Category: Nationalism

🇺🇸THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-29-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINER: After Two Years Of Dithering & Ongoing Human Rights Abuses, Biden Administration Heading For Failure In Re-Instituting Rule Of Law For Legal Asylum Seekers @ S. Border, According To Many Experts!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing 

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

 

NEWS

 

Biden administration preps for a rocky end to Trump-era immigration rule 

Politico: Experts in the immigration field say they’re expecting a stressful and chaotic transition when a court-ordered deadline to end the Trump directive is hit, one that could drive a new rush to the border and intensify GOP criticism. See also States move to keep court from lifting Trump asylum policy.

 

U.S. talking to Mexico, other countries to facilitate return of Venezuelan migrants 

Reuters: The United States is in talks with Mexico and other countries to facilitate the return of Venezuelan migrants to their homeland, a senior U.S. official said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.

 

ICE Detains More Individuals 

TRAC: The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, which currently houses single adults (mostly females) has more than doubled the number of individuals it is holding since September. ICE reports this facility run by CoreCivic now has the largest average daily population of detainees (1,562) in the country

 

Homeland Security chief could face impeachment in GOP-led House if he does not resign, Kevin McCarthy warns 

CBS: McCarthy also threatened to use “the power of the purse and the power of subpoena” to investigate and derail the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, saying Republican-led committees would hold oversight hearings near the U.S.-Mexico border.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

CA2 CAT Remand: Lopez De Velasquez V. Garland 

LexisNexis: “Remand is required in this case because the BIA did not give consideration to all relevant evidence and principles of law, as those have been detailed by this Court’s recent decision in Scarlett v. Barr, 957 F.3d 316, 332–36 (2d Cir. 2020). … Because Mejia did not fear torture at the hands of the Guatemalan authorities, the relevant inquiry is whether government officials have acquiesced in likely third-party torture. To make this determination, the Court considers whether there is evidence that authorities knew of the torture or turned a blind eye to it, and “thereafter” breached their “responsibility to prevent” the possible torture.”

 

CA2 on CAT, Honduras: Garcia-Aranda v. Garland 

LexisNexis: “Having reviewed both the IJ’s and the BIA’s opinions, we hold that the agency did not err in finding that Garcia-Aranda failed to satisfy her burden of proof for asylum and withholding of removal, but that the agency applied incorrect standards when adjudicating Garcia-Aranda’s CAT claim.”

 

3rd Circ. Says Jargon, Other Flaws Didn’t Prejudice CAT Bid 

Law360: The Third Circuit has backed a decision denying a Dominican man’s bid for deportation relief based on his fear of being tortured, saying the procedural flaws he claimed tainted his proceedings — including the use of legal jargon and a videoconferencing glitch — did not prejudice him.

 

8th Circ. Finds Persecution Evidence Lacking In Asylum Bid 

Law360: An English-speaking Cameroonian lost her chance to stay in the U.S. after the Eighth Circuit ruled that she failed to provide enough evidence showing that military officers had attacked her for her presumed support of Anglophone separatists.

 

CA9 Appeal Waiver Remand: Phong v. Garland 

LexisNexis: “Without record evidence that Phong orally waived his right to appeal before the IJ, we decline to address his alternative arguments that any waiver was unconsidered, unintelligent, or otherwise unenforceable. Rather, we remand to the BIA to develop the record on the waiver issue and, if it deems it appropriate, to consider Phong’s remaining arguments in the first instance.”

 

No Second Bite At Bond Needed For Detainee, 9th Circ. Says 

Law360: A divided Ninth Circuit on Monday ruled that the federal government was not constitutionally required to provide a Salvadoran immigrant a second bond hearing amid his prolonged detention during removal proceedings, while also bearing the burden to show he was a flight risk or danger to the community.

 

Immigrants, DHS settle case seeking activist targeting info 

AP: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has agreed to pay a Vermont-based immigrant advocacy organization $74,000 in legal fees to settle a lawsuit seeking information about whether advocates were being targeted by immigration agents because of their political activism.

 

USCIS Extends and Expands Fee Exemptions and Expedited Processing for Afghan Nationals 

USCIS: Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it is extending and expanding previously announced filing fee exemptions and expedited application processing for certain Afghan nationals.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

     

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella) 

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter 

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

Folks, it’s about re-instituting the law and screening system for legal asylum seekers which was in effect, in one form or another, for four decades before being illegally abrogated by the Trump Administration’s abusive use of Title 42. Outrageously, after promising to do better during the 2020 election campaign, the Biden Administration has “gone along to get along” with inflicting massive human rights violations under the Title 42 facade until finally ordered to comply with the law by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan last month.

One of Judge Sullivan’s well-supported findings was that the scofflaw actions by both Trump and Biden officials had resulted in knowingly and intentionally inflicting “dire harm” on legal asylum applicants:

Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.

“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”

Contrary to the “CYA BS” coming from Biden Administration officials, making the law work at the Southern Border requires neither currently unachievable “reform” legislation nor massive additions of personnel! It does, however, require better personnel, expert training, accountability, smarter use of resources, and enlightened, dynamic, courageous, principled, expert leadership currently glaringly lacking within the Biden Administration. 

The Administration’s much ballyhooed, yet poorly conceived, ineptly and inconsistently implemented, “revised asylum regulations” have also failed to “leverage” the potential for success, thus far producing only an anemic number of “first instance” asylum grants. This is far below the rate necessary for the process significantly to take pressure off the backlogged and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, one of the stated purposes of the regulations! Meanwhile, early indications are that Garland’s ill-advised regulatory time limits on certain arbitrarily-selected asylum applications have further diluted quality and just results for EOIR asylum decisions. That, folks, is in a system where disdain for both of these essential judicial traits is already rampant!

It’s not rocket science! It was well within the capability of the Biden Administration to establish a robust, functional asylum system had it acted with urgency and competency upon taking office in 2021:

  • Better Asylum Officers at USCIS and Immigration Judges at EOIR — well-qualified asylum experts with practical experience in the asylum system who will timely recognize and grant the many valid asylum claims in the first instance;
  • Cooperative agreements with NGOs and pro bono organizations to prescreen applications in an orderly manner and represent those who can establish a “credible fear;”
  • A new and improved BIA of qualified “practical scholars” in asylum law who will establish workable precedents and best practices that honestly reflect the generous approach to asylum required (but never carried out in practice or spirit) by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca and the BIA itself in its long-ignored and consistently misapplied precedent in Mogharrabi;
  • An orderly refugee resettlement program administered under the auspices of the Feds for those granted asylum and for those whose claims can’t be expeditiously granted at the border and who therefore must present them in Immigration Court at some location away from the border.

The Biden Administration has nobody to blame but themselves for their massive legal, moral, and practical failures on the Southern Border! With House GOP nativist/restrictionists “sharpening their knives,” Mayorkas, Garland, Rice, and other Biden officials who have failed to restore the legal asylum system shouldn’t expect long-ignored and “affirmatively dissed” human rights experts and advocates to bail them out!

The massive abrogations of human rights, due process, the rule of law, common sense, and human decency that the GOP espouses — so-called enforcement and ineffective “deterrence” only approach — will NOT resolve the humanitarian issues with ongoing, often inevitable, refugee flows! 

But, the Biden Administration’s inept approach to human rights has played right into the hands of these GOP White Nationalist politicos. That’s an inconceivable human tragedy for our nation and for the many legal refugees we turn away without due process or fair consideration of their life-threatening plight! These are refugees — legal immigrants — who should be allowed to enter legally and help our economy and our nation with their presence.

If we want refugees to apply “away from the border,” we must establish robust, timely, realistic refugee programs at or near places like Haiti, Venezuela, and the Northern Triangle that are sending us refugees. In the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress actually gave the President extraordinary discretionary authority to establish refugee processing directly in the countries the refugees are fleeing. This was a significant expansion of the UN refugee definition which requires a refugee to be “outside” his or her country of nationality. Yet, no less than the Trump and Obama Administrations before, President Biden has failed to “leverage” this powerful potential tool for establishing orderly refugee processing beyond our borders!

Meanwhile, down on the actual border, a place that Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, Garland, Rice, and other “high level architects of failed asylum policies” seldom, if ever, deign to visit, life, such as it is, goes on with the usual abuses heaped on asylum seekers patiently waiting to be fairly processed. 

A rational observer might have thought that the Biden Administration would use the precious time before Dec. 22, 2022, reluctantly “gifted” to them by Judge Sullivan, to pre-screen potential asylum seekers already at ports of entry on the Mexican side. Those with credible fear and strong claims could be identified for orderly entries when legal ports of entry (finally) re-open on Dec. 22. Or, better yet, they could be “paroled” into the U.S. now and expeditiously granted asylum by Asylum Officers.

This would reduce the immediate pressure on the ports, eliminate unnecessary trips to backlogged Immigration Courts, and expedite these refugees’ legal status, work authorization, and transition to life in the U.S.

I have no idea what the Biden Administration has done with the time since Judge Sullivan “gifted” them a stay. The only noticeable actions have been more BS excuses, blame-shifting, and lowering expectations. 

But, in reality, by their indolent approach to humanitarian issues and the law, in the interim the Administration has consciously left the fate of long-suffering and already “direly-harmed” legal asylum seekers to the Mexican Government. According to a recent NBC News report, the Mexican Government forcibly “rousted” many awaiting processing at a squalid camp near the border and “orbited them’ to “who knows where.” https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/mexican-authorities-evict-venezuelan-migrants-from-border-camps-155516485544

Judge Sullivan might want to take note of this in assessing how the Biden DOJ has used the “preparedness time” that he reluctantly granted them following his order.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-29-22

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. ☠️🤯🤮🚫 AFTER WINNING YEARS-LONG BATTLE TO STOP ILLEGAL REFUGEE REMOVALS BY TRUMP & BIDEN, WEARY HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES FACE DAUNTING NEW CHALLENGE: Garland’s Dysfunctional Due-Process-Denying “Courts” — Key Empirical Info Lacking, But We Do Know One Important Thing: Garland’s Latest Docket “Gimmick” — Time Limits — Sharply Reduces Chances Of Success, From Probable Grant (52%) To Likely Denial! — Quality Control & Grotesque Inconsistencies Remain Unaddressed In Dem AG’s “Race To Deny” Legal Protection!🤮
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘GARLAND, MAYORKAS FAIL TO CORRECT GROSS ABUSES OF DUE PROCESS CAUSED BY MPP SYSTEM!  — Reopening All Of The Unconstitutionally Denied MPP Cases Should Be A “No Brainer” For Competent Officials & “Real” Judges! — Tell Judge Garland His Unconstitutional & Abusive Immigration Courts Can’t Wait To Be Fixed! — Lives Are Being Lost & Suffering Continues While He Diddles!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

🇺🇸ELECTION 2022 – PERRY BACON JR @ WASHPOST GETS IT ALMOST RIGHT — Except He Omits One Of Most Overlooked, Under-appreciated, & Over-achieving Groups In The Dem Base: Immigration/Human Rights/Racial Justice Advocates & Supporters!

 

Perry Bacon, Jr.
Perry Bacon, Jr.
Washington Post Columnist
PHOTO: WashPost

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/21/democratic-voters-won-the-midterms-strategy/

The heroes of the 2022 midterm elections were Democratic voters and activists, not the party’s leadership. Those leaders should remember that and not try to distance themselves from the party’s base as they have at times in the past two years.

Though they changed course in the final months before the election, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats spent much of 2021 and 2022 on a flawed strategy. Democratic leaders were determined to boost the party with people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden in 2020, particularly the White voters without college degrees who have shifted sharply to the GOP over the last decade. So Democrats focused largely on economic policy, such as the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill and a law making it easier to manufacture microchips in the United States. They intentionally highlighted how these provisions would help people without college degrees and people in rural areas.

They at times sidelined other issues, such as voting rights, that might not be the priorities of White voters without college degrees. In July, a top White House official, communications director Kate Bedingfield, bashed party activists who complained that the administration wasn’t responding aggressively enough to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling eliminating the right to an abortion. And Democrats moved to the right on some issues, most notably policing. There were constant efforts to court moderate GOP voters and lawmakers and sideline prominent left-wing figures.

. . . .

The Democrats didn’t do well in this year’s elections by flipping lots of voters in places that voted Republican in 2020, such as Florida and Ohio. What they did was maintain strength in the congressional districts and states that they won two years ago and four years ago. The party’s base prevented the bottom from falling out.

Party officials are rushing to give credit — to one another. And some of the party’s leaders do deserve praise. Candidates such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who easily won reelection, and Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro early in their campaigns highlighted abortion and democracy, in addition to the economy. Biden rightly ignored some in the party who argued he should not talk about democracy issues in the final days of the campaign.

But in elections, the voters are the actors, the deciders. And this year, millions of Democratic-leaning voters turned out and stuck with the party, looking past sky-high inflation and a leadership team that spent much of its time courting people who would never vote for Democrats while ignoring key priorities of people who always vote for the Democrats.

These voters should be commended and celebrated.

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

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

Perry my friend, let’s go back just a bit in time and think about the “original targets” of Trump’s MAGA GOP “platform” of hate, lies, false narratives, and virulent anti- democracy insurrection masquerading as “patriotism!” 

Who’s been out there fighting for truth, justice, and equality before the law since “Day 1” of the MAGA hate movement? Who led the resistance at airports when the first manifestations of the Trump regime’s neo-Nazism in action began just shortly after his inauguration? Who took the legal fight to preserve American democracy all the way to the Supremes before a right-leaning majority still wedded to Dred Scott and the Chinese Exclusion cases tilted in favor of tyranny? A tilt, I might add that has progressively gotten worse over time and has spawned millions of human rights abuses, enabled torture, and actually helped kill some of the vulnerable humans we were sworn to protect?

Historically, migrants of all types, voluntary or involuntary, have constituted the “other” in America — targeted, disadvantaged at law,  and exploited by their fellow Americans even while being the essential ingredient that has built our nation. 

It’s rather odd, considering that 98% of us were “the other” at some point in history. I suppose a reckoning with that “inconvenient truth” is one of a number of reasons why the  MAGA GOP works so hard to “whitewash” American history. 

So, it’s worth thinking about why a talented group, their expertise, and their “learned wisdom” — and the better America for all that they represent and fight for — becomes so expendable and ignored by Dems between election cycles. Also worth reflecting on where American democracy, tenuous as it might be today, would be without them.

If the Biden Administration had honored and “leveraged” the immigration experts who helped elect it in 2016 and preserve it in 2022, we might well have order at the border, many more legal workers, lower inflation, decreasing backlogs, focused immigration enforcement that preserves national security, courts that model equal justice and due process and help develop the Article III Judiciary of the future, creative ideas for helping the economy of rural America, smarter use of taxpayer dollars, the list goes on. Success in these areas might even have enabled Dems to hold onto the House or given them a bigger margin in the Senate.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-28-22

Related posts:

  1. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  2. 😰👹👺🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮“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?
  3. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  4. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-21-22 — CompiledBy Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINERS: Garland’s Tardy Rebuke Of Sessions’s 2018 Wrong Precedent Limiting IJ Termination Authority Likely Too Little, Too Late To Save EOIR — As GOP House White Nationalist Absurdists Abandon Economy, Inflation To Push For More Crimes Against Humanity Directed At Black and Brown Folks @ S. Border, Administration’s Failure To Respect Human Rights, Restore Legal Asylum System, Leverage Refugee Processing Leaves Dems With “No Defense!”

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

pastedGraphic.png

 

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

PRACTICAL UPDATES

 

USCIS: Recommendations for Paper Filings to Avoid Scanning Delays

 

NEWS

 

Biden Is Still Separating Immigrant Kids From Their Families

Texas Observer: But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.

 

Judge orders end to Trump-era asylum restrictions at border

AP: Within hours, the Justice Department asked the judge to let the order take effect Dec. 21, giving it five weeks to prepare. Plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union didn’t oppose the delay.

 

Democrats confront bleak odds for immigration deal before 2023

Politico: Party leaders are pushing hard for legislation aiding the undocumented population known as “Dreamers” before Republicans take the House. But GOP senators have little interest. See also House Judiciary GOP Highlights First Oversight Targets.

 

Quality vs Quantity: How Does Sitting on the Dedicated Docket Impact the Judging Process?

TRAC: The outcome for asylum seekers has long been influenced by the identity of the immigration judge assigned to hear their case. This continues to be true as documented by TRAC’s just released judge-by-judge report series, now updated through FY 2022. In Arlington, Virginia, judge denial rates ranged from 15 percent to 95 percent. In Boston, judge denial rates varied from 17 percent to 93.5 percent. In Chicago, they ranged from 16 percent to 90 percent, while in San Francisco one judge denied just 1 percent of the cases while another denied 95 percent.

 

ICE lifted its ban on family visits, but relatives still struggle to see loved ones

NPR: Individuals held in immigration detention were barred from visits with relatives and friends for more than two years during the pandemic — far longer than federal prisons. In May, ICE lifted the ban, but immigrant advocates and people in detention centers argue that social visits have not been fully nor consistently reinstated.

 

Second immigrant bus arrives in Philadelphia from Texas, sent by Gov. Greg Abbott

Philly Inquirer: A second bus carrying immigrants from Texas arrived in Philadelphia Monday morning, a twice-in-six-days sequel that propelled the city to offer fresh welcome to more weary, uncertain travelers from the border.

 

Cubans, Nicaraguans drive illegal border crossings higher

AP: Fewer Venezuelans came after the the Biden administration introduced new asylum restrictions on Oct. 12, but increasing arrivals from other countries more than offset that decline, according to figures released late Monday. See also Mexico steps up immigration controls in south; Cuba, U.S. to hold second round of migration talks in Havana.

 

Senate: Migrants subject to unnecessary medical procedures

AP: U.S. immigration authorities didn’t do enough to adequately vet or monitor a gynecologist in rural Georgia who performed unnecessary medical procedures on detained migrant women without their consent, according to results of a Senate investigation released Tuesday.

 

The Public Has Never Seen The U.S. Government Force-Feed Someone — Until Now

Intercept: According to ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards, whenever there is a “calculated use of force,” staff are required to use a handheld camera to record the incident. The Intercept, with Kumar’s consent, requested the video through the Freedom of Information Act. After ICE refused to turn over the footage, The Intercept filed a lawsuit and ICE subsequently agreed to turn over the footage, but the agency redacted the faces and names of everyone who appears in it, aside from Kumar.

 

Ten years of hurt: how the Guardian reported Qatar’s World Cup working conditions

Guardian: A multi-country investigation by the Guardian finds at least 6,500 migrant workers from south Asia have died in Qatar in the 10 years since it was awarded the right to host the World Cup.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

Matter of Coronado Acevedo, 28 I&N Dec. 648 (A.G. 2022)

AG: (1)  Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 462 (A.G. 2018), is overruled. (2)  Pending the outcome of the rulemaking process, immigration judges and the Board of Immigration  of  Appeals  may  consider  and,  where  appropriate,  grant  termination  or  dismissal  of  removal  proceedings  in  certain  types  of  limited  circumstances,  such  as  where  a  noncitizen  has  obtained  lawful  permanent  residence  after  being  placed  in  removal  proceedings,  where  the  pendency  of  removal  proceedings  causes  adverse  immigration consequences for a respondent who must travel abroad to obtain a visa, or where  termination  is  necessary  for  the  respondent  to  be  eligible  to  seek  immigration  relief before United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

 

Biden Admin. Restores Immig. Courts’ Power To Nix Removals

Law360: The Biden administration on Thursday swept aside a Trump-era decision that mostly stripped immigration judges of their power to end removal proceedings, restoring immigration courts’ ability to terminate some deportation cases while it devises new policy.

 

Judge Allows Biden 5 Weeks To Wind Down Title 42

Law360: A federal judge on Wednesday granted “with great reluctance” the Biden administration’s request for a five-week stay of his previous day’s order to end expulsions of migrants under Title 42, a public health provision the Trump administration began using at the start of the pandemic.

 

Split 4th Circ. Orders Rehear Of Removal In Light Of Dimaya

Law360: A split Fourth Circuit panel ordered the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals to reconsider a Jamaican man’s removal order, criticizing the agency’s reasons for rejecting his claims that he diligently sought reversal of his order following a Supreme Court ruling.

 

NY IJ Asylum Victory; Guatemala; Feminist Political Opinion

LexisNexis: Michael Shannon writes: “I wanted to share a very good written decision from IJ Barbara Nelson, who granted asylum to my client based on her actual and imputed feminist political opinion under Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr.”

 

Feds Get OK For Psych Exams Of Migrant Parents

Law360: The federal government got the green light from an Arizona federal judge to conduct psychological examinations of asylum-seeking parents suing for damages for the alleged emotional trauma from being separated from their children at the southwestern U.S. border.

 

AILA and Partners Send Letter to USCIS, EOIR, and OPLA on Biometrics Appointments

AILA: AILA and partners sent a letter to USCIS, EOIR, and OPLA addressing the unnecessary hurdles non-detained people in removal proceedings face in securing a biometrics appointment prior to their merits hearing.

 

USCIS Notice of Continuation of TPS Documentation for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal

AILA: USCIS notice of the automatic extension of the validity of TPS-related documentation for beneficiaries under the TPS designations for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal set to expire on 12/31/22, through 6/30/24. (87 FR 68717, 11/16/22)

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

Miller Lite
After two years of “drinking the koolaid,” the party might be over for Mayorkas & Garland, as McCarthy & his insurrectionist/White Nationalist zanies “move in for the kill.”

Two years of ineptness, failure to clean house at DOJ and DHS, unkept promises to advocates, lack of guts to quickly reverse Trump’s massive scofflaw program of racist-inspired human rights abuses, arrogant “tuning out” of experts, lack of engagement and presence at the border have been largely ignored by Dems in both Houses. Indeed, other than a hearing on the Article 1 bill before Chair Lofgren (at which Garland was not required to appear and explain his due-process-denying mess and abject failure to reform EOIR), Dems failure to conduct meaningful oversight of the Administration’s mishandling of refugee programs, asylum, detention, asylum seeker resettlement, and Immigration Courts will be “coming home to roost” as insurrectionist, racists from the House GOP take aim at “snuffing” humanity and abolishing the rule of law! 

Two years of inept, immoral, “Miller Litism” from the Administration leaves Dems with no defense and no supporters of their actions. Nativist restrictionists wanted “100% kill” @ border! Experts wanted a return to the rule of law, orderly processing, and due process. The Biden Administration delivered neither!

We tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen! No,  McCarthy and his insurrectionist White Nationalist zany-haters have the floor. Just have to hope that historians are fully documenting the lies and Neo-Nazi views that these GOP hacks will be promoting — to help future generations understand how America “went off the rails” in the 21st century! Understandably, the GOP would rather focus on Biden’s failed immigration policies than on the rampant gun violence, hate crimes, child abuse, forced births, and dumbing down of America at the heart of their vile agenda!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The GOP’s “New McCarthyism,” Never!

PWS

11-23-22

Related posts:

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🚫HISTORY THE GOP DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Let’s Be Very Clear About The Truth That White Nationalist Racists Want To “Whitewash” & Its Continuing Corrosive Effect on Our Nation! 

 

Anti-Chinese Poster
This is part of the “real history” of America! The GOP doesn’t want to talk about it!
Public Realm

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-12/la-me-eureka-chinatown-history

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CALIFORNIA

This California town ran its Chinese residents out. Now the story is finally being told

Mary Chin stands beside a mural in downtown Eureka, Calif., depicting her late husband, Ben Chin, who was said to be the first Chinese American to move to the town in seven decades. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

BY HAILEY BRANSON-POTTSSTAFF WRITER

NOV. 12, 2022 5 AM PT

EUREKA, Calif. —  Beauty drew Brieanne Mirjah D’Souza to Eureka.

In 2018, she and her husband — Michigan natives who had been living for a spell in the Bay Area — moved up to this chilly old timber town to build a life beneath the redwoods and by the sea.

But last winter, pregnant with her first child, D’Souza began reflecting on this pretty place she would bring her son into.

D’Souza, a 32-year-old digital marketer, is of Chinese and West Indian descent. And Humboldt County is very white.

As D’Souza’s belly grew and the headlines told of a dramatic surge in anti-Asian hate crimes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, D’Souza set out to find other people who looked like her.

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A fledgling group started meeting over Zoom and trading emails. They learned there had once been a Chinatown in Eureka. Maybe they could commemorate it with a plaque, they figured.

But where had it gone?

::

In the late 19th century, Chinatown occupied a single block in the middle of the remote, misty port town.

A historical photo is held up at the corner of 4th and E Streets in Eureka during a guided tour of the city’s old Chinatown, which stood on the right in both images. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

A few hundred Asian immigrants — mostly men — lived in Eureka after a federal law barred immigration from China in 1882.

They toiled in redwood logging camps, laundries and restaurants. They were nannies and household servants and vegetable growers. They were former gold prospectors priced out of the work because of a predatory state tax on foreign miners.

When the economy soured in the 1880s, white people blamed them, claiming they stole jobs. Newspapers whipped up anti-Chinese sentiment.

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“There were a lot of stereotypes: that Chinese people were diseased, they were morally corrupt, they would not assimilate to the rest of American society at the time,” said Katie Buesch, a former director and curator at the Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka.

That sentiment was par for the course in the Golden State at the time.

Some California city officials are now acknowledging the ugly past — a counter-movement to red-state politicians pushing to ban books and limit the teaching of history that involves race.

Antioch and San Jose apologized last year for burning their Chinatowns in the late 1800s. San Francisco apologized for barring Chinese children from public schools.

Los Angeles is working on a memorial to commemorate an 1871 massacre in which at least 18 Chinese people were fatally shot or hanged. And in Pacific Grove earlier this year, organizers canceled a pageant that had long featured performers in yellowface.

In Humboldt County, Buesch, who had put together a small museum exhibit on Eureka’s Chinese community just before the pandemic, was struck by an 1885 article in the Daily Times-Telephone newspaper about Chinatown.

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“The time has come when these plague spots should be removed,” the newspaper wrote.

On Feb. 5, 1885, the newspaper, which called the Chinese neighborhood a violent, drug-addled “leper’s colony,” wrote that it would probably be “goodbye to Chinatown” if an “unoffending white man” were killed there.

A Chinese vegetable merchant carries his goods in Eureka before the Chinese expulsion in 1885.(Courtesy of Jean Pfaelzer)

The very next day, a white Eureka city councilman who lived near Chinatown was walking past. Shots rang out between what is said to be two Chinese men, although details are scant. A stray bullet killed the councilman.

An angry mob of more than 600 white people — loggers, fishermen, miners and merchants — filled the streets, said Jean Pfaelzer, author of “Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans.”

A gallows was erected. An effigy of a Chinese man swung from a noose.

CALIFORNIA

White residents burned this California Chinatown to the ground. An apology came 145 years later

July 26, 2021

Someone suggested slaughtering the Chinese, but that was deemed un-Christian, Pfaelzer said. Others said they should burn Chinatown, but its scrap wood buildings belonged to a white man, since the Chinese were not allowed to own property.

They instead appointed a committee of 15 men to go into Chinatown and order everyone to leave. The sheriff commissioned wagons to gather their belongings. Armed vigilantes roamed on horseback.

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According the the Clarke Museum website, a group of Chinese and Japanese people were secretly brought in to work in a local cannery but were expelled after being found out. They were sent by barge to an island in Humboldt Bay before catching a ship back to Washington. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The next morning, about 300 Chinese people were marched to the wharf and eventually loaded onto two steamships: The Humboldt and The City of Chester.

They were shipped to San Francisco, where no one knew they were coming, Pfaelzer said. They disembarked and fled.

A few dozen sued the city of Eureka, but a judge tossed out their lawsuit.

The purge, which became known as the “Eureka method,” was copied in other towns across California and hailed by white people as nonviolent.

By 1890, the business directory for Humboldt County was boasting that it was “the only county in the state containing no Chinamen.” A Eureka law, in effect until the mid-20th century, banned Chinese people from working in the city.

::

Eureka’s Chinatown consisted of one square block, bottom center, in what is now the city’s downtown. The city forced expelled its Chinese residents in 1885 after the shooting death of a white city councilman. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

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In the spring of 2021, a gunman killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at three Atlanta-area spas.

The shootings sparked an outpouring of activism and calls to #StopAsianHate. They followed months of heightened attacks on Asian Americans amid a political climate in which then-President Trump was calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”

Around that time, D’Souza had set up an Instagram account she called APA Humboldt.

D’Souza quickly heard from a local group of Asian Americans who had organized a series of Japanese taiko drum performances before the pandemic.

They began meeting virtually. Their numbers grew. There was a real hunger for community in this county where only 3% of the population is Asian or Pacific Islander.

The group delved into local history, poring through legal briefs, census data, letters, maps and journals to piece together the little-known story of Eureka’s Chinatown, which had been told mostly from a white perspective.

“We all had an awakening of sorts,” D’Souza said. “There was no awareness that there was once a thriving Chinese community here … and they faced the same kind of discrimination and racism that we’re still facing today.”

D’Souza figured they would install a plaque before her baby came, and that would be that.

Eureka’s Chinatown, pictured in the late 19th century.(Courtesy of Jean Pfaelzer)

But what became known as the Eureka Chinatown Project — the work of the group now called Humboldt Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity — blossomed.

With support from the city, they erected signs describing the expulsion in Historic Chinatown — which, today, is a downtown business district with banks, parking lots and no trace of the neighborhood that once stood.

There are plans for a monument.

And — with a mural and a renamed roadway — the Eureka Chinatown Project honored two local Chinese American pioneers whose legacies were too little known.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

We can’t build for a better future on the positive foundations of America without honestly acknowledging, discussing, and addressing the racism and injustices of the past. The GOP “history deniers” are hamstringing our nation!

You can trace today’s rise in anti-Asian-American hate crimes, anti-Asian racial slurs from a former President, and snarky “anti-woke proclamations” from DeSantis directly to the ugliest truths about America’s past. 

And, just because the latter can speak in complete sentences doesn’t mean that he isn’t just as dangerous to democracy and unsuited to public office as Donald Trump! White Nationalist theocracy and lies are bad for our country no matter who utters them. 

DeSantis’s self-proclaimed “Red Florida Paradise” also relies on the hard work of migrants, many of them undocumented, and some other charitable out of state benefactors to literally remain above water: Joe Biden, Democrats, and lots of “Blue State taxpayers:”

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been a persistent critic of President Joe Biden on nearly every policy front as he moves toward a likely potential 2024 presidential bid. But the Florida Republican likes one thing about the president: his wallet.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/03/desantis-federal-relief-cash-fund-priorities-00060020

DeSantis is every bit the charlatan, flim-flam man, would-be theocrat, and purveyor of a whitewashed version of US “history that never was” as Trump. (Concededly, unlike Trump, he actually has won the popular vote in elections.) Under our system, if Floridians have the colossal bad judgement to elect him, that’s their call (although at some point, it could get tiresome for the rest of us to keep bailing them out). But, they have no right to inflict him on the rest of our nation. For the sake of democracy, humanity, and integrity, the rest of us must insure that DeSantis remains where he belongs — below the “Florida-Georgia line.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-14-22

Related posts:

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  2. GEORGE PACKER @ THE ATLANTIC: With Failed Institutions & Lousy Leaders, Including a President Leading the Charge to the Bottom, America Faces An Uncertain Future — “A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters.” — Joe Biden & The Dems Could Be The Last, Best Hope For American Democracy & Real Progress Toward “Equal Justice For All!”
  3. ☠️👎DEATH PANEL: Billy The Bigot’s BIA Spends 34-Pages Stomping Every Aspect Of Claim By Victim Of Trump’s MPP — Matter of M-D-C-V-
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THE GIBSON REPORT — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINER: Biden Administration Hatches Plans To Dump On Haitian Refugees; Abuses Of Black Detainees; Stranded Venezuelans — Once In Office, The Biden-Harris Racial & Immigrant Justice Campaign “Talk Doesn’t Walk!” 🤬

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

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Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

 

PRACTICAL UPDATES

 

New I-765 and I-589 are mandatory starting next week: Starting Nov. 7, 2022, USCIS will only accept the 07/26/22 editions.

 

NEWS

 

With a possible surge of Haitian migrants ahead, the Biden admin is weighing holding them in a third country or at Guantánamo

NBC: The Biden administration is weighing options to respond to what could soon be a mass exodus of migrants from Haiti, including temporarily holding migrants in a third country or expanding capacity at an existing facility at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to two U.S. officials and an internal planning document reviewed by NBC News.

 

Thousands of Venezuelans are stranded in Mexico after the U.S. shut doors to them

NPR: Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are stranded south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The U.S. recently shut the door to them and is returning most Venezuelans who arrive seeking asylum to Mexico. See also Venezuelans struggle with new reality in Tijuana after expulsions from United States.

 

At least 853 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in past 12 months — a record high

CBS: The figure, which far exceeded the previous record of 546 migrant deaths recorded by Border Patrol in fiscal year 2021, is likely an undercount due to data collection limits, migration policy analysts said.

Report: Abuse reports by Black immigrant detainees are disproportionately high

LA Times: After analyzing the records of nearly 17,000 calls between 2016 and 2021 from its national immigrant detention hotline, Freedom for Immigrants released a report Wednesday that it and other advocacy groups say indicates a pattern of racism and abuse toward Black migrants.

 

Hundreds of Thousands at Imminent Risk of Deportation and Family Separation After Negotiations in Ramos v. Mayorkas Collapse

ACLU: After 16 months of negotiations, settlement talks between the Biden administration and plaintiffs in Ramos v. Mayorkas officially collapsed yesterday afternoon, leaving more than 260,000 people at risk of deportation. Beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and their US citizen children first brought the lawsuit in 2018 after Trump revoked protections for individuals from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, and later for Nepal and Honduras.

 

U.S. removes Trump-era barriers to citizenship-test waivers for disabled immigrants

NPR: After months of public feedback, the federal agency has shortened and simplified its disability waiver, which is used to exempt immigrants with physical, mental or learning disabilities from the English and civics test requirements.

 

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Defies Biden With Border Wall Made of Shipping Containers

Intercept: On Monday, Gov. Doug Ducey began dropping the first of thousands of shipping containers along a 10-mile stretch of national forest in open defiance of federal authorities. In the days since, the Republican governor has transformed a remote section of rugged desert into what looks like a junkyard.

 

Poll finds broad support in battleground states for legalizing unauthorized immigrants

CBS: Seventy-three percent of surveyed voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin said they backed giving immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission an opportunity to “earn” lawful status and ultimately citizenship if they meet certain requirements, including passing background checks.

 

The Migrant Crisis, Eric Adams and Politics 101

NYT: Adams said he’s hopeful that changes President Biden recently announced to federal immigration policy could help reduce the flow of migrants to New York. See also Migrant crisis is ultimate test of NYC schools; Asylum seekers facing legal challenges.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

9th Circ. Says It Can’t Hear Salvadoran’s ‘Transit Bar’ Case

Law360: A split Ninth Circuit declined to revive the asylum bid of a Salvadoran man ordered deported after traveling through Guatemala and Mexico before entering the U.S., saying its hands were tied when it came to reviewing expedited removal orders.

 

Split 9th Circ. Orders New Look At Guatemalan’s Torture Claim

Law360: A split Ninth Circuit has ordered the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals to reconsider a Guatemalan man’s deportation relief bid, saying the agency wrongly ruled out government acquiescence in the man’s account of being tortured by Guatemalan police officers.

 

10th Circ. Declines Review Of 1999 Deportation Order

Law360: The Tenth Circuit declined to review a former conditional green card holder’s challenge of a 1999 deportation order, saying his chances of tossing the decades-long order stopped at the immigration courts due to his unlawful reentries into the U.S.

 

USCIS Retracts T Visa Denial After Judge’s Rebuke

Law360: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved a Mexican woman’s application for a T visa, designated for sex trafficking victims, after an Illinois federal judge faulted the agency’s earlier refusal to accept an immigration judge’s waiver of inadmissibility, the woman said.

 

Juvenile Migrants Differ From Trafficking Victims, Judge Says

Law360: A California federal judge tossed an equal protection claim brought by young immigrants who were abused or neglected by their parents, dismissing on Wednesday their argument that the government was unfairly treating them differently from trafficking victims in doling out work authorization.

 

Florida judge orders DeSantis to hand over migrant flights records

Politico: The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but lawyers representing the Florida Center for Government Accountability said they anticipated there would be an appeal.

 

Mastermind behind massive marriage fraud conspiracy sentenced to 10 years in prison

ICE: The organization was responsible for organizing well over 500 sham marriages in exchange for substantial amounts of money solely for the alien beneficiary to obtain immigration benefits.

 

Senate Dems Seek To Expand Haitian Deportation Shield

Law360: Senate Democrats called on the Biden administration to broaden Haitian immigration protections to cover Haitians who have fled political and economic turmoil over the past year, saying Wednesday that conditions in Haiti have only worsened since the administration last offered relief

 

EOIR Announces 32 New Immigration Judges

EOIR: The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) announced the appointment of 32 immigration judges to courts in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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

When all else fails, picking on vulnerable Black Haitian refugees is always a popular way to buff up your “restrictionist creds” for Administrations of both parties. But, the GOP already has the White Nationalist/nativist vote locked up. So, what the Biden folks hope to get by throwing Haitians “under the bus” and driving back and forth over their bodies is a mystery to me. 

Despite the gratuitous abuses heaped on Haitians by the USG and White Nationalist pols like Trump over the years, and the overall indifference of the Dems, Haitians are one of the most successful and well-assimilated immigrant groups in America. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjYiZXSk437AhXpLFkFHV09AWIQFnoECA8QAQ&url=https://www.cato.org/blog/haitians-assimilate-well-united-states&usg=AOvVaw2iOnJGCn89Lr7und5Cho6S

They are also the second largest political group among Black immigrants, following Jamaicans. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjYiZXSk437AhXpLFkFHV09AWIQFnoECCEQAQ&url=https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/07/20/haitian-americans-come-of-age-politically&usg=AOvVaw2iv_ZCo_fQAjBZT3qSLQgA

Hey, I’m only a retired Immigration Judge, not a political wonk. But, I can’t see what Biden and Harris stand to gain with their cruel, anti-Haitian policies. 

Why not set up viable refugee programs in Haiti, as we did for Cubans, if we don’t want more refugees taking to the sea in leaky boats? Why not prioritize immigrant visa processing for qualified immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, the Northern Triangle, and other Western Hemisphere countries? Migration from these nations to the U.S. is a reality that benefits both the migrants and our nation. Why not use the tools at hand to channel legal immigration rather than flailing around with questionable built to fail “deterrents.” 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-01-22

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  2. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  3. ⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — 08-01-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney — NIJC — Unpublished 2d Cir. Indigenous Woman Asylum Remand Is A “Dive” Into Why EOIR Is A Dangerous & Unacceptable Drag On Our Justice System! ☠️
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 10-24-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Human Rights Advocates, Immigrants, Abandoned By Biden Administration! — Garland’s “Unforced Errors” @ EOIR Haunt Dems!  — Where Do Operating “America’s Worst Courts” & “Dissing Equal Justice” Fit Into Dem’s Vision Of Democracy?🤯

🤯AMERICA NEEDS IMMIGRANT WORKERS: THE GOP LIES, DENIES, DEHUMANIZES, EXPLOITS — DEMS ARBITRARILY DEPORT POTENTIAL LEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHILE LEAVING OTHERS IN LIMBO WITH BUMBLING BUREAUCRACY & BROKEN COURTS  — “Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game?”

Casey Stengel
“Can’t anyone here play this game?” The GOP lacks honesty and decency. The Dems lack vision and guts. The public is misinformed about the realities of immigration. Migrants and their supporters are caught in the crossfire of political failure! 
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

Lack of immigration reform hurts businesses and farmers, puts nation’s food supply at risk

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2022/10/30/immigration-reform-southern-border-farmers-congress-dreamers-midterms/8189018001/

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

Note the comments from immigration lawyer George Pappas in North Carolina.

The hostility is reflected in the immigration courts in Atlanta and in Charlotte, where the highest denial rates for asylum prevail,” he told USA TODAY. “They will not be talking about outsourcing workers or about education. The right wing base of the Republican party has used immigration as a political wedge issue to deflect attention and to deflect media, airwaves, and media space from real issues.

While undoubtedly the Immigration Courts in Atlanta and Charlotte do reflect the type of biased, anti-immigrant approach pushed by GOP politicos, today they are run by Dem AG Merrick Garland. He has failed to make needed reforms and changes at the top, starting with inept leadership from EOIR Headquarters and a precedent setting appellate board (BIA) that does not reflect the best-qualified expert judicial talent available who would implement due process, fundamental fairness, consistency, and best judicial practices nationwide.   

Ironically, these values WERE once part of the “EOIR Vision,” abandoned and trashed by Administrations of both parties over the past two decades. For Dems who believe in the power of immigrants and immigrants’ tights, it’s now basically “Pogoland:” “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

A number of the public comments in the articles also show gross misconceptions about the nature of migration, the goals of the GOP, the reasons why migrants can’t apply for asylum in a safe, orderly manner at ports of entry, the immense benefits to both the workforce and society brought by family-based immigrants and those seeking to enter as refugees and asylees, and the relationship between an improved economy and a sensible, robust, realistic approach to immigration (eschewed by the GOP; bobbled by the Dems).

Both parties have squandered opportunities to acknowledge truth, make the current system work better, and create order at the border. Neither has a serious plan for reform on its agenda. 

Unlike the Trump “shut the border/build the wall” racist fiasco, Biden’s initial US Citizenship Act of 2021 had some good ideas. But, after quickly “throwing it out there,” apparently as a sop to those who helped elect them, the Administration shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it. Instead, they pursued a mishmash of “built to fail gimmicks,” bureaucratic bungling, broken courts, poor legal positions, lack of vision, inept PR, and weak leadership.

The failure of the world’s leading “nation of immigrants” to discard and disavow the racist nonsense on immigration and come together on realistic, forward looking, generous, welcoming immigration policies makes our nation look bad and robs us of opportunities to improve the economy and build for the future.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-31-22

Related posts:

  1. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🤯👎🏽MORE CIRCUIT REJECTS FOR GARLAND & PRELOGAR — 1st & 3rd Cirs “Just Say No” To DOJ’s Ill-Advised Positions On “Theft Offense” & Derivative Citizenship!  — It’s Part Of A Larger Leadership Failure @ Garland’s Broken DOJ!
  4. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!

🤯BILL FRELICK @ THE HILL BLASTS BIDEN’S SCOFFLAW, ELITIST MISTREATMENT OF VENEZUELAN REFUGEES! — Welcome A Few Of The Well-To-Do, Give Others In Need The Screw! 🔩☠️ — Whatever Happened To The Refugee Act of 1980 & The Rule Of Law?

Statue of Liberty
Too many Biden Administration Immigration officials appear to share Stephen Miller’s “upside down” view of the Statue of Liberty, in whole or in part! Why can’t they just follow the Refugee Act of 1980 and establish the robust, timely, generous legal approach to refugees and asylum seekers that best serves America?
Bill Frelick
Bill Frelick
Director
Refugee and Migrant Rights Division
Human Rights Watch

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3704714-bidens-new-plan-no-help-for-desperate-venezuelan-refugees/

Refugees are people who flee for their lives. Escape from danger and abuse is usually chaotic, sudden, desperate. The Biden administration’s rollout of its new policy for Venezuelan refugees seems oblivious to this refugee reality and risks doing more harm than good.

. . . .

Announcing the program on Oct. 12, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Venezuelans who enter irregularly “will be returned to Mexico.”

He didn’t mention — and appeared to disregard — U.S. law, which recognizes that anyone who arrives in the United States has the right to seek asylum “whether or not at a designated port of arrival” and “irrespective of such alien’s status.”

The impact of this announcement, “effective immediately,” was the summary return to Mexico without examination of their asylum claims of any Venezuelans entering the United States without authorization. Mexico has given no assurances that it will examine their refugee claims or provide asylum to those who fear return to Venezuela. In fact, the 4,050 Venezuelans expelled to Mexico since the implementation of the policy have been given visas valid for only one week and instructed to leave the country.

. . . .

With the Biden administration’s plan in effect, we might as well apply a blowtorch to Emma Lazarus’s welcoming poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and chisel in a new message: “Give me your well-rested, your well-to-do, your properly ticketed jet-setters yearning to breathe free.”

Bill Frelick is the refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. Follow him on Twitter @BillFrelick.

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

Read Bill’s complete op-ed act the link. Bill is one of many “practical experts” who would do a much better job than current Administration politicos in establishing and running a refugee and asylum program that would comply with the law,  due process, human dignity, and America’s best interests. Why is Biden following the lead of his “clueless (and spineless) crew?”

The Refugee Act of 1980 was enacted and amended to deal with these situations! Robust, realistic refugee programs outside the U.S. should encourage many refugees to apply, be screened abroad, and admitted legally. 

Other refugees arriving at our border can be promptly screened for credible fear. Those who fail that test can be summarily removed in accordance with existing law. 

Those who pass that test should have access to counsel and receive timely, expert adjudications, with full appeal rights, under the generous “well founded fear” (1 in 10 chance) international standard established by the Refugee Act. See, e.g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (Supremes); Matter of Mogharrabi (BIA).

It’s not “rocket science!” With dynamic, experienced refugee experts running the system and “practical scholars” with expertise in refugee processing and human rights laws serving as USCIS Asylum Officers and EOIR judges at the trial and appellate levels the legal system should be flexible enough to deal with all refugee situations in an orderly manner.

Many, probably a majority, of today’s asylum seekers should be granted asylum and admitted to the U.S. in full legal status, authorized to work, and on their way to green cards and eventual citizenship. Like those admitted from abroad, they could also be made eligible for certain resettlement assistance to facilitate integration into American communities who undoubtedly will benefit from their presence.

The more robust, realistic, and timely our overseas refugee programs become, the fewer refugees who will be forced to apply for asylum at our borders. Also, real, bold, dynamic humanitarian leadership, including accepting our fair share of refugees and asylees, could persuade other countries signatory to the Geneva Refugee Convention to do likewise.

No insurmountable backlogs; no bewildered individuals wandering around the U.S. in limbo waiting for hearings that will never happen; few “no shows;” no long-term detention; no botched, biased “any reason to deny” decisions from unqualified officers and judges leading to years of litigation cluttering our legal system, no diverting Border Patrol resources from real law enforcement, no refugees huddled under bridges or sitting on street corners in Mexico!

It’s not “pie in the sky!” It’s the way our legal system could and should work with competent leadership and the very best available adjudicators and judges! It would support the proper, important role of refugees as an essential component of LEGAL IMMIGRATION, not an “exception” or “loophole” as racists and nativists like to falsely argue.

Instead of demonstrating the competence and integrity to use existing law to deal with refugee and asylum situations, the Biden Administration resorts to ad hoc political gimmicks. Essentially, the “RA80” has been repealed “administratively.” Effectively, we’re back to the “ad hoc” arbitrary approaches we used prior to ‘80 (which I worked on during the Ford Administration, and where I recollect I first heard of Bill Frelick). 

I doubt that the late Senator Ted Kennedy, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, and the rest of the group who helped shepherd the Refugee Act of 1980 through Congress would have thought that using Border Patrol Agents as Asylum Officers or packing the Immigration Courts and the BIA with judges prone to deny almost every asylum claim, regardless of facts or proper legal standards, was the “key to success!”

Congress specifically intended to eliminate the use of parole to deal with refugees except in extremely unusual circumstances, not present here. Biden’s latest ill-advised gimmick violates that premise. It’s totally inexcusable, as the refugee flow from Venezuela is neither new nor unpredictable. I was granting Venezuelan asylum cases before I retired in June 2016. Even then, there were legions of documentation, much of it generated by the USG, condemning the repressive regime in Venezuela and documenting the persecution of those who resisted!

A better AG would say “No” to these improper evasions of existing law. But, we have Merrick “What Me Worry” Garland! His botching of the Immigration Courts has been combined with a gross failure to stand up for equal justice for migrants (particularly those of color) across the board! America and refugees deserve better from our chief lawyer.

The Refugee Act of 1980 actually provides all the tools and flexibility the Biden Administration needs to establish order on the border and properly and fairly process refugees and asylees. Why won’t they use them?

Alfred E. Neumann
AG Merrick Garland has “looked the other way” while the Biden Administration flaunts applicable protection laws in and outside the U.S. He also runs a dysfunctional “court system” where anti-asylum bias, worst practices, poorly qualified decision makers, and grotesque inconsistencies undermine the legal rights of asylum seekers and other refugees. Doesn’t America deserve more competence from its top lawyer?
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-28-22

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  4. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”

☠️💀⚰️DEATH VALLEY DAYS: ASYLUM SEEKERS & LAWYERS FACE HARSH CONDITIONS IN QUEST FOR ASYLUM IN GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL EOIR — Bad Law, Bias, Incompetence, Inconsistency, & Indifference To Humanity Among Obstacles — The Majority Perish Along The Way! — “Courtside” Takes You “Inside The Numbers” Of TRAC’s “New Look” IJ Asylum Reports — New Format, But Same Old Broken & Unfair System!

Death Valley
Asylum seekers and lawyers must cross hostile territory, with a dearth of naturally-occurring due process, to successfully negotiate Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR. Most never make it!
Death Valley
Creative Commons

Here’s the TRAC “New Format” IJ Asylum Report:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/

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

INSIDE THE NUMBERS FOR THE TRAC 10-09-22 IJ REPORT

NOTE: Does not account for: IJs no longer on the bench; IJs appearing in more than one location; differences among detained, non-detained dockets; profiles of high and non-high-denying courts excluded locations with fewer than four IJs listed. No guarantee of accuracy for my “hand count” — but, in accordance with the old government motto, “I did the best I could under the circumstances.”

  • Precipitous unexplained rise in nationwide denial rate since FY 2012, from 44.5% to 63.3%, even though human rights conditions in most so-called “sending countries” remained horrible and in some cases significantly deteriorated. See for FY2012 stats, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/306/
  • Lots of “Nay-Sayers” on the Immigration Bench:
    • 92 IJs denied asylum 90% or more of the time.
    • Another 94 IJs denied 85-90% of the time.
    • Total of 186 “High Deniers” — those who denied 85% or more — significantly (21.7% or more) above already inexplicably high 63.3% national rate.
  • High Denying Courts (majority of IJs listed denied 85%+)
    • Atlanta (including ATD-Detained) (10 of 10 IJs)
    • Charlotte (6 of 8 IJs)
    • Conroe (5 of 9 IJs)
    • Houston (19 of 22 IJs)
    • Houston-Greenspoint (4 of 5 IJs)
    • Jena (6 of 6 IJs)
    • LA – North (8 of 11 IJs)
    • Los Fresnos (5 of 6 IJs)
    • Lumpkin (5 of 7 IJs)
    • Memphis (6 of 11 IJs)
    • Miami (20 of 31 IJs)
    • Miamii – Krome (7 of 9 IJs) 
  • Non-High-Denying Courts (all, or almost all, listed IJs denied less than 85%)
    • Adelanto (5 IJs)
    • Arlington (3 of 25 IJs High Deniers)
    • Bloomington (1 of 13 IJs High Denier)
    • Boston (1 of 15 IJs High Denier)
    • Baltimore (1 of 16 IJs High Denier)
    • Batavia (1 of 4 IJs High Denier)
    • Chicago (1 of 16 IJs High Denier)
    • Denver (2 of 8 IJs High Deniers)
    • Detroit (4 IJs)
    • Elizabeth (5 IJs)
    • Imperial (5 IJs)
    • New York (46 IJs, 0 High Deniers) **
    • New York Detained (17 IJs, 1 High Denier) 
    • Newark (3 of 16 IJs High Deniers)
    • Otay Mesa (7 IJs)
    • Pearsall (5 IJs)
    • Philadelphia (8 IJs)
    • Portland OR (4 IJs)
    • San Francisco (2 of 27 High Deniers)
    • Seattle (8 IJs)
    • Tacoma (5 IJs)
    • Van Nuys (1 of 7 IJs High Denier)
  • Telling stats:  99.1%, 97.4%, 94.3% 90.4% — Asylum denial rates for four BIA Appellate Immigration Judges listed in the chart who continue to serve on Garland’s BIA. No wonder asylum seekers are saddled with bad law and sloppy, one-sided appellate review within Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR.
  • Best courts for asylum seekers: Generally  in the Northeast and Northern California: Arlington, Boston, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Newark, San Francisco, Chicago.
  • Worst places for asylum seekers: Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte, Houston, Louisiana.
  • Mind-blowing stat: Compare the performance of IJs in Arlington and Baltimore with those in Charlotte, all within the 4th Circuit.
  • Observations:
    • New York, followed by San Francisco, appear to be the largest and best functioning courts with respect to actually following the generous standards for asylum seekers set forth by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca, enunciated (but seldom followed) by the BIA in Mogharrabi, and to a large extent incorporated into sporadically enforced regulations.
    • In NY, 46 IJs, 0 High Deniers, 24 listed IJs granted at least 50% or more of the cases, denial rates ranging from 7.1% to 83.5%, still a rather mind-boggling range.The 24 IJs in the 50% or more grant range would seem like a good place for Garland to look for a model for rebuilding EOIR as a fair, due-process-oriented, subject matter expert court. He doesn’t seem interested in doing that, but it could be done with better leadership.
    • Although generally one would expect Detention Courts to be in the “High Denier” category, that’s not always the case. Courts like NY-Detained, Elizabeth, Adelanto, Otay Mesa, and Pearsall, all had some significant asylum grant rates. Conversely, several predominantly non-detained courts like Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, and Houston were unseemly “dead zones” for asylum seekers. Garland’s failure to address the gross inconsistencies and abuses of asylum law going on in those and other “High Denier Courts” is disgraceful.
  • Overall, this is a statistical picture of a failed and dysfunctional court system where critical life or death decisions depend more on where you are and who your judge or BIA “panel” is than on the quality of the evidence or the state of the law. It has failed to deliver on its promise of being a court of widely acknowledged subject matter experts who will guarantee due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices for all on some of the most important and life-determining decisions in American jurisprudence. It’s bad; and not significantly improving under the Dems!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-28-22

Related posts:

  1. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  2. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🏴‍☠️BIA’S MISOGYNISTIC, ANTI-ASYLUM, IGNORE THE EXPERTS & THE EVIDENCE APPROACH 🤮 REBUKED AGAIN — 9th Cir. Slams BIA Big Time In Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland! — “Concurring, Judge Paez wrote that in addition to ignoring evidence that Rodriguez was targeted on account of her feminist political opinion, the Board also ignored extensive record evidence from a leading authority on domestic violence that directly rejected the Board’s premise that domestic violence is presumed to be motivated by nothing more than the private dynamics of a ‘personal relationship.’”

☠️⚰️💀GARLAND’S STAR CHAMBERS — “SLOW VIOLENCE” ON PEOPLE OF COLOR!🥵— Bias, Bad Law, Bungling Bureaucracy! — “Where Due Process Goes To Die!” 🤮 — Upcoming Book Will Expose Garland’s Lawless, Cruel, Inhumane “Court” System!

 

Slow Injustice @ EOIR
Garland’s approach to immigrant justice in his courts harkens back to “the bad old days.” Yet he remains impervious — and unaccountable!
The Wasp 1882-01-06 cover Slow but sure.jpg
Slow, but Sure. Cartoon depicts Lady Justice riding a tortoise, about to hang a man.
George Frederick Keller
Public domain

Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog previews upcoming book by Professor Maya Pagni Barack:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2022/10/from-the-bookshelves-the-slow-violence-of-immigration-court-procedural-justice-on-trial-by-maya-pagn.html

Friday, October 21, 2022

From the Bookshelves: The Slow Violence of Immigration Court Procedural Justice on Trial by Maya Pagni Barak

By Immigration Prof

The Slow Violence of Immigration Court Procedural Justice on Trial by Maya Pagni Barak (forthcominng March 2023, NYU Press)

The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:

“Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take years and most migrants will eventually be ordered deported. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court sheds light on the experiences of migrants from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as they navigate legal processes, deportation proceedings, immigration court, and the immigration system writ large.

Grounded in the illuminating stories of people facing deportation, the family members who support them, and the attorneys who defend them, The Slow Violence of Immigration Court invites readers to question matters of fairness and justice and the fear of living with the threat of deportation. Although the spectacle of violence created by family separation and deportation is perceived as extreme and unprecedented, these long legal proceedings are masked in the mundane and are often overlooked, ignored, and excused. In an urgent call to action, Maya Pagni Barak deftly demonstrates that deportation and family separation are not abhorrent anomalies, but are a routine, slow form of violence at the heart of the U.S. immigration system.”

KJ

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

The ongoing national disgrace called “EOIR” continues to mete out injustice and inane bureaucratic nonsense under a DEMOCRATIC Administration that pledged to return the rule of law and humanity to our broken Immigration Court system! 

That system is “headed and controlled” by a DEMOCRATIC AG, Merrick Garland. He is a former Federal Appellate Judge who certainly knows that what passes for “justice” in his broken “court” system is nothing of the sort! Also this ongoing debacle doesn’t say much good about Garland’s “lieutenants:” Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

They have all “looked the other way,” defended, or failed to condemn this travesty undermining our entire justice system, unfolding under their collective noses at EOIR every day! At some point in the future, all these guys will be “making the rounds” of major law firms, NGOs, universities, mainstream media, and corporations — seeking to “cash in” on their DOJ “experience.” Then, folks should remember how they ACTUALLY PERFORMED (or didn’t) when they had a chance to fix “America’s worst courts” — hotbeds of racial and ethnic injustice, purveyors of bad law, and a haven for ridiculously dysfunctional procedures!

Perhaps a suitable future for these willfully blind “public servants” would be to require them to spend the balance of their careers practicing on a pro bono basis before the “star chambers” they inflicted on others! See how they like being “scheduled,” with no or inadequate notice, to do 15 or 20 asylum cases per month; appearing before too many ill-qualified “judges” who have already decided to deny regardless of the law and facts; appealing to a captive “appellate court” dominated by individuals, working for the Executive, whose main “judicial qualification” was that they denied close to 100% of the asylum claims that came before them in Immigration Court and were known for their rude and dismissive treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers! See, e.g., “Confronting The American Star Chamber . . .,” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-4Vm.,

Here’s Professor Barak’s bio from the U of Michigan-Dearborn website:

Maya Barak, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies

Maya P. Barak
Maya P. Barak, PhD
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies
U. of Michigan -Dearborn
PHOTO: UM-D Websitew

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College-Wide Programs

mbarak@umich.edu

1070 Social Sciences Building | 4901 Evergreen Road | Dearborn, MI 48128

Personal Website

Teaching Areas: Arab American Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice Studies, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Women’s & Gender Studies

Research Areas: Capital Punishment, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Gangs, Immigrants / Crimmigration, Legal Sociology, Procedural Justice, State-Corporate Crime

Biography and Education

I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I hold a PhD in Justice, Law and Criminology from American University (2016), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Eastern Michigan University (2011), and a BA in Social Anthropology and Peace and Social Justice from the University of Michigan (2009). My research brings together the areas of law, deviance, immigration, and power, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches that span the fields of criminology, law and society, and anthropology.

Education

Ph.D. in Justice, Law and Criminology

Teaching and Research

Courses Taught

Selected Publications

Books

Gould, Jon B. and Maya Barak. 2019. Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers. New York: NYU Press.

Selected Articles

Barak, Maya. 2021. “Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court.” Journal on Migration and Human Security (https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024211034740).

Barak, Maya. 2021. “A Hollow Hope? The Empty Promise of Rights in the U.S. Immigration System”/ “¿Una promesa vacía? La ilusión de “los derechos” en el sistema migratorio de los Estados Unidos.” Las Cadenas Que Amamos: Una panorámica sobre el retroceso de Occidente a todos los niveles.

Barak, Maya. 2021. “Family Separation as State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime Vol. 2(2), 2021, pp. 109-121 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631309X20982299). (2021 Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award, Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, American Society of Criminology)

Barak, Maya, Leon, K., and Maguire, Edward. 2020. “Conceptual and Empirical Obstacles in Defining MS-13: Law-Enforcement Perspectives.” Criminology and Public Policy (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12493).

Barak, Maya. 2017. “Motherhood and Immigration Policy: How Immigration Law Shapes Central Americans’ Experience of Family.” In Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field, edited by Tanya Golash-Boza. New York: Oxford University Press.

Advocates and all Americans committed to racial justice and equal justice under law need to keep raising hell — and supporting progressive candidates — until this horrible system is replaced by a real court system, with subject matter expert judges, totally focused on delivering due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices to all!

What’s happening to individuals (fellow humans, “persons” under our Constitution) and their lawyers at EOIR is NOT OK, nor is it acceptable from a DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION!

Yeah, “there’s trouble, right here in River City!” And, it begins with “E,” ends with “R,” and rhymes with “EYORE!”

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

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-22-22

Related posts:

  1. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  4. REGIME’S NEWEST SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: BOGUS REGS THAT WOULD ILLEGALLY & UNNECESSARILY EXTEND THE GROUNDS OF “MANDATORY DENIAL,” DECREASE ADJUDICATOR DISCRETION, & SHAFT REFUGEE FAMILIES — Regime’s Outlandish “Efficiency Rationale” Fails to Mask Their Cruelty, Racism, Fraud, Waste, & Abuse – Julia Edwards Ainsley (NBC News) & Dean Kevin R. Johnson (ImmigrationProf Blog) Report

🇺🇸🗽POLITICS/COMMUNICATION: Anand Giridharadas Has A Plan For Defeating Fascism!

https://twitter.com/intelligence2/status/1583053222495031297?s=20&t=0qtnWoCtSNnhf3i6nq3hVA

We’re not going to defeat fascism by talking about policy. Nor by issuing grave warnings. Nor by praying for the rain of indictments. Nor by despair.

We are going to defeat it by outcompeting it. Here is a proposal for how we can do that right now.

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

Watch the compelling “spot on” video at the above link. Many thanks to my friend Charles Kuck for passing this on!

The Dems once were the “party of practical problem solvers” — particularly at the local level with great organizations that effectively addressed issues on the minds of the local populace. After all, it was Dem House Speaker, the late Tip O’Neill, who famously said that “All politics is local” (although, perhaps contrary to popular notions, he did not “coin” that phrase.)

It’s not that today’s GOP solves problems. Far from it! Indeed they specialize in division, destruction (“the wrecking crew”), and making things worse. (How would you like to go to GOP Rep. MTG or Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin to get help with mistreatment of your trans kid in school? Good luck with the one!)

Yet the GOP does excel in one area. That is channeling and fanning the rage, bitterness, and anger of folks in the community who feel left out or that “the system” has betrayed them. They are also great at using that collective anger and resentment for their own political ends — usually anti-democracy actions or picking on, demonizing, and falsely blaming vulnerable groups in society for all their ills.

Anand says it’s time for Dems to get back to communicating and problem solving: “outcompeting” and “outperforming,” if you will! That’s certainly true on a larger scale. But, it’s also true at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR. There, bureaucratic nonsense, “built to fail gimmicks,” and false “deterrence rationale” have replaced scholarship, timeliness, and practical problem solving directed at the achievable, yet inexplicably elusive, “common good.” Time for a difference approach at the critical, yet often ignored, “retail level” of democracy!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-20-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️NO ACCOUNTABILITY: ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICLY INSTIGATING A FAILED COUP, TRUMP CONTINUES TO OPENLY PLOT TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY, AS NEO-FASCIST GOP & ITS TOADY POLITICOS LINE UP BEHIND THE “BIG LIE!” — THE GOP, & THOSE WHO SUPPORT & ENABLE IT, HAS ACTUALLY BECOME THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC!🤮👎🏽🏴‍☠️
  2. 😒LOOKING THE OTHER WAY @ GARLAND’S DOJ:  ☠️ Deadly Civil & Human Rights Violations Inflicted On Individuals Of Color By DHS/DOJ’s “New American Gulag!”
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. POLITICS: KURT BARDELLA @ LA TIMES: WHAT “DEMS DON’T GET” THREATENS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY☠️: “They should do what the Republicans would do given a chance: Refuse to compromise and go on the attack. This difference, of course, is that the Democrats are going after the insurrectionist machine and defending democracy while the GOP is tearing it down.”

🗽PRANTL & YALE-LOEHR @ NY DAILY NEWS: Private Refugee Sponsorship — An Idea Whose Time Has Come! — But, The Biden Administration Has Turned Its Back On The Legal & Human Rights Refugees!🏴‍☠️

 

Janine Prantl
Dr. Janine Prantl
Immigration Postdoctoral Associate
Cornell Law
PHOTO: Cornell Law
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Cornell Law

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-let-private-citizens-sponsor-refugees-20221015-dtepnanthfegnpf6anjirwt3by-story.html 

Let private citizens sponsor refugees

By Janine Prantl and Stephen Yale-Loehr

New York Daily News

Oct 15, 2022

Every fall, the U.S. president sets a refugee ceiling — the maximum number of refugees that may be resettled annually to the United States. For the new fiscal year that started Oct. 1, President Biden plans to resettle up to 125,000 refugees. Because of dramatic cuts to the refugee program during the prior administration, that goal will be hard to meet. A year ago, Biden set the same target, but more than 100,000 refugee slots went unused.

Historically, only the U.S. government, working with international refugee agencies and nonprofits, has determined which refugees will be admitted to the United States. That’s a mistake. To meet its goal of admitting 125,000 refugees this fiscal year, the United States should also promptly allow private sponsorships of refugees.

In February 2021, Biden issued an executive order to rebuild our refugee program, including through private refugee sponsorships. Subsequently, the State Department announced plans to start a pilot program, but the launch has been delayed. Over a year after the first announcement, and close to the end of 2022, the State Department has not decided on the funding of prospective partners or issued guidelines on the pilot. The clock is ticking.

Several countries, including Canada, Australia, Argentina, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Spain, already allow private sponsorships of refugees. Under private sponsorships, individuals and community groups collaborate to provide financial, emotional, and practical support for refugees. Some countries also empower sponsors to nominate specific refugees to enter and stay in their country.

Canada’s experience shows that private sponsorships can work. A 2020 study confirmed that privately-sponsored refugees are more likely than government-sponsored refugees to be working within the first year after entering Canada, with an employment rate at 90% for men and 71% for women. Findings from Canada also suggest that privately-sponsored refugees are more likely to stay at their initial destinations and private sponsorships could contribute to geographic dispersal of resettled refugees.

Americans are already engaged in private sponsorships for Afghans and Ukrainians through the Sponsor Circles initiative. This initiative supports Americans who decide to become sponsors by assisting them in the application process, offering temporary housing credits through Airbnb.org, as well as ongoing expert guidance and other sponsor tools and resources. More than 123,000 Americans have applied to financially sponsor Ukrainians, and over 87,000 Ukrainians have been granted permission to travel to the United States. The number of arrivals will likely exceed 100,000 by the end of 2022.

While technically most Ukrainians and Afghans have not entered the United States as refugees, lessons learned from the Sponsor Circles initiative could help establish a formal private refugee sponsorship model. Because most Ukrainians enter the United States under parole power, they can be authorized for travel in as little as two weeks. However, prospective sponsors have recently reported longer processing times.

To transform private sponsorships from an emergency one-time program to a formalized program where beneficiaries enter as refugees, with access to long-term residence and citizenship, the backlog issue becomes even more concerning. Current tests of 30-day streamlined visa processing for Afghans in Doha could be expanded and serve as a role model for both parolees and refugees. Moreover, to mobilize private refugee sponsors and enable them to prepare, the U.S. government needs to move forward quickly and specify a program design for private refugee sponsors, including financial requirements, sponsorship time commitments, and concrete sponsor responsibilities.

Once a private refugee sponsorship program gets launched, sponsors will have to accomplish challenging tasks. They will have to deal with language barriers, find affordable housing and help new refugees apply for public benefits. For such a process to work, it is important to set up communication streams between private refugee sponsors and existing refugee resettlement agencies.

Public-private partnerships work in other areas. For example, they have become an increasingly popular way to upgrade infrastructure and address the challenges of climate change. By incorporating a private refugee sponsorship model, the U.S. government can supplement its own efforts to admit 125,000 refugees this fiscal year.

More importantly, private refugee sponsorships would allow Americans to participate directly in welcoming refugees and facilitating their successful integration. Experience in the United Kingdom shows that private sponsorship can be a powerful tool in expanding communities’ understanding and capacity for welcoming newcomers. It can reduce fears about others more generally, change working practices to make them more inclusive for diverse populations, and bring new perspectives into relatively homogeneous communities. Involving U.S. citizens in the immigration process could thus be a way to dampen the current heated debate about immigration and allow Americans to see the mutual benefits of immigration.

Janine Prantl is an immigration postdoctoral associate in the Cornell Law School Immigration Law and Policy Research Program. Stephen Yale-Loehr is professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School.

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

Lots of creative ideas out here on how to improve our broken refugee and asylum systems! But, from those in charge of migration policy in the Biden Administration, not so much!😢

No, they are stuck in reverse. A small-time “overseas” refugee program for  Venezuelans (24k “slots” for a refugee crisis that has generated more than 6 million refugees)🤯; a heavy dose of cruel and discredited “Stephen Miller Lite” Title 42 for those who exercise their legal right to apply for asylum at or near the border 🤮; more “due process free” illegal returns to abusive conditions in Mexico☠️.

Perhaps inadvertently, a recent NBC Nightly News report on the border mentioned a widely ignored fact. It pictured and described desperate Venezuelans patiently waiting in line to turn themselves in to CPB to exercise their legal rights to apply for asylum and other protections in the U.S. That’s right — “turn themselves in!”

This is NOT real law enforcement, nor does it present a security crisis! Nor are the oft repeated “record numbers” of  border “apprehensions” legitimate!

Since individuals are often returned to Mexico with neither proper processing nor due process, many of these “apprehensions” are inflated — representing repeated “apprehensions” of the same individual merely seeking to apply for asylum — a legal right denied to them by both the Trump and Biden Administrations!

One might also ask whether an individual turning him or herself in and requesting legal asylum is “apprehended” at all? That’s why CBP has started using the more ambiguous term “encounter” to disguise what’s really happening at the border.

Under the Biden Administration’s latest discriminatory and  brain dead application of Title 42, those Venezuelans  who voluntarily turn themselves in at ports of entry or near the border will be illegally returned to Mexico to rot — as a “reward” for attempting to follow the law. Does this make sense? Of course not. And the consequences of this horrible “policy” are dire for both the refugees and our nation. In many ways, the Biden Administration inexplicably has gone even beyond the cruel stunts of DeSantis and Abbott in making “political footballs” 🏈out of vulnerable Venezuelan refugees! It’s an ongoing national disgrace, masquerading as “policy!”

The only avenue for legal refugee for these Venezuelans fleeing a repressive left-wing dictatorship is to hire a smuggler to get them past the border where they can lose themselves in the interior of the U.S. That is, under the Biden policy, “do it yourself, black market refuge” substitutes for a variable legal system and adds to the unscreened and often unknown underground population of undocumented migrants. in the U.S.

A robust, realistic refugee program for Venezuela, operating both in Mexico and in or near Venezuela, might well reduce the incentives for extralegal migration. It could also take some pressure off of other “receiving” countries in the Hemisphere. But, the “token” — unduly limited — program proposed by the Biden Administration will do nothing of the sort!

Extralegal entries and underground populations are not good. Robust, realistic, timely, refugee and asylum programs — properly focused on using existing laws for protection, not rejection — would reduce the incentive for extralegal migration while reaping the many potential benefits and strengths that refugees and asylees “bring to the table.”

Such a beneficial program is achievable — under current law. But, not without a radical shakeup in both the leadership and substance of the Biden Administration’s so-called human rights bureaucracy!

Casey Stengel

“Can’t anybody here play this game,” wonders Casey Stengel about the cruel, clueless crew in charge of human rights and immigration (non)policy in the Biden-Harris Administration.
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

 🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-17-22

 

Related posts:

  1. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  2. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!
  3. 👍🏼🗽⚖️🙂🇺🇸BREAKING: IN A STUNNING REVERSAL, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL BEGIN DISMANTLING “REMAIN IN MEXICO” PROGRAM BY SCREENING & ADMITTING THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN AWAITING ASYLUM HEARINGS! — Processing To Begin On Feb. 19!
  4. VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS THINKS RULE OF LAW DOESN’T APPLY TO RICH NATION THAT ILLEGALLY TURNS DESPERATE REFUGEES AWAY, SUGGESTS GUATEMALANS SHOULD DIE IN PLACE! — “Deterrence Statement” Won’t Stop Migration, Won’t Appease Nativist-Restrictionists, But Will Cost Her Support From Human Rights Progressives Who Helped Elect Her!  — There Will Be No Workable Solutions At Our Southern Border Without a Functional, Robust Legal Asylum System That Complies With Due Process!

🇺🇸 MIGRANTS, W/ OR W/O DOCS, ARE AGAIN BAILING OUT FLA, DESPITE DeSANTIS’S RACIST STUNTS — Don’t Expect Reality To Change The White Nationalist False Narrative!

https://apple.news/AFdtHuzYiQS-N1caP0gT6UA

Ciara Nugent
Ciara Nugent
Staff Writer
Time
PHOTO: Time.com

From Time Maggie:

Migrants Are Leading Clean-up Efforts in Florida, Despite DeSantis’ Crusade Against Them

Migrant workers are flooding-in to help Florida rebuild after Hurricane Ian, even as Governor Ron DeSantis wages a crusade against them.

CIARA NUGENT

Three days after Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28 as a Category 4 storm, Johnny Aburto arrived in Port Charlotte, a mostly white community of 64,000, popular with retirees, on the state’s southwestern coast. The town suffered extensive damage during the storm: roofs blown off, homes flooded, power lines downed. There is a lot of work to be done.

Aburto, 42, is here to do it. Originally from Nicaragua, he is part of a large, informal, overwhelmingly immigrant workforce that travels the U.S. cleaning up after increasingly frequent climate-related disasters. Once a hurricane hits, these crews are bussed in by contractors desperate for workers, or they drive to the area themselves and wait in Walmart or Home Depot parking lots to be picked up for a day’s work. Aburto, a skilled laborer, was in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005, Baton Rouge after Louisiana’s floods in 2016, Panama City Beach after Michael in 2018, and Lake Charles after Laura in 2020. “These kinds of events really affect people,” he says. “We do our bit to help them.”

In Port Charlotte, Aburto is now busy covering roofs with tarpaulins—a crucial first step to keep homes safe from future rain, so that power can be restored and residents can come back. He’s also cleaning out soaked debris from interiors. When that kind of work is done, he says, many of his colleagues will stay on to make more permanent repairs.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Sadly, America has a long disreputable history of denying the humanity and rights of those whose labor and skills built our nation and made it great. African Americans,  Chinese-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Haitian-Americans, and many others have all felt the sting of racism, demonizing myths, dehumanization, exploitation, and grotesque ingratitude. 

I happen to be reading UVA Professor Amanda Frost’s outstanding book on “citizenship stripping.” I was struck by this quote about the exploitation of Mexican workers during the “Bracero Program” which was followed by “Operation Wetback” — the Eisenhower Administration’s totally illegal mass removal of Mexicans, including lawful immigrants and U.S. citizens!

“As one grower put it, “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.” 51”

— You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost

https://a.co/0BsTPuZ

Amanda Frost
Amanda Frost
Professor UVA Law
Author, “You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers “
PHOTO: UVA Law

It would be nice to think this time will be different — that we have advanced as a nation. But, I wouldn’t bank on it!

Floridians have a golden opportunity to replace DeSantis with a real Governor, Charlie Crist, who would serve all people, use government resources prudently, and govern in the public interest. Polls, however, say that such a “Florida epiphany” is unlikely. But, it’s still possible.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-08-22

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  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

🏴‍☠️🤮 HALLS OF INJUSTICE: Allegations Of Racism, Misogyny, Islamophobia, & Other Bias Have Been Swirling Around Garland’s Dysfunctional EOIR — Now, The Ohio Immigrant Alliance Is Seeking & Assembling Examples To Force Long Overdue Action!

Garland’s “vision of justice” for asylum seekers and other migrants at EOIR leaves something to be desired:

Four Horsemen
Folks with wrong-headed “take no prisoners” views on asylum law were “rewarded” with “ judgeships” at both the trial and appellate levels of EOIR under the Trump Administration. Many continue to serve and discriminate against legitimate asylum seekers under Garland. Just check out the number of “sitting IJ’s” with outrageously high “asylum denial rates” near or in excess of 90%, according to TRAC Immigration. Why haven’t these important, non-life-tenured positions been “merit re-competed” to place the “best, brightest, and most qualified” on the Immigration Bench?
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Woman Tortured
Jaundiced attitudes about women (particularly those of color) and gender-based asylum claims among EOIR judges have neither been “rooted out” nor effectively addressed by Garland. As we can see, de-humanization of women and stripping them of dignity under asylum laws carries over into other legal arenas! Targeted, endemic. societal persecution of women is often intentionally minimized and mis-characterized as “random violence,” “personal disputes,” “mere jealousy,” or “not that serious” in Immigration Court! “Fictionalized accounts” of the ability of abused women to seek protection from authorities in countries where femicide and rape are rampant   are sometimes employed to deny legitimate asylum claims in Garland’s broken courts.
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Star Chamber Justice
Wrong , “unduly restrictive,” asylum precedents and discredited methods (“Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — on steroids under Garland — is a key example) continue to harm asylum seekers in Garland’s dysfunctional “courts.” — Public Realm

 

https://ohioimmigrant.org/2022/09/08/wanted-examples-of-racism-and-other-bias-in-us-immigration-court/

WANTED: Examples Of Racism And Other Bias In US Immigration Court

September 8, 2022tramontelaComments Off

on WANTED: Examples of racism and other bias in US immigration court

. . . .

The nation’s Immigration Courts have—thus far—flown under the public’s radar screen. Yet these are the places where life-or-death decisions are made, often for subjective and even racist reasons. That is why the Ohio Immigrant Alliance is collecting examples of racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, and other biased statements and decisions made by Immigration Judges from across the country. We are working with a research team to analyze the cases and produce a report in early 2023.  Here are a few examples.

Contact Lauren Hamlett (hamlett.15 AT buckeyemail.osu.edu) for more information or to share examples. This can be in the form of court documents and judges’ decisions or an interview with an immigrant or attorney. We will adhere to all privacy requirements requested by the immigrant and not publish anything without their consent.

The report, to be published in 2023, will shine a light on how racism shows up in Immigration Court using real-life examples. These findings will enrage anyone who believes the U.S. should work toward becoming a nation that guarantees “justice for all.”

See this testimony for more information, and contact Lauren to share your experiences.

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

I was struck by the undeniable truth — scandalously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and Biden Administration policy officials — contained in the January 20, 2022 statement by Lynn Tramonte, Ohio Immigrant Alliance, to the House Judiciary Committee considering the need for an independent, professionally-administered, merit-based Immigration Court. 

The U.S. Is Deporting People Who Qualify for Asylum

The current U.S. immigration system is not designed to function fairly, but to fail. There are many examples of this, but today I will focus on examples from the U.S. Immigration Court.

Lynn’s full statement is available at the “this testimony” link above. I’ve made this point over and over!

Because the current system is purposely biased against asylum seekers, particularly those of color arriving at our Southern border, the “statistics” purportedly showing that few will qualify for asylum are totally bogus! Then, they are inexcusably cited by so-called “mainstream media” who haven’t done their homework! This perpetuates the “nativist myth” of the “illegitimate asylum seeker” which is then used to dehumanize refugees and deny them their legal and human rights!

Fact is, because we don’t have a legitimate, expert asylum adjudication system, we don’t really know how many qualified refugees are being illegally turned away or denied. But, it’s a safe bet that a fair, expert, professionally administered asylum system would grant legal protection to many more — probably a majority — of those who pass credible fear! 

The problem is NOT, as Sessions and other nativists claimed, that too many individuals pass “credible fear.” It’s that a biased, anti-asylum, mal-administered, and constitutionally flawed system wrongfully denies far, far, far too many legitimate claims! And, Garland’s incredibly dysfunctional EOIR is at the heart of this problem!

Fixing EOIR is an essential first step in “re-legitimizing” our entire floundering justice system. But, Garland isn’t up to the job!

Asylum is an important form of legal immigration and an opportunity for America to put its best foot forward by properly, fairly, and timely screening and admitting those who can qualify for refuge and will be key contributors to our nation’s future. The babble of GOP nativists like DeSantis, Cruz, Abbott, and others about “illegals” is total BS! 

Asylum seekers have every right to be here and pursue fair, timely, and professional adjudication of their claims — something that’s elusive — highly unlikely to happen — under today’s “designed to fail” system! That includes the “new, designed to fail, improperly staffed and mindlessly operated asylum regulations.” See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/10/03/%f0%9f%98%b0asylum-programmed-for-failure-refugee-roulette-three-rr3-confirm-what-many-of-us-said-right-off-the-bat-about-biden-admin/

It’s an ongoing national disgrace that Garland has failed to reform his Immigration Courts, eliminate bias and invidious discrimination from his judiciary, install quality, expertise, and professionalism, and insist that the Biden Administration abandon “Miller Lite,” nativist policies and mis-interpretations of the law that are diminishing our nation and endangering our future; that he also has ridiculously chosen to “go to war” with experts, NGOs, attorneys, and others seeking to change and improve his disgraceful mess at EOIR!

What’s the purpose and function of an Attorney General who operates broken and biased “courts,” defends the indefensible, and refuses to stand up for the fair application of the law to some of the most vulnerable among us?

In the meantime, submit your “real life” examples of what really happens to vulnerable humans in “America’s worst courts” to Ohio Immigrant Alliance at the above link.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-07-22

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  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”
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😰ASYLUM: “PROGRAMMED FOR FAILURE” — “Refugee Roulette Three” (“RR3”) Confirm What Many Of Us Said Right Off The Bat About Biden Administration’s Tragically Botched Stab At Asylum Reform!

The “Notorious RR3:”

Professor Philip G. Schrag
Professor Philip G. Schrag
Georgetown Law
Co-Director, CALS Asylum Clinic
Professor Andrew Schoenholtz
Professor from Practice; Director, Human Rights Institute; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies
PHOTO: GeorgetownLaw
Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales
Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
I. Herman Stern Research Professor
Temple Law
PHOTO: Temple Law

 

Here’s the abstract of the latest “practical scholarship” from the RR3:  Professors Phil Schrag, Andy Schoenholtz, and Jaya Ramji-Nogles, “The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem,” which will appear in the Howard Law Journal:

The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem

Howard Law Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2023

59 Pages Posted:

Philip G. Schrag

Georgetown University Law Center

Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Temple University – James E. Beasley School of Law

Andrew I. Schoenholtz

Georgetown University Law Center

Date Written: September 29, 2022

Abstract

In 2022, the Biden administration implemented what the New York Times has described as potentially “the most sweeping change to the asylum process in a quarter-century.” This new adjudication system creates unrealistically short deadlines for asylum seekers who arrive over the southern border, the vast majority of whom are people of color. Rather than providing a fair opportunity for those seeking safety to explain and corroborate their persecution claims, the new system imposes unreasonably speedy time frames to enable swift adjudications. Asylum seekers must obtain representation very quickly even though the government does not fund counsel and not enough lawyers offer free or low-cost representation. Moreover, the immigration statute requires that asylum seekers must corroborate their claims with extrinsic evidence if the adjudicator thinks that such evidence is available – a nearly impossible task in the time frames provided by the new rule. As a result, the new rule clashes with every state’s Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 and 1.3, imposing duties of competence and diligence in every case that a lawyer undertakes. It will be extremely difficult for lawyers to provide competent and diligent representation under the new, excessively short deadlines. For immigration lawyers, the new rule exacerbates a challenge that they share with public defenders and other lawyers working within dysfunctional systems: how to provide even the most basic level of procedural due process for their clients, most of whom are people of color.

This article begins by describing the regular asylum process. It then summarizes the history of expedited removal, a screening system that limits access to that process for asylum seekers who arrive at the southern U.S. border without visas. It then explains and assesses the Biden administration’s first and second versions of the new asylum rule, highlighting the major flaw that will make the current version an unfairly formidable hurdle for asylum seekers subject to it. The article concludes by setting out a way for the Biden administration to create a more fair, accurate and efficient border asylum adjudication system and ensure that the U.S. can comply with domestic and international refugee law.

Keywords: Asylum, Asylum adjudication, Asylum process, Expedited removal, Immigration, Legal ethics, Due process, Administrative law

JEL Classification: K39

Suggested Citation:

Schrag, Philip G. and Ramji-Nogales, Jaya and Schoenholtz, Andrew I., The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem (September 29, 2022). Howard Law Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4233655

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

Four Horsemen
New regulations pasted on old anti-asylum, anti-lawyer, anti-due-process attitudes and relying on an ever more dysfunctional EOIR, now at war with the asylum bar, won’t cut it! 
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

You can download the complete article from SSRN at the above link. 

Expect the Biden Administration to “blow off” the suggestions for improvement at the end of the article. They seem to glory in “tuning out” the views of practical experts who know how to fix the broken asylum adjudication system. 

As I predicted when these regulations first came out, they were “programmed for failure.”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/06/06/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽-human-rights-first-files-public-comments-pointing-out-due-process-eroding-flaws-in-biden-administrations-new-asylum-regulations/

Due-process-denying, representation-killing, arbitrary time limits imposed from above have been tried by Administration after Administration. They have always failed and will continue to do so. So, why are they a key part of the Administration’s so-called “reforms?”

Rather than addressing the representation crisis in a rational, cooperative manner, the Biden Administration’s EOIR farce has driven a huge wedge between the clueless policy makers who operate in the “twilight zone” and the NGO, pro bono, and low bono legal community that they need to succeed on immigration, human rights, and racial justice. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/09/30/%f0%9f%86%98-sos-from-round-tables-%f0%9f%9b%a1-%e2%9a%94%ef%b8%8f-judge-sue-roy-complete-due-rocess-meltdown-eoir-newark-as-garlands-leadership-continues-to-fail-%e2%98%a0/

Compare the article’s discussion of the importance of representation and the practical and ethical problems caused by the new regulations with the reality of the “nutsos” ways EOIR is mis-treating attorneys currently trying to practice before the Immigration Courts!

Additionally, the unwarranted, yet largely self-fulfilling assumption by the Biden Administration that only 15% of asylum applications would be granted at the “Asylum Office stage” show why this program was designed to fail by the wrong officials. For the system to meaningfully address the Immigration Court asylum backlog, the grant rate would have to be multiples of that — probably at least 50%.

That’s a realistic projection, given the well-documented, atrocious human rights conditions in most “sending countries” and the current artificial limitations on grants imposed by bad precedents and flawed, biased, or incompetent adjudications. When I was at the Arlington Immigration Court from 2003-16, a significant majority of the “referrals” from the Asylum Office were granted asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT protection, often with concurrence or only token opposition by ICE. That suggests that there is a huge unrealized potential for many more timely asylum grants at the Asylum Office. But, success will never be achieved with the current “anti-asylum, afraid to correctly and fairly implement refugee law gang” in charge — committed to retaining the bad attitudes and repeating the mistakes of the past!

Hanging over the whole disaster is the “uncomfortable truth” that I’ve been shouting:

  • The Biden Administration is still operating EOIR and large portions of the immigration bureaucracy at DHS with Trump-era “holdovers” who were improperly “programmed to deny” asylum.

  • There is a dearth of positive precedents from the BIA on gender-based asylum and other types of common asylum applications at the border that are routinely and wrongfully mishandled and denied.

  • There are cosmic problems resulting from failure to provide qualified representation of asylum seekers at the border.

  • Detention continues to be misused as a “deterrent” to legal claims and “punishment” for asserting  them. 

  • Despite “touting” a much larger refugee admissions program beyond the border, the Administration has failed to deliver a robust, realistic, refugee admissions program for Latin America and the Caribbean which would take pressure off the border. 

  • Racism and White Nationalism continue to drive the Administration’s dramatically inconsistent approach to White refugees from Ukraine compared with refugees of color at the Southern Border.

Indeed, this entire “reform effort” is essentially “upside down.” It’s a “designed to fail” attempt to avoid the broken and malfunctioning Immigration Court system without dealing with the REAL problem: EOIR!

Without the necessary progressive personnel and structural reforms at Garland’s EOIR (“clean house” of unqualified, under-qualified, or misplaced administrators and judges from past Administrations), the cultural changes (“out with the anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, racially challenged, too often misogynistic, EOIR culture”) it would bring, and most of all, the substantive changes to align asylum law with due process, best practices, and the generous interpretations that were foreshadowed by the Refugee Act of 1`980 but have been intentionally suppressed by politicos of both parties, there will be neither justice nor stability in our asylum and immigration systems, nor will there be equal justice for all, including racial justice, in America! 

Even my esteemed “RR3” friends understate the debilitating effects of the ever-worsening dysfunction at EOIR and Garland’s failure of leadership on due process and human rights!

Perhaps the most telling statement in their article is this: “Asylum officers are more highly trained in asylum adjudication than immigration judges . . . .”  Why, on earth, would that be? 

Why isn’t the BIA led and comprised of internationally-respected asylum experts like Schrag, Schoenholtz, Ramji-Nogales, and others like them? Why aren’t all Immigration Judges drawn from the ranks of universally-respected “practical scholars” in asylum and human rights?  Plenty of them are out here! Why aren’t they on the bench? Why is the Biden Administration running a “D-Team Judiciary” at EOIR rather than “the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” as EOIR was once envisioned? What’s the excuse for lousy training at EOIR when top-flight “modulated” asylum training is available from expert sources like Professor Michele Pistone’s innovative VIISTA Villanova program? What’s the excuse for the colossal EOIR failure that threatens lives and our democracy on a daily basis? Why aren’t alarm bells going off at the White House about Garland’s failed stewardship at EOIR?

Reforming the asylum system, starting with EOIR, could also potentially have big societal and economic benefits for America. Asylees gain legal status, can work, get in line for green cards, eventually become citizens, and realize their full potential as productive members of our society. Not incidentally, they also become regular taxpayers and can help bolster essential enterprises and infrastructure improvements.

For example, just yesterday the Portland (ME) Press Herald featured an article about the critical, chronic shortage of workers in Maine. https://www.pressherald.com/2022/10/02/how-can-maine-solve-its-workforce-crisis/ Why isn’t the Biden Administration working with Maine authorities, NGOs, and economic development groups to “fast track” asylum approvals for those who might be persuaded to resettle in Maine to take advantage of these economic opportunities, for everyone’s benefit? Mainers also are suffering from a shortage of affordable housing. I’ll bet that with a little “seed money,” there are enterprising, skilled groups of potential asylees who could help build and maintain affordable housing for communities in need, in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S. Why are they instead “rotting at the border” or being aimlessly “orbited” around America by nativist GOP governors trying to score political points with their White Nationalist base?

By adopting the nativists’ dehumanizing mis-characterization of asylum seekers as a “problem” to be measured in “numbers,” deterred, and held at bay, the Administration is missing a golden opportunity to achieve some much-needed “win-wins.” Why run bone-headed “built to fail, haste makes waste” asylum pilot programs in a few cities rather than trying things that might work to everyone’s advantage, as I have described above?

At a time when many in America are finally learning the truth about our disgraceful failure to offer refuge to Jews during the period leading up to the Holocaust from the Ken Burns documentary, we (our at least some Americans) appear to be committed to making the same mistakes again. We should not undervalue the lives and contributions of refugees because of systemic or structural boas against certain groups!

Claiming to “reform” the U.S. refugee and asylum system without dealing with the ongoing, worsening, disasterous dysfunction at EOIR is a fool’s errand. The way to make the system work more efficiently is to grant the large number of deserving asylum cases in a timely, practical, manner driven by due process, best practices, and best interpretations of asylum law. Unless and until those in charge act on this truth, the awful mess at EOIR will continue to be an existential threat to democracy!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-03-22

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  3. DEMS NEED TO STOP REPEATING THE BOGUS 🤥 NARRATIVES ABOUT THE (LARGELY SELF-CREATED & OVERBLOWN) “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS:” Channeling “Courtside,” Yale Schacher Sets Forth A Plan For Using Experts To Not Only Reinstitute But Drastically Improve Due Process ⚖️🗽🇺🇸 For Asylum Seekers! — It’s NOT Rocket 🚀 Science!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

🗽👍HUMANITY WINS:  FOOD, SHELTER, REPRESENTATION, TEAMWORK, OVERCOME DeSANTIS’S & ABBOTT’S CRUEL SHENANIGANS! — DeSantis created “a picture of a carefully orchestrated, taxpayer-funded operation with little apparent concern for the interests of the migrants caught in the middle.” 

Beth Reinhard
Beth Reinhard
Investigative Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: WashPost Website
Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Immigration Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: WashPost Website

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/25/desantis-perla-migrant-flight-marthas-vineyard/

This WashPost article by , and sets forth in detail how the courage and perserverance of asylum seekers, the humanity and initiative of the local community in Martha’s Vineyard, timely assistance by the Massachusetts Government, and heroic efforts by pro bono lawyers, came together  to  “redirect” the cruelty behind nativist GOP Govs’ idiotic political stunt. 

. . . .

Nearly two weeks later, though, Jose is one of dozens of migrants who now question Perla’s efforts to entice them onto a flight that unexpectedly ended on the wealthy island of Martha’s Vineyard — a political operation engineered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to gin up outrage over the United States’ border crisis.

Much remains unknown about the effort. While DeSantis has embraced his role in staging the flight, arguing that it protected Florida from “negative ramifications” of a border crossing surge, his office has been less clear about the purpose of nearly $1.6 million paid to a contractor, according to state records, and the role of state officials in developing the plan.

But Post interviews with several migrants directly recruited by Perla, as well as court documents and state records, paint a picture of a carefully orchestrated, taxpayer-funded operation with little apparent concern for the interests of the migrants caught in the middle. Florida officials began researching Texas’s migrant situation weeks before the flights, and a contractor with ties to the DeSantis administration later handled the efforts. Some migrants, meanwhile, say they were misled into signing documents after being lured into the trip with food and hotel stays.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Imagine what could be accomplished if Texas and Florida officials actually worked to HELP resettle individuals in an orderly and reasonable manner that recognized their humanity and respected and facilitated their legal rights to apply for asylum and other protections in the US? What if the Biden Administration actually brought in a team of qualified experts to lead and operate our existing refugee and asylum systems fairly and effectively instead of using stale approaches and personnel who simply lack the skills, vision, and courage to get the job done?

Fortunately, the asylum seekers, NGOs, and state and local officials, and ordinary citizens in welcoming American communities have stepped up to get the job done notwithstanding the glaring failures and counterproductive efforts of the previously-mentioned groups!

The preposterous attempt by DeSantis to link “sanctuary” with asylum seekers! Loosely speaking, “sanctuary jurisdictions” are those that have declined to voluntarily cooperate with certain ICE enforcement activities, primarily directed at so-called “civil” immigration enforcement. 

But, the Venezuelan asylum seekers “orbited” to Martha’s Vineyard had all been examined by DHS and released to pursue their legal requests for asylum in the US! Indeed, most probably turned themselves in to DHS Enforcement after being forced to cross illegally to present claims that the U.S. Government (with the connivence of GOP state Attorneys General and biased right wing Federal Judges) has refused to accept at legal ports of entry as they are supposed to do under our laws. 

These individuals are NOT “wanted” by ICE enforcement. There is no connection whatsoever between any “sanctuary jurisdiction’s” decision not to cooperate with ICE enforcement in rounding up certain individuals for possible deportation and legal asylum seekers from Venezuela (or any other country) pursuing their claims, beyond the fact that sanctuary jurisdictions value human dignity and are more welcoming to migrants of all types and statuses when called upon to provide assistance to them.

Venezuelan asylum seekers are part of the larger forced exodus of 6-7 million Venezuelans escaping the repression of the Maduro regime. 95% of these forced migrants have found refuge in countries OTHER than the U.S. Colombia is the largest destination country with at least 1.7 million Venezuelans, many times more than the U.S.

The vast majority of Venezuelans have found refugee in countries far poorer and less able to resettle them than the U.S. The idea that “sanctuary policies” of Martha’s Vineyard or any other U.S. jurisdiction is driving Venezuelan asylum seekers is beyond absurd. Indeed, it now appears that the Venezuelan asylum seekers “orbited” to Martha’s vineyard as part of the DeSantis scheme neither knew where it was nor had any idea they were being sent there until they were well on their way! 

Indeed, the decision to  send these individuals to an island with neither a DHS Office nor an Immigration Court (as opposed to, say, resettling them in Boston with advance notice), and with few “own site” pro bono lawyers, actually undermined their ability to comply with legal requirements and squandered resources that could and should have been put into getting timely and fair adjudications of their legal asylum applications. But, even in the face of GOP-led efforts to create maximum chaos, these legal asylum seekers and their supporters are committed to making our legal system work — against all odds! 

Finally, congrats to Molly Hennessy-Fiske, long time LA Times immigration reporter who has now joined the team at WashPost!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-26-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🤮🤯🏴‍☠️👎🏽GARLAND’S DOJ GOES “FULL MILLER LITE” ON TRAUMATIZED REFUGEE FAMILIES! — Some Dem “Strategists” Like New Policy: Dis Progressives, Abandon Campaign Promises, Trash Vulnerable Migrant Families Of Color In Hopes Of Appeasing White Nationalist GOP Nativists!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”