"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.
Michael D. Shear, Miriam Jordan, and Manny Fernandez report for the NY Times:
. . . .
American diplomats say the best way to confront that kind of lawlessness is with the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that has been flowing to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras for several years, designed to bolster the rule of law and improve the economy.
Image
At the Good Neighbor Settlement House in Brownsville, migrants rest, exhausted, after a meal.CreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Last week, Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned those efforts, ordering the State Department to scrap about $500 million in aid to the three countries. Mr. Trump’s decision has been criticized by members of both parties, who call it shortsighted.
Likewise, critics say that Mr. Trump’s repeated denigration of Mexico over the years — including his insistence on building a border wall — risks undermining Mexico’s willingness to help to keep Central American migrants from traveling to the United States.
“This is the first Mexican administration that has even been oriented toward doing that,” Ms. Meissner, the Clinton administration immigration commissioner, said.
But blaming other countries and painting those coming across the border from Mexico as a national security threat has never failed to animate Mr. Trump’s core supporters — the ones who helped deliver him the White House in 2016.
“It’s an invasion,” Mr. Trump declared in February, after Congress denied him money to build a wall. “We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.”
In fact, the migrants are mostly victims of the broken immigration system. They are not, by and large, killers, rapists or gang members. Most do not carry drugs. They have learned how to make asylum claims, just as the law allows them to do. And nearly all of them are scared — of being shipped off to Mexico, separated from their children, sent to prison. Scared, especially, of going home.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Caitlin Dickerson contributed reporting.
*************************************
This is just the conclusion of the much longer article that you can read at the above link.
Unless and until the U.S. recognizes the situation for what it is — Forced Migration —- there can be no effective solutions.
Tone-deaf (and worse) legislators and policy makers (mostly in the GOP) refuse to recognize the fundamental truth — Forced Migrants are Forced Migrants — they ultimately won’t be deterred by harsh laws, malicious prosecutions, biased judges, unfair “expeditious returns,” inhumane imprisonments, racist rhetoric, or any of the other often tried always failed enforcement policies that this Administration and its supporters so love.
The other fundamental truth that Trump ignores is that refugees, asylees, and other forced migrants overall have a positive impact on receiving countries. They are a human force that should be regulated but not generally avoided. Indeed, that’s a “win-win” formula for success that should replace our current Administration’s insistence on intentionally turning migration situations from opportunities for success into otherwise avoidable “lose-lose” situations.
What will work is dealing with the root causes of forced migration; providing feasible alternatives to coming to the U.S.; fairly and timely adjudicating applications for protection; assimilation; and in some cases truly voluntary, interest-based decisions to return to a country of origin after conditions improve (not expulsion or forced returns).
Targeting human smugglers, drug smugglers, persecutors, and other types of criminals through sophisticated, intelligence-biased undercover-type operations could also be effective.
International cooperation and involvement of the UNHCR and other humanitarian NGOs is also essential.
Better government produces better results; that’s not “rocket science.”
Manny Fernandez, Caitlin Dickerson, and Paulina Villegas report for the NYTimes:
. . . .
Much of the growing chaos, say many of those who work along the border and in some of the government’s own security agencies, is a result of a failed gamble on the part of the Trump administration that a succession of ever-hharsher border policies would deter the flood of migrants coming from Central America.
It has not, and the failure to spend money on expanding border processing facilities, better transportation and broader networks of cooperation with private charities, they say, has led to the current problems with overcrowding, health threats and uncontrolled releases of migrants in cities along the border.
“It’s the complete, 100 percent focus on harsher options that will deter the influx, with a disregard for managing what’s happening,” said a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired. “We have a lot more families, a lot more unaccompanied children, and the focus has just been on how can we deter, rather than how can we handle.”
Mr. Trump has made it a priority to end what he calls the practice of “catch and release,” but the policy of holding large numbers of migrants in detention has led to capacity problems. The Obama administration had a policy of releasing migrants who were considered safe and likely to appear in court in order to make room for others who were a higher priority for detention, but the Trump administration has largely eliminated that practice.
The number of detainees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities has reached its highest point ever, according to figures provided by the agency, with an average daily population of 45,200 single adults and family units.
The result is the recent need to release large numbers of migrants, many simply dropped off at bus stations. About 600 migrants were dropped off with no advance planning in El Paso during the last full week in December. Similar releases have happened in recent days and weeks in Arizona and California.
The homeland security official said the administration could have done more to improve the situation and avoid the recent mass drop-offs, such as working more closely with nonprofit groups. “They could have put more resources down there, either monetary or physical,” the official said. “There are things you could do to manage it so that it’s not just, ‘We’re overwhelmed. We’re releasing them.’”
. . . .
Some of those involved in the policymaking said that there was open acknowledgment within the government that the newest policies under development — a plan that would require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico through the duration of their immigration cases, and one to build tent cities along the border to house more families — were either likely to face an immediate court injunction or were so costly that they could not be justified to taxpayers. But the officials said they were under orders from the White House to push forward.
“It’s like, ‘O.K., why are we working on this if it’s just another lawsuit in the making?’” said a second Homeland Security official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Everybody knows that it’s going to be challenged in the courts and likely struck down. I don’t think the people at the top feel like they have a choice. They just do what they are asked to do.”
The situation has become more tense in recent weeks as ICE authorities, who in the past were careful to coordinate with volunteer shelters when releasing migrants, have instead begun dropping them in large numbers in the streets in Texas, Arizona and California, forcing city officials and charity groups to scramble.
“We’re dealing with the symptoms of the root cause, which is the lack of a rational immigration policy from Washington, and both sides are culpable,” said Dee Margo, the mayor of El Paso.
City officials have been told that the government may soon increase the number of migrants released in El Paso to 500 daily. “That may be a killer, that may be a real challenge for us to be able to deal with,” Mr. Margo said.
The government itself is dealing with some of the most acute problems — housing large numbers of families in border processing centers built to handle single men.
. . . .
***************************************
Read the complete article, with accompanying stats and charts, at the link. Part of the real shame here is that the Government could actually make great strides in dealing with this situation properly and legally. And it wouldn’t cost anything near the $5 billion the President insists on wasting on his “Wall.”
What’s really needed for improved border security is:
More Asylum Officers;
More Immigration Judges and Court personnel;
More ICE Assistant Chief Counsel;
More port of entry inspectors;
Better technology at and between ports or entry and at international airports;
Better DHS intelligence capabilities;
More anti-smuggling and undercover officers;
Better funding for the UNHCR to improve asylum reception and processing in Mexico and other countries surrounding the Northern Triangle;
Funding to assist pro bono groups and NGOs in representing, advising, and when appropriate arranging either temporary or permanent resettlement;
More honest recognition of the many real refugees and granting them asylum or other protections in a timely and consistent manner so that they can get work authorization and begin contributing to our society;
Much better management and leadership at DHS.
I’ll bet that all that could be done for less than $5 billion. And, rather than more controversy, waste, and abuse, we’d see real improvement in both border security and the lives of human beings we are legally obligated to assist and protect.
Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.
Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.
“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.
Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.
The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.
Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.
In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.
But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.
Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.
Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.
Image
Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters
Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.
Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.
Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.
She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.
Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.
“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”
The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.
This is what a few of those children will remember.
No Touching, No Running
Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.
He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.
Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.
The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.
There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.
“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”
Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.
Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.
“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”
A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”
Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.
“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”
But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.
. . . .
*****************************************
Read the full story at the link.
This is America in the age of Trump & Sessions. A few of these kids might get to stay in the U.S. Most will be returned (with little or no Due Process) to countries will they will be targeted, harassed, brutalized, extorted, impressed, and/or perhaps killed by gangs that operate more or less with impunity from weak and corrupt police and governments. Indeed, contrary to the false blathering of Sessions & co., gangs and cartels are the “de facto government” in some areas of the Norther Triangle. Those kids that survive to adulthood will have these memories of the United States and how we treated them at their time of most need.
