HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/doj-changed-hiring-promote-restrictive-immigration-judges?fbclid=IwAR2VfI3AKcttNoXlc_MX0sa-6X94bsOWF4btxb7tWDBz7Es4bvqB63oZA-0

Tanvi Misra reports for Roll Call:

DOJ changed hiring to promote restrictive immigration judges

New practice permanently placed judges on powerful appellate board, documents show

Posted Oct 29, 2019 2:51 PM

Tanvi Misra

@Tanvim

More non-Spanish speaking migrants are crossing the border DHS advances plan to get DNA samples from immigrant detainees White House plans to cut refugee admittance to all-time low

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James McHenry, director of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, testifies before a Senate panel in 2018. Memos from McHenry detail changes in hiring practices for six restrictive judges placed permanently on the Board of Immigration Appeals. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Department of Justice has quietly changed hiring procedures to permanently place immigration judges repeatedly accused of bias to a powerful appellate board, adding to growing worries about the politicization of the immigration court system.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests describe how an already opaque hiring procedure was tweaked for the six newest hires to the 21-member Board of Immigration Appeals. All six board members, added in August, were immigration judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates. Some also had the highest number of decisions in 2017 that the same appellate body sent back to them for reconsideration. All six members were immediately appointed to the board without a yearslong probationary period.

[More non-Spanish speaking migrants are crossing the border]

“They’re high-level deniers who’ve done some pretty outrageous things [in the courtroom] that would make you believe they’re anti-immigrant,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and past senior legal adviser at the board. “It’s a terrifying prospect … They have power over thousands of lives.”

Among the hiring documents are four recommendation memos to the Attorney General’s office from James McHenry, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration court system.

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The memos, dated July 18, recommend immigration judges William A. Cassidy, V. Stuart Couch, Earle B. Wilson, and Keith E. Hunsucker to positions on the appellate board. McHenry’s memos note new hiring procedures had been established on March 8, to vet “multiple candidates” expressing interest in the open board positions.

A footnote in the memos states that applicants who are immigration judges would be hired through a special procedure: Instead of going through the typical two-year probationary period, they would be appointed to the board on a permanent basis, immediately. This was because a position on the appellate board “requires the same or similar skills” as that of an immigration judge, according to the memo.

Appellate board members, traditionally hired from a variety of professional backgrounds, are tasked with reviewing judicial decisions appealed by the government or plaintiff. Their decisions, made as part of a three-member panel, can set binding precedents that adjudicators and immigration judges rely on for future cases related to asylum, stays of deportation, protections for unaccompanied minors and other areas.

McHenry, appointed in 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, concludes his recommendation memos by noting that the judge’s “current federal service was vetted and no negative information that would preclude his appointment” was reported. He does not mention any past or pending grievances, although public complaints have been filed against at least three of the judges.

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These documents, obtained through FOIA via Muckrock, a nonprofit, collaborative that pushes for government transparency, and shared with CQ Roll Call, reflect “the secrecy with which these rules are changing,” said Matthew Hoppock, a Kansas City-based immigration attorney. “It’s very hard to remove or discipline a judge that’s permanent than when it’s probationary, so this has long term implications.”

‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have left’: Migrant laments ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

Volume 90%

The Department of Justice declined to answer a series of questions asked by CQ Roll Call regarding the new hiring practices, why exemptions were made in the case of these immigration judges and whether complaints against any of the judges were considered.

“Board members, like immigration judges, are selected through an open, competitive, and merit-based process involving an initial review by the Office of Personnel Management and subsequent, multiple levels of review by the Department of Justice,” a DOJ official wrote via email. “This process includes review by several career officials. The elevation of trial judges to appellate bodies is common in almost every judicial system, and EOIR is no different.”

Homestead: On the front lines of the migrant children debate

Volume 90%

Opaque hiring process

When the department posted the six board vacancies in March, the openings reflected the first time that board members would be allowed to serve from immigration courts throughout the country. Previously, the entire appellate board worked out of its suburban Virginia headquarters.

In addition, the job posts suggested that new hires would be acting in a dual capacity: They may be asked to adjudicate cases at the trial court level and then also review the court decisions appealed to the board. Previously, board members stuck to reviewing appeals cases, a process that could take more than a year.

Ultimately, all six hires were immigration judges, although past board candidates have come from government service, private sector, academia and nonprofits.

“This was stunning,” MaryBeth Keller, chief immigration judge until she stepped down this summer, said in a recent interview with The Asylumist, a blog about asylum issues. “I can’t imagine that the pool of applicants was such that only [immigration judges] would be hired, including two from the same city.”

Keller said immigration judges are “generally eminently qualified to be board members, but to bring in all six from the immigration court? I’d like to think that the pool of applicants was more diverse than that.”

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who headed the board under President Bill Clinton, said the panel always had arbitrary hiring procedures that changed with each administration and suffered from “quality control” issues. But the Trump administration has “pushed the envelope the furthest,” he said.

“This administration has weaponized the process,” he told CQ Roll Call. “They have taken a system that has some notable weaknesses in it and exploited those weaknesses for their own ends.”

The reputation and track record of the newest immigration judges has also raised eyebrows.

According to an analysis of EOIR data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, each of these newest six judges had an asylum denial rate over 80 percent, with Couch, Cassidy, and Wilson at 92, 96, and 98 percent, respectively. Nationally, the denial rate for asylum cases is around 57 percent. Previous to their work as immigration judges, all six had worked on behalf of government entities, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the military.

“It mirrors a lot of the concerns at the trial level,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). She said several new hires at the trial level have been Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys.

“Every day across the country, people’s lives hang in the balance waiting for immigration judges to decide their fate,” she said. “Asylum grant rates for immigration court cases vary widely depending on the judge, suggesting that outcomes may turn on which judge is deciding the case rather than established principles and rules of law.”

Immigration experts note that denial rates depend on a variety of factors, including the number and types of cases that appear on a judge’s docket. Perhaps a better measure of an immigration judge’s decision-making may be the rate that rulings get returned by the appeals board.

For 2017, the last full year for which data is available, Couch and Wilson had the third and fourth highest number of board-remanded cases — at 50 and 47 respectively, according to federal documents obtained by Bryan Johnson, a New York-based immigration lawyer. The total number of cases on their dockets that year were 176 and 416, respectively.

Some of the behavior by the newer judges also have earned them a reputation. In 2018, AILA obtained 11 complaints against Cassidy that alleged prejudice against immigrant respondents. In a public letter the Southern Poverty Law Center sent last year to McHenry, the group complained that Cassidy bullied migrants in his court. He also asked questions that “exceeded his judicial authority,” Center lawyers wrote.

Another letter, sent in 2017 by SPLC lawyers and an Emory University law professor whose students observed Cassidy’s court proceedings, noted the judge “analogized an immigrant to ‘a person coming to your home in a Halloween mask, waving a knife dripping with blood’ and asked the attorney if he would let that person in.”

SPLC also has documented issues with Wilson, noting how he “routinely leaned back in his chair, placed his head in his hands and closed his eyes” during one hearing. “He held this position for more than 20 minutes as a woman seeking asylum described the murders of her parents and siblings.”

Couch’s behavior and his cases have made news. According to Mother Jones, he once lost his temper with a 2-year-old Guatemalan child, threatening to unleash a dog on the boy if he didn’t stop making noise. But he is perhaps better known as the judge who denied asylum to “Ms. A.B.,” a Salvadoran domestic violence survivor, even after the appellate board asked him to reconsider. Sessions, the attorney general at the time, ultimately intervened and made the final precedent-setting ruling in the case.

Couch has a pattern of denying asylum to women who have fled domestic violence, “despite clear instructions to the contrary” from the appellate board, according to Johnson, the immigration lawyer who said Couch “has been prejudging all claims that have a history of domestic violence, and quite literally copying and pasting language he used to deny other domestic violence victims asylum.”

Jeremy McKinney, a Charlotte-based immigration lawyer and second vice president at AILA, went to law school with Couch and called him “complex.” While he was reluctant to characterize the judge as “anti-immigrant,” he acknowledged “concerning” stories about the Couch’s court demeanor.

“In our conversations, he’s held the view that asylum is not the right vehicle for some individuals to immigrate to the U.S. — it’s one I disagree with,” McKinney said. “But I feel quite certain that that’s exactly why he was hired.”

Politicizing court system

Increasingly, political appointees are “micromanaging” the dockets of immigration judges, said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the union National Association of Immigration Judges. Appointees also are making moves that jeopardize their judicial independence, she said. Among them: requiring judges to meet a quota of 700 completed cases per year; referring cases even if they are still in the midst of adjudication to political leadership, including the Attorney General, for the final decision; and seeking to decertify the immigration judges’ union.

These are “symptoms of a bigger problem,” said Tabaddor. “If you have a court that’s situated in the law enforcement agency … that is the fundamental flaw that needs to be corrected.”

In March, the American Bar Association echoed calls by congressional Democrats to investigate DOJ hiring practices in a report that warned the department’s “current approach will elevate speed over substance, exacerbate the lack of diversity on the bench, and eliminate safeguards that could lead to a resurgence of politicized hiring.”

“Moreover, until the allegations of politically motivated hiring can be resolved, doubt will remain about the perceived and perhaps actual fairness of immigration proceedings,” the organization wrote. “The most direct route to resolving these reasonable and important concerns would be for DOJ to publicize its hiring criteria, and for the inspector general to conduct an investigation into recent hiring practices.”

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One of the most disgusting developments, that the media sometimes misses, is that having skewed and biased the system specifically against Central American asylum seekers, particularly women and children, the Administration uses their “cooked” and “bogus” statistics to make a totally disingenuous case that the high denial rates show the system is being abused by asylum seekers and their lawyers. That, along with the “fiction of the asylum no show” been one of “Big Mac’s” most egregious and oft repeated lies! There certainly is systemic abuse taking place here — but it is by the Trump Administration, not asylum seekers and their courageous lawyers.

This system is a national disgrace operating under the auspices of a feckless Congress and complicit Article III courts whose life-tenured judges are failing in their collective duty to put an end to this blatantly unconstitutional system: one that also violates statutory provisions intended to give migrants access to counsel, an opportunity to fully present and document their cases to an unbiased decision maker, and a fair opportunity to seek asylum regardless of status or manner of entry. Basically, judges at all levels who are complicit in this mockery of justice are “robed killers.”

Just a few years ago, asylum seekers were winning the majority of individual rulings on asylum in Immigration Court. Others were getting lesser forms of protection, so that more than 60 percent of asylum applicants who got final decisions in Immigration Court were receiving much-needed, life-saving protection. That’s exactly what one would expect given the Supreme Court’s pronouncements in 1987 about the generous standards applicable to asylum seekers in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca.

Today, conditions have not improved materially in most “refugee sending countries.” Indeed, this Administration’s bogus designation of the Northern Triangle “failed states” as “Safe Third Countries” is absurd and shows their outright contempt for the system and their steadfast belief that the Federal Judiciary will “tank” on their responsibility to hold this Executive accountable.

As a result of this reprehensible conduct, the favorable trend in asylum adjudication has been sharply reversed. Now, approximately two-thirds of asylum cases are being denied, many based on specious “adverse credibility” findings, illegal “nexus” findings that intentionally violate the doctrine of “mixed motives”enshrined in the statute, absurdly unethical and illegal rewriting of asylum precedents by Sessions and Barr, intentional denial of the statutory right to counsel, and overt coercion through misuse of DHS detention authority to improperly “punish” and “deter” legal asylum seekers.

Right under the noses of complicit Article III Judges and Congress, the Trump Administration has “weaponized” the Immigration “Courts” and made them an intentionally hostile environment for asylum seekers and their, often pro bono or low bono, lawyers. How is this acceptable in 21^st Century America?

That’s why it’s important for members of the “New Due Process Army” to remember my “5 Cs Formula” – Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change. Make these folks with “no skin the game” feel the pain and be morally accountable for those human lives they are destroying by inaction in the face of Executive illegality and tyranny from their “ivory tower perches.”

We’re in a war for the survival of our democracy and the future of humanity. There is only one “right side” in this battle. History will remember who stood tall and who went small when individual rights, particularly the rights to Due Process and fair treatment for the most vulnerable among us, were under attack by the lawless forces of White Nationalism and their enablers!

PWS

10-31-19

“DUH” OF THE DAY — THREE ARTICLES EXPLAIN HOW SLEAZY SYCOPHANT BILLY BARR PUT HIMSELF AT THE CENTER OF TRUMP’S CORRUPTION — It’s No Surprise To Those Of Us Who Have Watched Barr’s “Ethics Free Zone” @ DOJ — Why Are Article IIIs Allowing This Biased “Political Hack” To Trash Justice In The U.S. Immigration Courts?

https://apple.news/AbSuy-8PHRYa0vX1p8I-F5Q

Sonam Sheth writes at Business Insider:

‘Pure insanity’: Intelligence veterans are floored by Barr’s ‘off the books’ overtures to foreign officials about the Russia probe

Intelligence veterans were puzzled by reports that Attorney General William Barr personally urged foreign officials to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. “This is unheard of,” one former senior Justice Department official who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, told Insider. The Washington Post reported that Barr had already made overtures to British intelligence officials about the

Read in Business Insider: https://apple.news/AbSuy-8PHRYa0vX1p8I-F5Q

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Harry Litman in the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/01/did-william-barr-break-any-rules-only-most-important-one/

Did William Barr break any rules? Only the most important one.

Add to list

By Harry Litman

Contributing columnist

October 1 at 11:35 AM

Multiple news agencies reported Monday that Attorney General William P. Barr has had extensive personal involvement in the Justice Department’s investigations into the origins of the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

That involvement — including trips abroad for personal meetings with foreign officials — is certainly “fairly unorthodox,” in the words of a former Justice Department official. Is it also inappropriate?

After all, part of an attorney general’s job is to liaise with foreign counterparts. It’s not unusual to have in-person meetings, especially at the beginning of an attorney general’s tenure, both to meet and greet and to discuss mutual priorities.

Moreover, Barr is the head of the Justice Department. No department business is beyond his concern. Unlike, say, the barriers that are supposed to stand between the White House and the Justice Department, there is no out-of-bounds area for the department’s political appointees, much less the attorney general.

Thus, during Barr’s first tenure as attorney general, he personally argued a case in the Supreme Court, a task normally reserved to the solicitor general and his or her assistants. No one took him to task for weeding in the solicitor general’s garden.

So what, if anything, might be worrisome about Barr’s conduct now?

Well, plenty. For starters, while attorneys general do meet with foreign officials to cement working relationships and even communicate shared general priorities, transatlantic trips to ask for help on an individual investigation are beyond rare. It would even be unusual for an attorney general to pick up the phone to call a counterpart about an individual case.

Barr’s personal globe-trotting mission necessarily communicates that this one matter — of all the ongoing business of the Justice Department — is an unsurpassed priority of the department.

Second and relatedly, Barr already has appointed a respected U.S. attorney, John Durham, to undertake the investigation. Many Justice Department investigations require cooperation with our most important foreign friends, and there are established channels of communication for Durham to work through if he needs help from intelligence agencies of other countries.

Third, the attorney general’s personal involvement compromises the whole idea of Durham’s independence. How is Durham supposed to ignore the bear riding piggyback on his shoulders?

That would be so even if the attorney general had no particular prejudice or bias with respect to the investigation. But the next problem, larger still, is that this attorney general brings strongly held preconceptions into an investigation that is supposed to be free of them.

Barr has repeatedly expressed suspicions of impropriety in the initiation of the Russia probe, including his inflammatory suggestion that the probe constituted “spying” on the Trump campaign.

It is hard not to conclude that Barr’s driving motivation is to turn up some nefarious aspect to the probe’s origins, backed by the imprimatur of a foreign government. And of course, nothing would please President Trump more.

Which brings us to the next big problem with Barr’s unusual campaign. Its animating idea, in fact obsession, is simply wacky. No one has ever shown any satisfactory basis for the various conspiracy theories that Trump defenders have trotted out to argue that the investigation into Russian meddling was rotten at the core.

Indeed, the whole enterprise of trying to discredit the probe is half-cocked. The revelations in the Mueller report of extensive efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election are beyond dispute and extraordinarily grave. It is fortunate that the FBI undertook the probe with the seriousness it merited.

Finally, the attorney general has not simply inserted himself into Durham’s probe. He has entered into a working partnership with Trump. Thus, we learned that the president’s recent call to the Australian prime minister to urge him to assist Barr apparently came at Barr’s urging. And again, that Barr asked Trump to contact other countries to ask them to introduce the attorney general and Durham to appropriate officials.

The president should not be within a million miles of this probe. Barr’s improper tag-team approach links the attorney general to Trump’s goal of smearing anyone involved in investigating him and can only further undermine public confidence in the department’s evenhandedness.

The overall rule that Barr has broken isn’t found in so many words in the Code of Federal Regulations or the Department of Justice Manual. But it’s the first rule for any attorney general: the rule of sound judgment and impartial apolitical administration of justice.

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Barr’s enabling of Trump’s corruption just got more dangerous

Add to list

By Greg Sargent

Opinion writer

October 1 at 10:42 AM

We are now learning extraordinary new details about the lengths to which William P. Barr is going in service of President Trump’s corrupt and all-consuming goal of making core truths about his 2016 election victory disappear.

But this isn’t a story that only looks backward. It also looks forward. And we need to ask whether these new efforts by Trump’s attorney general are aimed at the 2020 election as well.

Barr appears determined to discredit the special counsel investigation’s finding that Russia engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in our election on Trump’s behalf.

Which raises the question: What if Barr’s activities — whether by coincidence or design — end up chilling how intelligence officials respond to the next foreign effort to sabotage a U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf?

The Post has some major new reporting that documents Barr’s efforts to enlist foreign governments in his campaign to discredit the origins of Robert S. Mueller III’s probe. Barr has made overtures to British and Italian officials, and Trump himself pressed the Australian president to assist in undermining the investigation’s genesis.

[Harry Litman: Did William Barr break any rules? Only the most important one.]

Barr has already claimed “spying” on Trump’s campaign occurred, feeding Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory of a “deep state” plot to block him from getting elected. The goal now appears to be to use the government’s investigative machinery to create the impression that the real crime was not Russian interference, for which a whole bunch of Russians were indicted, but rather the investigation itself — perpetrated by U.S. law enforcement.Current and former officials are alarmed by Barr’s direct involvement in the investigation into the probe’s origins currently being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut. As one former official tells The Post, this is “fairly unorthodox” and undercuts any hopes that Durham will be permitted to settle this in a “professional, nonpartisan manner.”

Another worry about Barr’s involvement

In an interview with me, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), raised another worrisome prospect.

“This is designed to validate a conspiracy theory — that Russia didn’t interfere, and that the whole Mueller probe was a ‘witch hunt,’” Malinowski, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told me. The goal, he said, is to paint the intelligence community and FBI as the “villains in that conspiracy theory.”

Malinowski argued that intelligence officials eyeing how to respond to foreign interference in 2020 might take cues from the aggressiveness of Barr’s ongoing investigation of the investigators.

“There’s a message to our intelligence community, which is, ‘Don’t go there,’” Malinowski told me. “They’re being investigated for doing their jobs the last time.”

What’s more, Malinowski pointed out, foreign intelligence officials and governments might take a similar message from Barr’s efforts to enlist them in his current internal review.

“Are you going to share intelligence with this administration next year if you pick up evidence of Russian interference?” Malinowski noted, referring to foreign officials, who will ask themselves: “How will such information be received by the Trump administration? Do you pass along something that is clearly unwanted?”

Making that point more salient, The Post reports that Barr has taken a “sustained interest” in a conspiracy theory holding that the European academic who originally alerted Trump adviser George Papadopoulos to dirt Russia gathered on Hillary Clinton — which led to the FBI probe — was actually a plant hoping to falsely entrap the Trump campaign.

And one source tells The Post that in his conversations with British officials, Barr “expressed a belief” that the investigation of Russian interference “stemmed from some corrupt origin.”

A second source denies that characterization. But it simply cannot be dismissed as a very real possibility.

No end to Barr’s enabling of Trump

After all, we already saw Barr publicly legitimize Trump’s corrupt attacks on law enforcement by validating the “spying” and “witch hunt” language. Barr has even appealed to us to take into account how victimized Trump felt by Mueller’s witch-hunting in evaluating Trump’s corrupt efforts to obstruct it.

What’s more, Barr’s initial summary of the Mueller report misled the country by dishonestly downplaying what it actually determined about Trump officials’ efforts to conspire and benefit from Russian interference, and by minimizing the findings on obstruction of justice.

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All this feeds into the ballooning Ukraine scandal as well. One key thing that Trump demanded of the Ukrainian president in the July 25 call is help validating a whackjob conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 email hacks. This, too, would magically make the truth about 2016 disappear — and in the call, Trump directed the Ukrainian president to work with Barr to make it true.

The Justice Department has denied any such Barr involvement. But here again, we already know that Barr’s Justice Department helped direct efforts to keep Congress from learning of the whistleblower complaint detailing that corrupt pressure on a foreign leader to interfere in the next U.S. election. Barr didn’t recuse himself from that, despite being personally named in the complaint.

Barr’s efforts in that regard are now being scrutinized by House Democrats as part of their impeachment inquiry. Which raises the question of whether these latest activities abroad will also come under House Democratic scrutiny.

Such efforts by Democrats, Malinowski suggested to me, would show that Democrats have the “back” of the intelligence community, so it isn’t dissuaded from investigating the next foreign attacks on our political system. After all, as Malinowski bluntly put it, this dissuasion appears in part to be Barr’s “goal.”

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Barr’s political bias and his gross failure to provide asylum applicants and other migrants with the “fair and impartial” quasi-judicial hearings guaranteed by our Constitution has become painfully obvious, just as it was under unqualified White Nationalist AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. The conflicts of interest, bogus legal rulings, ethical violations, and anti-immigrant bias simply scream out.

Yet, complicit Article IIIs continue to mindlessly accept the skewed and systemically unfair results of this corrupt and politicized “court” system largely without critical examination. Why aren’t life tenured Federal Judges performing their Constitutional duty to protect our individual Due Process?

PWS

10-01-19

DON KERWIN @ CMS: The Darkness Of Trump’s White Nationalist Xenophobia Descends Over Ronald Reagan’s “City On The Hill!”

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

https://cmsny.org/publications/assault-on-refugee-protection-kerwin-9-30-19/

The Darkening City on the Hill: The Trump Administration Heightens Its Assault on Refugee Protection

NEW ESSAY | CMS Executive Director Donald Kerwin

In 2018, the global population of forcibly displaced persons reached a record 70.8 million, including 25.9 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum-seekers. The United States led the response to past refugee crises of a similar magnitude, as, for example, in the aftermath of World War II and the Vietnam conflict. Yet although the United States remains the largest donor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,[1] the Trump administration has sought to steer the country in a different direction. The United States now seems poised to become the global leader in refugee responsibility shunning and of exclusionary nationalist states, whose leaders the president regularly praises, fetes and seems to emulate. The administration’s recent actions have been particularly damaging to the nation’s identity, to the millions of forcibly displaced in search of safety and a permanent home, and to the ethic of responsibility sharing set forth in the Global Compact on Refugees, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly last December.

On September 26, 2019, the White House released two long-anticipated decrees. Its Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement requires that both states and localities consent to the resettlement of refugees in a particular locality. If either refuses to consent, the Order provides that “refugees should not be resettled within that State or locality,” except in very narrow circumstances that include prior notification of the president. States could bar refugee resettlement, for example, in cities that have been renewed by refugees and that badly want and need them. The Order purports to ensure that “refugees are resettled in communities that are eager and equipped to support their successful integration into American society and the labor force.” Yet significant coordination already occurs, and it can be strengthened without creating a state and local veto that would hamstring the federal government’s administration of this program. For many years, media sources and politicians, including the president, have railed against the refugee program’s putative insecurity and the burdens it imposes on communities. If implemented, the Order would further politicize refugee protection and diminish resettlement opportunities. Evisceration of the refugee program (not integration) seems to be the Order’s purpose, and would certainly be its result.

In addition, the Order seems to require states and localities to take an affirmative step – as part of a yet-determined process – to consent to refugee placement. In other words, they must “opt in” to the program. If they do not, then the federal government would deem the jurisdiction unacceptable for resettlement. In these circumstances, the enhanced federal consultation with states and localities and their “greater involvement in the process” of refugee placement would consist of nothing at all.

Also on September 26, the administration released the President’s annual Report to Congress on Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. This document announced the administration’s decision to limit refugee admissions to 18,000 in FY 2020, the lowest number in the 40-year history of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), lower even that the two years following the 9/11 attacks.[2] The Refugee Council USA explained the implications of this decision as follows:

This decision is unprecedented, cruel, and contrary to American humanitarian values and strategic interests. Historically, the United States has been the global leader on refugee resettlement, setting an average refugee admissions goal of 95,000 people annually. To slam the door on persecuted people while the number of refugees displaced globally continues to rise to historic levels upends decades of bipartisan tradition. It also abandons thousands of refugees in need of resettlement, leaving them in precarious, often life-threatening situations.

The Refugee Council USA also pointed out that the forthcoming Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for FY 2020 – which constitutes formal notice of the refugee ceiling – will further dismantle “the community-based infrastructure in the US, which has long welcomed the most in-need refugees and provided them the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety.” This infrastructure – which has been decades in the making – will take years to rebuild.

The administration’s rationale for historically low admissions are specious. The Report to Congress makes the obvious point that it would be more impactful to “resolve” refugee-producing conditions, than to resettle large numbers of refugees. Yet there is no reason why the United States cannot administer a robust resettlement program and address the causes of displacement through diplomacy. These two strategies complement each other. Resettlement is typically available for a relatively small number of particularly vulnerable refugees. UNHCR reports that 68 percent of its refugee submissions for 2018 “were for survivors of violence and torture, those with legal and physical protection needs, and particularly vulnerable women and girls. Just over half of all resettlement submissions concerned children.”

Moreover, the Trump administration has failed to wield US “[d]iplomatic tools – for example, foreign assistance, economic and political engagement, and alliance-building” to resolve refugee-producing conditions or to create the conditions that would allow refugees to return home safely and voluntarily. To the contrary, it has been consistently dismissive of these tools and has failed to create any new legal avenues for desperate persons to migrate. Instead, it has cut foreign aid to states that have generated the largest numbers of asylum-seekers in recent years, and it terminated the Obama-era Central American Minors program, which allowed qualifying children from Central America’s Northern Triangle states to enter the United States legally as refugees or parolees in order to join their legally present parents.

The Report to Congress also lauds the US commitment to asylum and to other protection programs, which it argues make the United States “the most compassionate and generous nation in history.” Yet the administration has systematically sought to weaken the US asylum system and its “temporary and permanent protection” programs for “victims of trafficking, humanitarian parole, temporary protected status, and special immigrant juvenile status.”

In particular, it has sought to rescind Temporary Protected Status for the overwhelming majority of its beneficiaries. It has used the cruelty of family separation and detention to deter asylum-seekers from coming. It has reduced due process protections by expanding the expedited removal process. It has also corrupted the expedited removal process by allowing Border Patrol agents – who lack sufficient training in refugee protection and who tend to be deeply suspicious of asylum claims – to assume the role of Asylum Officers and to determine whether asylum-seekers possess a “credible fear” and thus can pursue their claims. It has adopted numerous strategies to prevent and deter asylum-seekers from reaching US territory such as criminally prosecuting and detaining them, and limiting access to the system, including through interception in transit, crude turn-backs at the border, and metering (scheduling) requirements in Mexico for insufficient interview slots in the United States.

Other administrative initiatives will force asylum-seekers to abandon their claims. Under the Return to Mexico program (misnamed the “Migrant Protection Protocols”), for example, US asylum seekers need to wait in dangerous Mexican border communities, while their cases slowly wind through the US immigration system. Early reports indicate that the United States has returned some asylum-seekers to Southern Mexico, making it impossible for them to pursue their claims. The Trump-era Attorneys General have also tried to reject, by fiat, certain common asylum claims (such as those based on gang violence) and have sought to diminish the independence and rigor of the immigration court system. The administration has also sought to weaken protections based on child welfare principles – which it sees as enforcement “loopholes” – for unaccompanied refugee and migrant minors, and for other vulnerable groups.

As it did in announcing its (then) record low admission ceiling for FY 2019, the Report to Congress for FY 2020 argues that the “current burdens on the U.S. immigration system must be alleviated before it is again possible to resettle large number of refugees.” It is true that asylum applications to the United States have spiked in recent years. Yet as Susan Martin has argued, the United States has historically been able to meet significant demands on its asylum system and to resettle substantial numbers of refugees. In the early 1980s, for example, it received and settled 125,000 Cubans and many thousands of Haitians who had reached Florida’s shores. It also resettled more than 207,000 refugees in 1980 and nearly 160,000 in 1981. By FY 1994, it faced a backlog of more than 425,000 pending asylum applications, but it still resettled 113,000 refugees in 1994 and nearly 100,000 in 1995. Martin concludes that the Trump administration either is “far less competent than its predecessors in managing complex movements of people so it must make a tradeoff between resettlement and asylum” or, more likely, “it is using asylum as a thinly veiled excuse to reduce overall immigration admissions.”

Finally, the Report to Congress claims that the president “is taking new steps to make sure that the refugees that the United States welcomes are set up to succeed.” In support of this claim, it references the Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement, which (as discussed) effectively bars resettlement in states and localities that object or do not affirmatively consent to it. This measure, combined with the administration’s pitifully low admissions ceiling, will deny the possibility of admission and, thus, integration to countless refugees. The Order allows for the resettlement of “spouses and children” following to join refugees. However, the admissions cap will keep many resettled refugees indefinitely separated from their families and, in this way, will impede their integration.

As it stands, refugees have been remarkably successful in the United States without the administration’s “reforms.” A 2018 study by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) compared 1.1 million resettled refugees who arrived between 1987 and 2016, with non-refugees, the foreign born, and the total US population. It found that the labor force participation (68 percent) and employment rates (64 percent) of the 1.1 million refugees exceeded those of the total US population (63 and 60 percent), which consists mostly of US citizens. Refugees with the longest tenure (who arrived between 1987 and 1996) had integrated more fully than recent arrivals (from 2007-2016), as measured by: households with mortgages (41 to 19 percent); English language proficiency (75 to 55 percent); naturalization rates (89 to 24 percent); college education (66 to 32 percent); labor force participation (68 to 61 percent); employment (66 to 55 percent); and, self-employment (14 to 4 percent). Finally, the study found that refugees who arrived between 1987 and 1996 exceeded the total US population in median personal income ($28,000 to $23,000), homeownership (41 to 37 percent) and many other metrics.

To cap off the worst month in the 40-year history of the US refugee protection system, the US Supreme granted a stay on September 11, 2019 that ensured that the United States would, at least temporarily, reject most asylum claims from migrants who have passed through a third country (not their own) on their way to the US-Mexico border. It stayed a lower court order that enjoined the implementation of an interim final rule that will allow claims from such asylum-seekers to proceed only if they can show that they first sought and failed to receive asylum or Torture Convention protection in a third country.[3]

In the best of circumstances, the US asylum process is arduous and uncertain, and many persons who have fled violence and other dangerous conditions ultimately do not prevail in their claims. However, the rule would make it far more difficult even to access this system. It would bar most asylum claims to the United States, including almost all from Central America and other nations that have been the source of most US asylum applications in recent years. Although described as a “safe third country” measure, the rule evinces no concern for the safety of asylum-seekers, for their aspirations, or for the ability of refugee-producing states such as Guatemala or El Salvador to accommodate additional asylum requests. It also violates international law. The stay means that the rule will now go into effect, while the underlying legal challenges to it run their course. If upheld, the rule would eviscerate the US asylum system. In fact, this seems to be its purpose.

The administration’s policies raise the question: Why does the United States offer protection to refugees and asylum-seekers at all? In passing the Refugee Act of 1980, which established USRAP and harmonized US asylum standards with international law, Congress recognized “the historic policy of the United States to respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands,” and it encouraged “all nations to provide assistance and resettlement opportunities to refugees to the fullest extent possible.” For decades, there has been a bipartisan consensus that saving lives – as the US refugee program undeniably does – reflects and projects US ideals to the world. Moreover, refugees do not threaten or burden the nation: They renew it by exemplifying core US values, such as courage, endurance, and a love of freedom. Most refugees passionately identify with the United States, having found in it the security, opportunity and freedom denied them elsewhere. Robust refugee protection policies, the consensus held, serves the nation’s interests in global stability, diminished irregular migration, and increased cooperation on US diplomatic, military and security priorities. The program has also saved countless persons who risked their lives to work for and on behalf of the US government.

In his July 30, 1981 statement on US immigration and refugee policy, President Ronald Reagan committed to continuing “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and that shares “the responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.” He also acknowledged the importance of these policies to the nation’s interests. In his January 11, 1989 farewell address to the nation, Reagan spoke of the United States as a nation that had always stood as a beacon of freedom to the world’s refugees, but that this identity needed to be “rediscovered.” It needs to be rediscovered now as well, and before the Trump administration succeeds in fully dismantling one of the nation’s defining and proudest programs.

[1] The lion’s share of the UNHCR’s budget – more than three-quarters – goes to its refugee program.

[2] As is its wont, the administration skirted the law in setting the refugee ceiling prior to its statutorily mandated consultation with Congress on admissions. It insists that it still plans to consult with Congress, but to what substantive end is not clear.

[3] The administration misused the previously rare procedure of issuing an “interim final rule” to allow the asylum rule to go into effect prior to formal notice and comment rulemaking, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

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

Thanks, Don, for shedding light on what will go down as one of the darkest chapters in modern U.S. history.

Also, as Don so cogently points out, support for refugee admissions used to be a bipartisan issue. Now, the ugliness and counter-productivity of Trump’s racist xenophobia has overtaken the GOP and made it an anathema to America’s future.

What would RR think? His optimism and braver view of America’s role in the world stands in sharp contrast to the darkness of Trump’s White Nationalist cowardice, ignorance, and weakness.

PWS

10-01-19

CELEBRATE A “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MILESTONE! — Under Trump, Sessions, & Barr, Immigration “Courts’” “Active Backlog” Hits Million Case Mark! — 1,007,005 As Of August 31, 2019, Per TRAC, With Another 322,055 “Gonzo Specials” In Waiting! — Congress Take Note: More Judges = More Backlog Under Trump’s DOJ!

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/574/

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Immigration Court’s active backlog of cases just passed the million case mark. The latest case-by-case court records through the end of August 2019 show the court’s active case backlog was 1,007,155. If the additional 322,535 cases which the court says are pending but have not been placed on the active caseload rolls are added, then the backlog now tops 1.3 million.

During the first eleven months of FY 2019, court records reveal a total of 384,977 new cases reached the court. If the pace of filings continues through the final month of this fiscal year, FY 2019 will also mark a new filing record.

While much in the news, new cases where individuals have been required to “Remain in Mexico” during their court processing currently make up just under 10 percent (9.9%) of these new filings. These MPP cases comprise an even smaller share – only 3.3 percent — of the court’s active backlog.

As of the end of August, a total of 38,291 MPP cases had reached the court, of which 33,564 were still pending.

For the full report – including links to online query tools where readers can drill into countless additional details covering all 4.5 million court filings since FY 2001, the recent MPP component of these filings, and the court’s over 1 million active case backlog – go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/574/

Additional free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through August 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
http://trac.syr.edu

———————————————————————————
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to http://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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The futility of throwing more money into this badly broken system has become obvious. Without an independent, Article I U.S. Immigration Court, run by judges who direct the activities of the administrators rather than being run by politicos, there simply will not be any semblance of competent professional management of this system, certainly not under this Administration.

The Administration stubbornly refuses to take the necessary step of responsibly exercising “prosecutorial discretion” to reduce the backlog to a manageable size without “gimmicks.”

It’s equally obvious that Congress needs to enact some type of realistic legalization program that will remove cases of individuals with a period of productive residency and their families from the “active” docket and forestall the further mess that would be created by the absolute insanity of the “Gonzo plan” of restoring properly “administratively closed” cases to the active dockets.

The system is calling out for help. Unfortunately, those cries are being ignored by both Congress and the Article III Courts who are the only ones currently capable of fixing the system.

PWS

09-18-19

BRET STEPHENS @ NYT: “Blessed Are The Refugees” — Damned Be Trump & His Cowardly Group Of Refugee Abusers & Their Enablers!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/opinion/refugees-trump-america.html

A woman and her young daughter, no older than 6 or 7, are shopping for groceries in a corner store of a bombed-out city. It’s sometime around 1947. The war is over, the Germans are gone, the Gestapo is no longer hunting Jews. Some of their local henchmen have been imprisoned or shot. Many just took off their uniforms and returned to their former lives.

The mother speaks with the trace of a foreign accent. As she reaches for her wallet to pay, the grocer says: “Why don’t you people go back to where you came from?”

Where, precisely, would that even be? The woman had fled Moscow for Berlin as a girl, after the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 and arrested her father, who was never to be heard from again. Later, when still in her twenties, she had fled Berlin for Milan, sometime between Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 and Mussolini’s enactment of the racial laws in 1938.

She and her daughter were citizens of no country, living under a made-up name. They had nowhere to return, no place to go, no way to stay, and nothing they could do about any of it. To go back to the Soviet Union would have been suicidal. Israel did not yet exist. Germany was out of the question. America’s doors were mostly shut.

This was the life of a refugee in postwar, pre-reconstructed Europe. It changed dramatically the following year, when Harry Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act, marking the first time that U.S. immigration policy became actively sympathetic to the utterly dispossessed.

Thanks to the law, mother and daughter arrived in New York on Nov. 13, 1950, with only $7 between them, but without the weight of fear on their backs.

What Truman did became precedent for decisions by subsequent administrations to admit other refugees: Some 40,000 Hungarians fleeing Soviet tanks after 1956 (including a young Andy Grove, later the C.E.O. of Intel); hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing Castro’s repression after 1959 (including a young Gloria Estefan); as many as 750,000 Soviet Jews fleeing persecution by a succession of Kremlin despots (including a young Sergey Brin).

There were so many others. More than a million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians after the fall of Saigon. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians after Khomeini’s revolution. Over 100,000 Iraqis since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Similar numbers of Burmese. Altogether, some three million refugees have been welcomed by the U.S. since the Refugee Act of 1980, more than by any other country.

By almost any metric, America’s refugees tend to succeed, or at least their children do. Whatever they do to enrich themselves, they enrich the country a great deal more. Empirical data on immigrant success overwhelmingly confirm what common sense makes plain. People who have known tyranny tend to make the most of liberty. People who have experienced desperation usually make the most of opportunity. It’s mainly those born to freedom who have the knack for squandering it.

But beyond the material question of enrichment is the spiritual one of ennoblement. Of what can Americans be more proud than that we so often opened our doors to those for whom every other door was shut?

All of which makes this a moment of unique shame for the United States.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its xenophobia from its first days in office. The number of refugees arriving in the country plummeted from around 97,000 in 2016 to 23,000 in 2018. Last week, The Times reported that the White House was considering options to cut the numbers again by half, and perhaps even bring it down to zero.

As if to underscore the spirit of cruelty, the administration also declined to grant temporary protected status to Bahamians devastated by Hurricane Dorian. And the Supreme Court issued an order allowing for a new rule that effectively denies asylum protections for refugees arriving through a third country — a victory for executive authority when that authority is in the worst possible hands.

Critics of this column will almost certainly complain that the United States can’t possibly take everyone in — a dishonest argument since hardly anyone argues for taking in “everyone,” and a foolish argument since America will almost inevitably decline without a healthy intake of immigrants to make up for a falling birthrate.

Critics will also claim that “very bad people,” as Donald Trump likes to say, might take advantage of a generous asylum and refugee policy. Here again I’m aware of nobody advocating a “let-the-terrorists-come-too” immigration policy. Only a person incapable of kindness — a person like the president — can think that kindness and vigilance are incompatible, or that generosity is for suckers.

The mother and daughter whose story I told at the beginning of this column are, as you might have guessed, my own grandmother and mother. I thank God it was Harry Truman, not Donald Trump, who led America when they had nowhere else to turn.

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

There will be no America if Trumpism prevails, Bret.

PWS

09-14-19

SUPREME DISGRACE: Instead Of Protecting The Individual Rights Of Our Most Vulnerable Asylum Seekers, The Supremes’ Majority Joins The White Nationalist Assault On Refugee Laws & Human Dignity!

Azam Ahmed
Bureau Chief, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean
NY Times

https://apple.news/AzVf9gcH2QyOC67VugroXQg

By Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas

MEXICO CITY — Thousands of people fleeing persecution, most from Central America, line up at the United States’ southern border every day hoping for asylum. They wait for months, their names slowly crawling up a hand-drawn list until they are allowed to present their case to American immigration authorities.

After the United States Supreme Court issued an order this week, almost none of them will be eligible for asylum.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to enforce new rules that bar asylum applications from anyone who has not already been denied asylum in one of the countries they traveled through on their way to the United States.

The rule is among the most stringent measures taken by this administration in its battle to halt migration, upending decades of asylum and humanitarian norms. It is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of migrants traveling through Mexico to reach the United States: Eritreans and Cameroonians fleeing political violence. Nicaraguans and Venezuelans fleeing repression.

And the largest group of all: Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans escaping the twin scourges of poverty and gangs.

“This takes away all hope,” said Eddie Leonardo Caliz, 34, who left San Pedro Sula in Honduras with his wife and two kids three months ago to try to escape gang violence, and spoke from a shelter in southern Mexico. With measures like this, he said, the Trump administration “is depriving us of the opportunity to be safe.”

The new rule, which has been allowed to take effect pending legal challenges, is consistent with the Trump administration’s posture of hostility and rejection for those seeking protection in the United States.

Whether by separating families of migrants, by drastically limiting the number of asylum applications accepted on a given day or by returning those entering the United States to Mexico to await their hearings, the administration has shown a dogged determination to discourage migration.

Central American migrants at the Amar shelter in Nuevo Laredo in July.

Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times

And it has put tremendous pressure on Mexico to help meet its goal, threatening months ago to escalate tariffs on all Mexican goods if the nation did not buffer the surge of migrants heading to the United States from Central America and elsewhere.

Mexico responded. This week, when Mexican and American officials met in Washington to discuss progress on the issue, the Mexican delegation took great pains to show how its crackdown along its border with Guatemala and throughout the country has reduced migration flows to the United States by more than 50 percent in the last three months.

Mexico’s actions, though applauded by Trump administration officials this week, have overwhelmed its troubled migration system. The number of individuals applying for asylum in Mexico has already skyrocketed in the last few years, as the United States has tightened its borders.

This rule could add to that burden, with many more applying for asylum in Mexico, despite the danger of remaining in Mexico. Violence there has soared to the highest levels in more than two decades. Stories of migrants kidnapped along the border abound, as criminal organizations await their return from the United States or pick them off as they attempt to cross the border.

Several migrants who are making their way north said in interviews on Thursday that the new rule would not deter them. For most, the hope of a new life in the United States outweighed whatever legal worries might lie ahead.

“I know things are getting more and more complicated in the U.S.,” said Noel Hernández, 21, who was staying at a migrant shelter in Guatemala after leaving his home in Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, a few days ago.

“It’s like flipping a coin,” he said. “I either win or I lose.”

Others said they would try to make it in Mexico, despite the violence, or in Guatemala, a nation with a barely functional asylum system.

Oscar Daniel Rodríguez, 33, from San Salvador, has been in Guatemala with his wife and 3-year-old son for a month now, and says he will apply for asylum there.

He had applied for asylum in Mexico during a previous trek, and was rejected. If he is denied in Guatemala, he will try again in Mexico, he said. If they deny him again, he will try the United States.

Migrants from a caravan, along with organizers and legal observers, at the pedestrian crossing that will lead them to the U.S, in 2018.

Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

“No matter how long it takes, and how long we have to wait, what we want is to give our son a better future,” he said.

Mexican asylum applicants, who don’t have to transit through another country to reach the United States, are not impacted by the new policy.

Like past efforts by the Trump administration to curb migration, Wednesday’s order could prove a burden for Mexico.

A senior Mexican official who spoke anonymously because the government has not addressed the issue publicly said that, for now, individuals who seek to apply will not fall under a previous provision, called Migrant Protection Protocol. That provision sends those applying for asylum in the United States back to Mexico to await their hearings.

Instead, migrants will either have to apply for another form of relief in the United States — with a higher bar for acceptance and fewer protections — or be deported back to their home countries.

Mexico is already playing host to tens of thousands of migrants awaiting their asylum hearings in the United States. Its migrant detention facilities can be overcrowded, unsafe and unsanitary.

Asylum applications there have soared in the last year, reaching about 50,000 through August, compared to fewer than 30,000 applications in the same period a year ago. This has placed a strain on Mexican society and on a system ill-equipped to handle such demand.

“We see detention centers crammed with migrants and children, riots, social problems arising, human rights abuses, and rising xenophobia among Mexicans,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor of international relations the University of Guadalajara. “The Mexican government has then little to no other choice but to design long-term migration policies to deal with the large number of migrants coming and staying now in Mexico.”

“There is not much else we can do,” he added, ruefully, “besides maybe lighting a candle for the Virgin of Guadalupe and praying for Trump not to be re-elected.”

Raftsmen wait for clients at a river crossing between the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times

The initial rule to block asylum sent shock waves among immigrant rights advocates when it was issued by the Trump administration in July of this year. It was almost immediately challenged in lawsuits.

The initiative was a unilateral move by the Trump administration after failed negotiations with Mexico and Guatemala to reach deals, called safe third country agreements, that would have required those countries to absorb asylum seekers who passed through them on their way to the United States.

Though Guatemala eventually caved to the administration’s pressure, and reached a safe third country agreement with the United States, Mexico remained firm in its refusal.

Now, with the Supreme Court allowing the asylum rule to go into effect, some feel the United States got what it wanted anyway — without the other countries’ consent.

“This is the latest step in terms of Trump’s policies to push Mexico to become a safe third country, and to make a big chunk of the migration flow stay in Mexico permanently and deter them from traveling north,” said Raúl Benítez, a professor of international relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The Mexican government, for its part, insists the move is not the same as a safe third country arrangement, which would require a bilateral agreement and would automatically send the majority of asylum seekers back to Mexico for good.

Neither Mexican officials nor independent experts believe it will lead to an immediate influx of returnees to Mexico. Instead, it could leave those who have been returned to Mexico while they await hearings more likely to stay because they will not be granted protection in the United States.

While the new rules will inhibit most migrants from applying for asylum, there are other forms of protected status that remain open to them, though the bar to entry is much higher.

Under current asylum law, individuals must show a credible fear, which is figured to be a 10 percent chance that they will face persecution if sent back home. The threshold for the two remaining protections now — so-called withholding status and qualification under the convention against torture — is reasonable fear. To qualify, the applicant must show a probability of being persecuted back home that is greater than 50 percent.

“The people affected by this policy are the most vulnerable — those without lawyers and those without knowledge of the system,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration attorney with the Immigration Council. “Those without lawyers are being asked to meet a standard almost impossible for someone uneducated in asylum law to meet.”

Daniele Volpe contributed reporting from Guatemala City.

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

So, just why are Justices like Breyer and Kagan tarnishing their legacies by joining with their White Nationalist enabling brethren in this all out assault on the Refugee Act of 1980, the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, Human Rights, and human dignity?

The latest Trump Administration illegal absurdity encouraged, aided, and abetted by the Supremes: Honduras, one of the most dangerous and corrupt refugee sending countries in the world without a functioning asylum system, as a “Safe Third Country.” Obviously, the actions of an Administration confident that the majority of the Supremes share their corruption and cowardice when it comes to enforcing America’s long-standing human rights obligations.

Although it might not have occurred to the geniuses of the Trump Administration, and certainly not to the Supremes’ majority who apparently believe themselves exempt from the practical consequences of their actions, each of the failed states in the Northern Triangle has a seacoast which would allow ocean transit to the U.S. without touching any other country. So, the Trump White Nationalists and their Supreme enablers could be triggering another “Golden Venture” debacle or the type of even more dangerous sea exodus that happened in the Mediterranean when the EU restricted asylum applicants at its land borders.

Or, it’s possible that smugglers will simply “sell” refugees on the very plausible idea that the U.S. refugee system and our commitment to the “rule of law” is nothing but a joke. In that case, smuggling individuals into the interior of the U.S will become an even bigger business. No way they will ever all be caught, even with ICE acting as Trump’s “New American Gestapo.” Higher risk means more profits for smugglers, more death and exploitation for migrants, and more unscreened “extralegal migration” into the U.S.

Up until Trump, the U.S. had been lucky. Most asylum seekers presented themselves at ports of entry or nearby Border Patrol Stations and trusted themselves to the U.S. asylum system for orderly processing. Even those who managed to enter the U.S. usually “affirmatively applied” through the USCIS Asylum Offices.

The current mess in the legal system was almost entirely self-created by the “malicious incompetence” on the part of the Government’s immigration enforcement authorities. The “new message” is clear: only fools should use the US legal system, which in the case of asylum now more closely resembles a Third World dictatorship.

Once folks abandon the U.S. legal system, all of the land and sea borders and indeed the entire land mass of the U.S. will potentially “come into play” for smugglers and their desperate human cargoes of forced migrants. No wall will be long and high enough, no jail cells big enough, no child abuse severe enough, and no extralegal Supreme Court endorsed racist program nasty enough to control the flow of forced migrants seeking shelter. It might well lead to an internal police force that will trample the individual rights of all Americans. But, it won’t stop human migration until the U.S. downward spiral finally reaches the point where we are no better than the “sending countries” from which people are fleeing.

The other possibility is that conditions in the sending countries improve over time so that most folks will stay put. But, the Administration has shown no interest in investing in long term solutions to forced migration.

Immigration is a sign of a strong country; xenophobia a weak and cowardly one. Unhappily, the Supremes have have abandoned the former vision and become front and center in encouraging and enabling the latter.

PWS

09-13-19

BILL McKIBBEN @ TIME: Imagine A World Not Led By Trump & His Fellow GOP Climate Change Deniers! — Humanity Would Have At Least A “Fighting Chance” For Survival!

https://time.com/5669022/climate-change-2050/

BY BILL MCKIBBEN SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

IDEAS

McKibben is the author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? and a co-founder of 350.org

Let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy. We had no other choice.

There was a point after 2020 when we began to collectively realize a few basic things.

One, we weren’t getting out of this unscathed. Climate change, even in its early stages, had begun to hurt: watching a California city literally called Paradise turn into hell inside of two hours made it clear that all Americans were at risk. When you breathe wildfire smoke half the summer in your Silicon Valley fortress, or struggle to find insurance for your Florida beach house, doubt creeps in even for those who imagined they were immune.

Two, there were actually some solutions. By 2020, renewable energy was the cheapest way to generate electricity around the planet—in fact, the cheapest way there ever had been. The engineers had done their job, taking sun and wind from quirky backyard DIY projects to cutting-edge technology. Batteries had plummeted down the same cost curve as renewable energy, so the fact that the sun went down at night no longer mattered quite so much—you could store its rays to use later.

And the third realization? People began to understand that the biggest reason we weren’t making full, fast use of these new technologies was the political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Investigative journalists had exposed its three-decade campaign of denial and disinformation, and attorneys general and plaintiffs’ lawyers were beginning to pick them apart. And just in time.

These trends first intersected powerfully on Election Day in 2020. The Halloween hurricane that crashed into the Gulf didn’t just take hundreds of lives and thousands of homes; it revealed a political seam that had begun to show up in polling data a year or two before. Of all the issues that made suburban Americans—women especially—uneasy about President Trump, his stance on climate change was near the top. What had seemed a modest lead for the Democratic challenger widened during the last week of the campaign as damage reports from Louisiana and Mississippi rolled in; on election night it turned into a rout, and the analysts insisted that an underappreciated “green vote” had played a vital part—after all, actual green parties in Canada, the U.K. and much of continental Europe were also outperforming expectations. Young voters were turning out in record numbers: the Greta Generation, as punsters were calling them, made climate change their No. 1 issue.

And when the new President took the oath of office, she didn’t disappoint. In her Inaugural Address, she pledged to immediately put America back in the Paris Agreement—but then she added, “We know by now that Paris is nowhere near enough. Even if all the countries followed all the promises made in that accord, the temperature would still rise more than 3°C (5°F or 6°F). If we let the planet warm that much, we won’t be able to have civilizations like the ones we’re used to. So we’re going to make the change we need to make, and we’re going to make them fast.”

Fast, of course, is a word that doesn’t really apply to Capitol Hill or most of the world’s other Congresses, Parliaments and Central Committees. It took constant demonstrations from ever larger groups like Extinction Rebellion, and led by young activists especially from the communities suffering the most, to ensure that politicians feared an angry electorate more than an angry carbon lobby. But America, which historically had poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other nation, did cease blocking progress. With the filibuster removed, the Senate passed—by the narrowest of margins—one bill after another to end subsidies for coal and gas and oil companies, began to tax the carbon they produced, and acted on the basic principles of the Green New Deal: funding the rapid deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, guaranteeing federal jobs for anyone who wanted that work, and putting an end to drilling and mining on federal lands.

Since those public lands trailed only China, the U.S., India and Russia as a source of carbon, that was a big deal. Its biggest impact was on Wall Street, where investors began to treat fossil-fuel stocks with increasing disdain. When BlackRock, the biggest money manager in the world, cleaned its basic passive index fund of coal, oil and gas stocks, the companies were essentially rendered off-limits to normal investors. As protesters began cutting up their Chase bank cards, the biggest lender to the fossil-fuel industry suddenly decided green investments made more sense. Even the staid insurance industry began refusing to underwrite new oil and gas pipelines—and shorn of its easy access to capital, the industry was also shorn of much of its political influence. Every quarter meant fewer voters who mined coal and more who installed solar panels, and that made political change even easier.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of McKibben’s essay at the link.

The 2020 election might be America’s and the world’s last, best chance for salvation from Trump and his anti-science, climate denying GOP cabal that is bent on destroying our air, water, resources, and health.

PWS

09-13-19

SUPREME TANK: COMPLICIT COURT ENDS U.S. ASYLUM PROTECTIONS BY 7-2 VOTE — Endorses Trump’s White Nationalist Racist Attack On Human Rights & Eradication Of Refugee Act Of 1980 — On 09-11-19, Supremes Celebrate By Joining Trump’s Attack On America & Humanity! — Only Justices Ginsburg & Sotomayor Have Guts To Stand Up For Constitution & Rule Of Law!

Death On The Rio Grande — Supremes Sign Death Warrants For Vulnerable Refugees, Trash Refugee Act of 1980

19a230_k53l

Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019) 1 SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 19A230 _________________
WILLIAM P. BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL. v. EAST BAY SANCTUARY COVENANT, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY [September 11, 2019]
The application for stay presented to JUSTICE KAGAN and by her referred to the Court is granted. The district court’s July 24, 2019 order granting a preliminary injunction and September 9, 2019 order restoring the nationwide scope of the injunction are stayed in full pending disposition of the Government’s appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of the Government’s petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is sought. If a writ of certiorari is sought and the Court denies the petition, this order shall terminate automatically. If the Court grants the petition for a writ of certiorari, this order shall terminate when the Court enters its judgment.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins, dissenting from grant of stay.
Once again the Executive Branch has issued a rule that seeks to upend longstanding practices regarding refugees who seek shelter from persecution. Although this Nation has long kept its doors open to refugees—and although the stakes for asylum seekers could not be higher—the Government implemented its rule without first providing the public notice and inviting the public input generally required by law. After several organizations representing immi- grants sued to stop the rule from going into effect, a federal district court found that the organizations were likely to prevail and preliminarily enjoined the rule nationwide. A

2 BARR v. EAST BAY SANCTUARY COVENANT SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
federal appeals court narrowed the injunction to run only circuit-wide, but denied the Government’s motion for a complete stay.
Now the Government asks this Court to intervene and to stay the preliminary decisions below. This is an extraordinary request. Unfortunately, the Court acquiesces. Because I do not believe the Government has met its weighty burden for such relief, I would deny the stay.
The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security promulgated the rule at issue here on July 16, 2019. See 84 Fed. Reg. 33829. In effect, the rule forbids almost all Central Americans—even unaccompanied children—to apply for asylum in the United States if they enter or seek to enter through the southern border, unless they were first denied asylum in Mexico or another third country. Id., at 33835, 33840; see also 385 F. Supp. 3d 922, 929–930 (ND Cal. 2019).
The District Court found that the rule was likely unlawful for at least three reasons. See id., at 938–957. First, the court found it probable that the rule was inconsistent with the asylum statute, 94 Stat. 105, as amended, 8 U. S. C. §1158. See §1158(b)(2)(C) (requiring that any regulation like the rule be“consistent”with the statute). Section 1158 generally provides that any noncitizen “physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States . . . may apply for asylum.” §1158(a)(1). And unlike the rule, the District Court explained, the statute provides narrow, carefully calibrated exceptions to asylum eligibility. As relevant here, Congress restricted asylum based on the possibility that a person could safely resettle in a third country. See §1158(a)(2)(A), (b)(2)(A)(vi). The rule, by contrast, does not consider whether refugees were safe or resettled in Mexico—just whether they traveled through it. That blunt approach, according to the District Court, rewrote the statute. See 385 F. Supp. 3d, at 939– 947, 959.

Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019) 3
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
Second, the District Court found that the challengers would likely prevail because the Government skirted typical rulemaking procedures. Id., at 947–951. The District Court noted “serious questions” about the rule’s validity because the Government effected a sea change in immigration law without first providing advance notice and opportunity for public comment. Id., at 930; see also 5 U. S. C. §553. The District Court found the Government’s purported justifications unpersuasive at the preliminary-injunction stage. 385 F. Supp. 3d, at 948–951 (discussing statutory exceptions to notice-and-comment procedures).
Last, the District Court found the explanation for the rule so poorly reasoned that the Government’s action was likely arbitrary and capricious. See id., at 951–957; 5 U. S. C. §706. On this score, the District Court addressed the Government’s principal justifications for the rule: that failing to seek asylum while fleeing through more than one country “raises questions about the validity and urgency” of the asylum seeker’s claim, 84 Fed. Reg. 33839; and that Mexico, the last port of entry before the United States, offers a fea- sible alternative for persons seeking protection from persecution, id., at 33835, 33839–33840. The District Court examined the evidence in the administrative record and explained why it flatly refuted the Government’s assumptions. 385 F. Supp. 3d, at 951–957. A “mountain of evidence points one way,” the District Court observed, yet the Government “went the other—with no explanation.” Id., at 955.
After the District Court issued the injunction, the Ninth Circuit declined the Government’s request for a complete stay, reasoning that the Government did not make the required “ ‘strong showing’ ” that it would likely succeed on the merits of each issue. ___ F. 3d ___ (2019), 2019 WL 3850928, *1 (quoting Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U. S. 770, 776 (1987)). Narrowing the injunction to the Circuit’s borders, the Ninth Circuit expedited the appeal and permitted

4 BARR v. EAST BAY SANCTUARY COVENANT SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
the District Court to consider whether additional facts would warrant a broader injunction. 2019 WL 3850928, *2– *3.
The lower courts’ decisions warrant respect. A stay pending appeal is “extraordinary” relief. Williams v. Zbaraz, 442 U. S. 1309, 1311 (1979) (Stevens, J., in chambers); see also Maryland v. King, 567 U.S. 1301, 1302 (2012) (ROBERTS, C. J., in chambers) (listing stay factors). Given the District Court’s thorough analysis, and the serious questions that court raised, I do not believe the Government has carried its “especially heavy” burden. Packwood v. Senate Select Comm. on Ethics, 510 U. S. 1319, 1320 (1994) (Rehnquist, C. J., in chambers). The rule here may be, as the District Court concluded, in significant tension with the asylum statute. It may also be arbitrary and capricious for failing to engage with the record evidence contradicting its conclusions. It is especially concerning, moreover, that the rule the Government promulgated topples decades of settled asylum practices and affects some of the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere—without affording the public a chance to weigh in.
Setting aside the merits, the unusual history of this case also counsels against our intervention. This lawsuit has been proceeding on three tracks: In this Court, the parties have litigated the Government’s stay request. In the Ninth Circuit, the parties are briefing the Government’s appeal. And in the District Court, the parties recently participated in an evidentiary hearing to supplement the record. In- deed, just two days ago the District Court reinstated a na- tionwide injunction based on new facts. See East Bay Sanc- tuary Covenant v. Barr, No. 4:19–cv–4073, Doc. 73 (ND Cal., Sept. 9, 2019). Notably, the Government moved to stay the newest order in both the District Court and the Ninth Circuit. (Neither court has resolved that request, though the Ninth Circuit granted an administrative stay to allow further deliberation.) This Court has not considered

Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019) 5
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
the new evidence, nor does it pause for the lower courts to resolve the Government’s pending motions. By granting a stay, the Court simultaneously lags behind and jumps ahead of the courts below. And in doing so, the Court side-steps the ordinary judicial process to allow the Government to implement a rule that bypassed the ordinary rulemaking process. I fear that the Court’s precipitous action today risks undermining the interbranch governmental processes that encourage deliberation, public participation, and transparency.
***
In sum, granting a stay pending appeal should be an “extraordinary” act. Williams, 442 U. S., at 1311. Unfortunately, it appears the Government has treated this exceptional mechanism as a new normal. Historically, the Government has made this kind of request rarely; now it does so reflexively. See, e.g., Vladeck, The Solicitor General and the Shadow Docket, 133 Harv. L. Rev. (forthcoming Nov. 2019). Not long ago, the Court resisted the shortcut the Government now invites. See Trump v. East Bay Sanc- tuary Covenant, 586 U. S. ___ (2018). I regret that my colleagues have not exercised the same restraint here. I respectfully dissent.

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

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent says it all, but, alas, in vain.

09-11-19 will be remembered as the day that justice, human rights, and human decency died in America!

Shame on Justices Breyer and Kagan for “going along to get along” with the dismantling of the Refugee Act of 1980. The “blood of the innocents” will be on their hands and the hands of their five colleagues.

The “Dred Scottification” (or “dehumanization”) of immigrants, Latinos, and other minorities that Justice Breyer once predicted, yet lacked the guts to speak out against in this case, is now in full swing. It will increase unabated, now that the Supremes’ sellout to authoritarian racism is assured. And don’t expect “Moscow Mitch” and his gang of toadies to put up any opposition.

The American justice system has been dismantled. But history will remember the roles of each of those “Black Robed Cowards” who participated in its demise.

With this atrocious decision, the Supremes have basically made themselves irrelevant to the battle for fairness and individual rights under the Constitution. As I have suggested before, self-created irrelevance might come back to haunt them.

PWS

09-11-19

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Trump & His GOP’s Cowardly “War On Children” Should Outrage Every American! — Join The “New Due Process Army” & Fight To Save Humanity!

Catherine writes in the Washington Post:

You’ve heard of the Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, even Women. Well, welcome to the War on Children.

It’s being waged by the Trump administration and other right-wing public officials, regardless of any claimed “family values.”

For evidence, look no further than the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services’s own inspector general. It details the trauma suffered by immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s evil “zero tolerance” policy.

Thousands of children were placed in overcrowded centers ill-equipped to provide care for them physically or psychologically. Visits to 45 centers around the country resulted in accounts of children who cried inconsolably; who were drugged; who were promised family reunifications that never came; whose severe emotional distress manifested in phantom chest pains, with complaints that “every heartbeat hurts”; who thought their parents had abandoned them or had been murdered.

Such state-sanctioned child abuse was designed to serve as a “deterrent” for asylum-seeking families, as then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and other administration officials made clear.

Of course, they failed to recognize just how horrific are the conditions these asylum-seeking children are fleeing — conditions that further decreased HHS’s ability to adequately care for them.

“Staff in multiple facilities reported cases of children who had been kidnapped or raped” back in their home countries, the IG report states. Other children witnessed family members raped or murdered.

But hey, Trump believes these kiddos must be punished further for the crime of seeking refuge — a.k.a., the “invasion” of America.

Despite this and other abundant evidence that government facilities are not able to care for children for extended periods, last month, the administration also announced a new policy that would allow it to keep children (along with their families) in jail-like conditions for longer periods of time.

This is hardly the only way the administration has knowingly enacted policies that harm children.

In August, it finalized a rule that would make it more difficult for immigrants to receive green cards if they have used certain safety-net services they’re legally entitled to — or if government officials suspect they might ever use such services. Confusion and fear about the policy and whom it affects abound. This has already created a “chilling effect” for usage of social services, with immigrant parents disenrolling even their U.S.-citizen children just to be safe.

Last fall, for instance, I interviewed a green-card-holding mother who decided not to enroll her underweight newborn in a program that would have provided free formula (even though the program in question was not mentioned in the rule, and the baby is a U.S. citizen). Huge recent declines in children’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment are also believed to be at least partly a result of fears about this policy change.

If Your Dog Does This, It Could Be Them Signaling A Warning

And lest you think only immigrant or brown children are being targeted in this war: U.S. servicemembers’ children, of all sorts of backgrounds, are being hurt, too.

The Trump administration is siphoning billions from various defense projects to fund border wall construction, despite promises that Mexico would pay for it. This might sound unlikely to affect kids, but somehow the Trump administration found a way. Among the projects losing funds are schools for the children of U.S. servicemembers based in Kentucky, Germany and Japan, and a child-care center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

Trump’s proposed federal budgets have likewise axed funding for other programs that serve children, such as subsidized school meals and Medicaid. Indeed, both federal and state GOP officials more broadly are still working to kill the Medicaid expansion, as well as other Affordable Care Act provisions that benefit kids.

The GOP has likewise ignored the pleas of children who want their lives protected from gun violence, or who want their futures protected from a warming planet.

A year ago, I offered a suggestion : that Democrats make children the theme of their midterm campaign. They mostly ignored me and still did okay. Nonetheless, I’m re-upping it.

Because even without Trump’s baby jails and proposed Medicaid cuts, our country’s emphasis on children’s well- being is seriously deficient.

Last year, for the first time on record, we spent a greater share of the federal budget servicing the national debt than we did on children, according to an analysis out next week from First Focus on Children. Spending on children as a share of the federal budget is also expected to shrink over the coming decade, crowded out by both debt service and spending on the elderly.

This is despite the fact that spending on children (especially low-income children) has among the highest returns on investment of any form of government spending.

Whatever the opposite of Trump’s War on Children is, that’s what Democrats should be running on.

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

Thanks, Catherine, for speaking out so clearly and articulately about what has become our #1 National Disgrace: Trump’s War On Human Decency & Future Generations and its sleazy cast of supporting characters like Pence, Kelly, Miller, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” Homan, Albence, Morgan, “Cooch Cooch,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Barr, Cotton, Graham, and others with their glib immorality and disregard for truth, our Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human values.

Who thought the U.S. would ever stoop so low — to use our government’s power and might to abuse defenseless, already traumatized, and highly vulnerable children. (Catherine’s article does’t even get into how, with the help of scofflaw Attorneys General Sessions and Barr and some complacent Article III Judges, the Administration has manipulated asylum law and Immigration “Court” procedures to deny children and other asylum seekers the legal protection to which they are entitled under U.S. and international laws.)

There are many groups out there in the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day against this kind of outrageous behavior by our elected leaders, their corrupt cronies, and their many “go along to get along” enablers in the bureaucracy. Join or donate to one today!

The war to save America and humanity from Trump’s vile and cowardly agenda is one that we can’t afford to lose: For the sake of future generations!

PWS

09-06-19

INSIDE TRUMP’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” (“NAG”): Where So-Called “Civil Immigration Detainees” Asserting Their Legal Rights Are Punished In Ways That Would Be “Cruel & Unusual” If Applied To Convicted Criminals!

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=6efdc532-da2a-4e07-8ea4-f1876c153c07&v=sdk

Tom K. Wong writes in the LA Times:

The Trump administration has attempted to close the door on asylum seekers who are looking for refuge in the United States. But even as it blocks entry — and sends tens of thousands of asylum seekers to Mexico to wait out their immigration proceedings — thousands of families with children are also being held in federal immigration detention facilities.

Because the administration has prohibited advocacy groups, journalists, immigration attorneys and even congressional staff from entering detention facilities to document conditions and interview detainees, the public has had only anecdotal glimpses into how detainees were treated. Now we have systematic evidence to support accounts of the harsh conditions that asylum seekers experience in immigration detention. In many ways, it is worse than we thought.

From October 2018 through June 2019, the San Diego Rapid Response Network (SDRRN) assisted approximately 7,300 asylum-seeking families at their shelters. These families, who were processed and then admitted into the U.S., totaled more than 17,000 people, including 7,900 children 5 years old or younger. My team and I at the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego independently analyzed intake data collected by the SDRRN for all of these families.

In a report released last week, we found that approximately 35% of the asylum-seeking heads of households we studied reported problems related to conditions in immigration detention, treatment in immigration detention, or medical issues. This finding is alarming since it’s very likely an underestimate, because the SDRRN was focused on providing needed services to the asylum-seeking families, not administering questionnaires. Moreover, abuses or problems in detention may be underreported by asylum seekers who are afraid that raising complaints may negatively affect their asylum case.

Of those who reported issues related to conditions in detention, approximately 6 out of 10 reported food and water problems, including not having enough to eat, being fed frozen food, being fed spoiled food, not being given formula for infants, not being given water, and having to drink dirty or foul-tasting water. Approximately half reported having to sleep on the floor, having to sleep with the lights on, overcrowded conditions, confinement, and the temperature being too cold in “la hielera,” the detention facilities known as the “iceboxes.” Approximately 1 out of every 3 reported not having access to clean or sanitary toilets, being able to shower or being able to brush their teeth.

About 1 out of 10 of the asylum-seeking heads of households — or more than 700 of them — reported verbal abuse, physical abuse or some form of mistreatment in immigration detention. Examples of verbal abuse include being told “we don’t want your kind here” and “you’re an ape,” among others. Examples of physical abuse include being thrown against the wall when attempting to get a drink of water.

The data also showed the great diversity of those who arrive at the southern border to seek refuge. The majority of the asylum-seeking families came from the “Northern Triangle” of Central America — Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. However, many also came from other continents, 28 in all, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, China and Vietnam, to name a few. Any changes to U.S. asylum policies meant to deter Central Americans from entering at the southern border will affect asylum seekers from all over the world who are also looking to the U.S. for safety.

We also found that just over 1 out of 5 of these families do not speak Spanish as their primary language. The languages spoken range from indigenous Central American languages — including K’iche’, Q’eqchi’ and Mam — to Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Vietnamese and Romanian, among others. This linguistic diversity presents another set of challenges.

When asylum seekers are released from detention, they are given detailed instructions on a form called the “Notice to Appear,” including instructions about their immigration court dates, times and locations. On the notice, immigration officials indicate the language that the asylum seeker was given these instructions in. For those whose primary language is not Spanish, nearly 9 out of every 10 were nevertheless given instructions in Spanish. If these families are not provided instructions about their immigration proceedings in a language they can understand, they will not be able to navigate an extremely complex legal process, which may infringe on their basic rights to due process.

From substandard conditions in immigration detention to verbal and physical abuse to serious due process concerns, the data show that the Trump administration is not abiding by its obligations under U.S. and international asylum and refugee law to treat humanely those who are seeking protection from persecution.

With the administration now determined to hold asylum-seeking families for potentially as long as it takes for their immigration proceedings to play out (which could be years), conditions may get worse. Cruelty, after all, may very well be the point.

Tom K. Wong is associate professor of political science and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego.

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

What kind of country allows its leaders to impose these types of abuses on vulnerable individuals whose “crime” is seeking protection under our laws and the international conventions that they implement?

Why are “Big Mac” and other Trump sycophants at DHS allowed to lie with impunity about what is really happening in DHS detention, the real inhuman consequences of “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”), and abuse “Safe Third Country” agreements by dishonestly pretending that Guatemala, one of the world’s most notoriously dangerous and corrupt “failed states,” meets the statutory requirements?

A key point in Professor Wong’s article is that many, probably the majority, of those released from detention receive inadequate explanations of their obligations to report current addresses and appear for both Immigration Court Hearings and separate ICE detention “check-ins.” Combined with this Administration’s obstinate refusal to work closely and cooperatively with legal services groups to maximize representation, it leads to many unnecessary, yet largely intentional on the part of DHS & EOIR, so-called “no shows.” These, in turn, get bogus “in absentia orders” from Immigration Judges operating under excruciating and inappropriate pressure to “produce numbers, not justice.” This, in turn, feeds the demonstrably false DHS narrative, oft repeated by “Big Mac With Lies” & others, that a large number of asylum seekers will “abscond” if released in the U.S.

It’s all part of a White Nationalist restrictionist immigration agenda that when finally exposed in detail after Trump and his cronies leave office will paint America as foolish, corrupt, and cowardly. Is this the “legacy” we truly want to leave to future generations?

Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to restore the rule of law and Constitutional order and to end the corruption and daily human rights abuses of the Trump Administration!

PWS

09-0-19

LABOR DAY @ WASHPOST: The Toxic Hypocrisy Of Trump & The Restrictionists On The Labor Issue!

LABOR DAY @ WASHPOST: The Toxic Hypocrisy Of Tru.mp & The Restrictionists On The Labor Issue!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-days-our-debate-over-labor-is-awash-in-hypocrisy/2019/09/01/d57e735c-c9a4-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html

By Editorial Board

September 1 at 5:47 PM

A CYNIC, says a character in one of Oscar Wilde’s novels, is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If that’s true, then the debate over the state of labor in the United States these days is awash in cynicism — or maybe it could just be called plain old hypocrisy. And in truth, it’s not so much a debate as a shouting match, largely over the inflamed issue of immigration.

Most of the noise comes from restrictionists, encouraged and shamelessly egged on, for the first time in memory, by a president of the United States. Such people recite figures they have assembled regarding the costs of immigration: its effects on wages, government spending and, of course, our “culture,” which some might take as a cover word for race or ethnicity or religion. But a lot of these compilations are questionable, both in their origins and their conclusions.

And beyond that, there is a great contradiction in such reasoning: It fails to take account of the work immigrants do in this country — the fruits of their labor, which are shared by the entire society. The skylines of metropolitan areas such as ours have been transformed over the past quarter-century by new construction, with immigrants providing a considerable share of the labor. Many of our hospitals, clinics, day-care centers, hotels, homes for the elderly and other institutions could not exist without immigrant employees, who made up about 17 percent of this country’s workforce in 2018, according to a government report.

A quarter of immigrants, in turn, are thought to be unauthorized. Although they are regularly slandered — by the president, among others — as a source of crime and as living off the dole, they are, for the most part, as law-abiding as the general population and are eligible for few government benefits. Not many people with personal knowledge of the matter would question their work ethic. Their labors in farm and field help feed the country; replacing them there would be a daunting task. They serve in some of the most demanding and often unpleasant jobs in our society: slaughtering animals, working long hours outdoors in punishing heat and cold, caring for the elderly, sick and mentally ill, cleaning four or five homes a day.

Strangely enough, this sort of thing is rarely discussed in any serious way on the cable outlets and social media. There is much in the way of insult and calumny toward impoverished immigrants (they “make our country poorer and dirtier,” said one popular TV opinionizer) but little constructive thought on how this country, with a static and aging native population and a tightening labor market, can continue to prosper without a reasonable amount of immigration.

Although unauthorized immigrants are routinely demonized by some in Congress and the media, there is a sizable part of the country, perhaps a majority, that does not consider their presence here to be criminal, that in fact sympathizes with them. There aren’t many other kinds of lawbreakers of whom that can be said. The recent immigration raid on agricultural processing plants in Mississippi, in which nearly 700 workers were rounded up, brought forth a wave of help and support for the workers and their families from people around the country, including churches and neighbors in Mississippi.

Practical and intelligent proposals are being made for dealing with the problems of immigration and work. But nothing can be done unless more of this country pays attention to the realities in working America in the coming election year and not to the dark maundering of demagogic doomsayers.

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

Yup.

Largely what I’ve been saying all along on “Courtside.” The solution to the largely manufactured “immigration crisis” is staring us in the face.

Legalize those already in the labor force, so that they can be fully protected from exploitation by minimum wage, wage and hour, and OSHA laws, and reach their full economic potential in our society (which would also maximize tax revenues and Social Security contributions).

Then, provide many more legal immigration opportunities for workers and families, both permanent and temporary, to keep America great and prevent us from suffering the type of economic stagnation that has hit Japan and other “low immigration” countries.

The main things standing in the way of such rational and practical solutions are Trump and the hard core GOP restrictionists who prop him up.

Sadly, it also appears that some, not all, within the massive DHS bureaucracy have become invested in cruel and futile immigration enforcement which requires endless taxpayer money and bodies to maintain its cycle of inevitable, yet sometimes politically advantageous, “enforcement-only” failures.

PWS

09-02-19

CRUEL & SELFISH TRUMP ENCOURAGES RACE TO THE BOTTOM: Mistreating The Younger Generation, Whether Or Not They Are “Ours,” Will Come Back To Haunt Us!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-how-we-treat-other-peoples-children-that-matters/2019/08/23/24fcf982-c4f8-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html

Nancy Gibbs writes in WashPost:

Nancy Gibbs is director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and a former editor of Time.

It is not an act of particular virtue to love your children and treat them well; instinct and evolution privilege our own kids, and from the moment they blink into the world, we would risk anything for their safety, sacrifice anything for their happiness.

It’s how we treat other people’s children that measures and tests us today. And here, as we shudder at the impact of his immigration policies on families, I can’t help but think that President Trump is channeling parents on both the right and the left who’ve decided that other people’s children don’t matter, as long as their own get ahead.

Anyone asserting the existence of certain universal values could always default to this: No decent society would ever argue that it’s okay to torture children. Which made it all the more chilling when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Mississippi swept up about 680 undocumented workers, leaving some children to return from the first day of school to locked houses, missing parents and shattered families. The spectacle — and it was flaunted as a spectacle, the largest one-state immigration enforcement effort in U.S. history — does not just challenge us on how best to balance politics, economics and justice. It asks us, “When is it okay to torment other people’s kids?”

CONTENT FROM VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER

Treating America’s back pain problem

Doctors are finding new ways to address the condition, which impacts 80 percent of people in the U.S.

For Trump, the answer was clear and blithely callous: “This serves as a very good deterrent,” he declared. What parent watching the sobbing children would dare step foot across a border illegally? “I just hope to keep it up,” he said.

You don’t have to be an apologist for open borders to conclude that there are ways to promote security that stop short of emotional torture. Yes, children often suffer when parents commit crimes, but that is the collateral damage of enforcement, not its goal.

Still, the mentality that justifies harming children so long as they’re not your own is not unique to the president. From the beginning of this year to mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed more than 1,200 cases of measles, the most since 2000. Arrogance plus ignorance takes its toll: Parents who won’t “risk” vaccinating their own children discount the risk to others. If they think vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, they should hope other parents stop vaccinating, as well. But more likely they are counting on others to comply so that their own children can have the best of all worlds: no vaccine and little chance of exposure to disease.

CONTENT FROM SAFEWAY

Back-to-school lunch tips for parents

How to pack a simple, wholesome, school-approved lunch that your kids will love.

In a different way but in the same spirit, the psychotically ambitious parents of the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal did not care who they deprived of a spot at Stanford or the University of Southern California as long as their children succeeded. Unlike many things in life, college admissions is zero-sum; an unqualified student who bribes her way in takes a spot from someone who tried to earn it. Need extra time for the SAT? Get a doctor to diagnose a learning disability. Between 2009 and 2016, the number of students getting special accommodations more than doubled, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. At one school in affluent Westchester County, N.Y., nearly 1 in 5 students had special testing privileges, which was nearly 10 times the national average.

These are starling parents, like the birds that destroy other birds’ eggs to take their nests and protect their own. For if every parent puts his or her child first at all costs, communities degrade, schools can’t function, society becomes ungovernable. And while they are not natural objects of sympathy, the cheaters’ children suffer, as well. The most obvious victims are the ones who end up sick or disabled by infections that could have been avoided. But moral infection eats you from the inside, rots relationships, wounds self-worth. As the college admissions scandal unfolded, I kept wondering what scars the parents’ ambitions left on their children. “The ruin of a nation,” a Ghanian proverb warns, “begins in the homes of its people.”

Which brings us back to our larger family. America’s identity derives from ideals that set us apart from the places we left to come here: freedom and fairness, justice and mercy, where anyone with moxie and muscle can build a future. We care for our neighbors; we honor service and sacrifice. Soldiers died for these values; parents watched sons and daughters go to war, sacrifice that which was most precious, to defend something bigger than ourselves.

This president doesn’t seem to think very much of our national character. He discounts our instinctive generosity to those in need, our compassion not just for our own children but all children, our confidence that we can succeed together, not just at each other’s expense.

What happens when nothing is bigger than oneself, no value is worth sacrificing for and it’s every man for himself? We are finding out.

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

Trump constantly preaches a foul doctrine of “beggar thy neighbor.”

PWS

O8-25-19

TRUMP SEES MASS MURDER AS OPPORTUNITY TO SPREAD LIES, HATE, RACISM, & DIVISION, WHILE TOUTING HIS “PERSONALITY CULT” — Hits On Leaders of Dayton, El Paso, While Upping Racial Tensions That Undoubtedly Will Lead To More White Supremacist Domestic Terror In The Near Future!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lashes-out-at-beto-orourke-and-the-media-ahead-of-visits-to-el-paso-and-dayton/2019/08/07/b0aa8afc-b8fb-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html

Ashley Parker
White House Reporter
Washington Post

From the Washington Post:

By Ashley Parker ,

Philip Rucker ,

Jenna Johnson and

Felicia Sonmez

August 8 at 12:01 AM

EL PASO — On a day when President Trump vowed to tone down his rhetoric and help the country heal following two mass slayings, he did the opposite — lacing his visits Wednesday to El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, with a flurry of attacks on local leaders and memorializing his trips with grinning thumbs-up photos.

A traditional role for presidents has been to offer comfort and solace to all Americans at times of national tragedy, but the day provided a fresh testament to Trump’s limitations in striking notes of unity and empathy.

When Trump swooped into the grieving border city of El Paso to offer condolences following the massacre of Latinos allegedly by a white supremacist, some of the city’s elected leaders and thousands of its citizens declared the president unwelcome.

In his only public remarks during the trip, Trump lashed out at Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, both Democrats, over their characterization of his visit with hospital patients in Dayton.

“We had an amazing day,” Trump said in El Paso as he concluded his visit. “As you know, we left Ohio. The love, the respect for the office of the presidency.”

Trump also praised El Paso police officers and other first responders and shook their hands, telling one female officer, “I saw you on television the other day and you were fantastic.”

None of the eight patients still being treated at University Medical Center in El Paso agreed to meet with Trump when he visited the hospital, UMC spokesman Ryan Mielke said. Two victims who already had been discharged returned to the hospital with family members to meet with the president.

“This is a very sensitive time in their lives,” Mielke said. “Some of them said they didn’t want to meet with the president. Some of them didn’t want any visitors.”

Before Trump’s visit Wednesday, however, some of the hospitalized victims accepted visits from a number of city and county elected officials, as well as Reps. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) and Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.).

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the president and first lady Melania Trump met with “victims of the tragedy while at the hospital” and were “received very warmly by not just victims and their families, but by the many members of medical staff who lined the hallways to meet them. It was a moving visit for all involved.”

El Paso and Dayton were not merely the latest in the multiplying series of American mass shootings. The carnage in El Paso is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism, with parallels between a racist manifesto posted minutes before the shooting and the president’s own anti-immigration rhetoric.

President Trump is greeted by Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio on Wednesday. (Ty Greenlees/AP)

This has thrust Trump into the center of a roiling political and societal debate, with some Democratic leaders saying the president has emboldened white supremacy and is a threat to the nation.

Former vice president Joe Biden, who is running to unseat Trump in 2020, said in a speech Wednesday, “We have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced a political strategy of hate, racism and division.”

When the Mayor of Dayton first saw @realDonaldTrump tweet about her pic.twitter.com/Z8YdyeebXp

— Scott Wartman (@ScottWartman) August 7, 2019

Both in Dayton and El Paso, Trump kept almost entirely out of public view, a marked break with tradition, as presidents visiting grieving communities typically offer public condolences.

Trump avoided the Oregon district where the shooting in Dayton took place, and just a short drive from Miami Valley Hospital, which he did visit. Whaley said he would not have been welcome in the Oregon District, where scores of demonstrators congregated, holding anti-Trump signs and chanting “Do something!” in a call for stricter gun laws.

Brown and Whaley described the visit by the president and first lady in favorable terms.

“They were hurting. He was comforting. He did the right things. Melania did the right things,” Brown told reporters. “And it’s his job in part to comfort people. I’m glad he did it in those hospital rooms.”

Whaley added: “I think the victims and the first responders were grateful that the president of the United States came to Dayton.”

Both Brown and Whaley, however, were also sharply critical of Trump’s divisive rhetoric and Republican resistance to gun-control legislation.

Whaley later responded to Trump’s comments about her and Brown by calling him “a bully and a coward.” She said on CNN, “It’s fine that he wants to bully me and Sen. Brown. We’re okay. We can take it.”

The traveling press corps was not allowed to observe Trump’s visit with three victims who remained hospitalized. It fell therefore to White House aide Dan Scavino to proclaim in a tweet that Trump “was treated like a Rock Star inside the hospital.”

[‘Hispanic invasion’: A white nationalist version of Texas that never existed]

Trump and the first lady also met with police officers, fire officials, trauma surgeons and nurses at the facility, which treated 23 victims of the shooting. The hospital invited victims who had already been released to come back and meet with the president and the first lady.

“It was an authentic visit,” hospital president Mike Uhl said, praising Trump as “attentive, present and extremely accommodating.”

Trump offered his own affirmation on Twitter: “It was a warm & wonderful visit. Tremendous enthusiasm & even Love.”

Grisham said journalists were kept out of the hospital visit because staff did not want it to devolve into “a photo op” and overwhelm the victims with media.

The White House, however, distributed its own photos of Trump smiling for pictures with first responders, along with a slickly produced video, helping make the president the center of attention.

Trump’s reception in El Paso was less hospitable, and not only because so many local leaders have said they believe his rhetoric inspired Saturday’s slayings at a shopping center near the U.S.-Mexico border. Although he won the state of Texas in the 2016 election, Trump captured just 25.7 percent of the vote in El Paso County, the worst performance recorded here by a major-party presidential candidate in at least two decades.

An ever-growing makeshift memorial has sprouted near the shooting scene that features piles of colorful flowers, a row of white crosses, a line of prayer candles, as well as messages to the president. “Mr. T, Respect our sorrow and grief. Do not ‘invade’ our city,” reads one note, a reference to Trump’s repeated warnings of a migrant “invasion” at the border.

Just before Trump arrived in El Paso — where he and the first lady met with law enforcement personnel at an emergency operations center following their hospital visit — several hundred people gathered in opposition to his trip .

Congregating under the hot midday sun in a baseball field for an “El Paso Strong” event, some held homemade signs. “Go home! You are NOT welcome here!” read one. “This was Trump-inspired terrorism,” read another. “Trump repent,” read a third.

At one point, the crowd chanted, “Send him back!” — a nod to the incendiary “Send her back!” chant about Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at one of Trump’s campaign rallies last month.

“We feel like right now we should be in mourning, and we feel like we should be collecting our thoughts, we should be doing vigils and we should be gathering together as a community. We believe it is an insult that the president is coming here,” said one of the organizers, Jaime Candelaria, a 37-year-old singer and songwriter.

[‘Be quiet!’: Trump claims Beto O’Rourke uses a ‘phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage’]

Escobar said onstage, “In this moment, someone is visiting … I felt it was important that we come together and not focus on the visitor, but focus on El Paso.” She added, “We will not stop resisting the hate! Resisting the bigotry! Resisting the racism!”

In the crowd at the El Paso Strong event was Shawn Nixon, 20, a Walmart employee who was at work restocking the school supplies area when the gunman opened fire Saturday morning. At the sound of the shots, Nixon said he fell to the ground, pulling with him a young child who had been shopping with his mother.

“All I’m just asking for Donald Trump, for the president, to do is to say ‘sorry,’ ” Nixon said. “He created this crime. He created it because of his words. Every time that he’s on TV, that’s what he’s doing.”

During his flight home from El Paso, Trump attacked Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), the twin brother of presidential candidate Julián Castro, tweeting that he “makes a fool of himself every time he opens his mouth.” The congressman has come under scrutiny for publicizing a list of San Antonio donors who have contributed to Trump and accusing them of “fueling a campaign of hate.”

On Saturday in El Paso, authorities said, a man opened fire inside the Walmart, killing 22 people and injuring two dozen others. At 1:05 a.m. Sunday, a gunman killed nine people and injured 27 others outside a bar in Dayton, police said.

All week, Trump has zigzagged between two competing instincts: unite and divide.

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, Trump remained cloistered at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., issuing only short statements on Twitter. Back at the White House on Monday, the president delivered a scripted speech in which he preached harmony.

“Now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside — so destructive — and find the courage to answer hatred with unity, devotion and love,” Trump said, reading from teleprompters.

The president did not heed his own advice, however. Late Tuesday night, he took to Twitter to attack Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman running for president who has said Trump bears some responsibility for the shooting there because of his demonization of Latino immigrants.

Trump tweeted: “Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement — & be quiet!”

Then, as he departed the White House on Wednesday morning en route to Ohio, Trump told reporters he would refrain from attacking his adversaries during the trip.

“I would like to stay out of the political fray,” the president said. Asked about his rhetoric, he said he thinks it “brings people together” and added, “I think we have toned it down.”

[Gannett building in McLean evacuated after reports of man with weapon]

That detente lasted only a few minutes. Answering a reporter’s question about Biden, Trump pounced. “Joe is a pretty incompetent guy,” the president said. “Joe Biden has truly lost his fastball, that I can tell you.”

By the time the president had left Dayton, he was back on Twitter and sniping at Democrats, a tirade triggered by his consumption of cable television news aboard Air Force One.

“Watching Sleepy Joe Biden making a speech. Sooo Boring! The LameStream Media will die in the ratings and clicks with this guy,” the president wrote.

Then he lashed out at Brown and Whaley, falsely accusing them of “totally misrepresenting” the reception he received at Miami Valley Hospital. He alleged that their news conference immediately after the president’s visit “was a fraud.”

But neither Brown nor Whaley said Trump received a poor reception at the hospital.

When Whaley first saw Trump’s tweets criticizing her and Brown, she paused for a moment to read them on a cellphone and said, “I don’t — I mean, I’m really confused. We said he was treated, like, very well. So, I don’t know why they’re talking about ‘misrepresenting.’

“Oh, well, you know,” the mayor added with a shrug. “He lives in his world of Twitter.”

Parker and Johnson reported from El Paso, and Rucker and Sonmez reported from Washington. Arelis R. Hernández in Dayton, Robert Moore in El Paso, and Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner in Washington contributed to this report.

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

Totally lacking in human decency. Totally unqualified for any office, let alone the highest one in the land. Will enough folks ”wise up” and stand up to this cowardly bully before it’s too late for all of us?

PWS

08-09-19

AILA CONDEMNS BARR’S LATEST COWARDLY EXTRALEGAL ATTACK ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS — “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum.”

Jeremy McKinney, Esquire
Greensboro, NC
AILA 2nd Vice President

AG’s Decision Ignores Precedent and Is the Latest Attempt to Restrict Asylum

AILA: AG’s Decision Ignores Precedent and Is the Latest Attempt to Restrict Asylum

AILA Doc. No. 19072905 | Dated July 29, 2019

CONTACTS:

George Tzamaras
202-507-7649
gtzamaras@aila.org Belle Woods
202-507-7675
bwoods@aila.org

WASHINGTON, DC — On July 29, 2019, Attorney General (AG) William Barr issued a precedent decision in Matter of L-E-A- and announced that in his view, families cannot be considered a particular social group (and thus grounds for asylum) unless they are recognized by society as such.

AILA Second Vice President Jeremy McKinney stated, “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum. Courts, like the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, have voluminous case law directly contradicting the Attorney General’s decision today.

“The impact of AG Barr’s decision, along with the other decisions issued by his immediate predecessors on asylum and the nation’s immigration courts, cannot be overstated. Last summer, the AG issued Matter of A-B- attempting to end the category of persecution – essentially restricting domestic violence victims and other victims of crimes perpetrated by private, non-government actors from their ability to qualify for asylum. Today, the AG’s office further attempts to restrict asylum by targeting a new category of asylum seekers: families. This will cause irreparable harm. We know that these are some of the most vulnerable of asylum seekers as parents flee with their children in order to protect them from persecution. This decision unnecessarily makes asylum harder. Clearly, our nation needs an independent immigration court system separate from the Department of Justice.”

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 19072905.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

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

Cowardice is the very definition of when those in power whose job and solemn duty is to protect and vindicate the rights of others, particularly the most vulnerable among us like refugees, instead grossly abuse their power by picking on them, bullying them, and abusing them. Whether or not Barr and the other White Nationalist restrictionists in the Trump Administration are committing actual crimes under U.S. law, they are certainly guilty of “crimes against humanity” in any normal sense of the word.

It is for legal scholars, historians, and moral philosophers to insure that Trump, Pence, Barr, Sessions, “Cooch Cooch,” “Big Mac With Lies,” Miller, Nielsen, Kelly, Homan, Morgan, and others who have enthusiastically supported and enabled this debacle do not escape the negative judgements of history!

PWS

07-30-19

2 1/2 YEARS AFTER ANNOUNCING IT, TRUMP FINALLY GETS HIS EXPANSION OF EXPEDITED REMOVAL!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-administration-to-expand-its-power-to-deport-undocumented-immigrants/2019/07/22/76d09bc4-ac8e-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

The Trump administration on Tuesday will significantly expand its power to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who have illegally entered the United States within the past two years, using a fast-track deportation process that bypasses immigration judges.

Officials are calling the new strategy, which will take effect immediately, a “necessary response” to the influx of Central Americans and others at the southern border. It will allow immigration authorities to quickly remove immigrants from anywhere they encounter them across the United States, and they expect the approach will help alleviate the nation’s immigration-court backlog and free up space in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails.

The stated targets of the change are people who sneaked into the United States and do not have an asylum case or immigration-court date pending. Previously, the administration’s policy for “expedited removal” had been limited to migrants caught within 100 miles of the U.S. border who had been in the country for less than two weeks. The new rule would apply to immigrants anywhere in the United States who have been in the country for less than two years — adhering to a time limit included in the 1996 federal law that authorized the expedited process.

“AI will embed intelligence in daily operations to augment our employees, reshape our business practices, and even help create new products and services.” -Michele Goetz, principal analyst, Forrester

Immigrants apprehended in Iowa, Nebraska or other inland states would have to prove to immigration officials that they have been in the United States continuously for the past two years, or they could end up in an immigration jail facing quick deportation. And it could be relatively low-level immigration officers — not officers of a court — making the decisions.

President Trump has promised to deport millions of immigrants and has threatened enforcement raids targeting those in as many as 10 major cities.

Schumer again calls for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on July 9 outlined Democratic proposals for curbing the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. (The Washington Post)

Nearly 300,000 of the approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States could be subject to expedited removal, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The typical undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States for 15 years, according to the Pew Research Center.

Though border apprehensions have fallen in June and July as the Trump administration and Mexico have intensified their crackdown on the southern border, acting Department of Homeland Security chief Kevin McAleenan said in a draft notice Monday that “the implementation of additional measures is a necessary response to the ongoing immigration crisis.” He said the new rule would take effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

[Trump administration weighs expanding expedited deportation]

“DHS has determined that the volume of illegal entries, and the attendant risks to national security and public safety presented by these illegal entries, warrants this immediate implementation of DHS’s full statutory authority over expedited removal,” McAleenan said in the notice. “DHS expects that the full use of expedited removal statutory authority will strengthen national security, diminish the number of illegal entries, and otherwise ensure the prompt removal of aliens apprehended in the United States.”

Immigration lawyers said that the expansion is unprecedented and effectively gives U.S. agents the power to issue deportation orders without bringing immigrants before a judge or allowing them to speak with a lawyer.

“Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court,” Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “We will sue to end this policy quickly.”

Royce Bernstein Murray of the American Immigration Council also vowed to challenge the policy in court, arguing that the broadened authority allows DHS “to essentially be both prosecutor and judge.”

Guatemalan men deported from the United States board a bus after arriving at an air-force base in Guatemala City last week. (Moises Castillo/AP)

Immigrants’ advocates warned that the policy could ensnare longtime legal residents or even U.S. citizens who have been deported in error before. Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she fears the rule will lead to increased racial profiling and turn ICE into a “show-me-your-papers militia.”

“This new directive flows directly from the racist rhetoric that the president has been using for the last week and indeed months, but this new rule is going to terrorize communities of color,” said Gupta, who was head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama. “It really reads as a send-them-all-back policy,” she added, referring to the audience’s “Send her back!” chants at a Trump rally last week in response to the president’s attacks on a Somali-born Muslim congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

[Momentary border reprieve rests on a rickety foundation]

David Leopold, a Cleveland immigration lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said expanding the expedited-removal program shifts the decision-making to immigration officers who might not have much experience with such a policy and means that many immigrants who might have the right to remain in the country will not be given the opportunity to show it.

“That is going to apply to a huge swath of people,” he said, noting that the rule requires migrants to prove that they have been in the United States for years — a particularly difficult onus when they, by definition, lack legal-immigration documents. “My view is: How are they going to prove it? The burden is on them to prove it. If I can’t prove it, I’m done.”

ICE, which enforces immigration law and makes arrests across the United States, estimates that “a significant number” of undocumented immigrants would be eligible for expedited removal, including at least 20,500 migrants the agency apprehended last fiscal year and more than 6,400 it arrested this year, as of March 30.

McAleenan, in the federal notice, made reference to the Trump administration’s recent efforts to deter migration to the United States on many fronts, an approach that has included pushing asylum claimants back into Mexico to await court hearings, stepped up Mexican enforcement against migrants as they head north, and the threat of ICE raids on families who have final removal orders. McAleenan wrote that the new rule “will reduce incentives” for migrants to enter the United States and swiftly move away from the border to avoid the faster deportation process.

Deported migrants coming from Texas prepare to leave La Aurora Airport Repatriation Center in September in Guatemala City. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

DHS said it has anecdotal evidence that many immigrants smuggled into the United States hide in “safe houses” far from the southern border to avoid the threat of expedited removal. This year officials said 67 undocumented immigrants were found in a safe house in Roswell, N.M. — just beyond 100 miles from the Mexican border — and the year before they found three others, held for ransom, at a house in San Antonio, about 150 miles from the border.

Federal officials said they could make exceptions for people with serious medical conditions or “substantial connections” to the United States, and they said deportation is not necessarily immediate. Officials said they have safeguards in place for migrants who might be U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Asylum officers will interview immigrants who fear returning to their home countries, to determine whether they qualify for asylum or another form of protection, and they potentially could refer them to full deportation proceedings. Unaccompanied minors from non-neighboring countries are not eligible for speedy deportations under federal law.

Expedited removals stem from a 1996 law, signed by President Bill Clinton, that authorized the use of expedited deportations for undocumented immigrants apprehended anywhere in the country who could not prove they had been physically present in the country two years before their apprehension.

In practice, enforcement was far more limited, at first applying to migrants arriving at a port of entry or by sea. In 2004, President George W. Bush expanded expedited removals along the U.S.-Mexico border, allowing for the swift expulsion of immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border who had lived in the country fewer than 14 days. The Bush administration said issuing removal orders bars migrants from reentering the United States and makes it easier to pursue criminal charges against them if they try.

Expedited deportations soared from about 50,000 immigrants in 2004 to 193,000 in 2013, about 44 percent of the total number of people deported that year, according to the American Immigration Council.

Trump sought to expand expedited deportations days after he took office as one of multiple strategies to crack down on illegal immigration at a time when the immigration-court backlog hovered at about 600,000 cases. The plan never materialized, and illegal border crossings sank in the months after he assumed the presidency.

But apprehensions soared during the past year as migrant families from Central America sought refuge in the United States; they often are quickly released to await court hearings because of limits on how long the United States can detain children.

Since then, the immigration-court caseload has spiked to more than 900,000 cases, and ICE has more than 50,000 migrants in custody each day, a record.

In the notice, McAleenan said expedited removal will relieve pressure on detention centers and the courts. He said the courts had fewer than 168,000 cases at the end of fiscal 2004, when DHS expanded expedited removal along the southern border.

Migrants in expedited proceedings spend an average of just more than 11 days in immigration jails, while detainees awaiting “time-consuming” court hearings spend almost 52 days in jail, McAleenan said.

“DHS expects that the New Designation will help mitigate additional backlogs in the immigration courts and will reduce the significant costs to the government associated with full removal proceedings before an immigration judge, including the costs of a longer detention period and government representation in those proceedings,” McAleenan said in the notice.

The Trump administration says the notice is exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act’s public comment requirements, but DHS is seeking comments on the change even though it is slated to take effect immediately upon posting.

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

Well, Trump has the statute on his side here. But, because he is driven by malicious incompetence and racism, that hasn’t always carried the day for him.

Problems with this rollout:

There does not appear to be any legitimate reason for waiving the Administrative Procedures Act’s requirement for advance notice and comment for the regulatory change, particularly given its absurdly long gestation period;
The statute might well be unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause as applied to those whose connection to the border is quite attenuated (likely why prior Administrations chose a much more cautious and limited implementation);
The Trump Administration is likely to engage in overreach in implementation by going after long term residents who are outside the scope of the provision.

Only time will tell whether the Trump Administration’s latest “get tough” action will work, or just add to the Administration’s already remarkable record of litigation incompetence in the Federal Courts.

PWS

07-22-19

CONTACTS:
George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org	Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org

DOJ changed hiring to promote restrictive immigration judges

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