"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
An outside expert who inspected an immigration detention center in Virginia that experienced a massive coronavirus outbreak is recommending that some high-risk inmates be released after finding flaws in the center’s screening procedures.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered the inspection last month after several detainees filed a lawsuit with the help of legal activist groups. Brinkema faulted the detention complex in Farmville for an outbreak that affected more than 90% of the center’s nearly 300 detainees, including a 72-year-old detainee who died. Government officials fought unsuccessfully to block the inspection.
The expert, Homer Venters, inspected the site last month and filed a report made public Friday that says the center does a poor job of screening inmates for COVID-19 symptoms. He recommended that detainees at high risk for the disease be released.
The report cites “multiple and systematic deficiencies” in the complex’s health services and concludes that to be detained there “represents a significant health risk for high-risk patients.”
A report prepared by an expert hired by the detention center reached different conclusions. That expert, William Reese, said the biggest problem he saw was that detainees were refusing to wear masks. Given the inmates’ “lack of cooperation … it is remarkable that the facility has had no new positive tests among Detainees in nearly a month,” Reese wrote.
Venters, in his report, wrote that inmates dismissed staff entreaties to wear masks because they blamed the facility for getting them sick in the first place. The inmates also told Venters that they felt the masks were unnecessary since most everyone in the facility had already contracted the virus.
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At an earlier hearing, Brinkema criticized a “bureaucratic circus” for causing the outbreak, saying the center violated its own procedures by accepting 74 transfers from facilities in hot spot states Florida and Arizona without implementing any quarantine procedures.
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined comment on the report, citing the ongoing litigation.
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Read the full report at the link.
Your taxpayer dollars at work, being used by DHS to abuse detainees and cover up Government wrongdoing.
We’ll see what Judge Brinkema makes of this absurdly dysfunctional, taxpayer funded mess. “Kakistocracy in action,” as veteran “DHS Watchers” say!
But, if the immigration justice system were functional, this problem would never have gotten to Judge Brinkema. A “real” Immigration Court, with fair, impartial, expert judges, free from political bias and interference, would have shut down most of the unnecessary and abusive DHS Gulag long ago. A real Appellate Division of that court would have established sensible nationwide precedents requiring release of vulnerable detainees to suitable placements.
Due process, fundamental fairness, and a truly independent and properly qualified judiciary that enforced them would save lives while promoting systemic efficiency. “Regime change” is an essential first step to saving our democracy. It starts in November!
Trump cabinet officials voted in 2018 White House meeting to separate migrant children, say officials
“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Trump adviser Stephen Miller, say officials present at a White House meeting.
by Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff | NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON — In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.
Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, led the meeting and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
It had been nearly a month since then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had launched the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, announcing that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with small children. But so far, U.S. border agents had not begun separating parents from their children to put the plan into action, and Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, was furious about the delay.
Those invited included Sessions, Nielsen, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and newly installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
Nielsen told those at the meeting that there were simply not enough resources at DHS, nor at the other agencies that would be involved, to be able to separate parents, prosecute them for crossing the border and return them to their children in a timely manner, according to the two officials who were present. Without a swift process, the children would enter into the custody of Health and Human Services, which was already operating at near capacity.
Two officials involved in the planning of zero tolerance said the Justice Department acknowledged on multiple occasions that U.S. attorneys would not be able to prosecute all parents expeditiously, so sending children to HHS was the most likely outcome.
As Nielsen had said repeatedly to other officials in the weeks leading up to the meeting, according to two former officials, the process could get messy and children could get lost in an already clogged system.
Miller saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct, but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. Miller, with the support of Sessions, advocated for separating all immigrant families, even those going through civil court proceedings, the former officials said.
While “zero tolerance” ultimately separated nearly 3,000 children from their parents, what Miller proposed would have separated an additional 25,000, including those who legally presented themselves at a port of entry seeking asylum, according to Customs and Border Protection data from May and June 2018.
That plan never came to fruition, in large part because DHS officials had argued it would grind the immigration process to a halt. But after Sessions’ announcement that all families entering illegally would be prosecuted, the onus had fallen on DHS to act.
At the meeting, Miller accused anyone opposing zero tolerance of being a lawbreaker and un-American, according to the two officials present.
“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Miller, according to the two officials. It was not unusual for Miller to make claims like this, but this time he was adamant that the policy move forward, regardless of arguments about resources and logistics.
No one in the meeting made the case that separating families would be inhumane or immoral, the officials said. Any moral argument regarding immigration “fell on deaf ears” inside the White House, said one of the officials.
“Miller was tired of hearing about logistical problems,” said one of the officials. “It was just, ‘Let’s move forward and staff will figure this out.'”
Frustrated, Miller accused Nielsen of stalling and then demanded a show of hands. Who was in favor of moving forward, he asked?
A sea of hands went up. Nielsen kept hers down. It was clear she had been outvoted, according to the officials.
In the days immediately following the meeting, Nielsen had a conversation with then-CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan inside her office at the Ronald Reagan Building, and then signed a memo instructing DHS personnel to prosecute all migrants crossing the border illegally, including parents arriving with their children.
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Read the rest of the report, detailing the full extent of this outrageous, illegal, and immoral conduct by corrupt high-level officials of our Government, at the link. This is what your tax dollars have been used for, while legitimate needs like coronavirus testing, disaster relief (see, Iowa), mail delivery, naturalization services, unemployment relief, etc., go unmet!
So, separated families and children continue to suffer, much of the harm and trauma irreparable and life-defining. This “policy” was so clearly illegal and unconstitutional that DOJ attorneys conceded its unconstitutionality in Federal Court.
However, in an ethics-free DOJ, those same lawyers falsely claimed that there was no such policy. Rudimentary “due diligence”on their part, required by professional ethics, would have revealed that their representations on behalf of corrupt institutional “clients” were false.
The article also confirms the complicity of Kevin “Big MacWith Lies” McAleenan in gross, intentional human rights violations. Courtsideexposed “Big Mac” long ago!
While the victims continue to suffer, Miller, Sessions, Nielsen, Big Mac, and other cowards who planned and carried out these “crimes against humanity,”directed at some of the most vulnerable humans in the world, remain at large. Some, like Miller, actually remain on the “public dole.” Likely, so do the DOJ lawyers who unprofessionally defended and helped obscure this misconduct in Federal Court.
It’s also worth examining the role of U.S. Magistrate Judges and U.S. District Judges along the southern border, most of whom turned a blind eye to the transparent racial and political motives, not to mention the grotesque misallocation of public resources, driving Sessions’s “zero tolerance”misdirection of scarce prosecutorial resources from serious felonies to minor immigration prosecutions.
As I’ve been saying, “Better Federal Judges for a better America!” And, better Federal Judges start with removal of the Trump regime as well as the ousting of “Moscow Mitch” and the GOP from Senate control.
Will there ever be accountability? Our national soul and future might depend on the answer!
Had enough wanton cruelty, neo-Nazism, corruption, illegality, immorality, cowardice, lies, false narratives, racism, stupidity, and squandering of tax dollars on nativist schemes and gimmicks? Get motivated and take action to get our nation back on track to being that “City upon a Hill” that the rest of the world used to admire and respect!
This November, vote like your life and the very future of humanity depend on it! Because they do!
More than twice as many immigrants have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement this fiscal year than last after two detainees died this week. That brought this year’s total to 17, compared with eight deaths last year.
A 72-year-old Canadian man who had tested positive for the coronavirus died in ICE custody on Wednesday night at a Virginia hospital, the agency said Friday in a statement.
James Thomas Hill reported feeling shortness of breath to staff at an ICE detention facility in Farmville, Virginia, on July 10 and was admitted to Centra Southside Community Hospital before being transferred to Lynchburg General Hospital the following day, ICE said.
A COVID-19 test administered by hospital staff came back positive on July 11, the agency said.
Hill entered ICE custody on April 11 following his release from the Rivers Federal Correctional Institute in North Carolina after serving 13 years of a 26-year prison sentence for health care fraud and distributing a controlled substance, according to ICE. An immigration judge had ordered his removal on May 12, ICE said. At the time of his death, Hill was in ICE custody pending his removal to Canada, the agency said.
The agency said it had notified the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility, the Canadian consulate and Hill’s next of kin. His death was first reported by BuzzFeed News.
A 51-year-old Taiwanese man died Wednesday afternoon at a Florida hospital after being a diagnosed with a “massive intercranial hemorrhage,” ICE said in a separate statement Thursday.
Kuan Hui Lee was found unresponsive at the Krome Service Processing Center in Florida on July 31 and taken to the Kendall Regional Medical Center.
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I think this is just the beginning of the true carnage that advocates have been predicting for months. And that doesn’t even count those killed after being “orbited” by DHS in violation of the statute and due process as a complicit Supremes majority egged them on.
The shame of our nation’s intentional dehumanization and mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants under the Trump regime won’t be eradicated. What kind of “democracy” runs a “Gulag” for non-criminals where all “sentences” are arbitrary and indefinite and the there is no readily available impartial review of detention by a neutral and detached magistrate? Where Supreme Court Justices worry more about the impact of “nationwide injunctions” and “bogus emergencies” declared by an patently unqualified and invidiously biased Executive than they do about the lives, health, and freedom of individuals whose “crime” is to assert their legal and Constitutional rights?
While the problem starts with a White Nationalist, racist regime and a feckless GOP-controlled Senate under Moscow Mitch, those Federal Judges at all levels who could have put an end to these “crimes against humanity,” but failed to do so, also bear responsibility for the death and destruction of human lives by the regime.
Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts, Never (Again). Better Justices & Judges For A Better America!
The Trump administration has proposed a new rule that would allow it to deny asylum to immigrants who are deemed a public health risk.
The soon-to-be published rule would let the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to block immigrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. based on “potential international threats from the spread of pandemics,” according to a notice announcing it Wednesday.
The rule would apply to immigrants seeking asylum and those seeking “withholding of removal” — a protected immigration status for those who have shown they may well face danger if returned to their home countries.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
This outrageous, totally pretextual, racist proposal violates the Constitution, asylum laws, international agreements, morality, and human values. The factual basis is absurd since there has been no showing that asylum applicants are a source of COVID spread. To the contrary, unnecessarily detained asylum applicants have been victims of Trump’s failed policies. Moreover, if DHS actually were worried about COVID, they could easily test and quarantine to identify and deal constructively and humanely with the few applicants who might have been infected someplace other than DHS facilities.
This is White Nationalist racism at its worst.
We need better judges, and particularly better Justices on the Supremes, for a better America! Judges who will prevent, rather than encourage, racist-driven “crimes against humanity.” Standing up against such crimes, particularly when they are disgracefully directed by a racist Executive at our most vulnerable humans, should be a “no-brainer” for a unanimous Supremes with Justices qualified for the high offices they hold. For the “JR Five” a “no brainer” has too often been a “non-starter.” So, the regime’s gross abuses of migrants and people of color and the damage, societal disorder, wasted time, squandered resources, and the human misery they cause roll on.
“Dred Scottification” is wrong! Period! And Supreme Court Justices who enable it are wrong for America!
This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!
Michelle Mendez Defending Vulnerable Populations Director Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Michelle Mendez responds for CLINIC to McHenry’s latest decision in an e-mail to Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community:
Subject: [immprof] RE: Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC., 28 I&N Dec. 16 (DIR 2020)
Dan, thank you for sharing this new decision from EOIR Director McHenry.
This second decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC. from EOIR Director McHenry may seem to come out of nowhere so, since the decision is aimed at CLINIC, we would like to provide background.
CLINIC’s network is comprised of approximately 380 immigration legal services organizations many of which have successfully relied on Recognition and Accreditation program to expand their legal services capacity in serving low-income immigrant communities. In support of our network, CLINIC has specifically catered to the needs of Accredited Representatives by, as examples, designing trial skills and legal writing trainings just for them and supporting them on their accreditation applications to EOIR. Given our expertise and interest in the Recognition and Accreditation program, when EOIR Director McHenry issued a call for amicus briefs on Recognition and Accreditation issues, CLINIC submitted a brief and we later learned, via the (first) decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), that we were the sole org to appear as amicus.
Unfortunately, in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), EOIR Director McHenry’s discussion of the skills needed to attain full accreditations was vague, unclear, and therefore confusing. Footnotes 13 and 14 in the decision appear to fault the applicant for full accreditation status for not practicing before EOIR before being granted full accreditation. At worst, the decision could lead one to infer that accredited representatives had to engage in unauthorized practice of immigration law to get the skills needed for full accreditation. We brought this issue to EOIR Director McHenry’s attention and he entertained our feedback during a phone conversation while disagreeing with our concerns. While the phone call was ultimately unhelpful as to this issue, we were able to discern just how unfamiliar he is with the Recognition and Accreditation program. At one point he stated that it was “totally conceivable that [accredited representatives] have some litigation experience.” It is not totally conceivable and we informed him of this too. After our call we sent EOIR Director McHenry the attached letter. We followed up with EOIR Director McHenry on Tuesday. On Wednesday he responded that “a type of formal response is forthcoming.” On Thursday he issued this second, published decision in which he chastises us for challenging him when we, as mere amicus curiae, have “no authority” to do so. However, you will notice that he also took the opportunity to clarify the very points we told him were vague and problematic. Of course, EOIR Director McHenry did not have to go the published decision route to deal with our concerns, but he preferred to project his power above being collaborative. And we have some concerns that EOIR will use this decision to prevent amici from following up to clear errors in other decisions where the respondent was pro se or the decision addresses in absentia orders. While I am surprised that CLINIC seemingly made him feel threatened, as a respected retired IJ said, it is an “honor to be called out in something like this.”
I am not on the ICLINIC@LIST.MSU.EDU listserv so if someone could forward this email to them, I would be grateful. Thank you.
Michelle N. Mendez (she/her/ella/elle)
Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)
Here’s a link to McHenry’s decision inBay Area II:
So, CLINIC, the sole Amicus, with much more experience in the Recognition & Accreditation Program than McHenry, offers McHenry some helpful suggestions for clarifying his decision. He should have thanked them and issued an amended decision on his own, as “real courts” sometimes do.
Instead, McHenry threw a hissy fit, imagining that his “authority” was being challenged. While making the suggested clarification, he took the occasion unnecessarily and inappropriately to publicly dump on the Amicus who helped him.
Clearly, the act of an arrogant, yet insecure, person who knows he’s “way over his head” in his job. Sound familiar? But, hardly anything we didn’t already know about the awful legal and management mess at EOIR. And, in many ways a microcosm of the multiple disasters and institutional breakdowns sweeping our nation in the Age of the (Not So) Great Imposter.
I was gratified yesterday to hear former Ambassador Susan Rice on Meet the Press“channel Courtside” by referring to Trump’s so-called intelligence advisors as a “Clown Show” 🤡 in connection with the “Putin’s bounty fiasco.” On the other hand, that our national intelligence is in the hands of sycophantic clowns advising the “Chief Clown” is a cause for grave concern.
Suffice it to say that McHenry’s performance is powerful evidence of the reasons why the Director of EOIR should be abolished, hopefully as part of Article I legislation, and replaced with an “Executive Director,” a purely administrative position with no judicial or “legal policy” functions, and subordinate to and reporting to the Chief Appellate Judgewho would replace the BIA Chair. The recent attempts to “reinsert” an improper adjudicative and “policy” role for the Director is yet another example of the gross legal, ethical, and management failures of EOIR under Trump’s DOJ kakistocracy.
WASHINGTON — The retired judge appointed to act as a friend of the court in the Michael Flynn case strongly urged the court Wednesday not to let the Justice Department abandon the prosecution.
In a scorching 83-page submission, John Gleeson said the government’s move to drop the case was “riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact,” which were contradicted by the positions it has taken in other false statement cases and by its own previous court filings about Flynn’s conduct as well as his decisions to plead guilty twice.
“Even recognizing that the Government is entitled to deference in assessing the strength of its case, these claims are not credible,” the retired judge wrote. “Indeed, they are preposterous. For starters — and most unusually — they are directly and decisively disproven by the Government’s own briefs filed just months ago in this very proceeding.”
Gleeson said judges must ordinarily defer to the wishes of the Justice Department about whether to pursue a prosecution, but not when the motives of the government are suspect. In Flynn’s case, the government’s move to dismiss the case “is based solely on the fact that Flynn is an ally of President Trump.”
Federal District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington appointed Gleeson to submit arguments about why the government should not be allowed to drop the case, so that Sullivan could consider both sides.
The appointment came after the Justice Department last month asked the judge to dismiss the case, having determined that even if Flynn lied to FBI agents in early 2017 about his phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., his lies were not “material” to any investigation and did not, therefore, violate the false statement law at the heart of his case.
Flynn told the FBI that he did talk to Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump transition but denied that they talked about Russia’s response to the latest Obama sanctions or about a forthcoming UN vote. He later admitted that both those statements were untrue.
Those statements, Gleeson said, were clearly important to the FBI’s investigation into potential connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
“It is hard to conceive of a more material false statement than this one,” Gleeson said.
Gleeson said without any firm legal basis for wanting to drop the case, the only other reason must be Flynn’s relationship with Trump. Wednesday’s brief noted that the president tweeted or re-tweeted about Flynn at least 100 times since March 2017.
Clearly the president is personally invested in ensuring that Flynn’s prosecution ends, Gleeson said, adding, “Everything about this irregular.”
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Read the rest of Pete’s article at the link.
Add this to the absolute legal, ethical, constitutional, and management disaster going in in the U.S. Immigration Courts under Barr’s “maliciously incompetent” management, and the case for removing him from office is overwhelming. Won’t happen. But, it should!
Actually, filing a “preposterous motion” backed by clearly untrue assertions is a clear violation of an attorney’s role as an “officer of the court” owing “candor to the tribunal.” If Barr were a private practitioner, it would likely earn him a referral to his state bar authorities for possible discipline or license revocation.
But, in Federal Courts these days the “undue deference” and unfairly favorable treatment of DOJ attorneys continues. It has actually been institutionalized, and even unjustly rewarded, by the Supremes. Talk about encouraging worst practices and highlighting “negative role models!”
The whole ethical debacle of the Trump Administration DOJ and the overall feckless performance of our Federal Courts, particularly the Supremes and certain Circuit Courts of Appeals, at halting clear Executive abuses and requiring honesty and professionalism (including rejecting racist or religiously bigoted agendas) from the Federal Government before tribunals cries out for a serious re-examination of: 1) who should be sitting on the Federal Bench; 2) what ethical standards they should be held to; and 3) the undue favoritism and leniency traditionally shown by Federal Courts to Government lawyers engaging in misrepresentations, sloppy work, promoting pretexts for overtly racist agendas, and constantly using dilatory litigation tactics intended to punish individual litigants for asserting their legal rights.
The last three years have shown that better Federal Judges and much more courageous, effective judicial leadership committed to guaranteeing due process and fairness for all is absolutely necessary for our nation to achieve “equal justice under law.” The current sorry state of the Article III Judiciary shows that police departments are not the only part of our broken justice system that needs reform and some “different faces” to achieve equal justice under law. As a nation, we can’t achieve social and racial justice with the gang that promoted, enabled, and in some cases even encouraged injustice in charge. And, that goes for all three failed branches of our Federal Government.
George Floyd’s death should never have happened; nor should families be separated, kids put in cages, legal asylum applicants told to rot in Mexico, and Billy Barr be allowed to operate unconstitutional “Star Chambers” masquerading as “courts” (when they are nothing of the sort). The problems in our justice system go much deeper than the Minneapolis Police Department!
Yes, they can be solved! But, not without some new faces, new approaches, and some progressive thinking and input from all of society, particularly our younger generations! You have to believe in equal justice to achieve equal justice! We can’t get there with the current gang of “non-believers” in charge and promoting their failed, and all too often overtly or covertly racially biased, agendas.
Due Process Forever!
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has expedited the deportation of child migrants during the coronavirus pandemic, citing public health, but documents obtained by NBC News show that as far back as 2017, now–DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf sought to expedite child deportations in order to discourage Central American asylum seekers.
Recent reports from immigration lawyers, DHS officials and congressional staff have indicated a rise in the number of rapid deportations of unaccompanied migrant children. Previously, children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian were given protections under anti-trafficking laws, which included the right to claim asylum and to be placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services until they could be placed with a guardian.
The New York Times recently reported that more than 900 children have been deported under a new policy that sends children back to their home countries before they have had a chance to coordinate plans with a guardian at home or claim asylum in the U.S.. Many of those children, according to the Times, were in the U.S. and living in HHS custody or with family members before the pandemic began.
DHS has said the deportations are justified under Title 42, which allows restrictions on immigration to slow the spread of disease.
But a 2017 policy proposal by Wolf shows that the agency has long sought the ability to deport children more quickly, long before the threat of a virus gave it cover to do so.
The documents were first obtained by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D.-Ore., and then shared with NBC News.
Wolf, who was then chief of staff to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, sent a collection of policy ideas to the Justice Department, which included plans to reclassify unaccompanied migrant children as accompanied once they had been placed in the care of a parent or sponsor.
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Read Julia’s complete article at the link.
As I keep saying, ever since “tanking” on the so-called “Travel Ban Cases,”John Roberts and his GOP buddies on the Supremes have been avoiding their duty to critically examine the clearly invidious motives of the Trump regime. They have encouraged legal and intellectual fraud by inviting the regime to present a plethora of demonstrably bogus pretexts to thinly cloak their unlawful intent.
Undoubtedly, we’re just seeing the “tip of the iceberg” here. Future historians will unearth overwhelming evidence of the racism and other improper drivers of the regime’s cowardly attack on vulnerable children and asylum seekers. They will expose fully the disgraceful role of Roberts and his gang in encouraging and covering up what future generations will almost universally view as grotesque abuses of human rights and the rule of law. Which they are!
This November, we have a chance to change course and start writing an end to this disgraceful chapter of American history. Don’t blow it!
WASHINGTON — Several immigrant rights organizations are outraged by a new choice U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is presenting to migrant parents: Separate from your child or stay together in detention indefinitely.
Starting on Thursday, the groups claim, ICE began distributing a form in all three of its family detention centers that would allow parents to apply for their minor children to be released. The form, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, states that it is in compliance with the Flores court agreement, which prohibits ICE from holding minors for more than 20 days.
The released children are placed with family members, sponsors or placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Trump administration faced intense criticism for a Zero Tolerance policy in 2018 in which undocumented migrant children were separated from parents who had illegally crossed the order. The policy was implemented in May 2018 but reversed after an outcry in June.
The current, “voluntary” concept was previously termed “binary choice,” but has never been fully implemented. Now, lawyers representing clients in ICE family detention say parents may be persuaded to separate from their children if they are worried about exposing them to COVID-19 in detention.
The timing is no coincidence, said Shayln Fluharty, director of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which provides legal services for families in detention in Dilley, Texas. A federal judge recently told ICE it was not in compliance with the Flores agreement, and the forms, said Fluharty, are a way for ICE to show that these parents have chosen to keep their children in detention.
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Read the rest of Julia’s article at the link.
Just another “in your face” unlawful move by DHS officials sending a strong message of contempt to the Federal Judges handling various aspects of the regime’s intentional child abuse, family separation, and punishing asylum seeking families by needless imprisonment in the New American Gulag (“NAG”).
Yes, the District Court Judges handling these matters have ordered the Government to take various forms of corrective action. But, even where the judges use forceful language, it’s largely ineffective to change illegal policies. The regime and its officials just play “hide the ball” and develop schemes and “work arounds” to violate the law and court orders in other ways. That they continue to do this over and over – a strategy known as “malicious compliance” – shows their total disrespect for the Federal Courts and that they share Trump and Miller’s belief that they are above the law.
So far, particularly in the immigration and refugee area, the scofflaws have largely prevailed.They have dismembered immigration and asylum laws with neither legislative enactments nor meaningful judicial consequences. They have publicly and arrogantly “thumbed their noses” at court orders they don’t like. Unless and until the Federal Judges back up their orders by holding Chad Wolf and other scofflaw officials in contempt – real contempt – jail time not just meaningless fines – the abuse and the open disregard for the rule of law and for the authority of Federal Judges will continue.
The law, our Constitution, and human rights will continue to be mocked. Even the best of Federal Judges will appear feckless unless and until they start treating immigration officials as the lawless criminals they actually are!
Undoubtedly, some of the children and families intentionally being abused, dehumanized, and punished by the Trump regime as Federal Courts play bystander won’t survive long enough to tell their stories. But, some will. While those officials, legislators, and judges enabling, or in some cases masterminding and encouraging, these abuses appear likely to escape “temporal” legal accountability for their actions, moral and historical accountability are a different matter altogether. Lots of folks who believe they are “operating under the radar screen” are going to look very bad when the light of history shines on the grotesque human rights, moral, and constitutional violations at our borders and in our Gulags and those who carried them out or failed to effectively halt them.
A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration was again violating a longstanding agreement that compels the government to release migrant children detained at the border within 20 days and ordered the minors be released.
Plaintiffs represented by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law have been challenging the child detention policies of the administration of President Donald Trump in Los Angeles federal court, where they’ve alleged the coronavirus crisis has caused further delays in the mandated release of migrant children.
The challenges are being waged under a 1997 settlement between immigrant advocates and the government known as the Flores agreement. It generally requires children detained at the border and kept in nonlicensed facilities to be released within weeks.
Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee oversees the settlement and issued a mixed ruling to enforce the Flores agreement and again ordered the government to “expedite the release” of children in its custody.
“This court order could very well prevent hundreds of children from becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 infection, and may even save some children’s lives,” longtime plaintiffs’ attorney Peter Schey said by email. “On behalf of the 5,000 detained children we represent, we are deeply grateful for the court’s humane order.”
The Flores agreement has faced multiple challenges since the Trump administration in 2018 enacted a policy of separating family members at the border as a means of dissuading illegal crossings. The administration backed down but was slow to reunite children when their parents.
Plaintiffs alleged the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement stopped releasing children to parents, relatives or potential guardians in New York, California and Washington to avoid becoming entangled in those states’ stay-at-home rules during the pandemic.
They also argued the government was dragging its feet by halting the release process for some children because parents, relatives and potential guardians couldn’t easily be fingerprinted for background checks.
Plaintiffs said delays endangered children as the virus could spread in detention facilities, citing a nonprofit facility in Texas “placed under a 14-day quarantine order,” according to Friday’s ruling.
They also alleged that a teen turned 18 during “quarantine” and was released to ICE rather than going to a family placement program “already secured for him.”
Gee did not agree with all those claims. But she concluded: “ORR and ICE shall continue to make every effort to promptly and safely release” children represented by plaintiffs.
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The solution is obvious: 1) release the kids👍; 2) jail Stephen ☠️🤮Miller👍👍👍.
Here’s a copy of Judge Gee’s latest order in Flores v. Barr:
The union for lawyers and support staff who handle Justice Department immigration appeals says their office’s working conditions put workers’ lives in danger. And employees in the DOJ office handling those immigration appeals said many suspect it’s because the department prioritizes high deportation numbers over worker safety.
“I feel like half the time, I’m working on Trump’s reelection,” said an employee in the office who spoke anonymously because of concerns about retaliation. “This is just a piece for him to tout when reelection time comes up about how much he’s getting done.”
It’s an accusation a spokesperson for the office vehemently denied. But the conflict is no longer being kept in the DOJ family; the president of that union recently filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), saying management requires too many people to come into the office, putting workers at risk of contracting Covid-19, the sickness caused by the novel coronavirus. Concerns in the office about worker safety were first reported by Government Executive.
At issue are working conditions in DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The office oversees America’s immigration courts––which are part of the Justice Department––and lawyers there handle appeals from immigrants fighting deportation orders. Those courts face a mammoth backlog of more than one million cases, by Syracuse University’s count. Despite hiring more immigration judges, the backlog has doubled under the Trump administration.
EOIR leaders have maximized how much telework employees there can do, the spokesperson said, adding that the office “takes the safety, health, and well-being of its employees very seriously.”
But the OSHA complaint, which Politico reviewed, says the office is violating a federal law mandating workplaces be free of “hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”
“The agency’s actions described below are proliferating the spread of a known and deadly contagion both within our building and to our surrounding communities,” the complaint reads. The office policies “are expected to result in death and severe health complications and/or possible life-long disabilities,” it says.
The office requires most support staff to come in, rather than telework, as they deal with physical pieces of paper and files as part of their work, per the complaint. The few who can work from home can only do so once a week, and on rotating days because they share the same laptop, the complaint reads. At work, support staff sit in cubicles in a shared area, “in direct breathing paths of each other,” it says.
Nancy Sykes, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3525, filed the complaint on behalf of the union. It represents non-managerial Board of Immigration Appeals employees in the office, including attorneys, paralegals, clerks, and legal assistants.
The EOIR spokesperson, meanwhile, said the office is working to implement coronavirus guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of Personnel Management, and the General Services Administration.
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Read the rest of Betsy’s report at the link. Long a superstar at The Daily Beast, and an articulate “repeat panelist” on “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd, it’s great to have Betsy “back on the immigration beat” as a part of her “new portfolio” over at Politico. I’ve always found Betsy’s clear prose and insightful analysis enlightening!
Typically within the Trump immigration kakistocracy, the harshest consequences fall jump-on the most vulnerable. In Immigration Court, it’s often unrepresented asylum seekers, some of them mere children, being railroaded through the system with regard to neither due process nor a legally correct application of asylum law. Here, the brunt of the latest EOIR assault on human dignity during the pandemic appears to fall on the support staff at the “bottom of the totem pole” of EOIR’s “bloated at the top,” yet astoundingly misdirected and consequently inefficient, bureaucracy. What a way to run the railroad — even a “Deportation Railroad!” 🚂
As my good friend and Round Table colleague, Judge Jeffrey Chase said: “In spite of having very genuine concerns, the BIA staff are generally off the radar. Thanks to Betsy for spotlighting them. The BIA staff union and the NAIJ put out a joint statement yesterday; let’s hope this begins a period of increased communication and cooperation.”
Many of us “old timers” remember a bygone era when the BIA staff was considered one of the premier places for career attorneys to work at the DOJ. This was largely because staff were treated “like family.” The BIA, in cooperation with the union, actually “pioneered” things like “flexible work schedules” and “work from home” at the DOJ. That union (of which I actually was among the “founding members” back in the 1970’s) was perhaps the first one at the DOJ to represent the interests of both attorneys and support staff. Those times sadly are long gone.
As I’ve mentioned before, under the Trump regime, EOIR “non-management” employees at all levels levels are treated with a disrespect, intentional demeaning, and callous disregard for health and welfare usually reserved for those poor souls trapped in what passes for an immigration justice system under the White Nationalist driven Trump regime. Risking employees’ lives to promote Trump’s reelection agenda? That’s actually illegal on a number of accounts. But, don’t expect any corrective actions in an era where the “rule of law” has been willfully distorted and undermined as Congress and the Article IIIs simply melt away under Trump’s contemptuous scofflaw onslaught.
Unhappily, as Betsy’s article highlights, there appears to be little chance of meaningful change unless and until enough employees actually start dropping dead, by which time it will be too late.
But, as I keep pointing out, there are “other villains” here. Despite DOJ/EOIR efforts to suppress truth, all of this basically is happening in “plain sight,” as we know from folks like Judge Ashley Tabaddor, the NAIJ, the BIA union, former Judges on the Round Table who are speaking out, courageous employees willing to “blow the whistle” anonymously, as well as reporters like Betsy, Erich Wagner atGovernment Executive (who “broke” this story), and Malathi Nayak at Bloomberg News, to name just a few. The unconstitutional mockery of Due Process, immigration, and asylum laws in Immigration Court hearings is documented in verbatim transcripts available to the Article III Courts and the Congress.
Yet, Congress and the Article III Courts let these grotesqueabuses within our justice system go on largely unabated. It’s a disgusting and disturbing saga of the breakdown of America’s democratic institutions and their replacement by an authoritarian, “Third-World style” kakistocracy, headed by a dangerously incompetent and unrestrained clown 🤡 whom thosecharged with protecting us and our institutions refuse to hold accountable.
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!🇺🇸 We need “regime change” at all levels. And, that certainly includes a better, more courageous, more scholarly Federal Judiciary that understands immigration and human rights, believes in Due Process and fundamental fairness for all under law, and will finally stand up and put an end to these gross abuses if Congress doesn’t act first. Obviously, it’s also essential to get a new Executive committed to advancing, rather than destroying, our Constitution and the rule of law and who will strive for best, rather than worst, practices in all phases of government.
April 21, 2020. Migrants didn’t bring coronavirus to the U.S. Inevitable as its arrival was, U.S. travelers returning from abroad hastened the infection. The Trump regime ignored advanced warnings, wasted time, failed to prepare, and intentionally misled the public into believing that the problem was minor and under control. As we know, it was neither. No wonderthe “Chief Clown” needs to shift attention to “the usual suspects.”
Rather than being a threat, courageous, talented, hard-working migrants of all types have been at the forefront of our battle against coronavirus. They put their own lives at risk to provide health care, medical research, food, sanitation, delivery, stocking, transportation, cleaning, technology, and other essential services. Their reward from Trump, Miller, and the other regime racists: to be scapegoated and further dehumanized by those whose “malicious incompetence” actually threatens the health and safety of all Americans.
Nobody knows what the U.S. economy will look like post-COVID-19. But, we can be sure that migrants will play a key role in our future. And, of course, permanent legal immigrants are carefully screened and required to undergo health examination before being admitted.
Meanwhile, Democrats complain, but show show no sign of actually using their leverage to halt the regime’s invidious assault on migrants. They weren’t even to get all taxpaying immigrant families included in the initial stimulus payments nor have they been able to require immigration authorities to comply with best health practices for detained migrants. Nor does it look like the needs of migrants will be addressed by the latest proposed legislation, although exact details are still pending. So, their bluster is just that —bluster.
Undoubtedly, the brave lawyers of the New Due Process Army will mount legal challenges to this latest assault on the rule of law. While some challenges might succeed in the lower Federal Courts, to date the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes have shown no inclination to look critically at any of the regime’s many misuses and abuses of so-called “emergency” and “national security” rationales, even when they are transparently bogus “pretexts” for xenophobia, religious bigotry, and racism.
Perhaps it’s largely a moot point right now. Market forces affect immigration. With worldwide travel restrictions, borders closed, and 22 million out of work in the U.S., the allure of migration to the U.S. should be sharply reduced.
The Trump regime’s open hostility to immigrants plus our chaotic response to COVID-19, perhaps the world’s worst overall at this point, might make the U.S. a less attractive place for future immigration, particularly for legal migrants who have other choices. Demand for migration is normally a sign of economic and social health. As America fades into disorder under the kakistocracy, so might our ability to attract migrants, particularly those we claim to prize.
According to James Hohmann at the Washington Post, senior officials at the DHS were surprised by Trump’s late night tweet announcing the impending action. As Hohmann noted, that’s an indication of the deep thought, analysis, and preparation that went into this action. Trump has normalized incompetence and dumb decisions made based on a racist political agenda to the point where they barley cause a ripple in our distorted national discussion anymore. I’d say it was like being “goverened” by a five-year-old, but that would be a supreme insult to most five-year-olds I know.
While the “Chief Clown” can’t move fast enough to reopen the economy, even in the face of solid evidence that the it’s premature in most areas, don’t expect the bogus “immigration emergency” to end as long as this regime is in power. Crisis becomes yet another opportunity for the “worst of the worst among us” — the kakistocracy — to act on their biases and prejudices and get away with it.
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats slammed President Donald Trump after he announced that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, arguing that such a move does nothing to protect Americans from the coronavirus and deflects attention away from his handling of the outbreak.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., tweeted that Trump is the “xenophobe. In. chief.”
“This action is not only an attempt to divert attention away from Trump’s failure to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, but an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda. We must come together to reject his division,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Shortly after 10 p.m. ET on Monday, Trump announced in a tweet, “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
There were no additional details. A senior administration official said Trump could sign the executive order as early as this week.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee, called it a “pathetic attempt to shift blame from his Visible Incompetence to an Invisible Enemy.”
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Read Rebecca’s full article at the link.
Due Process Forever. The White Nationalist Kakistocracy Never!
“There can be a good rebound on the other side of this,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
The coronavirus pandemic is putting unprecedented strain on the U.S. economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday in an exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie on the “TODAY” show, noting, “There can be a good rebound on the other side of this.”
“We may well be in a recession,” Powell said, in a rare live interview. “But I would point to the difference between this and a normal recession. There is not anything fundamentally wrong with our economy. Quite the contrary. We are starting from a very strong position.”
“This is a unique situation,” Powell said, when asked if the economy could withstand a monthlong shutdown. “I think people need to understand this is not a typical downturn. People are being asked to close their business, to stay home from work, and to not engage in certain economic activity, and so they are pulling back. At a certain point, we will get the virus under control and confidence will return.”
The Fed said such extreme action was warranted because “the coronavirus outbreak has harmed communities and disrupted economic activity in many countries, including the United States.”
By making borrowing as cheap as possible, the central bank hopes to give companies and individuals ready access to nearly interest-free cash to invest and spend.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak
“We’re trying to make a bridge from a very strong economy to another place of economic strength,” Powell said Thursday, by stepping in and replacing lending to small- and medium-sized businesses and other “places where credit is not being offered.”
The Senate approved the 880-page bill in a unanimous 96-0 vote. The measure would provide billions of dollars in credit for struggling industries, a significant boost to unemployment insurance and direct cash payments to Americans.
With regard to President Donald Trump’s hope to reopen the economy by Easter, Powell said, “We are not experts in pandemics over here. We don’t get to make that decision. We would tend to listen to the experts. Dr. [Anthony] Fauci said something like, ‘The virus is going to set the timetable,’ and that sounds right to me.”
“The sooner we get the virus under control, people will very willingly open back up their businesses and get back to work,” Powell said.
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If we can just “tune out” Trump and his negative leadership, follow the lead of our health professionals, Governors, and Mayors, and all pull together, putting human lives first, we can get through to better days. Until then, unfortunately, things are likely to get worse as America runs short of basic medical supplies, personnel, and hospital space.
Economies can and will be rebuilt. The dead can’t be brought back to life. Every life we re able to save now is valuable and will pay a dividend, whether economic, emotional, or spiritual, on the other side of the crisis. Already, we’re seeing both young and old come together to help, as medical students and retired health professionals volunteer to step into the breach.
I found Jerome Powell’s interview with Savannah Guthrie of NBC’s Today Show one of the best and most reassuring, from an economic standpoint, interview with a Federal official recently. You can watch it in its entirety at the above link.
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump imposes sweeping entry restrictions in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus — and considers still more — he’s relying on an agency to help implement them that has been hollowed out at the top ranks in a revolving door of leadership, potentially hampering his administration’s response to the crisis.
It has been nearly a year since the Department of Homeland Security has had a Senate-confirmed leader. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, the fourth person to lead the agency in three years, has been on the job less than six months.
In addition, 65 percent of top jobs in the department are vacant or filled by acting appointees, more than in any other federal agency, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that advocates for more effective government. Among the vacancies are the No. 2 official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the department’s top lawyer and the head of the country’s immigration system.
That has led to a cascade of other unfilled jobs, a vacuum of leadership causing major decisions to be deferred and a drop in morale at the agency that was born out of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to coordinate the government’s response to threats, said people close to DHS. After a chaotic rollout over the weekend of restrictions on many travelers from Europe — where those returning to the U.S. were held for hours in cramped conditions — there are new concerns that the agency isn’t prepared to manage what’s to come.
“You have the vacancies, the musical chairs with positions throughout the organization and policies that come down without a lot of forethought putting added stress on a workforce that already has an extremely crucial job to protect the homeland,” said David Lapan, who was a spokesman for DHS during Trump’s first year in office. “So at what point do we break them?”
To Lapan, the chaotic scenes at airports over the weekend were a reminder of what happened when, in the early days of his presidency, Trump abruptly announced travel restrictions on passengers coming from predominately Muslim countries without giving DHS time to prepare.
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Now, lets hear from the always amazing Betsy Woodruff Swan over at her “new home” Politico on how DHS has, predictably, tried to “hide the ball” on the coronavirus exposure of its own employees:
Nearly 500 Homeland Security employees are quarantined because of the novel coronavirus, and at least 13 are confirmed or presumed COVID-19 positive, according to documentation reviewed by POLITICO.
A DHS spokesperson would not to comment on the record for this story.
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The department previously revealed that eight Transportation Security Administration officers had contracted COVID-19.
But the latest numbers are higher and highlight the challenge the novel coronavirus poses to the federal workforce. More than 240,000 people work for DHS, making it the third-largest workforce in the federal government. Many of those employees interact with numerous people every day as part of their work, including employees with Customs and Border Protection and the TSA.
“The department’s leadership is going to have to pay very close attention as this public health crisis evolves,” said John Cohen, former acting undersecretary of intelligence and analysis. “It has to be concerned that its ability to carry out its core mission could be compromised if there’s a widespread outbreak of the virus among DHS personnel. And quite frankly, that’s something that federal, state, and local officials need to be concerned about across the board — that this virus will spread among first responders, law enforcement, and Homeland Security personnel, compromising the ability of those organizations to protect the public.”
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“Because of the president’s outsized focus on the immigration enforcement part of the DHS mission set — since immigration is not the only thing in DHS’ mission — the organization has been under a lot of strain over the last three years,” he said. “The focus on immigration, lots of attention, lots of presidential pressure, vacancies, changes in leadership, the government shutdown, people having to work without pay — after all of that, add on this pandemic and I think you have cause for concern about a workforce that has been under extended stress now having to endure yet more.”
So, it’s hardly surprising that faced with a genuine crisis that threatens health and safety, the DHS is rudderless, ill-prepared to respond, and continues to hide the real human consequences of its malicious incompetence, thereby endangering both its own line employees as well as the entire U.S. public.
Betsy Woodruff Swan is one of my favorite guest panelists on “Meet the Press.” Clear, concise, articulate, analytical! I assisted Betsy occasionally in the past when she was at The Daily Beast. I hope that in her new role she will get “re-involved” in immigration coverage. In any event, great to “post” you again, Betsy!
More than two-thirds of the migrants fleeing Central America’s northern triangle countries – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – experienced the murder, disappearance or kidnapping of a relative before their departure, according to a new study by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The MSF study said 42.5% of interviewees reported the violent death of a relative over the previous two years, while 16.2% had a relative forcibly disappeared and 9.2% had a loved one kidnapped.
The study – based on interviews with migrants and refugees at MSF medical facilities in Central America and Mexico – once again showed the despair driving migrants to abandon some the hemisphere’s poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries.
Central America’s rampant violence fuels an invisible refugee crisis
“We’re speaking of human beings, not numbers,” Sergio Martín, MSF general coordinator in Mexico, said at the study’s presentation on Tuesday. “In many cases, it’s clear that migration is the only possible way out. Staying put is not an option.”
In 45.8% of the interviews, migrants said that “exposure to violent situations” was a key reason for leaving their home country. Of those fleeing due to violence, 36.4% had become internally displaced in their countries of origin, but were eventually forced to flee.
The research was published at a time when the US border is becoming increasingly difficult to reach.
Mexico has been launched a crackdown against people trying to cross its southern frontier and deployed its newly created national guard to dismantle large groups of migrants, while the Trump administration has made the asylum process practically impossible for most applicants.
US officials are returning asylum seekers to dangerous Mexican border cities – where MSF has found many are kidnapped and preyed upon by drug cartels – under scheme known as migrant protection protocols to await their court cases. Some migrants are now being flown to Guatemala to apply for asylum in the impoverished Central American country.
Remain in Mexico: 80% of migrants in Trump policy are victims of violence
“The aggressive migration policies adopted by the US and Mexico mean that more and more people are trapped in a vicious circle,” the MSF report stated. “Patients describe an increase in the predatory violence perpetuated by criminal organisations operating along the migrant route.”
Meanwhile, violence against migrants transit Mexico is escalating, the study found: 39.2% of interviewees were assaulted in the country, while 27.3% were threatened or extorted – with the actual figures likely higher than the official statistics as victims tend not to report crimes committed against them.
Nearly 6% of migrants reported witnessing a death during their time in Mexico, according to MSF. In 17.9% of those cases, it was a murder.
Members of MSF teams have themselves witnessed kidnappings outside migrant shelters.
“The physical obstacles to entering the United States are taken for granted. But what surprises [migrants] … is the violence that they experience in Mexico,” the report said.
“Coming from a country where violence is endemic, they decide to make the journey because they have no other option.”
Violence is just of a range of factors driving migration, and motives vary from region to region and country to country.
A 2019 survey from Creative Associates International found violence was the main driver of migration for 38% of Salvadorans, 18% of Hondurans and 14% of Guatemalans. In Guatemala – the main source of migrants detained at the US border with Mexico – 71% of respondents cited “economic concerns” as their main motive.
Fleeing a hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north
Climate change is increasingly being recognized as a driver of migration – especially from areas in Central America’s “Dry Corridor” – as is political corruption.
“Over the last 20 years in Honduras, the poverty rate hasn’t fallen beneath 60%,” said Father Germán Calix, Honduras director of the Catholic Church’s charitable arm Caritas.
“The lack of policies and actions in favor of the poor has been such that people have lost confidence that this situation can ever be reversed from Honduras.”
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As folks die, are raped, kidnapped, extorted, and abused, as a result of DHS’s policies, Acting CBP Commish Mark Morgan touts how effective massive violations of legal, constitutional, and human rights are at deterring refugees seeking legal protection.
WASHINGTON — The number of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border declined for the eighth month in a row in January, but Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday that in recent weeks the number of average daily apprehensions has risen.
In four of the past five years, apprehensions have begun to increase in February, according to CBP statistics. Morgan said he thinks there might be a spring surge in migrants from Mexico motivated in part by the country’s stagnant economy. The recent uptick is occurring despite tough limitations on asylum opportunities and more aggressive deportation policies.
Morgan noted that the majority of people crossing the border are now individual adults from Mexico, and said that the Trump administration was having success in dissuading Central American families from coming north.
Total apprehensions at the border were lower in January than in recent months, but during the month daily apprehensions began increasing. U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 29,200 individuals crossing at the Southwest border between ports of entry during January, CBP said Tuesday morning, a decrease from the 32,858 people apprehended in December and 33,511 in November.
Morgan touted the agency’s January successes, including the discovery of the longest cross-border tunnel used for smuggling in history and the seizure of more than 50,000 pounds of drugs on the Southwest border.
“We continue to see positive results because of the steps taken by the Trump Administration to control the border and uphold the rule of law,” said Morgan. “We’ve seen eight straight months of decline, but as we see from the seizure of the longest-ever tunnel between the U.S. and Mexico and significant drug seizures, much work remains.”
Migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have decreased, said Morgan. He hailed the administration’s success in reducing numbers of apprehensions from these three countries, crediting security agreements with their governments. He noted that CBP has been promoting the message that if citizens from those countries come to the U.S., “They will be promptly removed and returned.”
The Trump administration has long sought to deter migrants, many of whom were Central American families, from making the journey to the U.S. southern border. Some of the administration’s policies at the border have stoked outrage over the treatment of migrants, such as the 2018 family separation policy that removed children as young as a few months old from their parents and kept them in separate detention facilities.
Last year, the administration implemented a policy to send many asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases play out. It recently began sending some asylum-seekers to Guatemala.
Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policies have said such policies violate migrants’ rights and further endanger them by making them wait in dangerous border towns or in one of the most violent countries in the world, which lacks a robust asylum system. A Human Rights Watch report released earlier this month highlighted the potentially deadly risks to Salvadorans in particular — many of whom are fleeing gang violence — when they are sent to wait in Mexico or deported to El Salvador.
Morgan was also asked about the detention of Iranian Americans on the Northern border in Washington state after the U.S. killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January. CBP denied there was any directive to agents in a tweet, but a memo surfaced weeks later showing the CBP Seattle Field Office had told much of the Northern border to conduct additional screenings of anyone with ties to Iran or Lebanon. He noted that while there was no national directive, the Seattle Field Office got “overzealous” in screening Iranian-Americans and headquarters immediately corrected the action.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who represents Seattle, said, “It’s deeply disturbing that it took my inquiries, a leaked memo and press reports for CBP to finally acknowledge that it inappropriately targeted Iranian Americans at the Washington State-Canada border.”
“We need to know how far-reaching the order was, who it came from and why it took so long for CBP to come clean.”
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The dead can’t speak. Those illegally deported to torture, rape, extortion, abuse, and exploitation often don’t want to.
In an era where the “truly courageous heroes of public service” are punished by Trump while his GOP sycophants cheer, Morgan is a shining example of the very worst and most disgraceful characteristics of those who falsely claim to be serving our national interests!
Obviously, in the age of extreme regime unaccountability, Congressional fecklessness, and Article III Judicial complicity, folks like Morgan literally can “get with murder.” How grotesque, and arrogantly immoral to tout the deadly results of dehumanization and degradation of some of the most vulnerable and needy human beings!
Also worth noting that until hard evidence to the contrary emerged, under Morgan CBP initially lied about detentions of U.S. citizens of Iranian descent at the border.All of this flagrant dishonesty, racism, and impunity was originally enabled and encouraged by the “head in the sand” approach to the regime’s dishonesty and gross violations of the Constitution in the “Travel Ban Cases” by the Supremes led by the “J.R. Five.” Remember that the next time J.R. fecklessly and disingenuously pontificates on the “loss of civility” in legal discourse. What about the loss of human lives due to your complicit performance, J.R.?
A note to future historians:Don’t forget the role played by Morgan and other regime toadies in what properly will be viewed as intentional “crimes against humanity” and attendant cover-ups and minimization of intentionally inflicted human misery and unnecessary suffering. And, certainly J.R. and his other GOP judicial enablers should be “outed” and held accountable for their role in destroying our democratic institutions, encouraging evil, and promoting injustice and dehumanization. They are enablers and knowing participants in “America’s Jim Crow Revival!”
Due Process Forever; Crimes Against Humanity & Toady Bureaucrats & Judges Never!
The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
BY SEBASTIAN MURDOCK
SENIOR REPORTER
HIUFFPOST
The New York Times published an op-ed decrying immigration by an author claiming to be a “liberal restrictionist” who is in fact attached to a known hate group.
The column, published Friday, was written by , “a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies,” according to the biography listed under his byline.
CIS, which calls itself “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,” is a known hate group that has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant movement that hires racist writers and associates with white nationalists.
“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” Kammer’s headline reads. The piece begins with an anecdote about how immigrants take the jobs of American-born workers and later claims “many liberal Democrats” want illegal immigration to run rampant:
Now many liberal Democrats, including those who call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seek to erase the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Under the banner of inclusiveness, equality, human rights, racial reconciliation and reparations for American interventions in the third world, those liberals demand sanctuary for those who make it past the Border Patrol or overstay a visa. Few speak openly of open borders, but that is essentially what they are calling for.
Throughout the piece, Kammer seems set on reminding readers that he is liberal, even if his views might suggest otherwise.
“That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist,” Kammer, a former journalist, writes. “I have long considered myself a moderate liberal, in part because Democrats have always been the allies of working people.”
White House adviser Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, has cited CIS when speaking about immigration, and in 2011, the group released a report attempting to connect immigration with the creation of future terrorists, calling them “terror babies.”
The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science “research” papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language. According to the SPLC, “longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian’s contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements.”
Running a column by an author employed by a known hate group is the latest in the Times’s run of publishing racist pieces in its opinion section. In December, columnist and known bedbug Bret Stephens cited a study by a white nationalist that falsely claimed Ashkenazi Jews have a higher IQ than other races. The study he cited “traffics in centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes,” according to the SPLC.
The New York Times opinion section under editor James Bennet ostensibly aims to challenge the paper’s predominately liberal readers by presenting them with thoughtful critiques of their worldview. In practice, it runs pieces like this recent argument that launching a war against Iran would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East—which was written by a veteran of the Bush administration who had predicted confidently in a 2003 piece also published by the Times that launching a war against Iraq would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East. There was no acknowledgment in the new piece of the old one, as an opinion section committed to intellectual honesty might require, nor was it particularly challenging in the sense of being difficult to rebut. But it did make people on the left feel bad, and like they were losing their minds, which is the bar that Bennet’s section requires an argument to clear.
The essay “I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” published in the Times Thursday, may represent the nadir of this approach. It makes a familiar argument: that “the left” believes in a “post-national” system of open borders which sacrifices the interests of native-born working Americans to the interests of low-skilled foreign immigrants who drive down wages and disrupt the cultural cohesiveness of their communities. It argues for respecting a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and asserts that Donald Trump’s position on immigration can be appreciated, in a non-racist way, as “a patriotic battle to defend common people.” It accuses Trump’s critics of having had their minds addled by “tribal passions” and a fetish for conflict “between ethnic groups,” and it proposes a “conciliatory” policy that would offer amnesty to existing undocumented workers but institute a crackdown regime of visa enforcement that would prevent future undocumented individuals from finding jobs.
The familiarity of the article’s arguments is matched by the familiarity of its flaws. While large-scale immigration is, in fact, believed by some non-racists to flatten wages at the bottom of the pay scale, it’s also known to accelerate rather than retard economic expansion overall, and tends to be supported by progressives who advocate for other means of increasing working-class wages and sharing the benefits of GDP growth. The distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigration is not some ancient, race-agnostic pillar of global affairs, but rather a concept that was instituted in the United States in the early 20th century to explicitly discriminate against Asian, southern European, and eastern European individuals and expanded in the 1960s to explicitly discriminate against Mexicans. Trump’s support is strongest in areas where there are fewer undocumented immigrants, not more, and he lost four of the five states that have the highest undocumented populations per capita. Many of the most immigration-heavy and ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. are also the safest and wealthiest and are considered so desirable to live in by migrating native-born Americans that they are experiencing housing crises.
As to whether criticizing an administration that instituted the premeditated, systematic separation of young children from their parents after they applied legally for asylum is a matter of unseemly “tribal passions,” or whether support for the principles of inclusive American citizenship described on the Statue of Liberty constitutes “post-national” anti-patriotism, perhaps we can agree to disagree.
More concerning than any of these specific problems, though, is the piece’s provenance: It’s written by someone named Jerry Kammer, a fellow at a think tank called the Center for Immigration Studies. Kammer has made a career out of covering immigration policy, he writes, for two reasons: “I was fascinated by its human, political and moral complexity. I also wanted to push back against the campaign by activist groups to label restrictionism as inherently racist.” He expresses regret that “odious people” with white-power affiliations have given the cause of cutting back on immigration a “bad name.”
What neither Kammer nor the Times discloses is that the Center for Immigration Studies was in fact founded by these people, most prominent among them a white nationalist named John Tanton who died last year. Tanton, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, believed that the United States needed to maintain a “European-American majority, and a clear one at that”; he founded CIS, he wrote in the 1980s, in order to give his ideas the appearance of independent “credibility.”
Kammer does write that he disagrees with “some of the center’s hard-line positions.” Among his more hard-line colleagues at CIS are a writer named Jason Richwine, who contributed to a journal founded by white supremacist Richard Spencer and who has said that “IQ” is the “most important” difference between racial groups. (As the SPLC has documented, CIS has circulated literally hundreds of articles by explicit white supremacists like Spencer via links in its weekly newsletter. Its director once accused Barack Obama of trying to “foment race war.”) A statement of purpose on the CIS website is credited to longtime Tanton collaborator Dan Stein, who once complained that mass immigration was a tool developed by “Ted Kennedy and his political allies” in approximately 1958 to “retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.”
In 1997, the Wall Street Journal wrote about Tanton in a piece called “The Intellectual Roots of Nativism.” It was a scathing article which noted that Tanton had once described the immigrant’s contribution to society as “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” The piece expressed concern that “otherwise sober-minded conservatives” and “reasonable critics of immigration” were affiliating themselves with his ideas. The author of that WSJ article, a 28-year-old journalist named Tucker Carlson, has since made the career-advancing decision to embrace Tanton-style nativism; he was in the news not too long ago for complaining in his role as a Fox News host that immigrants make the United States physically “dirtier.”
Whatever space ever existed between mainstream conservatism and white-power nationalism, Carlson demonstrates, has collapsed. And it turns out that the “odious people” that Kammer references in the Times are actually his colleagues and forebears, who created his organization so that policies intended to perpetuate “European-American” and “Anglo-Saxon” superiority could be laundered into the respectable discourse. What else is there to say but: It worked!
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So, we have a White Nationalist in the White House assisted by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller actually turning nativism into “Government policy.” Other white supremacists are scattered in key positions throughout the Government, particularly the immigration bureaucracy. Trump tweets and right-wing media put out a constant barrage of nativist lies, misrepresentations, false narratives, and racial, ethnic, and religious slurs.
So, just why is it that the “mainstream media” owes White Nationalists yet another forum to spread their nativist propaganda?
It’s not limited, of course, to just the Times. The WashPost regularly publishes largely fact and value free right-wing blather from professional shills like Marc Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt under the guise of “op-eds.”
And Chuck Todd regularly invites GOP congenital liars and Trump toadies like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to spread their lies, false narratives, and debunked “conspiracy theories” from the “bully pulpit” of “Meet the Press.” To top it off, Chuck then appears to be flabbergasted that when he confronts these guys with truth and facts, they “double down” continuing to lie to his face, ignore established facts, and spread Putinesque conspiracy theories.
Fact is, most of the Trump agenda is corrupt, counterfactual, unethical, inhumane, divisive, and corrosive to American democracy. We receive enough of it from lots of sources every day, pretty much 24-7-365. Is it really necessary for those supposedly dedicated to truth and democracy to give more free “air time” to nativist shills spreading their racially corrosive, divisive, anti-democracy propaganda?
