"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.
American poses with dead Haitian revolutionaries after being killed by US Marine machine gun fire – 10-11-1915.jpg. Past US armed invasions of Haiti to protect our interests haven’t done much to improve the lives of the Haitian people. Public Realm
As Haiti Unravels, U.S. Officials Push to Send in an Armed Foreign Force
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U.S. seeks to prompt armed invasion of Haiti by OTHER countries to protect US from Haitian refugees seeking freedom and a new life! What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing shakes up brave US security officials like some unarmed Black individuals in leaky boats risking their lives to “breathe free” and to contribute to the U.S. economy in the process!
Really! There must be about “two Democrats in the world” who think this crackpot scheme is a good idea. Unfortunately, they are employed by the Biden Administration and in charge of “immigration policy!”
Sorry, Casey, but I have to keep saying it: “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Apparently not!
“Casey Stengel might understand the Biden Administration’s immigration policies. The rest of us not so much.” PHOTO: Rudi Reit Creative Commons
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
Politico: Experts in the immigration field say they’re expecting a stressful and chaotic transition when a court-ordered deadline to end the Trump directive is hit, one that could drive a new rush to the border and intensify GOP criticism. See also States move to keep court from lifting Trump asylum policy.
Reuters: The United States is in talks with Mexico and other countries to facilitate the return of Venezuelan migrants to their homeland, a senior U.S. official said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.
TRAC: The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, which currently houses single adults (mostly females) has more than doubled the number of individuals it is holding since September. ICE reports this facility run by CoreCivic now has the largest average daily population of detainees (1,562) in the country
CBS: McCarthy also threatened to use “the power of the purse and the power of subpoena” to investigate and derail the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, saying Republican-led committees would hold oversight hearings near the U.S.-Mexico border.
LexisNexis: “Remand is required in this case because the BIA did not give consideration to all relevant evidence and principles of law, as those have been detailed by this Court’s recent decision in Scarlett v. Barr, 957 F.3d 316, 332–36 (2d Cir. 2020). … Because Mejia did not fear torture at the hands of the Guatemalan authorities, the relevant inquiry is whether government officials have acquiesced in likely third-party torture. To make this determination, the Court considers whether there is evidence that authorities knew of the torture or turned a blind eye to it, and “thereafter” breached their “responsibility to prevent” the possible torture.”
LexisNexis: “Having reviewed both the IJ’s and the BIA’s opinions, we hold that the agency did not err in finding that Garcia-Aranda failed to satisfy her burden of proof for asylum and withholding of removal, but that the agency applied incorrect standards when adjudicating Garcia-Aranda’s CAT claim.”
Law360: The Third Circuit has backed a decision denying a Dominican man’s bid for deportation relief based on his fear of being tortured, saying the procedural flaws he claimed tainted his proceedings — including the use of legal jargon and a videoconferencing glitch — did not prejudice him.
Law360: An English-speaking Cameroonian lost her chance to stay in the U.S. after the Eighth Circuit ruled that she failed to provide enough evidence showing that military officers had attacked her for her presumed support of Anglophone separatists.
LexisNexis: “Without record evidence that Phong orally waived his right to appeal before the IJ, we decline to address his alternative arguments that any waiver was unconsidered, unintelligent, or otherwise unenforceable. Rather, we remand to the BIA to develop the record on the waiver issue and, if it deems it appropriate, to consider Phong’s remaining arguments in the first instance.”
Law360: A divided Ninth Circuit on Monday ruled that the federal government was not constitutionally required to provide a Salvadoran immigrant a second bond hearing amid his prolonged detention during removal proceedings, while also bearing the burden to show he was a flight risk or danger to the community.
AP: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has agreed to pay a Vermont-based immigrant advocacy organization $74,000 in legal fees to settle a lawsuit seeking information about whether advocates were being targeted by immigration agents because of their political activism.
USCIS: Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it is extending and expanding previously announced filing fee exemptions and expedited application processing for certain Afghan nationals.
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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Folks, it’s about re-instituting the law and screening system for legal asylum seekerswhich was in effect, in one form or another, for four decades before being illegally abrogated by the Trump Administration’s abusive use of Title 42. Outrageously, after promising to do better during the 2020 election campaign, the Biden Administration has “gone along to get along” with inflicting massive human rights violations under the Title 42 facade until finally ordered to comply with the law by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan last month.
One of Judge Sullivan’s well-supported findings was that the scofflaw actions by both Trump and Biden officials had resulted in knowingly and intentionally inflicting “dire harm” on legal asylum applicants:
Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.
“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”
Contrary to the “CYA BS” coming from Biden Administration officials, making the law work at the Southern Border requires neither currently unachievable “reform” legislation nor massive additions of personnel! It does, however, require better personnel, expert training, accountability, smarter use of resources, and enlightened, dynamic, courageous, principled, expert leadership currently glaringly lacking within the Biden Administration.
The Administration’s much ballyhooed, yet poorly conceived, ineptly and inconsistently implemented,“revised asylum regulations” have also failed to “leverage” thepotential for success, thus far producing only an anemic number of “first instance” asylum grants. This is far below the rate necessary for the process significantly to take pressure off the backlogged and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, one of the stated purposes of the regulations!Meanwhile, early indications are that Garland’s ill-advised regulatory time limits on certain arbitrarily-selected asylum applications have further diluted quality and just results for EOIR asylum decisions. That, folks, is in a system where disdain for both of these essential judicial traits is already rampant!
It’s not rocket science! It was well within the capability of the Biden Administration to establish a robust, functional asylum system had it acted with urgency and competency upon taking office in 2021:
Better Asylum Officers at USCIS and Immigration Judges at EOIR — well-qualified asylum experts with practical experience in the asylum system who will timely recognize and grant the many valid asylum claims in the first instance;
Cooperative agreements with NGOs and pro bono organizations to prescreen applications in an orderly manner and represent those who can establish a “credible fear;”
A new and improved BIA of qualified “practical scholars” in asylum law who will establish workable precedents and best practices that honestly reflect the generous approach to asylum required (but never carried out in practice or spirit) by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca and the BIA itself in its long-ignored and consistently misapplied precedent in Mogharrabi;
An orderly refugee resettlement program administered under the auspices of the Feds for those granted asylum and for those whose claims can’t be expeditiously granted at the border and who therefore must present them in Immigration Court at some location away from the border.
The Biden Administration has nobody to blame but themselves for their massive legal, moral, and practical failures on the Southern Border! With House GOP nativist/restrictionists “sharpening their knives,” Mayorkas, Garland, Rice, and other Biden officials who have failed to restore the legal asylum system shouldn’t expect long-ignored and “affirmatively dissed” human rights experts and advocates to bail them out!
The massive abrogations of human rights, due process, the rule of law, common sense, and human decency that the GOP espouses — so-called enforcement and ineffective “deterrence” only approach — will NOT resolve the humanitarian issues with ongoing, often inevitable, refugee flows!
But, the Biden Administration’s inept approach to human rights has played right into the hands of these GOP White Nationalist politicos. That’s an inconceivable human tragedy for our nation and for the many legal refugees we turn away without due process or fair consideration of their life-threatening plight! These are refugees — legal immigrants — who should be allowed to enter legally and help our economy and our nation with their presence.
If we want refugees to apply “away from the border,” we must establish robust, timely, realistic refugee programs at or near places like Haiti, Venezuela, and the Northern Triangle that are sending us refugees. In the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress actually gave the President extraordinary discretionary authority to establish refugee processing directly in the countries the refugees are fleeing. This was a significant expansion of the UN refugee definition which requires a refugee to be “outside” his or her country of nationality. Yet, no less than the Trump and Obama Administrations before, President Biden has failed to “leverage” this powerful potential tool for establishing orderly refugee processing beyond our borders!
Meanwhile, down on the actual border, a place that Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, Garland, Rice, and other “high level architects of failed asylum policies” seldom, if ever, deign to visit, life, such as it is, goes on with the usual abuses heaped on asylum seekers patiently waiting to be fairly processed.
A rational observer might have thought that the Biden Administration would use the precious time before Dec. 22, 2022, reluctantly “gifted” to them by Judge Sullivan, to pre-screen potential asylum seekers already at ports of entry on the Mexican side. Those with credible fear and strong claims could be identified for orderly entries when legal ports of entry (finally) re-open on Dec. 22. Or, better yet, they could be “paroled” into the U.S. now and expeditiously granted asylum by Asylum Officers.
This would reduce the immediate pressure on the ports, eliminate unnecessary trips to backlogged Immigration Courts, and expedite these refugees’ legal status, work authorization, and transition to life in the U.S.
I have no idea what the Biden Administration has done with the time since Judge Sullivan “gifted” them a stay. The only noticeable actions have been more BS excuses, blame-shifting, and lowering expectations.
But, in reality, by their indolent approach to humanitarian issues and the law, in the interim the Administration has consciously left the fate of long-suffering and already “direly-harmed” legal asylum seekers to the Mexican Government. According to a recent NBC News report, the Mexican Government forcibly “rousted” many awaiting processing at a squalid camp near the border and “orbited them’ to “who knows where.” https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/mexican-authorities-evict-venezuelan-migrants-from-border-camps-155516485544
Judge Sullivan might want to take note of this in assessing how the Biden DOJ has used the “preparedness time” that he reluctantly granted them following his order.
“Dulce Zaragoza, a native and citizen of Mexico and a lawful permanent resident of the United States, pleaded guilty to the Indiana offense of criminal neglect of a dependent after locking her six-year-old son in a closet for six hours. She was sentenced to one year in jail suspended to time served plus 30 days, with the remainder of the sentence to be served on probation. After completing her sentence, she traveled abroad and presented herself for admission when she returned. The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) found her inadmissible based on the neglect conviction, which the agency classified as a “crime involving moral turpitude.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I). She was placed in removal proceedings. Zaragoza fought removal on several grounds, with her arguments expanding as the proceedings progressed. Before the immigration judge, she argued that the Indiana neglect offense does not qualify as a crime involving moral turpitude. The judge disagreed and entered a removal order, and Zaragoza appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA” or “the Board”). In the meantime, she petitioned the state court to modify her sentence. Her purpose was to bring herself within the so-called “petty offense” exception to inadmissibility, which is available to first-time offenders sentenced to six months or less. Id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(ii)(II). The state court obliged and reduced her one-year sentence to 179 days. With that order in hand, Zaragoza argued before the BIA that Indiana’s neglect offense is not a crime involving moral turpitude, and regardless, the petty-offense exception applies. The BIA rejected both arguments, agreeing with the immigration judge that the Indiana offense is categorically a crime involving moral turpitude, and further holding that the sentence-modification order was not effective to establish Zaragoza’s eligibility for the petty-offense exception. For the latter conclusion, the Board relied on a recent decision of the Attorney General declaring that state-court sentence modification orders are effective for immigration purposes only if based on a legal defect in the underlying criminal proceeding. Matter of Thomas & Thompson (“Thomas”), 27 I. & N. Dec. 674, 690 (Att’y Gen. 2019). Zaragoza sought reconsideration, this time adding two more arguments: (1) the phrase “crime involving moral turpitude” is unconstitutionally vague; and (2) the Attorney General’s decision in Thomas is impermissibly retroactive as applied to her. The BIA disagreed on both counts. Zaragoza petitioned for review in this court, reprising the entire array of arguments she presented to the Board. We agree with the BIA’s resolution of all issues but one: applying Thomas in Zaragoza’s case is an impermissibly retroactive application of a new rule. We therefore remand to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
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Commentary from Kevin A. Gregg, ESQ:
Kevin A. Gregg
• 1st
Partner at Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt P.A. & Host of Immigration Review Podcast
2d • Edited •
2 days ago
Crimmigration attorneys, get your motions ready.
At least in Chicago! Matter of Thomas and Thompson CANNOT be applied retroactively in the Seventh Circuit!
Sentence modifications/clarifications/European vacations obtained pre-T&T and that comply with Matter of Cota Vargas/Song/Estrada must be recognized for immigration purposes!
Also, when will A.G. Garland weigh in on Matter of Thomas and Thompson? The time is now.
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When the BIA starts not with the correct legal concept that retroactivity is disfavored in the law, but rather with “how can we best help DHS Enforcement and/or curry favor and job security from our political ‘handlers’ at DOJ,” “bad things are going to happen.” And, they do, over and over!
There are plenty of well-qualified “practical scholars” out here who understand retroactivity in the immigration context and would get these basic questions right in the first instance without bothering the Courts of Appeals or generating disorder, inconsistency, and unnecessary backlog! Why hasn’t Garland recruited them to be the “New and Improved BIA” that would actually be driven by legal expertise, practical scholarship, due process, and fundamental fairness? The latter are qualities that EOIR and DOJ claims it seeks in Immigration Judges. But, it’s not the reality that practitioners too often actually face in todays dysfunctional, inefficient, and hopelessly backlogged EOIR.
The public and those subject to substandard judging and often dehumanizing treatment by EOIR are suffering — amazingly, now more than ever! When will Garland do his job and reform his courts to conform to due process, fundamental fairness, best interpretations of law, and best practices?
The latter desirable qualities, actually necessary for any legitimate judiciary, are certainly NOT descriptive of today’s broken EOIR! Garland and his lieutenants might consider themselves “above the fray!”
But, my already over-stuffed e-mailbox is “lighting up” with EOIR horror stories from experienced, long-time practitioners who are questioning whether they can continue practicing in the hostile, lawless, “no due process,” “no customer service,” “no common sense,” “blame the victim” environment that Garland has allowed to mushroom, and sometimes even encouraged, at EOIR.
I mentioned the term “Dedicated Docket” at an Executive Session of a major NGO recently. The anger and disgust that it provoked from those actually “doing the job” of fighting for justice in Garland’s broken system was palpable!
Why is a Democratic Administration that is, despite beating expectations in the midterms, still hanging on by a thread, inflicting this type of disrespect, pain, and suffering on its own loyal supporters? How will this self-created legal, Constitutional, human rights disaster play out moving toward 2024!
“The EOIR HQ Tower” needs a complete shake-up and replacement ofthose who have demonstrated their inability to get the job done with those who can! The latter are out here. But, the worse Garland lets his system get, the harder and most costly (dollars and lives) it will be to fix it!
Hon.Romano L. Mazoli (1932-2022) U.S Congressman (D-KY; 1971-95) PHOTO: therecord.com
I personally knew Congressman Mazzoli (D-KY), and worked with him and his staff on the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”), as I did with Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) and his staff on the Senate side. At that time I was the Deputy General Counsel and later Acting General Counsel of the “Legacy INS.”
Shortly before I left INS for private practice, in 1987, Congressman Mazzoli invited me to his hometown of Louisville to speak on immigration reform. I was presented with a ceramic “Big Balloon,” representing the City of Louisville, to memorialize that occasion.
We kept up for a time after I went into private practice. He was friendly with Harris Miller who worked with me at Fragomen during my stint as DC Managing Partner. Harris, who recently, sadly, died at 71, had worked for Ron and the Democrats on the House Judiciary staff. I remember Harris, his wife Deborah, Ron, his wife Helen, my wife Cathy, and me having dinner at the Occidental Restaurant in DC shortly after he left Congress and just before I left Fragomen to become the BIA Chair in 1995. Ron supported my application.
At that time, Ron was putting together plans to teach at his alma mater U. of Louisville Law. I believe Harris and I might have offered him some “syllabus pointers,” although, in actuality, he hardly needed any help from us given his decades of experience in Congress.
Eventually, we lost touch. But I still have fond memories of Ron, Harris, and a time when the immigration debate, although always spirited and contentious, was more civilized and empirically based.
Here’s a lengthy obit on Ron from The NY Times, forwarded by my friend Nolan Rappaport.
Ron was a gentleman and a dedicated public servant who did everything he could to make the system work for the common good — part of the “lost art of governing effectively.” A life well lived. Rest In Peace, Ron.
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
This gathering will bring together existing universal representation projects as well as groups considering starting/supporting new programs to reflect on best practices, adapting models while seeking to end detention, and ways to expand universal representation. The deadline to register for virtual attendance is tomorrow, October 25, 2022.
CNN: There were 227,547 migrant encounters along the US-Mexico border in September, up 12 percent from the previous month. The sharp increase in migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua contributed to the uptick.
NYT: The number of Venezuelans entering the United States illegally dropped from about 1,200 a day to 150 in the first days after the Biden administration rolled out the new policies.
Reuters: The Ethiopian military and allies including troops from neighboring Eritrea have been battling forces from the northern region of Tigray on and off for two years. The conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine.
The Hill: The Coast Guard stopped 185 Cubans on Friday, 94 on Saturday and 40 on Sunday. In total, the service says it has intercepted 921 Cubans since Oct. 1.
AP: Molina was among 13 migrants who recently arrived in the U.S. who agreed to share documents with The Associated Press that they received when they were released from U.S. custody while they seek asylum after crossing the border with Mexico. The AP found that most had no idea where they were going — nor did the people at the addresses listed on their paperwork.
CNN: It has been an endless cycle since President Joe Biden took office, according to multiple administration officials and sources close to the White House. Agency officials dream up a plan but then struggle to get White House approval, even as the problem compounds and Republicans step up their criticism. See also Immigrant advocates feel abandoned as they stare at Biden’s first-term checklist.
TRAC: According to new data obtained by TRAC through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, 480,301 people have been enrolled in ICE’s electronic monitoring program known as Alternatives to Detention (ATD) between August 2020 and June 2022. Many of these individuals, about 196,000, were previously active in ATD but have since ceased to be monitored under ATD, while 284,000 immigrants were still in ATD as of the end of June.
TRAC: As of the end of September 2022, Immigration Court judges dismissed a total of 63,586 cases because Department of Homeland Security officials, chiefly Border Patrol agents, are not filing the actual “Notice to Appear” (NTA) with the Immigration Court. Without a filed NTA, the Court has no jurisdiction to hear the case.
GBH: Police in New York arrested about 57,000 unlicensed drivers a year before state lawmakers narrowly approved the Green Light Law in 2019, making most immigrants eligible for licenses regardless of their legal status. In 2021, those arrests declined to about 30,000 and are on a similar pace for this year, according to records obtained by GBH News from the New York State Unified Court System.
Block Club: As a major city that attracts immigrants, Chicago specifically has been struggling to support the recent influx of asylum seekers. After dealing with cuts under the Trump administration and then the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant serving organizations’ resources were already strained before the war in Ukraine and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent Taliban takeover sent thousands of refugees and asylum seekers to Chicago. The recent arrival of migrants from Texas has only added to the strain on organizations’ resources, including legal services and representation.
LexisNexis: He argues that the immigration judge (“IJ”) applied the incorrect legal standard in assessing whether he would more likely than not be tortured with the “consent or acquiescence” of the Honduran government, and that the BIA erred in its review of the IJ’s decision. He also argues that the BIA failed to consider whether the Honduran government would likely torture him and whether the MS-13 gang is a de facto government actor. We agree that the agency erred in these respects, and we therefore grant his petition for review, vacate the order of the BIA to the extent it denied him CAT relief as to Honduras, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
CA1: We thus remand for the BIA to consider in the first instance whether Chavez’s proposed social group satisfies the requirements for constituting a particular social group under the INA to which he belongs. We express no opinion as to the merits of that issue other than to emphasize that the BIA cannot reject such a group based solely on its determination that current or former gang members cannot form a particular social group.
LexisNexis: The plain language of the statute, coupled with the reasoning of Mahn and Ramirez-Contreras, persuades us that the Pennsylvania felony fleeing statute does not qualify as turpitudinous. While the failing to stop for a police officer while crossing a state line is conduct that may put another in danger, it does not necessarily do so. The agency therefore erred in its conclusion that King was convicted of a CIMT.
LexisNexis: We conclude: (1) the record in this case compels the conclusion that two of De Leon’s attackers were police officers during a July 2011 incident; (2) De Leon showed acquiescence on the part of the Guatemalan government with respect to that incident because government officials— namely, the two police officers—directly participated in the incident; and (3) the record indicates that the IJ and BIA’s conclusion that De Leon is not likely to be subjected to torture with government acquiescence if returned to Guatemala disregards several important circumstances pertinent to evaluating the likelihood of future torture. In light of these errors, we grant the petition and remand for the agency to reconsider De Leon’s application for relief.
Law360: The state of Texas on Wednesday agreed to drop its challenge to a provision of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy which exempted unaccompanied minor migrants from being expelled from the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Law360: An Illinois university professor and students can’t stop the Biden administration from enforcing a Trump-era policy barring student visas to Chinese nationals who are connected to any entity in China that supports its “military-civil fusion strategy,” a federal judge has ruled, denying the plaintiffs’ bid for a temporary restraining order.
Law360: A class of foreign-born military recruits who sought $10 million in attorney fees after winning back their expedited path to naturalization two years ago have settled for $2.75 million in the interest of conserving resources and avoiding further litigation risks.
AIC: Several legal services organizations filed a lawsuit today against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for unlawfully preventing attorneys from communicating with immigrants detained in four detention facilities in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona.
USCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is extending certain COVID-19-related flexibilities through Jan. 24, 2023, to assist applicants, petitioners, and requestors.
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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
But immigrant advocates note that some of their demands aren’t contingent on Congress or the courts, which makes it all the more exasperating as to why the administration has failed to deliver.
Some told POLITICO they simply wanted to see the administration remedy the harm caused by the Trump administration’s family separation policies. Others want to see follow-up on early proposals to protect immigrant workers in labor disputes.
The administration further angered the community last week when it announced plans to use the Trump-era pandemic policy, Title 42, to expel Venezuelan migrants crossing the border illegally as part of its new humanitarian parole program for them. Advocates decried the expansion of Title 42, which the Justice Department is fighting in court, as a continuation of the Trump “playbook.”
. . . .
The biggest, most significant “unforced error” by the Biden Administration has been the failure to “clean house” at EOIR and to reform the Immigration Courts to be a model of great, scholarly, humane judging, and a bastion of due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices.
The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation set forth a successful “blueprint” for a far-right takeover of not only the Immigration Courts, but the entire Article III Judiciary. The Trump Administration adopted and successfully followed it!
By stark contrast, the Dems have failed to act timely and decisively on the one all-important Federal court system that they completely control! EOIR is a system that probably has more impact on the future of America — or whether there will even be a future America — than any court short of the Supremes!
Garland’s dismissive treatment of the informed views of immigration, human rights, and racial justice experts — who have had “hands on” experience with “America’s most dysfunctional courts” (the Immigration Courts) — has undermined our legal system and hamstrung almost every other progressive social justice initiative — from voting rights to abortion!
Garland’s failure to bring in experienced, dynamic, inspirational, respected, “Tier One” progressive practical scholar/leaders — folks like, for example, Dean Kevin Johnson, Professor Karen Musalo, Marielena Hincapie, Professor Phil Schrag, Margaret Stock, Professor Michele Pistone, and Judge Dana Leigh Marks — to clean up EOIR, kick some tail, and create “the best, fairest, most efficient courts in America” — is beyond inexcusable!
Dems are a self-inflicted mess when it comes to immigration — apparently because those “calling the shots” are more “Stephen Miller Lite” than they are Julian Castro and other Democrats who understand the essential importance of immigrants and of standing up for their rights — starting with the “retail level” of American justice.
As one frustrated experienced practitioner recently told me: “Biden’s entire immigration policies are a train wreck. He didn’t take the action he said he would. The practice of immigration law is soul crushing.”
“Soul crushing!” Those words should be a “wake up call” to the “tone deaf” policy honchos in the Administration. It shouldn’t be this way in a Dem Administration that was elected because they promised to do better and to stand up to the lies, myths, and false narratives of the nativist right! Once in power, Dems don’t seem to be able to distinguish between their friends and their adversaries. That’s proven NOT to be a “formula for success!”
For every immigrant/racial justice advocate that the Biden Administration wears down and demoralizes, two “new recruits” for the NDPA will arise, fully energized to keep litigating, winning, and raising hell until due process, human rights, fundamental fairness, and racial justice get some long overdue ACTION. Based on results to date, that means continuing to “beat Garland’s brains out” in court! The talent and creativity is obviously “out here,” not in Garland’s “Halls of (In)Justice!” Given that the “Stephen Miller Group” is also challenging the Administration in court, Garland will eventually find himself doing nothing but litigating immigration issues and getting walloped by both sides!
Meanwhile, as the Administration daily fails on immigration, human rights, and racial justice within the Executive Branch, my mailbox and message box are overflowing with desperate requests from Dem politicos, from Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Chuck on down, for more donations of money and time. But, once the election cycle is over, our views are ignored, and we are treated as “PNGs.” Meanwhile, those who actively undermined immigrants’ rights and diminished due process are rewarded or retained in key positions where they continue to heap damage on the most vulnerable among us and frustrate their supporters.
Doesn’t seem like a sustainable future for the Democratic Party or for American democracy! But, hey, I’m just a retired Immigration Judge. Maybe my friends in the social justice movement enjoy being treated as “chopped liver” — frozen out and ignored — once they have helped elect Dems.
Republicans boldly “run on the big lie.” Meanwhile, Dems “run from the truth” about immigrants and their all-important role in America’s future! Go figure!
A quote from a recent NY Times article struck me as aptly summarizing the failure of leaders of both political parties to take an honest, creative, and practical approach to the opportunity presented by continuing human migration:
Immigration in the United States is broken, but one side of the fence wants to study the root causes of the problem, and don’t want to see what’s happening right here,” Mr. [John] Martin [deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso] said, squinting beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “And the other side wants to build a wall which would become a dam and eventually burst.”
Former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions went to the border to preach his “gospel” of anti-immigrant hate, lies, nativist myths, and to “fire up” officials for one of the biggest unconstitutional abuses of prosecutorial authority in modern American history. Indeed, that is when one reporter coined the term “Gonzo Apocalypto” to describe the absolute nonsense spewing from Sessions’s mouth.
Sessions orchestrated a vile “strategy” of family separation from which the victims haven’t yet, and may never, fully recover. Interestingly, he has also escaped accountability.
By contrast, Garland, to my knowledge, has never bothered to visit the border and engage first-hand with the human carnage his failed “courts” and abuse of both the Constitution and asylum law inflict on others. He interacts neither with those outside government trying to uphold the rule of law nor the enforcement officials given “mission impossible.” He absolves himself from observing the effect that his failure to carry out orderly, humane, legally compliant refugee and asylum processing — using existing law rather than extralegal “gimmicks” — has on communities on the border and in the interior.
Sessions was a vile, intellectually dishonest, and immoral leader; Garland is simply a failed and disengaged one. But, the difference might not be readily apparent to most practitioners laboring in the foul trenches of Garland’s dysfunctional “court” system.
From my observation, there are folks out here interested in, and capable of, addressing the opportunities, potential benefits, and challenges presented by the inevitability of human migration in the 21st Century. Most of them, unlike “pontificating politicos,” have, at some point, “walked the walk” with those humans caught up in the migration dilemma, on both sides of the border.
But, leaders of neither party are interested in the constructive ideas and solutions developed within the rule of law that these unusually talented and dedicated individuals can offer. As long as that is the case, the realities of human migration, false promises, racially driven bias, and wildly inconsistent application of justice in America will continue to vex both politicians and the voters who put such “non-problem-solvers” in office!
The Biden Administration thinks carrying out his policies is A-OK. Many of those who,helped put them in office disagree. Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will expand its use of a public health rule to start expelling to Mexico thousands of Venezuelans who illegally cross the U.S. border and announced a new humanitarian parole program to provide a narrow legal pathway to the United States for up to 24,000 Venezuelans.
The administration hopes that Venezuelans will apply for the parole plan remotely and fly to the United States rather than making the dangerous trek to the southwest border.
But the reliance on a Trump-era pandemic rule to deny entry to many others crystallized the Biden administration’s balancing act in both helping refugees and tightening border restrictions in the face of Republican attacks on President Biden’s immigration policy and record numbers of illegal border crossings. And there is no guarantee that just 27 days before the midterm elections, it will have the desired effect.
Until now, the majority of Venezuelans who crossed into the United States have not been expelled under the public health authority, known as Title 42. Instead, they were screened and released into the country temporarily to face removal proceedings in immigration court, where they have the option to apply for asylum.
. . . .
****************
In addition to being cruel and illegal, the new policy won’t please anyone on the immigration issue. Biden is selling his erstwhile supporters “down the river,” while neither mollifying critics on the right nor winning over independents.
Expect refugees to suffer and die. I also predict that extralegal entries aiming for “do it yourself” refuge in the interior will increase. And, our immigration and asylum systems will remain a dysfunctional mess.
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
NPR: This has been the deadliest year ever for migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 800 migrants have died border-wide in the fiscal year that ends this week, according to internal government figures shared by a senior Border Patrol official.
NYT: For now, the changes are tiny; only 99 people since the end of May have completed what are called asylum merits interviews with an asylum officer and been fully evaluated under the new rules. Of those, 24 have been granted asylum, while most of the rest have had their cases sent back to the immigration court system for an appeal.
NYT: The decision to leave the cap at 125,000 was a contrast with the Trump administration, which severely restricted entry, but advocacy groups said migrants were still processed too slowly.
CNN: National security adviser Jake Sullivan and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, among other White House officials, met with the representatives of 19 countries at the White House to iron out the implementation of that declaration and appoint a special coordinator for each country, according to the senior administration official.
Intercept: The Warden of what was once one of the nation’s most notorious immigration detention facilities was arrested this week after allegedly killing one migrant and wounding another in the desert of rural West Texas.
Forbes: Compelling new research finds immigrants, including those with less than a high school degree, provide enormous fiscal benefits and a significant subsidy to U.S. taxpayers.
Reuters: In the first eight months of 2022, Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted 23,358 asylum-seekers crossing into the country at unofficial entry points, 13% more than all of 2017, when an influx of border-crossers at Roxham Road, near the Quebec-New York border, made international headlines.
Politico: Because cannabis remains illegal at a federal level, all employers — even those licensed at the state level — lack access to E-Verify, a government service that helps businesses verify immigration status. They also cannot use visa programs like H-2A and H-2B, which facilitate legal immigration of farmworkers in other industries… The Oregon legislature in the last 12 months set aside more than $31 million for law enforcement and advocacy groups working to combat illicit cannabis cultivation and help undocumented workers in the industry.
NPR: What is the connection between climate change, the movement of people around the globe, and the rise of xenophobic politicians? That’s the overarching question we’re hoping to answer with this reporting trip.
Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review whether the Fifth Circuit was right to reject a Guatemalan woman’s deportation case on the grounds that she hadn’t gone through a final round of administrative appeals.
Law360: The Third Circuit has affirmed an Eastern District of Pennsylvania federal judge’s rejection of a Dominican Republic citizen’s appeal of his conviction on firearm and immigration law offenses — albeit for different reasons than the lower court.
Law360: The State Department will not have to schedule visa interviews for 12 winners of the 2022 Diversity Visa Lottery, after a D.C. federal judge found that the selectees didn’t show a high likelihood of proving that the Biden administration unlawfully delayed their interviews.
Law360: An Ohio federal judge on Wednesday said the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals wrongly tossed a woman’s visa petition for her Ghanian husband over a previous “sham marriage,” saying whether the prior marriage was actually fake was open to dispute.
Law360: The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday hit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in D.C. federal court, accusing the agency of improperly withholding access to records regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees’ access to counsel.
AP: The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders around the world. Settlement talks with attorneys and the government broke down late last year.
AP: A companion complaint Wednesday to the office of civil rights at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security documents retaliation, including restrictions on access to legal representation and a falsified accusation of misconduct against an immigrant under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Reuters: Two U.S. government employees said they experienced retaliation after they sounded alarms about the conditions at Fort Bliss, which has been used for emergency housing since March 2021, according to the report issued by the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general’s office.
USCIS: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced an extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Burma for an additional 18 months, from Nov. 26, 2022, through May 25, 2024, due to extraordinary and temporary conditions in Burma that prevent individuals from safely returning.
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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Despite disingenuous claims otherwise, the overhyped “launch” of asylum “reform” has been a “dud” — producing little for the Administration but even less for legitimate refugees and due process advocates caught up in the mind-boggling dysfunction of the failed Mayorkas/Garland asylum system. PHOTO: NASA/Joel Kowsky Public Realm
As border deaths continue to soar, nativist GOP Governors use humans as political pawns, and conditions in refugee sending countries deteriorate, the Biden Administration’s failed human rights/racial justice bureaucracy has no answers!
By attempting to replicate, remarkably even touting, the unrealistically high denial rates produced by the previous system — too often the result of badly flawed adjudications, poorly trained officers and judges, lack of effective representation, chronic systemic anti-asylum bias, and overly restrictive, anti-asylum precedents produced by a BIA loaded with anti-asylum zealots by the Trump Administration — Mayorkas and Garland have basically guaranteed continuing human rights abuses and defective adjudication of claims.
Truth is, even during the height of the overt anti-asylum program of the Trump Administration, approximately 70% of those whose claims were “referred” by the Asylum Office were eventually granted protection in Immigration Court.
According to Human Rights First (“HRF”), an international human rights organization, in Fiscal Year 2021, 68% of asylum cases referred to immigration court by the AO were subsequently granted protection.[1] With nearly 70% of claims being granted in FY2021, this represents a clear and apparent waste of judicial resources.
And, this was with a legal system with overly restrictive precedents that clearly and improperly manipulated generous asylum laws AGAINST refugees, often hindered effective representation, and was “overseen” by many Immigration Judges who were hand-selected or retained by the Trump DOJ because they were “programmed to deny” asylum at outrageous rates. By granting only a pathetic 24 of 99 cases that actually were decided over four months, and “referring” the rest to Garland’s beyond dysfunctional “courts” (currently fighting an indescribably stupid all-out “war” with NGOs and pro bono attorneys), Mayorkas hasn’t come anywhere close to “leveraging” the system to locate, prioritize, timely grant many more legitimate cases, and drastically reduce the huge number of unnecessary referrals to EOIR.
Rather than “cleaning house” at USCIS and EOIR, bringing in dynamic, qualified leaders, expert adjudicators and judges who can timely recognize the many legitimate claims, working with NGOs and pro bono groups to get all asylum seekers represented, and utilizing the expert training resources that currently exist outside Government, Mayorkas and Garland are perpetrating the same anti-asylum myths spewed out by Miller, Trump, and company! Essentially, instead of fixing the fatal flaws in the current system, the Biden Administration has chosen to institutionalize and expedite them! That’s insane!
The Biden Administration’s failure to do the butt-kicking, bold, thoughtful work necessary to establish robust, timely, efficient, refugee and asylum systems is dragging down our legal system, promoting racial injustice, perpetrating xenophobic myths, advancing “worst practices,” harming, sometimes killing, legitimate refugees fleeing repressive regimes, and denying American communities legal residents who could be using their skills to help build a stronger economy and a better future for America.
With thousands of asylum seekers from countries where persecution is well-documented being “orbited” by nativist GOP Governors, the Biden Administration was presented with a golden opportunity to work with NGOs, states, and local governments to coordinate resettlement, get them competently represented, and grant asylum in a fair and timely manner, thus demonstrating how an improved asylum system could work with proper staffing, attitudes, and legal guidance. Instead, the Administration has chosen to waste time on a “thudding dud” of a pilot that shows a stunning lack of leadership, courage, imagination, initiative, humanity, and respect for the rule of law!
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
EOIR Schedule: EOIR immigration judges are scheduled for a mandatory training session on Aug. 22, 2022, from 1pm to 5pm EST. The Chicago Immigration Court will re-set all non-detained cases scheduled for that afternoon; detained cases will go forward. It is unclear at this time if/how this affects other courts.
Roll Call: Senate Democrats stuck together and mostly voted against amendments to their tax, climate and health care package, while using a procedural maneuver to allow their vulnerable incumbents to vote for some that could score political points without actually making any changes to the bill [including on immigration].
The Atlantic: Over the past year and a half, [the Atlantic] has conducted more than 150 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of internal government documents, some of which were turned over only after a multiyear lawsuit… The policy’s worst outcomes were all anticipated, and repeated internal and external warnings were ignored.
NPR: On Monday, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced a round of emergency contracts with local agencies and organizations to allow the city to respond to an increasing number of asylum-seekers entering the city’s homeless shelter system. See also Pentagon denies DC request for National Guard migrant help.
Block Club: Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya and several immigrant rights organizations held a public hearing last week in which the county’s Legislation and Intergovernmental Relations Committee heard testimony from experts about how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses data from companies like LexisNexis.
Border Chron: Facial recognition has become the primary biometric technology for CBP. Everyone who enters the country has their picture taken, though supposedly people can opt out (that often isn’t obvious, thanks to a lack of signage; I cross the border constantly and have never seen anything about opting out). The surveillance technology has also been deployed at 32 airports for people exiting the country. CBP partners with airports and airlines to add another layer to this private-public nexus.
AP: Lara Logan, a former Fox Nation host, recently claimed that U.S. Border Patrol agents are distributing Social Security numbers to immigrants at the border. A video of her comments has circulated widely across social media platforms… No such thing is happening, Rhonda Lawson, a spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the AP in an email.
NYCaribNews: Between September 2017 – when Moreno was suspended from the bar – and late September 2018, Moreno took on new clients, practiced law, and gave legal advice to scores of undocumented immigrants. In some instances, even predating his suspension, Moreno defrauded clients by falsely claiming that undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States for over a decade could secure legal status, a fraud known as the “10-Year Green Card Scam.”
Law360: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog reported worker shortages at the military sites that provided a temporary refuge to Afghan evacuees, saying the understaffing left officials concerned they couldn’t properly meet Afghan nationals’ needs.
AP: The two-word docket entry read “judgment issued” to record that justices voted 5-4 in a ruling issued June 30 that the administration could scrap the “Remain in Mexico” policy, overruling a lower court that forced the policy to be reinstated in December.
BIA: A respondent who has made a timely objection to a noncompliant notice to appear is not generally required to show he or she was prejudiced by missing time or place information. An Immigration Judge may allow the Department Homeland Security to remedy a noncompliant notice to appear without ordering the termination of removal proceedings [Note: Except in CA7, pursuant to Arreola-Ochoa].
Law360: A Swedish plastic surgeon who served prison time for a $3 million tax evasion scheme should not be allowed back into the U.S., the Third Circuit ruled Thursday.
Law360: The Fourth Circuit gave a Salvadoran woman and her son a second chance at their asylum application, holding that an immigration judge didn’t give enough weight to her claim of death threats on the basis of religion.
Law360: The Ninth Circuit rejected a Mexico native’s bid to reopen his removal proceedings on grounds that his 1997 conviction was modified, saying none of the circumstances allowing the challenge of a removal applied to him.
Law360: The Ninth Circuit ruled that federal funds for criminal justice programs can’t be withheld from states and counties that don’t enforce immigration laws, upholding lower court decisions that found the denial an overreach of the U.S. Department of Justice’s authority.
Law360: The Eleventh Circuit affirmed Tuesday a deportation order against a Chilean green card holder who pled guilty to violating a Florida law criminalizing child neglect, while acknowledging that the trial court’s record of the conviction was “hopelessly opaque” and included the state judge specifying the criminal offense was for “whatever.”
LexisNexis: Drawing all inferences and viewing all evidence in the light most favorable to the government, the Court finds that plaintiffs have met their burden of showing that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact, and that the waiver implementation guidance was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA.
Law360: A New York federal judge refused to modify an order resuming acceptance of new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applications, saying clarification sought following a Texas judge’s barring new approvals was actually a request for additional relief.
Law360: A California federal judge has affirmed a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decision to deny a Russian national permanent resident status, ruling that by installing and maintaining a security camera system for a cannabis grower, the person had participated in the trafficking of a Schedule I drug.
Law360: A Pennsylvania judge ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reconsider a man’s petition for his Turkish wife’s green card, saying the agency’s unreasonable delay in denying the petition unfairly hampered the couple’s ability to address the agency’s concerns.
Law360: A California federal judge ordered the Biden administration to revisit the tens of thousands of visa applications that were denied under Trump-era travel restrictions, finding that targeted foreigners were still bruised from the travel ban, long after its revocation.
USCIS: Certain EADs with a validity period of less than 2 years are now being automatically extended to align with the parole period shown on the beneficiary’s Form I-94, Arrival/Departure Record.
AILA: USCIS issued policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to address the eligibility of military service members with uncharacterized military discharges for purposes for naturalization under section 328 or section 329 of the INA. Comments are due by 9/2/22.
EOIR: [EOIR] announced the appointment of 19 immigration judges to courts in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
EOIR: The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced it has recently been notified of phone calls that spoof the Arlington Immigration Court as part of a misinformation campaign. The callers will often “spoof,” or fake, the immigration court’s main line, 703-305-1300, so the calls appear to be coming from EOIR on the recipient’s caller ID.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Interestingly, none of the “perps” of child abuse by the Trump Administration has been held accountable. By contrast, many of their victims have suffered irreparable harm.
Trump officials provided “explicitly false formation” to intentionally mislead the public about the abusive, racist intent behind their program of intentional misconduct. So, why isn’t this a problem?
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
USCIS: This extends certain COVID-19-related flexibilities through Oct. 23, 2022, to assist applicants, petitioners, and requestors. The reproduced signature flexibility announced in March, 2020, will become permanent policy on July 25, 2022. But DHS To End COVID-19 Temporary Policy for Expired List B Identity Documents.
TRAC: One out of every six new cases DHS initiates in Immigration Court are now being dismissed because CBP officials are not filing the actual “Notice to Appear” (NTA) with the Court. The latest case-by-case Court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University through a series of Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests show a dramatic increase in these cases.
Buzzfeed: The US reached a settlement Thursday that establishes fingerprinting deadlines for parents and sponsors trying to get unaccompanied immigrant children out of government custody. Under the settlement, which expires in two years, the government has seven days to schedule fingerprinting appointments and 10 days to finish processing them.
CNN: The Biden administration is developing a new identification card for migrants to serve as a one-stop shop to access immigration files and, eventually, be accepted by the Transportation Security Administration for travel, according to two Homeland Security officials.
CBS: Officials in Arizona, Missouri, Texas and other GOP-controlled states have convinced federal judges, all but one of whom was appointed by former President Donald Trump, to block or set aside seven major immigration policies enacted or supported by Mr. Biden over the past year.
AP: Over the next 30 years, 143 million people are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published this year.
Reuters: Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has requested the deployment of military troops to assist with migrants arriving on buses sent by the Texas and Arizona state governments, according to letters sent by her office to U.S. military and White House officials. See also Migrants Being Sent to NYC From Texas — to the Wrong Places, With No Help, Sources Say.
Documented: Advocates estimate that ICE moved dozens of individuals at the Orange County Jail in New York on Monday, and sent them to detention centers in Mississippi and elsewhere in New York, without prior notification to families or attorneys about the transfers.
Reuters: An estimated 6 million Venezuelans have fled economic collapse and insecurity in their home country in recent years, according to United Nations figures. Many have settled in other South American countries but some have traveled north.
BIA: The respondent’s conviction for unlawfully selling or otherwise disposing of a firearm or ammunition in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(d) (2018) does not render him removable as charged under section 237(a)(2)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(C) (2018), because § 922(d) is categorically overbroad and indivisible relative to the definition of a firearms offense.
Law360: The Second Circuit ordered the Board of Immigration Appeals to revisit an indigenous Guatemalan mother and son’s bids for asylum and deportation relief, saying the agency failed to provide a sufficient premise for affirming an immigration judge’s denial of relief.
LexisNexis: An active judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. The matter failed to receive a majority of votes of the non-recused active judges in favor of en banc consideration.
Law360: Not knowing the law isn’t enough to excuse a Guatemalan union worker from missing the deadline to apply for asylum by three years, the Ninth Circuit said when it refused to overturn an immigration panel’s decision that the man’s circumstances weren’t “extraordinary.”
Law360: A panel of Ninth Circuit judges granted a petition to review an order rejecting a Mexican woman’s asylum bid Wednesday, saying in an unpublished opinion that the agency was wrong to determine that inconsistencies or omissions in her testimony undercut her credibility as a witness.
Law360: The D.C. Circuit has rejected requests from Afghan and Iraqi translators to alter a lower court’s order that granted the federal government an indefinite deadline extension to draft a plan for faster green card processing, ruling that reversing the order wasn’t necessary.
AILA: Advance Copy: DHS notice extending the designation of Syria for TPS for 18 months, from 10/1/22 through 3/31/24, and redesignating Syria for TPS for 18 months, effective 10/1/22 through 3/31/24. The notice will be published in the Federal Register on 8/1/22.
AILA: USCIS is experiencing delays in issuing receipts for Form I-589. For purposes of the asylum one-year filing deadline, affirmative asylum interview scheduling priorities, and EAD eligibility, the filing date will still be the date USCIS received the I-589 and not the date it was processed.
USCIS: USCIS is currently experiencing delays in issuing receipts for Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal. Due to these delays, you may not receive a receipt notice in a timely manner after you properly file your Form I-589.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
The foregoing sources also clearly illustrate that, with or without past persecution, such indigenous women would have a “reasonable fear” of persecution on account of their status under the generous standards for asylum adjudication articulated by the Supremes more than three decades ago in Cardoza-Fonseca and, shortly thereafter, reaffirmed and supposedly implementedby the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi (a fear can be “objectively reasonable” even if persecution is significant unlikely to occur). Problem is: Both of these binding precedents favoring many, many more asylum grants are widely ignored by policy makers, USCIS, EOIR, and some Article III Courts — with no meaningful consequences!
Additionally, the respondents appear to have had grantable “racial persecution” claims based on indigenous ethnicity. The son, in addition to being a “derivative” on his mother’s application, also had an apparently grantable case based on disability.
In a functioning system, this case would have been quickly granted, the respondents would be integrating into and contributing to our nation with green cards, and they would be well on their way to U.S. citizenship. Indeed, there would be instructive BIA precedents that would prevent DHS from re-litigating what are essentially frivolous oppositions!
But, instead, after more than five years and proceedings at three levels of our justice system, the case remains unresolved. Because of egregious, unforced EOIR errors it is still “bouncing around” the 1.8+ millionEOIR backlog, following this remand from the Second Circuit.
Exceptionally poor BIA legal performance, enabling and supporting a debilitating “anti-immigrant/anti-asylum/racially derogatory culture of denial” at EOIR, has led to far, far too many improper asylum denials at the Immigration Judge level and to a dysfunctional system that just keeps on building backlog and producing grotesquely inconsistent, “Refugee Roulette” results! Go to TRAC Immigration and check out the shocking number of sitting IJs with absurd 90% or more “asylum denial rates.”
It also fuels the continuing GOP nativist blather that denies the truth about what is happening at our Southern Border. We are wrongfully denying legal protection and status to many, many qualified refugees — often without any process at all (let alone due process) and with a deeply flawed, biased, and fatally defective process for those who are able to “get into the system.” (Itself, an arbitrary and capricious decision made by lower level enforcement agents rather than experts in asylum adjudication).
The “unpublished” nature of this particular Second Circuit decision might lead one to conclude that the Article IIIs have lost interest in solving the problem, preferring to sweep it under the carpet as this pathetic attempt at a “below the radar screen” unpublished remand does. But, such timid “head in the sand” actions will not restore fairness and order to a system that now conspicuously lacks both! This dangerous, defective, unfair, and unprofessional abuse of our justice system needs to be “publicly called out!”
“The agency failed to evaluate any of the country conditions evidence relevant to Oliva-Oliva’s CAT claim.” So how is this acceptable professional performance by the BIA? And why is it being “swept under the carpet” by the Second Circuit rather than “trumpeted” as part of a demand that Garland fix his dysfunctional due-process-denying system, NOW?
Contrary to all the fictional “open borders nonsense” being pushed by the nativist right, the key to restoring order at the borders is generous, timely, efficient, professional granting of refuge to those who qualify, either by the Asylum Office or the Refugee Program. This, in turn, absolutely requires supervision, guidance, and review where necessary by an “different” EOIR functioning as a true “expert tribunal.”
That would finally tell us who belongs in the legal protection system and who doesn’t while screening and providing accurate profiles of both groups. The latter essential data is totally lacking under the absurdist, racially motivated, “rejection not protection” program of Trump, much of which has been retained by Biden or forced upon him by unqualified righty Federal Judges. But, we’ll never get there without meaningful, progressive, due-process focused EOIR reform!
There will be no justice at the Southern Border or in America as a whole without radical, long overdue, due process reforms at EOIR!
Why So Many Children of Immigrants Rise to the Top
July 11, 2022
By Peter Coy
Peter Coy writes about economics for Opinion.
The lack of a shared set of facts about immigration makes it easy for accusatory and often false messages to echo loudly in the run-up to the midterm elections. J.D. Vance, a leading Republican candidate for Ohio’s open Senate seat, claimed in a recent advertisement that “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona has described immigration as “full scale invasion.” Tucker Carlson of Fox News told a guest on his show in 2017: “Go to Lowell, Mass., or Lewiston, Maine, or any place where large numbers of immigrants have been moved into a poor community, and it hasn’t become richer. It’s become poorer. That’s real.”
A new book, “Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success,” by two economists, Ran Abramitzky of Stanford and Leah Boustan of Princeton, should undercut some of the fearmongering. They linked census records to pull together what they call “the first set of truly big data about immigration.”
Using the data set, Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan were able to compare the income trajectories of immigrants’ children with those of people whose parents were born in the United States. The economists found that on average, the children of immigrants were exceptionally good at moving up the economic ladder.
Immigrants and their children are assimilating into the United States as quickly now as in the past, the economists found. That’s in line with recent research into the effects of immigration. While “first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born,” according to a 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the “second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S.”
Second-generation-immigrant success stories have long been a part of America’s history. Looking at census records from 1880, the researchers found that men whose fathers were low-income immigrants made more money as adults than the sons of low-income men born in the United States. (They focused on sons because it was harder to track women from one census to the next, since so many adopted their husbands’ names at marriage.) Because of privacy restrictions, they had access to individual data only through the 1940 census. They used other sources for subsequent years.
Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan observed the same pattern a century later. Children born around 1980 to men from Mexico, India, Brazil and almost every other country outearned the children of U.S.-born men.
“America really does have golden streets that allow immigrants to quickly make more than they could have earned at home,” they write. But, they add, “moving up the economic ladder in America — and catching up to the U.S.-born — takes time.”
Once Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan found abundant evidence of second-generation immigrants’ upward mobility, they tried to figure out why those children did so well.
They arrived at two answers. First, the children had an easy time outdoing parents whose careers were inhibited by poor language skills or a lack of professional credentials. The classic example is an immigrant doctor who winds up driving a cab in the United States.
Second, immigrants tended to settle in parts of the country experiencing strong job growth. That gave them an edge over native-born Americans who were firmly rooted in places with faltering economies. Immigrants are good at doing something difficult: leaving behind relatives, friends and the familiarity of home in search of prosperity. The economists found that native-born Americans who do what immigrants do — move toward opportunity — have children who are just as upwardly mobile as the children of immigrants.
The changing geography of immigration
European immigrants
flocked to factory jobs in
the Midwest …
Germans, Italians
and Irish people
followed millions of
U.S.-born Americans
to the West Coast.
Each dot represents
10 people
… and largely avoided the faltering economy of the rural South during the Jim Crow era.
Many Asian
immigrants joined
family members who
were already in the
United States in the
1970s and 80s.
Recent immigrants
followed job opportunities
to urban areas.
Latino immigrants
drove population growth
in the Southwest.
About 125,000 Cubans
landed in Florida during the Mariel boatlift.
Sources: Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan
Looking at maps of where immigrants have settled at different points in time, it’s clear that those regions were also areas of productivity and economic growth. In 1910, European immigrants went to work in the factories of the Midwest and New England. In 1980, immigrants from elsewhere in the Americas filled jobs in rapidly growing parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Florida.
If immigrants are so upwardly mobile, why doesn’t it seem that way? One reason is that there are more newcomers than there have been in decades and most haven’t had time yet to get ahead. The share of foreign-born people in the United States is back to the levels of the first two decades of the 20th century.
Share of the U.S. population that was born abroad
1850
1870
1890
1910
1930
1950
1970
1990
2010
0
5
10
15%
Ireland
Mexico
Germany
Canada
Africa
Middle East
Americas
Europe
Asia
Other
1921 Congress creates country-based immigration quotas.
1965 Congress rolls back quotas.
Sources: Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan
Another reason is that most immigrants are arriving well below native-born Americans socioeconomically. They are more likely, Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan found, than immigrants of the past to come from countries that are significantly poorer than the United States, including El Salvador, India and Vietnam. But it’s those immigrants who start at the bottom who ascend the most. In contrast, affluent, educated immigrants tend to be the least upwardly mobile, simply because they’re already at or near the top.
Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan dispute the argument that immigrants frequently take jobs from native-born Americans. Less skilled immigrants gravitate toward jobs for which there is relatively little competition from native-born Americans, such as picking crops, while highly skilled immigrants often create more jobs for native-born Americans by starting businesses and inventing things, they write.
The research of Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan has made headlines before, but in their new book they broaden and deepen the narrative with excerpts from diaries and oral histories of immigrants. Signe Tornbloom, 18, a daughter of hardscrabble Swedish farmers, immigrated alone in 1916 after receiving a letter that said, more or less: “Well, you’d better come over here. Everything is much better than it is at home.”
The notion that immigrants have become a permanent underclass, isolated from the American mainstream, is popular among immigration restrictionists — as well as among some pro-immigration groups that say immigrants need more help to break out of poverty. The truth is that today’s immigrants are advancing just as swiftly as those of the past. “The American dream,” Mr. Abramitzky said in an interview, “is just as alive now as it was a century ago.”
**************
Check out the full article and some really nifty graphics at the link.
Donald G. Sanders, a former Senate lawyer who uncovered the White House tapes that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, died on Sunday at a hospital in Columbia, Mo. He was 69.
Mr. Sanders, who lived in Columbia, died of cancer, said his wife, Dolores.
A former F.B.I. agent, Mr. Sanders was a Republican staff lawyer for the Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in when he brought to light ”the smoking gun” that eventually pointed to Nixon’s complicity in a cover-up of the break-in.
It was in a closed-door preliminary interrogation that Mr. Sanders’s curiosity was aroused by seemingly apprehensive answers from Alexander P. Butterfield, Nixon’s former appointments secretary.
Mr. Sanders dug deeper and asked if it were possible that some sort of recording system had been used in the White House.
Mr. Butterfield answered, ”I wish you hadn’t asked that question, but, yes, there is.”
Mr. Sanders then hurried to tell Fred D. Thompson, the lead minority counsel who is now a Republican senator from Tennessee.
”We both knew then it was important,” Mr. Sanders recalled in a 1997 interview.
Then, in nationally televised hearings, Mr. Thompson asked Mr. Butterfield about the recording system.
”It was actually Don who discovered the existence of the White House taping system, but he was too unassuming to ever mention it,” Mr. Thompson said on Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Mr. Sanders had returned to his home state in the 1980’s after more than two decades of Federal Government service as a lawyer for Congressional committees, an F.B.I. agent and an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Gerald R. Ford.
Donald Gilbert Sanders was born on April 26, 1930, in St. Louis. He graduated from the law school of the University of Missouri and then spent two years in the Marines. From 1956 to 1959, he was city attorney for Columbia.
From 1959 to 1969, Mr. Sanders worked for the F.B.I.
In 1969, he started working as a lawyer for Congressional committees.
After returning to Missouri, Mr. Sanders served as a commissioner in Boone County in 1989 and 1990, but he did not seek re-election. He had a private law practice in Columbia until his death.
In 1997, Mr. Sanders, while battling cancer, tried to start a national campaign to draft Senator Thompson for the 2000 Republican Presidential nomination, but Mr. Thompson declined to enter the race.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Sanders is survived by two sons, Michael, of Dallas, and Matthew, of Monrovia, Calif.; a daughter, Deborah Sanders, of Arlington, Va., and his mother, Ann Sanders of Columbia.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 29, 1999, Section A, Page 25 of the National edition with the headline: Donald G. Sanders Dies at 69; Brought Nixon Taping to Light. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Well, my friend Deb knew, of course!
What an important role! And, one that is antithetical to most of today’s GOP, with a few exceptions. It’s an interesting (discouraging) contrast with the total lack of integrity among most GOP politicos and “parallel universe” supporters whose corrupt willingness to face truth about Trump’s criminal conspiracy to overthrow our Constitution and our duly elected Government still threatens our American democracy!
Anna Flagg is The Marshall Project’s senior data reporter.
Julia Preston is a contributing writer at The Marshall Project.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
During their harrowing journey from Venezuela to the Texas border, the three Zaragoza children liked to imagine the refuge they would find when they reached the United States, a place where they would finally be free from hunger and police harassment and could simply be kids
Instead, when they reached the border in March, they were detained — dirty with mud from the Rio Grande and shivering with cold — in frigid cinder block cells. They spent sleepless nights on cement floors, packed in with dozens of other children under the glare of white lights, with agents in green uniforms shouting orders.
The siblings were booked by officers who asked questions they didn’t understand and were told to sign documents in English they couldn’t read. Even after their release three days later, they feared the U.S. would never be the haven they had longed for.
Since early 2017, one of every three people held in a Border Patrol facility was a minor, a far bigger share than has been reported before now, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project of previously unpublished official records. Out of almost 2 million people detained by the Border Patrol from February 2017 through June 2021, more than 650,000 were under 18, the analysis showed. More than 220,000 of those children, about one-third, were held for longer than 72 hours, the period established by federal court rulings and an anti-trafficking statute as a limit for border detention of children.
For most young migrants crossing without documents, the first stop in the U.S. is one of some 70 Border Patrol stations along the boundary line. The records reveal that detaining children and teenagers has become a major part of the Border Patrol’s everyday work. The records also show that conditions for minors have not significantly improved under President Joe Biden. While the numbers of kids in Border Patrol custody peaked in 2019 under former President Donald Trump, they rose again when Biden took office and have remained high.
Those numbers could surge to new highs when the Biden administration eventually lifts Title 42, a public health order that border authorities have used for more than two years to swiftly expel most unauthorized border crossers, including many children.
But the Border Patrol has resisted making changes to its facilities and practices to adapt to children, even while officials acknowledge that the conditions young people routinely face are often unsafe.
“A Border Patrol facility is no place for a child,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the nation’s highest immigration official, has repeatedly said. However, even now, as authorities are scrambling to beef up enforcement and expand detention capacity in preparation for a post-Title 42 influx, the Border Patrol’s basic approach to kids remains the same: Just move them out of custody as fast as possible.
Without broader changes, many thousands of kids seeking protection will remain at risk for harsh, demeaning and sometimes dangerous treatment as their first experience of the United States.
. . . .
*************************************************
Read Anna’s and Julia’s complete, disturbing, infuriating report at the link. Unnecessary, immoral, inappropriate, and just plain stupid and evil! Did I mention stupid and evil?
Thanks, in part, to the Trump Administration’s policies of racist child abuse masquerading as “immigration enforcement,” there is a large body of recent, available, accessible empirical data on the devastating effects on children, families, society, and our world’s future of immigration enforcement that targets children, teens, and other vulnerable groups!
The “perps” of these repulsive policies will “check out” at some point in the future. The Biden Administration, which pledged to do better but disgracefully hasn’t delivered, also can’t and should not escape accountability.
The damage they are inflicting on future generations and the ability of our world to harness and utilize in a cooperative fashion the “human capital” needed for our planet’s and humanity’s survival is totally unacceptable! People of intelligence, courage, energy, innovation, and compassion must work together to stop this disgraceful abuse. Those chosen as responsible leaders and officials in the future must represent “our better angels!” 😇
While those of us in the “senior generation” who believe in social justice and a better future for humanity will continue the fight, our “time on the stage” is inexorably winding down. It will be up to the NDPA and the rest of the upcoming generation — in America and elsewhere — to decide what kind of world they want to live in and what they are willing to do, and sometimes sacrifice, to make it happen.
As I have said many times: “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!”
It’s past time for a better, more realistic, more human, and “robustly humane” approach to human migration!😎 One that focuses on the long-term welfare of children and society, NOT short-term mythical “enforcement goals” or fears!
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
CNN: The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the federal government can continue to detain certain immigrants in removal proceedings without giving them a bond hearing after six months, in case where the Biden administration has prevailed over the immigration activists who opposed the government in the case.
CNN: A federal judge in Texas vacated guidelines set by the Biden administration over who is to be prioritized for immigration enforcement, according to a Friday ruling.
Vox: Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in Egbert v. Boule, moreover, has implications that stretch far beyond the border. Egbert guts a seminal Supreme Court precedent, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), which established that federal law enforcement officers who violate the Constitution may be individually sued — and potentially be required to compensate their victims for their illegal actions.
NYT: The agreement, called the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, commits the United States to taking 20,000 refugees from Latin America during the next two years, a threefold increase, according to White House officials. Mr. Biden also pledged to increase the number of seasonal worker visas from Central America and Haiti by 11,500.
NYT: The Biden administration expelled nearly 4,000 Haitians on 36 deportation flights in May — a significant increase over the previous three months — after renegotiating agreements with the island nation, which has been crippled by gang violence and an expanding humanitarian crisis.
Intercept_: Immigration and Customs Enforcement searched a massive database of personal information provided by LexisNexis over 1.2 million times in just a seven-month period in 2021, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. Critics say the staggering search volume confirms fears that the data broker is enabling the mass surveillance and deportation of immigrants.
WaPo: Weeks into the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, immigration officials fired off emails saying something was awry. The children were being reunited too quickly with their parents, an official wrote on a Friday night in late May 2018.
USA Today: Immigrants detained in civil cases face “monumental barriers in finding and communicating with attorneys,” which renders their right to legal representation “essentially meaningless,” according to the report released Thursday.
Law360: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take into account whether noncitizens have served in the U.S. military when making decisions about whether to try to deport them, the agency announced Tuesday.
CNN: Without intervention, as many as 200,000 children in the United States risk “aging out” of their parents’ immigration status and face having to enter the immigration system as adults themselves, the companies wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
NPR: In its statement, the Mexican migration agency did not specify what kind of documents were issued but most of the migrants showed papers that gave them a period of one month or more to leave the country or begin regularization procedures in Mexico. Most want to use the documents to reach the U.S. border.
AP: Before that change, Venezuelans had flown to Mexico City or Cancun as tourists and then made their way comfortably to the border. Many made it from home to the U.S. border in as little as four days.
Reuters: The United States on Wednesday moved to lift some Trump-era restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba even as it fended off criticism for blocking the Communist-run island and long-time foe from attending a regional summit this week.
Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that immigrants do not have a right to bond hearings when the government can show they are a flight risk, and that district courts lack the authority to order the government to provide such hearings on a class-wide basis.
Law360: Border agents can’t be sued in federal court for damages over alleged constitutional violations, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, citing concerns that broadening the legal liability of agents could negatively impact national security.
Law360: The Ninth Circuit denied a Honduran man’s bid to stay in the U.S., finding that his conviction in California for possessing a forged social security card with a counterfeit government seal is grounds for deportation as a crime involving moral turpitude.
LexisNexis[The BIA] applied a “presumption” that Petitioner’s conviction was a particularly serious crime and required him to “rebut” this presumption…The BIA committed an error of law, and abused its discretion, in failing to apply the correct legal standards in assessing whether Petitioner’s offense was a “particularly serious crime.”
LexisNexis: The particular social group of “Honduran women” was not at issue in Jaco, however, and the Fifth Circuit’s comment related to this group was incidental to the disposition of the case. Therefore, the Fifth Circuit’s comment regarding “Honduran women” as a particular social group is dicta and is not binding on this Court’s decision.
Law360: A Texas federal judge on Friday threw out the Biden administration’s policy for prioritizing immigration enforcement, saying the guidance ran counter to a legal requirement to detain certain categories of immigrants.
Law360: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement couldn’t shake off claims that it targeted its critics for removal, as a Washington federal judge ruled on Thursday that the Biden administration’s curbs on immigration enforcement operations didn’t moot the retaliation suit.
Law360: A Washington federal judge tossed a negligence claim against the federal government from a father and son seeking $6 million after being forcibly separated at the southern border, saying the pair did not allege the government owed a duty of care.
Law360: The Biden administration is facing yet another lawsuit over its immigration policies at the Southern border, this time from the state of Indiana, alleging that the administration is unlawfully granting parole to migrants and burdening state taxpayers as a result.
Law360: A group of asylum-seekers have hit U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with a proposed class action, saying its policies and practices unlawfully prevent them and other asylum applicants from obtaining work authorization pending decisions on their asylum claims.
Law360: The Fourth Circuit has revived a challenge by federal immigration judges to a Trump-era policy barring them from speaking up about the immigration courts, after a labor official formally dissolved their union.
Law360: The National Association of Immigration Judges asked the D.C. Circuit in a petition late Wednesday to overturn the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s 2020 decision that immigration judges cannot unionize, arguing that the FLRA’s order violated its members’ due process rights and protected liberty interest in joining a labor union.
AILA: USCIS updated policy guidance to incorporate changes from the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) Final Rule, including updated citations, new definitions, and clarifications. The updates apply to SIJ petitions and AOS applications filed or pending on or after 4/7/22.
AILA: CBP announced that users of the CPB One mobile application will be able to select a Spanish-language version of the features that allow them to file applications for or receive electronic versions of I-94s. More information about Form I-94 is available.
AILA: The CDC issued an order rescinding a 17-month-old requirement that people arriving in the country by air test negative for COVID-19, effective at 12:01 am (ET) on Sunday, June 11, 2022, saying it is “not currently necessary.”
AILA: From May 4, 2022, to June 2, 2022, USCIS issued certain I-765 receipt notices with incorrect information. Corrected notices with language confirming the 540-day automatic extension should reach affected applicants by the third week of June.
AILA: DOS announced that the U.S. Embassy Havana will schedule all immediate relative immigrant visa appointments to include spouses and children under 21 of U.S. citizens (IR/CR-1 and IR/CR-2), with interviews beginning in July 2022. More information in notice.
AILA: ICE announced a policy directive to consider U.S. military service when making discretionary determinations with regard to civil immigration enforcement actions against noncitizens.
Law360: The U.S. State Department said it is seeking project ideas from nonprofits and other institutions on how to strengthen its refugee resettlement program in areas such as housing, community engagement and program participation.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
It would be hard to imagine an action more out of line with the “LAD” than ramping up deportations of Black migrants to the dangerous, chaotic, failed state of Haiti. As the article from the NYT highlighted by Elizabeth above says:
The situation in Haiti has worsened over the past year. The International Organization for Migration, the largest nongovernmental aid group there, said that there were more than 200 kidnappings in May. Poverty is everywhere, and nearly half the country does not have adequate access to affordable and healthy food, according to the United Nations.
. . . .
In September, the Biden administration gave the organization $13.1 million intended to help Haitians getting off expulsion flights, providing cash and other assistance to help them to reintegrate. Many had been living in other countries in South America for years before making the journey to the United States.
The situation in Haiti has worsened over the past year. The International Organization for Migration, the largest nongovernmental aid group there, said that there were more than 200 kidnappings in May. Poverty is everywhere, and nearly half the country does not have adequate access to affordable and healthy food, according to the United Nations.
. . . .
The systemic issues that drive migration out of Haiti are expected to come up during the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week. Haiti’s interim prime minister, Ariel Henry, is in attendance.
President Biden ran for office promising to bring compassion to U.S. immigration policies, particularly those involving asylum. But rolling out new policies amid a sharp increase in migration and during a pandemic has proved difficult. Some Trump-era policies remain in place.
So, why is the Administration squanderingmoney, resources, and, incredibly, the goodwill of folks who actually voted for Biden/Harris to “ramp up” deportations and exclusions of migrants of color, many of them asylum applicants subject to a biased and unfair system, when we could actually use their skills in our economy, as this quote from an article by Dany Bahar at Brookings points out:
At the same time, 2021 resulted in the highest number of migrants entering or attempting to enter through the southern border to the United States. There is no reason to think this won’t continue in 2022. These migrants, mostly from the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), are desperate to join the U.S. labor force, as they flee poor economic conditions—particularly after the economic slowdown caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic—as well as violence and instability in general. In response to this flow, the Biden-Harris administration has focused on significantly
increasing investment toward Central America, including Mexico, while at the same time telling immigrants in Guatemala “
The irony is clear; if there was any time in the modern history of the United States to promote a flexibilization of its migration policies, it is now. It is the most efficient and easiest way to offer a smart solution to the unprecedented tightness in U.S. labor markets. It is a no-brainer for several reasons.
It might be a “no brainer,” as Dany says, but it appears to be “above the pay grade” of Biden’s inept immigration policy team. They seem to be mostly “Stephen Miller fellow travelers.” Why?
I suppose the only “silver lining” is that I can always count on inept policy officials in the Biden Administration to prove my points about what a horrible job they are doing for immigrants, for racial justice, for Due Process of law, for America, and for humanity!
He had been in office only two months and there was already a crisis at the southwest border. Thousands of migrant children were jammed into unsanitary Border Patrol stations. Republicans were accusing Mr. Biden of flinging open the borders. And his aides were blaming one another.
Facing his bickering staff in the Oval Office that day in late March 2021, Mr. Biden grew so angry at their attempts to duck responsibility that he erupted.
Who do I need to fire, he demanded, to fix this?
Mr. Biden came into office promising to dismantle what he described as the inhumane immigration policies of President Donald J. Trump. But the episode, recounted by several people who attended or were briefed on the meeting, helps explain why that effort remains incomplete: For much of Mr. Biden’s presidency so far, the White House has been divided by furious debates over how — and whether — to proceed in the face of a surge of migrants crossing the southwest border.
. . . .
****************^
Read the complete article at the link.
Not rocket 🚀 science:
Note to Susan Rice & Ron Klain: There will be no racial justice in America without immigrant justice.
Asylum is the law, NOT a “policy option” or a “strategy.”
The Attorney General has an obligation to insist that the law be followed or to resign.
How on earth could anyone think that the border can be fixed without addressing the extreme dysfunction and Trump White Nationalist bias in the Immigration Courts?
How do you run on a promise to restore asylum at the border without having a plan in hand to do that on Inauguration Day?
Ports of entry “reopened” remarkably quickly for White asylum seekers from Ukraine, using cooperation among the DHS, Mexico, and volunteer groups. So, it’s very “doable.” What’s lacking here appears to be the will and the motivation to treat asylum seekers of color fairly and humanely.
Is the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ on permanent LOA? What does Kristen Clarke, AAG for Civil Rights, do to earn her paycheck? Whatever happened to Associate AG Vanita Gupta, a former civil rights and racial justice maven, who has turned her back on America’s most glaring and serious racial justice problems, at the border and in her Department’s dysfunctional “courts,” and disappeared into the bowls of Garland’s bureaucracy, never to be heard from again?
So, following the law and treating persons of color fairly and humanely at our borders will create “chaos” (it should do nothing of the sort, with competent leadership and personnel) and might be “bad politics” for “moderate Dems.” Gimmie a break!
Why not just consider all asylum applicants to be “constructively White persons” and proceed accordingly?
Why is appeasing GOP White Nationalist nativists, who wouldn’t support Biden no matter what he does at the border, more important to the Administration than keeping promises to supporters who actually worked to put Biden, Harris, and, derivatively, folks like Rice, Klain, Mayorkas, and Garland in office?
Repubs do remember who their key supporters are, and act accordingly, even when those actions are illegal, immoral, counterproductive, and often unpopular. Dems, by contrast, are afraid to follow the law and do the right thing to make good on promises to their supporters!
America actually needs more legal immigrants. Many of them are waiting at the border for justice long delayed. Perhaps, an Administration who can’t see that and turn it into a “win-win” doesn’t deserve to be in office.
NQRFPT = “Not Quite Ready For Prime Time” — Unfortunately, it’s a more than apt descriptor for the Biden Administration’s overall inept and tone-deaf approach to due process and immigrants’ rights in the beyond dysfunctional and unjust “Immigration Courts” under EOIR @ Garalnd’s DOJ.
Mike LaSusa Legal and Natioanl Security Reporter Law369 PHOTO: Twitter
Influx Of Solo Kids Poses Challenge For Immigration Courts
By Mike LaSusa
Law360 (March 31, 2022, 2:44 PM EDT) — Unaccompanied minors arriving in increasing numbers at the southern U.S. border are likely to face a tough time finding legal representation and navigating an overwhelmed immigration court system that has no special procedures for handling their cases.
The number of unaccompanied children encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection has risen sharply over the past year, to an average of more than 10,000 per month, according to CBP data. Those kids’ cases often end up in immigration court, where they are subject to the exact same treatment as adults, no matter their age.
“Nobody really thought of this when the laws were enacted,” said retired Immigration Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law. “Everything dealing with kids is kind of an add-on,” he said, referring to special dockets for minors and other initiatives that aren’t expressly laid out in the law but have been tried in various courts over the years.
About a third of the immigration court cases started since October involve people under 18, and of those people, 40% are 4 or under, according to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates the courts.
It’s unclear how many of those cases involve unaccompanied children and how many involve kids with adult relatives, and it’s hard to make historical comparisons because of changes in how the EOIR has tracked data on kids’ cases over the years.
But kids’ cases are indeed making up an increasing share of immigration court dockets, according to Jennifer Podkul, vice president of policy and advocacy for Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, one of the main providers of legal services for migrant kids in the U.S.
“The cases are taking a lot longer because the backlog has increased so much,” Podkul said. Amid the crush of cases, attorneys can be hard to find.
. . . .
The immigration courts should consider “getting some real juvenile judges who actually understand asylum law and have real special training, not just a few hours of canned training, to deal with kids,” said Schmidt, the former immigration judge.
. . . .
***************************
Those with Law360 access can read Mike’s complete article at the link.
For what seems to be the millionth time with Garland, it’s not “rocket science.”🚀 He should have brought in Jen Podkul, her “boss,” Wendy Young of KIND, or a similar qualified leader from outside Government, to kick tail, roll some heads, clean out the deadwood, and set up a “Juvenile Division” of the Immigration Court staffed with well-qualified “real” judges, experts in asylum law, SIJ status, U & T visas, PD, and due process for vulnerable populations.
Such judicial talent is out there. But, that’s the problem with Garland! The judicial and leadership talent remain largely “out there” while lesser qualified individuals continue to botch cases and screw up the justice system on a regular basis! Actions have consequences; so do inactions and failure to act decisively and courageously.
And, of course, Garland should have replaced the BIA with real judges — progressive practical scholars who wouldn’t tolerate some of the garbage inflicted on kids by the current out of control, undisciplined, “enforcement biased,” anti-immigrant EOIR system.
Instead, Garland employs Miller “restrictionist enforcement guru” Tracy Short as his “Chief Immigration Judge” and another “Miller holdover” David Wetmore as BIA Chair. No immigration expert in America would deem either of these guys capable or qualified to insure due process for kids (or, for that matter anyone else) in Immgration Court.
Yet, more than a year into the Biden Administration, there they are! It’s almost as if Stephen Miller just moved over to DOJ to join his buddy Gene Hamilton in abusing immigrants in Immigration Court. (Technically, Hamilton is gone, but it would be hard to tell from the way Garland and his equally tone-deaf lieutenants have messed up EOIR. Currently, he and Miller are officers of “America First Legal” a neo-fascist group engaged in “aiming to reinstate Trump-era policies that bar unaccompanied migrant children from entering the United States,” according to Wikipedia.)
Meanwhile, the folks with the expertise to solve problems and get the Immigration Courts back on track, like Jen & Wendy, are giving interviews and trying to fix Garland’s ungodly mess from the outside! What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with this Administration?
We’re about to find out! Big time, as Garland’s broken, due-process denying “court” system continues it’s “death spiral,” ☠️ taking lots of kids and other human lives down with it!
