationales to justify actual policies with real-world impact, such as the effort to cruelly restrict asylum-applications to only official points of entry. Trump has also threatened a total border shutdown. Hearings could reveal that the justifications are nonsense, and spotlight their true arbitrary and cruel nature (putting aside for now that their real motive is ethno-nationalism).
“All this innuendo we hear about criminals coming in the caravan, we just want to know, how did you validate this?” Thompson told me, adding that DHS officials would be called on in hearings to account for Trump’s claims. “Policy has to be backed up with evidence. So we will do rigorous oversight.”
This will also include a look at the recent tear-gassing of migrants, and the administration’s public statements about it and justifications, Thompson said. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the fact that tear gas appears to have impacted children by claiming they were used as “human shields.”
The use of the military as a prop
Thompson said such scrutiny could dovetail with an examination of Trump’s use of the military at the border as campaign propaganda, though that might involve the House Armed Services Committee. “We have to get full disclosure in a public setting or a classified setting,” Thompson said. “Under no circumstances will we not get information.”
The overall goal, Thompson said, will be this: “As a nation of immigrants ourselves, we want to make sure that our process of immigration that includes asylum-seekers is constitutional and represents American values.”
Family separations and the travel ban
Thompson told me the committee would also look at the process leading up to the travel ban, which proceeded despite the fact that two internal Homeland Security analyses undercut its national security rationale.
Democrats can demand that DHS officials justify that policy. “What did you use to come up with this travel ban? How did you select these countries?” Thompson said, previewing the inquiry and vowing subpoenas if necessary. “We will ask for any written documentation that went towards putting the ban in place, what individuals were consulted, and what the process consisted of.”
Thompson also said the run-up to the implementation of the family separation policy and its rationale would receive similar scrutiny, as well as at the conditions under which children have been held, such as the reported Texas “tent city.” “Somebody is going to have to come in and tell us, ‘Is this the most efficient way to manage the situation?’” Thompson said. But also: “How did we get here in the first place?”
What can Democrats do?
One big question: What will House Democrats do legislatively against such policies? Thompson told me the goal is to secure cooperation with DHS, but in cases where the agency continues policies that Democrats deem terribly misguided or serious abuses, they can try to legislate against them. That would run headlong into Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate, at which point one could see discussion of targeted defunding of certain policies, though whether that will happen or what that might look like remains to be seen.
“As far as I’m concerned, no option is off the table,” Thompson said. Some more moderate House Democrats who won tougher districts might balk at such a stance, but Thompson said: “Every committee has responsibilities, and we have to carry them out.”
The big story here is that Trump has relied on the outright dismissal of his own administration’s factual determinations to justify many policies, not just on immigration, but also with his drive to weaken efforts to combat global warming despite the big report warning of the dire threats it poses.
The administration will strenuously resist Democratic oversight, and I don’t want to overstate what it can accomplish. But House Democrats must at least try to get into the fight against Trump’s war on facts and empiricism wherever possible. And when it comes to the humanitarian crises Trump has wrought on immigration, this is particularly urgent.
*********************************
Finally, some much-needed, long-overdue accountability, fact-finding, and truth about Trump’s intentionally cruel and usually lawless immigration policies and those sycophants and toadies who implement them and egg him on. No, it won’t necessarily change things overnight. But, having some “pushback” and setting the factual record straight for further action is an important first step. And, I hope that the absolutely avoidable politically created mess in the U.S. Immigration Courts, and their disgraceful abandonment of Due Process as their sole focus, is high on the oversight list!
Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News, quoting extensively from “Our Gang” Leader Hon. Jeffrey Chase:
WASHINGTON — Homeland Security and Justice Department officials are feuding over a controversial plan that would force asylum-seekers at the southwestern border to remain in Mexico until their cases are decided, according to sources close the administration.
Department of Justice officials have been pushing for asylum-seekers at the border to be immediately returned to Mexico as they arrive at the border, instead of first undergoing screening for fear of persecution or torture if they are not allowed in.
Department of Homeland Security officials want asylum-seekers screened for persecution, torture, and fear before being immediately returned to Mexico, to ensure that there are no serious concerns for their safety in Mexico.
The dispute highlights the fact that key details regarding the plan are still up in the air.
A Justice Department official said there was no dispute over the screening process but that the matter was under consideration between both agencies. The official said the discussion between the two US departments were “a normal part of the process.” DHS declined to comment.
Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge, said the dispute goes to the very heart of asylum law, which grants foreigners who otherwise would not be admissible the right to enter the country if they can show that they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they are returned to the country they came from.
“‘Credible fear’ was created over 20 years ago to be the standard for those arriving and not deemed admissible. It was designed to be a low bar, as those at the border have just arrived, are often scared of government officials, are sometimes traumatized, usually don’t yet have legal counsel, and have very limited ability to gather evidence,” Chase told BuzzFeed News. “Imposing a higher standard for political purposes would be contrary to our treaty obligation to not return genuine refugees.”
BuzzFeed News reported earlier this month that the administration had been considering such a plan and that discussions with Mexico had been ongoing. The Washington Post reported last week that a deal had been agreed upon with Mexico and that asylum-seekers would remain in that country while their cases were being adjudicated. But that story was later denied by Mexican officials, and the status of any talks is uncertain. A new administration takes office in Mexico on Saturday.
The proposal was first focused on individuals who come to a port of entry to request asylum but has since been extended to include those apprehended between border crossings as well, sources said.
The discussions appear to be a renewed effort to implement a directive first raised in an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in the early days of his administration in 2017. The Mexican government publicly rejected that plan, and the Trump administration made no effort to implement the president’s instructions.
In the executive order, Trump had directed the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to pursue the option. In a memo written by then-DHS chief John Kelly, officials were told to return individuals at the border “to the extent appropriate and reasonably practicable.” Kelly cited a statute that states that certain individuals can be sent back to the contiguous country they arrived from.
Advocates have said that implementation of such a measure would put families and migrants in danger and would be quickly challenged in court.
************************************
Well said, Jeffrey! There was a day, obviously in the past, when DOJ lawyers were concerned with assuring compliance with the law and applicable court decisions, rather than thinking of various ways to “push the envelope” by engaging in facially illegal, and certainly immoral, conduct. Hopefully, such evasion of both their oaths of office and ethical standards will be considered by future employers in the private sector.
The irony here is that with a different Administration in place, cooperation among the U.S., Mexico, and the UNHCR in ways that strengthened the Mexican asylum system, improved conditions for refugees and asylees in Mexico, encouraged regular refugee processing by both countries in or near the Northern Triangle, improved reception and processing for those at the U.S. border, and most important, constructively addressed the problems in the Northern Triangle forcing folks to flee would be a win-win-win-win for all involved.
The flow of refugees from the Northern Triangle is primarily a humanitarian, not a law enforcement situation. Among other things, a humanitarian approach would promote advantages of applying in Mexico and reasons why it could be a rational choice for some asylum seekers; it would eschew illegal threats, cynically and intentionally created inhumane, even life-threatening, conditions, and improper sanctions to “deter” individuals from asserting their legal rights to apply for asylum in the U.S. under both our law and international law. Sadly, all of the latter are exactly what the Trump Administration is engaged in at present, with the assistance of their ethically-challenged Government “legal” team.
Washington (CNN)A federal judge in California on Friday left in place a nationwide injunction that blocks the President’s asylum restrictions from going into effect.
Judge Jon S. Tigar of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said the government had not shown that the President’s policy “is a lawful exercise of Executive Branch authority.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice had asked Tigar to lift his temporary restraining order — issued November 19 — while the appeals process plays out.
But Tigar refused to do so, holding that the government had failed to convince him that asylum seekers with legitimate claims would not suffer “significant harms” due to the new policy.
The move comes after President Donald Trump lashed out last week at Tigar, and said he would ultimately prevail in the case before the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month, Trump signed a proclamation that would have prevented most migrants who crossed the southern border illegally from seeking asylum.
The American Civil Liberties Union immediately sued the administration on behalf of asylum assistance groups in California. Within 10 days of the President’s proclamation, Tigar granted the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order. The policy has since been in legal limbo.
“We are pleased the district court continues to recognize the harm that will occur if this illegal policy goes into effect,” ACLU lead attorney Lee Gelernt said in a statement Friday.
Asked for comment, the Justice Department referred CNN to a statement issued by Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Katie Waldman and Justice Department spokesman Steven Stafford after the temporary restraining order was issued, which says in part: “Our asylum system is broken, and it is being abused by tens of thousands of meritless claims every year. As the Supreme Court affirmed this summer, Congress has given the President broad authority to limit or even stop the entry of aliens into this country.”
When he issued his order on November 19, Tigar said the Trump administration policy barring asylum for immigrants who enter outside legal checkpoints “irreconcilably conflicts” with immigration law and the “expressed intent of Congress.”
“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Tigar wrote, adding that asylum seekers would be put at “increased risk of violence and other harms at the border” if the administration’s rule is allowed to go into effect.
On behalf of the administration, Department of Justice attorneys had argued that the court’s injunction “directly undermines the President’s determination that an immediate temporary suspension of entry between ports of entry is necessary to address the ongoing and increasing crisis facing our immigration system.”
The statements issued by the DOJ and DHS claiming that there are “tens of thousands of meritless asylum applications” are misleading, at best. While it is true that more asylum applications are denied than are granted, (a stark reversal of the situation only a few years ago), that by no means makes them “meritless” or means that the individuals didn’t have a right to have their cases fairly adjudicated under our laws.
Indeed, the latest TRAC statistics showing a continuously declining asylum grant rate under Trump, notwithstanding worsening conditions in the Northern Triangle and in most other asylum sending countries, strongly suggests that it is the Government’s bias and blatant politicization of the Immigration Court system that is the real abuse here.
Clearly, Session’s perversion of the law and facts in Matter of A-B- in an effort to deny protection to one of the most clearly persecuted groups in the world — women who are victims of gender based persecution in the forms of domestic violence — is a prime example of the type of improper racist-inspired political meddling that has been allowed to take place. It has destroyed the remaining integrity of the Immigration Court system, as well as endangered the lives of many deserving refugees in need of protection to which they are legally entitled but are being denied for improper reasons. When history eventually sorts out this sordid episode, the racist officials and the “go along to get along” judges and other government officials will be clearly identified for what they are.
The idea that the U.S. Government, which has purposely created a bogus “emergency” at the Southern Border with the political stunt of sending troops rather than Asylum Officers and Judges, is preposterous! While the poor asylum seekers face a genuine danger intentionally and cynically created by Trump and his White Nationalists, they pose no real threat to the U.S. Fortunately, Judge Tigar saw through the Administration’s contemptuous threats and disingenuous arguments to the contrary.
Dem Senator: Trump administration’s policies ‘caused anxiety at the border’
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) on Monday blamed the Trump administration for causing “anxiety” at the southern border a day after border agents fired tear gas in response to migrants attempting to breach the border.
“There’s a better way to handle this. The United States, the Trump policies has caused anxiety at the border,” Cardin said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“There’s an orderly process that should have been used,” he added. “Should we fix our immigration system? Absolutely. But this administration has made no effort to fix our immigration system.”
President Trump has repeatedly blamed Congress and Democrats, in particular, for failing to pass legislation hardening the country’s immigration laws. The White House and lawmakers have been unable to reach an agreement on a host of immigration issues, though Congress has provided some funding for border security.
Cardin said Monday that the Trump administration has enacted policies that have exacerbated the problem at the border with the so-called caravan of Central American migrants, citing the White House’s move to curb immigrants’ ability to claim asylum and the previous policy of separating families who illegally cross the border.
“So they’re making the circumstances worse, and here we look at children being subject to tear-gassing,” Cardin said. “That’s the United States causing that. That’s outrageous.”
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Sunday shut down the busy San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego as hundreds of migrants approached. Tensions flared further when dozens of migrants broke away from a larger group to try and breach the border.
CBP said in a statement that officers fired tear gas into the crowd after attempted illegal crossings and after some migrants threw rocks at border agents.
Trump on Monday morning called on Mexico to deport the migrants back to their home countries and threatened to permanently close the southern border. The president has for weeks painted the group of migrants as an imminent security threat, prompting fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers.
*****************************************
“There’s an orderly process that should have been used.”Yup! But, Trump refuses to use it and make it work!And, it could have been done for less money and fewer resources than the estimated $200 million military boondoggle at the border.
I also hope Sen. Cardin will urge Rep. Cummings (D-MD) and his colleagues in the House to exercise some “oversight” involving the senior Border Patrol officials who publicly proclaimed that most of those arriving at the border, who have been neither interviewed nor screened because of intentional delays by the US Government, are “economic refugees” not “real refugees.”
I tend to doubt that these loud-mouthed law enforcement officials, who have allowed themselves to become political puppets of the Trump White House, have any idea of what makes someone a “real refugee” under the law. Fact is, that in some Immigration Courts away from the Southern Border, the Immigration Judges continue to be fair and knowledgeable (NOT places like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Stewart). Those Immigration Judges take the necessary hours to fairly and impartially hear asylum cases (apparently largely disregarding artificial “quotas”). And, as a result, some properly documented domestic violence, family based, religious based, and political opposition to gang cases continue to be granted to applicants. Shows what happens when rather than prejudging cases like Trump, Sessions, DHS Senior Officials, and, sadly, some Immigration Judges, have done, asylum applicants from the Northern Triangle aren’t hustled through the “assembly line” and are given a fair chance to be represented and to gather the documentation necessary to overcome Sessions’s badly warped misconstruction of country conditions and intentionally misleading dicta in Matter of A-B-.
So, how can these Border Patrol folks tell by “eyeballing” thousands of individuals from the other side of the border whether their claims are “bona fide” or not? That, even after Trump’s and Sessions’s best efforts to “game” the system, the majority of arrivals from Central America still manage to pass “credible fear” examinations from the USCIS Asylum Office suggests that these Border Patrol officials are blowing (dangerous) “hot air” into an already volatile situation. That’s totally irresponsible Time for some accountability all up and down the line for those carrying out Trump’s misguided immigration policies with no visible resistance to actions that at best strain, and quite possibly violate, our established asylum laws and procedures!
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s incoming leadership is denying a published report that it had agreed to a Trump administration proposal requiring asylum seekers arriving at the southwest border to wait in Mexico as U.S. authorities consider their claims for safe haven.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Washington had won the support of the government of Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who takes office on Dec. 1 — for a plan mandating that asylum seekers at the border remain in Mexico as their claims move through the U.S. immigration system.
The Trump administration has long sought such an accord with Mexico as a means of resolving what it has termed a “crisis” of an escalating number of Central American asylum applicants — and limited detention space in which to hold them on U.S. territory as their petitions are considered.
Critics on both sides of the border have long assailed the notion of Mexico serving as a way station or detention grounds for Central Americans and others applying for asylum in the United States.
The administration of Mexico’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, rejected a similar Trump administration proposal last year.
But the Post quoted Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico’s interior minister-designate, as saying Mexico’s new government had accepted the policy as a “short-term solution” to the issue of Central American migration — which has been dramatized in recent weeks as thousands of U.S.-bound Central Americans have made their way north through Mexico in caravans.
Later Saturday, however, she denied that Mexico had agreed to host people seeking U.S. asylum as their cases awaited judgment.
“There is no agreement of any sort between the future Mexican federal government and the U.S.,” the incoming interior minister said in a statement.
Moreover, she said Mexico’s new government had rejected any deal in which Mexico would be considered “a safe third country” for U.S. asylum applicants.
In a Twitter message on Saturday, President Trump reiterated threats to close the southern border — threats that have alarmed many in Mexico, since cross-border trade is a mainstay of the Mexican economy.
In his tweet, Trump also said migrants would not be allowed into the United States “until their claims are individually approved in court.”
Others, he said, would “stay in Mexico,” he added, without elaboration.
The Twitter message did not specify whether Washington had reached any kind of agreement with Mexico on the matter.
Only a small minority of Central American applicants are ultimately granted political asylum in the United States, but the decision-making progress can take months or years — during which time many are released and gain footholds in the United States.
Trump has vowed to end what he calls the “catch and release” system. “Our very strong policy is Catch and Detain,” he tweeted Saturday. “No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S.”
The White House has also pushed an alternative “safe third country” approach in talks with Mexican officials. Under such a plan, Central Americans seeking asylum would generally have to file for protection in Mexico, not in the United States.
The proposal is a variant of the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” plan, under which asylum seekers would wait in Mexico until their cases were adjudicated in the United States.
With a “safe third country” designation, the United States would consider Mexico a secure nation for receiving asylum applicants. In practice, that would bar most asylum seekers who entered Mexico from filing asylum claims in the United States. The United States already has such an understanding with Canada.
But immigrant advocates have long opposed such a designation for Mexico for a number of reasons — principal among them the country’s widespread and rising violence, which often targets Central American migrants. Mexico cannot be considered safe for asylum seekers, many argue.
Critics also say Mexico’s system for processing refugee requests is already overwhelmed and ill-prepared to handle a huge new influx.
In her statement, Mexico’s incoming interior secretary echoed the vows of leftist President-elect Lopez Obrador to protect the human rights of caravan travelers and other Central American migrants while providing them with food, healthcare and shelter. Lopez Obrador has also vowed to help Central Americans acquire work papers if they opt to remain in Mexico.
More than 6,000 caravan members, mostly Hondurans, have arrived this month in the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, posing a humanitarian, logistical and political challenge for the two cities on the border. The migrants say they are fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands.
Tijuana’s mayor declared a “humanitarian crisis” Friday as the border city sought additional federal and state aid to help house the migrants, most of whom are crowded into a sports complex a block from the U.S.-Mexico border fence.
Tijuana officials anticipate that as many as 10,000 Central American migrants could eventually converge on the city and be stuck there for months as they seek to file asylum claims in the United States, a time-consuming process. U.S. officials at the San Ysidro crossing generally accept no more than 100 asylum applications a day.
Special correspondent Sanchez reported from Mexico City and Times staff writer McDonnell from Washington.
“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez told Reuters on Saturday, contradicting Trump and an earlier Washington Post report that said a deal ― albeit an informal one ― had been struck between the two governments.
The Post had quoted Sanchez as saying the administration of Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, had “for now” agreed to the so-called “Remain in Mexico” plan.
Sanchez was quoted by the paper as saying that Mexico would allow asylum seekers to stay in the country as a “short-term solution.”
Following the publication of the Post’s report, however, Sanchez back-pedaled on those remarks. She told Reuters that Obrador’s administration was “in talks” with the U.S., but stressed officials who weren’t yet in office couldn’t formally make any agreements.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at two U.S. border control helicopters flying overhead near a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.
Reuters reported that Sanchez “did not explicitly rule out” that Mexico could allow Central American caravan migrants ― thousands of whom have arrived in Tijuana, just south of California ― to wait in the country while their claims are processed in the U.S.
Sanchez did, however, say that plans for Mexico to assume “safe third country” status had been “ruled out.” Under a “safe third” agreement, the U.S. could force migrants to seek asylum in Mexico.
Trump said in a pair of Saturday evening tweets that migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border “will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court.”
“No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S. … All will stay in Mexico,” the president wrote.
His tweets were interpreted as possible confirmation of the posible deal between the U.S. and Obrador’s administration.
WASHINGTON — The incoming chairman of a key oversight committee in the House of Representatives said Sunday that any attempt by President Donald Trump to keep migrants from claiming asylum in the U.S. would be unlawful.
“That’s not the law,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in an exclusive interview on “Meet the Press,” indicating that Congress will act if the president moves ahead with that policy. “They should be allowed to come in, seek asylum, that’s the law.”
President Donald Trump has said he’s reached a deal with the government of Mexico to keep migrants traveling in large caravans from Central America in Mexico until their court date to plead asylum. But a spokesman for incoming Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said talk of such a deal is premature and U.S. officials told NBC News that the details are still being worked out.
Cummings said he supports the law as it stands. “I think we have a system that has worked for a long time. This president’s come in, wants to change it, that’s up to him. But now the Congress has got to stand up and hopefully they will,” Cummings said.
Family detention at the border and the separation of children from their parents after crossing the border was already on Cummings’ list of potential investigations as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee when Democrats take control of Congress in January.
Cummings has a list of 64 subpoenas it is ready to send to the Trump administration on a variety of issues ranging from immigration to voting rights act, drug prices and the opioid epidemic.
“I think the American people have said that they want checks and balances,” Cummings said. “And subpoenas, by the way, that may involve, say, private industries like the pharmaceutical companies” over “these skyrocketing drug prices.”
When asked about the priorities he is setting for areas of investigation, Cummings said he will focus on issues that “go to the very heart of our democracy and protecting that democracy.”
Cummings also said Sunday that his committee will “probably” look into Trump’s financial ties, especially to Saudi Arabia, and if it violates the emoluments clause, which is aimed at preventing a president from profiting on the office.
Cummings said he wanted to determine “whether the president is acting in his best interest or those of the American people,” adding, “I think this would be appropriate and there are other committees that will be looking at this too.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also criticized Trump over his support for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite reports that a CIA assessment concluded that the Saudi ruler ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Lee said that Trump’s assessment is “inconsistent” with the intelligence he’s seen. “Intelligence I’ve seen suggests this was ordered by the crown prince,” he said.
Lee says that Khashoggi’s murder and Trump’s response provides “an opportunity” for Congress to weigh in to the U.S.-backed Saudi role in Yemen that has created a worsening humanitarian disaster.
“I think Congress has to take some ownership of U.S. foreign policy, especially as it relates to our intervention in this war,” Less said. “Our unconstitutional fighting of a civil war in Yemen that has never been declared by the U.S. Congress as a problem. And that’s on us.”
I agree with Congressman Cummings. Indeed, I’ve been saying for some time now that the law is well-designed to deal with the flow of asylum applicants to the Southern Border. This Administration has simply chosen not to make it work, in many ways. The result is a self-created crisis. I’m looking forward to some real oversight of the intentionally created immigration mess in the coming year, including holding some of those responsible for creating it accountable!
MEXICO CITY — The Trump administration has won the support of Mexico’s incoming government for a plan to remake U.S. border policy by requiringasylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts, according to Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition team.
The agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and place a formidable new barrier in the path of Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence. By reaching the accord, the Trump administration has also overcome Mexico’s historic reticence to deepen cooperation with the United States on an issue widely seen here as America’s problem.
The White House had no immediate comment.
. . . .
*************************
Go to the WashPost at the link to read the rest of the story!
Will the UNHCR & the US help Mexico establish humane accommodations for those awaiting asylum decisions?
Will Mexico allow free access to US lawyers to assist asylum seekers in preparing their claims?
Will US Immigration Courts be established at Ports of Entry to conduct hearings for those who pass “credible fear?”
If properly staffed and run in good faith by both the US and Mexico, with the assistance of the UNHCR and various NGOs, this potentially could be a reasonable way to process asylum seekers at the border.
But, it’s difficult to imagine the Trump Administration conducting any immigration related program fairly and in accordance with the law.
Nick MIroff, Joshua Partlow, and Josh Dawsey report for the WashPost:
November 21 at 10:18 PM
Central Americans who arrive at U.S. border crossings seeking asylum in the United States will have to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under sweeping new measures the Trump administration is preparing to implement, according to internal planning documents and three Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the initiative.
According to DHS memos obtained by The Washington Post on Wednesday, Central American asylum seekers who cannot establish a “reasonable fear” of persecution in Mexico will not be allowed to enter the United States and would be turned around at the border.
The plan, called “Remain in Mexico,” amounts to a major break with current screening procedures, which generally allow those who establish a fear of return to their home countries to avoid immediate deportation and remain in the United States until they can get a hearing with an immigration judge. Trump despises this system, which he calls “catch and release,” and has vowed to end it.
Among the thousands of Central American migrants traveling by caravan across Mexico, many hope to apply for asylum due to threats of gang violence or other persecution in their home countries. They had expected to be able to stay in the United States while their claims move through immigration court. The new rules would disrupt those plans, and the hopes of other Central Americans who seek asylum in the United States each year.
Trump remains furious about the caravan and the legal setbacks his administration has suffered in federal court, demanding hard-line policy ideas from aides. Senior adviser Stephen Miller has pushed to implement the Remain in Mexico plan immediately, though other senior officials have expressed concern about implementing it amid sensitive negotiations with the Mexican government, according to two DHS officials and a White House adviser with knowledge of the plan, which was discussed at the White House on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the administration’s new plan, if a migrant does not specifically fear persecution in Mexico, that is where they will stay. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is sending teams of asylum officers from field offices in San Francisco, Washington, and Los Angeles to the ports of entry in the San Diego area to implement the new screening procedures, according to a USCIS official.
To cross into the United States, asylum seekers would have to meet a relatively higher bar in the screening procedure to establish that their fears of being in Mexico are enough to require immediate admission, the documents say.
“If you are determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will be permitted to remain in the United States while you await your hearing before an immigration judge,” the asylum officers will now tell those who arrive seeking humanitarian refuge, according to the DHS memos. “If you are not determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will remain in Mexico.”
Mexican border cities are among the most violent in the country, as drug cartels battle over access to smuggling routes into the United States. In the state of Baja California, which includes Tijuana, the State Department warns that “criminal activity and violence, including homicide, remain a primary concern throughout the state.”
The new rules will take effect as soon as Friday, according to two DHS officials familiar with the plans.
Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for DHS, issued a statement late Wednesday saying there are no immediate plans to implement these new measures.
“The President has made clear — every single legal option is on the table to secure our nation and to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants at our borders,” the statement says. “DHS is not implementing such a new enforcement program this week. Reporting on policies that do not exist creates uncertainty and confusion along our borders and has a negative real world impact. We will ensure — as always — that any new program or policy will comply with humanitarian obligations, uphold our national security and sovereignty, and is implemented with notice to the public and well coordinated with partners.”
A Mexican official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that current Mexican immigration law does not allow those seeking asylum in another country to stay in Mexico.
On Dec. 1, a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will be sworn in, and it’s also unclear whether his transition team was consulted on the new asylum screening procedures.
The possibility that thousands of U.S.-bound asylum seekers would have to wait in Mexico for months, even years, could produce a significant financial burden for the government there, especially if the migrants remain in camps and shelters on a long-term basis.
There are currently 6,000 migrants in the Tijuana area, many of them camped at a baseball field along the border, seeking to enter the United States. Several thousand more are en route to the city as part of caravan groups, according to Homeland Security estimates.
U.S. border officials have allowed about 60 to 100 asylum seekers to approach the San Ysidro port of entry each day for processing.
Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that U.S. and Mexican officials were discussing such a plan.
Mexico also appears to be taking a less-permissive attitude toward the new migrant caravans now entering the country.
Authorities detained more than 200 people, or nearly all of the latest caravan, who recently crossed Mexico’s southern border on their way to the United States. This is at least the fourth large group of migrants to cross into Mexico and attempt to walk to the U.S. border. They were picked up not long after crossing. The vast majority of the migrants were from El Salvador, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.
After the first caravan this fall entered Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration offered migrants the chance to live and work in Mexico as long as they stayed in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. Most chose not to accept this deal, because they wanted to travel to the United States.
nick.miroff@washpost.com
joshua.partlow@washpost.com
josh.dawsey@washpost.com
Partlow reported from Mexico City. Dawsey reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
Let’s see, Trump shrugs off the murder of a Washington Post journalist by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, downplays Putin’s overt interference in our elections, promotes mindless nationalism of the exact type responsible for two World Wars and tens of millions of avoidable deaths, and praises massive human rights violator and murderer Kim even as the latter is duping him on nukes. So, he’s scared to stand up to anyone powerful or for ideals and values that take courage to promote and advance.
But, when it comes to bullying, demonizing, and beating up on harmless but extremely vulnerable and desperate refugees, many of them women, children, and families fleeing for their lives, he excels. What does that tell us about the lack of character of the “man,” and the total lack of judgement and regard for American values of those in the minority who put him in office and continue to prop him up?
This appears to be a reaction to: 1) Federal Courts requiring Trump to follow the law; 2) Mexico’s refusal to be bullied into signing an absurdly inappropriate and totally one-sided “safe third country” agreement; 3) Congresses failure to fund the wasteful “Wall;” and 4) the near total, yet highly predictable, failure of Trump’s racist, White Nationalist inspired “get tough” immigration enforcement policies.
The Federal Courts are likely to permanently enjoin Trump from ignoring the law that specifically allows anyone in the U.S., legally or not, to apply for asylum. Additionally, Trump encourages violence against refugees and creates unsafe, inhumane conditions on the Mexican side of the border. Consequently, the end result of Trump’s intentional “making folks wait in Mexico” policy is likely to be encouraging individuals seeking asylum to enter illegally and then turn themselves in to the authorities to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the better options of working with the UNHCR and Mexico to promote a multinational approach to protection and to solve the problems in the Northern Triangle causing this humanitarian flow remain unaddressed by the Trumpsters.
Also, when will the “Face of Evil,” Stephen Miller, finally be held accountable for his consistently cowardly and racist attacks on the law and the American legal system?
