Migration – Page 283 – immigrationcourtside.com

TIME: Deportation Can Be a Death Sentence — We Should Be Concerned About “Quick Removal Schemes” By The Administration & Continued Deterioration of Due Process And Fairness For Asylum Seekers – Particularly Those Unrepresented — In U.S. Immigration Court!

http://time.com/4696017/deportation-death-refugees-asylum/

Conchita Cruz and Swapna Reddy, co-founders of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project at the Urban Justice Center, write:

“For one immigrant group—asylum seekers already living in the United States—the fear is especially intense: deportation is a death sentence.
While thousands showed up to support refugee families at airports in response to the refugee ban, many Americans do not realize that a different group of refugee families stands to be picked up in raids, detained and wrongfully deported from the United States. These refugees are called “asylum seekers” because they are seeking refugee status from inside the United States instead of abroad.
For many asylum seekers, there is no mechanism to apply for refugee status abroad, which causes them to come to the U.S.-Mexico border and turn themselves in, seeking refuge. Like their counterparts in airports, they have experienced incredible violence in their countries of origin. They have been brutally raped, threatened by gunpoint to join gangs, or witnessed the murder of loved ones.
In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) holds asylum seekers in detention centers for weeks or months until they pass a preliminary interview with an asylum officer. If they secure release, they move in with relatives or friends while remaining in deportation proceedings pending a full asylum trial.
Asylum seekers do not have a right to government-appointed counsel though their lives hang in the balance. Instead, families are forced to navigate the complex immigration system alone in a language they do not understand. Many also suffer from trauma-based disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder due to the persecution they experienced in the countries they fled.”

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Perhaps contrary to popular perception, we often return individuals to dangerous and life-threatening situations. That’s because of the somewhat arcane “nexus” requirement for asylum that only covers persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

By manipulating these definitions, U.S. Government authorities often can deny protection even to individuals who clearly face life-threatening danger upon return. The Government has worked particularly hard to develop technical legal criteria to disqualify those fleeing danger in the Northern Triangle.

Given the complexity and the highly legalistic nature of the system, competent representation by an attorney is a requirement for due process. For example, according to TRAC, for a sample population of Northern Triangle “women with children,” slightly more than 26% of those with lawyers got favorable decisions from the Immigration Court. Without lawyers, only 1.5% succeeded.

And, if the law were interpreted more reasonably and generously, in accordance with the spirit of asylum protection, I think that a substantial majority of those applying for asylum from the Northern Triangle would be granted relief. Pressure for more favorable interpretations will not come from unrepresented individuals who can’t speak English, let alone articulate, document, and support sophisticated legal arguments for better interpretations of protection laws.

PWS

03/09/17

CNN: Is Trump’s Order To Hire 5,000 More Border Agents a “10-Year Plan?”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/politics/border-agents-cbp-hiring-slow/index.html

Tal Kopan reports

“Washington (CNN) — Optimistic internal estimates say that it could still take five to 10 years for Customs and Border Protection to hire all the additional agents President Donald Trump has ordered, even if the agency gets a wish list of requests to make hiring easier, according to documents obtained by CNN.

CBP has long struggled to even keep up with attrition in its ranks, and was staffed below currently targeted levels even before the President’s January executive orders called for 5,000 more agents.
CBP’s acting commissioner spelled out a series of steps the agency would need, either from other agencies, its parent DHS or Congress, in order to hire more agents in a memo for the deputy secretary last month, according to a copy obtained by CNN.
But even those measures would only help so much, the memo makes clear.
The hurdles are just the latest practical difficulty faced by Trump’s attempts to substantially increase immigration enforcement in the US. His moves to vastly increase the number of undocumented immigrants detained and deported have rankled Democrats and spread fear in immigrant communities. In addition to his long-promised border wall, Trump has ordered a substantial increase in personnel, including the CBP surge.”

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Read the full article at the link. Let’s see, if hiring 5,000 additional Border Patrol Agents takes DHS as long as 10 years, how long will it take to hire 10,000 additional ICE Agents? 20 years? 25 years?

As Nolan Rappaport has mentioned to me, it’s critical that high standards be maintained. Not only does lowering standards and training to meet goals increase the chances of due process and human rights violations, but it could be an opportunity for corruption and for international criminal cartels and gangs to penetrate the U.S. law enforcement system.

PWS

03/08/17

CNN: Does Sudden Drop In S. Border Stops Mean Trump’s “Get Tough” Policy Is Working? Only Time Will Tell, But DHS Views News Favorably!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/border-crossings-huge-drop-trump-tough-talk/index.html

Tal Kopan reports:

“Washington (CNN) Illegal Southwest border crossings were down 40% last month, according to just released Customs and Border Protection numbers — a sign that President Donald Trump’s hardline rhetoric and policies on immigration may be having a deterrent effect.

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly himself announced the month-to-month numbers, statistics that CBP usually quietly posts on its website without fanfare.
According to CBP data, the 40% drop in illegal Southwest border crossings from January to February is far outside normal seasonal trends. Typically, the January to February change is actually an increase of 10% to 20%.
The drop breaks a nearly 20-year trend, as CBP data going back to 2000 shows an uptick in apprehensions every February.
The number of apprehensions and inadmissible individuals presenting at the border was 18,762 people in February, down from 31,578 in January.
It will still take months to figure out if the decrease in apprehensions is an indication of a lasting Trump effect on immigration patterns. Numbers tend to decrease seasonally in the winter and increase into the spring months.
But the sharp downtick after an uptick at the end of the Obama administration could fit the narrative that it takes tough rhetoric on immigration — backed up by policy — to get word-of-mouth warnings to undocumented immigrants making the harrowing journey to the border.”

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Read the full article at the link.

PWS

03/089/17

The Human Costs Of Trumpism — Kids In Danger, Abandoned By U.S.!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/americas/trump-refugee-ban-children-central-america.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0

The NY Times reports:

“SAN SALVADOR — Veronica picked up some modeling clay, molded it into little human figures with her hands — and then dug holes into the sculpture’s face.

“Look,” said Veronica, 9, showing off the creation to her aunt. “That’s how Mamá ended up.”

For more than a year, Veronica and her sister have been in hiding here in El Salvador, hoping to receive refugee status in the United States. The two girls were doing homework at their dining room table when masked men burst in and gunned down their grandparents — the community’s only two health workers — on rumors that the couple had been tipping off the police about gangs in the neighborhood.

Like many thousands of others, Veronica and her sister applied for sanctuary in the United States under a special Obama administration effort to grapple with the violence that has gutted Central America and sent waves of its people on a desperate march toward the American border.

But on Monday, the Trump administration announced a four-month suspension on all refugee admissions to the United States so security procedures can be improved and, perhaps most significantly, cut the number of total refugees allowed into the country by more than half.

“We can’t remain in the same place,” said the girls’ aunt, Reina, who is seeking refugee status for her nieces, witnesses to the double homicide. “We got a call last weekend telling us that they’d find us under whatever rock we were hiding.”

When President Trump first tried to freeze the nation’s refugee program in January, the courts jumped in and thwarted his executive order.

But one vital limit that the courts did allow — and which Mr. Trump’s new order continues — is a drastic reduction in the number of refugees admitted to the United States this fiscal year, from 110,000 under President Barack Obama to Mr. Trump’s revised cap: 50,000.

And those seats are mostly taken already.”

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We supposedly don’t want folks sending their kids on a dangerous journey to the U.S. to escape life-threatening situations in the Northern Triangle. So, the Obama Administration finally creates a very, very modest program for processing refugees (mostly women and children) in the Northern Triangle.

But, the Trump Administration comes along and reduces refugee numbers and suspends refugee admissions. So, why are we surprised that kids continue to make the dangerous journey with the help of smugglers. Basically, what the Trump Administration has done is to 1) endanger kids, and 2) enrich smugglers?

PWS

03/07/17

NY TIMES OPINION: James Traub Says Refugee Issues Are More Nuanced Than Most Of Us Want To Admit!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/the-hard-truth-about-refugees.html?emc=edit_ty_20170307&nl=opinion-today&nlid=79213886&te=1&_r=0&referer=

“The situation is different here. Since the United States has no real refugee problem, save one fabricated by Mr. Trump and conservative activists, and no immigrant crime wave, the chief answer has to be on the level of the opinion corridor: Liberal urbanites have to accept that many Americans react to multicultural pieties by finding something else — sometimes their own white identity — to embrace. If there’s a culture war, everyone loses; but history tells us that liberals lose worse.

I believe that liberalism can be preserved only if liberals learn to distinguish between what must be protected at all cost and what must be, not discarded, but reconsidered — the unquestioned virtue of cosmopolitanism, for example, or of free trade. If we are to honor the human rights of refugees, we must find a way to do so that commands political majorities. Otherwise we’ll keep electing leaders who couldn’t care less about those rights.”

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Read the entire thought-provoking op-ed at the link.

PWS

30/07/17

Proving My Point — The Sessions, Kelly, Trump Claim That More Than 300 Refugees Are Subjects Of Counterterrorism Investigations Earns “Three Pinocchios” From the WashPost “Fact Checker!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/03/06/trumps-claim-that-more-than-300-refugees-are-the-subject-of-counterterrorism-investigations/?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name:homepage/story&utm_term=.e6cc017ec4a9

Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes in the Washington Post:

“It’s irresponsible for the administration to tout this number repeatedly without context or giving the public additional information to understand whether refugees are a threat to the U.S. homeland. The burden of proof is on the speaker, yet administration officials repeatedly declined reporters’ requests for more information. Moreover, the administration’s credibility on factual accuracy is open to question, given the frequent false claims made by the president and other senior officials.
This 300 figure, without context, is problematic for three reasons. It represents a tiny fraction of all resettled refugees in the United States per year (83,380 on average), and since the refugee program began in 1980 (3 million). Since Sept. 11, 2001, roughly 190,000 refugees were accepted into the United States from the six countries listed in the immigration executive order. The 300 figure represents a fraction — though unclear how small or big — of the total open counterterrorism investigations (which could be 1,000 or up to 10,000). And we have no idea what charges are involved, or if these investigations will even result in any charges (or convictions, for that matter).

In the absence of context or additional information from the administration, we find this figure highly misleading, worthy of Three Pinocchios. Should the administration decide to share more information to place this figure into context, we’re happy to reconsider the evidence and the rating.”

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Coulda been worse, as in “Four Pinochios” the “Lowest Award.” And, there is always a chance that the Administration could eventually provide real evidence to back up its largely fictional claims that refugees are a major threat to our national security. But, I wouldn’t count on it.

In the meantime, as I suggested in the previous post, Gen. Kelly is likely to see his sterling reputation go down the drain if he continues to go along with the Sessions, Bannon, Miller crowd. All of the latter have spent their lives living in an “alternate universe” largely free of truth, common sense, perspective, reflection, humanity, and common decency (yes, there is a difference between “geniality” and “courtesy” for which Sessions is known and “human decency” of which he has exhibited depressingly little in his long career in public service).

PWS

03/07/17

WashPost: What Cheers A Grumpy Trump? — A Muslim & Refugee Bashing Session With Sessions, Kelly, Bannon & Miller

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-trumps-fury-the-president-rages-at-leaks-setbacks-and-accusations/2017/03/05/40713af4-01df-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumptumult-830pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.89b3d6c4aad2

Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker report in the Washington Post:

“That night at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had dinner with Sessions, Bannon, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly and White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, among others. They tried to put Trump in a better mood by going over their implementation plans for the travel ban, according to a White House official.”

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Kind of sad to see Gen. Kelly go over to the “dark side.” At his confirmation hearings, he actually was one of the few in this Administration to show a nuanced understanding of migration.

But he now seems to have either “bought into” or chosen to “go along to get along” with the fiction that the world’s most vulnerable and needy individuals, refugees, and legal immigrants, most of whom are coming to join family members already admitted to the U.S., are a greater threat to our security than, say, ISIS or disgruntled and/or disturbed native born U.S. citizens walking around with all too readily available military style firearms.

Yes, I suppose that I’d still rather have General Kelly in charge of the DHS than the likely alternatives — unqualified idealogical zealots. But, as time goes on and the problems with the Administration’s nationalistic, unrealistic, and inhumane approach to immigration multiply, Gen. Kelly might find that he will be remembered more for his failure to stand up to guys like Sessions, Bannon, and Miller than his many military achievements. And, that will be an “American Tragedy.”

PWS

03/07/17

THE ATLANTIC: Our Unhappy Immigration History — President Herbert Hoover’s Anti-Immigrant Policies Resulted In The “Mexican Repatriation” — U.S. Citizens Were The Majority Of Those Illegally Removed!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/americas-brutal-forgotten-history-of-illegal-deportations/517971/

Alex Wagner writes:

“Back in Hoover’s era, as America hung on the precipice of economic calamity—the Great Depression—the president was under enormous pressure to offer a solution for increasing unemployment, and to devise an emergency plan for the strained social safety net. Though he understood the pressing need to aid a crashing economy, Hoover resisted federal intervention, instead preferring a patchwork of piecemeal solutions, including the targeting of outsiders.
According to former California State Senator Joseph Dunn, who in 2004 began an investigation into the Hoover-era deportations, “the Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name.”

“Getting rid of” America’s Mexican population was a random, brutal effort. “For participating cities and counties, they would go through public employee rolls and look for Mexican-sounding names and then go and arrest and deport those people,” said Dunn. “And then there was a job opening!”

“We weren’t rounding up people who were Canadian,” he added. “It was an absolutely racially-motivated program to create jobs by getting rid of people.”

Why, specifically, men and women of Mexican heritage? Professor Francisco Balderrama, whose book, A Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s is the most definitive chronicle of the period (and, not coincidentally, one of the only ones), explained: “Mexican immigration was very recent. It goes back to that saying: Last hired, first fired. The attitude of many industrialists and agriculturalists was reflected in larger cities: A Mexican is a Mexican.” And that included even those citizens of Mexicans descent who were born in the U.S. “That is sort of key in understanding the psychic of the nation,” said Balderrama.

The so-called repatriation effort was, in large part, a misnomer, given the fact that as many as sixty percent of those sent to “home” Mexico were U.S. citizens: American-born children of Mexican-descent who had never before traveled south of the border. (Dunn noted, “I don’t know how you can repatriate someone to a country they’ve not been born or raised in.”)

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Pretty grotesque. Where’s the apology? Where is the circumspection? Where its the humanity in the Administration’s new “immigrant scapegoating” program?

Thanks much to Nolan Rappaport for bringing this interesting, if disturbing, piece of immigration history to my attention.

PWS

03/06/17

DIFFERING VIEWS OF NEW “TRAVEL BAN” ON CNN: Jeffrey Toobin: It Could Stand Up — Advocates: It Stinks!

Jeffrey Toobin writes:

“CNN)For President Trump and his travel ban, the second time may be the charm.

The revised executive order, revealed Monday during a rare joint appearance by three Cabinet members, addresses many of the legal problems that led Trump’s first executive order to be stymied by the courts.
The new order makes plain that holders of green cards and valid visas are now clearly exempt. There is no longer an exception to allow Christian refugees to jump to the head of the line.

The government’s explanation for why it selected the covered countries does not mention religion; rather, the administration says the six countries — down from seven in the previous order — either support terrorism or lack sufficient controls to identify dangerous visitors to the United States. The order also removes Iraq as one of the countries covered by the order.
The courts, which invalidated the original ban, did so, in effect, because they found the order amounted to religious discrimination against Muslims. This new order, unlike the first, makes no mention of the religions of any applicants to come to the United States.
Still, opponents of the order will insist the new rules are merely pretexts — that the new order once again fulfills President Trump’s campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the United States.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/opinions/trump-travel-ban-toobin/index.html

On the other hand, Lauren Said-Moorhouse reports:

“(CNN)International humanitarian groups have slammed US President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban, which targets six Muslim-majority nations, for sharing many of the same flaws as its predecessor.

Similar to the January order, travel ban 2.0 again prevents citizens from Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan from entering the United States for at least 90 days. In this iteration, Iraq is not on the list of barred countries.
The new order, which the Trump administration says is needed to protect the United States from foreign terrorists entering the country, will also suspend the admission of refugees for 120 days and urges US officials to improve vetting procedures for a resettlement program already regarded to be rigorous.
Aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, and Amnesty International USA, quickly condemned the new directive, arguing the ban still does not make the United States any safer.
David Miliband, IRC president and CEO, said in a statement that the revised executive order on immigration “heartlessly targets the most vetted and most vulnerable population to enter the United States.” He added that the new executive order could affect 60,000 people already screened for resettlement in America.

“The ban doesn’t target those who are the greatest security risk, but those least able to advocate for themselves. Instead of making us safer, it serves as a gift for extremists who seek to undermine the United States,” Miliband said.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/world/trump-travel-ban-world-reaction/index.html

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PWS

03/06/17

The Optimist, Ruy Teixeira Says That While Trump Will Inflict Some Damage, Liberal Democratic Values Are Destined To Prevail!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/optimistic-leftist/?utm_term=.27be7a4aa301

Ruy Teixeira writes in the Washington Post:

“Public-opinion data is quite clear that the United States has become more, not less, liberal in all these areas over time and that these trends are continuing. Take the standard question about whether immigration levels should increase, decrease or stay the same. The 38 percent of people who say “decrease” is about as low as it ever has been since Gallup started tracking the question in the 1960s. The current number represents a massive drop, of about 30 points, since the early 1990s, when Pat Buchanan first raised his pitchfork high at the Republican National Convention. There has also been a considerable change in views about whether immigration is a good or bad thing for America — and it’s positive, not negative, change, even if one confines the data to white Americans. According to Gallup, the “good thing” response by whites was as low as 51 percent in the early 2000s but has been around 70 percent in the past two years.

Nor has there been any kind of spike in negative racial attitudes in recent years — in fact, according to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey , such attitudes were far more prevalent in the early 1990s than they are today, including among white Democrats and Republicans. This is true even as perceptions of the quality of race relations have been dimming, thanks primarily to conflict around police shootings and to a tiny minority of genuine haters whose rhetoric and actions have been widely covered. But the underlying trend toward racial liberalism continues.

So the idea that Trump will somehow successfully relitigate the role of immigrants, minorities, gays and women in American society is scary but absurd. He may continue the Republican campaign to restrict voting rights. He may seek to overturn Roe v. Wade (supported by 70 percent of the American public). He may promote prejudice against Muslim Americans. Such actions may in fact be cheered on by his hard-core supporters. But he will ultimately fail, because what he wishes to do is both massively unpopular and runs against the grain of legal precedent and institutional norms.

And he can’t hold back the one true inevitability in demographic change: the replacement of older generations by newer ones. Underappreciated in November’s election was the continuing leftward lean of young voters, once again supporting the Democratic candidate by around 20 points — and with younger millennials, including both college-educated and noncollege whites, even more pro-Democratic than older ones. That is huge. And don’t expect these voters to shift right as they age. Political science research shows that early voting patterns tend to stick.

Another locus of disquiet, if not hysteria, on the left is the environment. But consider this: In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire; in 1979, when Obama was attending college in Los Angeles and remembers constant smog, there were 234 days when the city exceeded federal ozone standards. Our water and air are now orders of magnitude cleaner than they were back then.
Trump will not be able to suddenly wipe out all these gains. Sure, he says he will severely cut environmental regulations, especially ones put in place by Obama; hollow out the EPA; somehow bring back the coal industry; and much more. But saying and doing are two different things. Getting rid of Obama-era rules such as the Clean Power Plan would take years and be challenged by litigation. Reversing the decline of the coal industry is economically impossible. Abolishing the EPA and gutting the clean air and water acts is politically impossible. When the George W. Bush administration tried to eliminate one Clinton-era rule on levels of arsenic in drinking water, it ran into a political buzzsaw and had to retreat.”

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PWS

03/06/17

REUTERS EXCLUSIVE: Will Administration’s Next “Border Deterrence” Plan Be To Separate Women & Their Children — Rep. Henry Ceullar (D-TX) Takes A Stand Against Violating Human Rights!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children-idUSKBN16A2ES?utm_source=applenews

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports:

“Women and children crossing together illegally into the United States could be separated by U.S. authorities under a proposal being considered by the Department of Homeland Security, according to three government officials.

Part of the reason for the proposal is to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children, said the officials, who have been briefed on the proposal.

The policy shift would allow the government to keep parents in custody while they contest deportation or wait for asylum hearings. Children would be put into protective custody with the Department of Health and Human Services, in the “least restrictive setting” until they can be taken into the care of a U.S. relative or state-sponsored guardian.

Currently, families contesting deportation or applying for asylum are generally released from detention quickly and allowed to remain in the United States until their cases are resolved. A federal appeals court ruling bars prolonged child detention.

President Donald Trump has called for ending “catch and release,” in which migrants who cross illegally are freed to live in the United States while awaiting legal proceedings.

Two of the officials were briefed on the proposal at a Feb. 2 town hall for asylum officers by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum chief John Lafferty.

A third DHS official said the department is actively considering separating women from their children but has not made a decision.

HHS and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.”

. . . .

U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat whose district includes about 200 miles (320 km) of the border with Mexico, slammed the proposal. “Bottom line: separating mothers and children is wrong,” he said in a statement.

“That type of thing is where we depart from border security and get into violating human rights,” he said.”

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I agree with Rep. Cuellar. “Refugee deterrence plans” used by past Administrations of both parties involving mass detention and schemes to make things difficult for families have failed and will continue to do so. Desperate people, fleeing for their lives, will do desperate things, including putting up with detention and other inhumane treatment by the U.S.

Undoubtedly, as in the past, some individuals will be pressured by detention and family separation into giving up claims and accepting return. But, overall, most who face the real possibility of death, torture, extortion, and other abuse upon return will “wait the system out” hoping, even when the the evidence might suggest otherwise, that the U.S. will eventually live up to its ideals of fairness, due process and compliance with laws on protection.

Let’s remember that we are talking about scared refugees seeking to exercise their rights under U.S. law, the Geneva Convention on Refugees, and the Convention Against Torture, to apply for protection at the border or in the U.S., and to have those claims fairly and impartially determined.

Rep. Cuellar is someone who has taken the time to understand the problems of children and families in the U.S. Immigration Court system. I know he visited the Arlington Immigration Court on one or more occasions to observe “priority” juvenile hearings. Partially as a result, he became one of the leaders of the successful bipartisan effort to provide additional funding and judicial positions for the Immigration Court. Remarkably, the bulk of those additional positions remained unfilled or “in the pipeline” at the conclusion of the Obama Administration.

Thanks to Nolan Rappaport for sending this in.

PWS

03/04/04

BREAKING: Sessions Recuses Himself From Russian Investigation!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/top-gop-lawmaker-calls-on-sessions-to-recuse-himself-from-russia-investigation/2017/03/02/148c07ac-ff46-11e6-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_gopreax-840a:homepage/story&utm_term=.2d513bee7715

From the WashPost:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday he will recuse himself from any investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, which would include any Russian interference in the electoral process.

Speaking at a hastily-called press conference at the Justice Department, Sessions said he had met with department ethics officials soon after being sworn in last month to evaluate the rules and cases in which he might have a conflict.

“They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation,” Sessions said. He added that he concurred with their assessment, and would thus recuse himself from any existing or future investigation involving Trump’s campaign.

The announcement comes a day after The Washington Post revealed that Sessions twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and did not disclose that fact to Congress during his confirmation hearing.”

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The good news for Sessions is that most experts think that he will not face criminal prosecution for any arguable “inaccuracies” in his sworn testimony to Congress during his confirmation hearings.

But, folks are missing what Sessions really lied about under oath: that he could leave his partisan positions as an “outlier Senator” from a state known for its historic bigotry and poor race relations behind and represent all of the people of the United States as Attorney General. In the short time since he became Attorney General, Sessions has proved that he was at least being disingenuous if not outright lying. He has: 1) withdrawn Federal protections for transgender students, 2) changed the Government’s position in a key voting rights case thus giving the green light to states that seek to disenfranchise African American and other minority voters, and 3) announced that local police will have a free hand to enforce laws even if they have been shown to have a tendency to do so in ways that violate the basic civil rights of minority suspects.

And, Sessions was apparently behind the xenophobic, poorly conceived and executed, and fear-mongering Executive Orders on immigration. In other words, Sessions has squarely aligned himself with the white-power-oriented, nationalistic, xenophobic forces in the White House represented by Steve Bannon and Sessions’s former aide Stephen Miller.

Another article in the WashPost points out Session’s hypocrisy on the issues of “perjury, access, and recusal” when the situation involved the Clintons. What goes around comes around. Here’s a link to the complete article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/03/02/six-times-jeff-sessions-talked-about-perjury-access-and-special-prosecutors-when-it-involved-the-clintons/?utm_term=.84d5a9024cb4

And here’s an article by Ari Berman in The Nation pointing out the real truth about our Attorney General: “Jeff Sessions Is a Disgrace to the Justice Department
He didn’t just lie about Russia—he’s put the Trump administration on the wrong side of every major issue.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/jeff-sessions-is-a-disgrace-to-the-justice-department/

PWS

03/02/17

WALTER PINCUS IN THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The Coming Immigration Court Disaster!

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/01/trump-us-immigration-waiting-for-chaos/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR Dennett immigration reform Chopin&utm_content=NYR Dennett immigration reform Chopin+CID_c0a3091a06cff6ddbb541b093215f280&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=US Immigration Waiting for Chaos

“One thing however is clear. Trump’s recent efforts to use blunt executive power to close our borders and prepare the way for deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants are confronting far-reaching problems. Not only is there opposition from federal judges, the business sector, civil liberties groups, and others. There is also a major roadblock from another quarter: our already broken system of immigration laws and immigration courts.

The nation’s immigration laws needed repair long before Trump came to office. Even without the measures taken by the new administration, immigration courts face a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, while the existing detention system is plagued, not just by arbitrary arrests, but also by deep problems in the way immigrant detainees are handled by our courts, one aspect of which is the subject of a Supreme Court challenge.

But will the potential Trump excesses—driven by the president’s fear mongering about immigrant crimes and the alleged potential for terrorists to pose as refugees—be enough to light a fire under a Republican-led Congress that has for years balked at immigration reform?

. . . .

For better or worse—and it may turn out to be worse if Congress continues to refuse to act—the Trump administration’s determination to enforce current laws has pushed long-standing inequities in immigration justice onto the front pages.

Take the matter of those immigration judges, who now number some three hundred and are scheduled to grow substantially under the Trump administration. In April 2013, the National Association of Immigration Judges issued a scathing report pleading for omnibus immigration reform. Describing the morale of the immigration judge corps as “plummeting,” the report found that “the Immigration Courts’ caseload is spiraling out of control, dramatically outpacing the judicial resources available and making a complete gridlock of the current system a disturbing and foreseeable probability.”

The judges also noted that, “as a component of the DOJ [Department of Justice], the Immigration Courts remain housed in an executive agency with a prosecutorial mission that is frequently at odds with the goal of impartial adjudication.” For example, the judges are appointed by the Attorney General and “subject to non-transparent performance review and disciplinary processes as DOJ employees.” As a result, “they can be subjected to personal discipline for not meeting the administrative priorities of their supervisors and are frequently placed in the untenable position of having to choose between risking their livelihood and exercising their independent decision-making authority when deciding continuances”—the postponement of a hearing or trial.

The immigration judges writing this complaint were working under the Obama administration Justice Department, with Eric Holder as attorney general. What will their situation be like with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a believer in tighter immigration controls, as their boss?

As it is now, an immigration judge’s job is exhausting. They carry an average load of 1,500 cases, but have minimal staff support. In the 2013 report, the immigration judges noted that they have no bailiffs, no court reporters, and only one quarter of the time of a single judicial law clerk. The backlog of immigration cases in the United States now stands at roughly 542,000. Most important, the immigration judges claim some 85 percent of detained immigrants appearing before them are unrepresented by counsel.

Meanwhile, another pending lawsuit highlights a different long-running problem concerning our nation’s immigration judges. In June 2013, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, along with Public Citizen and the American Immigration Council (AIC) filed a case in federal district court in Washington, D.C., seeking documents that would disclose whether the federal government adequately investigated and resolved misconduct complaints against immigration judges.

Such complaints have been widespread enough that the Justice Department reports annually on the number. In fiscal 2014, the latest figures published, there were 115 complaints lodged against 66 immigration judges. Although 77 were listed as resolved, the outcomes are not described.”

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This timely article was brought to my attention by my good friend and former colleague retired U.s. Immigration Judge (NY) Sarah Burr. Walter Pincus is a highly respected national security reporter. He’s not by any means an “immigration guru.”

As I have pointed out in previous blogs and articles, this problem is real! In the absence of sensible, bipartisan immigration reform by Congress, which must include establishing an independent immigration judiciary, our entire Federal Justice System is at risk of massive failure.

Why? Because even now, immigration review cases are one of the largest, if not the largest, components of the civil dockets of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. As due process in the Immigration Courts and the BIA (the “Appellate Division” of the U.S. Immigration Courts) deteriorates under excruciating pressure from the Administration, more and more of those ordered removed will take their cases to the U.S. Courts of Appeals. That’s potentially hundreds of thousands of additional cases. It won’t be long before the Courts of Appeals won’t have time for anything else but immigration review.

In my view, that’s likely to provoke two responses from the Article III Courts. First, the Circuits will start imposing their own minimum due process and legal sufficiency requirements on the Immigration Courts. But, since there are eleven different Circuits now reviewing immigration petitions, that’s likely to result in a hodgepodge of different criteria applicable in different parts of the country. And, the Supremes have neither the time nor ability to quickly resolve all Circuit conflicts.

Second, many, if not all Courts of Appeals, are likely to return the problem to the DOJ by remanding thousands of cases to the Immigration Courts for “re-dos” under fundamentally fair procedures. Obviously, that will be a massive waste of time and resources for both the Article III Courts and the Immigration Courts. It’s much better to do it right in the first place. “Haste makes waste.”

No matter where one stands in the immigration debate, due process and independent decision making in the U.S. Immigration Courts should be a matter of bipartisan concern and cooperation. After all, we are a constitutional republic, and due process is one of the key concepts of our constitutional system.

PWS

03/02/17

Raul Reyes On CNN: Trump’s “Softening” On Immigration A “Cruel Hoax” — “The Most Anti-Immigrant President In Modern History”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/opinions/trump-bait-and-switch-on-immigration-reyes/index.html

“Then came Trump’s address before Congress, and his true intentions were revealed. His talk of immigration reform, we now know, was just that: Talk. At best, his earlier statements about immigration reform were a publicity stunt designed to gin up interest (and ratings, which Trump is obsessed with) in his speech. At worst, this bait-and-switch was a cruel hoax perpetrated on millions of undocumented people who might have briefly hoped for a reprieve from possible deportation.
In fact, Trump’s speech offered little meaningful policy on immigration, beyond conflating immigrants with crime and misrepresenting key facts underlying illegal immigration. Tellingly, there was no mention of offering legalization to anyone.

. . . .

Yes, such reform is possible, but it is unlikely Trump will expend any political capital making it happen. He was elected by a base that is fervently opposed to anything resembling “amnesty.” He has surrounded himself with advisers like white nationalist champion Steve Bannon, the xenophobic Stephen Miller, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who wants curbs on legal immigration.”

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PWS

03/02/17

Despite Softer Tone, Not Everyone “Sold” On Trump’s Vision, Particularly As It Relates to Immigration!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-policies-joint-session_us_58b6e282e4b0780bac2f010b?

Igor Bobic , Amanda Terkel , Kate Sheppard write in HuffPost:

“Yet many key assertions Trump made were patently false. America is neither crime-infested nor still mired in a recession, as he portrayed. Moreover, some of his bold rhetoric on issues like the environment, immigration, civil rights, women’s rights and child care are directly undercut by the policies he has pursued or promised to pursue since taking office on Jan. 20.

Immigration Reform
Trump welcomed the idea of compromise on immigration reform, calling on Democrats and Republicans to “work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades.” Prior to the speech, he even told reporters that he wanted a bill that could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Despite his call for compromise, however, Trump has directed his administration to enforce the nation’s immigration laws more aggressively. The policy, which he dubbed a “military operation,” has given immigration officials the freedom to target not only serious criminals, as Trump has promised, but also undocumented immigrants with misdemeanors and some with no criminal history at all. And he still has plans to build a “great” wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, which Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress strongly oppose.

“At one point, he mentioned that he was targeting and criminalizing immigrants, but at the same time, he’s saying we need to unite?” asked Roque Pech, a beneficiary of former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants temporary deportation relief to certain young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

Pech, who attended the event as a guest of Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.), said Trump’s immigration talk made no sense: “I felt like multiple times he was contradicting himself. That was one of the clearer examples.”

Matthew Cooper, writing in Newsweek, was also blunt in his assessment:

“Yet no one listening to the nearly hour-long address would think Trump had mellowed his nationalist agenda. His decision to create an office at the Justice Department focused on crime caused by illegal immigrants elicited groans from Democrats in the chamber. Just as President Barack Obama once held up DREAMers—immigrants who arrived illegally as children and went on to lead productive lives—Trump pointed to families gathered in the House of Representatives who had lost family members to crimes perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. Trump showed no signs of softening his stance on immigration, save for not invoking his usual promise to have Mexico pay for the wall. If anything he went further, by suggesting that the current immigration system should be overhauled and based on “merit,” however that’s defined. Despite news reports earlier on Tuesday that he might be open to some kind of immigration reform allowing 11 million undocumented migrants to stay in the U.S., there was no indication of that kind of softening in his address. Instead he invoked the frightening image of immigrants driving down wages and raising havoc. “Lawless chaos,” he called it. The solution, he said: “We must restore integrity and the rule of law to our borders.” By applauding Jamiel Shaw, the African-American man whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant, Trump made his case for getting tough on the border and did so in a way that would help insulate him against charges of racism.”

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-congress-speech-immigration-paul-ryan-obamacare-trade-crime-562365

And, according to the Washington Post’s “Fact Checkers,” Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, striking a more “Presidential tone,” Trump continues to pile up erroneous statements at an impressive rate:

“An address to Congress is such an important speech that presidents generally are careful not to stretch the truth. The “16 words” in George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address that falsely claimed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa led to significant turmoil in the administration, including the criminal conviction of a top aide.

President Trump’s maiden address to Congress was notable because it was filled with numerous inaccuracies. In fact, many of the president’s false claims are old favorites that he trots out on a regular, almost daily basis. Here’s a roundup of 13 of the more notable claims, in the order in which the president made them.

. . . .

“We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.”

The data are mixed on the amount of drugs coming through the borders. The amount of marijuana seized at the border continues to decline — probably a reflection of drug use in the United States, as more states legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use. In fiscal 2016, 1.3 million pounds of marijuana were seized, down from 1.5 million the year before, and lower than the peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The amount of cocaine seized at the borders overall in fiscal 2016 (5,473 pounds) was roughly half the amount seized the previous year (11,220 pounds).

But the amount of heroin and methamphetamine seized has increased in recent years. In fiscal year 2016, CBP seized 9,062 pounds of heroin (compared to 8,282 in fiscal 2015) and 8,224 pounds of methamphetamine (compared to 6,443 pounds in fiscal 2015).

Meanwhile, illegal immigration flows across the Southern border in fiscal 2015 were at the lowest levels since 1972, except for in 2011. The apprehensions in fiscal 2016 (408,870) exceeded fiscal 2015 (331,333), but still indicate an overall decline since their peak in 2000 (1.6 million).

. . . .

“As we speak, we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak and as I have promised throughout the campaign.”

Trump is referring to the recent arrests of undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, or the “bad ones.” Trump takes credit for fulfilling his campaign promise of cracking down on illegal immigration, but these arrests are routine. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has always targeted dangerous criminals in enforcement priorities. The recent arrests, however, did include people who would not have fallen under narrowed enforcement priorities under Obama.

Still, 25 percent of the arrests that grabbed headlines in early February were of people who had lesser charges and noncriminal convictions. According to anecdotes of recent arrests, undocumented people with traffic violations were subject to arrest. They are not the “bad ones,” such as drug dealers or gang members, that he describes.

“By finally enforcing our immigration laws we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions and billions of dollars and make our communities safer for everyone.”

Trump exaggerates the impact of illegal immigration on crime, taxpayer money and jobs.

Extensive research shows noncitizens are not more prone to criminality than U.S.-born citizens. The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are not criminal aliens or aggravated felons.

Trump appears to reference the cost of illegal immigration from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports lower levels of legal and illegal immigration. According to the group, the annual cost of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local levels amounted to about $113 billion as of 2013.
The scene as President Trump delivers his first address to a joint session of Congress
View Photos The president returned to familiar themes from his campaign in his speech to Congress, promising to reduce regulations and taxes, combat terrorism, crack down on illegal immigration and replace the Affordable Care Act.
But this calculation makes assumptions that are not necessarily tied to illegal immigration, like enrollment in English proficiency classes. The enrollment number doesn’t tell you anything about the actual citizenship status of students (i.e., they could be native-born children of undocumented immigrants, raised in a non-English-speaking home).
In general, economists have found that immigration overall results in a net positive to the U.S. economy. There are slight negative effects, which are felt most strongly by less-educated and low-skilled workers. Illegal immigration, in particular, tends to affect less-educated and low-skilled American workers the most — groups disproportionately consisting of black men and recently arrived less-educated legal immigrants.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2010 report found that illegal immigration has tended to depress wages and employment particularly for black men. But factors other than illegal immigration contribute to black unemployment, the report found, including the high school dropout rate and low job-retention rates.

. . . .

“Jamiel’s 17-year-old son was viciously murdered by an illegal immigrant gang member, who had just been released from prison. Jamiel Shaw Jr. was an incredible young man, with unlimited potential who was getting ready to go to college where he would have excelled as a great quarterback. But he never got the chance. His father, who is in the audience tonight, has become a good friend of mine.”

Trump likes to use anecdotes as evidence for associating violent crimes with illegal immigration, telling stories of victims of homicide by undocumented immigrants. He brought family members of those killed by illegal immigrants as his guests for Tuesday night’s speech. He often talks about the death of Jamiel Shaw Jr., a 17-year-old football star who was killed in 2008 by a gang member who was in the country illegally.

Clearly, stories like this exist. But the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants do not fit Trump’s description of aggravated felons, whose crimes include murder. U.S. Sentencing Commission data show homicides are a small percentage of the crimes committed by noncitizens, whether they are in the United States illegally or not.

The Congressional Research Service found that the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants do not fit in the category of aggravated felons, whose crimes include murder, drug trafficking or illegal trafficking of firearms.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/28/fact-checking-president-trumps-address-to-congress/?utm_term=.dc2c2a6b69c0&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

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PWS

03/02/17

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