THE VOICE OF REASON: ANGELINA JOLIE @ TIME ON WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NOT BE ABANDONING OUR TRADITIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LEADERSHIP ROLE! — “It is troubling to see our country backing away from these, while expecting other countries, who are hosting millions of refugees and asylum seekers, to adhere to a stricter code. If we go down this path, we risk a race to the bottom and far greater chaos. An international rules-based system brings order. Breaking international standards only encourages more rule-breaking.” — Advocates Independent Article I Immigration Court For Fair & Impartial Adjudication Of Asylum Claims!

https://apple.news/ARnAxuYYATOy78Bq8BYOy7g

Angelina Jolie writes in Time:

Angelina Jolie: The Crisis We Face at the Border Does Not Require Us to Choose Between Security and Humanity

Angelina Jolie

Jolie, a TIME contributing editor, is an Academy Award–winning actor and Special Envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees

We Americans have been confronted by devastating images from our southern border and increasingly polarized views on how to address this untenable situation.

At times I wonder if we are retreating from the ideal of America as a country founded by and for brave, bold, freedom-seeking rebels, and becoming instead inward-looking and fearful.

I suspect many of us will refuse to retreat. We grew up in this beautiful, free country, in all its diversity. We know nothing good ever came of fear, and that our own history — including the shameful mistreatment of Native Americans — should incline us to humility and respect when considering the question of migration.

I’m not a lawyer, an asylum seeker, or one of the people working every day to protect our borders and run our immigration system. But I work with the UN Refugee Agency, which operates in 134 countries to protect and support many of the over 70 million people displaced by conflict and persecution.

We in America are starting to experience on our borders some of the pressures other nations have faced for years: countries like Turkey, Uganda and Sudan, which host 6 million refugees between them. Or Lebanon, where every sixth person is a refugee. Or Colombia, which is hosting over 1 million Venezuelans in a country slightly less than twice the size of Texas. There are lessons — and warnings — we can derive from the global refugee situation.

The first is that this is about more than just one border. Unless we address the factors forcing people to move, from war to economic desperation to climate change, we will face ever-growing human displacement. If you don’t address these problems at their source, you will always have people at your borders. People fleeing out of desperation will brave any obstacle in front of them.

Second, countries producing the migration or refugee flow have the greatest responsibility to take measures to protect their citizens and address the insecurity, corruption and violence causing people to flee. But assisting them with that task is in our interest. Former senior military figures urge the restoration of U.S. aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, arguing that helping to build the rule of law, respect for human rights and stability is the only way to create alternatives to migration. The UN Refugee Agency is calling for an urgent summit of governments in the Americas to address the displacement crisis. These seem logical, overdue steps. Our development assistance to other countries is not a bargaining chip, it is an investment in our long-term security. Showing leadership and working with other countries is a measure of strength, not a sign of weakness.

Third, we have a vital interest in upholding international laws and standards on asylum and protection. It is troubling to see our country backing away from these, while expecting other countries, who are hosting millions of refugees and asylum seekers, to adhere to a stricter code. If we go down this path, we risk a race to the bottom and far greater chaos. An international rules-based system brings order. Breaking international standards only encourages more rule-breaking.

Fourth, the legal experts I meet suggest there are ways of making the immigration system function much more effectively, fairly and humanely. For instance, by resourcing the immigration courts to address the enormous backlog of cases built up over years. They argue this would help enable prompt determination of who legally qualifies for protection and who does not, and at the same time disincentivize anyone inclined to misuse the asylum system for economic or other reasons. The American Bar Association and other legal scholars and associations are calling for immigration court to be made independent and free from external influence, so that cases can be fairly, efficiently and impartially decided under the law.

There are also proven models of working with legal firms to provide pro-bono legal assistance to unaccompanied children in the immigration system without increasing the burden on the U.S. taxpayer. Expanding these kinds of initiative would help to ensure that vulnerable children don’t have to represent themselves in court, and improve the effectiveness, fairness and speed of immigration proceedings. Approximately 65% of children in the U.S. immigration system still face court without an attorney.

We all want our borders to be secure and our laws to be upheld, but it is not true that we face a choice between security and our humanity: between sealing our country off and turning our back to the world on the one hand, or having open borders on the other. The best way of protecting our security is by upholding our values and addressing the roots of this crisis. We can be fearless, generous and open-minded in seeking solutions.

TIME Ideas hosts the world’s leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

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Wow! Great thoughts on how caring people might actually help to constructively address human migration issues rather than cruelly making them worse through “malicious incompetence.”

It’s painfully clear that we have the wrong “celebrity” leading our nation. But, Jolie wasn’t on the ballot (not will she be). Nevertheless, in a saner and more law-abiding Government, there should be a place for ideas and leadership from Jolie and others like her.

HISTORICAL NOTE: If my memory serves me correctly, Angelina Jolie once appeared before my esteemed retired colleague U.S. Immigration Judge M. Christopher Grant, as an expert witness in an asylum case before the Arlington Immigration Court.

PWS

08-02-19

HONDURAS SINKING INTO THE SEA: No “Wall” (Or Dike) Will Stop The Eventual Flood Of Environmental Refugees

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jul/31/hond uras-community-coastal-towns-rising-sea-le?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Nina Lakhani
Central American Reporter,
The Guardian

Nina Lakhani reports for The Guardian:

Eric Pineda runs a modest beachfront restaurant which serves up plates of fresh fish and rice – and faces imminent destruction.

A recent tidal surge razed the nightclub next door, leaving a pastel pink ruin, and in the past two years, several other businesses between Pineda’s property and the Pacific Ocean have been destroyed by sudden waves.

“Every year, the ocean is getting closer and higher. I think we’ve got a year – maybe two – before the water takes us too,” said Pineda, 24. “It won’t be long.”

Golden beaches once helped transform this fishing community on the Gulf of Fonseca into a thriving tourist destination. Nowadays, however, there are barely a few metres of sand left, and rising water levels and tidal surges have wiped out roads, homes and businesses. Locals estimate that around a metre of ground is lost every year – which means this entire community will soon be under water. The same predicament is faced by settlements along the Pacific coast of Honduras, where land and its people are disappearing fast.

In recent years, millions of people have fled Central America to escape grinding poverty, institutional collapse and untrammeled violence. But another factor behind the exodus has received less attention: conflicts over natural resources which have been intensified by corporate expansion and climate change.

Running Dry

Violence and poverty have forced millions of Central Americans to flee their homes, but as the climate crisis deepens, drought, famine and environmental destruction are playing a growing role in driving the exodus

Living without water: the crisis pushing people out of El Salvador

’People are dying’: how the climate crisis has sparked an exodus to the US

Why I’m fleeing Honduras to seek asylum in the US

More from this series

Sea levels are rising around the world, but in this region another local factor is helping speed up coastal degradation: swathes of mangrove forests have been destroyed to make way for industrial shrimp farms which have proliferated even inside protected reserves.

Many Honduran shrimps are exported to the US and the UK, where they are sold in major supermarket chains including Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer.

“The industry destroys huge mangrove sites promising development, but actually creates very few jobs – and actually increases poverty by restricting fishing access for locals,” said Dina Morel, director of a local marine conservation organization, known by its acronym Coddeffagolf.

According to Morel, shrimp farms are routinely approved in protected areas and environmental violations rarely punished as officials often have vested interests in the profitable industry.

“The consequences of losing this essential ecosystem are clear,” said biologist Víctor Bocanegra. “Environmental vulnerability, food insecurity, poverty and social decomposition, which all leads to forced migration.”

Mangroves are essential to healthy, resilient coastlines. The sturdy trees protect shorelines from storms and floods, and help prevent erosion by stabilizing sediments with their intertwined roots.

They are key factors in marine biodiversity, providing food, clean water, shelter and safety for fish and invertebrates such as crabs, lobsters and prawns.

In order to take advantage of this natural symbiosis, acres and acres of shrimp farms have been built inland in ocean inlets which were once safe havens for tidal waves. But the farms block the natural flow of water, causing high tides and storm surges to immerse beach communities instead.

On Cedeño beach, Ariana Tees, 70, is frying fish caught by her husband, Manuel, 67, in a makeshift tarpaulin kitchen just metres from the sea. This is where they live, work, eat and sleep, but every month they are forced further and further back as the ocean inches closer inland.

Every year, the ocean is getting closer and higher. I think we’ve got a year – maybe two – before the water takes us too

Eric Pineda

“Of course we’re scared,” said Tees. “But we’ve nowhere else to go, and there’s no protection from the government, not even a barrier.”

Manuel, who has been fishing since he was a child, said: “Every year there is less fish, and the surges have nowhere to go – so the water comes here looking for an exit. We’ve woken up in the middle of the night surrounded by water.”

He paused, before concluding: “Basically we’re fucked.”

The shrimp industry in southern Honduras dates back to the 1970s, but grew exponentially in the 1990s. As a result, in 2000, seven mangrove forests covering over 150,000 acres were designated protected reserves.

Despite this, half the region’s mangroves were destroyed between 2000 and 2010 – largely as a result of fishing concessions sanctioned before the decree, according to research by Coddeffagolf.

No one knows exactly how much of the protected areas remain intact, but satellite images seen by the Guardian suggest the situation is critical.

The extent of the deforestation can be seen from a mountain peak in San José de Las Conchas, 20 miles north of Cedeño, where the panorama reveals only slivers of protected mangroves nestled between massive manmade shrimp lagoons and the turquoise ocean.

We’ve woken up in the middle of the night surrounded by water.

Manuel Tees

Locals say shrimp companies build farms in secret – hidden from view by a ring of mangroves – then obtain permits retrospectively.

Sales figures suggest shrimp farms are expanding: $216m of shrimps were exported last year, a figure expected to rise by up to 20% in 2019.

FundeSur, a social responsibility foundation created by the shrimp industry in 2014, claims to invest $0.02 for every pound of shrimp exported into health, education and environmental projects.

But reforestation programmes, which require years of nurturing to ensure hardy shrubs, are rare. FundeSur did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“There is more deforestation than reforestation, that’s evident for everyone to see,” said Nelson Martínez, a grassroots organiser from Guapinol, a nearby community badly damaged by a tidal surge three years ago. “Unless the mangroves are saved, Guapinol will disappear too.”

A thin strip of land sandwiched between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Central America is especially vulnerable to the global climate emergency.

Between 1998 and 2017, Honduras was the second country or territory most affected by extreme weather events such as floods, storms, droughts and wildfires, according to the Global Risk Index. (Puerto Rico came first.)

Hurricane Mitch – the most deadly storm in the western hemisphere in over two centuries – left at least 8,000 people dead and a million others homeless and landless when it struck in 1998. It set the country’s economic development back at least 50 years and triggered the first wave of post-cold war Central American migration to the US.

Yet, investment in climate mitigation and adaption programmes such as reforestation and flood defences is falling.

Only 0.5% of the central government budget is allocated to environmental protection this year, down from 1.2% in 2010, according to analysis by economist Hugo Pino, a former finance minister and central bank governor.

Since a 2009 coup, a profusion of water-guzzling megaprojects – including dams, mines, and African palm plantations – has fuelled social conflicts, state repression and migration.

Berta Cáceres, a Goldman environmental prize winner, was murdered in March 2016 in retaliation for leading opposition to the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the river Gualcarque, relied upon by the indigenous Lenca people for food, water and medicines.

“The key issue connecting climate change and governments is water governance – the politics deciding who gets priority to enough good quality water,” said Professor Raúl Pacheco-Vega, an environmental politics scholar at the centre for economic research and teaching (Cide) in Mexico.

In Honduras, the upshot of water politics is stark: every year during the rainy season, countless communities are cut off, lives are lost, and roads, bridges and schools are damaged. It is a cycle of environmental destruction that exacerbates poverty and drives migration as families search for food, water and safety.

In October, six people were killed after two days of torrential rain triggered landslides and the River Choluteca burst its banks. The town of Marcovia, 14 miles inland from Cedeño, was inundated and its habitants forced to leave.

Soon after, hundreds of people from the nearby city of Choluteca joined a caravan of migrants heading north through Mexico to the US border.

Half a million Hondurans heading north have been apprehended by US and Mexican officials since October 2016.

The motives for migration are always complex, but in this region, environmental factors are increasingly important.

Pedro Landa from Eric, a Jesuits human rights research organisation, said the lessons from Mitch were never learned. “Since the [2009] coup, the state has been increasingly controlled by mafia politicians with no interest in guaranteeing water supplies or economic development for ordinary people, just for themselves.”

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White Nationalist political slogans and cruel “enforcement-only” gimmicks can’t solve the real human problems and global forces driving migration. That would take expertise, empathy, courage, vision, and intellectual capacity, five qualities conspicuously lacking in Trump and the shallow toadies who make up his Administration.

PWS

08-01-19

AILA CONDEMNS BARR’S LATEST COWARDLY EXTRALEGAL ATTACK ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS — “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum.”

Jeremy McKinney, Esquire
Greensboro, NC
AILA 2nd Vice President

AG’s Decision Ignores Precedent and Is the Latest Attempt to Restrict Asylum

AILA: AG’s Decision Ignores Precedent and Is the Latest Attempt to Restrict Asylum

AILA Doc. No. 19072905 | Dated July 29, 2019

CONTACTS:

George Tzamaras
202-507-7649
gtzamaras@aila.org Belle Woods
202-507-7675
bwoods@aila.org

WASHINGTON, DC — On July 29, 2019, Attorney General (AG) William Barr issued a precedent decision in Matter of L-E-A- and announced that in his view, families cannot be considered a particular social group (and thus grounds for asylum) unless they are recognized by society as such.

AILA Second Vice President Jeremy McKinney stated, “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum. Courts, like the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, have voluminous case law directly contradicting the Attorney General’s decision today.

“The impact of AG Barr’s decision, along with the other decisions issued by his immediate predecessors on asylum and the nation’s immigration courts, cannot be overstated. Last summer, the AG issued Matter of A-B- attempting to end the category of persecution – essentially restricting domestic violence victims and other victims of crimes perpetrated by private, non-government actors from their ability to qualify for asylum. Today, the AG’s office further attempts to restrict asylum by targeting a new category of asylum seekers: families. This will cause irreparable harm. We know that these are some of the most vulnerable of asylum seekers as parents flee with their children in order to protect them from persecution. This decision unnecessarily makes asylum harder. Clearly, our nation needs an independent immigration court system separate from the Department of Justice.”

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 19072905.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

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Cowardice is the very definition of when those in power whose job and solemn duty is to protect and vindicate the rights of others, particularly the most vulnerable among us like refugees, instead grossly abuse their power by picking on them, bullying them, and abusing them. Whether or not Barr and the other White Nationalist restrictionists in the Trump Administration are committing actual crimes under U.S. law, they are certainly guilty of “crimes against humanity” in any normal sense of the word.

It is for legal scholars, historians, and moral philosophers to insure that Trump, Pence, Barr, Sessions, “Cooch Cooch,” “Big Mac With Lies,” Miller, Nielsen, Kelly, Homan, Morgan, and others who have enthusiastically supported and enabled this debacle do not escape the negative judgements of history!

PWS

07-30-19

TAL @ SF CHRON: 9TH CIR. STICKS A FORK IN CORE OF “GONZO APOCALYPTO” SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM — Many Of DOJ’s Wasteful “Criminal” Prosecutions Of Harmless Asylum Seekers Were Illegal — Conservative Icon Judge Jay Bybee Becoming A Key Judicial Voice For The Rule Of Law Against Trump & Co’s Executive Abuses!

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Ninth-Circuit-ruling-could-wipe-out-hundreds-of-14152171.php

Ninth Circuit ruling could wipe out hundreds of family separations convictions

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in California substantially narrowed the government’s ability to charge people for crossing the border illegally — a case that could invalidate hundreds of prosecutions that were at the core of the Trump administration’s separations of migrant families last year.

The ruling comes as the federal law in the case, which makes it a crime to cross the border without authorization, is under scrutiny in the Democratic presidential campaign, with several candidates arguing it should be done away with altogether.

Wednesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena could bolster the Democrats’ argument that the Trump administration is misusing the law to criminalize well-intentioned immigrants seeking asylum. It also adds further questions to the administration’s widely criticized prosecutions that resulted in thousands of family separations last year.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The 2-1 decision overturning a lower court ruling concerned the provision of U.S. law that makes improper entry to the country a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail. The law has three parts: entering the U.S. at an improper time or place, eluding immigration officers or entering the U.S. using false pretenses.

In an opinion written by Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush-appointee, the court decided that the second part — eluding officers — could only apply to immigrants who are at a valid border crossing but who try to enter by evading detection, not immigrants picked up on the U.S. side having crossed somewhere else. That was the case with Oracio Corrales-Vazquez, a Mexican national whom officers found hiding in bushes miles from the border, whose conviction the court overturned.

Because part one of the statute already covers immigrants who surreptitiously enter where there is no legal crossing, the court held, the second part must exist to cover some separate activity. Otherwise, the court said, it would be redundant.

Circuit has already held that part one of the illegal-entry crime — entering at an improper time or place — does not apply to people who cross the border where officials can see them, in person or over cameras, and then seek out an officer and claim asylum. Those migrants are clearly not trying to avoid detection, court rulings have held.

It has become standard practice for federal authorities in Southern California to charge border crossers only using part two to avoid the defense to part one, said Kara Hartzler, an attorney with the nonprofit San Diego Federal Defenders who brought the case. Now, federal attorneys will not have part two as a back door to charge asylum seekers with illegal entry.

The court ruling means thousands of similar convictions could be thrown out, including hundreds that were the basis for family separations the Trump administration carried out last summer in the name of prosecuting a crime.

“All of the criminal cases that led to being separated from their families, … at least in San Diego, are at least convictions where the person was actually innocent because of this ruling,” Hartzler said.

David Leopold, a former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, recalled then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen telling Congress the family separations were justified because the adults taken into custody had been charged with illegal-entry crimes.

“Well, here they weren’t even prosecuting those cases correctly,” Leopold said. “It puts a question mark next to every one of those convictions, which led to separation of children and in some cases the permanent separation of child from parent.”

The Trump administration separated thousands of families in the two months the program was in effect, before the president stopped it and a federal judge in San Diego ruled the practice was unconstitutional. In hundreds of those cases, parents were deported without their children, many of whom will not be reunited as the youths pursue a right to stay in the U.S.

The Justice Department does not make prosecution data public that would identify how many separated families could be affected by Wednesday’s ruling, but there could be hundreds of such cases. Nearly 4,000 immigration-related offenses were brought in the Southern District of California in 2018, according to court data, of which the most common charge is illegal entry.

The ruling also comes as some Democrats are attacking the notion that crossing the border should be a criminal rather than civil offense. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro has made repealing the law a central focus of his presidential campaign, pointing to the Trump administration’s use of the law as a justification for separating the families last year. Twelve Democratic candidates have embraced the idea, according to a Politico tracker.

Castro and other critics of the law say it criminalizes asylum seeking. Other parts of the law make clear that an immigrant can file an asylum claim regardless of whether they entered the country legally.

Bill Hing, professor of law and migration studies at University of San Francisco, supports Castro’s arguments to remove the criminal part of the law, saying deportation is “already a pretty severe penalty” for anyone found not to have a valid asylum claim.

“Especially now, the vast majority of people gathered at the border are coming to seek protection — why criminalize that activity?” Hing said. “The statute should require something much more criminal in intent, and when it’s just simply to cross the border to seek protection, I think there’s a good argument that we should decriminalize that activity.”

The ruling applies only to the nine states covered by the Ninth Circuit, including California and Arizona along the Mexican border. But Hing says lawyers could seek similar rulings in other border states.

“Conceptually it actually makes sense,” Hing said. “It doesn’t make sense to have two parts of a law where the same act could qualify for the violation of both.”

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Appointed by President George W. Bush, Judge Jay Bybee has been a controversial figure. His confirmation was strongly opposed by many Human Rights and Civil Rights groups because of his role in justifying torture while serving in the Bush DOJ.

Nevertheless, in this case, and in the earlier case of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, blocking an illegal attempt by Trump to bar Central American asylum seekers, Judge Bybee has been a strong and courageous voice for the rule of law, reason, and Constitutional separation of powers in the face of Trump’s intentional overreach in the area of immigration. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/12/10/mark-joseph-stern-slate-on-why-judge-bybees-65-page-evisceration-of-trumps-lawless-asylum-order-is-so-important-the-next-time-trump-floats-a-flagrantly-lawless-idea-then/.

Indeed, many observers believe that Judge Bybee’s scholarly opinion in East Bay Sanctuary was key to Chief Justice Roberts voting with the Supremes’ so-called “liberal wing” to reject the Administration’s bogus attempt to “end run” the system in that case by going directly to the Supremes without allowing the lower court proceedings to be completed. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/12/21/i-was-right-barely-chief-justice-roberts-saves-asylum-rule-of-law-administrations-request-to-implement-order-truncating-asylum-law-turned-down-5-4/.

Unfortunately, this much needed decision comes too late for many families who have been irreparably damaged by “Gonzo Apolcalypto’s” vile illegal and immoral abuse of Government prosecutorial authority. It’s too bad that there does not appear to be any way of holding “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions personally liable for his abuse of office, unconscionable distortion of our justice system, and the lifetime damage he inflicted on so many innocent children and families.

The case is US v. Oracio Corrales-Vazquez, and here’s a link to the full opinion: https://www.courtlistener.com/pdf/2019/07/24/united_states_v._oracio_corrales-Vazquez.pdf

And, of course, thanks to Tal for her continued incisive reporting on the most important issues facing America!

PWS

07-26-19

DUE PROCESS & RULE OF LAW PREVAIL ANYWAY — USD JUDGE TIGAR STOPS TRUMP’S ASYLUM TRAVESTY FOR NOW! — Conflicting Decisions On Same Day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/asylum-ruling-tro.html

Miriam Jordan & Zolan Kanno-Youngs report for The NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to continue accepting asylum claims from all eligible migrants arriving in the United States, temporarily thwarting the president’s latest attempt to stanch the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction against a new rule that would have effectively banned asylum claims in the United States for most Central American migrants, who have been arriving in record numbers this year. It would have also affected many migrants from Africa, Asia and other regions.

The decision came on the same day that a federal judge in Washington, hearing a separate challenge, let the new rule stand, briefly delivering the administration a win. But Judge Tigar’s order prevents the rule from being carried out until the legal issues can be debated more fully.

The rule, which has been applied on a limited basis in Texas, requires migrants to apply for and be denied asylum in the first safe country they arrive in on their way to the United States — in many of the current cases, Mexico — before applying for protections here. Because migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala make up the vast majority of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border, the policy would virtually terminate asylum there.

“This new rule is likely invalid because it is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws,” Judge Tigar wrote in his ruling on Wednesday, adding that the government’s decision to put it in place was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The government, which is expected to appeal the decision, has said that the rule intends to prevent exploitation of the asylum system by those who unlawfully immigrate to the United States. By clogging the immigration courts with meritless claims, the government argues, these applicants harm asylum seekers with legitimate cases who must wait longer to secure the protection they deserve.

Under the policy, which the administration announced on July 15, only immigrants who have officially lost their bids for asylum in another country or who have been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply in the United States.

Hondurans and Salvadorans have to apply for asylum and be denied in Guatemala or Mexico before they become eligible to apply in the United States, and Guatemalans have to apply and be denied in Mexico.

The policy reversed longstanding asylum laws that ensure people can seek safe haven no matter how they got to the United States. On July 16, the day the new rule went into effect — initially in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy in court in San Francisco. The case in Washington was filed separately by two advocacy organizations, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Raices.

“The court recognized, as it did with the first asylum ban, that the Trump administration was attempting an unlawful end run around asylum protections enacted by Congress,” said Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U. lawyer who argued the case in San Francisco.

The groups challenging the rule argued that immigration laws enacted by Congress expressly state that a person is ineligible for asylum only if the applicant is “firmly resettled” in another country before arriving in the United States. The laws also require an asylum seeker to request protection elsewhere only if the United States has entered into an agreement with that country and the applicant was guaranteed a “full and fair procedure” there, they said.

Judge Tigar agreed. “The rule provides none of these protections,” he said in his ruling.

During a hearing in the case on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Justice Department, Scott Stewart, said that a large influx of migrant families had spawned a “crisis” that had become “particularly stark” and created a “strain” on the asylum system.

“Migrants understand the basics of the incentives and are informed about how changes in law and policy can affect their options,” Mr. Stewart told the judge.

Judge Tigar voiced concern about forcing asylum seekers to apply for protection in Mexico or Guatemala. “We don’t see how anyone could read this record and think those are safe countries,” he said, referring to the rule’s language that migrants must apply to the first safe country.

The judge also said that the government did not address the “adequacy of the asylum system in Guatemala,” which is not equipped to handle a surge in applications.

Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International, said it was inhumane and cruel to force people fleeing violence to seek safety in places that are as dangerous as the homes they fled. “Everyone seeking protection has the right to humane treatment and a fair asylum process under U.S. and international law,” she said.

In federal court in Washington, two advocacy groups made similar arguments against the new policy.

But that judge, Timothy J. Kelly, found that the groups did not sufficiently support their claim that “irreparable harm” would be done to the plaintiffs in the case if the policy were not blocked. While the rule would affect migrants seeking asylum, the judge said, “the plaintiffs before me here are not asylum seekers.”

“They are only two organizations, one of which operates in the D.C. area, far from the southern border,” he added.

In recent years, the number of migrants petitioning for asylum has skyrocketed.

Migrant families and unaccompanied children have been turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents and then requesting asylum, which typically enables them to remain in the United States for years as their cases wind through the backlogged immigration courts. Only about 20 percent of them ultimately win asylum, according to the government, and many of those whose applications are rejected remain in the country unlawfully.

The administration announced the new asylum policy despite the fact that Guatemala and Mexico had not agreed to the plan, which means those countries have made no assurances that they would grant asylum to migrants intending to go to the United States. Talks with Guatemala broke down and the country’s president, Jimmy Morales, backed out of a meeting that had been scheduled for July 15 at the White House. On Wednesday, President Trump said that his administration was considering imposing tariffs on Guatemalan exports or taxing money sent home by migrants.

The new asylum rule is just one of many efforts by the Trump administration to curb the entry of migrants.

At ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection agents have significantly slowed the processing of applicants through metering — limiting how many migrants are processed to as few as a dozen per day.

And some 16,000 migrants are waiting in Mexican border towns like Tijuana under a policy commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until the day of their court hearing. The policy makes it more difficult for the migrants to secure a lawyer to represent them in the United States, undermining their chances of winning protections.

In November, President Trump unveiled a separate policy that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Judge Tigar, who was also hearing that case, issued a temporary restraining order blocking that rule. The case is currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Washington, and Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.

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It’s a much more reasonable order than that issued by Judge Kelly in DC earlier in the day which declared “open season” on asylum seekers. Judge Tigar has been on the front lines of Trump’s war on Due Process and the rule of law. Significantly, he pointed out the absurdity of the Trump Administration’s outrageous scofflaw attempt to classify Guatemala, one of the most dangerous countries in the world, without a functioning asylum system, as a bogus “safe third country.”

It’s on to the appellate courts!

PWS

07-24-19

TOM JAWETZ @ CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: “Restoring the Rule of Law Through a Fair, Humane, and Workable Immigration System”

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2019/07/22/472378/restoring-rule-law-fair-humane-workable-immigration-system/

OVERVIEW

Policymakers must break free of the false dichotomy of America as either a nation of immigrants or a nation of laws, and advance an immigration system that is fair, humane, and actually works.

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Read the entire much longer, but well worth it, article at the above link.

Tom is totally right: It’s absurd to let Trump and the restrictionists attempt to take the “rule of law high ground.” No Administration in our lifetime has had less respect for or been more detrimental to the U.S. Constitution and the true rule of law. Just look at the suspensions of refugee and asylum laws and the absolute disaster Trump has wrought in the U.S. Immigration Courts!

Also, no Democrat is actually calling for an “open borders” policy. Being in favor of much more robust legal immigrant admissions, a larger and more generous refugee program, and the end of expensive, inhumane, and counterproductive enforcement methods will actually make our borders more secure by ending the absurdity of equating refugees and those coming to work with terrorists, drug smugglers, and others who might be coming to do us harm.

With more generous and realistic legal immigration laws and policies, more folks will chose to use the legal system (even when it means reasonable waiting times), fewer folks will find it necessary to evade the law, and border enforcement will become more efficient and effective. Moreover, in a more inclusive system with more realistic “lines,” the potential sanction of “being sent to the end of the line” will have more “bite.”

It’s all about rational priorities and a system more in line with reality and our needs as a nation. That means a system that is not driven by irrational forces like racism and White Nationalism, both of which encourage individuals to act in their overall worst interests, and against the best interests of the larger group, to satisfy some underlying fear or prejudice.

Many thanks to my good friend and stalwart member of the “Roundtable,” Retired Judge Gustavo D. “Surferboy” Villageliu, for bringing this important item to my attention! May you “catch a big one” that will glide you majestically to shore, my friend!

Hon. Gustavo D. Villageliu — Honorable Gustavo D. Villageliu
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
American Surfer

PWS

07-23-19

MOHSIN HAMID @ NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Migration Is Human History, & We Are All Migrants — Opposition To Migration Is Opposition To Human Progress: “Accepting our reality as a migratory species will not be easy. New art, new stories, and new ways of being will be needed. But the potential is great. A better world is possible, a more just and inclusive world, better for us and for our grandchildren, with better food and better music and less violence too!

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/08/we-all-are-migrants-in-the-21st-century/

Ours is a migratory species. Humans have always moved. Our ancestors did, and not linearly, like an army advancing out of Africa in a series of bold thrusts, but circuitously, sometimes in one direction, then in another, borne along by currents both without and within. Our contemporaries are moving—above all from the countryside to the cities of Asia and Africa. And our descendants will move too. They will move as the climate changes, as sea levels rise, as wars are fought, as one mode of economic activity dies out and gives way to another.

The power of our technology, its impact on our planet, is growing. Consequently the pace of change is accelerating, giving rise to new stresses, and our nimble species will use movement as part of its response to these stresses, as our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers did, as we are designed to do.

And yet we are told that such movement is unprecedented, that it represents a crisis, a flood, a disaster. We are told that there are two kinds of humans, natives and migrants, and that these must struggle for supremacy.

We are told not only that movement through geographies can be stopped but that movement through time can be too, that we can return to the past, to a better past.

We are told not only that movement through geographies can be stopped but that movement through time can be too, that we can return to the past, to a better past, when our country, our race, our religion was truly great. All we must accept is division. The division of humanity into natives and migrants. A vision of a world of walls and barriers, and of the guards and weapons and surveillance required to enforce those barriers. A world where privacy dies, and dignity and equality alongside it, and where humans must pretend to be static, unmoving, moored to the land on which they currently stand and to a time like the time of their childhood—or of their ancestors’ childhoods—an imaginary time, in which standing still is only an imaginary possibility.

Such are the dreams of a species defeated by nostalgia, at war with itself, with its migratory nature and the nature of its relationship to time, screaming in denial of the constant movement that is human life.

Perhaps thinking of us all as migrants offers us a way out of this looming dystopia. If we are all migrants, then possibly there is a kinship between the suffering of the woman who has never lived in another town and yet has come to feel foreign on her own street and the suffering of the man who has left his town and will never see it again. Maybe transience is our mutual enemy, not in the sense that the passage of time can be defeated but rather in the sense that we all suffer from the losses time inflicts.

A greater degree of compassion for ourselves might then become possible, and out of it, a greater degree of compassion for others. We might muster more courage as we swim through time, rather than giving in to fear. We might collectively be able to be brave enough to recognize that our individual endings are not the ending of everything and that beauty and hope remain possible even once we are gone.

Accepting our reality as a migratory species will not be easy. New art, new stories, and new ways of being will be needed. But the potential is great. A better world is possible, a more just and inclusive world, better for us and for our grandchildren, with better food and better music and less violence too.

The city nearest you was, two centuries ago, almost unimaginably different from that city today. Two centuries in the future it is likely to be at least as different again. Few citizens of almost any city now would prefer to live in their city of two centuries ago. We should have the confidence to imagine that the same will be true of the citizens of the world’s cities two centuries hence.

A species of migrants at last comfortable being a species of migrants. That, for me, is a destination worth wandering to. It is the central challenge and opportunity every migrant offers us: to see in him, in her, the reality of ourselves.

Mohsin Hamid is the author of four novels —Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Exit West—and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations. His writing has been translated into 40 languages, featured on best-seller lists, and adapted for the screen.

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Life is change!

As I often say, we can diminish ourselves as a nation (and, under Trump are doing just that, at an alarming rate), but it won’t stop human migration.

Just think what might happen if we spent the same amount of time, effort, and money on addressing and solving migration issues that we now do on cruel, inept, and ineffective efforts to stop migration. “Malicious incompetence” will never be effective policy.

PWS

07-21-19

DON KERWIN @ CMS: REFUGEES HELPED MAKE AMERICA GREAT — NOW UNPATRIOTIC TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO COMPLETELY ABANDON WORLD’S REFUGEES AT THEIR TIME OF GREATEST NEED — Richest, Most Diverse, Most Resettlement-Able Country In The World Intends To Shirk Humanitarian Duties — Undoubtedly Some Will Die & Many Will Be Traumatized By This Cowardly Attack On On International Obligations To World’S Most Vulnerable!

https://cmsny.org/whats-less-patriotic-than-abandonment-of-the-us-refugee-protection-program/

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Don writes:

What’s less patriotic than abandonment of the US refugee protection program?

Donald Kerwin

Director

Center for Migration Studies

(Raúl Nájera/Unsplash)

SEARCH OUR POSTS

This week, the Trump administration has descended to a new level of contempt for the US refugee protection system. From its very first days in office when it evoked specious national security concerns to suspend the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days and indefinitely bar the admission of Syrian refugees, the administration has sought to discredit and diminish the US refugee resettlement, asylum, temporary protection, and other humanitarian programs.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump regularly decried the ways in which President Barack Obama exercised Executive authority, including by offering status, work authorization and protection from deportation to undocumented residents brought to the United States as children. As president, however, he has far exceeded Obama in unilaterally exercising his immigration authorities, albeit in favor of indiscriminate enforcement and evisceration of humanitarian programs. Many of these measures – although often justified on rule of law grounds – have not survived legal challenge.

To provide just a sampling of the Trump administration’s misguided policies, it has cut refugee admissions to historically low levels at a time of unprecedented need; has sought to rescind Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 95 percent of the program’s beneficiaries; ended the Central American Minors (CAM) program which allowed El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran children to undergo refugee screening in their own countries and join their legally present parents in the United States; cut aid to the Northern Triangle states, which have produced in recent years the lion’s share of migrants and asylum-seekers to the United States, and; denied access to the US asylum system through interception, border enforcement, and cruel deterrence strategies, such as separating children from parents and forcing asylum seekers to wait for months in dangerous Mexican border cities while their US claims are pending.

The president habitually impugns the patriotism of his critics, but has systematically attempted to dismantle quintessentially American programs, which have long reflected and projected US values. Some of the most shameful episodes in the US history – as when it turned away the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the S.S. St. Louis – involve the United States’ failure to protect refugees. By contrast, its leadership in responding to the refugees generated by World War II, the Vietnam conflict, the Cuban revolution, and the Balkans war in the former Yugoslavia – earned it the respect, gratitude and good will of many states and countless persons. They made it a beacon of freedom.

How do these programs serve US interests? They save lives (a core value). They promote regional and global stability. They reduce irregular migration. They promote US foreign policy goals. They encourage developing nations to continue to offer haven and integration opportunities to the bulk of the world’s refugees. They promote cooperation with US diplomatic, military and counterterror strategies. They link communities, including diverse faith communities, that work together to welcome and resettle refugees. As President Ronald Reagan put it in 1981, they continue “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and shares the “responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.”

On July 18, Politico reported that the administration has been trying to make the case for admitting no refugees in FY 2020 – not those already approved for admission, not the family members of refugees in the United States, not those who assisted the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not survivors of religious persecution, although the administration regularly touts its commitment to religious liberty. It has reportedly been weighing a farcical rationale for this extraordinary step; that is, the United States cannot both process asylum claims and resettle refugees, although it has been doing both for decades.

On July 15, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOD) issued final interim regulations – which became effective the following day – that seek to deny access to the US asylum system to virtually every asylum-seeker at the southern border. With narrow exceptions, the rule would bar asylum claims by those “who did not apply for protection from persecution or torture where it was available in at least one third country” outside his or her “country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which he or she transited en route to the United States.”

Yet the Immigration and Nationality Act allows any non-citizen physically present in the United States to apply for asylum. Removal is permitted only “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement” to a third country where “the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and where the alien is eligible to receive asylum or equivalent temporary protection.” In short, this exception applies to “safe third country” agreements with other nations. The United States has only one such agreement – with Canada – which does not apply to asylum-seekers with family members in the other country, as the DHS and DOD regulation would. The pre-conditions for such an agreement are that an agreement actually exists, the state parties to the agreement are “safe,” and they have “full and fair” asylum policies and procedures. The DHS/DOJ rule flouts all of these statutory requirements.

Ironically, the Trump administration claims that it needs to take this step based on the numbers of people seeking protection from countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Yet great demand and need argue for a robust, well-resourced asylum system, not the shell of a program.

Some percentage of asylum-seekers from these countries will ultimately be found to be ineligible for asylum, although a very high percentage have been forced to leave their violence-torn homelands and will at least present credible claims. For its part, the Trump administration has not effectively addressed the causes driving the flight of these migrants, has not offered legal migration opportunities to those in great need, and has failed to take any of steps necessary to address a human crisis of this magnitude. These steps would certainly reduce irregular migration and the high numbers of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Instead, it has resorted to deterrence, interception and border enforcement policies – a recipe for failure on humanitarian, legal, and enforcement grounds, and a boon only to human smuggling networks and for-profit prisons.

The administration is dismantling the US refugee resettlement program and the asylum system – at immense human cost, to the nation’s detriment, and with disastrous consequences for the international system of refugee protection which it once led. This isn’t patriotism. It’s an act of sabotage of a defining set of American value and a once proud program. One day – perhaps soon – it will be looked upon as a shameful episode in US history.

July 19, 2019

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Wow! Just when you might have thought Trump couldn’t be any more cowardly or unpatriotic, he sinks us even lower!

Trump’s claims that the U.S. is “full” or that we don’t have room for more refugees is pure racist restrictionist BS! According to Amnesty International, one-third of the world’s refugees, 6.7 million people, are hosted by the world’s poorest countries. https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/refugees-asylum-seekers-and-migrants/global-refugee-crisis-statistics-and-facts/

Under Trump, the U.S. has become a leading shirker of refugee resettlement responsibilities, encouraging other prosperous Western Nations to follow our cowardly and selfish example.

Lebanon (GNP approx. $52 billion) hosted 1.4 million refugees, or 156 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants; Jordan (GNP approx. $41 billion) hosted 2.5 million refugees, or 72 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, the U.S., GNP approx. $20 trillion+, has reduced its refugee resettlement commitment to less than 30,000 and now outrageously proposes to “zero it out.”

Cowardly, inhumane, irresponsible, selfish, racist leaders reflect on all of us, not just on the disturbing lack of values of the minority of Americans who installed them in office and keep them propped up.

The U.S. is now officially leading the “race to the bottom.” Will those of us who believe in a confident, generous, courageous, patriotic America, reestablishing ourselves as a human rights leader be able to get it together to “right the ship” in 2020. Or, will the Ship of State continue to sink with Trump and his unpatriotic White Nationalist racists at the helm?

PWS

WORDS FROM AMERICA’S KIDDIE GULAGS: As Dishonest Administration Pols Like McAleenan, “Cooch Cooch,” Morgan, Provost, & A Bevy Of Border Patrol Officials Lie To Congress, The Press, & The American People About What Is Happening In DHS Detention, Here’s The Truth About The Human Rights Abuses Being Committed Daily By Our Nation In Our Name, In The Words Of The Abused Kids Themselves, Read By Children In NY — Watch The Video!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/opinion/migrant-children-detention-border.html

New York children read the words of their peers held in U.S. Border Patrol facilities.

The New York Times

By The Editors

Video by Leah Varjacques and Taige Jensen

In the video Op-Ed above, children read testimonies given by young migrants detained in Customs and Border Protection facilities. They reveal harrowing stories of children living in cages, going hungry and tending to infants without their parents.

Border Patrol has been detaining thousands of children, sometimes for weeks, in conditions no child anywhere should suffer. At a June hearing before a federal appeals court, judges were stunned by the administration’s arguments that these children were kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities, as required by the Flores Settlement.

The overcrowding, long stays and inhumane, possibly illegal living conditions are a result of the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policies and mismanagement of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the border agency.

Barring exceptional circumstances, the legal limit for Border Patrol to detain children is 72 hours. The agency is then supposed to transfer children to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement for a maximum of 20 days. But the resettlement office has been keeping children far longer, creating a backlog across the entire system. As a result, Border Patrol centers have not been quickly processing unaccompanied children and migrant families, who have recently been crossing the border in record-breaking numbers.

Detained children provided the testimonies read in this video last month to lawyers who visited Border Patrol centers as part of an ongoing investigation of detention facilities.

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Go to the above link for the video showing how we intentionally abuse children who seek our protection. Do we really want to be known and remembered as a “Cowardly Nation of Child Abusers.” That’s what Trump and his “New GOP,” the party of unapologetic White Nationalist racism, is turning us into.

Just yesterday, McAleenan was lying and covering up before Congress, trying to deny the abuses taking place on his watch every day. He also had the gall to blame this entirely avoidable situation on not enough money from Congress, bad laws (which the Administration doesn’t follow anyway), and the very vulnerable individuals seeking legal protection under our laws, many of them kids.

Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) finally had enough and rightfully blew up at him. But, that’s not going to stop the daily abuse and the stream of lies, false narratives, and cover-ups being promoted by McAleenan and his cohorts.

How does McAleenan claim that they are doing the best they can when the DHS’s own Inspector General says exactly the opposite? How does he claim that reports have been exaggerated when Inspector General reports confirming the horrible treatment were in his own hands some time ago? How do Republicans in Congress justify the racist-driven human rights abuses that they are promoting?

America’s future depends on “regime change.” The only question is whether it will come soon enough to save our country and our souls. For Trump’s racism and the abuse he, his followers, and his apologists (like the ever toxic and irresponsible Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham) are heaping on children, asylum seekers, and other migrants truly diminishes the humanity of all of us!

PWS

07-19-19

AS COURTS & CONGRESS DITHER, FAILING TO STOP CLEARLY ILLEGAL & INHUMAN CONDUCT, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO PUNISH INNOCENT KIDS AT THE BORDER WITH ARROGANT IMPUNITY — Whatever Happened To The Institutions That Were Supposed To Protect Us From Abuses By An Authoritarian, Scofflaw Executive? — Kate Linthicum Reports For The LA Times!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=f4f6873a-7ae7-4cc2-bbe2-9fc685d2ea1b

Kate Lithicum reports for the LA Times:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — For the two dozen migrant children living inside a small church on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, most days go like this: breakfast at 8 a.m., dinner at 6 p.m. and hours of nothing in between.

There is no school, and except for a handful of worn Bibles, there are no books. Dangers abound in the surrounding hills, so most haven’t left the razor-wire-ringed compound in weeks or even months.

“I feel imprisoned,” said 16-year-old Alison Mendoza.

She left Nicaragua with her parents and two younger sisters in March after her father received death threats for demonstrating against President Daniel Ortega, whose government has jailed and killed thousands of dissenters.

The family has been waiting here in Juarez for nearly two months for their chance to request political asylum in the United States. A Trump administration policy allows only a handful of asylum seekers to pass through ports of entry at the U.S. border each day.

Mendoza and her sisters, Sol, 6, and Michele, 11, are among the thousands of migrant children languishing along the border as a result of changing migration trends and White House policies that seek to deter asylum seekers.

They left friends and relatives behind and endured the trials of the migrant trail only to end up stuck in camps, cheap hotels and shelters such as Buen Pastor, which is now home to children and their families from as far away as Ghana and Congo. Pawns in an adult’s dispute, their future is entirely uncertain.

Two recent Trump administration mandates are almost certain to result in even larger numbers of migrant children being stranded here.

One calls for asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. About 3,000 migrant children and their families have been returned to Juarez under that program since April, according to Chihuahua state officials.

A mandate announced this week calls for asylum to be denied to migrants who did not apply for protection in at least one country they passed through while trying to reach the United States.

The rules mean that there is a very strong likelihood that if the Mendozas finally do cross the border to plead their case, they will be sent right back to Juarez.

“What will we do?” said Donald Mendoza, 37, who left behind a good job at a Managua university that would have allowed him to pay for all three girls’ college educations.

The Mexican government has committed to providing schooling to migrants who are returned from the U.S., but Mendoza doesn’t want to raise his girls in notoriously dangerous Juarez, where 10 people were slain on Sunday alone.

“This is not the life I planned for my children,” he said.

Buen Pastor opened its doors about 20 years ago to migrants — back then almost always single men — who passed through Juarez before seeking to sneak across the border.

“They would come, rest for a night or two, and then cross,” said Pastor Juan Fierro Garcia.

But over the last two years, entire families began trudging up the dirt road that leads to the church.

Many had heard that U.S. authorities were releasing migrants as long as they requested asylum and were traveling with children.

“We didn’t know much about the situation, just that families were passing,” said Joseph Venegas, 26, who left Honduras last month with his wife and their two sons.

After crossing into the U.S. illegally last week, and turning themselves in to border authorities, Venegas and his family were held for two days and then released back into Juarez with an order to appear at an asylum hearing in October. A Mexican official told them how to get to Buen Pastor.

Ten-year-old Jose sobbed on the way there. “I want to go back to Honduras,” he wailed.

“We had bad luck,” his father explained. “The law is the law and we have to respect it.”

“We are doing all of this for you,” Venegas added.

Venegas said the family decided to leave because a teachers’ strike meant Jose hadn’t been able to go to school for months.

But now, as he watched Jose sit morosely in one corner of the shelter and his wife nurse their coughing 4-month-old baby on a nearby bench, he wondered whether leaving had been in the best interest of his kids.

“What kind of childhood is this?” he asked.

The experience is a little easier on the younger children, many of whom don’t understand exactly what is happening, and who run around the shelter in a tight pack. The youngsters from Africa speak only a small amount of Spanish, but they still manage to make friends.

The lack of toys means the children entertain themselves around a big table, beating it like a drum until their parents complain or turning it into a fort under which they hide and whisper.

There are several small buildings clustered around the compound — a men’s dormitory, a women’s dormitory and the church sanctuary where families camp out each night on mattresses squeezed between the pews.

The crowded conditions and a constant stream of visitors — nongovernmental organization workers, pro bono lawyers and journalists all asking the same tired questions — mean there is zero privacy. Young women groom themselves and change clothes under the cover of blankets.

A psychologist from the state comes once a week. On a recent morning, she gathered the children around a big round table and led them in breathing exercises.

She asked them to go one by one, saying their names and where they were from.

“I’m Natalia from Honduras,” one girl said.

“I’m Akasia from Congo,” said another.

A thin child from Guatemala declined to speak, burying her head in her arms.

“She is sad,” the 7-year-old boy next to her explained.

“It’s OK,” the psychologist said. “It’s okay to be sad.”

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

This kind of preventable harm inflicted by an Administration that has declared war on humanity and the rule of law is directly at the feet of three irresponsible Federal Judges of the Ninth Circuit who tanked by vacating the injunction against such gross abuses properly put in place by the U.S. District Judge in Innovation Law Labs v. McAleenan, ostensibly so that their colleagues could “deliberate” (actually “dither”) over a decision that would take responsible judges about 60 minutes to reach! How do guys like this sleep at night?

The issue in Innovation Law Labs involves the bogus “Migrant Protection Protocols,” more accurately described as “Remain in Mexico” or “Die in Mexico” that intentionally violates both Fifth Amendment Due Process and numerous provisions of the INA, including the rights to access to counsel of one’s own choosing, fair notice of hearings, adequate time to prepare and present a case, and the right to assert withholding of removal to a country where one fears persecution or torture.

Failure of privileged Article III Judges to protect the most vulnerable among us from Executive overreach and abuse, in this case clearly racially motivated, has real life adverse consequences, beyond the “judicial ivory tower,” that in many cases are irreversible.

All of us who believe in justice should be outraged by the Ninth Circuit’s dilatory performance in this case! It’s nothing short of child abuse sanctioned by the Federal Judiciary. It must stop!

PWS

07-19-19

CONSTITUTIONAL SCOFFLAW BARR “OUTED” AGAIN: U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman (WD WA) Rips AG’s Unconstitutional Denial Of Bonds To Asylum Seekers – Finds Matter of M-S- Unlawful!

https://apple.news/AVi9zCrsgS2y4pg6ZqHWJ6A

Vanessa Romo reports for NPR:

A Seattle federal judge ruled Tuesday that asylum-seeking migrants detained for being in the U.S. illegally have the right to a bond hearing in immigration court rather than being held until their cases are complete.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said it is unconstitutional to indefinitely detain migrants who fled to the U.S. seeking asylum protections.

The decision reverses an April directivefrom Attorney General William Barr ordering immigration judges not to release migrants on bail after an applicant successfully establishes “a credible fear of persecution or torture” in the home country — a policy that has been in place since 2005.

“The court finds that plaintiffs have established a constitutionally-protected interest in their liberty, a right to due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision maker to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue,” Pechman wrote.

In her ruling, Pechman also took issue with an aspect of Barr’s policy that left open the possibility that migrants, still awaiting a hearing, could be re-detained by ICE after being released on bond.

“The Government’s unwillingness to unconditionally assert that Plaintiffs will not be re-detained means that the specter of re-detention looms and these Plaintiffs and many members of their class face the real and imminent threat of bondless and indefinite detention …,” she said.

The ruling comes amid a widespread shortage of immigration judges that has caused massive delays in processing hearings. The most recent dataavailable from The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse shows a total of 424 judges nationwide face a backlog of 892,517 cases on the courts’ active dockets as of the end of April.

“The three largest immigration courts were so under-resourced that hearing dates were being scheduled as far out as August 2023 in New York City, October 2022 in Los Angeles, and April 2022 in San Francisco,” TRAC reports

Pechman also modified a preliminary injunction issued earlier this year. The new injunction requires the government to ensure bond hearings are held within seven days after they are requested by eligible asylum-seekers. If the government exceeds that limit, the undocumented immigrant must be released.

Immigrant rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, sued to block the policy, which was set to take effect this month.

In a statement, Matt Adams, legal director of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said: “The court reaffirmed what has been settled for decades: that asylum seekers who enter this country have a right to be free from arbitrary detention.”

Michael Tan, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, added: “Try as it may, the administration cannot circumvent the Constitution in its effort to deter and punish asylum-seekers applying for protection.”

The Department of Justice is expected to appeal the ruling quickly.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.

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Go to the NPR website for a full copy of Judge Pechman’s decision in Padilla v. ICE.

So, while the 9^thCircuit is bopping along violating human rights by enabling Trump’s absurdly illegal “Kill ‘Em in Mexico Program,” as a result of a three-judge panel who tanked on their oaths of office, Judge Pechman and some others at the “retail level” of the Federal Judiciary are still on the job and upholding our Constitution against the all-out assault led by Barr on behalf of Trump.

It’s also worth remembering that the U.S. Attorney General is supposed to uphold the Constitution and protect individual rights, rather than serving as tool of racist White Nationalist extremism as Sessions and Barr have done. Already in shambles and a disgraceful ethical morass, there won’t be anything left of the “Justice” Department by the time Barr’s toxic tenure ends.

Bill Barr is a national disgrace and an affront to American justice. But, hey, it’s the Trump Adminisration, so what else is new?

PWS

07-03-19

INSIDE THE KAKISTOCRACY: “Cooch Cooch” Takes Commanding Lead In Race To The Bottom – Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) Nails Him Cold!

Rep. Don Beyer

@RepDonBeyer

Ken Cuccinelli immediately stands out in an Administration that values cruelty. What a despicable and heartless thing to say.

Quote Tweet

The Washington Post

@washingtonpost

Jun 28

Ken Cuccinelli, head of citizenship service, blames migrant father for drowning deaths captured in photo (link: https://wapo.st/2NlcWTb) wapo.st/2NlcWTb

8:19 AM · Jun 28, 2019· Twitter for iPhone

590

Retweets

1.6K

Likes

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Thanks, Don, and well said! I’m proud to have you for our Representative here in Alexandria. You have been a constant voice of decency, common sense, and opposition to the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy. And those of us in Virginia who survived the “Modern Day Jim Crow Era” of “Cooch Cooch” as Virginia Attorney General know just what a nasty, vile, unqualified, racist hack he has always been and always will be. Heck, even Mitch McConnell can’t stand him, and that says something!

“Cooch Cooch’s” latest despicable act of note comes along with provoking an immediate rebellion among Asylum Officers. As I predicted, “Cooch Cooch” has already distinguished himself as a “lowlife among bottom dwellers.”

PWS

06-29-19

AMEN: A PRAYER IN THE TIME OF KAKISTOCRACY!

Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase writes:

Hi all: I volunteer on Tuesday nights at a free immigration law clinic run by the New Sanctuary Coalition, based in Judson Church In Greenwich Village, NYC. As you can imagine, fear has been running high since the announcement of multi-city raids. Micah Bucey, a minister at Judson, composed the following non-denominational centering prayer that is now recited before each clinic. I share with you for inspiration:

Spirit of Resistance,

You who are beyond the capacity of any border or name,

You who stretch beyond the indignity of any cage

You who envelop us in the power to persist, to protest, and to rehumanize, //

As we bring our passion and our pain to this place,

We offer gratitude for small gatherings that do monumental things,

We offer gratitude for a fierce community that unbuilds walls

And we offer gratitude for dreams of the world we are creating. //

We ask that you

Refresh us with new breath and energy for the long haul,

Guide us through fear, frustration, and panic,

Expand our hearts to envelop all those who pass through this room tonight and all those who have yet to make it to this room,

Ignite the fire of our faith in the truth that love knows no borders. //

Help us to never forget

That ICE is meant to melt,

That you cannot deport a movement,

And that the moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice if we keep bending it together. //

Amen

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

PWS

06-29-19

INSIDE TRUMP’S DEADLY KIDDIE GULAG: He’s Superseded Sessions As America’s Most Notorious Child Abuser!

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/inside-a-texas-building-where-the-government-is-holding-immigrant-children

Isaac Chotiner reports for the New Yorker:

Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children

By Isaac Chotiner

June 22, 2019

Some of the lawyers interviewing immigrant children held in Border Patrol detention facilities were so disturbed by what they saw that they have decided to talk to the media.

Photograph by Cedar Attanasio / AP

Hundreds of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents or family members are being held in dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas. This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.

To discuss what the attorneys saw and heard, I spoke by phone with one of them, Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University and the director of its clinical-law program. She told me that, although Flores is an active court case, some of the lawyers were so disturbed by what they saw that they decided to talk to the media. We discussed the daily lives of the children in custody, the role that the guards are playing at the facility, and what should be done to unite many of these kids with their parents. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How many lawyers were in your party? And can you describe what happened when you arrived?

We had approximately ten lawyers, doctors, and interpreters in El Paso this past week. We did not plan to go to the Clint Facility, because it’s not a facility that historically receives children. It wasn’t even on our radar. It was at a facility that historically only had a maximum occupancy of a hundred and four, and it was an adult facility. So we were not expecting to go there, and then we saw the report, last week, that it appeared that children were being sent to Clint, so we decided to put four teams over there. The teams are one to two attorneys, or an attorney and an interpreter. The idea is that we would be interviewing one child at a time or one sibling group at a time.

How many interviews do you do in a day?

We do a screening interview first to see if the child’s most basic needs are being met. Is it warm enough? Do they have a place to sleep? How long have they been there? Are they being fed? And if it sounds like the basic needs are being met, then we don’t need to interview them longer. If, when we start to interview the child, they start to tell us things like they’re sleeping on the floor, they’re sick, nobody’s taking care of them, they’re hungry, then we do a more in-depth interview. And those interviews can take two hours or even longer. So it depends on what the children tell us. So I’d say, with a team of four attorneys, if you’re interviewing several groups, which we sometimes try to do, or if you interview older children who are trying to take care of younger children, then you are interviewing, let’s say, anywhere from ten to twenty children per day.

How many kids are at the facility right now, and do you have some sense of a breakdown of where they’re from?

When we arrived, on Monday, there were approximately three hundred and fifty children there. They were constantly receiving children, and they’re constantly picking up children and transferring them over to an O.R.R. [Office of Refugee Resettlement] site. So the number is fluid. We were so shocked by the number of children who were there, because it’s a facility that only has capacity for a hundred and four. And we were told that they had recently expanded the facility, but they did not give us a tour of it, and we legally don’t have the right to tour the facility.

We drove around afterward, and we discovered that there was a giant warehouse that they had put on the site. And it appears that that one warehouse has allegedly increased their capacity by an additional five hundred kids. When we talked to Border Patrol agents later that week, they confirmed that is the alleged expansion, and when we talked to children, one of the children described as many as three hundred children being in that room, in that warehouse, basically, at one point when he first arrived. There were no windows.

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

As Trump launches his latest “human hostages for outrageous ransom” scheme, it’s important for Democrats to hang tough against any reduction in rights for asylum seekers. The whole “loopholes” bogus claim is just another piece of this toxic White Nationalist racist narrative.

The only “change” needed would be to require the Trump Administration to comply with its domestic, international, and Constitutional duties to administer asylum laws fairly and generously for the protection of asylum seekers. An end of child abuse should be a prerequisite for any discussions.

The reality to keep in mind is that while ICE’s ability to inflict pain and suffering on ethnic communities as part of the racially-motivated “New Operation Wetback” is real, their capacity to actually remove undocumented residents is quite limited.

Contrary to the bogus narrative, several million of the 10 million so-called undocumented residents are actually here with permission and are therefore not currently subject to removal. Those include individuals with DACA, TPS, PD, Deferred Action, and in the EOIR Court System, or whose cases are pending in the Courts of Appeals.

Additionally, many, perhaps the majority, of those with so-called final “in absentia” orders of removal never received proper legal notice of their hearings and will be entitled to file a “motion to reopen” with an automatic stay while those motions are pending. Those who are not yet in the EOIR system will go to the end of a backlog that stretches out for many years.

Given their notoriously poor record keeping, it’s likely that many of ICE’s “last known addresses” are no good. Plus, the resistance that ICE’s racist fear-mongering tactics have engendered in many communities will hamper operations.

Additionally, ICE keeps claiming that is detention capacity is already “saturated.” Thus, most of those picked up, who will not be “immediately removable,” will have to be released.

In short, while we can expect some human tragedies and human rights abuses, the result of the Trump/DHS/ICE “saber rattling” will likely be another resounding operational failure that fuels the “Abolish ICE Movement” while energizing the vote to remove Trump and his GOP White Nationalist Cabal from office in 2020. Kind of an “everyone loses” outcome – but, despite all of his lies, boasting, and shamelessly false self-promotion, that’s all Trump has ever been about.

PWS

06-23-19

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FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/four-severely-ill-migrant-babies-hospitalized-after-lawyers-visited-border-patrol-facility_n_5d0d3bbce4b07ae90d9cfe4f

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week.

The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.

She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.

“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”

Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby, who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.

The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment ― and its alleged neglect ― of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.

Immigration authorities say they’re overwhelmed; activists say they’re not trying hard enough.

“It’s intentional disregard for the well-being of children,” Gialluca said. “The guards continue to dehumanize these people and treat them worse than we would treat animals.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

The Associated Press reported this week that children in border facilities don’t have adequate access to food, water, soap or showers. On Tuesday, a Justice Department attorney argued in court that the government should not have to provide detained children with soap, toothbrushes or beds.

The AP report is based on interviews a group of lawyers conducted with hundreds of children in three Texas-based Border Patrol stations last week as part of the Flores settlement ― an agreement that outlines conditions for detained children. The lawyers say children are also being held in these facilities for longer than the 72-hour limit the settlement specifies, and in some cases up to three weeks.

Lawyers are particularly concerned about the spread of illness inside Border Patrol facilities, which can sometimes turn fatal. Five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December, some of whom were initially diagnosed with a common cold or the flu. The processing center in McAllen, known as Ursula, recently quarantined three dozen migrants who were sick after a 16-year-old died of the flu at the same facility.

Children and their parents told lawyers that in some cases they didn’t have any access to medical treatment in Border Patrol facilities despite being visibly ill. Gialluca spoke with one 16-year-old mother whose toddler had the flu, but was told by a guard the child “wasn’t sick enough to see a doctor.” She said others also reported being denied medical attention despite having critically sick babies.

Medical experts say that because children have less developed immune and respiratory systems, their symptoms can escalate quickly if they aren’t properly treated.

Dr. Julie Linton, the co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, previously told HuffPost that children can’t recover from illnesses in Border Patrol facilities. These centers are described as “hieleras” ― Spanish for iceboxes ― because of their freezing temperatures, and migrants describe sleeping on floors under bright lights that shine 24/7, with nothing but Mylar blankets to keep warm.

Gialluca met one 16-year-old mother whose 8-month-old baby was sick with the flu and forced to sleep outside for four days at the McAllen Border Patrol station. The mother said the guards took the clothing off the baby’s back, leaving her in a diaper, and forced them to sleep on concrete without a blanket.

A sick 2-year-old girl was shivering in a T-shirt and had shallow breathing, according to Mike Fassio, a Seattle-based immigration attorney who visited Ursula.

“I was very, very concerned,” he said, adding lawyers spoke with immigrants in a room outside of the facility. “When she left us, I knew she was going back to a place that was cold, crowded and unsanitary.” Fassio noted that guards referred to the children as “bodies.”

Some children were so exhausted they fell asleep during the interviews, said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who spoke with kids at a facility in Clint, Texas. Long met a 3-year-old boy who was dirty with matted hair and was being taken care of by his 11-year-old brother. She said that more than 10 sick children were being quarantined in cells.

While the group of roughly eight lawyers and interpreters at Ursula were supposed to be interviewing children about conditions in the facilities, they also ended up asking guards and government officials to bring kids to the hospital because they were so worried about their state. Gialluca added that she and her colleagues interviewed only a small portion of migrants in the facility, which is the largest processing center in the U.S. and can hold up to 1,000 people. She believes the number of migrants in need of hospitalization is likely much higher.

Government officials have blamed horrific conditions at detention facilities on the fact that Congress has not yet passed an emergency funding package that would include almost $3 billion to help care for unaccompanied migrant children. But Gialluca says border officials shouldn’t need more resources to treat immigrants like human beings.

“Money isn’t keeping guards from allowing people to access toilets,” she said. “Money isn’t causing guards to take clothing and medicine away from children.”

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

Here’s Another report from Nicole Goodkind at Newsweek on the “malicious incompetence” and intentional misallocation of resources by Trump and his DHS sycophants that is willfully endangering kids’ lives as part of a cheap White Nationalist political stunt:

8-YEAR-OLD MIGRANTS BEING FORCED TO CARE FOR TODDLERS IN DETENTION CAMPS

A team of lawyers conducted 60 interviews with migrant children being held in an El Paso, Texas, detention camp and found conditions to be dismal.

Fifteen of those in the holding center had the flu and 10 more are quarantined with illness, according to the lawyers, who first gave the data to the Associated Press. Three infants are being detained alongside their teenage mothers, and many children are under the age of 12.

“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one teenaged girl told the lawyers in an interview. The boy was not wearing a diaper and his shirt was covered in mucus, she said.

Law professor Warren Binford, who aided in the interviews, said she witnessed an 8-year-old girl caring for a 4-year-old child who was very dirty, the girl was unable to get the boy to take a shower. She also described the children she interviewed as sleep-deprived, often falling asleep while speaking with her.

“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, to the AP.

The lawyers were inspecting the facility as part of the Flores agreement, which resulted from a landmark 1985 case that established that facilities where minor migrants are held must be kept “safe and sanitary.”

A representative of the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian, argued Tuesday that safe and sanitary conditions don’t necessarily have to include toothbrushes, soap or towels for children.

Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS MAJOR ICE RAIDS FOR SUNDAY

U.S. immigration authorities plan to raid Miami, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles and other cities. They intend to arrest up to 2,000 families, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans told The Washington Post. The orders reportedly come directly from President Donald Trump.

On Monday, the president tweeted: “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Officials told The Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security agency plans to hold families in hotel rooms until they are deported. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan is allegedly targeting families that have completely dropped out of the court process, but has warned that the operation could lead to further cases of families being separated.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore confirmed the raids on Friday, saying that about 140 families in southern California will be targeted in pre-dawn raids early next week. The chief also made clear that the raids are done on a federal level and that the police department will not be involved.

On Thursday, Carla Provost, chief of the United States Border Patrol argued that the Department of Homeland Security was not receiving enough money to properly care for migrants on the southern border, and that was leading to terrible conditions in detention centers. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to $4.6 billion in emergency funds for what the Trump administration has referred to as a “border crisis.”

Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro questioned how the agency could afford mass raids while asking for more money Friday. “The Trump Administration says it needs more money (supplemental bill) for the situation at the border yet they may be starting massive immigration raids next week. So how do you have the money for that if you’re running out of money ICE?” he tweeted.

“These potential raids are a disgusting political ploy to stoke fear and rile up Trump’s base for 2020,” wrote Sandra Cordero, Director of Families Belong Together, an immigration advocacy group, in a statement. “Past raids have left children alone and afraid in empty homes, praying they won’t be left to care for younger siblings by themselves, with no idea if they’ll see their parents again. This is yet another flagrant disregard for the welfare of children on behalf of a cruel administration bent on fomenting fear and creating chaos.”

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

Come on, Carla, cut the BS and butt covering. The “mix” of arrivals at the Southern Border began to shift to refugee families from the Northern Triangle back in the summer of 2014. So, CBP and DHS have had five years to prepare for this “change” which is actually “old news.”

More “old news” is the increased flow of asylum seekers with kids which began back before Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for CBP and DHS to bring back retired asylum officers and adjudicators and reassign other adjudicative personnel to the border to insure prompt, orderly, safe, and efficient processing of asylum applicants at ports of entry, thus eliminating the incentive (or necessity) for folks to turn themselves in after crossing the border between ports.

Also, plenty of time to work with NGOs, pro bono groups, states, and communities to insure representation and proper placement of family groups in various locations throughout the country without panic or “dumping.”

Another bogus claim spread by Trump, Provost, and the rest of the sycophants: that the prevalence of kids among new asylum arrivals is somehow totally a response to the Flores settlement (which actually has been in effect for decades).

Undoubtedly, with the Trump Administration’s active assistance, unscrupulous smugglers and coyotes are encouraging some folks to bring children as the only way to have a shot at fair processing under the tilted U.S. asylum system promoted by Trump. Indeed, as I have observed before, the Trump Administrations has consistently been a “best friend” to gangs, smugglers, traffickers, cartels, and druggies seeking to “jack up” profits by further exploiting the human misery caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent “ approach to immigration, effective law enforcement, and humanity generally. https://apple.news/AFQw_eqcHSZCYxUznmP0wpQ

Undoubtedly, some of these unscrupulous individuals are telling families to travel with kids. But, the truth is that according to the UNHCR, over one-half of today’s refugees are children. https://www.unhcr.org/children-49c3646c1e8.html.

So, the prevalence of children among new arrivals should properly been seen as part of a sad worldwide trend that Trump and his cronies disgustingly have done everything possible to encourage, exploit, and aggravate. It most certainly is not primarily caused by the Flores settlement or by giving soap, toothbrushes, blankets, or medical care to children being abused in the “DHS Gulag” administered in part by disingenuous folks like Provost.

Any honest observer of what’s going on knows that the majority of the asylum applications that passed credible fear probably could have been granted (or given protection under the Convention Against Torture — “CAT”) by the Asylum Office without even going to Immigration Court under the proper generous interpretation of our asylum laws, an honest interpretation of CAT that reflects the true conditions in the Northern Triangle, and a very “doable” change in procedures.

Only dishonest fools in the Trump Administration (and a few from the Obama Administration) would maintain that gender isn’t a social group subject to widespread persecution in the Northern Triangle, deny that gangs have assumed the role of quasi-governmental entities thus making most of the harm they inflict on resisters “political persecution,” and make the beyond ludicrous claim that the corrupt failed states of the Northern Triangle have either the ability or much real interest in protecting those subject to persecution.

And, Carla, why aren’t you out there today registering a public protest of the waste of time and funds in ICE going after families with ridiculously inappropriate “raids” when every resource could and should be focused instead on providing humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving at the Southern Border?

This racist-inspired “Sunday Morning Reign of Terror” directed at U.S. ethnic communities is specifically designed to return helpless families to the very dangerous countries from which they originally fled! Thus, Trump and his phony DHS are intentionally feeding “fresh meat” to gangs and cartels and insuring that the cycle of northward migration, no matter how dangerous, will continue until everyone who needs to leave its either gone or dead (the latter apparently the “solution” favored by Provost, Trump, Morgan, McAleenan, Miller, and others).

Provost, McAleenan, Morgan, and their co-conspirators are all participants in a cynical scheme to intentionally “crash” the asylum system, rather than competently administering it. They are intentionally endangering the lives of children and other vulnerable asylum seekers, many entitled to legal protections, to promote, along with GOP restrictionists, totally bogus, dishonest, and completely unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions of the precious, life-saving right of refugees to seek asylum in the U.S.

It’s an unbelievably dishonest and cowardly scheme, and a complete breach of both oaths of office and public trust. It might be that those who long ago abandoned American values will lap up this insult to human values and human dignity.

But, there are plenty of us out here who know and understand exactly what you are doing. We will not only resist it, but will be historical witnesses to your cruel, inhuman, and unlawful schemes and gimmicks to “abuse and kill the innocent.” And, we’ll be keeping count.

PWS

06-22-19

CONTACTS:
George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org	Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org

Angelina Jolie: The Crisis We Face at the Border Does Not Require Us to Choose Between Security and Humanity

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New York children read the words of their peers held in U.S. Border Patrol facilities.

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Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase writes:

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