Political Correctness – Page 9 – immigrationcourtside.com

TAL @ CNN: DENYING DUE PROCESS IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS — Sessions’s Plans & Actions Contravene Many Key Recommendations Of Recent Independent Internal Evaluation – Feuding With Judges, Suspending Legal Orientation Program, Establishing Evaluations Based On “Quotas,” Detailing Judges To Border Detention Centers, Restricting Administrative Closing, Increasing Use Of Televideo Hearings, Emphasis On Increasing Removals Over Due Process All Run Counter To Recent Recommendations!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/politics/immigration-courts-justice-department-report/index.html

Justice report’s findings clash with Sessions’ actions

By Tal Kopan

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made overhauling the chronically backlogged immigration courts a top priority — but some of his moves seem to run counter to recommendations in a Justice Department-commissioned report made public on Monday.

While some of the recommendations, such as increasing staffing, have been part of his efforts, other steps — such as requiring judges to process a target amount of cases — run contrary to the study’s suggestions.

The report was written by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton last April after a yearlong analysis commissioned by the Justice Department’s immigration courts division. A redacted version was made public Monday as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and American Immigration Council.

The report looks at the chronic inability of the immigration courts to keep up with the number of cases before them. Cases related to immigration status are handled in a court system separate from the typical criminal and civil courts in the US — a system that is run entirely by the Justice Department and in which the attorney general effectively functions as a one-man Supreme Court.

Because cases can take years to finish, undocumented immigrants can end up living and building lives in the US as they await a final decision on whether they are legally allowed to stay in the US — something the Trump administration has cited as a driver of illegal immigration.

The Booz Allen Hamilton analysis identifies a number of issues that contribute to the backlog, including staffing shortages, technological difficulties and external factors like an increasing number of cases.

Sessions has worked to hire more immigration judges and has ordered other upgrades like the use of an electronic filing system, as the report recommends.

But the American Immigration Lawyers Association expressed concern about a number of other recommendations that seemed ignored or on which opposite action was taken.

Responding to the report, a Justice Department official who requested not to be named said that the efforts of the department are “common-sense.”

“After years of mismanagement and neglect, the Justice Department has implemented a number of common-sense reforms in the immigration court system, a number of them address these issues and we believe that focusing our efforts on these reforms has been an effective place to start,” the official said.

The report’s recommendations include a performance review system for judges, who are hired and managed by the Justice Department, that “emphasizes process over outcomes and places high priority on judicial integrity and independence,” including in dialogue with the union that represents immigration judges. The Justice Department recently rolled out a performance metrics system, though, that requires judges to complete a certain number of cases per year and sets time goals for other procedural steps along the way, which immigration judges have strongly opposed as jeopardizing the ability of judges to make fair, independent decisions.

In a call with reporters, AILA representatives and a retired immigration judge argued that while the report doesn’t explicitly reject a quota system, it’s clear that putting one in place is contrary to the recommendation. They say that judges who are fearful of their job security and opportunity for advancement may be pressured to speed up hearing cases at the expense of due process for the immigrants, which could skew the outcome of the case.

A Justice Department official said the agency rejects the notion of a “false dichotomy” that improving efficiency sacrifices due process and said the agency has also put in place court-based metrics that lend itself to the recommendation of the report.

In another example, the report recommends that the Justice Department consider expanding legal orientation programs for immigrants and increasing their access to attorneys, so they can better navigate the system. The Justice Department recently put on hold a legal advice program for immigrants in the courts, saying it needed to be reviewed, though audits in the past had consistently shown it was productive and had saved the government money long-term. Officials say they may reinstitute the program if the audit shows it is effective.

The report also recommends limited use of video hearings, saying judges are stymied by technical difficulties and also are less able to read the subtle cues and nonverbal communications of witnesses and people involved in the hearings. Sessions’ immigration courts plan includes expanding the use of video hearings.

In another example, one of Sessions’ first moves in taking office was to send a number of judges to the border on a temporary assignment to handle cases there. The report says temporary assignments should be avoided, as they create more delays when judges have to catch up on their workloads back home.

The report also recommends administratively closing cases if they are being adjudicated in some other venue, like a visa petition or another court case. The Trump administration has sought to curtail the administrative closing of cases.

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DOJ’s ridiculous claim that Sessions’s actions are “common sense” is refuted by virtually everyone with expertise or true understanding of the Immigration Court system including those working in it, those stuck in it, and even ICE!

There can be no effective, Due Process oriented, “actual common sense” Immigration Court reforms so long as Jeff Sessions controls those courts.

PWS

04-23-18

PRO PUBLICA: HOW OUR GOVERNMENT HAS CYNICALLY TURNED WHAT SHOULD BE A GENEROUSLY ADMINISTERED, LIFE-SAVING, PROTECTION-GRANTING ASYLUM SYSTEM INTO A “GAME OF CHANCE” WITH POTENTIALLY FATAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THE HAPLESS & VULNERABLE “PLAYERS!” –Play The “Interactive Version” Of “The Game” Here – See If You Would Survive or Perish Playing “Refugee Roulette!”

https://projects.propublica.org/asylum/#how-asylum-works

Years-long wait lists, bewildering legal arguments, an extended stay in detention — you can experience it all in the Waiting Game, a newsgame that simulates the experience of trying to seek asylum in the United States. The game was created by ProPublica, Playmatics and WNYC. Based on the true stories of real asylum-seekers, this interactive portal allows users to follow in the footsteps of five people fleeing persecution and trying to take refuge in America.

The process can be exhausting and feel arbitrary – and as you’ll find in the game, it involves a lot of waiting. Once asylum-seekers reach America, they must condense complex and often traumatic stories into short, digestible narratives they will tell again and again. Their lives often depend on their ability to convince a judge that they are in danger. Judicial decisions are so inconsistent across the country, success in complicated cases can come down to geography and luck — in New York City only 17 percent of asylum cases are denied in immigration court; in Atlanta, 94 percent are. Increasingly, many asylum-seekers are held in detention for months or even years while going through the system. The immigration detention system costs more than $2 billion per year to maintain.

The Trump administration has tried to reframe the asylum system as a national security threat and a magnet for illegal immigration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterizes the American asylum process as “subject to rampant abuse” and “overloaded with fake claims.” He has aimed recent reforms at expediting asylum adjudications to speed up deportations and at making it more difficult for certain groups to qualify for protection, such as Central Americans who claim to fear gender-based violence or gang persecution.

The narrative that the system is overrun with fraud has long been pushed by groups that favor limiting immigration overall. They point to some 37 percent of asylum-seekers who annually miss their immigration hearings as evidence that people without legitimate fears of persecution game the system. They argue that allowing asylum-seekers to obtain work permits while they wait for a decision on their cases — which sometimes takes years — incentivizes baseless claims.

But another picture emerged when ProPublica spoke with more than 20 experts and stakeholders who study and work in the asylum system, including lawyers, immigration judges, historians, policy experts, an asylum officer, a former border patrol agent and a former ICE prosecutor.

When asked about changes to the system they’d like to see, many suggested providing asylum-seekers with better access to lawyers to support due process, expanding the definition of a refugee to cover modern-day conflicts,providing more resources to help the system process claims in a timely manner, and improving judicial independence by moving immigration courts out of the Department of Justice.

Most acknowledged some level of asylum-claim abuse exists. “In any system, of course, there are going to be some bad actors and some weaknesses people seek to exploit,” said Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.

But they also argued for the importance of protecting and improving a national program that has provided refuge to hundreds of thousands of people. “If you are going to make a mistake in the immigration area, make this mistake,” said Bill Hing, director of the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic. “Protect people that may not need protecting, but don’t make the mistake of not protecting people who need it.”

Victor Manjarrez, a former border patrol agent from the 1980s until 2011, said he had seen human smuggling networks exploit the border over the years, but also many people who genuinely needed help.

“We have a system that’s not perfect, but is designed to take refugees. That is the beauty of it,” he said. “It has a lot of issues, but we have something in place that is designed to be compassionate. And that’s why we have such a big political debate about this.”

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Read the narrative and play the interactive “Waiting Game” at the above link!

Getting refuge often depends on getting the right:

Border Patrol Agent an Asylum Officer to even get into the system;
Lawyer;
Local Immigration Court;
Immigration Judge;
DHS Assistant Chief Counsel;
BIA Panel;
U.S. Court of Appeals jurisdiction;
U.S. Court of Appeals Panel;
Luck.

If something goes wrong anywhere along this line, your case could “go South,” even if it’s very meritorious.

I also agree with Professor Hing that given the UNHCR guidance that asylum applicants ought to be given “the benefit of the doubt,” the generous standard for asylum established by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca and implemented by the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the often irreversible nature of wrongful removals to persecution, the system should be designed to “error on the side of the applicant.”

Indeed, one of the things that DHS in my experience does well is detecting and prosecuting systemic asylum fraud. While a few individuals probably do get away with tricking the system, most “professional fraudsters” and their clients eventually are caught and brought to justice, most often in criminal court. Most of these are discovered not by “tough laws” or what happens in Immigration Court, but by more normal criminal investigative techniques: undercover agents, tips from informants, and “disgruntled employees or clients” who “blow the whistle” in return for more lenient treatment for themselves.

Hope YOU get protected, not rejected!

PWS

04-23-18

TAL @ CNN: Documents Obtained Under FOIA Lend Support To Widely Held View That Trump Administration’s Decision To End Haitian TPS Driven By Bias Not Facts!

DHS decision to end Haitian immigrant protections questioned

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Newly released internal documents are raising questions about the Trump administration’s decision to end protections for tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants — and whether the argument that the protections were no longer merited was valid.

Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has been aggressive in ending a number of temporary protected status designations that have been on the books, in some cases, for decades.

Roughly 300,000 people who have lived in the US with legal permission, most of whom have been here for upward of 15-20 years, could have their status pulled in the coming months as the protections expire. In the case of Haiti, nearly 60,000 immigrants are set to see their status expire next year.

The justification from the administration for ending the protections has been that by law, when the conditions from the original disaster that triggered the protections have improved, they must expire. DHS has been clear that it does not believe it can look at the totality of conditions in the country to factor in its decision making.

But the documents released Tuesday as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit raise questions about whether DHS was accurately interpreting information in drawing those conclusions.

The documents suggest DHS contradicted its own staff assessment of Haiti when it opted to end TPS for the country, which was put in place after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The documents also include email correspondence showing Haiti’s deep concern about ending TPS for the country.

While many of the documents are redacted, the release includes a report prepared by staff about the conditions in Haiti, which was included as part of a recommendation by the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/politics/haiti-tps-documents-questions/index.html

And SCOTUS coverage here:http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/politics/supreme-court-federal-law-deportation-immigrants/index.html

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It’s no surprise that Trump Administration immigration policies are based on racial animus and White Nationalism and that they often fly in the face of known conditions in foreign countries. That’s what bias and congenital dishonesty are all about.

Haitian immigrants, who have made great contributions to the United States, have been singled out for poor treatment by past Administrations of both parties. But, they have persevered in the face of adversity both at home and abroad.

Not sure what the remedy would be here even if bias could be proved. The legislation creating TPS status makes country designations or non-designations matters committed to Executive discretion without any judicial review.

So the remedy is probably the same as for most of the Trump Administration’s unlawful and immoral acts: removal of the Administration and its GOP enablers at the ballot box. Even if that eventually happens, it’s not clear whether it will be soon enough to save Haitians in TPS status.

On the other hand, since most of the Haitians in TPS status would be entitled to full hearings before the Immigration Courts, they probably won’t be ordered out of the country any time soon. But, in some cases they could lose their authorization to work.

PWS

04-18-18

GONZO’S WORLD: “Apocalypto” & “Mikey P” Headline SNL “Cold Opening” Featuring “Michael ‘The Fixer’ Cohen” & “Bob Mueller”

Here’s the link:

https://apple.news/AkZhe3YpoQsOHijc1PgzkZQ

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I’m betting that when the time comes that our poor nation finally is relieved of Gonzo’s “services” as AG, unlike the late Janet Reno he won’t be showing up for any live appearances on SNL. Perhaps, he’ll be out on bond awaiting trial. At least he’s smart enough to hire “Chuckie” Cooper as his mouthpiece rather than “The Fixer!”

PWS

054-15-18

ELIZABETH BRUENIG @ WASHPOST: Trump Lacks The Moral Authority To Lead A “Just War!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/under-trump-there-can-be-no-just-war/2018/04/12/5ea5ab72-3dc5-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html

Bruenig writes:

. . . .

The moral sense is worth emphasizing. Trump’s White House is characterized not only by permanent chaos but also by constantly shifting flickers of vision — will it be right-populism, typical business conservatism, ultrapatriotic nationalism or something else altogether? One waits to find out each day, which doesn’t bode well for a regime contemplating military action. Moreover, Trump’s campaign — and his presidency — both rested on his gleeful indifference to people fleeing violence, be they immigrants from the global south or refugees from the Middle East. In what world could his administration be expected to become a just steward of their interests now? Is it really possible a government that can’t rush to turn back or exile the helpless fast enough has the moral capability to attempt any kind of just war, much less the practical means to carry it out? I doubt it.

And I worry. Careful restraint is harder than impulsive action; doubting one’s own moral capacities harder than ignoring the matter altogether. This means that governments least equipped to execute just action on the international stage may be the most likely to give it a try anyway, no matter its cost in blood and souls.

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Read the rest of Elizabeth’s article at the link.

The Syrian bombing has absolutely nothing to do with saving lives or taking a stand against the use of chemical weapons and everything to do with power and Trump’s ego. Trump sand his supporters have little difficulty turning their backs on desperate and dying Syrian refugees, including children, (who, unlike the children dying from chemical weapons attacks could actually be saved without too much trouble on the so-called “Western Powers” part) every day of the week.

Nor do they have any difficulty with proposing to truncate the already limited rights of refugee children arriving at our borders, sending them back to near certain abuse, death, or perhaps forced recruitment by gangs in the Northern Triangle. In other words, Trump and his GOP cronies Are “Immoral Situational Opportunists” who care nothing whatsoever for human life except in certain “staged” political contexts such as the abortion debate or debates over “death with dignity laws.” And, even then it has absolutely nothing to do with the lives supposedly at stake and everything to do with political capital to be gained by disallowing free will.

A scummy group won’t be made less scummy by going to war, no matter what the purported cause!

PWs

04-14-18

DIANNE SOLIS @ DALLAS MORNING NEWS DETAILS GONZO’S ALL-OUT ASSAULT ON INDEPENDENCE OF U.S.IMMIGRATION JUDGES AND DUE PROCESS IN OUR IMMIGRATION COURTS –“Due process isn’t making widgets,” Schmidt said. “Compare this to what happens in regular courts. No other court system operates this way. Yet the issues in immigration court are life and death,” he said, referring to asylum cases.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2018/04/10/immigration-judges-attorneys-worry-sessions-quotas-will-cut-justice-clogged-court-system

Dianne writes:

“A case takes nearly 900 days to make its way through the backlogged immigration courts of Texas. The national average is about 700 days in a system sagging with nearly 700,000 cases.

A new edict from President Donald Trump’s administration orders judges of the immigration courts to speed it up.

Now the pushback begins.

Quotas planned for the nation’s 334 immigration judges will just make the backlog worse by increasing appeals and questions about due process, says Ashley Tabaddor, Los Angeles-based president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

Quotas of 700 cases a year, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were laid out in a performance plan memo by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They go into effect October 1.

Some have even called the slowdown from the backlog “de facto amnesty.”

“We believe it is absolutely inconsistent to apply quotas and deadlines on judges who are supposed to exercise independent decision-making authority,” Tabaddor said.

“The parties that appear before the courts will be wondering if the judge is issuing the decision because she is trying to meet a deadline or quota or is she really applying her impartial adjudicative powers,” she added.

. . . .

Faster decision-making could cut the backlog, but it also has many worried about fairness.

The pressure for speed means immigrants would have to move quickly to find an attorney. Without an attorney, the likelihood of deportation increases. Nationally, about 58 percent of immigrants are represented by attorneys, according to Syracuse’s research center. But in Texas, only about a third of the immigrants have legal representation.

Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who served as chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals for immigration courts for six years, says he saw decisions rendered quickly and without proper legal analysis, leaving it necessary for many cases to be sent back to the immigration court for what he called “a redo.”

“Due process isn’t making widgets,” Schmidt said. “Compare this to what happens in regular courts. No other court system operates this way. Yet the issues in immigration court are life and death,” he said, referring to asylum cases.

Schmidt said there are good judges who take time with cases, which is often needed in asylum pleas from immigrants from countries at war or known for persecution of certain groups.

But he also said there were “some not-very-good judges” with high productivity.

Ramping up the production line, Schmidt said, will waste time.

“You will end up with more do-overs. Some people are going to be railroaded out of the country without fairness and due process,” Schmidt said.

. . . .

“It doesn’t make any sense to squeeze them,” said Huyen Pham, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth. “When you see a lot more enforcement, it means the immigration court will see a lot more people coming through.”

Lawyers and law school professors say the faster pace of deportation proceedings by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spells more trouble ahead. Immigration courts don’t have electronic filing processes for most of the system. Many judges must share the same clerk.

For decades, the nation’s immigration courts have served as a lynchpin in a complex system now under intense scrutiny. Immigration has become a signature issue for the Trump administration.

Five years ago, the backlog was about 344,000 cases — about half today’s amount. It grew, in part, with a rise in Central Americans coming across the border in the past few years. Most were given the opportunity to argue before an immigration judge about why they should stay in the U.S.

This isn’t the first time the judges have faced an administration that wants them to change priorities. President Barack Obama ordered that the cases of Central American unaccompanied children to be moved to the top of docket.

“Our dockets have been used as a political tool regardless of which administration is in power and this constant docket reshuffling, constant reprioritization of cases has only increased the backlog,” Tabaddor said.

The quota edict was followed by a memo to federal prosecutors in the criminal courts with jurisdiction over border areas to issue more misdemeanor charges against immigrants entering the country unlawfully. Sessions’ memo instructs prosecutors “to the extent practicable” to issue the misdemeanor charges for improper entry. On Wednesday, Sessions is scheduled to be in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to speak on immigration enforcement at a border sheriffs’ meeting.

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Judge Ashley Tabaddor, President of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ” — for the record, I’m a retired member of the NAIJ) hits the nail on the head. This is about denying immigrants their statutory and Constitutional rights while the Administration engages in “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) an egregious political abuse that I have been railing against ever since I retired in 2016.

Judge Tabaddor’s words are worth repeating:

“Our dockets have been used as a political tool regardless of which administration is in power and this constant docket reshuffling, constant reprioritization of cases has only increased the backlog,” Tabaddor said.

In plain terms this is fraud, waste, and abuse that Sessions and the DOJ are attempting to “cover up” by dishonestly attempting to “shift the blame” to immigrants, attorneys, and Immigration Judges who in fact are the victims of Session’s unethical behavior. If judges “pedaling faster” were the solution to the backlog (which it isn’t) that would mean that the current backlog was caused by Immigration Judges not working very hard, combined with attorneys and immigrants manipulating the system. Sessions has made various versions of this totally bogus claim to cover up his own “malicious incompetence.”

Indeed, by stripping Immigration Judges of authority effectively to manage their dockets; encouraging mindless enforcement by DHS; terminating DACA without any real basis; insulting and making life more difficult for attorneys trying to do their jobs of representing respondents; attacking legal assistance programs for unrepresented migrants; opening more “kangaroo courts” in locations where immigrants are abused in detention to get them to abandon their claims for relief; threatening established forms of protection (which in fact could be used to grant more cases at the Asylum Office and by stipulation — a much more sane and legal way of reducing dockets); canceling “ready to hear” cases that then are then “orbited” to the end of the docket to send Immigration Judges to detention courts where the judges sometimes did not have enough to do and the cases often weren’t ready for fair hearings; denying Immigration Judges the out of court time necessary to properly prepare cases and write decisions; and failing to emphasize the importance of quality and due process in appellate decision-making at the BIA, Sessions is contributing to and accelerating the breakdown of justice and due process in the U.S. Immigration Courts.

PWS

04-11-18

DON’T BELIEVE ANY OF THE “CROCODILE TEARS” BEING SHED BY TRUMP & HIS ADMINISTRATION ABOUT THE LATEST ASSAD ATROCITY IN SYRIA – THE ADMINISTRATION’S INHUMANE POLICIES HELP KILL SYRIAN REFUGEES IN AND OUT OF CAMPS ON A REGULAR BASIS – Bombs & Bluster Will Never Replace Humanitarian Assistance & Robust Refugee Resettlement

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/there-are-more-than-5-million-syrian-refugees-the-trump-administration-has-admitted-2-of-them/

There Are More Than 5 Million Syrian Refugees. The Trump Administration Has Admitted 2 of Them.

State Department data shows that many nations’ refugees are still effectively banned.

NOAH LANARDJAN. 29, 2018 2:21 PM

Women from Syria walk with their children in a refugee camp in Cyprus in September.Petros Karadjias/AP

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The United Nations estimates that there are 5.5 million Syrian refugees. In the past three months, the United States has allowed two of them to enter the country—down from about 3,600 in the last three months of the Obama administration.

After kicking off his presidency by temporarily banning refugees, Donald Trump lifted the ban in late October. But at the same time, he increased scrutiny of refugees from 11 countries, requiring that they be admitted only if doing so fulfills “critical foreign policy interests.” Refugee advocates said that the language would effectively ban refugees from a group of mostly Muslim-majority nations. Data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center reviewed by Mother Jones confirms their prediction.

The United States has taken in 44 refugees from the targeted countries since Trump issued his executive order, compared to about 12,000 during the same period last year. The countries are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The heightened vetting of people from those countries has driven down the total number of Muslim refugees coming to the United States. About 550 Muslim refugees have been admitted to the United States since the executive order. More than 11,000 arrived during the same period last year. The share of admitted refugees who are Muslim has dropped from 48 percent at the end of the Obama administration to 11 percent in recent months.

Under Trump’s October executive order, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would conduct a 90-day “in-depth threat assessment of each [targeted] country.” During that period, DHS said in a memo to Trump, it would only take refugees from the 11 countries “whose admission is deemed to be in the national interest and poses no threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

The 90-day mark passed last week. But Sean Piazza, a spokesman for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee resettlement agency, says the organization has not received any updates about the status of the temporary review now that the 90-day period has passed. It is unclear if it is still in effect, and DHS did not respond to a request for comment. DHS’ October memo stated that refugee admissions from the targeted countries are likely to “occur at a slower pace” beyond the 90-day deadline.

The Trump administration has tried to undermine support for accepting refugees by casting them as an economic burden. In September, the New York Times reported that White House officials had killed a draft report from the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees have increased government revenue by $63 billion over the past decade. The report that was ultimately published had a different calculus, documenting how much it costs to provide services to refugees but not how much they pay in taxes.

Overall, the United States in on track to resettle about 21,000 refugees this year, according to the IRC. That would be fewer than in any year since at least 1980—including 2002, when refugee admissions plummeted in the wake of 9/11. It is also less than half of the annual 45,000-refugee cap that the Trump administration set in September, which was the lowest cap ever. Historically, the United States has been considered a world leader in resettling refugees.

Before Trump assumed the presidency, it already took up to two years for refugees to be vetted and resettled, not including the time people spent fleeing their country for refugee camps. Henrike Dessaules, the communications director at the International Refugee Assistance Project, says the group has had clients who “were ready to travel, that had their medical checks, security checks, and interviews done.” Instead, “they have been completely stalled in the process,” she says.*

In 2016, the Obama administration placed its refugee limit at 85,000 people and used all but five of those slots. This year’s drop comes even though there were about 22.5 million refugees across the world in 2016, more than at any time since the United Nations’ refugee agency was founded in 1950.

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/middleeast/syria-refugees-lebanon-winter-intl/index.html

Syrian refugees escape the war, but die from the cold

Refugees freeze to death in Lebanon 02:48

Editor’s Note: This story contains extremely graphic images of dead and wounded people.

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon (CNN) — The rocky, plowed hillside is scattered with clues of what happened that January night. A woman’s scarf. A diaper. Empty cans of tuna fish. A plastic bag of sugar. An empty box of Turkish chocolate biscuits. A single cheap Syrian-made woman’s shoe. Several white, mud-spattered rubber gloves.

It was here, last month, that 17 Syrians froze to death in a night-time snowstorm while trying to cross the mountains into Lebanon.

Three-year-old Sarah is one of the few who survived. She now lies in a bed in the Bekaa Hospital in nearby Zahleh, two intravenous tubes taped to her small right arm. Frostbite left a large dark scab on her forehead. A thick bandage covers her right cheek. Another bandage is wound around her head to cover her frostbitten right ear.

Sarah doesn’t speak. She doesn’t make a sound. Her brown eyes dart around the room — curious, perhaps confused. Her father, Mishaan al Abed, sits by her bed, trying to distract her with his cell phone.

Sarah, 3, suffers from frostbite after smugglers abandoned her and her family as they were crossing into Lebanon.

No one has told Sarah that her mother Manal, her five-year-old sister Hiba, her grandmother, her aunt and two cousins died on the mountain.

“Sometimes she says, ‘I want to eat.’ That’s all,” Abed says. Sarah hasn’t mentioned anything about her ordeal, and he is hesitant to ask her.

An unfortunate reunion

Until now, Sarah hadn’t seen her father for two and a half years. He left Syria for Lebanon and found work as a house painter, leaving his family behind.

Mishaan al Abed sent money back to his wife and kids, who stayed outside the town of Abu Kamal, on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

ISIS controlled Abu Kamal from the summer of 2014 until last November, when it was retaken by Syrian government forces. Fighting still rages in the countryside around it, where Al Abed’s family lived.

Lebanese officials: 14 Syrian refugees found frozen near border

After their house was damaged, Abed’s brother and his family, along with Abed’s wife and two children, fled to Damascus. There they paid $4,000 — a fortune for a poor family — to a Syrian lawyer who they were told had the right connections with the army, intelligence and smugglers.

The plan was for them to be driven to the border in private cars on military-only roads. From there, says Abed, they were to walk with the smugglers for half an hour into Lebanon, where they would be met by other cars.

The plan started to fall apart when snow began to fall. The smugglers abandoned the group. The family lost their way and became separated. In the dark and the cold, most of them died. It’s not clear how Sarah and a few others survived.

The only thing that is clear, says hospital director Dr. Antoine Cortas, is that “it is a miracle Sarah is still alive.”

Hidden by the darkness and the snow was a house just a few hundred steps down the mountain.

In January, a group of Syrians froze to death trying to cross into Lebanon during a snowstorm.

Abed was expecting his family to cross over, but became concerned when he didn’t hear from them. “I was told the army had arrested people trying to cross into Lebanon. I thought it must be them. Then the intelligence services sent me a picture. I identified her as my wife.”

He opens the picture on his cell phone. It shows a lifeless woman curled up on the snow amidst thorn bushes, a red woolen cap on her head.

A struggle to cross over, a struggle to remain

More than a million Syrians have taken refuge in Lebanon, straining the resources of a country with a population of around six million. The Lebanese authorities have, to some extent, turned a blind eye to those entering the country illegally. But they have refused to allow relief groups to establish proper refugee camps, unlike Jordan and Turkey, for fear they will become permanent.

What pass for camps — officially called “informal tented settlements” — are ramshackle affairs. Syrians typically pay $100 to a landowner to build drafty, uninsulated breezeblock shelters with flimsy plastic tarpaulins as roofs.

Abu Farhan, a man in his sixties from Hama, in central Syria, lives in one of those shelters in a muddy camp outside the town of Rait, just a few kilometers from the Syrian border. His wife Fatima is ill. She is huddled next to a kerosene stove under a pile of blankets. Between coughing fits, she moans loudly. Farhan has had to borrow more than two million Lebanese pounds — around $1,300 — for her medical treatment.

Denied proper refugee camps, many Syrian refugees live in informal tented settlements.

Illness is just one of the perils here. Vermin, he says, is another. “There’s everything here,” he chuckles bitterly, “even things I’ve never seen before. Rats. Mice. Everything!”

The dilemma that Syrians in Lebanon face is glaringly clear. They’re not welcome here, and it’s difficult to scrape by. According to a recent report by the Norwegian Refugee Council, 71% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty.

Point of no return

Some Syrians have returned home, but many, like Abu Musa, a man in his forties who lives in the same settlement as Farhan, insist that returning would be nothing short of suicidal. He comes from Maarat al-Numan, in Idlib province, where Syrian forces, backed by Russian warplanes, are waging an offensive against government opponents.

“Of course, I’d like to go back to Syria!” Musa exclaims, gesturing around his damp, cold hut as if that were reason enough to return home. “But Syria isn’t safe. They’re fighting in my town. My house has been destroyed.”

And thus, Syrians continue to try to make their way to Lebanon, despite the very real risks.

Over 70% of Lebanon’s 1 million Syrian refugees live in poverty

“The people who are walking across the mountains, and taking days to cross the mountains in the middle of winter, are a testament to the fact that Syria is not safe,” said Mike Bruce of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“Until Syria is safe, until there is a lasting peace, people should not be going back to Syria.”

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

With the election of the staunchly anti-American, White Nationalist, xenophobic, religiously bigoted Trump Administration, the United States forfeited any claim to moral leadership and humanitarianism on the world stage. Our anti-refugee policies also harm our allies in the region by forcing them to bear the entire responsibility for sheltering refugees.

Only the electoral removal of this truly un-American Administration and its GOP fellow travelers from power will allow us to begin the healing process. Selfishness and inhumanity are not policies — they are diseases that will consume us all if we don’t exercise our Constitutional and political rights by voting to remove the toxic leaders spreading them!

PWS

04-10-18

SATURDAY SATIRE FROM ANDY BOROWITZ @ THE NEW YORKER – GOV. SCOTT WALKER SHOCKED BY RESULTS OF RECENT WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT ELECTION – “Scott Walker Dismayed That Wisconsin Apparently Smarter Despite Cuts in Education”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scott-walker-dismayed-that-wisconsin-apparently-smarter-despite-cuts-in-education?mbid=nl_Borowitz%20040418&CNDID=48297443&spMailingID=13253019&spUserID=MjQ1NjUyMTUwNjY5S0&spJobID=1380331002&spReportId=MTM4MDMzMTAwMgS2

Satire from The Borowitz Report

Scott Walker Dismayed That Wisconsin Apparently Smarter Despite Cuts in Education

By Andy Borowitz

April 4, 2018

Photograph by Scott Olson / Getty

MADISON (The Borowitz Report)—Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, said on Wednesday that he was “dismayed and alarmed” that people in his state had somehow become smarter despite substantial cuts in education.

“Ever since I took office, I have slashed education with the goal of making the voters of this state markedly dumber and incapable of critical thinking,” he told reporters. “Instead, what I am looking at is a doomsday scenario.”

Walker said that his cuts were based on a theory known as “trickle-up stupidity,” in which students in Wisconsin’s schools would become less informed and their ignorance would eventually infect their voting-age parents.

“Clearly, what looked like a can’t-miss plan on paper has not panned out,” he said.

Although Walker said that “it’s not time yet to press the panic button,” he warned that a so-called Smart Wave could be coming in his state.

“If Wisconsin voters continue to get smarter, that will be the end of me,” he said.

HON. BRUCE J. EINHORN IN WASHPOST: SESSIONS’S BLATANT ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES TO DEPORT INDIVIDUALS IN VIOLATION OF DUE PROCESS SHOWS A SYSTEM THAT HAS HIT ROCK BOTTOM! — Are There Any “Adults” Out There In Congress Or The Article III Courts With The Guts To Stand Up & Put An End To This Perversion Of American Justice? — “Due process requires judges free of political influence. Assembly-line justice is no justice at all.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-wants-to-bribe-judges-to-do-his-bidding/2018/04/05/fd4bdc48-390a-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html?utm_term=.770822e8f813

My former colleague Judge Bruce J. Einhorn writes in the Washington Post:

Bruce J. Einhorn, an adjunct professor of immigration, asylum and refugee law at Pepperdine University, served as a U.S. immigration judge from 1990 to 2007.

It’s a principle that has been a hallmark of our legal culture: The president shouldn’t be able to tell judges what to do.

No longer. The Trump administration is intent on imposing a quota system on federal immigration judges, tying their evaluations to the number of cases they decide in a year. This is an affront to judicial independence and the due process of law.

I served as a U.S. immigration judge in Los Angeles for 17 years, presiding over cases brought against foreign-born noncitizens who Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers believed were in this country illegally and should thus be removed. My responsibility included hearing both ICE’s claims and the claims from respondents for relief from removal, which sometimes included asylum from persecution and torture.

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As a judge, I swore to follow the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that “no person” (not “no citizen”) is deprived of due process of law. Accordingly, I was obliged to conduct hearings that guaranteed respondents a full and reasonable opportunity on all issues raised against them.

My decisions and the manner in which I conducted hearings were subject to review before the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and U.S. courts of appeals. At no time was my judicial behavior subject to evaluation based on how quickly I completed hearings and decided cases. Although my colleagues on the bench and I valued efficiency, the most critical considerations were fairness, thoroughness and adherence to the Fifth Amendment. If our nativist president and his lapdog of an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have their way, those most critical considerations will become a relic of justice.

Under the Trump-Sessions plan, each immigration judge, regardless of the nature and scope of proceedings assigned to him or her, will be required to complete 700 cases in a year to qualify for a “satisfactory” performance rating. It follows that only judges who complete more, perhaps many more, than 700 cases per year will qualify for a higher performance rating and, with it, a possible raise in pay.

Essentially, the administration’s plan is to bribe judges to hear and complete more cases regardless of their substance and complexity, with the corollary that judges who defy the quota imposed on them will be regarded as substandard and subject to penalties. The plan should be seen for what it is: an attempt to undermine judicial independence and compel immigration judges to look over their shoulders to make sure that the administration is smiling at them.

This is a genuine threat to the independence of the immigration bench. While Article III of the Constitution guarantees the complete independence of the federal district courts and courts of appeal, immigration judges are part of the executive branch. Notwithstanding the right of immigration judges to hear and decide cases as they believe they should under immigration law, they are unprotected from financial extortion and not-so-veiled political intimidation under the U.S. Administrative Procedure Actor any regulations.

Moreover, federal laws do not guarantee respondents in removal hearings a right to counsel, and a majority of those in such hearings are compelled to represent themselves before immigration judges, regardless of the complexity of their cases. Those who lack representation in removal hearings typically cannot afford it, and the funds to help legal aid organizations fill in for private attorneys are nowhere to be found.

Hearings in which respondents proceed pro se, or unrepresented, are often the most challenging and time-consuming for immigration judges, who must take care to assure that the procedural rights of those facing possible removal are protected and to guarantee that inarticulate relief claims are fully considered.

The Trump administration’s intention is clear: to intimidate supposedly independent judges to expedite cases, even if it undermines fairness — as will certainly be the case for pro se respondents. Every immigration judge knows that in general, it takes longer to consider and rule in favor of relief for a respondent than it does to agree with ICE and order deportation. The administration wants to use quotas to make immigration judges more an arm of ICE than independent adjudicators.

In my many years on the immigration bench, I learned that repressive nations had one thing in common: a lack of an independent judiciary. Due process requires judges free of political influence. Assembly-line justice is no justice at all.

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

Thanks, Bruce for speaking out so forcefully, articulately, and truthfully!

Jeff Sessions is a grotesque affront to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, American values, and human decency. Every day that he remains in office is a threat to our democracy. There could be no better evidence of why we need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court!

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never! Join the New Due Process Army Now! The fight must go on until Sessions and his toxic “21st Century Jim Crows” are defeated, and the U.S. Immigration Courts finally are forced to deliver on the betrayed promise of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

04-05-18

OUR FEAR-MONGERING LEADERS WANT YOU TO BE SCARED OF REFUGEES ARRIVING AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – DON’T BE! – Here’s What The Overhyped “Caravan” Actually Looks Like! — “Who wants to leave their country, the comfort of their home, their families?” she asked. “It’s a very difficult thing.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/world/americas/mexico-trump-caravan.html

Kirk Semple reports for the NY Times:

Inside an Immigrant Caravan: Women and Children, Fleeing Violence

By KIRK SEMPLE APRIL 4, 2018

Photo

Central American migrants, members of a group making its way through Mexico, waited in line on Wednesday to review their visa status at a temporary camp in Matías Romero.
CreditBrett Gundlock for The New York Times

MATÍAS ROMERO, Mexico — With a sarcastic half-smile, Nikolle Contreras, 27, surveyed her fellow members of the Central American caravan, which President Trump has called dangerous and has used as a justification to send troops to the border.

More than 1,000 people, mostly women and children, waited patiently on Wednesday in the shade of trees and makeshift shelters in a rundown sports complex in this Mexican town, about 600 miles south of the border. They were tired, having slept and eaten poorly for more than a week. All were facing an uncertain future.

“Imagine that!” said Ms. Contreras, a Honduran factory worker hoping to apply for asylum in the United States. “So many problems he has to solve and he gets involved with this caravan!”

The migrants, most of them Hondurans, left the southern Mexican border city of Tapachula on March 25 and for days traveled north en masse — by foot, hitchhiking and on the tops of trains — as they fled violence and poverty in their homelands and sought a better life elsewhere.

This sort of collective migration has become something of an annual event around Easter week, and a way for advocates to draw more attention to the plight of migrants.

But this particular caravan caught the attention of Mr. Trump, apparently after he heard about it on Fox News. In a Twitter tirade that began Sunday, he conjured up hordes of dangerous migrants surging toward the border. He demanded that Mexican officials halt the group, suggesting that otherwise he would make them pay dearly in trade negotiations or aid cuts.

Mr. Trump even boasted that his threat had forced Mexico’s government to halt and disperse the caravan participants. But there was no evidence of that on Wednesday.

. . . .

Irineo Mujica, Mexico director of People Without Borders, an advocacy group that is coordinating the caravan, called Mr. Trump’s Twitter attacks and promise of a militarized border “campaign craziness.”

“There are 300 kids and 400 women,” he said. “Babies with bibs and milk bottles, not armaments. How much of a threat can they be?”

. . . .

The group, organizers and advocates said, represented a regional humanitarian problem, not a security crisis for the United States, as Mr. Trump has suggested.

“What he’s attacking is a supremely vulnerable population,” said Gina Garibo, projects coordinator in Mexico for People Without Borders.

In response to Mr. Trump’s tweets and his plans to militarize the border, the Mexican Senate unanimously passed a nonbinding statement on Wednesday urging President Enrique Peña Nieto to suspend cooperation with the United States on immigration and security matters — “as long as President Donald Trump does not conduct himself with the civility and respect that the Mexican people deserve.”

Caravan organizers also said their intent was never to storm the border, especially not with a caravan of this size. While the original plan included the possibility of escorting the caravan to the northern border of Mexico, organizers had expected the group to mostly dissolve by the time it had reached Mexico City.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article along with more pictures of ordinary folks forced to make an extraordinary journey at the link.

There has never been any doubt that folks like Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen have nothing but contempt for the truth, laws, and human life. But, they also think that the American people are pretty stupid to fall for the “fantasyland claptrap” that they throw out to drum up support for their racist restrictionist ambitions.

Although you’ll never hear it from the disingenuous Trumpsters, individuals arriving at our borders have a legal right to apply for asylum guaranteed by both U.S. and international law. Most of the “law-breaking” involves the actions of the Trump DHS. By refusing to properly process asylum applicants at legal ports of entry, the Administration actually encourages illegal entry and the use of smugglers.

The only real “crisis” at the Southern border is a humanitarian one that this and past Administrations have had key roles in creating through failed immigration and foreign policies. Without better, smarter government, we’re bound to deep repeating the same mistakes.

Don’t fall for it!

PWS

04-05-18

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS SESSIONS’S “PRODUCTION QUOTAS” CAN’T SOLVE BACKLOG – HE’S RIGHT!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/381616-immigration-judge-quotas-will-not-eliminate-the-backlog-crisis

Nolan writes:

. . . .

But here’s a better reason to oppose the quotas: Session’s performance goals are not an effective way to deal with the backlog crisis.

As of March 5, 2018, there were approximately 350 judges, and the immigration court had 684,583 pending deportation cases.

If the judges do 700 cases-a-year, it will only dispose of approximately 245,000 cases-a-year. At that rate, it would take almost three years to eliminate the backlog … if there are no new cases. But there will always be new cases.

Sessions also will hire more judges, but the problems the immigration court is having with the current judges should be addressed first to determine whether the selection process needs to be changed.

From FY2013 through FY2017, 379 complaints were filed against the judges, approximately 30 percent of the judges every year!

Also, there are gross disparities in the way the judges are applying the law.

TRAC Immigration reports that the outcome at asylum hearings over a six-year period depended largely on which judge was assigned to the case.

For the 6,922 asylum seekers whose applications were adjudicated at the San Francisco Immigration Court, the likelihood of a denial varied from only 9.4 percent up to 97.1 percent, depending on which judge handled the case.

For the 1,233 individuals whose cases were heard at the Newark Immigration Court, the likelihood of a denial ranged from 10.9 percent up to 98.7 percent, depending on which judge handled the case.

In other words, the likelihood of being granted asylum in these courts could be as high as 90 percent or as low as 3 percent, depending upon which judge handles the case.

According to a Reuters report on disparities in how frequently immigrants are deported in removal proceedings, “the findings underscore what academics and government watchdogs have long complained about U.S. immigration courts: Differences among judges and courts can render the system unfair and even inhumane.”

GAO makes similar findings in its November 2016 report on variations in the outcomes of applications across immigration courts and judges. GAO also found that judges with 7 years of experience were 28 percent less likely to grant asylum than less experienced judges, which could be a factor in explaining the disparities.

Are unqualified judges being hired? Is the training program for new judges inadequate?

To some extent, the problem may be due to misconduct on the part of officials involved in the selection process.

For instance, in 2004, the Justice Department paid $11.5 million to settle a class action suit claiming that the immigration judge hiring practices of the Executive Officer for Immigration Review were discriminatory. Four years later, Monica Goodling from the Office of the Attorney General admitted that she had taken political considerations into account in soliciting candidates and reviewing applications.

In any case, it is apparent that Sessions isn’t going to eliminate the backlog crisis by setting performance goals or hiring more judges. He has to reduce the number of cases the immigration court has to handle.”

. . . .

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

Read Nolan’s complete article over on The Hill at the link.

Nolan’s points are well taken! He’s asking the types of obvious questions that folks genuinely interested in fixing this system should be asking. But, significantly, Jeff Sessions isn’t asking those types of questions!

The current Immigration Court system needs thoughtful quality control and due process targeted reforms on many levels, including a real merit-based hiring system — preferably run by the Article III Federal Courts. After all, the Federal Courts are the “ultimate consumers” of the Immigration Court’s work product.

According to the recent GAO study, it currently takes an average of two years — fully half of an Administration — to hire an Immigration Judge! That’s longer than the Senate confirmation process!

Sessions has promised but not delivered on yet another bureaucratic opaque system that would supposedly reduce the hiring cycle to 10 months, still ridiculously long. At most, IJ hiring should be on a 3-6 month cycle.

By comparison, in 1995 when I was hired, then EOIR Director Tony Moscato and Attorney General Reno had the Chairman and eight additional Board Members (“Appellate Immigration Judges”) hired, background cleared, and actually on board within a six month period — even though it involved a regulations change to increase the number of Board Members.

And, it’s certainly not that the current process produces remarkable results in terms of either diversity or background. Nearly 90% of the Immigration Judges hired over the past 10 years have come from very similar government backgrounds — mostly DHS and DOJ attorneys.

Attorneys from the private sector and academia, even those with superior qualifications, effectively have been systematically excluded from the 21st Century Immigration Judiciary. As Nolan pints out, the system cries out for judges of the highest caliber and universal reputations for fairness and scholarship as well as the ability to deal in an effective professional manner with the many “performing artist” aspects of running a fair courtroom in a stressful high volume system.

Additionally, a comprehensive 2016 report by Human Rights First (“HRF”) found that the appropriate number of case completions per Immigration Judge should be no more than 500 per judge to produce fair, high quality decisions that would meet the criteria for judicial review. So, why, without even referencing that report or reaching out to HRF, would Sessions & Co. create a “quota” that is 140% of that optimum number?

Here’s a link to the HRF Report:

HRF-In-The-Balance

How is this about building a real due process court system rather than a “deportation railroad?” Obviously, Sessions is only interested in the latter.

HRF actually went to experts involved in the Immigration Court system. Sessions, who has never been an Immigration Judge and disrespects most of those actually involved in the system, apparently invented his “quotas” without any meaningful input from any of the folks who actually work in and use the system.

As Nolan points out, the “wheels are coming off” the Immigration Court system. Mindless, “haste makes waste,” just pedal faster” invectives from Sessions can’t and won’t solve the problem.

That’s why Congress must create an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court — devoted to the only true purpose any court system can have: guaranteeing fairness and due process for all individuals appearing before it! That has nothing whatsoever to do with fake assembly line “production quotas!”

PWS

04-04-18

LAST WEEK TONIGHT: John Oliver “Shreds The Feds” — Exposes Parody Of Justice & Due Process In U.S. Immigration Courts – With Guest Appearances By Retired Judges John Gossart & Me & Judge Dana Marks – Also Featuring “Gonzo Apocalypto “ As “The Fourth Horseman Of The Apocalypse” & “Tot Court” As Perhaps The Second Worst Court In America After The US Immigration Courts — Listen To An Actual Recording Of An Immigration Judge Misapplying Protection Law in A 4-Question, 1 Min. 43 Sec. “Kangaroo Court” Hearing Resulting In An Assault At Gunpoint!

Here’s the video:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-oliver-immigration-court_us_5ac1c6c7e4b0f112dc9d6582

The tragedy is that bad as this sounds, the reality of what’s going on every day in this broken, failed, and disingenuous system is probably much worse than what’s portrayed here.

Yup, we can all chuckle at others’ misfortune. But, if Trump, Sessions, and the White Nationalist restrictionist crowd aren’t removed from office, this will be how all of our rights are treated. Someday, all of us are going to need to rely on our Constitutional rights. And, if Trump & Sessions have their way, you’ll be longing for the “Kiddie Court” rather than the travesty that’s being called “Due Process” in our Immigration Courts.

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the real America! Due Process Forever! Trump & Sessions Never!

PWS

04-02-18

FEDERAL COURTS DELIVER ANOTHER BIG HIT TO ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS ON IMMIGRATION: Attempt To Violate Detainee’s Constitutional Right To Abortion Thwarted!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-judge-orders-government-to-allow-abortion-access-to-detained-immigrant-teens/2018/03/30/19e9fcf8-3128-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

Ann E. Marimow, Spencer S. Hsu and Maria Sacchetti report for the Washington Post:

A federal judge issued a nationwide order temporarily preventing the government from blocking access to abortion services and counseling for teens detained in immigration custody, saying current administration policy and practices probably are unconstitutional.

The order came in a case brought last fall on behalf of a Central American girl in a government-funded shelter that set off a national debate over the constitutional rights of such undocumented teens to terminate their pregnancies.

The late Friday ruling, by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of Washington, allowed the case to proceed as a class action on behalf of any other teens who have crossed the border illegally and while in federal custody may want to seek abortion services. In filings, the U.S. government acknowledged there were at least 420 pregnant unaccompanied minors in custody in 2017, including 18 who requested abortions.

The Trump administration has refused to “facilitate” such procedures for pregnant teenagers traveling alone on the grounds that they had the option to voluntarily return to their home countries or to find private sponsors in the United States to assist them in obtaining procedures.

The policy position marked a departure from that of the Obama administration, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement did not block immigrants in U.S. custody from having abortions at their own expense, and paid for services for teens in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s life.

In her 28-page opinion, Chutkan, a 2014 Obama appointee, said the change in policy posed irreparable harm to pregnant teens, writing that “ORR’s absolute veto nullifies a UC’s right to make her own reproductive choices,” referring to unaccompanied children.

“The court concludes that ORR’s policies and practices infringe on female UC’s constitutional rights by effectively prohibiting them from ‘making the ultimate decision’ on whether or not to continue their pregnancy prior to viability — a quintessential undue burden,” the judge wrote.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately comment on the ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the teens, expressed relief at the court action.

“The Trump administration’s cruel policy of blocking young immigrant women in federal custody from accessing abortion is a blatant abuse of power,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “With today’s rulings, we are one step closer to ending this extreme policy once and for all and securing justice for all of these young women.”

[Trump official blocked a teen’s abortion, calling it ‘violence against an innocent life’]

In all, four pregnant teens in custody have asked Chutkan to force the administration to stop blocking access to abortion services. The initial case involving the teen in Texas is still pending in the Supreme Court after the Justice Department took the unusual step of asking the justices to consider disciplining the teen’s lawyers.

[Trump administration suggests possibility of disciplinary action against ACLU lawyers in abortion case]

Abortion rights advocates and some Democrats in Congress have called for the firing of E. Scott Lloyd, the head of the refugee resettlement office within the Department of Health and Human Services. Court records show that Lloyd has personally intervened to try to block abortion services.

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

Read the full article at the above link.

Hard to figure out why guys like E. Scott Lloyd and Jeff Sessions shouldn’t be both 1) fired, and 2) held personally liable under Bivens for knowing and intentional violations of constitutional rights.

PWS

03-31-18

JOSHUA MATZ IN WASHPOST: The Litigating Strategy Of Unrelenting Animus – Will It Eventually Win For The Trumpsters, Even While Destroying Our Legal System?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/getting-deja-vu-on-trumps-transgender-ban-youre-not-alone/2018/03/27/4e78091e-312e-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html

By Joshua Matz March 27 at 7:14 PM

Joshua Matz is a constitutional lawyer based in the District. He is also the publisher of the legal analysis blog Take Care.

President Trump is hard at work making animus the law of the land. Justice Department lawyers revealed his latest effort Friday night, announcing a revised plan to exclude nearly all transgender soldiers from the armed forces.

As many commentators have observed, the reasoning offered to support Trump’s policy is riddled with empirical errors and anti-trans stereotypes. It comes nowhere close to disproving the comprehensive study in 2016 that recommended allowing transgender people to serve openly. Like so many other missives from this White House, it makes only a token effort to conceal the disdain and disgust that underlie it.

Trump’s original “transgender ban” was blocked by four federal courts. After two of those rulings were affirmed on appeal, the administration decided against seeking Supreme Court review. It’s therefore safe to assume that Trump’s latest order will not go into effect unless it survives constitutional challenges.

And in thinking about that litigation, it’s hard to escape a feeling of deja vu. A little more than 14 months into Trump’s presidency, a pattern has emerged in cases challenging some of his most despicable decisions.

. . . .

It remains to be seen when and where these arguments will succeed. As a logical matter, there must be some limits. Evidence that Trump originally acted with impermissible motives cannot (and should not) permanently preclude him from making policy.

But that isn’t the situation we confront. Trump has made no effort whatsoever to dispel or deny the aura of animus that envelops so many of his orders. To the contrary, he and his advisers have leaned into the hate. With each passing day, it spreads like a poison.

We thus live in a strange new world, where bigots serve openly and soldiers are forced into closets.

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

Go on over to the WashPost at the link for the complete article.

The problem, as noted by Matz, is that our system isn’t designed to deal with unremitting hate and bias from it’s most active, and supposedly most responsible, litigant, the U.S. Government. Usually, after a few “warning shots across the bow,” the Executive gets the picture and changes strategies.

But, led by White Nationalists like Trump and Sessions, this Administration simply “doubles down” on thinly disguised hate and bias motivated policies. At some point, the Article III courts are likely to become both frustrated and exhausted. By continuing to “knock down” bias-based policies and actions, the Article IIIs become part of the political fray, which makes them uncomfortable. Perhaps at that point, they will just start giving Trump & Co. “free passes.” Indeed, some Federal Courts, including perhaps the Supremes, already appear prepared to “punt” on the daily dose of legally questionable and indecent legal positions spewed forth by this Administration.

PWS

03-29-18

THE BORDER IN PICTURES BY PHOTOGRAPHER JOHN MOORE — “The fury and debate over immigration to the United States appears to be going nowhere.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/world/americas/mexico-border-photos-john-moore.html

Where Fear and Hope Collide: Images From Mexican Border, and Beyond

ByBy AZAM AHMEDMARCH 25, 2018

The fury and debate over immigration to the United States appears to be going nowhere.”

The fury and debate over immigration to the United States appears to be going nowhere.”

MARCH 25, 2018

Photo

A man killed in a suspected drug-related execution in 2012 in Acapulco, Mexico. Violence has surged in Acapulco, once Mexico’s top tourist destination, spurring the flight of many Mexicans. CreditJohn Moore/Getty Images

For nearly a decade, the photographer John Moore has traversed the Mexico-United States border, covering the story of immigration from all sides — American, Mexican, immigrant and border agent.

His depiction of the border is both literal and figurative.

Continue reading the main story

Photo

Families at a memorial service for two boys who were kidnapped and killed in February 2017 in San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala. CreditJohn Moore/Getty Images

. . . .

A boy from Honduras watched a movie in 2014 at a detention facility for unaccompanied minors in McAllen, Tex.

. . . .

But wherever the numbers go, Mr. Moore’s images reflect an American truth: The fury and debate over immigration to the United States appears to be going nowhere.”

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

Go to the above link to the NYT for the full article and all of Moore’s pictures.

What do you suppose the “boy from Honduras” is thinking about America? Are these the images by which we want to be remembered as a country? If not, join the New Due Process Army and work for constructive change!

PWS

03-26-18

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Syrian refugees escape the war, but die from the cold

An unfortunate reunion

A struggle to cross over, a struggle to remain

Point of no return

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Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the real America! Due Process Forever! Trump & Sessions Never!

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