👩‍⚖️⚖️ONE MEAN☠️🤮⚰️ MOTHER: Soon-To-Be Justice Barrett’s Immigration Jurisprudence Shows Cruelty, Legal Ignorance, Lack Of Empathy For The Vulnerable Humans Whose Lives Are At Stake In An Unconstitutional System Rigged Against Them!

Judge Amy Coney Barrett — Supreme Court Nominee by Bob Englehart, PoliticalCartoons.com
Published under license

Dahlia Lithwick
Supreme Court Reporter
Slate
Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/democrats-amy-coney-barrett-confirmation-supreme-court-chat.html

Dahlia Lithwick & Mark Joseph Stern in Slate:

. . . .

Dahlia: I wonder what you thought of Barrett’s statement, about how she reads each of her opinions through the eyes of the losing party. As you have written, the losing party tends to be the prisoners, the Black worker, the teen seeking abortion, the asylum seeker. It reminded me of Justice Samuel Alito testifying at his hearings about his great solicitude for immigrants.

Mark: Barrett’s opening statement made me think about one of her worst decisions (so far), in which she approved the deportation of an asylum seeker because there were small, trivial variations in his account of persecution. Over a dissent, Barrett said, yep, this asylum seeker must be sent home to be tortured and murdered because tiny details in his story changed over time. Would a judge who views the case through the eyes of the asylum seeker really dismiss his claims so cavalierly? I doubt it.

. . . .

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

Read the complete dialogue at the link.

So much for intellectual honesty! It also shows Barrett’s fundamental lack of experience and legal understanding of what Immigration “Courts” really are and how they have been politicized and weaponized against asylum seekers by “judges” who report to overtly biased and xenophobic politicos in the Executive Branch. Just how would this “naked farce” satisfy any rudimentary concept of Due Process? Clearly it doesn’t. And just as clearly, intentionally tone-deaf judges like Barrett don’t care! They lack the guts, relevant experience representing migrants, and the intellectual presence to stand up for the Constitutional and human rights of “the other.”

How would YOU like to be sentenced to torture and/or death based on trivial inconsistencies found by an Immigration “Judge” working directly for the Attorney General and his regime in a badly flawed assembly line process designed to achieve political policy objectives, not justice?

Also, did anyone else pick up the facial absurdity of Barrett’s disingenuous claim to be “apolitical” while pledging allegiance to GOP “superhero” the late Justice Antonin Scalia, probably the most overtly “political Justice” of modern times?

Bottom Line: Once you’re out of the womb, this is one mother you don’t want on your case!🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️

Better Judges For A Better America! Judge/Justice Barrett is part of the problem, not the solution! The best way to insure that she is among the last, far-right, anti-democracy, inhumane judges given life tenure on the Supremes or anywhere else, vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out! Then, we’ll discover the “true meaning” of Barrett’s “I’m not there to make policy nonsense!” (Indeed, I would submit that the sole reason for her appointment was the GOP’s belief and expectation that she will reliably elevate disingenuous right-wing policies, biases, and prejudices over the Constitutional, individual, and human rights of individuals and that she will be a steadfast opponent of Constitutionally-required equal justice under law.)

Justice for the George Floyds, Breonna Taylors, dehumanized dead asylum seekers, and wrongfully imprisoned migrant kids of the world (e.g., the end of unconstitutional “Baby Jails”) will require a different type of “Justice” than Amy Coney Barrett in the future! Far from being truly “independent” and “apolitical,” Barrett is likely to be the perfect representative of the warped man who appointed her and his anti-democracy party. And, that’s likely to cause problems for all Americans of good will far into the future!

PWS

10-13-20

NDPA SUPERSTAR ⭐️ PROFESSOR ERIN BARBATO 🦸‍♀️ ORGANIZES EVENT, SPEAKS OUT IN MADISON CAP TIMES ON ICE ABUSES IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” (“NAG”) — “We must rebuild the system from the ground up and work toward a future in which immigrants are treated with respect and dignity. Our shared humanity demands it.”

https://madison.com/ct/opinion/column/erin-m-barbato-immigrant-detention-today-relies-on-systemic-racism-and-life-threatening-policies-it/article_0b8a6c14-99bf-5aa4-bd81-30b7923d9c54.html

Last month, a nurse at a federal immigration detention center in Irwin, Georgia, filed a whistleblower complaint detailing the abhorrent treatment of people detained there. She charged that women in detention were subjected to hysterectomies and invasive gynecological exams without their knowledge or consent, and often without assistance from interpreters.

The complaint is heartbreaking, but far from surprising. These atrocities are consistent with practices employed at U.S. detention centers for decades, and they are sadly consistent with our tragic history of forced sterilization of minority women. The implications of the complaint are perfectly clear: we must end the civil detention of immigrants, so fraught with systemic racism that undervalues the lives of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. There is no other option.

With over 200 detention centers, the United States has the largest immigration detention system in the world. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has over the past two years detained an average of 40,000 daily, an astonishing number that surpasses the population of Wisconsin cities like Brookfield and Wausau. Yet the detention of immigrants is just a microcosm of the inhumanity that characterizes our immigration system today. Many immigrants come to the U.S. to seek refuge and a better life for themselves and for their families. But when they arrive in this country, they are forced into conditions that violate human rights principles under both international and domestic standards, and that, frankly, violate our moral obligations to each other as human beings.

ICE has the authority to release most people from detention through monetary bonds or parole, and ICE policy requires that people seeking asylum are released from detention when they can establish their identity and demonstrate they are neither a danger nor a or flight risk. Instead of using these tools, though, ICE almost always chooses detention, ostensibly to deter others from coming into the country. But far from showing detention to be an effective deterrent, statistics reveal the opposite: harsher penalties have not reduced the numbers of undocumented migrants crossing U.S. borders. What the data does show is how immigrant detention has become a big business, with taxpayer dollars helping to subsidize a billion-dollar private prison industry that profits from human trauma.

Often located in remote places, immigrant detention facilities are ripe for the abuse of detained migrants. There is no community oversight and little — often no — access to legal representation. People in detention will only have an attorney if they can afford one or are lucky enough to find pro bono representation.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Erin’s article at the link! Erin reinforces points that I make often here on Courtside: the real objectives of unnecessary and highly cost-ineffective “civil detention” are to deprive migrants of access to counsel, coerce them into abandoning potentially successful claims, punish them for exercising legal rights, and deter others from asserting legal rights.

All of these are clear violations of Constitutional due process and equal protection! The conditions under which these non-criminals are held to “punish” them for their audacity to assert their legal rights also violate the Eighth Amendment, as some lower Federal Court Judges have found.

Unfortunately, too many Article III Judges have abdicated their oaths to uphold the Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable persons among us in the face of improper political pressure and a regime overtly out to undo American democracy and institute a far-right reactionary, white nationalist kakistocracy.

And, here’s info on a great “virtual event” that Erin helped organize to raise awareness of the existence and devastating effects of “Baby Jails” in the U.S. Allowing such cruel and inhuman abominations to flourish in our nation is beyond disgraceful! (See also the recent book Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America, by my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag).

https://law.wisc.edu/calendar/event.php?iEventID=32578180

The Flores Exhibit: Stories of Children Held in Immigrant Detention Facilities

WHEN

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

7:30 pm to 8:30 pm

WHERE

Virtual

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Artists, lawyers, advocates and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of young people under the age of 18, who were held in two detention facilities near the U.S./Mexico border in June 2019. Followed by a discussion with panelists.

Organized by the Immigrant Justice Clinic, Latinx Law Student Association, and American Constitution Society at UW Law School.

Zoom link will be sent to via email to those who register.

Registration

INTENDED AUDIENCE

Faculty, Students, Staff

EVENT CATEGORY

Speaker/Discussion

Email this event

Download for import into your calendar

« Back to the Calendar

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

I proudly note that my good friend Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase and other distinguished members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges are “readers” in “The Flores Exhibit.”

I am also inspired by all that Erin has accomplished and the lives she and her students have saved through the Immigrant Justice Clinic at my alma mater, UW Law!

Erin and others like her are exactly the type of progressive, practical, scholar-problem solvers that we need as Federal Judges and in key Government policy-making positions. We need to replace the reactionary kakistocracy with a progressive, equal justice oriented, practical, problem-solving humanitarian meritocracy.

“Equal Justice For All” isn’t just a “throwaway slogan.” It’s a vision of a better, more efficient, more effective, more tolerant, more inclusive, more diverse, more representative Government that will work with people of good faith everywhere to maximize opportunities for all and promote a brighter future for everyone in America! It’s in our power to make it happen,and the necessary change starts this Fall.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-12-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, “PERPS” ON THE LOOSE! — DOJ Internal Report Shows How “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Rosenstein, Hamilton Conspired To Separate Migrant Kids In Violation Of 5th Amendment — When Will These Criminals Be Charged & Prosecuted Under 18 USC 242? — NY Times Reports!

Sessions in a cage — Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/family-separation-border-immigration-jeff-sessions-rod-rosenstein.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20201007&instance_id=22889&nl=the-morning&regi_id=119096355&section_index=2&section_name=the_latest_news&segment_id=40077&te=1&user_id=70724c8ee3c2ebb50a6ef32ab050a46b

‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said

Top department officials were “a driving force” behind President Trump’s child separation policy, a draft investigation report said.

By Michael D. Shear, Katie Benner and Michael S. Schmidt

Oct. 6, 2020

505

WASHINGTON — The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.

But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.

“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”

Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Bash had declined the cases, but Mr. Rosenstein “instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”

The Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind the policy that spurred the separation of thousands of families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the United States, before Mr. Trump abandoned it amid global outrage, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general.

The separation of migrant children from their parents, sometimes for months, was at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on immigration. But the fierce backlash when the administration struggled to reunite the children turned it into one of the biggest policy debacles of the president’s term.

Though Mr. Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, allowing Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Department officials to largely be blamed, he and other top law enforcement officials understood that “zero tolerance” meant that migrant families would be separated and wanted that to happen because they believed it would deter future illegal immigration, Mr. Horowitz wrote.

The draft report, citing more than 45 interviews with key officials, emails and other documents, provides the most complete look at the discussions inside the Justice Department as the family separation policy was developed, pushed and ultimately carried out with little concern for children.

This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly, cautioned that the final report could change.

Before publishing the findings of its investigations, the inspector general’s office typically provides draft copies to Justice Department leaders and others mentioned in the reports to ensure that they are accurate.

Mr. Horowitz had been preparing to release his report since late summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation, though the process allowing for responses from current and former department officials whose conduct is under scrutiny is likely to delay its release until after the presidential election.

Mr. Sessions refused to be interviewed, the report noted. Mr. Rosenstein, who is now a lawyer in private practice, defended himself in his interview with investigators in response to questioning about his role, according to two of the officials. Mr. Rosenstein’s former office submitted a 64-page response to the report.

“If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw concluded that intentional separation of families was unconstitutional — a clear violation of Fifth Amendment due process. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/politics/family-separations-congress-states.html

The Government did not seriously question the correctness of this finding!

Intentionally violating Constitutional rights (not to mention lying and attempting to cover it up) is clearly a violation of 18 USC 242.

Here’s the text of that section from the DOJ’s own website:

TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

https://www.justice.gov/crt/deprivation-rights-under-color-law

Sure looks like an”open and shut” case for prosecution.

The irony: Families and their kids have been traumatized for life, perhaps even killed or disabled by the actions of these criminal conspirators; however, the “perps” remain at large.

Hamilton is on the public dole continuing to wreak-havoc on the Constitution, the rule of law, the Immigration Courts, and human decency at the corrupt Barr DOJ; Rosenstein works for a “fat cat” law firm hauling down a six figure salary while he avoids justice and accountability for his misdeeds; “Gonzo” had the absolute audacity to try to reinsert himself onto the public dole by running for the Senate from Alabama (thankfully, unsuccessfully, even though he previously held the seat for years and misused it as a public forum to spread his racist ideas, xenophobic venom, lies, false narratives, and unrelenting cruelty).

Where’s the “justice” in a system that punishes victims while letting “perps” prosper and go free?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-07-20

LINKEDIN SAVES LIVES: NDPA Superstar Michelle Mendez Of CLINIC With Some Good News On How Litigation Success Has Saved Lives In The Face Of Regime’s Scurrilous White Nationalist Attack On Asylum Laws! — These Are The True Brilliant Minds & Courageous Heroes Of Our Legal System, Carrying On RBG’s Legacy Of Fighting Tirelessly For Equal Justice!

Aimee Mayer Salins
Staff Attorney
Defending Vulnerable Populations
CLINIC
Source: Linkedin

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

Sorry for the small print. But, well worth the read.

Compare the courage and fidelity to due process, fundamental fairness, equal justice for all, and defense of human dignity demonstrated by brilliant lawyers like Michelle Mendez, Aimee Mayer Salins (former BIA JLC), and the terrific CAIR litigators with the warped right wing, anti-constitutional, anti-humanity jurisprudence of Trump’s Supreme Court choice, Judge Amy Coney Barrett:

Faced with two plausible readings of a law, fact, or precedent, Barrett always seems to choose the harsher, stingier interpretation. Can job applicants sue employers whose policies have a disproportionately deleterious impact on older people? Barrett said no. Should courts halt the deportation of an immigrant who faced torture at home? Barrett said no. Should they protect refugees denied asylum on the basis of xenophobic prejudice? Barrett said no. Should they shield prisoners from unjustified violence by correctional officers? Barrett said no. Should minors be allowed to terminate a pregnancy without telling their parents if a judge has found that they’re mature enough to make the decision? Barrett said no. Should women be permitted to obtain an abortion upon discovering a severe fetal abnormality? Barrett said no.

There is no question that, if confirmed, Barrett would cast the fifth vote to either hollow out Roe v. Wade or overturn it altogether. Similarly, there is no doubt that Barrett would dramatically expand the Second Amendment, invalidating gun control measures around the country. It’s quite possible, perhaps even likely, that within a year of her confirmation, Americans will be forbidden from terminating a pregnancy in 21 states—but permitted to purchase assault weapons and carry firearms in public in every state.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/09/21/insult-to-injury🤮☠%EF%B8%8F👎🏻-trump-to-tap-unqualified-cruel-righty-zealot-to-replace-rbg-one-leading-candidate-the-anti-rbg/

In other words, guns yes; human rights and human dignity, no! Some lawyers spend their lives saving lives and advancing humanity; others spend them pursuing and spreading anti-humanitarian, right wing dogmas. Why are commitments to cruelty, inhumanity, and a fundamentally unjust society things to “tout” in a judicial candidate? You need to look inside the deep perversity of the GOP minority who control our nation and are running it into the ground to get the answer.

There are thousands of progressive lawyers, many of them women and minorities, committed to standing up for equal justice for all who are better qualified than Judge Barrett. There is something wrong with a system that elevates the wrong people to the judiciary and other high offices.

It’s time to establish meritocracy and save our democracy. Vote to throw the GOP out of office and end the selection of far-right judges whose reactionary views and lack of empathy for the most vulnerable in society are far outside both the reality of our diverse nation and our future as a vibrant, progressive democracy that will promote equal justice and human rights at home and abroad!

Keep the future Judge Barretts where they belong — on the sidelines and in the margins of our legal system, while those with a better view of the Constitution, the rule of law, and human progress take their rightful places in positions of power and progressive influence in all there branches of our Government.

Judge Barrett parrots great admiration for RBG while aiming to trash her legacy of fairness and equality with a far-right, exclusive, intolerant agenda. In the future, we need Federal Judges who will constantly confront Judge Barrett, her soon-to-be-fellow GOP Supremes, and other righty judges bent on taking us back to the darkest corners of our past. Make them face the truly courageous and enlightened legacy of RBG and others like her. Force the “Barretts of the world” to reckon with their own smugly disingenuous jurisprudence and their lack of commmitment to humanity and true equality before the law for all persons in the U.S.! Constantly confront complicit courts for change!

Better judges for a better, fairer America!

This Fall, vote like your life and the future of humanity depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

09-27-20

😰👹👺🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮“DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN” — Nicole Narea @ Vox With A Glimpse Of Trump’s Second Term: American Apocalypse — Dark, Ugly, Hateful, Violent, Dishonest, Exclusionary, Stupid, Racist, Diminished, Yet Very White & Privileged — Are People Of Color & Their Allies Really Going To Stand By & Watch While Their Past & Our Future As A Strong, Creative, Tolerant, Diverse, Humane Nation Is Written Out Of History By A Racist GOP & Its Totally Wacko Yet Dangerously Evil Cult Leader?

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Album version

Music & Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

Well, they’re still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

Now I hear she’s got a house up in Fairview

And a style she’s trying to maintain

Well, if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I’m easily found

Tell her there’s a spot out ‘neath Abram’s Bridge

And tell her there’s a darkness on the edge of town

There’s a darkness on the edge of town

Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something that they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

Well, now some folks are born into a good life

And other folks get it anyway anyhow

Well, I lost my money and I lost my wife

Them things don’t seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I’ll be on that hill ’cause I can’t stop

I’ll be on that hill with everything I’ve got

Well, lives on the line where dreams are found and lost

I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

——— Source: springsteenlyrics.com, click here for music: https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=darknessontheedgeoftown

Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://apple.news/AyEIE9zXYSTeZ-TvO2TLZAQ

Nicole writes at Vox:

. . . .

As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.

The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.

Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.

“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”

. . . .

Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.

It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.

“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.

But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.

“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”

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

Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.

Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”

America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do.

This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!

It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes.

The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)

This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!

PWS

08-27-20

WHITE NATIONALISTS BEWARE: 9th Cir. Fires Warning Shot Across Bow Of Racist Judges, Prosecutors, & Police — No Qualified Immunity For You, Neo-Nazis! — Reynaga Hernandez v. Skinner

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-fourth-amendment-reynaga-hernandez-v-skinner

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Daniel M. Kowalski

11 Aug 2020

Fourth Amendment

CA9 on Fourth Amendment: Reynaga Hernandez v. Skinner

Reynaga Hernandez v. Skinner

“In late 2017, a witness in a courtroom in Billings, Montana, testified that one of the other witnesses, Miguel Reynaga Hernandez (“Reynaga”), was “not a legal citizen.” On the basis of this statement, the Justice of the Peace presiding over the hearing spoke with the local Sheriff’s Office and asked that Reynaga be “picked up.” Deputy Sheriff Derrek Skinner responded to the call. Outside the courtroom, Skinner asked Reynaga for identification and questioned him regarding his immigration status in the United States. Reynaga produced an expired Mexican consular identification card but was unable to provide detailed information regarding his immigration status because he does not speak English fluently. Skinner then placed Reynaga in handcuffs, searched his person, and escorted him to a patrol car outside the courthouse. With Reynaga waiting in the back of the patrol car, Skinner ran a warrants check and, after Reynaga’s record came back clean, asked Immigration and Custom Enforcement (“ICE”) if the agency had any interest in Reynaga. Reynaga was ultimately taken to an ICE facility and remained in custody for three months. Upon his release, Reynaga sued Skinner and Pedro Hernandez, the presiding Justice of the Peace (“Hernandez”), under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his Fourth Amendment rights. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court denied each defendant qualified immunity and held that Reynaga’s Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. Skinner and Hernandez interlocutorily appeal the court’s denial of qualified immunity. We affirm.”

From NWIRP: “This decision is important as it makes clear that state and local law enforcement officers may be held liable under the civil rights statute if they unlawfully detain community members in order to turn them over to immigration enforcement,” said Matt Adams, legal director for NWIRP. “Police officers—and even local judicial officials—may be held accountable when, instead of serving the community, they take it upon themselves to stop people based on their suspected immigration status, the language they speak, or their ethnicity or the color of their skin.” “The harm that [Judge Hernandez and Deputy Skinner] did to me is hard to explain,” said Mr. Reynaga in reacting to the court of appeals decision. “It’s something that lives in me and in my family now. It’s hard to describe what this harm represents to a person. But I’m very grateful for the work NWIRP has done for me. I’m very happy and proud that now immigrants here in Montana and in other states can know that we also have rights.” Following the court of appeals decision, Mr. Reynaga’s case will return to the district court for further proceedings on the damages he is entitled to in light of the violation of his constitutional rights.”

[Hats way off to Matt Adams (argued), Leila Kang, Aaron Korthuis, and Anne Recinos, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Seattle, Washington, and Shahid Haque, Border Crossing Law Firm P.C., Helena, Montana; for Plaintiff-Appellee!]

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

Who knows what the Supremes might do on on this? So far they have been reluctant to enforce the Constitution against racism in law enforcement. Remember, they recently gave the Border Patrol a license to unconstitutionally shoot and kill a Mexican kid across the border in Mexico. And, the Supremes majority has happily found ways to impose possible death sentences on legal asylum seekers of color without any meaningful process at all.

The “JR Five” aren’t particularly creative thinkers —except when it comes to thinking of ways to dehumanize (“Dred Scottify”) persons of color under our Constitution. Then they often are happy to fabricate any rationale to deny due process and equal protection under our laws.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-12-20

MUST SEE TV: “IMMIGRATION NATION” PREMIERES TODAY ON NETFLIX: Time Magazine Says “Netflix’s Searing Docuseries Immigration Nation Is The Most Important TV Show You’ll See In 2020!”

Immigration Nation

Directed by Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz

I appear, along with many others, in a later episode.

As you watch, ask this question: What does most of the enforcement you see have to do with any legitimate notion of “homeland security” except in the sense that abusing, terrorizing, separating, and removing individuals of color evidently makes some folks in the U.S., particularly Trump supporters, feel “more secure?”

No, it’s not “just enforcing the law!” No law is enforced 100% and most U.S. laws are enforced to just a limited extent due to priorities, funding, and sensible prosecutorial discretion used by every law enforcement agency.

How much does the Trump Administration “enforce” environmental protection laws, civil rights laws, laws protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination, fair housing laws, financial laws, health and safety laws, tax laws, or for that matter ethics laws, whistleblower protections, or anti-corruption laws?

Indeed, as hate crimes directed against the Hispanic, Asian, and Black communities have risen, prosecutions have actually fallen under Trump. See e.g., https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/02/us/hate-crimes-latinos-el-paso-shooting/index.html.

Although domestic violence hasn’t decreased in ethnic communities, prosecutions have gone down as a result of the Administration’s “terror tactics” as illustrated in Immigration Nation. Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypoto” Sessions’s racially-motivated prosecutions of minor immigration violators, intended to promote family separation and “deter” others from asserting legal rights, actually diverted Federal prosecutorial resources from real crimes like drug trafficking and white collar crimes.

Remember, Jeff Sessions walks free (his biggest “trauma” being a well-deserved primary defeat in Alabama); his victims aren’t so lucky; some of their trauma is permanent; their lives changed for the worse, and in some cases eradicated, forever! Where’s the “justice” and the “rule of law” in this?

Prosecutions are always prioritized and “targeted” in some way or another, sometimes rationally, reasonably, and prudently, and other times with bias and malice. So, as you watch this and hear folks like former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan and other Government officials pontificate about “just enforcing the law” or “required by law,” you should recognize it for the total BS that it is!

The Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement program is clearly designed by folks like Stephen Miller, Sessions, and others to be invidiously motivated and to terrorize communities of color including U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are part of those communities. They are an affront to the concepts of “equal justice under law” and eliminating “institutional racism.”

The Administration’s policies are actually “Dred Scottification” or “dehumanization of the other.” You can see and hear it in the voices of DHS enforcement officials, a number of whom eventually view other humans as “numbers,” “priorities,” “quotas,” “missions,” “ops” (“operations”), “beds,” or “collateral damage.”

That’s exactly how repressive bureaucracies in Germany, the Soviet Union, China, and other authoritarian states have worked and prospered, at least for a time. By breaking dehumanization into “little bureaucratic steps” individuals are relieved of moral responsibility and lulled into losing sight of the “big picture.”

Did the folks repairing the tracks and switches for the German railroads focus on where the boxcars were heading and what eventually would happen to their passengers? Did they even know, wonder, or care what was in those boxcars?

And, in case you wonder, family and child separations, supposedly eventually abandoned by Trump, might have diminished as a result of court cases, but they still regularly occur. Only now they are kept largely “below the radar screen” and disingenuously disguised under the bureaucratic rubric “binary choice.”

What has really diminished is less the abuses and more the national and international outrage about those abuses. Dishonesty, immorality, and cruelty have simply become “normalized” under Trump as long it’s largely “out of sight, out of mind.”

What do you imagine happens to those turned away at our borders without any meaningful process and “orbited” to the Northern Triangle — essentially “war zones?” (Preliminary studies show that many die or disappear.) A majority of the Supremes don’t care, and apparently most Americans don’t either as long as the carnage and tears aren’t popping up on their TV screens.

And, in many cases, the “removals” and denials of fair process, both the ones you see in Immigration Nation and the ones you don’t, are actually detrimental to our nation, our values, our society, and our future. The series mentions “being one on the wrong side of history;” that’s precisely where the DHS is under Trump. But, so is the rest of our nation for having allowed an evil charlatan like Trump to have power over our humanity.

This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it! Because they do! We can’t undo the past! But, we can make Trump part of that past and change our future for the better!

PWS

08-03-20

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻NATIONAL SECURITY: The Threat Isn’t On The Streets Of Portland Or From The Virtually Non-Existent & Largely Mythical “Antifa” — Leaving Aside The Existential Threat Posed By Trump, The Biggest Threat To America’s Future Existence Is On Our Payroll & Operates With Impunity From The 5th Floor Of The USDOJ — “Billy The Bigot” Barr Is Hell-Bent On Seeing The US Become A Hitlerian/Putinist State! — “It isn’t arguable; it’s wrong.” — So Why Does The “JR Five” Give Billy A Pass While Failing To Protect Humanity & The Rule of Law?

From the LA Times:

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=9c0e081f-1c63-4c31-af1d-af5fddcb108d&v=sdk

What makes Barr a danger to democracy

The attorney general channels Trump

HARRY LITMAN

Atty. Gen. William Barr left us with a terrifying certainty in the wake of his testimony Tuesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee: Under him, the Department of Justice stands ready to advance any pro-Trump policy, justifying it on the basis of a blinkered, tenuous view of the facts and the law, or maybe just Barr’s personal ideological intuitions.

For all its finger-wagging, the Judiciary Committee is not in a position to constrain the attorney general. There is no real brake on Barr’s conduct short of a Trump loss in November. Or, to adopt Barr’s own unsettling gloss, a Trump loss that is sufficiently “clear” that he and his boss would accept it.

Since the hearing, commentators have seized on a couple of blows that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee — Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) primarily — landed on the attorney general. But there was nothing close to a knockdown, and the hard facts remain: The House will not impeach Barr and President Trump will continue to give him full rein.

It’s no secret that the Democrats in Congress (and more than half of the country) view Barr as Mephistopheles — dishonest, partisan, corrupt, even racist. He did nothing Tuesday to try to revise that view; in fact, he seemed indifferent to it.

Norms of evenhandedness, professionalism and especially political disinterest, which traditionally check U.S. attorneys general, do not moderate his conduct. He championed every partisan act his DOJ has taken on the president’s behalf, blandly claiming they reflected the faithful application of the rule of law.

For example, when he defended the highly unusual deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore., Barr described a “Batman”-like dystopia in which a few U.S. marshals were beset by a marauding horde of uncontrollable professional anarchists. If that were accurate, it would be hard to quibble with sending in the feds.

But the justification dries up immediately if the protests were, as a lot of the reporting on the ground indicates, largely peaceful, and if local law enforcement were capable of defending the Portland federal courthouse and separating lawbreakers from peaceful protestors. (The announcement Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security’s mystery troops were withdrawing suggests the argument for the invasion was tenuous all along.)

Or consider Barr’s legally tortured defense of the president’s memo attempting to exclude immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally from the 2020 census. The plain language of the 14th Amendment, as well as a unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court, leaves no room for argument: Everyone who “inhabits” the U.S. must be counted.

But Barr claims that Congress has delegated to the Commerce Department an ability to advance an Orwellian definition of “inhabitant.” He called it an “arguable position.” It isn’t arguable; it’s wrong.

And given that it is the attorney general’s job to uphold the law of the land, he shouldn’t even bring up the theory, regardless of the half- or quarter-baked views of the president.

Barr’s partisan proclamations went on and on, with this whopper as a high point: “From my experience, the president has played a role properly and traditionally played by presidents.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the op-ed at the link.

Beyond Congressional fecklessness, perhaps the most disturbing and scary aspect of Billy’s anti-democracy, anti-humanity, racist agenda is that it has received only “light pushback” from the supposedly independent Article III Courts, particularly the Supremes’ majority led by Roberts.

Private practitioners who made the types of specious, disingenuous, and wrong arguments to Federal Courts advanced by Billy and fellow Trump toady Solicitor General Noel Francisco and their minions would probably have been disbarred or even in jail by now. Not only do these guys continue their wanton destruction of our legal system, but Roberts & Co. sometimes actually reward the DOJ’s fraud, racism, and bad faith.

Crooked and corrupt politicos are one thing. But, Supreme Court Justices who won’t call them out for their invidious motivations, won’t stand up for equal justice under law, allow racist abuses in the guise of patently bogus “national security” and Executive prerogative pretexts, won’t protect refugees, asylum seekers, children, or migrants of color, favor tyranny over humanity, and allow their courts to be paralyzed by frivolous Government litigation, dilatory appeals, and transparently bogus procedural gimmicks are the real problem here!

As Litman points out, despite the “smokescreens” thrown up by Barr and complicit courts, there’s really no ambiguity about what’s happening here. It’s straightforward! It’s a full scale attack on our justice system, our democracy, and our humanity by a bunch of would-be facist thugs operating out of the Executive Branch of our Government. America needs better Justices and Federal Judges who will cut through the legalistic BS, show courage, have integrity, and stand up for democracy, humanity, and equal justice for all!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

08-03-20

BAD NEWS FOR BIGOTLAND: Even As Billy The Bigot Blatantly Bashes The “Categorical Approach,” 10th Cir. Blasts Billy’s Biased BIA’s Bogus Blowing Of Same To Illegally Deport Under CO Controlled Substances Law!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

10th-Johnson-drugs19-9550

From: Dan Kowalski

Sent: Friday, July 31, 2020 4:16 PM
To: ICLINIC@LIST.MSU.EDU; Immigration Law Professors List
Subject: [immprof] FW: victory in Johnson v. Barr – Colorado possession statute overbroad and indivisble!!!

team,

a huge victory today for one of our clients, and hopefully many other folks in our community.

in Johnson v. Barr, the 10th circuit ruled that the Colorado statute of possession of a controlled substance is overboard as to the federal schedule and indivisible as to the particular controlled substance within a schedule.

the court honed in on the categorical approach, looking first to the plain language of the statute, the penalties assigned under the statute, its unpublished decision in Arellano, and persuasive state case law in deciding in our favor.

-this means that no conviction for possession of a schedule I or II CS can support the CS grounds of inadmissibility or deportability. this will hopefully help countless people who were found inadmissible, deportable, subject to mandatory detention, and ineligible for relief to seek redress of those legal errors.

-by extension, this decision is likely to apply to simply possession of a schedule III-V because it is also overbroad and structured nearly identically to the possession statute at issue in Johnson. moreover, due to legislative change last year classifying all PCS of schedule I-V CS as a DM1 offense starting in 2020, all future PCS offenses are likely also overbroad and indivisible.

this is definitely a day to celebrate. we will see whether the govt seeks rehearing or cert.

keep loving, keep fighting.

h

—

Hans Meyer

The Meyer Law Office, P.C.

—

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to immprof+unsubscribe@lists.ucla.edu.

Hans Meyer ESQ
Meyer Law
Denver, CO

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

Congratulations, Hans!

As noted by Hans, this decision could have “big-time” impact and result in numerous motions to reopen and “redos.” It’s just another example of how the gimmicks and misinterpretations used and encouraged by the Trump regime as part of their “haste makes waste” deport everyone policies actually create backlogs and waste resources while doing grave injustices.

America needs an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court with real expert judges, with a commitment to human rights and due process, dedicated to seeing that individual results are fair and just, rather than carrying out a perverted, race and hate driven nativist political agenda to maximize deportations in disregard of the law.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-02-20

RICHARD A. CLARKE @ WASHPOST: High Time To End The DHS Farce 🤡🤹‍♀️🎪☠️🤮: “Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dismantle-the-department-of-homeland-security/2020/07/30/24ef8ba0-d279-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html

Richard A. Clarke served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

President Trump has, often intentionally, damaged essential federal departments and agencies, driving from their ranks thousands of career civil servants who are global experts and national treasures. The country is seeing the results play out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but such damage has happened across the federal bureaucracy.

No national institution has been more damaged than the Department of Homeland Security. The youngest of the federal departments, the DHS is among the largest by employee count, ranking just below the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs. It was created in 2003 by smashing together 17 agencies from five departments in an ill-conceived response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Its divisions and agencies are now largely leaderless, because the White House refuses to nominate senior managers to replace those who have left. Quick, who is the secretary of homeland security?

You get my point.

Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities. The DHS has become synonymous with unsympathetic government overreach, malevolence and dysfunction.

For the patriotic, underpaid Americans working hard in the agencies of the DHS, what Trump has done to their reputations is a tragedy. The department, however, was doomed from the start. When such an agency was proposed before the Sept. 11 attacks, I was working in the White House, where I coordinated many “homeland” issues for almost a decade under President Bill Clinton and, later, President George W. Bush. Blocking the creation of the DHS was one of the few things on which Vice President Dick Cheney and I agreed. We thought that such a department would be too large, too diverse in function and too difficult to integrate into a well-functioning institution.

Congressional leaders, however, wanted to “do something” after 9/11, and it became impossible for the Bush administration to maintain its opposition to the idea of a homeland security agency. Instead, the Bush administration embraced it and quickly merged a raft of agencies ripped from their home departments. The new department never really came together.

For more than a decade, reports from the Government Accountability Office, think tanks and congressional committees have documented the failures of the DHS to coalesce into an effective entity. Its image steadily declined and was not helped by the popular television series “Homeland,” which despite its name depicted a dark world of CIA intrigue, portraying missions and functions that the DHS never actually had.. Contrary to popular belief, Homeland Security has never been the government’s lead counterterrorism entity. The FBI, part of the Justice Department, leads counterterrorism efforts within the United States.

The next administration would be well advised not to try to make the existing DHS structure work, for it will end up as another presidential administration that has failed in that task. Instead, the department should be reimagined — perhaps as part of a Reinventing Government effort, the first of which was led by then-Vice President Al Gore — with more manageable and mission-consistent entities. It should also shed its Orwellian name.

Federal departments and agencies develop personalities and images from their mission, and they attract people who identify with those personas. These identities are almost immutable, but new organizational designs and branding can reinvigorate and redirect agencies. Breaking up the DHS could have positive results.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

You read it Courtside long ago: No mission, no leadership, no values, no discipline, no decency. DHS as currently constituted is a dysfunctional mess that America won’t miss.

Break it up, reassign the truly necessary functions, reduce the funding, and use the money saved by eliminating detention, grotesque mismanagement and maladministration, stupid walls, undisciplined and counterproductive, “civil” enforcement, and other demonstrably destructive functions for something more constructive. Yes, if you strip out the neo-Nazi wannabes, racists, and incompetents, there is some real talent there. Some of that talent passed through my courtroom in Arlington. Some of it is in the Asylum Office and at USCIS. There is some in the anti-smuggling and fraud detection programs. But, it’s totally wasted in the current corrupt dysfunctional configuration. Indeed, the totally toxic reputation of DHS under Trump actually hinders the useful functions.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-31-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY HAS CONSEQUENCES: CLIMATE MIGRATION IS ONE OF THEM! — Trump’s Stupidity & Cruelty On Immigration Climate Science, & Disease Control Promises Horrible Global Human Disaster For Future Generations — Empowering & Enabling A Moron Is Always A Very Bad Idea! — No Idiotic Wall Or “Drill Baby Drill” Insanity Is Going To Prevent This Human Catastrophe We Are Inflicting On Those Who Follow!

🏴‍☠️

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html

THE GREAT CLIMATE MIGRATION

By Abrahm Lustgarten | Photographs by Meridith Kohut

Early in 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. Then it did rain, and Jorge rushed his last seeds into the ground. The corn sprouted into healthy green stalks, and there was hope — until, without warning, the river flooded. Jorge waded chest-deep into his fields searching in vain for cobs he could still eat. Soon he made a last desperate bet, signing away the tin-roof hut where he lived with his wife and three children against a $1,500 advance in okra seed. But after the flood, the rain stopped again, and everything died. Jorge knew then that if he didn’t get out of Guatemala, his family might die, too.

This article, the first in a series on global climate migration, is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Read more about the data project that underlies the reporting.

Even as hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled north toward the United States in recent years, in Jorge’s region — a state called Alta Verapaz, where precipitous mountains covered in coffee plantations and dense, dry forest give way to broader gentle valleys — the residents have largely stayed. Now, though, under a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy and starvation, they, too, have begun to leave. Almost everyone here experiences some degree of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from. Half the children are chronically hungry, and many are short for their age, with weak bones and bloated bellies. Their families are all facing the same excruciating decision that confronted Jorge.

The odd weather phenomenon that many blame for the suffering here — the drought and sudden storm pattern known as El Niño — is expected to become more frequent as the planet warms. Many semiarid parts of Guatemala will soon be more like a desert. Rainfall is expected to decrease by 60 percent in some parts of the country, and the amount of water replenishing streams and keeping soil moist will drop by as much as 83 percent. Researchers project that by 2070, yields of some staple crops in the state where Jorge lives will decline by nearly a third.

Scientists have learned to project such changes around the world with surprising precision, but — until recently — little has been known about the human consequences of those changes. As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.

In March, Jorge and his 7-year-old son each packed a pair of pants, three T-shirts, underwear and a toothbrush into a single thin black nylon sack with a drawstring. Jorge’s father had pawned his last four goats for $2,000 to help pay for their transit, another loan the family would have to repay at 100 percent interest. The coyote called at 10 p.m. — they would go that night. They had no idea then where they would wind up, or what they would do when they got there.

From decision to departure, it was three days. And then they were gone.

. . . .

Our modeling and the consensus of academics point to the same bottom line: If societies respond aggressively to climate change and migration and increase their resilience to it, food production will be shored up, poverty reduced and international migration slowed — factors that could help the world remain more stable and more peaceful. If leaders take fewer actions against climate change, or more punitive ones against migrants, food insecurity will deepen, as will poverty. Populations will surge, and cross-border movement will be restricted, leading to greater suffering. Whatever actions governments take next — and when they do it — makes a difference.

The window for action is closing. The world can now expect that with every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. For a long time, the climate alarm has been sounded in terms of its economic toll, but now it can increasingly be counted in people harmed. The worst danger, Hinde warned on our walk, is believing that something so frail and ephemeral as a wall can ever be an effective shield against the tide of history. “If we don’t develop a different attitude,” he said, “we’re going to be like people in the lifeboat, beating on those that are trying to climb in.”

Abrahm Lustgarten is a senior environmental reporter at ProPublica. His 2015 series examining the causes of water scarcity in the American West, “Killing the Colorado,” was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Meridith Kohut is an award-winning photojournalist based in Caracas, Venezuela, who has documented global health and humanitarian crises in Latin America for The New York Times for more than a decade. Her recent assignments include photographing migration and childbirth in Venezuela, antigovernment protests in Haiti and the killing of women in Guatemala.

Reporting and translation were contributed by Pedro Pablo Solares in Guatemala and El Salvador, and Louisa Reynolds and Juan de Dios García Davish in Mexico.

Data for opening globe graphic from “Future of the Human Climate Niche,” by Chi Xu, Timothy A. Kohler, Timothy M. Lenton, Jens-Christian Svenning and Marten Scheffer, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Graphic by Bryan Christie Design/Joe Lertola.

Maps in Central America graphics sequence show total population shift under the SSP5 / RCP 8.5 and SSP3 / RCP 8.5 scenarios used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and it is calculated on a 15-kilometer grid. A cube-root scale was used to compress the largest peaks.

Projections based on research by The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Model graphics and additional data analysis by Matthew Conlen.

Additional design and development by Jacky Myint and Shannon Lin.

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

Read the full article, with pictures and neat graphics, at the link!

“Safe Third Countries” indeed! It’s total fraud-enhanced immorality by the Trump regime, with our failed and failing “governing institutions” and the rest of the world fecklessly watching us be driven by the irrational hate and stupidity filled agenda of a madman and his toadies!

No wall will be high enough, no “American Gulag” cruel enough, no rhetoric racist enough, no laws hateful enough, no Supreme Court dehumanizing enough, no immorality and stupidity gross enough to stop mass human migration driven by climate change. “Desperate people do desperate things!”

This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-26-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🏻🤮HATE & BIAS RULE WHERE EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL IS SCORNED! —THE WORST OF THE WORST FIND A HOME IN AMERICA’S STAR CHAMBERS, THANKS TO BILLY THE BIGOT, ENABLED BY A CONGRESS & ARTICLE III JUDGES UNWILLING TO STAND UP AGAINST “HATE AGENDA” IN “AMERICA’S STAR CHAMBERS!” — Noah Lanard @ Mother Jones Reports!

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/he-defended-anti-gay-and-anti-muslim-causes-now-hes-an-immigration-judge/

Noah Lanard writes in Mother Jones:

He Defended Anti-Gay and Anti-Muslim Causes. Now He’s an Immigration Judge.

Brandon Bolling argued that Islam was incompatible with the First Amendment and homosexuality was not innate.

NOAH LANARD
Reporter
Bio | Follow

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters.

During the 2014–2015 school year, Caleigh Wood started to learn about Islam as part of her 11th grade world history class. Upon discovering this, Caleigh’s dad, John, wrote on Facebook that he “just about fucking lost it,” adding in response to a commenter, “A 556 round [of ammunition] doesn’t study Islam and it kills them fuckers everyday.” John told the school’s vice principal that “you can take that fucking Islam and shove it up your white fucking ass,” according to federal court records. After saying that he was going to create a “shit storm like you have never seen,” he got banned from the La Plata, Maryland, high school.

That could have been the end of the story. Instead, Brandon Bolling and other lawyers from the Thomas Law More Center, a right-wing Christian group that declares itself “battle ready to defend America,” represented John as he sued the Charles County public school system for allegedly attempting to indoctrinate his daughter into Islam.

Last week, the Justice Department announced that it had hired Bolling, a former Marine and federal attorney, to be an assistant chief immigration judge in Texas, even though he has no discernible immigration experience. During two stints at the Thomas More Law Center—neither of which is disclosed in his government bio—Bolling worked on numerous cases that pitted his clients against Muslims and the gay community. Now Bolling will help oversee the immigration cases of people detained in El Paso, and could be responsible for deciding whether victims of persecution based on their religions and sexual orientations receive protection under US asylum laws.

Bolling is one of 46 new immigration judges recently hired by the Trump administration. Another is Matt O’Brien, who served as the research director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, one of the country’s leading anti-immigrant groups. The decision to hire both men is an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to select judges sympathetic to its anti-immigration agenda. (The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Thomas More Law Center did not respond to requests for comment.)

As part of the Justice Department, immigration courts lack the independence of federal courts. The decisions they make can determine whether immigrants who have been in the United States for decades can remain, or whether asylum seekers will be deported to the countries they fled. Even when immigrants appeal their decisions, they generally stick, since the Trump administration has made a point of filling the Board of Immigration Appeals with judges known for denying nearly all asylum claims.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Noah’s article at the link.

As the world watches America spiral downward and our institutions, once admired by democracy advocates everywhere, spinelessly crumble in the face of tyranny, nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in the clearly unconstitutional, bias-driven, and grotesquely unfair Immigration “Courts.”

Racial justice and equal justice in America will remain cruel illusions unless and until we demand an end to these Star Chambers and hold those responsible for creating and enabling their current toxicity accountable!

Certainly giving Thomas More a bad name. And like lots of those caught up in the EOIR Star Chamber, he has no way of defending himself against the Bollings and Barrs of the world!

PWS

07-25-20

🤮👎🏻CONTEMPT FOR COURT: Trump Regime Continues To Drag Feet On DACA Compliance As U.S. Judge Finally Mulls Contempt For Scofflaw Officials — Human Lives “Held In A Bucket” ☠️🤮

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/trump-administration-has-put-daca-applications-on-hold-despite-supreme-court-ruling-restoring-program/2020/07/24/59f20f48-cdcf-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html

Emily Davies
Local Reporter
Washington Post

By Emily Davies

July 24 at 7:33 PM ET

Trump administration officials said during a federal court hearing Friday that they have not “granted nor rejected” any applications for a program designed to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, but rather have put them “on hold” as the government discusses the future of the program.

The virtual hearing in the U.S. District Court in Maryland was the first time the administration addressed reports that the Department of Homeland Security was not accepting applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — despite a recent Supreme Court ruling and a federal judge’s order requiring the government to resume accepting applications.

“Although the applications will be received by the department, they will be neither granted nor rejected, and instead will be held, placed into a bucket pending a policy consideration that takes place and that now I can tell you is still ongoing at the department,” said Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer with the Justice Department.

Pezzi also said that “some or all” of the applications from DACA beneficiaries looking to leave the country and return lawfully had been wrongly rejected when they should have been held.

“Going forward, in just the last few hours, it has been straightened out at least prospectively such that any request for DACA-based advance parole will also be held in the pending bucket,” Pezzi said.

[[Supreme Court blocks Trump’s bid to end DACA, a win for undocumented ‘dreamers’]]

U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm, who ordered last week that the government comply with court directives to restore the DACA program, ruled Friday that the Trump administration must clarify the program’s status to the public within 30 days. He instructed Pezzi to confirm by next Friday whether the government could commit to updating its U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website and sending receipts to DACA applicants who are confused about whether their applications have been processed.

Grimm also instructed the plaintiffs and defendants to propose a schedule for a briefing on whether the government should be held in contempt.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.

Emily, a former Post intern, is a relatively new addition to the reporting staff, but already showing “superstar potential.” She has shared in a Pulitzer Prize as part of a Team for Breaking News Reporting. Let’s hope that she keeps reporting on immigration issues as part of her local news beat!

Time to start taking names and throwing the criminals on the DHS payroll in jail! Their overall performance on DACA — a highly beneficial program favored by the vast majority of Americans that is actually helping us get through the pandemic — would have been a “no brainer” for a competent Administration. Instead, the “malicious incompetents” at DHS are showing why under their rancid leadership USCIS has become morally as well as fiscally bankrupt.

“Humanity in a bucket” is a very accurate description of the Trump regime’s racist, xenophobic, intentionally cruel, and, perhaps most of all, dehumanizing immigration polices. They diminish the humanity of every American every day they remain in office.

Due Process Forever! Kakistocracy, Never!

PWS

07-25-20

🎥🎞📺NEW NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES SHOWS DHS’S CRUEL, MISGUIDED, WASTEFUL ENFORCEMENT UNDER TRUMP — Not Surprisingly, The Regime Wants To Suppress The Truth — At Least Until After The Election — Caitlin Dickerson @ NY Times Reports

Caitlin Dickerson
National Immigration Reporter
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/trump-immigration-nation-netflix.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfq4hkT1UZACbIRp87tACDnb3Oxbk9iWX3MCmST3NExvgUBI7F_UrRa65id50zwzGfDpdnAYMYecZTnKVZLlA_DE6huIeFk5AIZC4_-Ni-B21ompyQB-x9rG6wYCywI-khgeXkskqLPTO-XaCM1WYzZ1ow-esTfl-h2nQJz6bBA7Q1joE4haF9c8g8ETQQZyCKvu3qDQF-PbiFbRLc7woxXYJJSG2Z3I7cu_9bLlIkWR-RR2h_4G0-9NpWJNoSWa7_JBUmc8b06q4DCJCm1elPvSY5zqibk_nysQ&smid=em-share

Caitlin reports:

In early 2017, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement prepared to carry out the hard-line agenda on which President Trump had campaigned, agency leaders jumped at the chance to let two filmmakers give a behind-the-scenes look at the process.

But as the documentary neared completion in recent months, the administration fought mightily to keep it from being released until after the 2020 election. After granting rare access to parts of the country’s powerful immigration enforcement machinery that are usually invisible to the public, administration officials threatened legal action and sought to block parts of it from seeing the light of day.

Some of the contentious scenes include ICE officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes and mocking them after taking them into custody. One shows an officer illegally picking the lock to an apartment building during a raid.

At town hall meetings captured on camera, agency spokesmen reassured the public that the organization’s focus was on arresting and deporting immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But the filmmakers observed numerous occasions in which officers expressed satisfaction after being told by supervisors to arrest as many people as possible, even those without criminal records.

“Start taking collaterals, man,” a supervisor in New York said over a speakerphone to an officer who was making street arrests as the filmmakers listened in. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,” he said.

The filmmakers, Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, who are a couple, turned drafts of their six-part project called “Immigration Nation” over to ICE leadership in keeping with a contract they had signed with the agency. What they encountered next resembled what happened to Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece, who was eventually sued in an unsuccessful attempt to stop her from publishing a memoir that revealed embarrassing details about the president and his associates.

Suddenly, Ms. Clusiau and Mr. Schwarz say, the official who oversaw the agency’s television and film department, with whom they had worked closely over nearly three years of filming, became combative.

The filmmakers discussed their conversations on the condition that the officials they dealt with not be named out of fear that it would escalate their conflict with the agency.

. . . .

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

Read Caitlin’s full article at the link.

The multi-part documentary begins airing on Netflix on August 3. You can watch the trailer at this link:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjj05eA9eXqAhXagnIEHR5UBd4QwqsBMAJ6BAgKEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DX_xVKy58Yuw&usg=AOvVaw3B6_C_v-0f__UPQyLHJ-fy

See firsthand how your tax dollars are being largely wasted on cruel, unnecessary terrorizing of ethnic communities and populating the “New American Gulag” — “enforcement” that in too many cases actually harms our economy and our society and certainly diminishes both our integrity and humanity as a nation.

Catlin’s concluding paragraphs are worth keeping in mind:

The filmmakers said they came away with some empathy for the ICE officers, but became convinced that the entire system was harmful to immigrants and their families.

The problem, they said, was summarized in the first episode by Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“Is a government agency evil? No. Is every single person inside ICE evil? No,” Ms. Heller told the filmmakers. “The brilliance of the system is that their job has been siphoned off in such a way that maybe what they see day to day seems justified, but when you add it up, all of the people just doing their job, it becomes this crazy terrorizing system.”

We have all been harmed by Trump’s racist-driven “weaponization” of DHS and the Immigration Courts, and that includes the DHS employees and the Immigration Court employees who are caught up in this grotesque, often illegal, and overall immoral abuse of government authority and resources.

We should also be concerned about the First Amendment implications of Trump’s attempts to misuse Government authority to manipulate the election in his favor by, once again, suppressing truth in reporting. Thank goodness we have courageous journalists like Caitlin and these filmmakers to keep exposing the ugly truth about the Trump/Miller/Wolf/Barr ongoing White Nationalist immigration charade.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-24-20

MORE DEADLY ☠️ MISTAKES: 6th Cir. Finds BIA Ignored Relevant Evidence In Trying To Deny Asylum To Russian Whistleblower — Skripkov v. Barr

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca6-on-asylum-russia-corruption-skripkov-v-barr#

CA6 on Asylum, Russia, Corruption: Skripkov v. Barr

Skripkov v. Barr

“Andrei Skripkov, a citizen of Russia, seeks review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) upholding an Immigration Judge’s (IJ’s) denial of his application for asylum and the withholding of removal. Skripkov asserted in his application that he was persecuted in his home country on account of his political opinion. He specifically contended that his anticorruption whistleblowing activities motivated Russian officials to persecute him. The IJ and the BIA, on the other hand, found that the officials were motivated solely by their pecuniary interest in furthering a corrupt scheme disrupted by Skripkov. In his petition for review, Skripkov argues that the BIA erred in disregarding evidence that he would be criminally prosecuted for his political opinion if he is returned to Russia. For the reasons set forth below, we GRANT Skripkov’s petition for review and REMAND the case to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Brenna D. Duncan!]

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

When the objective is to reject, not protect, mistakes are inevitable. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Most folks whose lives are being chewed up and spit out by the “designed to be unjust” Immigration Court system don’t have the good fortune to be represented by Brenna D. Duncan or someone of her caliber.

Indeed, under the ongoing illegal travesty that now passes for “justice” in America, most legal asylum seekers are turned away at the border without any hearing or meaningful process at all.

Interestingly, Brenna D. Duncan, a rising superstar at the international commercial law firm of Perkins Coie appears to have practiced primarily in the area of commercial litigation. Yet, she clearly understands immigration and human rights law better than the Immigration Judge and the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges involved in this case.

That’s why actual experience representing immigrants and asylum seekers is such a critical qualification for good Immigration Judges at both the trial and appellate levels as well as being something that should be a factor in appointing future Article III Judges at all levels right up to and particularly including the Supremes. Years of one-sided prosecutorial or law enforcement experience is often no substitute for the “real deal” of experience understanding immigrants and asylum seekers from their perspective.

The current Immigration Court system is intentionally and fatally skewed against asylum seekers, immigrants, due process, and fundamental fairness. Until that changes, equal justice under law will continue to be a cruel, unachieved illusion in our American justice system.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-22-20

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