"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.
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — Some Life-tenured Federal Judges abuse their privileged positions to insure that this is what “due process” will look like for asylum seekers of color! EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Here’s the decision from U.S. District JudgeMATTHEW J. KACSMARYK in Texas v. Biden:
Judge Kacsmaryk was appointed to the bench by Trump & McConnell in 2019. He is a former Federal prosecutor, deputy general counsel of a right wing religious group, and member of the Federalist Society. His nomination was (obviously unsuccessfully) opposed by more than 200 prominent civil rights, religious tolerance, and human rights groups.
Here’s an excerpt from their letter in opposition addressed to the Senate:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations committed to promoting and protecting the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States, I write in strong opposition to the confirmation of Matthew Kacsmaryk to be a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas.
Nominees to the federal courts must be committed to respecting the law, Constitution, and core American values of justice, fairness, and inclusivity. Mr. Kacsmaryk does not meet this standard. He is an anti-LGBT activist and culture warrior who does not respect the equal dignity of all people. His record reveals a hostility to LGBT equality and to women’s health, and he would not be able to rule fairly and impartially in cases involving those issues.
Interestingly, the letter was signed by none other than Vanita S. Gupta, then President & CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and currently the Associate Attorney General of the U.S.
Gupta and her colleagues had Judge K “pegged” as an unqualified righty bigot then! But, with the lineup currently in place at the 5th and the Supremes, it remains to be seen whether there is any effective short-term remedy for his grotesque abuses of power and human rights.
Judicial appointments are important! Maybe it’s time for Gupta and others at DOJ to treat Immigration Judge and BIA appointments as such!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Better Federal Judges for a better America!
Maria Ramos Pacheco reports for the Dallas Morning News:
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — While Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday the goal of her trip to El Paso was to understand the “root causes” of the rising influx of migrants from recent months, just across the border Honduran migrant Manuel Medina had a simple explanation for why thousands of people from other countries will continue to try to reach the United States: To stay alive while fleeing countries where their families are threatened by crime and violence.
“I did not leave my country and my wife because I wanted to. [Rising] crime forced me to leave everything; the only thing I want is for my family and me to be safe,” said Medina, 37, who left Honduras in May 2019 after receiving threats from gang members.
Amid a chorus of criticism coming mainly from Republican politicians, Harris made her first trip to the U.S. Southern border flanked by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas; Sen. Dick Durbin, D- Ill; and El Paso Rep. Verónica Escobar.
Amid a chorus of criticism coming mainly from Republican politicians, Harris made her first trip to the U.S. Southern border flanked by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro MayorkasSen.
For people like Medina, neither restrictive immigration policies nor dangerous journeys through several countries, border walls, or even statements from politicians deter them from seeking to rebuild their lives in the United States.
Medina has lived for two years in this city’s El Buen Samaritano shelter, managed by a religious organization, along with his 15-year-old son Nahúm Medina. Their asylum petition was initially rejected in 2019 and he stayed in Ciudad Juárez under the Migrants Protection Protocols, waiting for a second chance.
The MPP or “Remain in Mexico” program was created in 2019 by the Trump administration, which forced people seeking asylum to remain in Mexico. As of May, there were 71,002 active cases.
Restrictionism, racism, nativism, cruelty, and scofflaw behavior will only continue to make things worse. And, AG Merick Garland, staffing your “courts” with “Miller Lite” holdovers and Trump toadies won’t stop the downward spiral of American justice on your watch!
“Sadly, over the last two decades the US has been unable to get beyond this vision of ‘deterrence’ of legal asylum seekers.“ — Floaters — “How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)Vice President Kamala D. Harris Vice President of the United States. — “So far, she hasn’t gotten beyond the mistakes of the past, either. Taking a tour with CBP won’t help.” (Official Senate Photo)
Last week, Ms. Harris traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei and expressed the Biden administration’s goal to “help Guatelmalans find hope at home.” During a press conference on June 7, she told Guatemalans thinking of making the journey north to the United States: “Do not come. Do not come.”
“O.K., that’s like saying, ‘Stay home and die,’” according to the Rev. Pat Murphy, a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. “That message is falling on deaf ears.”
If Ms. Harris does travel to the border, Father Murphy said, she should be sure to make a visit to the Mexican side. “If she just stays on her side, she’s not going to find much,” he said.
In Tijuana, Ms. Harris would see a camp of 2,000 asylum seekers near the port of entry, Father Murphy said. “If she looked a little further, she would see the people who are victims of violence in Tijuana and Mexicali and other places,” he said. Migrants may be eager to escape bad situations in their home countries, Father Murphy said, but they often do not understand how difficult conditions at the border are “until they’re stuck in the middle of [a border city] with no place to go.”
“You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials. You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”
At diminished capacity because of the pandemic, migrant shelters are full. The United States has started to accept some vulnerable people, like families with children with an illness or those being persecuted because of their sexual orientation, Father Murphy said. But there are also hundreds deported every day.
He believes if the vice president did decide to visit the border, it would be worth her while. “You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials,” Father Murphy said. “You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”
. . . .
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration Studies
Donald Kerwin, the executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York, also noted that people have a right not to migrate—to stay in their home country. He sees immigration policy as an arena for a fruitful convergence of Catholic social teaching, international law and contemporary human rights principles.
The Biden administration’s recognition of the forces that drive migration should be applauded, but it can address root causes while re-establishing humane asylum policies at the border.
“States are responsible for ensuring that people can flourish at home,” he said. “But it’s an empty right at this point in many communities in the Northern Triangle countries. They’re facing impossible conditions, caused by natural disasters, climate change, gang violence and extraordinary poverty. So people have a right to flee those impossible conditions and seek lives that are worthy of human dignity. In some cases, that means leaving their countries.”
When they do leave their home countries, people have the right to seek protection wherever they can find it, Mr. Kerwin said. “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.”
The United States needs a functioning refugee resettlement system, an asylum system and robust humanitarian programs to address the conditions in Central America that are driving people to migrate, he said. “They’re not in place right now,” Mr. Kerwin said, “and until they are in place, people will reluctantly, at a terrible cost…continue to migrate.”
If Ms. Harris visits the border, Mr. Kerwin suggested she speak with migrants that have entered the United States, starting with the children. “Find out why they’ve come, what drove them to the United States and also see what their situation is currently, in often overcrowded facilities,” he said. “At that point, it would be clear as day that these folks are not a problem. These folks fled terrible problems, but they themselves are not the problem.”
Earlier this month, more than 20 bishops, Vatican representatives and leaders of Catholic organizations met for an emergency immigration meeting at Mundelein Seminary, outside of Chicago. Mr. Kerwin, who attended the meeting, said organizers displayed notes written by immigrant children, often addressed to God.
“It’s clear from reading these notes that these are lovely children, who miss their parents and worry about them and are in difficult situations that are not of their own making. And that the United States should do right by them,” he said. “And the right thing is to protect them and reunify them with family members.”
Chloe Gunther, America intern, contributed to this story.
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Read the full article at the link.
Politicians of both parties are averse to the truth. They don’t have the courage and backbone for it! But the truth is quite simple, if somewhat “inconvenient.”
Unless and until we can solve the problems driving refugees to flee the Northern Triangle, we will have to take more of them. We should welcome them through an orderly legal system, including a robust, properly staffed, and honestly administered legal refugee and asylum system.
Alternatively, we could continue our current policies of immorally and illegally killing some on the journey, “snuffing” some in the desert (where their bodies might never be found and “counted”), and enriching smugglers and cartels who will eventually get many determined survivors into the interior.
There, they will join our highly exploitable, yet politically expedient for both parties (for differing reasons), “extralegal population.” Alimited number will be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and be arbitrarily removed by ICE, usually at costs that far exceed any demonstrable benefits. Even fewer will commit misconduct leading to their arrest and removal.
But the bulk of them will blend in somehow and do what’s necessary for themselves and their families to survive, as has been happening for decades and generations. They will also enrich and improve our nation in ways both predictable and unpredictable. Some will eventually find it possible and advantageous to return to their nations of origin, most won’t.
It would be far better for both the migrants and our nation, not to mention humanity as a whole, if we included the bulk of those forced to come here in our legal immigration system. But, whether we are enlightened enough “to do it the right way” or not, they will come as long as the alternatives are starvation, death, unspeakable abuse, and unending despair.
Migration is both our oldest and most persistent human phenomenon and an essential survival skill for humanity. It’s going to take more than inane walls, cruel and illegal imprisonment in American Gulags, unworkable laws, mindless, yet expensive, enforcement, nativist rhetoric, bad judges, and cowardly politicians sending “don’t come” messages to make them “die in place.” Our politicians might be not be bright or brave enough to face reality — but, I guarantee that the forced migrants we like to dehumanize and look down upon are much smarter, braver, more aware, and far more creative, adaptable, and capable than we think!
Before: J. CLIFFORD WALLACE and MILAN D. SMITH, JR., Circuit Judges, and JANE A. RESTANI,* Judge.
Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr.;
Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Wallace
* The Honorable Jane A. Restani, Judge for the United States Court of International Trade, sitting by designation.
No. 20-70587
Agency No. A209-406-355
OPINION
2 SOTO-SOTO V. GARLAND
SUMMARY** Immigration
Granting Delfina Soto-Soto’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ reversing an immigration judge’s grant of deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture, and remanding for the Board to grant CAT relief, the panel held that the Board erred by reviewing the IJ’s decision de novo, rather than for clear error, and concluded that the record compelled the conclusion that Soto-Soto met her burden of proof to establish that it is more likely than not that she will suffer future torture if removed to Mexico.
Michoacán state police arrested and brutally tortured Soto-Soto until she confessed to the kidnapping and murder of a five-year old boy. After the Mexican trial court dismissed the charges against her as a result of due process errors during the investigation, she fled to the United States. Mexican prosecutors subsequently conducted a new investigation and filed new charges against Soto-Soto, INTERPOL put out a Red Notice for her extradition to Uruapan in Michoacán, Mexico, which is 67 miles from where Soto-Soto was tortured in Morelia, Michoacán. Relying on Soto-Soto’s past torture, her reporting of the torture to the Michoacán State Commission of Human Rights despite warnings not to do so, the reissued arrest warrant, and country condition evidence showing that indigenous women like Soto-Soto are particularly
** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
SOTO-SOTO V. GARLAND 3
vulnerable to torture, the IJ held that Soto-Soto was more likely than not to be tortured again if removed to Mexico. The Board reversed and held that the IJ’s determination was clearly erroneous because he did not acknowledge the Mexican judicial system’s appropriate steps to correct past due process errors, that Soto-Soto was not harmed while in custody for eight months after reporting the torture, and that members of Soto-Soto’s family remain in Mexico unharmed.
The panel concluded that the Board’s decision reflected that it engaged in a de novo weighing of the evidence, rather than clear error review. The panel explained that the Board may find an IJ’s factual finding to be clearly erroneous if it is illogical or implausible, or without support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the record, but in this case, the Board failed to explain how the IJ’s decision was illogical, implausible, or without support.
The panel’s majority also concluded that the Board’s view of the evidence was not supported by the record. First, the majority wrote that the record emphatically did not show that the Mexican court took steps to cure the due process errors caused by the state police officers torturing a confession out of Soto-Soto. Further, the majority wrote that even if the record supported the Board’s factual findings, that would not be enough to overturn the IJ’s decision under clear error review, because the IJ’s predictive finding as to the likelihood of torture is entitled to broad deference, which the Board failed to provide. Second, the majority wrote that because Soto-Soto’s human rights commission complaint was not filed until after she was released from custody, and nothing in the record suggested that the state police officers were aware of her report, Soto-Soto’s physical safety while in custody was not probative of the state police officers’
4 SOTO-SOTO V. GARLAND
intent to carry out their threat of future torture. Finally, the majority wrote that the lack of harm to Soto-Soto’s family was irrelevant because threats of such harm hinged on Soto- Soto’s return to Mexico, which had not yet occurred. The panel also observed that the Board failed to discuss the IJ’s other key factual findings, including country condition reports establishing that indigenous women are more likely to be tortured in Mexico than other groups.
Reviewed under the proper standard of review, the majority concluded that the IJ’s decision was not clearly erroneous, and that the record compelled the conclusion that Soto-Soto met her burden of proof to establish that it is more likely than not that she will suffer future torture if removed to Mexico. The majority remanded the petition to the Board with the direction to grant deferral of removal.
Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Wallace agreed that the Board impermissibly applied de novo review in reversing the IJ’s grant of relief. However, Judge Wallace wrote that he believes that the IJ erred in the likelihood of future torture analysis, and he relatedly disagreed with the majority’s and IJ’s conflation of the various Mexican law enforcement actors in the state of Michoacán into a unitary actor—i.e., the Michoacán state police—in assessing the likelihood of torture. Judge Wallace also highlighted that the IJ found Soto-Soto was ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal because there are serious reasons to believe that she did, in fact, kidnap and murder the child whenhisfamilyrefusedtopaythedemandedransom. Judge Wallace believed that her likely guilt should have been considered as well because her original criminal case was not dismissed due to factual innocence but due process errors that have been corrected. Judge Wallace concluded that the majority’s direction to the Board to grant CAT relief rather
SOTO-SOTO V. GARLAND 5
than reversing and remanding the petition to the Board for further consideration goes against the court’s ordinary practice, especially because the record did not compel the conclusion that Soto-Soto satisfied her burden of proof.
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More result-oriented decision making and basic errors on the EOIR deportation railroad.🚂
“This Dude loves the ‘Miller Lite’ approach to asylum by Garland and Mayorkas, as well as Harris’s latest tone-deaf ‘victim shaming.’” Keeps him (as well as human smugglers) in business! Reaper Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License
SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador — Rejected by her family, Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez fled her coastal village in 2014, the first of a series of forced displacements across El Salvador. She had hoped that in the larger city of San Miguel she could live as a transgender woman without discrimination and violence, but there she was threatened by a gang.
She moved away from San Miguel, then back again in a series of forced moves until the 27-year-old was shot to death April 25, sending shock waves through the close-knit LGBTQ community in San Miguel, the largest city in eastern El Salvador.
“Zashy was desperate; her family didn’t want her … and the gangsters had threatened her,” said Venus Nolasco, director of the San Miguel LGBTQ collective Pearls of the East. “She knew they were going to kill her. She wanted to flee the country, go to the United States, but they killed her with a shot through her lung.”
One day after Del Cid’s slaying, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris identified anti-LGBTQ violence in Central America as one of the root causes of migration in the region during a virtual meeting with the president of neighboring Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. She is visiting Guatemala and Mexico this week.
Transgender migrants were present in the Central American caravans that attempted to reach the United States border in recent years, fleeing harassment, gang extortion, violence and police indifference to crimes against them. Even in those large migrant movements, they say they faced harassment.
Things had been rough during Del Cid’s first stint in San Miguel. She had been living in a neighborhood where, as in many parts of the country, the MS-13 gang was the ultimate local authority. Gang members began to harass her, then brutally beat her, breaking her arm in 2015, Nolasco said.
“They warned her to leave, but she didn’t listen,” Nolasco said.
Del Cid moved in with Nolasco in the same neighborhood. One day, the gang grabbed Del Cid again.
“They took her, they wanted to kill her,” Nolasco said. “I begged them not to kill her, to let her go and she would leave the neighborhood.”
Del Cid moved back to her hometown, but her family rejected her again. She tried to please them, but she couldn’t, Nolasco said. Del Cid joined a church, got a girlfriend and had a baby girl, but could not maintain that life, she said.
She returned to San Miguel, where initially things seemed to go better. In 2020, Del Cid received humanitarian and housing support from COMCAVIS TRANS, a national LGBTQ rights organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Del Cid rented a home and opened a beauty salon there. She hired another woman to help her and was participating in an entrepreneurship program. She was preparing a business proposal to move the salon into its own space.
But Del Cid was shot in the back walking alone at night down the street. Passersby tried to help her and took her to a hospital, where she died. So far, police have made no arrests, and Nolasco believes that like other hate crimes in the country, “it will be forgotten; they’re not interested in what happens to us.”
Laura Almirall, UNHCR representative in El Salvador, said Del Cid’s killing frightened her community and saddened everyone who knew her.
“She was excited about her new plans and her new life. And unfortunately and tragically, everything came to an end,” she said.
Nolasco said that in San Miguel, some 70 miles east of the capital, the transgender community endures constant harassment from intolerant residents and gangs. They have rocks thrown at them, are beaten and are victims of extortion. If they go to police to make a report, they are insulted and demeaned. “Don’t come here to claim rights, because there are no rights for you,” police tell them, Nolasco said.
. . . .
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Despite some legal nonsense from EOIR and sometimes from uninformed Circuit Judges who have never represented asylum seekers and know little of actual conditions in the Northern Triangle, neither El Salvador nor the other Northern Triangle governments are “willing and able” to protect most individuals suffering gender-based and other forms of persecution.Decisions claiming otherwise are, in most cases, legally wrong and disingenuous to boot.
The U.S. asylum system needs expert Asylum Officers at DHS and progressive expert Immigration Judges at EOIR. Babbling (misleadingly) about “sealed borders” won’t take the place of telling Garland and Mayorkas to stop screwing around, bring in progressive experts, and fix the U.S. asylum system before more die! V.P. Harris could have taken the first necessary step toward “fixing the Southern Border” without even leaving DC.
How are we going to promote the rule of law in other nations when we ourselves are unwilling to exhibit honesty and follow the law with respect to the most vulnerable in the world seeking legal refuge at our borders?
Vice President Kamala D. Harris Vice President of the United States — She thinks that laws are for others and that platitudes solve problems. (Official Senate Photo)
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS THINKS RULE OF LAW DOESN’T APPLY TORICH NATION THAT ILLEGALLY TURNS DESPERATE REFUGEES AWAY, SUGGESTS GUATEMALANS SHOULD DIE IN PLACE! — “Deterrence Statement” Won’t Stop Migration, Won’t Appease Nativist-Restrictionists, But Will Cost Her Support From Human Rights Progressives Who Helped Elect Her!— There Will Be No Workable Solutions At Our Southern Border Without a Functional, Robust Legal Asylum System That Complies With Due Process!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
June 9, 2021
Every individual, regardless of status, has a legal right to apply for asylum at our border. This law was enacted on 1980 to carry out our legal obligations under the U.N. Convention and Protocol on the Status of Refugees, to which we have been party since 1968.
Right now, the U.S. has neither a legal asylum system operating at ports of entry nor does it have a functioning refugee program in Central America. Borders were illegally closed and legal immigration avenues were suspended by the White Nationalist Trump Administration on various pretexts involving false narratives about COVID, labor market impact, and national security, among others. At one point Trump even made the absurdist claim that America is “full!”
The Biden Administration has peddled rhetoric about re-establishing legal immigration. But, to date they have neither re-established the rule of law for asylum seekers at our Southern Border nor have they instituted an operational refugee program for Central America.
How bogus is the Biden/Harris continuation of the COVID facade for closing the border? Well, I didn’t hear much mention from Harris in Guatemala of COVID as a reason not to come or any promise to restore the legal asylum system once the “fake COVID emergency” is resolved.
So, there is no legal way for those in Guatemala and other countries to seek refuge in the U.S. Ignoring requests from experts and humanitarian NGOs, the Biden Administration has also stubbornly failed to repeal biased “precedents” from the Trump DOJ designed to make it difficult for refugees fleeing Latin America, particularly women, to qualify for legal protection despite the fact that their lives and safety will be in danger if returned.
Our scofflaw actions actually leave refugees needing protection no choice but to cross the border surreptitiously. We have suspended the rule of law for legal asylum seekers, while dishonestly claiming that they, not we, are the “law breakers.” After nearly 50 years in and sometimes out of the immigration bureaucracy, I know bureaucratic doublespeak when I hear it.
Remarkably, Vice President Harris seems to have cribbed her public statements on Guatemalan asylum from Gauleiter Stephen Miller. Even more astoundingly, Miller’s influence on the Biden Administration’s failing immigration policies, particularly at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR, continues to far exceed that of the diverse coalition of progressive experts, human rights advocates, and civil rights leaders who helped elect Biden and Harris! Talk about disrespect and being taken for granted!
In other words, America has totally “welched” on our legal and moral obligations to refugees and asylum seekers. Yet, incredibly, Harris warns them to stay in places where their lives and safety are in immediate danger, rather than taking a calculated risk of finding safety in the United States.
Since the U.S. no longer has a rule of law for asylum seekers or refugees, this usually means trying to enter with the aid of paid smugglers who offer them something the U.S. is unwilling to provide — a realistic possibility of refuge in time to save their lives! It’s certainly “not rocket science!” But, disturbingly, it appears to be above Harris’s pay grade!
As smugglers point out, the possibility of getting to the interior of the U.S., and there finding “do it yourself” refuge in our intentionally-created and often exploited “underground population,” actually far exceeds the chance of being granted asylum, even when we had a “somewhat” functioning asylum system. That’s largely because our law has long been improperly politically “gamed” (by Administrations of both parties) against asylum seekers from Central America.
So, nobody actually knows how many would qualify for asylum under a fair and unbiased system. We’ve never had the moral courage to set up such a procedure. Instead, we have used imprisonments, family separations, racist rhetoric, criminal prosecutions, and skewed legal denials from “captive courts” tilted in favor of DHS enforcement as “deterrents” to desperate refugees from our own Hemisphere.
Our nation fears complying with our own laws! Not much of a “profile in courage” here!
The Vice President concedes that the “in place” assistance she is offering to individuals in some of the world’s most corrupt and lawless countries is unlikely to have any impact for years to come. And, that’s assuming that the Biden Administration’s aid plan is better than those that have failed in the past, which it well might be. It certainly will be better than the insane cruelty and improper “enforcement only” efforts of the Trump Administration.
She is correct that most, but not all, Guatemalans would prefer to live in Guatemala if that were possible. But, the problem she insists on “papering over” is that survival in Guatemala currently is not reasonably likely for many Guatemalans. Unless and until Congress creates a more realistic legal immigration system, there is simply no realistic opportunity for many Guatemalans other than to apply for asylum at the border.
While asylum law would not cover them all, a proper interpretation and application through a re-established and meaningfully reformed system, overseen by expert judges (currently eschewed by Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts) could admit many more legally and timely than the current non-existent system or past ones intentionally skewed against asylum seekers in a futile, improper attempt to use the legal process as a “deterrent.” It would also encourage and motivate asylum seekers to apply at legal ports of entry rather than crossing surreptitiously.
Yet Harris’s “clear message” (of non-hope) to the oppressed people in the Northern Triangle is for them to “die in place,” while awaiting long-term solutions that might or might not ever happen. Meanwhile, the world’s richest nation lacks the will and determination to re-establish a legal asylum screening and adjudication system at our Southern Border.
Harris also wants the desperate masses “yearning to breath free” to know that the beacon of freedom no longer burns in America. We think it would be better if they died where they are, largely out of our sight and out of our mind.
We resent their efforts at survival, forcing us listen to their screams at our border for help that we prefer to deny (in violation of our legal obligations). We are bothered by the stench of the dead and annoyed by the news media’s incessant reporting on the Administration’s continuing failures of legality and humanity. Better (for us, not them) if they don’t come.
It’s an interesting “lesson” on racial and immigrant justice, as well as gender justice, from a Vice President who apparently prefers “inspiring” future generations to taking the tough, courageous moral and legal stands necessary to preserve and protect the current ones!
The Vice President might be correct on the rudiments of a better and more realistic long-term migration and economic plan for the Northern Triangle. But, her failure to recognize the essential first step of making the existing legal asylum asylum system work, and her unwillingness to tell Garland and Mayorkas to stop the foot-dragging and start complying with our laws and our Constitution, will doom her efforts long before they could ever have any positive impact.
The Southern Border is a big challenge. The solution has eluded all of Harris’s male predecessors, including her current boss, for the last half-century.
It requires an end to “Milleresque” platitudes and an honest recognition of the human realities of forced migration. It cries out for a strong knowledgeable leader who will re-establish the legal asylum system already in the law, insist that for the first time in our history it be operated by experts with robust humanitarian protection goals, real progressive expert judges, and full constitutional due process. It demands an end to the mindless dehumanization and demeaning of asylum seekers and recognition that those granted asylum are legal immigrants, a source of strength, and a benefit to our nation, not a phenomenon to be demonized and feared.
It requires a robust refugee program in the Northern Triangle that takes the pressure off the border asylum system until needed changes in the legal immigration system can be pushed through Congress and the longer-term improvements in infrastructure and governance in the Northern Triangle take effect.
It also requires a leader with the comprehensive knowledge and moral courage to defend robust legal refugee and asylum systems and more legal immigration from the onslaught of racially-charged, myth-based attacks from White Nationalists and nativists that are sure to follow. She would also have to deal with pushback from an entrenched immigration bureaucracy and weak leadership from Garland and others who have continued to feed the problems rather than solve them.
Unfortunately for Vice President Harris, our nation, and, most of all, the forced migrants whose lives and humanity are on the line every day, right now the job appears to be bigger than the person.
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”. — “The reality of racial justice and the rule of law for people of color at our Southern Border is rather sobering, as the Biden Administration fails to usher in needed progressive reforms. How many more people will die because this Administration won’t follow the Constitution, The Refugee Act, and our international obligations? We’ll never achieve racial justice so long as dehumanization of people of color is our official policy, carried out by a broken and dysfunctional DOJ!” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)Vice President Kamala D. Harris Vice President of the United States — “Will she be able to get beyond the mistakes of the past and put rationality, humanity, and the rule of law in place at the Southern Border. So far, the results of her leadership are NOT encouraging for those who believe in progressive, humanitarian, legal policies.” (Official Senate Photo)
James Fredrick is a multimedia journalist based in Mexico City and covers migration, crime, politics and sports.
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Obama tried deterring migrants with his characteristic lawyerly tact. Trump did it with his cruel, petty impulsiveness. Biden is doing it with his folksy toughness. The styles are different, but the results of immigration deterrence will always be the same.
We’re trapped in this cycle because the U.S. government refuses to listen to migrants. Having met hundreds of migrants during my years reporting in Mexico and Central America, it’s obvious why deterrence doesn’t work: What’s at home is worse than anything the United States could threaten. Most migrants don’t want to leave home. But they do because violent death or crippling destitution is all that’s left.
Failing to actually come up with a solution, we of the “greatest country on Earth” become tremendously feeble and defensive at the arrival of a few thousand immigrant children. But there is another way.
We must treat immigration as a civil and humanitarian issue, not a criminal one. Criminalizing people fleeing violence, persecution, climate change or economic hardship exacerbates these problems. So decriminalize border crossings and rebuild border facilities as welcome centers, not jails. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents at the border should be social workers, not cops.
If Trump’s family separation atrocity showed us anything, it’s that millions of Americans want to help immigrants in need. The United States should cooperate more with these groups. There are already large networks around the country that can provide housing, food, legal services, education and medical services to immigrants. Why rely on expensive armed border agents instead of willing, motivated humanitarian groups?
Immigration laws should also address the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to decriminalizing border crossings, our immigration laws rely on outdated quotas and corrupt, abusive worker programs. Asylum law is a relic of the Cold War and doesn’t reflect the world today.
Finally, Washington should stop making the problems worse with bad foreign policy. Despite numerous abuses, scandals and criminal allegations involving Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, the Biden administration refuses to denounce him, though many think he is responsible for the conditions Hondurans are fleeing. In fact, Biden administration officials are working with Hernández to try to prevent Hondurans from fleeing. He’s just one example in a long history of U.S. meddling to prop up corrupt, abusive, U.S.-friendly regimes. No amount of U.S. dollars in aid can make up for bad foreign policy.
President Biden can’t stop the crisis today. After all, he helped create it. But he can make sure this is the last “border crisis” we face.
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
Ah, “mindlessly” — one of my favorite terms, usually applied these days to Garland and his inept team at DOJ! Actually, Frederick isn’t the only one to figure this out!
The problem remains, as I have stated over and over, the toxic failure of the Biden Administration to bring progressive experts in immigration, human rights, civil rights, and “applied due process” into Government and empower them to solve the problems! It’s bizarrely compounded by the disgraceful unwillingnessof those few in the Biden Administration, like Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, who actually know better, to speak up for racial justice, social justice, human rights, and human dignity at the DOJ!
Unless VP Harris wakes up, convinces her boss, and brings in the progressive experts, she’s headed for the abyss, taking thousands of vulnerable refugees and, perhaps, American democracy down with her!
Refusal to listen: to migrants, their representatives, experts, our “better angels,” and common sense! The same problems, over and over, Administration after Administration, decade after decade! The same “built to fail” policies repeated!
The truth is in front of the Biden Administration! But, like Garland, Mayorkas, and others leading the way over the cliff, Biden and Harris can’t see it! They appear to have “tuned out” those desperately trying to keep them from plunging over the precipice! So tragic, so unnecessary, so threatening to American democracy and the future of humanity!
Gender Violence continues to to be endemic in Latin America! Yet, shockingly, its victims, refugee women of color, can expect little protection in Garland’s Immigration Courts still applying Jeff Sessions’s inaccurate, misogynistic precedent in Matter of A-B- and continuing to be staffed by too many “judges” selected or promoted by the Trump Administration because of their perceived willingness to support anti-asylum policies targeting many women of color! Recently Garland outraged progressives by appointing 17 “Miller/Barr Holdovers” to powerful, life or death, Immigration Judge positions while eschewing better-qualified progressive experts from the private sector who could bring diversity and gender and racial justice to his dysfunctional Immigration “Courts!” PHOTO: UNHCR website
Migrant women carry children in the rain at an intake area after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, late Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. The U.S. government continues to report large numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with an increase in adult crossers. But families and unaccompanied children are still arriving in dramatic numbers despite the weather changing in the Rio Grande Valley registering hotter days and nights. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)(Gregory Bull)Natalie Gonnella-Platts Director, Women’s Initiative George W. Bush Institute PHOTO: Bush InstituteJenny Villatoro Associate, George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative PHOTO: George W. Bush Institute
By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:
When U.S. Border Patrol found him in the Texas desert, 10-year-old Wilton was crying, “they abandoned me.” Exhausted and alone, his image went viral — a poignant visual of the struggle faced by thousands seeking safety.
But Wilton’s story actually began in Nicaragua when his mother, Meylin, wasn’t able to get legal protection from an abusive partner. Mother and son fled to the United States, seeking asylum, but were expelled under a public health rule and sent to Mexico, where they were kidnapped, according to an account in El Pais. Meylin’s brother in Miami could pay only half the ransom — enough for Wilton alone to be released.
Although Meylin was ultimately released and reunited with her son, the tale that led to Wilton’s arrival at the border as an unaccompanied minor isn’t unique. It illustrates the fact that gender-based violence, revictimization and lack of justice affect children, families and communities thousands of miles away. It also highlights the importance of a safe and legal pathway into the United States for survivors of gender-based violence and other asylum-seekers. For many, arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum is the only legal pathway available.
Immigration reform in the United States is essential to assuring that we have a secure and efficient border, a system flexible enough to handle changes in migrant flows, and the capacity to treat each migrant with dignity. But more needs to be done in the migrants’ home countries, too, so that they are not forced to flee for their safety in the first place.
Any comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform should address gender inequity and gender-based violence.
They are not siloed issues to acknowledge only when horrific stories of femicide and human trafficking force us to pay attention. Rather, they are deeply entangled with broader challenges of corruption and poverty. Proposed solutions shouldn’t overlook the impact of gender-based violence on migrant flows, economic development, education and health.
Fourteen of the 25 most dangerous places for women are in the Western Hemisphere, including countries within Central America. Patriarchy and gang violence subject women and girls to abhorrent actions of abuse and control.
Honduras and El Salvador saw some of the highest incidences of femicide within Latin America in 2019, at rates of 6.2 and 3.3 per 100,000, respectively. In Guatemala, adolescent girls are at a high risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.
COVID 19-related lockdowns are being exploited by gangs looking to strengthen control: El Salvador alone has seen a 70% increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic. And lockdowns have forced vulnerable individuals to stay in close proximity to their perpetrators. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported an increase in intrafamily violence, with El Salvador reporting an increase in intrafamily femicides as well.
Justice systems and access to services need to be strengthened to ensure adequate protection for all under the law. Legal protections often are inhibited by weak institutions, corruption and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators.
According to a 2017 national survey, two-thirds of Salvadoran women over the age of 15 have experienced violence, but only 6% have ever reported it. While laws against child marriage exist across the region, in some countries about 1 in 3 young women are in a union before age 18. Post-trauma support and efforts that inform Central American women of their rights and agency are critical interventions that could help women like Meylin.
Females have been disproportionately affected by the devastating impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, but the status of women and girls is chronically overlooked in response efforts, exacerbating the risk of violence.
Women and girls must be seen and heard. Greater focus on gender and age-disaggregated data collection and in tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of legal systems is crucial. And women and their lived experiences need to be more fully represented at all leadership levels.
Finally, direct outreach to local communities should be a priority for U.S. government and private sector-led programs. This includes resource and capacity support for advocates and organizations that serve as lifelines for those affected by violence, often at great personal risk. Engagement with men and boys is equally imperative.
How can anyone be expected to thrive when her day-to-day priority is simply to survive? The United States needs to recognize that gender-based violence and gender inequity drive migration.
Immigration reform must include strategies to address the root causes of migration from Central America in effective and lasting ways to prevent situations like Wilton’s and Meylin’s. Women and girls must be front and center in these solutions.
Natalie Gonnella-Platts serves as the director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.
Jenny Villatoro is an associate for the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative.
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“Deterrents” and illegally abusing asylum seekers DON’T WORK! It’s not that difficult a concept. Indeed, these misguided attempts at deterrence have been failing consistently under Administrations of both parties for the past four decades. One would think that an “enlightened nation” would try a different approach rather than simply repeating the costly failures of the past in various forms.
What we need are functioning refugee and asylum systems, led and staffed by progressive experts, operating from INSIDE Government, that will grant status to qualified refugee women in a fair and timely manner and set favorable precedents even while separately addressing the endemic problems in the “refugee-sending countries.” Of course, it will result in more legal immigration of refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. That’s a good thing for both us and those individuals, not something to be feared or unlawfully and dishonestly “deterred!”
With stagnating population growth, we should welcome and facilitate legal immigration of courageous, talented, dedicated refugee women from all countries and their children through the refugee, asylum, and a much more robust legal immigration system!
Debi Sanders ESQ “Warrior Queen” of the NDPA PHOTO: law.uva.edu
Thanks to NDPA warrior-queen Debi Sanders for sending in this item. This report should be great evidence for those litigating to halt the Garland misogyny mess at EOIR and, sadly, to some extent in U.S. Courts of Appeals that have chosen to sweep both reality of what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and the patent unconstitutionality of a system governed by bogus precedents entered or promoted by AG’s affiliated with DHS Enforcement who also packed and reshaped the immigration “judiciary” in the image of nativist restrictionists! However, compelling as it is, the report only adds to the existing body of documentation of the dishonest approach by Administrations of both parties to Latin American asylum claims, particularly those of women and children.
For Pete’s sake, first and second year law students know that the EOIR travesty is unconstitutional! Why are life-tenured Article III Judges covering it up? Hopefully, history will take note of their mal-performance on the bench! These guys are life-tenured! So, what’s their excuse for not upholding the Constitution against clear Congressional and Executive abuses?
Hard for me to say this. But, former President George W. Bush is doing more for human rights, gender rights, civil rights, and immigrants rights’ than Garland or anyone else at the Biden DOJ! At least he speaks out publicly for the humanity and contributions of migrants and for their fair and generous treatment, which is more than any member of the Biden Administration has done as they continue to mistake softening the rhetoric with taking firm action to reverse White Nationalist policies and replace them with readily achievable progressive ones.
030114-O-0000D-001.President George W. Bush. Photo by Eric Draper, White House. “Why is this guy willing to speak up for immigrants’ rights . . . .
Meanwhile, despite pleas from nearly every expert, progressive, human rights, immigrants’ rights, and gender rights group in the U.S., Garland continues to allow Sessions’s wrong, toxic, and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B – to remain in place and threaten the lives of female refugees while ignoring the misogynistic, anti-asylum, culture inculcated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR that continues to flourish and daily dish out abuse to migrants and their representatives without meaningful consequences.
“ . . . while this guy continues to apply misogynistic precedents, eschew progressive experts, recycle failed ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ gimmicks, and allow the Trump-era anti-asylum culture to continue to flourish at EOIR and DOJ?” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Official White House Photo Public Realm
What, indeed, is someone like AAG Vanita Gupta doing with herself at Garland’s anti-progressive, and anti-due-process mess at DOJ? Why are folks like her and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke there in the first place if they aren’t going to stand up to Garland’s tone-deaf, inept approach to gender rights, human rights, and racial justice @ EOIR? How, on earth, do you lead a “Civil Rights Division” while turning a blind eye to grotesque violations of civil and human rights going on daily in your “Boss’s” wholly owned “court” system that functions like no “real court” in America? What’s DAG Lisa Monaco doing presiding over a gender disaster at EOIR? It’s straight out of “Jim Crow!”
James “Jim” Crow Symbol of American Racism, still right at home at Garland’s EOIR!“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — “Do Garland, Monaco, Gupta, & Clarke work in ‘sound-proofed offices’ where they can’t hear our tortured screams and moans? What’s wrong with those guys? We’re suffering and dying while they are fiddling and diddling!” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And, I wouldn’t say that Vice President Harris is looking very good either, as she “swallows the whistle” on notorious scofflaw human rights violations that she was well aware of from her time in the Senate! Doesn’t anyone in the Biden Administration have the backbone to speak up for human rights, human decency, and restoring the rule of law? Is it REALLY our position that following the Constitution, our statutory laws, and the international treaties to which we are party is beyond the capabilities of the U.S. Government? If so, what, may I ask, is the difference between us an any third world dictatorship where laws have no meaning?
Vice President Kamala D. Harris. “Our first African-American, AAPI, child of immigrants VEEP seems curiously deaf and indifferent to the gross abuses being heaped on migrants and women of color at EOIR and at our Souther Border! What’s her excuse for turning her back on the progressive, human rights, gender equality groups that helped put her in office. Why is she remaining silent as Garland continues to appoint Billy Barr’s hand-selected non-progressive, non-diverse Immigration Judges to a life-determining “judiciary” that the Biden Administration wholly controls? How can you create a progressive, diverse, Article III Judiciary that will promote racial equity when you’re unwilling to apply those values and selection criteria to a huge judiciary that you actually control? What message are you sending to ‘next generation progressive attorneys of color’ when you allow Garland to ignore them in favor of lesser qualified candidates? Why aren’t you out there actively recruiting more attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups for the Immigration Judiciary rather than allowing Garland to use same-old, same old bogus “USA Jobs Phantom recruitments?” Lots of unanswered questions here! Vice President of the United States (Official Senate Photo)
I can’t figure it out! But, I do know that Garland’s lousy stewardship at EOIR, failure to speak out for fundamental fairness, usher in progressive changes, and restore due process @ EOIR has reached “crisis proportions” affecting our entire justice system and threatening democracy!
Hopefully, progressive advocacy, human rights, and civil rights groups will keep up the pressure and demands for long, long, long overdue and readily achievable changes at EOIR: in leadership, precedents, culture, and administration of justice! (Get this: Garland just created yet another bogus “Dedicated Docket” without a functional e-filing system to make it work! That’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling 101,” as anyone who has actually had to deal with the mess in his Immigration Courts could tell him. But, he’s apparently not interested!) Right now, it’s an unmitigated “disaster zone” continuing to spiral downward!
There is a direct link between the “Dred Scottification of the other” that Garland countenances at EOIR and the overall failure of our justice system to deal effectively with institutionalized racism! The U.S. has a long, disreputable history of treating women and persons of color as “non persons” under the Constitution. Much of it traces to our immigration laws where “the others” are routinely dehumanized, stereotyped, demonized, and abused by those who falsely claim to be furthering the “rule of law!” We will NOT achieve racial justice for all in America until we deal with the festering wounds intentionally inflicted on women, children, and people of color in our immigration system, at EOIR, and illegally continuing at our borders!
By choice, Garland now “owns” the misogynistic, anti-due-process, anti-asylum disaster @ EOIR. Make him deal with it in a constructive way!
🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! Garland’s continued tolerance of misogyny and the anti-due-process, anti-asylum culture at EOIR, NEVER! Stop Garland’s continuing misogynistic nonsense before more refugee women and people of color needlessly die! What’s it going to take finally to get some “real justice @ Justice?”
Under Biden, crossing the U.S. border has become like a lottery. Timing is everything.
“Sometimes I ask myself why they [let me stay] and they deported others,” said a 20-year-old Nicaraguan man. “And I give thanks to God.”
by Julia Ainsley, Didi Martinez and Kenzi Abou-Sabe | NBC NEWS
Julia Edwards Ainsley Investigative Reporter, NBC News
. . . .
“We will see more deaths. And that’s the sad truth for us,” Copp said.
Immigration advocates also believe uncertainty surrounding the Title 42 policy is driving many migrants to take more dangerous routes to avoid being apprehended all together.
“The Biden administration’s retention of Title 42 and refusal to open the legal ports of entry is having the perverse effect of forcing desperate asylum seekers fleeing danger to cross between the ports, which is to nobody’s benefit,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrants’ rights project and a lead plaintiffs’ lawyer in a lawsuit challenging the use of Title 42.
For now, the Biden administration has made no promises of end dates for the Title 42 policy, even as Covid-19 restrictions ease across the country. Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said that the policy is in place to protect both migrants, who would need to be kept temporarily in congregate care settings if allowed in, and agents.
Gelernt said the policy of only guaranteeing unaccompanied children entry forces some families to self-separate in order to give their children the best chance of seeking asylum in the U.S.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link. A “lottery” for human lives! What’s next for the Biden/Harris Administration, “Hunger Games V?”
Mayorkas’s claim is pure BS! 💩 This inane, illegal, immoral, and unnecessary policy “protects” nobody except smugglers and traffickers! And, the idea that at this point, it is required by COVID is absurd on its face!
By contrast, Lee Gelernt of ACLU, a long-time inspirational leader of the NDPA, speaks truth! The Southern Border can’t be regulated without repealing the illegal Title 42 restrictions and immediately re-establishing the rule of law. That includes timely professional screening by expert Asylum Officers working for USCIS; a fair, robust, generous, practical, due-process-oriented application of asylum and other protection laws by a radically reformed EOIR utilizing the services of real Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum law; and close cooperation and support from NGOs, local governments, religious, and private bar groups to provide universal representation to asylum seekers and to lead and implement resettlement efforts throughout the U.S.
Lee Gelernt Deputy Director ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Program PHOTO: ACLU
The expertise, practical problem solving ability, and resources are available. Most of it is in the private/NGO/academic sectors right now. These are the leaders and experts the Biden Administration should have brought into Government “right off the bat” to solve the problem, but has tragically failed to do so. Not like they were’t told well in advance!
It won’t happen with the bureaucrats and “tunnel visioners” the Biden Administration is relying upon — folks committed to repeating the failures of the past who lack the experience, vision, courage, independence, and creative problem solving ability necessary to lead the way to a better future. Using the law (or lack thereof) as a “deterrent” and issuing threats won’t stop desperate refugees from coming. As we can see, it only “turns them off” on using our (unavailable and now largely defunct) legal system and drives them first into the hands of traffickers and smugglers and eventually into our underground “extralegal” population.
Human migration is eons older than our republic! It won’t be eradicated or turned off and on by the utterances and actions of politicos and law enforcement officials. It requires a thoughtful, informed approach that has been largely absent from our government for decades, which is why the failures and resulting human trauma, wasted resources, and squandered human opportunities persist Administration after Administration, regardless of party and rhetoric.
Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions had no problem running all over the rule of law when he wanted to implement his illegal, White Nationalist, misogynist agenda and degrade asylum seekers with dehumanization and “Dred Scottification” of the other, primarily women, children, and individuals of color.
Unfortunately, by contrast, the Biden Administration, is too weak-kneed to stand up for the rule of law and human dignity!
But, folks like Julia Ainsley and her team are making a permanent public record. As in the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration doesn’t appear to recognize the concept of accountability in Government, particularly as applied to itself. But, I doubt history will be as kind and as accommodating to those, regardless of political affiliation, carrying out these illegal, irrational, inhumane, and “designed to fail” policies.
Perhaps, the “dead can’t speak!” ☠️⚰️ But, others certainly can and will speak for them and see that the abusers of humanity are held accountable.
Wendy Fry Watchdog & Accountability Team San Diego Union-TribuneDavid Hernandez Reporter San Diego Union-Tribune PHOTO: San Diego Union Tribune website
In the months before her death, Chavez Segovia had tried to cross the border at least two other times by land and had been expelled under Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows the government to deny non-citizens entry into the country in response to the threat of COVID-19.
Migrant advocates have warned the strict border policy is pushing desperate people to take larger risks to try to cross the border into the United States, increasing the chances they become injured or killed.
“There are more people choosing to cross through dangerous routes, including the maritime crossing, because they don’t have the ability to present themselves at the ports because the ports are closed as a result of the Title 42 orders,” explained Pedro Rios, the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program.
Chavez Segovia was trying to cross not just for work, but also because she was afraid, and was trying to claim asylum, said her sister, Gabriela, who is undocumented and living in northern California. She said Chavez Segovia tried to claim asylum on both previous crossing attempts.
Gabriela said she too was fearful of sharing details of her sister’s situation, especially because her sons remain in Mexico. But Gabriela said she wishes Chavez Segovia had gotten a chance to plead her case, and that U.S. border authorities had listened.
“Ella les dijo que viene de peligro; que corría peligro y ellos no le hicieron caso,” said Gabriela. “She told them she was coming from danger, that she was running from danger and they didn’t listen to her.
“What are you going to do? Wait until someone sits down and writes you a letter that says ‘I am threatening you.’ No, of course not, you’re going to go at the first opportunity,” said Gabriela, frustrated at the high bar of legal proof needed for one to make an asylum claim.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.
Failure to listen, failure to treat humans fairly and humanely. Hmmm . . . . seem to have heard that recently:
The Biden administration has agreed to let about 250 people a day through border crossings with Mexico to seek refuge in the United States, part of negotiations to settle a lawsuit over pandemic-related powers that deny migrants a right to apply for asylum, an attorney said Monday.
The government also said it would stop flying migrant families from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to El Paso, Texas, and San Diego to then be expelled to Mexico under pandemic powers, said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued in federal court in Washington, D.C. The government has reserved rights to resume flights “if it deems the circumstances warrant.”
The government concessions would dramatically reshape exercise of powers known as Title 42, named for a section of an obscure 1944 law that former President Donald Trump used to let the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention effectively end asylum at the border while it sought to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
Biden has exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42 but kept it for single adults and many families. He has come under criticism from progressives for keeping asylum off-limits to many and for encouraging some parents to send children across the border alone. Enforcement-minded critics say exempting children traveling alone led to record numbers crossing and that lifting restrictions more will invite many more people to come.
The government and the ACLU agreed to “a streamlined process for assessing and addressing exemption requests brought by particular vulnerable families and other individuals,” Gelernt said. Once fully up and running, an estimated 250 particularly vulnerable individuals will be allowed in daily to seek humanitarian protection through a consortium of nongovernmental organizations. They must test for COVID-19 before entering the country.
About 2,000 people have already been allowed to enter the country, exempted from the pandemic-related powers to pursue asylum or other forms of protection while in the United States, Gelernt said.
“While these concessions will hopefully save lives, they are not a substitute for eliminating Title 42 and restoring asylum processing fully,” Gelernt said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.
. . . .
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The Administration basically has conceded that the bogus Trump-era Title 42 bar had little to do with public health (never much of a concern for the Trump kakistocracy) and everything to do with eliminating the rights of legal asylum seekers, particularly refugee women and those of color. The Biden Administration’s defense of this travesty is pretty disingenuous.
WASHINGTON — With shaking hands, Karen Cruz Caceres manages to hit record on the call.
“How many days have you gone without food?” she asks into the phone.
Tani, her younger sister, is heard sobbing. “Help me,” she gets out.
Cruz Caceres assures her: “I am going to pay today. I’ll make another deposit.”
The April 1 call ends abruptly, and Cruz Caceres stops recording.
A week before, Cruz Caceres, a single mother from Honduras who won asylum in Tennessee, had gotten another call that upended her already precarious life: Kidnappers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, had abducted her pregnant sister Tani and Tani’s 4-year-old son, and they wanted more than $20,000, according to a video recording of the call and messages reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. The family asked The Times not to use her sister’s last name, for fear of retribution from the kidnappers in Mexico and gangs back home.
Tani, 33, and her son were kidnapped on March 25, Cruz Caceres and lawyers said — just after U.S. authorities expelled them from Texas alongside other mothers and children under a Trump-era pandemic policy known as Title 42, which President Biden has continued.
The unprecedented policy, which relies on an obscure 1944 public health statute to indefinitely close the border to “nonessential” travel, has made migrant children and parents easy prey for the criminal groups waiting just on the other side. Biden’s continued reliance on Title 42 to quickly remove the vast majority of migrants at the southern border without due process contrasts with his pledge to restore “human dignity” to a U.S. immigration system targeted by former President Trump.
“My sister and my nephew were told they were going to kill them and feed them to the dogs,” Cruz Caceres told The Times. “If [U.S. officials] want to deport them back to their country, why don’t they do it now like prior presidents did?” she asked. “Why dump them to try their luck in the most dangerous cities in Mexico, to get abducted by kidnappers?”
The abduction of migrants in northern Mexico and the extortion from U.S. family members isn’t new, lawyers, experts and officials told The Times — what’s new is the reliance on Title 42 to expel thousands of these already vulnerable families, leaving them at the mercy of kidnappers and other criminals.
Since the Trump administration implemented Title 42 in March last year amid a global pandemic, U.S. border officials have carried out more than 630,000 expulsions under the policy, some 240,000 since Biden took office in January, according to a Times analysis of the latest government data.
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Read the rest of Molly’s article at the link.
The Biden Administration ran and took office on a platform of kinder, saner policies that would restore human rights and the rule of law at the border. So far, that promise has been a deadly lie!
Arbitrarily and unlawfully closing legal ports of entry to asylum seekers and abrogating asylum and refugee laws plays directly into the hands of human smugglers and cartels while expanding the extralegal immigration system and the resulting underground of undocumented residents. Many of these individuals could and should have been legally admitted through legal channels if we had a functioning immigration system overseen by fair, impartial, expert Immigration Courts staffed with well-qualified progressive Immigration Judges.
Naturally, with no legal asylum system in place, and with asylum seekers arbitrarily rejected at legal ports of entry, as described in Molly’s article, desperate individuals will turn to smugglers to achieve refuge. It’s not rocket science; but sadly the human tragedy that illegal, inhumane government policies cause at our border appear to be “out of sight, out of mind” to Judge Garland and other Biden Administration officials. That is, until the dead bodies start to pile up on their doorsteps!
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” This appears to be the Garland, Monaco, Gupta view of human rights and the rule of law for asylum seeker! What if we thought of these folks as our fellow human beings, rather than statistics or problems to be “deterred” through illegal, deadly, and ultimately ineffective policies? What if Garland replaced Miller’s nativist “judges” with REAL progressive Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum and due process and have the guts to grant legal protection to eligible migrants in a prompt, fair, and timely manner and to demand that DHS Asylum Officers do likewise? (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Judge Garland & Secretary Mayorkas continue to abuse asylum seekers at the Southern Border & in the U.S. Albrecht Dürer, Public Domain, via Wikimedia CommonsKevin Sieff Latin American Correspondent, Washington Post
MATAMOROS, Mexico — Carolina had memorized the date, but she triple-checked her documents just to make sure. For months, her life had revolved around the court hearing at which she could finally make her asylum claim.
Like tens of thousands of asylum seekers who reached the U.S. border during the Trump administration, the 36-year-old from Honduras had been sent to wait in Mexico for her immigration hearing. She was told to return to the border on her court date.
So on Feb. 26, 2020, she woke up early and put on her best blouse. She said a short prayer. But not long after her bus left for Laredo, Tex., gunmen stopped the vehicle. They kidnapped Carolina and her 15-year-old daughter, took them to a stash house packed with other kidnapped migrants and demanded thousands of dollars in ransom.
By the time they were released a few days later, Carolina had missed her day in court.
Her asylum case, it turned out, had been closed in absentia because she hadn’t shown up. Of the 68,000 asylum cases processed under the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, the policy also know as “Remain in Mexico,” 28,000 were closed for the same reason: Because asylum seekers didn’t present themselves.
. . . .
“MPP deprived people of due process and fundamental fairness,” she said. “In order to restore access to asylum in a meaningful way, the Biden administration needs to reopen cases for people ordered removed under MPP and allow them to pursue their claims safely from within the United States.”
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Read Kevin’s full article at the link.
The last statement, from Haiyun Damon-Feng, the director of the Adelante Pro Bono Project and assistant director of the William H. Gates Public Service Law Program at the University of Washington School of Law, sums it up. It’s not rocket science! It’s basic “Con Law 101” with some common sense and human decency thrown in! It’s also an essential part of the Biden Administration fulfilling basic campaign promises! Folks like Damon-Feng are the ones who should be running this system, solving the problems, and reconstructing the legal asylum system!
In what kind of “court” system are kidnapped individuals, some of them minors and children, further penalized and the Government allowed to get away with not keeping accurate addresses of individuals in their process and of knowingly sending them into danger zones? The victims remain in limbo and suffering while the perpetrators of these illegal outages — both current and former government officials — have not been held accountable. This is a national disgrace compounded by the fact that neither Judge Garland nor Secretary Mayorkas have taken corrective actions. Nor have they cleaned out the deadwood from their own legally and morally bankrupt systems and put competent individuals in charge!
Qualified Immigration Judges and competent administrators at the DOJ and DHS could have started solving these problems beginning the day after the inauguration. That 100 days into the Biden Administration this system is still operating illegally and taking a human toll is both a betrayal of campaign promises and an abuse of humanity! It’s also horrible and clearly illegal policy!
How does an Administration that is actively engaged in “Dred Scottifying” people of color at the border and in their wholly owned Immigration “Courts” — actually modern day “Star Chambers” — have any “legitimate voice” on racial justice in America?
“Justice” Star Chamber Style
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Human lives matter! The Constitution matters! Asylum law matters!
Professor Erin Barbato Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic UW Law Photo source: UW Law
ARD, BARBATO, AND COLLINS NAMED UW LAW SCHOOL TEACHERS OF THE YEAR
Each spring, UW Law School celebrates excellence in teaching through its Teacher of the Year awards. UW Law School’s annual teaching awards demonstrate the value placed on excellent teaching. Our faculty engage and inspire UW Law students through thoughtful pedagogy, and we are proud to honor them for this important work.
The honorees for outstanding classroom, clinical and adjunct instruction in 2020 include:
BJ Ard, Classroom Teacher of the Year. BJ Ard is an Assistant Professor of Law whose teaching and scholarship focusing on intellectual property, privacy, and technology. Ard earned his law degree and doctorate from Yale in 2017. He joined the UW Law School in 2018.
Erin M. Barbato, Clinical Teacher of the Year. Barbato is the director of UW Law School’s Immigrant Justice Clinic (IJC) and a Clinical Professor of Law. In 2013, she joined the Law School as an adjunct professor with a focus on immigration law before becoming the IJC director in 2018. Under her supervision, students learn how to represent individuals in removal proceedings and with humanitarian-based immigration relief. Barbato received her law degree from Marquette University Law School in 2006.
Susan Collins, Adjunct Teacher of the Year. Collins teaches an introduction for estate planning and drafting. Collins earned her law degree in 1995, graduating cum laude from UW Law. Collins worked for Associated Bank as a senior vice president and fiduciary law senior counsel until 2018.
Congratulations, Erin, my friend and colleague So very proud of you and all you have achieved at my alma mater. “Badgers changing the world, for the better!”
Bucky Badger UW Mascot
This is a “Big Deal!” As Erin tells me:
The award is based on votes and comments from students. It means a lot to me as I think it reflects that the students of UW Law recognize the importance of representing people in removal proceedings. They are future due process warriors.
Erin has been an inspirational role model for a new generation of law students, taking groups to the border to save lives, engaging in “retail level” litigation in Immigration Court that advances justice in the most meaningful way possible, and publicizing the seminal role that immigrant justice plays in social justice in America. She is also a thinker and scholar who sees due process, human rights, and racial justice issues with a clarity lacking in all too many of today’s out of touch politicians, policy makers, and judges.
Erin also was a guest lecturer in my Immigration Law & Policy course course at Georgetown Law. Her “stories and pictures from the border” brought home to my students the gross violations of human and constitutional rights going on in our dysfunctional Immigration Courts on a daily basis.
Erin is one of the many “practical scholars” out there who should be “on the inside” at EOIR, DHS, and the Article III Courts!
TRUTH IS UGLY — The Biden Administration’s concept of “racial justice” for brown-skinned asylum seekers at the border conflicts with their post-Chauvin-trial rhetoric. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
From Human Rights First:
Yesterday, Human Rights First welcomed news of former police officer Derek Chauvin’s conviction for murdering George Floyd.
“Accountability is only a first step toward justice,” said President and CEO Michael Breen. “Bringing true justice demands something deeper – a reckoning on race in America that has been a long time coming and must continue until systemic racism is eliminated.”
Yesterday also saw the release of our new report, “Failure to Protect,” which outlines how the Biden administration’s expulsions are endangering the lives of asylum seekers and causing a new wave of family separation.
From welcoming refugees at the southern border to the withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, we urged the Biden administration to put human rights first in policy and in action.
We also opened registration for our Spring Social, taking place on June 3.
REPORTING FROM THE SOUTHERN BORDER
Human Rights First, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Al Otro Lado released a new report on Tuesday, “Failure to Protect,” on the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42, the illegal Trump-era policy that endangers asylum seekers.
Despite his pledge to reverse former President Trump’s cruel approach to migration and the border, President Biden is continuing a policy that endangers children, drives family separation, and illegally expels asylum seekers to danger, including many Black & LGBTQ refugees who endure bias-motivated violence in Mexico.
Our report identifies at least 492 public and media reports of violent attacks since January 21, 2021 – including rape, kidnapping and assault – against people blocked from requesting asylum protection at the U.S.-Mexico border and/or expelled to Mexico.
To commemorate the Chauvin verdict, the Biden Administration decides to extend the abuse of migrants’ humanity and dehumanization of people of color at our borders:
Don’t kid yourself: Steven Miller’s cruel, scofflaw policies still “rule” at our borders. You don’t have to look very far for institutionalized racism in the Federal “justice” system.
“O.K., that’s like saying, ‘Stay home and die,’” according to the Rev. Pat Murphy, a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. “That message is falling on deaf ears.”
