"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claims that “Democrats are committed to border security,” but the Democrats have opposed President Donald Trump’s efforts to do that.
Congress appears unlikely to override the veto, so the fate of the declaration probably will be decided by the same Ninth Circuit Courts that flouted precedent to block Trump’s travel ban, which almost certainly will result in another lower court defeat for Trump. The Supreme Court, however, may reverse the lower courts, as it did in the travel ban case. But that could take quite some time.
The Catch-22 at the heart of the matter
During the Bill Clinton administration the government entered into a settlement agreement that makes it difficult to remove aliens who bring their children with them when they make an illegal border crossing.
This became apparent last May, when Trump announced a zero-tolerance border security enforcement policy. Illegal entries are a crime: The first offense is a misdemeanor and subsequent offenses are felonies. Trump tried to use a no exceptions threat of a criminal prosecution as a deterrent. “If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you,” he said — no exceptions for aliens who bring their children with them.
The problem was prosecution of an alien who has his child with him requires the government either to detain the child with him while he is being prosecuted or separate him from his child.
Go on over to The Hill at the above link to read Nolan’s complete article.
Seems like the Government’s best bet would be to work cooperatively with NGOs and pro bono groups to link families who pass credible fear or who have court challenges pending to pro bono attorneys and to charitable organizations who can aid in temporary resettlement. In those situations, represented families almost always show up for their court hearings and keep the courts, DHS, and the lawyers properly informed of their whereabouts.
If the Government deems it a “priority” to move these cases to the “front of the court line” then they can remove some of the cases that are more than three years old and do not involve individuals with crimes from the already overcrowded Immigration Court dockets. The hundreds of thousands of pending and moribund “Non-Lawful Permanent Resident Cancellation of Removal Cases” would be fairly easily identifiable and logical candidates.
That will allow the Immigration Courts to concentrate on fair and timely adjudications of the more recent asylum claims without contributing to the overwhelming backlog. Some fair precedents by the Article III Courts (under this DOJ, the is no chance of fair asylum precedents being issued administratively) as to what claims do and do not properly qualify for asylum and relief under the CAT would eventually help provide meaningful guidance to Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, BIA Appellate Judges, and the private bar, and well as DHS Attorneys. This in turn, would help minimize the court time spent on cases that either were “slam dunk grants” or had “no chance” even under the most favorable view of the facts for the applicant. Both the DHS and the private bar would thus be motivated to spend time on the cases that really needed to be litigated in Immigration Court.
Additionally, greater predictability in the U.S. asylum system might also assist human rights groups working with individuals in the Northern Triangle and in Mexico to make better, more informed, and more realistic decisions as to whether to pursue humanitarian resettlement opportunities in Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere that might offer such.
If Congress were going to act, the most helpful changes would be 1) establishing an independent Article I immigration Court to replace the dysfunctional mess that has been created over the past several Administrations but severely and unnecessarily aggravated by this Administration; 2) amend the Act’s definition of “asylum” to make it clear that “gender” is a subset of “particular social group” persecution; 3) authorizing some type of “universal representation program” for asylum applicants in Immigration Court; and 4) requiring the Administration to reinstitute a meaningful “outside the U.S.” refugee processing program for Latin America in conjunction with the UNHCR;
No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. Nothing will. But, it would certainly put an end to some of the Administration’s wasteful and bad faith “gimmicks” and unnecessary litigation that now clog our justice system. That’s at least the beginning of a better future and a better use of resources.
Gallup scientist, Frank Newport, says that President Donald Trump’s wall has become an “RPPI” — a Rigidly Partisan Policy Issue. Opinions “are highly entrenched and largely based on underlying partisan identity.”
Pew Research Center’s recent poll found that 82 percent of Republicans favor expanding the border wall, compared to only 6 percent of Democrats. Pew analysts noted that “partisan differences [on the wall] are now wider than they have ever been.”
The resolution was cosponsored by 232 Democrats and one Republican. It passed on a roll call vote of 245 yeas and 182 nays. All of the nay votes were from Republicans.
Situation is worse than Trump is indicating
The failure to secure the border has resulted in a population of undocumented aliens so large that effective immigration enforcement in the interior of the country is no longer possible.
According to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Report for fiscal 2018, the number of aliens deported from the interior of the country rose from 65,332 in fiscal 2016, to 95,360 in fiscal 2018.
A study by MIT and Yale professors, however, indicates that the number of undocumented aliens in the United States could actually be as high as 22.1 million. If interior removals continue at the fiscal 2018 rate, it would take more than 200 years to remove them all.
Go on over to The Hill for Nolan’s complete article. I appreciate his “nifty summaries!”
No matter how one views the numbers, removal of everyone here in undocumented status is impossible, not to mention unnecessary. Serious immigration enforcement and control would start with a recognition of the fact that our system has been out of whack for decades and that removing folks who are overwhelmingly contributing members of our society is counterproductive and a waste of time and resources that could be directed elsewhere, at real law enforcement issues.
If anything, we should be asking why our system wasn’t designed to let these folks immigrate legally in the first place.
Additionally, treating asylum applicants who apply at the border or turn themselves in immediately after entering as a “law enforcement issue” is a misnomer. People who voluntarily submit themselves for screening and apply for legal status are not law enforcement issues.
Those individuals who, in fact, are coming solely for jobs can be “screened out” during the “credible fear” process, and summarily removed without placing them in the Immigration Courts for full “removal hearings.” The never get into the “interior.”
The idea that recent arrivals who are applying for asylum won’t show up for their hearings is clearly bogus — most hearings would be months, if not years in the future, so we don’t actually know at this point! If the Government ran a rational system working with NGOs and private bar groups to find placements and pro bono lawyers for asylum seekers, experience and past studies show that the vast majority would show up for hearings. A fairer, more generous, and more realistic interpretation of asylum law would also help.
Use of TPS to both register individuals and keep them out of Immigration Court for the time being would also be a good option for an Administration truly interested in addressing the humanitarian issues.
Rather than a “law enforcement emergency,” these folks present administrative processing, humanitarian relief, and foreign policy issues that this Administration has shown little or no interest in resolving in a constructive manner by using mechanisms available under current law and spending money prudently rather than wasting it on a wall that will take years, if not decades, to build and won’t address today’s concerns.
A coalition of 16 states filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block President Trump’s plan to build a border wall without permission from Congress, arguing that the president’s decision to declare a national emergency is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, brought by states with Democratic governors — except one, Maryland — seeks a preliminary injunction that would prevent the president from acting on his emergency declaration while the case plays out in the courts.
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a San Francisco-based court whose judges have ruled against an array of other Trump administration policies, including on immigration and the environment.
Accusing the president of “an unconstitutional and unlawful scheme,” the suit says the states are trying “to protect their residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution.”
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Read the rest of Amy’s article at the above link.
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But, over at TheHill, Nolan Rappaport predicts that Trump ultimately will prevail:
Family Pictures
Nolan writes:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumerclaim that President Donald Trump’s Southern Border National Emergency Proclamation is an unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist, and that it steals from urgently needed defense funds — that it is a power grab by a disappointed president who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve through the constitutional legislative process.
In fact, this isn’t about the Constitution or the bounds of the law, and — in fact — there is a very real crisis at the border, though not necessarily what Trump often describes. It helps to understand a bit of the history of “national emergencies.”
As of 1973, congress had passed more than 470 statutes granting national emergency powers to the president. National emergency declarations under those statutes were rarely challenged in court.
n Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which was decided in 1952, the Supreme Court overturned President Harry S. Truman’s proclamation seizing privately owned steel mills to preempt a national steelworker strike during the Korean War. But Truman didn’t have congressional authority to declare a national emergency. He relied on inherent powers which were not spelled out in the Constitution.
Trump, however, is using specific statutory authority that congress created for the president.
In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA), which permits the president to declare a national emergency when he considers it appropriate to do so. The NEA does not provide any specific emergency authorities. It relies on emergency authorities provided in other statutes. The declaration must specifically identify the authorities that it is activating.
We’ll see what happens. While the arguments made by Trump in support of his “Bogus National Emergency” were totally frivolous (and, perhaps, intentionally so), the points made by Rappaport, Hemel, Shane, and Lithwick aren’t. That could spell big trouble for our country’s future!
Trump doesn’t have a “sure fire legal winner” here; he might or might not have the majority of the Supremes “in his pocket” as he often arrogantly and disrespectfully claims. Nevertheless, there may be a better legal defense for the national emergency than his opponents had counted on.
Certainly, Trump is likely to benefit from having a “real lawyer,” AG Bill Barr, advancing his White Nationalist agenda at the “Justice” Department rather than the transparently biased and incompetent Sessions. While Barr might be “Sessions at heart,” unlike Sessions he certainly had the high-level professional legal skills, respect, and the “human face” necessary to prosper in the Big Law/Corporate world for decades.
Big Law/Corporate America isn’t necessarily the most diverse place, even today. Nevertheless, during my 7-year tenure there decades ago I saw that overt racism and xenophobia generally were frowned upon as being “bad for business.” That’s particularly true if the “business” included representing some of the largest multinational corporations in the world.
Who knows, Barr might even choose to advance the Trump agenda without explicitly ordering the DOJ to use the demeaning, and dehumanizing term “illegals” to refer to fellow human beings, many of them actually here with Government permission, seeking to attain legal status, and often to save their own lives and those of family members, through our legal system.
Many of them perform relatively thankless, yet essential, jobs that are key to our national economic success. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that like the Trump Family and recently exposed former U.N Ambassador nominee Heather Nauert, almost all of us privileged and lucky enough to be U.S. citizens who have prospered from an expanding economy have been doing so on the backs of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Additionally, migrants are some of the dwindling number of individuals in our country who actually believe in and trust the system to be fair and “do the right thing.”
But, a change in tone, even if welcome, should never be confused with a change in policy or actually respecting the due process rights of others and the rule of law as applied to those seeking legally available benefits in our immigration system. That’s just not part of the White Nationalist agenda that Barr so eagerly signed up to defend and advance
It’s likely to a long time, if ever, before “justice” reasserts itself in the mission of the Department of Justice.
PWS
02-19-19
NOTE: An earlier version of this post contained the wrong article from Dahlia Lithwick. Sorry for any confusion.
As immigration policy hangs over the ongoing conflict over whether the government is going to remain open, there’s something missing from this discussion, something so fundamental that it’s quite remarkable that we all seem to have forgotten to even ask about it. The president is demanding his border wall, Democrats are fighting against him, and occasionally we bring up issues like the fate of the Dreamers and those here under Temporary Protected Status.
But what nobody asks is this: What kind of immigration system do we actually want?
Not what might happen in the next negotiation or what each side would be willing to give up, but what does each side see as the ultimate goal they’re working toward? If they could look forward ten or twenty years and say “This is where we should get to,” what would that look like?
It’s a vital question, because whatever we’re doing at the moment should be guided by our long-term goals. Once we understand what those goals are, we can think more clearly about where we should go after we get this whole shutdown ridiculousness behind us. And we all ought to be able to agree that there is some future we’re trying to arrive at, a point at which we have a system that works to our satisfaction and immigration isn’t something we’re constantly at each other’s throats about.
That may not be possible, but I’ll start with what liberals would like to see. There are certainly disagreements not just on the left generally but among immigration advocates as well, but there is a basic vision one can identify.
The first thing they want, of course, is to take the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are in the country now and give them a path to citizenship. That’s something even some Republicans agree with, and if you put requirements like learning English and paying back taxes on it, support becomes nearly universal.
Second, liberals would like to see an expansion of the legal immigration system, which is a consistent source of frustration and a driver of illegal immigration. When it can take decades to get approved to move to the United States, of course many people are going to opt for the illegal route, even if it can be dangerous and uncertain. If the legal immigration works, people will go through it and not around it.
And if you have a well-functioning legal system, you can make illegal immigration less attractive, with things like an E-Verify process that makes it harder to find work if you’re undocumented. There may always be some kind of black market for workers, but if you’re simultaneously offering people a legal path — both toward permanent residency and with temporary work visas for people who are looking only to make some money and then return to their home countries — it will be much smaller problem.
So in the liberal vision, we might end up with about the same number of immigrants coming into the country as we have now, it’s just that the overwhelming majority would be coming legally. We’d have security at the border, but we wouldn’t need ICE breaking down doors and tearing parents from their children’s arms. We’d have a robust system to evaluate asylum claims so we wouldn’t have to be throwing people in cages. We certainly wouldn’t pretend that one day there will be no more demand in the labor market for immigrant workers.
There are many Republicans who could be okay with that future, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. But the conservative vision is complicated. For years, we heard Republican politicians say, “I’m for legal immigration. I’m against illegal immigration.” They may not usually have been advocating significant increases in legal immigration, but it’s important to remember that the current venomous hostility toward immigrants was not always the standard Republican position. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both far friendlier toward immigrants than Donald Trump is.
Conservatives might disagree with this characterization, but as I see it, their ultimate goal is a system in which coming into the country illegally is utterly impossible, but levels of legal immigration don’t change much. In other words, we still have immigration, but the flow slows to a trickle. And the Trump administration is making attempts to drastically reduce legal immigration. With the president’s enthusiastic support, domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is driving a nationalist agenda that seeks to drastically reduce the inflow of immigrants to the country and even looks for every possible means to deport both legal and undocumented immigrants, even if they’ve been living here for years or decades.
That’s a somewhat extreme position even within the Republican Party, but it does reflect a discomfort with immigration that is common on the right. It’s the cultural problem, the fact that many people just don’t like having contact with people who don’t look like them or don’t speak the same language they do or eat the same foods they do. Trump very skillfully played to that discomfort by essentially telling voters he could wind back the clock to the time when they were young, before all this disconcerting change happened. His targets were the people who say “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” and when he said he would make America great again, “great again” meant “like things were when you were young.”
That’s a demand that can never be satisfied, even if it’s only a portion of the Republican electorate that really dreams of an America where there are almost no new immigrants and most of those who are already here just disappear. Unfortunately, that portion currently not only controls the White House but exercises a veto over any attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, because the rest of the GOP is so terrified of them.
Which is why it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.
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Right on, Paul! You “nailed” it! Pretty much what I’ve been saying on “Courtside” all along!
However, the unlikelihood of achieving “comprehensive immigration reform” in the “Age of Trump” shouldn’t prevent the parties from working together in a bipartisan manner on “smaller fixes” such as that relating to child marriage suggested by Nolan Rappaport, posted earlier this week. See https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3Hu
These marriages are arranged to provide the alien spouses with a basis for obtaining visas they can use to enter the United States as lawful permanent residents, leaving young girls trapped in marriages that have been described as a form of slavery.
USCIS, however, will not approve the petition if the beneficiary or the petitioner was not old enough to marry under the laws of the place where the marriage was performed, or a marriage at that age violates the public policy of the American state in which the couple intends to reside.
Most states do not have a minimum age for marriageif the child has parental or judicial consent, but USCIS admittedat a Committee staff briefing that visa petitioners do not have to prove parental or judicial consent. However, the instructions for a fiancé petition require evidence that the couple met in-person within the last two years, unless doing so violates religious customs or social practices.
Delaware and New Jersey are the only statesthat prohibit marriage for anyone under the age of 18 with no exceptions.
The United Nations Population Fundsays that child marriage is a human rights violation. It threatens girls’ lives and health, and it limits their future prospects. Girls who marry while they are still children often become pregnant while still adolescents, which increases the risk of complications in pregnancy and childbirth. This is the leading cause of death for older adolescent girls.
Go on over to The Hill at one of the links for the complete article.
While so-called “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” might remain elusive, there are some “quick bipartisan fixes” like this that 1) address important issues; and 2) could get folks together and thereby form a basis for later cooperation on a bigger agenda. I’m also delighted to focus on something OTW (“other than wall”) these days. Thanks, Nolan!
WaPo: In addition to its immigration provisions, the package — which McConnell could move to advance as early as Tuesday, although a Thursday vote appears more likely — would reopen all parts of the government that are closed. It also would provide emergency funding for U.S. areas hit by hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters.
TRAC: Since the beginning of the federal government shutdown, most Immigration Court hearings have been cancelled. As of January 11, the estimated number of cancellations reached 42,726. Each week the shutdown continues, cancelled hearings will likely grow by another 20,000. As many as 100,000 individuals awaiting their day in court may be impacted if the shutdown continues through the end of January. See also: These states’ immigration courts are most impacted by the government shutdown.
USAToday: Of the 60,000 employees at Customs and Border Patrol, nine of 10 must report to work, checking passports and manning pieces of the border wall that have already been built. But they’re not being paid.
Vox: Refugee admissions have plummeted, while rejections of asylum applications have increased. Arrests of immigrants without criminal records have returned to the levels of the first term of the Obama administration, while Trump works to make hundreds of thousands more immigrants vulnerable to deportation, by stripping them of protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or Temporary Protected Status. And the travel ban quietly churns on.
CMS: The US undocumented population from Mexico fell by almost 400,000 in 2017. In 2017, for the first time, the population from Mexico constituted less than one half of the total undocumented population.
WaPo: Speaking Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the vice president quoted from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as he defended Trump’s latest pitch to secure funding for a barrier along the United States’ southern border.
WaPo: Richard Kessler, an immigration lawyer in Grand Rapids, Mich., said he was surprised when a woman he had worked with called to tell him that her son, a 27-year-old Marine veteran with mental-health issues, was being held in an immigration facility, apparently awaiting a possible deportation.
CNN: With Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand entering the 2020 presidential race on Tuesday, her dramatic shift on the issue of immigration over the past decade will likely be one of the central questions about her candidacy as she seeks to take on President Donald Trump.
DailyNews: In what could be its biggest campaign, the New York Immigration Coalition, the state’s largest immigration advocacy group, plans to spend at least $1 million on TV, radio and targeted social and digital media ads as well as billboards.
CBS: When U.S. consumers are calling about a hotel reservation or an airline flight, there’s a good chance a deportee in El Salvador is on the other end of the line.
NBC: Trump administration officials weighed speeding up the deportation of migrant children by denying them their legal right to asylum hearings after separating them from their parents, according to comments on a late 2017 draft of what became the administration’s family separation policy obtained by NBC News. The draft also shows officials wanted to specifically target parents in migrant families for increased prosecutions, contradicting the administration’s previous statements.
WaPo: The report issued by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services says no one systematically kept count of separated children until a lawsuit last spring triggered by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, under which the government tried to criminally prosecute all parents who crossed the border illegally, taking their children from them in the process. See also As One ‘Tent City’ for Immigrant Children Closes in Texas, Another Opens in Florida.
Al Jazeera: Last year, around 2,297 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean while 116,959 people reached Europe by sea. According to the IOM, sea arrivals to Europe in the first 16 days of 2019 totalled 4,216, compared with 2,365 in the same period of 2018.
NPR: U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ordered the administration to stop its plans to include the controversial question on forms for the upcoming national head count “without curing the legal defects” the judge identified in his 277-page opinion released on Tuesday.
USCIS: Generally, conditional permanent residents who file a Form I-751 must appear for an interview. However, USCIS officers may consider waiving an interview.
EOIR released guidance on Grace v. Whitaker, stating that for all credible fear review hearings conducted on or after 12/19/18, IJs may not rely on several aspects of Matter of A-B- as a basis for affirming a negative credible fear determination. Guidance obtained from CGRS and ACLU.
USCIS issued policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to address the policies and procedures related to secure documents, including how USCIS delivers and tracks these documents and how requestors should request a replacement or reissuance. Comments are due by 1/30/19. Policy is effective 1/16/19.
CBP Liaison Minutes: If a permanent resident, who has a pending application for naturalization in which a Notice of Intent to Deny was issued challenging whether the individual had been eligible for adjustment of status at the time that application was filed, travels abroad and presents his green card upon his return, will he be admitted as a permanent resident? Are such cases flagged in some way? If there has only been a NOID and no action has been taken on the N-400, the individual will be admitted as an LPR. If the N-400 was denied and the individual was issued an NTA under Section 237 (but has not been served), CBP will re-issue the NTA under Section 212. If an NTA was issued and served under Section 237, the individual will be admitted as an LPR in proceedings.
2019 National Day of Action: On Thursday, April 11, 2019, AILA members and their clients are invited to meet with their legislators on Capitol Hill to discuss immigration policy changes and the impact it has on their state and district.
Upwardly Global’s mission is to eliminate employment barriers for skilled immigrants and refugees, and integrate this population into the professional U.S. workforce.
Trump offers to limit his border wall to strategic locations
BY NOLAN RAPPAPORT, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/20/19 07:00 AM EST 945
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should give serious consideration to the settlement proposal that President Donald Trump made in his televised address from the White House.
Her objection all along has been to building a wall across the entire length of the Mexican border, and Trump no longer intends to erect “a concrete structure from sea to sea.”
He has acknowledged that much of the border is already protected by natural barriers, such as mountains and water. He wants the $5.7 billion he has requested for a strategic deployment of steel barriers at high priority locations.
The border already has many miles of barriers, including 115 miles that are being built or are under contract. He just plans to add another 230 miles this year at locations where they are most urgently needed.
These barriers would not make illegal crossings impossible, but they would make illegal crossings more difficult and make it easier for the Border Patrol to apprehend crossers.
His request includes $800 million for humanitarian assistance; $805 million for drug detection technology; 2,750 more border agents and law enforcement officers; and 75 more immigration judges.
In what he describes as an effort to build trust and goodwill, the legislation he is offering to implement his proposal also would extend the status of 700,000 DACA participants for three years.
This is just a temporary measure, but the outcome of the litigation over the DACA program is uncertain, and the participants will be extremely vulnerable if the program is terminated. DACA participation is sufficient in itself to establish deportability, and they can’t apply for asylum. There is a one-year time limit on filing asylum applications and they all have been here for more than a year.
The legislation also would extend the status of 300,000 current Temporary Protected Status recipients for three years.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has promised Trump that his bill will be brought to the floor of the Senate this week.
Trump also mentions the immigration court backlog crisis in his address. He says that it is not possible to provide an asylum hearing for every illegal crosser who sets one foot on American soil.
The asylum provisions state that aliens who are physically present in the United States may apply for asylum irrespective of their immigration status, unless one of the stated exceptions applies.
In my opinion, the sheer number of illegal crossers is the real border crisis. It has overwhelmed our immigration courts, making it virtually impossible to enforce immigration laws..
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Read Nolan’s complete article over on TheHill at the link.
At the time Nolan released this, he didn’t have the complete Trump proposal. I initially thought like Nolan that there might be the seeds for agreement in there.
But, Trump misrepresented what he was offering. In reality, it was yet another bogus 1000 page anti-asylum travesty drafted by White Nationalist in Residence Stephen Miller. Clearly intended to be a non-starter. Actually, it’s much like the dishonest tactics Trump used during the “Dreamer Debacle” that he engineered for no particular reason I can think of. And, that was when the GOP actually was in control.
Also, Nolan didn’t have the benefit of the Supreme Court action leaving DACA in effect for the indefinite future.
I’ve posted lots recently on what real border security and humanitarian assistance might look like. And, the Dems appear to be at work on something along those lines; a robust $5.7 billion but more constructive border security package that provides more resources for the Asylum Office, EOIR, technology, and inspections, but doesn’t undermine fundamental asylum law, negate Wilberforce protections for unaccompanied minors, or trash our international protection obligations.
Ultimately, once the Government reopens, that approach, plus permanent status for the Dreamers, with some wall or other physical barriers for Trump still seems to be the most likely way of ”getting to yes.” Then again, there might be no way of getting to yes with Trump.
Unfortunately, Trump has made it easier for them by basing his request on claims about who is crossing the border that can be disputed readily, such as that many of them are terrorists or criminals.
He should base his otherwise correct argument instead on the numbers — on the fact that the sheer number of illegal crossings has overwhelmed our immigration courts, creating a backlog crisis that has made it virtually impossible to enforce our immigration laws, and that the border cannot be secured when illegal crossers are allowed to remain here indefinitely.
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Go on over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.
Democrats aren’t destroying Trump’s credibility; he’s doing that himself with his constant lies and false narratives; this is just the latest and one of the most egregious examples;
By all reliable counts, illegal border crossings at the Southern Border are down substantially;
What is “up” are crossings by unaccompanied children and families from the Northern Triangle seeking asylum;
Such individuals present a humanitarian situation arising from a crisis in the Northern Triangle; but, they are not a “security threat” to the US; almost all turn themselves in at ports of entry or shortly after entering to apply for asylum under our legal system as they are entitled to do;
Those (other than unaccompanied children) who don’t establish a “credible fear” can be returned immediately without ever getting to the Immigration Courts (except for brief “credible fear reviews” before Immigration Judges);
The vast majority have a “credible fear” and should be referred to Immigration Court for full hearings on their claims in accordance with the law and our Constitution;
When matched with pro bono lawyers, given a clear understanding of the requirements, and time to prepare and document a claim, they appear for court hearings almost all the time;
Even with the Trump Administration’s “anti-asylum campaign” directed primarily at applicants from the Northern Triangle, and the lack of representation in approximately 25% of the cases, asylum claims from the Northern Triangle succeed at a rate of approximately 20%, https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3oo;
Undoubtedly, there is a “crisis” in our U.S. Immigration Courts — a Due Process and mismanagement crisis;
But, the Trump Administration with its often illegal actions and gross mismanagement, has actually managed to artificially increase the Immigration Court Backlog from just over 500,000 to more than 1.1 million in less than two years — despite having at least 100 additional Immigration Judges on duty, https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3qN;
Indeed, Trump’s shutdown is unnecessarily “ratcheting up” the Immigration Court backlog and initiating a new round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” right now;
In addition to not understanding the true complexities of the immigration system, the Administration’s incompetent administration of the Immigration Courts is another reason why Trump might choose to shift attention elsewhere.;
Somebody will have to address the Due Process and administrative mess in the Immigration Courts in a constructive manner, starting with an independent, apolitical, court structure; but it won’t be the Trump Administration.
We also know that in fiscal 2017, there were more than twice as many instances of aliens overstaying their nonimmigrant visitor admission period than known instances of aliens crossing the Mexican border illegally.
No one knows how long the overstays will remain.
According to the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) Fiscal Year 2017 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, 52,656,022 nonimmigrant departures were expected in fiscal 2017, and there were 701,900 overstays. These figures are limited to aliens who were admitted to the United States at air and sea ports of entry. DHS does not have much data on entries or exits at land ports of entry.
Moreover, the overstay estimates are based on “events,” the number of expected departures, not the number of aliens who were expected to depart that year. According to a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of the report, this makes the overstay rates deceptively low.
Using the DHS methodology, if 10 nonimmigrant visitors each comes to the U.S. three times during the fiscal year being considered, that would result in each having three expected departure dates, for a total 30 departure dates. If they all leave when they are supposed to leave but an additional visitor who makes only one visit overstays, the overstay rate would be 1/31 entries, or about 3 percent.
But if the overstay rate were based instead on the number of people who were expected to make a departure, the rate in the example above would be 1/11, which would be 9 percent.
The following table provides the DHS report’s overstay rates:
Overstays can be removed quickly when they have been apprehended.
Many of them come under the provisions of the Visa Waiver Program(VWP), which allows eligible nationals from 38 VWP countries to enter the United States for 90 days as nonimmigrant visitors for business or pleasure without a visa.
There is a one-year time limit on applying for asylum, and withholding just prohibits sending the alien to the country where he would face persecution — It does not permit him to remain in the United States.
Removal of overstays who enter with a visa requires a hearing before an immigration judge, but the government’s burden of proof can be met by establishing that the person was admitted to the United States as a nonimmigrant visitor and that the period authorized for the visit has expired. This often can be handled very quickly at a Master Calendar Hearing if the alien does not want to apply for asylum or withholding.
If Trump wants effective border security, he cannot just erect a wall along the Mexican border. He also has to reduce the number of overstays.
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Go on over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.
There are lots of “moving pieces” to the immigration puzzle.
In the manic push for a border wall, some officials in the Trump administration have cried wolf about the number of terrorists caught trying to enter the United States. Terrorism is a serious threat and should not be trotted out to justify an unpopular policy proposal. It is a false alarm that, as the ancient story of the shepherd boy who cried wolf teaches, results in no one believing the cry when the wolf eventually does come to eat the sheep.
On Jan. 4, 2019, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists were picked up trying to cross the southern border last year. She made the remarks in anticipation of President Trump’s meeting with congressional leaders on funding the government and his request for $5 billion for a border wall. When Fox News’ Chris Wallace challenged these claims of thousands of terrorists attempting entry that Sanders and Department of Homeland (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen have made, Sanders refused to correct the record, alleging that the southern border is the “most vulnerable point of entry.”
Obfuscation, misrepresentation and falsification of immigration statistics has become commonplace in the Trump administration, the most glaring of which is the 2018 report that the Department of Justice (DOJ) co-authored with DHS. Eighteen former national security experts who had worked at the highest levels in several administrations wrote a letterseverely critiquing the report. They identified a number of mischaracterizations in the report and sought its rescission under the Information Quality Act (IQA).
In doing so, the national security experts emphasized the damage such a misleading report inflicts on counterterrorism efforts. They concluded: “Terrorists’’ success or failure in spreading fear and provoking self-inflicted overreactions hinges, in significant part, on how the public understands the actual threat that terrorists pose. DOJ’s and DHS’s Report distorts that threat in ways that run contrary not only to the IQA but also to sound, responsible approaches to counterterrorism.” Although DOJ has acknowledged errors in the 2018 report, officials in the Trump administration refuse to correct the record and continue to the muddy and distort the research.
In fact, most of the suspected terrorists or suspicious foreign nationals are detected abroad and intercepted before they set foot on American soil or when they attempt to enter at a port of entry. Improvements in intelligence gathering and sharing, along with advances in technologies, have greatly enhanced the rigor of visa screening abroad. State Department consular officers use biometric and biographic databases to screen all foreign nationals seeking visas. They also use facial recognition technology to screen applicants against photographs of known and suspected terrorists obtained from the Terrorist Screening Center. Consular officials partner with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to utilize the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment on known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups.
National security screenings do not end with consular visa processing. As I have written, commercial airlines are required to make passenger name record data available to DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) up to 72 hours in advance of travel. Biographic traveler data is submitted to the Advance Passenger Information System. Passenger data are forwarded to CBP’s National Targeting Center (NTC), where they once again are vetted against intelligence and law enforcement databases. Finally, CBP inspectors examine and verify U.S. citizens and foreign nationals who seek admission to the United States at all ports of entry, linking with the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment on known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups.
With such a rigorous and extensive web of national security screenings conducted on millions of foreign travelers, it is credible that the United States had almost 4,000 “hits” of suspicious individuals, including more than a few false-positive “hits” on people with similar names. What is not credible is the claim that 4,000 known or suspected terrorists attempted to cross the southern border.
The latest reporting on actual statistics presents a sharply different picture than the one drawn by Nielsen and Sanders. Julia Ainsley of NBCreports, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered only six immigrants at ports of entry on the U.S-Mexico border in the first half of fiscal year 2018 whose names were on a federal government list of known or suspected terrorists.” Nick Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center from December 2014 through December 2017, characterized the threat of terrorists crossing the southern border as more of a “theoretical vulnerability than an actual one.”
If anything, Trump’s border wall would divert needed resources away from stymieing terrorist travel at land ports of entry. Terrorists are not likely to trek through the desolate lands along the southern border if our ports of entry are overburdened, understaffed and lacking in the latest technologies.
Ruth Ellen Wasem is a clinical professor of policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. For more than 25 years, she was a domestic policy specialist at the U.S. Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. Follow her on Twitter @rewasem.
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Vladimir Putin must be in “celebration mode” to see all the damage that Trump is inflicting on America and our national security. Who needs an army, spies, missiles, drones, bombs, or any other type of weapons when they have Trump’s daily internal war on America and American institutions.
If erected, President Trump’s border wall would be a symbol for America’s failure to implement effective immigration policies. It would be a tombstone marking the abandonment of our values that protect refugees and welcome immigrants. It would be a monument to our neglect to support healthy democracies in our hemisphere.
Most Americans, of course, do not support a border wall. Public opinion polls from December 2018 found that 54 percent to 57 percent of those surveyed did not support building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Most recently, the NPR/PBS/Marist Poll similarly reported that 56 percent of those surveyed thought President Trump should compromise on the border wall.
One only needs to turn to border security experts for reasons not to support a border wall. They note that the United States already has invested over $2 billion to build about 700 miles of fencing and has spent billions of dollars on border surveillance technologies. A 2016 study by the Migration Policy Institute that reviewed research from across the globe found little evidence that border walls stopped unauthorized migration. At best, the such barriers divert, rather than prevent, illegal flows.
It’s difficult to make a case for the border wall since unauthorized migration from Mexico has dropped to historic lows in recent years. The only significant uptick are the well-documented flows of asylum-seekers from Central America. Others more expert than I have warned about the dangers to our hemisphere if we turn our back on the violence and breakdown of civil society in the Northern Triangle. It is irresponsible to abandon Mexico to deal with the Central Americans displaced by the violence. Building Trump’s wall is not an honorable or a credible policy response, and it puts the stability of the whole region at risk.
The good news is that responsible and effective immigration policies do not need to be highly partisan issues. Democrats and Republicans are at an impasse only because President Trump insists that he needs $5 billionfor his border wall. When it comes to immigration reform and border control, there is considerable common ground among Republicans and Democrats.
Reasonable policymakers in both parties long have known that border security resources need to be committed to modernizing our ports of entry (POEs). As RAND border security expert Blas Nunez-Neto has written, “(P)olicymakers could consider investing in improvements to the ability to detect narcotics at ports of entry, the common entry point for the most dangerous drugs.” In addition, national security and commerce require that we upgrade the infrastructure at POEs to be able to handle the flow of people and goods in the 21st century. Neglecting the POEs in pursuit of a border wall is shortsighted and dangerous.
There long has been bipartisan support for increasing the number of immigration judges and asylum officers along the southern border. For example, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) have supported increasing the number of judges. We would not need to turn a Walmart into a detention center if there were sufficient adjudicators and judges to process credible-fear and asylum cases fairly and expeditiously. Asylum-seekers and other migrants would not be languishing along the border, and children would not be separated from their parents, if we funded adjudicators commensurate with border security.
Finally, for the past two decades, policymakers from both sides of the political aisle have recognized the need to reform legal immigration so that it better conforms to the national interest. Several times during the Bush and Obama administrations, comprehensive immigration reform billsdrafted by a bipartisan group of senators passed the U.S. Senate. Even the “Dreamers” who enjoy broad and bipartisan support have not seen legislation enacted to resolve their immigration status. In other words, there is agreement that immigration policy should be revised to reflect the national interest, but we have not yet reached a consensus on what constitutes the national interest. This, not the wall, is the debate that should engage us.
At the dawn of 2019, it is time to leave failed ideas behind and move immigration reform and control forward.
Ruth Ellen Wasem is a clinical professor of policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. For more than 25 years, she was a domestic policy specialist at the U.S. Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration.
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I agree with Ruth that for $5+ billion we should get some real border security, which certainly should include fairer, more efficient, more humane processing of asylum applicants. That, rather than bogus “Walls” (which wouldn’t be built for years anyway), more expensive, needless, and inhumane detention, and gimmicks like “return to Mexico” and intentional slowdowns in applicant processing is the way to get individuals to apply for asylum at ports of entry.
That being said, I’m sure that border security could include some physical barriers in places where experts think they actually would assist humane, professional border enforcement.
I also think, as Nolan and others have suggested, that some form of “Dreamer Relief” could be part of a compromise border security that could gain bipartisan support.
The study finds that the engine that fueled ICE’s peak effectiveness—the intersection of federal immigration enforcement with state and local criminal justice systems—is being throttled by state and local policies that limit cooperation with ICE. Nearly 70 percent of ICE arrests in the early Trump months originated with local jails and state prisons, a sizeable share that is nonetheless down from more than 85 percent in fiscal 2008-11.
Beyond sanctuary policies, the report finds growing resistance at other levels. Some cities are changing policing practices to reduce noncitizen arrests, such as decriminalizing driving without a license. Immigrant advocates are conducting more “know-your-rights” trainings, teaching people they do not have to open their doors to ICE. And others are mobilizing to monitor ICE operations in the field, or increasing funding for legal representation for those facing removal hearings.
ICE report contradicts notion that Trump is using immigration law to ‘keep America white’
BY NOLAN RAPPAPORT, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/21/18 10:00 AM EST 150
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
Excerpt:
In fiscal 2018, ICE arrested 105,140 immigration violators who had criminal convictions and 32,977 immigration violators who had pending criminal charges.
Only 20,464 (12.9 percent) did not have convictions or pending criminal charges. A recent Yale study estimates that there are more than 22 million undocumented aliens in the United States, which indicates that the likelihood of deportation is quite low for undocumented aliens who do not become involved in criminal activity.
Moreover, according to MPI’s study, ICE relies heavily on help from state and local law enforcement agencies to identify and arrest removable aliens. In jurisdictions that cooperate with ICE, the police screen aliens when they are arrested and booked into custody and notify ICE if any of them appear to have unlawful status.
Sanctuary cities do not provide this cooperation, which leaves ICE with little choice but to carry out its enforcement activities in neighborhoods and at other community locations, even though this is not an efficient use of its resources. This has resulted in an increase in the arrests of noncriminal aliens and numerous complaints.
Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences
Kino Border Initiative
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Office of Justice and Ecology, Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States
Excerpt:
The Criminalization of Deportation
The Trump administration has regularly portrayed undocumented residents, migrants seeking to request asylum at the US-Mexico border, and deportees as criminals and security threats. Most survey respondents either had not been convicted of a crime or had committed an immigration or traffic offense prior to their deportation. Nevertheless, study participants described a deportation system that treated them as criminals and instilled fear in their communities.
Nearly one-half of respondents said they had not been convicted of a crime prior to their deportation.
Of the 37 respondents (51.4 percent) who reported having been convicted of a crime,[6] more than one-third (35.1 percent) had been convicted of a traffic or immigration offense, 21.6 percent of a drug-related crime (including possession), and another 21.6 percent of a violent crime.[7]
A high percent of respondents (65.2) reported that their deportation began with a police arrest, 30.3 percent reported having been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and less than 1 percent by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The majority of apprehensions took place while respondents were driving (36.1 percent), at home (26.3 percent), or at work (6 percent).
Survey respondents spent an average of 96 days in immigrant detention. Most were detained for 30 days or less, and 17 percent were detained for 180 days or more.
Only 28 percent were able to secure legal counsel.
Roughly one-fourth of survey respondents reported spending no time in criminal custody and 22.6 percent spent a week or less prior to their deportation. However, 17.3 percent spent more than one year.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently reported that nearly 15,000 children are being held in immigrant detention centers across the United States. Most, if not all of these children are asylum-seekers, fleeing conditions of abject violence and poverty in their home countries. Regardless of one’s outlook on immigration, it is hard not to feel extremely saddened at the thought of so many children locked up, away from their loved ones and during the holiday season no less. It is even harder to fathom how this present scenario is making anyone happy. Imagine being separated from your family this holiday season.
Recent research shows that societies more open and welcoming to refugees and immigrants experience much higher happiness gains. Based on the findings of their research, the Migration Policy Institute concluded that “policies that contribute to migrant happiness are likely to create a win-win situation for both immigrants and natives.” In other words, both native- and foreign-born populations fare better in terms of overall happiness — also referred to as subjective well-being in the social sciences — when given a policy and social environment that accepts and promotes immigration.
Conversely, oppressive or negative attitudes toward immigrants and refugees are associated with declines in subjective well-being. Findings from a recent survey of 27 nations by the Pew Research Center suggest that many people worldwide, including a whopping 82 percent of Greeks, 72 percent of Hungarians, 71 percent of Italians, and 58 percent of Germans oppose immigration. That’s (potentially) a lot of unhappy people.
Policies and practices that restrict immigration such as building border walls, placing bans on certain nationalities from entering a country, and detaining and deporting individuals who lack legal status, may not only lead to happiness declines. They also heighten people’s fears and anxieties, predisposing them to negative psychological and physical health outcomes.
What distinguishes societies that are more accepting of immigrants versus those that are less accepting?
This is a question that has been at the center of my own research in comparing contexts of immigrant reception in the U.S.and Italy for several years. In Italy, I’ve been particularly intrigued by the emergence of solidarity initiatives and networks between citizens and noncitizens that seek to collectivize risk and improve overall material and subjective well-being.
Building on findings from the medical and social sciences that societies rich in social capital, less unequal, and more egalitarian show higher life expectancies on average, one hypothesis of this research is that the promise of improved subjective well-being incentivizes people to enact solidarities such as take actions to feel aligned with one another — across lines of race, class and citizenship.
At a time of especially pronounced hostilities toward refugees and immigrants in the U.S., it is perhaps unsurprising that the U.S. trails far behind (18th) in world happiness rankings. Punitive immigration policies and negative attitudes toward immigrants not only harm the people directly targeted. These practices may also represent a sort of self-harm to the segment of the population that is native-born.
As the end of the year draws to a close, many of us exchange gifts because we think it will bring some shred of happiness. In our quest to spread this joy and bring more of it into our lives, perhaps this year more of us can act more humanely and compassionately toward refugees, asylum-seekers, immigrants, and other displaced persons who comprise an ever-growing segment of the global population.
Megan A. Carney is assistant professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and a Public Voices Fellow with The Op-Ed Project. She is the author of “The Unending Hunger: Tracing Women and Food Insecurity Across Borders” and director of the UA Center for Regional Food Studies.
Trump’s border security funding request therefore should include measures to locate and remove overstays. He could start with the overstays who used the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) to come here.
VWP overstays totaled 379,734 from fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2017. No one knows how many overstayed in the 27-year period between the inception of the program in 1988, and when DHS began recording entry/exit data for fiscal 2015.
Perhaps Trump should request legislation to remove aliens from the program who may not be bona fide visitors, such as young men who are unemployed. Restrictions are already in place to remove aliens from the program for security reasons.
Nationals of VWP countries who have been in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen on or after March 1, 2011, are not allowed to use the program. They may still be able to come here, but they will have to go through the visa application screening process.
Trump also should request funding to address the incentives that encourage illegal border crossings, such as the “job magnet.”
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) added section 274A to the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide sanctions for employers who hire aliens who are not authorized to work in the United States. But the program has never been fully implemented.
The Trump administration has increased worksite enforcement efforts. In fiscal 2018, the Homeland Security Investigations office opened 6,848 worksite investigations, compared to 1,691 in fiscal 2017. But there are more than 30.2 million businesses in the United States.
DOL enforces federal labor laws that were enacted to curb such abuses, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act which established a minimum wage, overtime pay, and other employment standards. With additional funding, DOL could mount a large-scale, nationwide campaign to stop the exploitation of employees in industries known to hire large numbers of undocumented immigrants.
. . . .
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Go on over to TheHill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.
These seem like reasonable enforcement strategies that could garner bipartisan support. Wonder why the Administration hasn’t made them priorities to date?
The parties agreed that the proclamation did not render any alien ineligible for asylum. District Judge Jon S. Tigar found, therefore, that the case did not present the question of whether section 212(f) authorizes the president to directly limit asylum eligibility, so he did not include the proclamation in his decision.
This was a mistake. Although the proclamation doesn’t say that it is making the illegal crossers ineligible for asylum, it prevents them from getting relief of any kind that would allow them to enter the United States.
Judge Tigar granted a temporary restraining order which prohibits any action to continue the implementation of the rule and requires a return to the pre-rule practices for processing asylum applications.
. . . .
Judge Tigar’s restoration of pre-rule practices for processing asylum applications means that the illegal crossers will not be prevented from establishing a credible fear of persecution in the expedited removal proceedings, which will entitle them to an asylum hearing before an immigration judge.
But the immigration judge will have to deny their applications because asylum would permit then to enter the United States – and the proclamation bars their entry.
Moreover, the denial will make them statutorily ineligible for asylum if they file another asylum application later.
The first paragraph in the asylum provisions states that any alien who is physically present in the United States may apply for asylum, but the second paragraph provides three exceptions.
One of the exceptions states that asylum is not available to an alien who has filed a previous application that was denied, unless he can show a change in circumstances which materially affects his eligibility for asylum.
The rule that Judge Tigar suspended would have avoided this problem by preventing the asylum seekers from getting to a hearing before an immigration judge at which their applications would be denied.
It is possible that when the proclamation is terminated, a court will find that the termination materially affects asylum eligibility and therefore that the bar to future asylum applications no longer applies.
But the third paragraph provides that no court shall have jurisdiction to review any determination on the exceptions. The courts, therefore, will not be able to reinstate asylum eligibility on this or on any other basis.
It will be up to Trump to decide whether aliens whose applications are denied on account of the proclamation will be able to file another asylum application when the proclamation is lifted.
Indefinite detention
Illegal crossers, however, may be able to avoid persecution by applying for withholding of removal.
Relief under the withholding provision just prohibits sending an alien to a country where it is more likely than not that he would be persecuted. Consequently, withholding would not violate the entry prohibition in the proclamation.
The relief would apply only to the alien who is at risk of being persecuted. It would not include his spouse or children.
The proclamation, nevertheless, would be a serious problem for aliens who are granted withholding. It would prevent them from being released from detention while arrangements are being made to find a suitable country that is willing to take them, and that may not even be possible, depending on the case.
Asylum seekers who go to ports of entry instead of making an illegal crossing are experiencing problems. Nevertheless, it might be wise to try at least some of the ports of entry before resorting to an illegal crossing.
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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article.
I’m not aware that anyone at DHS or EOIR has actually taken the legal position that Nolan has outlined. If they did, I would expect ACLU to have them instantly back before Judge Tigar on a contempt of court motion.
Also, that this theory hasn’t been pursued before Judge Tigar would make it unlikely that it would be argued before the Supremes, assuming that the case eventually winds up there (which I don’t). I do concede, however, that because the “Supremes are supreme” they basically can do whatever they want, including pursuing theories not argued or decided below. Most of the time, however, they prefer a more judicially (and politically) prudent approach.
I agree with Nolan’s bottom line that notwithstanding the inconvenience and the apparent slowdown by the Administration in asylum processing, asylum applicants would be well advised to patiently and peacefully wait in line to pursue their applications at ports of entry. There are also several cases pending which ultimately could provide some relief from both the intentional slowdown of processing at the ports of entry, and the skewing of the credible fear process against applicants from the Northern Triangle.
US judge rules against Trump administration in suit over policing grants to ‘sanctuary cities’
Updated 5:21 PM EST November 30, 2018
Washington
A federal judge ruled against the Justice Department on Friday in a lawsuit over withholding federal money from so-called sanctuary cities, the latest blow to the Trump administration’s hardline immigration tactics.
The lawsuit challenged the Justice Department’s efforts to punish sanctuary cities by withholding a key law enforcement grant the department said was available only to cities that complied with specific immigration enforcement measures.
In July 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that applicants for Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants would have to comply with federal immigration enforcement in ways that were unlike years past, like allowing federal law enforcement agents to have access to detainees in jails for questioning about their immigration status.
According to the ruling, the seven states involved in the lawsuit, as well as New York City, had been receiving the grant money since Congress created the fund for the “modern version of the program in 2006,” and the funds “collectively totaled over $25 million.”
“In 2017, for the first time in the history of the program, the U.S. Department of Justice (‘DOJ’) and Attorney General (collectively, ‘Defendants’) imposed three immigration-related conditions that grantees must comply with in order to receive funding,” wrote Judge Edgardo Ramos, of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, in his ruling.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood led the suit and was joined by New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington state and Virginia.
Underwood said in a statement on Friday that the ruling was “a major win for New Yorkers’ public safety.” CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
This isn’t the first ruling of its kind — in April, a panel of three judges from the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling in favor of the city of Chicago that blocked the Justice Department from adding new requirements for the policing grants.
A federal district court judge on Friday denied the Trump administration’s request to block or limit the scope of a ruling that temporarily prohibits the government from enforcing its ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the court is not convinced the government will suffer irreparable harm without a stay of the court’s October 2017 preliminary injunction.
The government had asked for a stay pending any potential, future proceedings in the Supreme Court. Bypassing normal judicial order, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court last week to review the case before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
Arguments before the appeals court are scheduled for Dec. 10.
At the very least, the government asked the district court to limit the nationwide scope of the injunction while the court weighs in, but Kollar-Kotelly refused. She said the government had not convinced the court that a more limited injunction is appropriate.
“Without supporting evidence, defendants’ bare assertion that the Court’s injunction poses a threat to military readiness is insufficient to overcome the public interest in ensuring that the government does not engage in unconstitutional and discriminatory conduct,” she said.
“After all, ‘it must be remembered that all Plaintiffs seek during this litigation is to serve their nation with honor and dignity, volunteering to face extreme hardships, to endure lengthy deployments and separation from family and friends, and to willingly make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives if necessary to protect the Nation, the people of the United States, and the Constitution against all who would attack them,’ ” she said.
Not surprisingly, policies stemming from racism and homophobia being advanced for crass political reasons aren’t doing very well in Federal Courts. There, the judges tend to prefer cogent legal arguments. The latter is something for which Gonzo was never known. Indeed, a number of the biased based positions he advanced in support of the Administration were so outlandish that the judges actually gave the Government additional time to develop a legal rationale. But, that also proved to be time wasted, because there never was any legal rationale for these policies and legal positions. Just hate and bias, and an ignorance of the real meaning of our Constitution.
There’s lots of irony, indeed total absurdity, in Sessions’s audaciously bogus claim that he “stood for the rule of law.” Safe to say that no Attorney General since “John the Con” Mitchell has done so much to undermine our Constitutional system and the real “rule of law.”
