"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
TORNILLO, Texas — Having immigrant teens live in the “tent city” in Tornillo, Texas, was always supposed to be a temporary solution, after the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border meant the government didn’t have enough beds in the shelter system.
It opened in June, and the contractor running the site had a 30-day contract. At that time, 326 children were being housed there.
But four months after its opening, the shelter 30 miles outside of El Paso has grown into a bustling town. It now holds nearly five times its initial population — roughly 1,500 teens — and its contract has been extended until at least Dec. 31.
The tent city’s purpose has changed as well. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for the care of unaccompanied child immigrants, say none of the teens currently housed there were detained as a result of family separations. It now holds immigrant children who crossed the border without an adult, in theory as a last stage of their stay in the vast US shelter bureaucracy.
And as the shelter expands, administrative issues have cropped up concerning legal representation and FBI background checks — extending many teens’ stays longer than what HHS says is the average.
Tornillo now has a new football field, math and English classes, and more than 100 tent structures. Staffers zipped around in carts between dozens of portable offices offering mental health services, emergency medical care, legal services, and even a barber. A huge emergency tent has been turned into a sleeping hall for 300 teenage girls, decorated with paper chains and lanterns.
BuzzFeed News toured the Tornillo facility for the second time on Friday, as part of a group of reporters. Like the first and only other tour, instructions were strict. No photographs or recording devices were allowed, and reporters were not permitted to use the names of employees or speak with the teens living at the camp — though HHS was more lenient on the last rule during Friday’s tour. The only photos were provided by the government.
HHS
The facility in Tornillo, Texas.
“I frankly thought we were done here in July,” the facility’s incident commander, who works for the contractor BCFS, told reporters Friday. He spoke from a new command center that is nearly triple the size of the office he occupied in June.
“I’m still here, ’cause otherwise, where are these kids going?” the commander said.
Only children between ages 13 and 17 stay at the Tornillo facility, which is now the largest in the HHS’s nationwide system. Pregnant teens, and teens requiring behavioral medication, are not allowed — “we’re too big, too high-profile,” the incident commander explained.
Officials said the average length of time that teens spend at Tornillo is 25 days. Yet many of the teens living at the camp have spent weeks or even months in HHS shelters before arriving at Tornillo. In order to clear out those other facilities, teens are sent to the tent shelter to await final processing before they are released to a sponsor in the US.
“This is a last stop, if you will,” said Mark Weber, a spokesperson for HHS.
Ten teens in Tornillo BuzzFeed News encountered had spent between three to five months in government detention — significantly more than the 59 days that HHS says is the average stay for an unaccompanied immigrant minor in its care. That average is up from 48 days in 2017, and around 30 days during the Obama administration.
Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith
And even after arriving in Tornillo, the young occupants find themselves facing a fresh final set of administrative hurdles that threaten to complicate or delay their stay in the US shelter system.
One of the teens BuzzFeed News spoke with last week, a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala, told reporters that she’d been in Tornillo exactly one month on Saturday. Before being transferred to Texas, she had spent four months in an HHS shelter in Miami, meaning she’d already spent five months in HHS care. She was uncertain how much longer she’d remain there.
Her brother, who lives in Texas and had been in the US for a decade, is trying to sponsor her, which should secure her release. But he is undocumented, and he told her that her caseworker is not sure if he will be able to act as a sponsor.
She didn’t want to go back to Guatemala, where her parents are. “I suffered a lot in the journey [to the United States], and what, for nothing?” she said.
Another teenage girl standing next to her told reporters she’d also come to Tornillo from the Miami shelter at the same time, and that she’d crossed the border four months earlier.
The delays stem in part from a new requirement — that the FBI perform a fingerprint background check — imposed by the Trump administration on family members and other adults who wish to sponsor an unaccompanied immigrant minor.
Those changes are delaying how long kids are staying in care, and have created the ongoing need for Tornillo to operate as a temporary shelter to handle the overflow from permanent HHS shelters, said the incident commander. He added that more than half of the children at the Tornillo shelter are there because of FBI delays.
Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith
“It is the extra precaution that HHS has put in place for sponsors,” said the incident commander on Friday. “That is absolutely what has caused this, without any question whatsoever.”
While he applauded the extra care HHS has taken to ensure the safety of unaccompanied minors, the incident commander criticized the length of time the FBI takes to do fingerprint checks. On Friday, 826 of the kids in Tornillo were still awaiting the results of fingerprint checks, the final step needed before they are released, he said.
“I think it should be done quickly,” the incident commander said. “I don’t understand why it’s taking so long. It seems like a system issue. … That is frustrating to me.”
He noted that it takes time to do background checks, but said that HHS is “working through the process [with the FBI] and working to speed it up.” He did not provide further details.
Asked if the teens who end up in Tornillo spend longer than the average stay in the shelter system, Weber replied: “I don’t think that’s [true]. … These kids are very close to being released.”
Weber also argued that the need for the Tornillo facility is “driven by the number of kids crossing the border” — which this year, he said, is set to be the third highest on record. Around 50,000 unaccompanied minors are expected to cross the border this year.
Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith
On Thursday, BuzzFeed News visited the juvenile immigration proceedings in downtown El Paso. Eleven teenage boys from the Tornillo facility, aged between 15 and 17, had been given notice to appear in court on that day.
The boys were dressed in new, matching navy and white polo shirts, denim jeans or khakis, and black, braided leather belts. They had fresh haircuts.
The judge asked the boys if they had copies of their Notices to Appear, a charging document issued by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement informing them of removal proceedings, and read the date on which each NTA had been issued. Dates ranged from June 6 until July 1, meaning the teenagers had been in HHS care for a minimum of over three months — longer than the average stay.
None of the boys had legal representation at the court hearing — they were just accompanied to court by a BCFS employee. All of them asked the judge to delay their cases so they could find an immigration lawyer. They were given until late January to do so.
The HHS spokesperson said it’s just not his agency’s job. “Yes, children are appearing in court, but that is not part of HHS’s responsibility,” Weber told reporters on Friday. “Those legal options are pursued basically after they are released from us.”
Juveniles facing immigration proceedings do not have the right to a government-appointed lawyer. Weber said the children who appeared in court would absolutely have received legal help beforehand.
Everyone in HHS care receives a “Know Your Rights” training, Weber said, and upon arrival to Tornillo, the teenagers are again reminded that they are able to speak with a lawyer. Ten legal representatives — a combination of lawyers and social workers from different legal organizations — are on hand on weekdays in Tornillo to meet with children.
But those lawyers don’t formally represent them. They offer advice to the children.
And those representatives only meet with detainees if the teen specifically asks to see a lawyer, the incident commander said. He estimated that of the approximately 3,100 teens who have been housed at Tornillo since it opened, only about 400 had requested and received a meeting with a legal representative.
Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith
Moreover, to organize a meeting with the lawyers, the children must fill out a form — a difficult task for many of the children at Tornillo. The incident commander said most of the facility’s residents are at a fourth-grade learning level.
Asked how children in the care of HHS with very little education were supposed to be able to navigate the legal system alone, or even the process of arranging and interacting with a lawyer, Weber acknowledged that “negotiating the legal system is incredibly difficult.”
Although the incident commander is hopeful the facility will close on Dec. 31, Weber didn’t commit to that deadline. “It depends how many kids come,” he said.
The facility — its population peaked at 1,637 on Sept. 28 — has 1,400 beds on standby in two giant tents. This is in case the Homestead shelter in Florida — another temporary facility that opened during the family separation crisis — needs to evacuate due to a hurricane.
In immigration court Thursday, Judge Robert S. Hough, who oversees all juvenile immigration proceedings in El Paso, asked the BCFS employee assisting the children before him about Tornillo’s supposed Dec. 31 closing date.
“Hurry up and wrap it up before you get any bigger,” suggested the judge.
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Once the smokescreen of all the Trump lies and racism clears, how could we ever explain to future generations what we have done to the most vulnerable among us and to children, young people, and young families that are our world’s future? I guess it will go along with explaining how have we let Trump and his grifter buddies destroy, pollute, and poison the universe that also belongs to future generations.
Judges in the nation’s federal criminal courts increasingly are balking at what they call unlawful efforts by U.S. immigration authorities to continue to detain people charged with entering the country illegally, even after they have been granted bail.
The rulings complicate the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown on defendants who are charged with illegally crossing the border but whom judges have determined do not pose a flight or safety risk.
The decisions force prosecutors to make a choice — charge defendants with illegal entry or reentry and risk that a federal judge releases them pending trial, or keep suspects locked up in civil detention pending deportation proceedings and forgo criminal prosecution.
A recent ruling by a federal judge in Washington highlights the human and legal issues at stake, the case of a dishwasher from El Salvador who has a wife and two children in the District, where he returned after two deportations.
The surge in such criminal cases stems from an April 2017 announcement by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions prioritizing Justice Department prosecutions of entry and reentry crimes. More than 60,000 people have faced such criminal charges since then, with twice as many new prosecutions this July, the most recent month for which data is available, compared with the same month in 2017, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which monitors cases.
Individuals caught without documents on a first offense can be charged with a misdemeanor, but anyone caught in the United States after a prior deportation can be charged with a felony and face more than a year in prison. Immigration-related prosecutions are now the majority of all federal criminal cases, stretching far beyond states bordering Mexico.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions early this month in Ohio. (Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/AP)
Advocates for immigrants say the recent court rulings may limit the use of the criminal charges to pressure defendants to abandon efforts to stay in the United States. The impact on overall removal efforts remains to be seen, but courts appear to be pushing back at an expansion of authority by prosecutors and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In the District, one rejection of the tougher tactics came from U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a 1987 appointee of President Ronald Reagan. On Sept. 26. Lamberth said the government cannot have it both ways — asking federal courts to deny bail to defendants awaiting criminal trial and then, if a judge disagrees, holding them anyway in the immigration system.
The decision came in the case of Jaime Omar Vasquez-Benitez, 38, who court papers say was picking food up at a restaurant in July when D.C. police stopped him for suspected gang activity and turned him over to ICE. Federal public defenders say Vasquez-Benitez had quit a gang and fears for his life if he is deported.
He was charged in August with felony reentry despite deportation orders in 2008 and 2014.
A federal magistrate and district judge ruled Vasquez-Benitez should be released on bail, but U.S. marshals returned him to ICE custody. Defense attorneys moved to enforce the release order, and the case ended up in front of Lamberth after Vasquez-Benitez was indicted.
Lamberth ruled that a landmark 1966 U.S. bail statute specifically covers migrants and must “trump” more-general immigration laws, releasing Vasquez-Benitez into a high-intensity supervision program. He wrote that courts have long “upheld as sacrosanct” the principle that no one can act as prosecutor and judge at the same time, and that the Justice Department cannot ignore bail rulings any more than it can shrug off a defendant’s right to a speedy trial.
The judge said prosecutors can pursue both criminal charges and civil removal cases against defendants but must abide by a judge’s decision to grant bail. Or they can forgo charges and keep defendants locked up in civil detention while pursuing deportation.
People detained without valid immigration documents may well be worse off if uncharged, “languishing” indefinitely without speedy trial or access to bail in ICE detention camps far from families or counsel, the judge noted.
“Nevertheless, the government can do that” under immigration law, Lamberth wrote. “But so long as the government invokes the jurisdiction of a federal court, the government must consent to the Court’s custodial dominion over the criminal defendants before it.”
A decision on whether to appeal is pending. Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the District, said the office was reviewing the ruling.
In a July 2017 Justice Department bulletin to 94 U.S. attorney offices nationwide, Oregon federal prosecutor Gregory R. Nyhus said that federal criminal statutes and civil immigration laws “are reconcilable” and that “courts should be encouraged to harmonize these statutes rather than focusing on [one] to the complete exclusion of the other.”
The government’s position — that it can hold Vasquez-Benitez strictly for deportation on a reinstated removal order, unrelated to his prosecution — has yet to be decided by an appeals court.
Rulings by trial judges in similar cases have varied.
Since July 2017, federal judges in Washington, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Detroit, Cleveland and Austin have rejected the government’s approach, drawing on a 2012 district court opinion in Oregon and a similar 2015 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that “the executive branch has a choice to make” between holding an undocumented person for deportation or prosecuting that person under criminal law and the Constitution.
Federal judges in Buffalo and Philadelphia have come down on the other side, saying that criminal and immigration laws can “coexist” on “parallel” tracks. Before the Trump administration, prosecutors would typically drop criminal charges to pursue civil removal if a previously deported defendant won bail.
Yihong “Julie” Mao, staff attorney with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, said the group was “heartened” by court rulings upholding undocumented immigrants’ right to bail and pretrial release based on family and community ties. She added: “This is fundamentally a separation-of-powers issue. The Department of Justice cannot be both judge and prosecutor.”
Mary Petras, an assistant federal public defender who is representing Vasquez-Benitez in the District, declined to comment.
In court filings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Clair Kohl argued that the defendant’s case is not covered by the 2012 ruling, because ICE is holding him solely to deport him, not to prosecute him.
The Salvadoran man was first arrested in 1997, falsely claimed Mexican citizenship and was allowed to go to Mexico, according to court papers. He was deported in 2008 after serving a three-year sentence for felony obstruction of justice in the District and again in 2014, before he was caught for a fourth time this July.
Prosecutors would have prosecuted Vasquez-Benitez even in past years because of what they said in court papers was his “threatening, violent behavior” and felony criminal conviction. Vasquez-Benitez was convicted of obstruction of justice for telling a woman in 2005 she would “pay the consequences” if she called the police, and a 2014 arrest warrant in El Salvador said he has been charged with extortion, prosecutors said.
“There may come a time . . . [when] immigration proceedings have concluded . . . forcing the United States to choose between physical removal and continuation of this criminal case. That time, however, has not yet come,” wrote Kohl and Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Dewar in an unsuccessful effort to detain the man.
Petras told the court the man is a longtime restaurant worker, and his wife works part time as a hotel housekeeper. Both have family nearby, and the couple’s 3-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son attended a recent court hearing.
Petras argued the man posed no flight risk, because he is seeking to halt his deportation after gang members in El Salvador sent him a message warning that he had “signed his death warrant” by quitting the gang and removing gang tattoos.
The lawyer said the fact that her client has lived in the Washington area for years and returned shows that he “wants to be here and that he has no intent or incentive to flee.”
Read more:
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Compare what is happening in DC and some other jurisdictions with the “go along to get along” approach by some U.S. District Judges and U.S. Magistrate Judges along the border whom I have criticized in prior posts. The latter have allowed Sessions, Nielsen, and co. to turn their courts into “assembly line justice” — the kind that Session is implementing in his “wholly owned” U.S. Immigration Courts.
It’s pretty clear from the published reports that almost none of those being railroaded through that system actually understand the full immigration implications of their guilty pleas, nor do they understand how they can apply for asylum and what other rights they might have under the “civil immigration system.” Indeed, accepting guilty pleas without insuring that those entering the pleas fully understand the civil immigration situation and implications, including the likelihood of indefinite civil immigration detention and possible denial of a chance for a full hearing before an Immigration Judge, is arguably a violation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky.
I also have a “personal recollection” of Judge Royce Lamberth from decades ago when he was the Chief of the Civil Division at the U.S. Attorneys Office for DC and I was the Deputy General Counsel/Acting General Counsel at the “Legacy INS.” On several occasions I had to trek over from the “Central Office” in the “Chester Arthur Building” at 4th and Eye St., NW to the U.S. Courthouse complex on 5th Street to explain and justify the INS position to Royce.
He was known as a formidable individual, even in those days — a chief litigator who brooked no-nonsense from USG Agencies and who was concerned with maintaining the Government’s reputation for integrity and legal excellence before the U.S. Courts. That probably has much to do with how he got nominated and confirmed to be a U.S. District Judge and why he still brooks no-nonsense from the “Masters of Nonsense” in the Trump Administration.
Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey, & Maria Sacchetti report for WashPost:
The White House is actively considering plans that could again separate parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to reverse soaring numbers of families attempting to cross illegally into the United States, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the effort.
One option under consideration is for the government to detain asylum-seeking families together for up to 20 days, then give parents a choice — stay in family detention with their child for months or years as their immigration case proceeds, or allow children to be taken to a government shelter so other relatives or guardians can seek custody.
That option — called “binary choice” — is one of several under consideration amid the president’s frustration over border security. Trump has been unable to fulfill key promises to build a border wall and end what he calls “catch and release,” a process that began under past administrations in which most detained families are quickly freed to await immigration hearings. The number of migrant family members arrested and charged with illegally crossing the border jumped 38 percent in August and is now at a record level, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.
Senior administration officials say they are not planning to revive the chaotic forced separations carried out by the Trump administration in May and June that spawned an enormous political backlash and led to a court order to reunite families.
But they feel compelled to do something, and officials say senior White House adviser Stephen Miller is advocating for tougher measures because he believes the springtime separations worked as an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.
At least 2,500 children were taken from their parents over a period of six weeks. Crossings by families declined slightly in May, June and July before surging again in August. September numbers are expected to be even higher.
While some migrants worried about separations, others felt seeking asylum was worth the risk
For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: ‘Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’(Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)
While some inside the White House and DHS are concerned about the “optics” and political blowback of renewed separations, Miller and others are determined to act, according to officials briefed on the deliberations. There have been several high-level meetings in the White House in recent weeks about the issue. The “binary choice” option is seen as one that could be tried out fairly quickly.
“Career law enforcement professionals in the U.S. government are working to analyze and evaluate options that would protect the American people, prevent the horrific actions of child smuggling, and stop drug cartels from pouring into our communities,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in an emailed statement.
Any effort to expand family detentions and resume separations would face multiple logistical and legal hurdles.
It would require overcoming the communication and data management failures that plagued the first effort, when Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and Department of Health and Human Services caseworkers struggled to keep track of separated parents and children.
The Trump administration believes it is on solid legal ground, according to two officials, in part because U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who ordered the government to reunite separated families in June, approved the binary-choice approach in one of his rulings. But a Congressional Research Service report last month said “practical and legal barriers” remain to using that approach in the future and said releasing families together in the United States is “the only clearly viable option under current law.”
‘Administration officials said the CRS report cited earlier legal rulings. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which launched the separations lawsuit, disputed that interpretation and said it would oppose any attempt at expanded family detentions or separations.
“The government need not, and legally may not, indiscriminately detain families who present no flight risk or danger,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in an email. “It is deeply troubling that this Administration continues to look for ways to cause harm to small children.”
Another hurdle is that the government does not have detention space for a large number of additional families. ICE has three “family residential centers” with a combined capacity of roughly 3,000 parents and children. With more than four times that many arriving each month, it is unclear where the government would hold all the parents who would opt to remain with their children.
But Trump said in his June 20 executive order halting family separations that the administration’s policy is to keep parents and children together, “including by detaining” them. In recent weeks, federal officials have taken steps to expand their ability to do that.
In addition to considering “binary choice” and other options, officials have proposed new rules that would allow them to withdraw from a 1997 federal court agreement that bars ICE from keeping children in custody for more than 20 days.
The rules would give ICE greater flexibility to expand family detention centers and potentially hold parents and children longer, though lawyers say this would be likely to end up in court.
Officials have also imposed production quotas on immigration judges and are searching for more ways to speed up the calendar in its courts to adjudicate cases more quickly.
Federal officials arguing for the tougher measures say the rising number of family crossings is a sign of asylum fraud. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has blasted smugglers for charging migrants thousands of dollars to ferry them into the United States, knowing that “legal loopholes” will force the administration to release them pending a court hearing. Federal officials say released families are rarely deported.
Advocates for immigrants counter that asylum seekers are fleeing violence and acute poverty, mainly in Central America, and deserve to have a full hearing before an immigration judge.
“There is currently a crisis at our southern border,” DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in a statement, adding, “DHS will continue to enforce the law humanely, and will continue to examine a range of options to secure our nation’s borders.”
In southern Arizona, so many families have crossed in the past 10 days that the government has been releasing them en masse to shelters and charities. A lack of available bus tickets has stranded hundreds of parents and children in Tucson, where they sleep on Red Cross cots in a church gymnasium.
At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) told Nielsen that migrants were “flooding into the community” and that authorities there had “no ability to do anything about it.”
Nielsen said lawmakers needs to give DHS more latitude to hold families with children in detention until their cases can be fully adjudicated — a process that can take months or years because of huge court backlogs.
DHS officials have seen the biggest increase this year in families arriving from Guatemala, where smugglers called “coyotes” tell migrants they can avoid detention and deportation by bringing a child, according to some community leaders in that country.
On Friday, Nielsen called for a regional effort to combat smuggling and violence in the region and to “heighten our penalties for traffickers.”
“I think there’s more that we can do to hold them responsible, particularly those who traffic in children,” she said in a speech in Washington at the second Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America.
More than 90,000 adults with children were caught at the southwest border in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018. The previous high for a single year was 77,600 in 2016
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My recollection is that 1) the DOJ conceded in court that a policy of intentionally separating families is unconstitutional; and 2) Federal Courts have held that detention of individuals who are neither security risks nor likely to abscond for the primary purpose of “deterrence” is illegal.
So, if this facially illegal program is put into action, why shouldn’t Stephen Miller go to jail and be held personally liable for all the damages he causes with his scofflaw racist policies? Why shouldn’t Nielsen, Sessions, and others who are part of the Miller White Nationalist scheme also be held personally liable?
More cruelty, more wasting of taxpayer resources, more abuse of the judicial process by the Trump Administration.
Oh, and by the way. although today’s out of control U.S. Immigration Court backlogs began with “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” during the Bush II and Obama Administrations, Sessions and the Trump Administration have pushed them to astounding new levels with their incompetence and anti-asylum bias. Don’t blame the victims for the Government’s irresponsible actions!
If folks who believe in human decency and the rule of law don’t get out and vote, these abuses and degradations of our national values will continue.
Here’s an excerpt from Justine van der Luen’s much longer article “A Culture of No,” published in the Fall 2018 issue of VQR (quoting me, among many others).
. . . .
“Here in the US, there is democracy, but we still have fear,” he said. “I got asylum but if they want to make a problem, they can do it.” He was terrified that the smallest misstep, no matter how apparently meaningless, how accidental or random, could signal the difference between freedom and imprisonment—and from there, between life and death.
To beat the extreme odds in El Paso, Isaac had spent fifteen months in detention and paid thousands of dollars in legal fees to an elite lawyer who then worked dozens of pro bono hours on his appeal. This feat required an enormous amount of translated and notarized evidence discretely sent overseas by family members in Syria, the emotional and financial support of his brother and his lawyer, and the wherewithal to withstand a complex, taxing, humiliating process. How many asylum seekers could or should have to endure such an ordeal in order to gain internationally recognized rights meant to protect the persecuted?
As Isaac started over in America, other asylum seekers I had been tracking were less fortunate. Jesus Rodriguez Mendoza, the Venezuelan, had been transferred to a notorious detention center in Miami, which his legal team believed was punishment for his public protests; he remained on the El Paso docket, but now was physically separated from his lawyers, his fourth parole request denied. Berta Arias, the Honduran grandmother whose relief Judge Abbott had granted and then quickly rescinded, lost her appeal and was deported without the granddaughter she had raised. The Central American man whose brother, with an identical case, had won protection in New York City, remained in the Camp. It wasn’t only those from the Americas who were out of luck. Cambodians, Cameroonians, Guineans, and Kenyans I’d followed all had their claims denied; they had since been deported or were waiting on appeals.
One young Central American woman who had been repeatedly raped had managed to win relief, but only after her lawyer, unable to bear the thought of her client being sent home to be violated yet again, paid over $2,000 from her own pocket to fly two expert witnesses into Texas to clinch the case.
“I think in El Paso, they want to see that people died,” a young Salvadoran asylum seeker told me. He was an Evangelical Christian, who preached to local kids. Members of MS-13 had shot at him with a machine gun, killing a pedestrian who happened to be standing nearby, and kidnapped and murdered his fifteen-year-old friend who had joined him in proselytizing. The young man, his mother, and his brother made their way to the US. Despite having a devoted pro bono lawyer, he lost his asylum case, as well as his appeal, on the grounds of credibility (the judge believed he was simply an economic migrant who had invented the threats); his mother also struggled to find legal relief in El Paso.
“Maybe if I died, and then my mom asked for asylum, maybe then she can get protection,” he told me calmly. “They tried to kill me, but I didn’t die, so it’s not good enough for them.”
Justine van der Leun is the author of several books, including We Are Not Such Things (Random House, 2016), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Spectator Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in theNew York Times, Harper’s, the Guardian, and Oprah Magazine. She is an International Women’s Media Foundation reporting fellow and a grantee of the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.
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I encourage you to read the full article at the above link, which is accompanied by some great original illustrations by Alan Vest!
Justine highlights the real role of attorneys in our asylum system. Many of them are working on a pro bono or low fee basis or actually paying out of their own pockets! They persist under horrible working conditions and often rude, insensitive, and unprofessional treatment from judges and other government officials that would persuade most other professionals to take up another line of work. The cases are complicated and (unnecessarily) fact intensive, often requiring not only extensive research and legal knowledge, but also skilled use of expert testimony and sources translated from foreign languages.
In courts like El Paso, getting a fair result in an asylum case too often depends on making the record below and then taking an appeal — the latter itself a time-consuming “hit or miss” proposition depending on the BIA “panel” (it could be a single judge) or the Circuit in which the case arose (sadly, the 5th Circuit is notorious for taking a cavalier and tone-deaf attitude toward the law and fundamental fairness in immigration matters).
Indeed, conscientious, dedicated attorneys are far more interested in making the system function in a fair and efficient manner consistent with our Constitution than the DOJ politicos who run today’s broken court system.
Compare the reality with the intentionally false and totally disingenuous picture painted by our White Nationalist Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He refers to “dirty lawyers” who are “gaming” the system.
Apparently, Sessions’s view of “gaming” means providing vigorous and effective representation and forcing him and some of the anti-asylum judges working for him to comply with asylum law!
It’s also painfully clear that no unrepresented asylum applicant would have any chance whatsoever of receiving fairness and Due Process in El Paso.
But, instead of working with the private bar to facilitate representation and repair the damage to the Immigration Courts, Sessions has gone to great lengths to prevent effective representation of asylum seekers. He has arranged for the detention of asylum seekers in horrible conditions in obscure places where there are no lawyers; he has “speeded up” the system to make it more difficult for lawyers to effectively represent their clients; he has used unconstitutional intentional family separation to duress individuals with valid claims into abandoning them; he has made pejorative remarks about asylum seekers and their lawyers in front of Immigration Judges; and he has manipulated the substantive law against bona fide asylum seekers.
Yes, many, many Immigration Judges “buck the odds” to honor their oaths of office and guarantee fairness and Due Process for asylum seekers and other respondents. Justine points out how results differ dramatically in Immigration Courts where judges apply the law and treat respondents and their lawyers in a fair and impartial manner.
So, how can I be such a strong advocate for independence of a system that I know is badly flawed? Those of us who have actually worked in the system know that it can’t be fixed overnight.
But, getting the system out of the hands of Sessions and the DOJ politicos is an absolutely essential first step. With the advent of a true merit judicial hiring system, such as that recommended by Professor Andy Schoenholtz and others, and the establishment of a more diverse and representative Appellate Division that acts like an independent Federal Court to rein in those judges who are unfairly treating asylum applicants and force them to correctly and fairly apply the law, there will be a return of meaningful judicial dialogue and deliberation which leads to progress over time.
Notably, in Isaac’s case, the system actually worked! After many months of expensive, wasteful, and unnecessary detention and an incorrect decision below, the BIA summarily corrected the Immigration Judge’s clearly erroneous denial of Isaac’s asylum case. But corrective action by the BIA to bring anti-asylum judicial “outliers” under control is exactly what Sessions has disabled in his decision in Matter of A-B-. He basically encourages “worst practices” and enables biased Immigration Judges while criticizing the BIA’s modest attempts to bring legality and order to an out of control system. What an outrageous perversion of justice and Due Process by someone who constantly makes bogus claims to be “enforcing the rule of law!”
Additionally, by returning control over dockets and court administrationto sitting judges, rather than non-judicial DOJ politicos and their agency subordinates, an independent Immigration Court can make progress toward reducing backlogs while promoting, rather than “demoting,” Due Process.
The current Immigration Court System is a farce that should outrage and disgust every fair-minded American! It will continue to malfunction and deny Due Process until we have an independent Immigration Court where all judges are required to respect the Constitution and the individual rights of those coming before them.
Join the “New Due Process Army” and force the Immigration Courts and the Article IIIs to live up to their unfilled promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all!”
Attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement were restricted from granting reprieves for certain immigrants facing deportation, ordered to review and potentially reopen previously closed cases, and told that nearly all undocumented immigrants were priorities for deportation, according to a previously unreleased memo obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The memo, which was issued Aug. 15, 2017, and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, provided a roadmap for how ICE attorneys were to prosecute cases under the Trump administration. It was written by Tracy Short, ICE’s principal legal adviser and head of the attorneys who handle deportation cases in court.
While immigration lawyers had long reported anecdotally that such changes had taken place in the courtroom, the memo is the first detailed explanation of how government attorneys were told to handle deportation cases and how to implement Trump’s executive order on immigration enforcement issued Jan. 25, 2017.
“Prosecutorial discretion is an act of administrative leniency, it is not an entitlement,” Short wrote.
Under the Obama administration, ICE attorneys were encouraged to request the dismissal or indefinite suspension of deportation cases of immigrants who were not serious criminals or national security threats. To do so, the administration directed ICE attorneys to look for qualifying cases and encouraged immigration attorneys to email ICE with requests for “prosecutorial discretion.”
Obama administration officials believed their approach would focus ICE’s limited resources on those unauthorized immigrants with the worst criminal records, as opposed to those who were largely contributing members of society.
Short’s memo told attorneys they were no longer required to check the email inbox used to receive requests for leniency from immigration attorneys. Short also wrote that ICE attorneys could consider prosecutorial discretion for immigrants in certain circumstances, such as a relative of a military member, has an obvious claim to status, has an “extraordinary humanitarian factor,” or is an asset to state or federal law enforcement. Even then, ICE attorneys must receive written approval from senior leadership in Washington for such a request.
Still, attorneys across the country have rarely seen immigrants granted reprieves, regardless of their circumstances, said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“The revelation of the memo is important because it shows how the ICE trial attorneys were instructed to stop exercising prosecutorial discretion in all but the most extreme circumstances,” said David Leopold, an immigration attorney at Ulmer and Berne in Cleveland. “The memo changed prosecutorial discretion by all but forbidding ICE prosecutors from using their common sense or showing any compassion.”
Sarah Pierce, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the “memo is in line with the broader interior enforcement goal of the administration: Enforce immigration laws against everyone.”
The memo also directed ICE attorneys to review previously closed cases, instructing them to look for cases that don’t fit the administration’s new immigration enforcement priorities, which include practically all undocumented immigrants, and to prioritize reopening cases in which individuals had a criminal history or evidence of fraud. At the same time, attorneys were told that practically all undocumented immigrants were now priorities for deportation in the court.
As of August 2018, the government had requested the reactivation of nearly 8,000 deportation cases that had been administratively closed. The previous fiscal year, which included nearly four months of the Obama administration, there were nearly 8,400 such requests. The pace of such requests is nearly double that of the last two years of the Obama administration, when there were 3,551 and 4,847 such requests, respectively. Attorney General Jeff Sessions limited the ability for immigration judges to indefinitely suspend deportation cases in June.
“This is an unrelenting, unremitting deportation push. From that point of view, it is eye-opening in its scope, trying to make sure that no stone is unturned,” said a government official familiar with the memo who was not authorized to speak about it. “It systematically took any possibility where some independent judgment could be exercised by a government attorney and made it very clear they know what their marching orders are.”
A copy of the memorandum in question accompanies the full article at the above link.
So, ICE Assistant Chief Counsel will be “going to the mat” — thereby requiring “full” hearings — in almost every one of the 760,000 cases currently on the docket, plus perhaps hundreds of thousands of previously administratively closed cases.
At the same time, U.S. Immigration Judges are improperly being pressured by Sessions to set three or four merits cases per day, when most experienced judges would have difficulty completing two such cases in a fully professional manner consistent with Due Process.
Something has to give here. That something is likely to be Due Process for the respondents — the only real purpose of the system in the first place.
How long will this mockery of justice and parody of a “court system” be allowed to go on? Will Article III Judges be satisfied to be “rubber stamps” on a process that violates the Constitution? Or, will they step in and insist that the Immigration Courts comply with the Constitution — something that scofflaws like Jeff Sessions, Kirstjen Nielsen, and the other Trumpists have no intention of doing?
Only time will tell! But, history will record and remember what they did!
Statement of Former Immigration Judges and BIA Members Opposing IJ Quotas
As former Immigration Judges and BIA Members, we join our former colleagues in the NAIJ in decrying the imposition of much-criticized performance quotas on sitting Immigration Judges. Experience has demonstrated that it is futile to protest to the present Attorney General and his appointed EOIR Director, who have repeatedly demonstrated a callous disregard for due process, fundamental fairness, or judicial independence in the immigration courts. Jeff Sessions has repeatedly demonstrated his personal bias against both immigrants and judges. With the help of his EOIR Director, James McHenry, Sessions has taken a series of steps designed to strip the judges that he controls of all of the independence and powers that distinguish them as judges, and thus turn them into assembly-line workers. And because of Sessions’s disdain for immigrants, in his mind, those assembly lines should be issuing deportation orders, at faster speeds and in larger numbers. Never before, in our experience, has EOIR so directly and strongly undermined the decisional independence of Immigration Judges.
We therefore appeal at present to the leadership of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge. Holding the title of “judges” themselves, the Chief, Deputy Chief, and Assistant Chief Immigration Judges are entrusted to protect the integrity of the Immigration Courts and the rights and independence of the Immigration Judges they oversee. At present, the OCIJ leadership has completely abandoned these responsibilities, and have instead become complicit with those seeking to undermine the system they are charged to protect. Now more than ever, our country needs leadership within EOIR with the courage and integrity to stand up for what is right. Courage, integrity, and impartiality from political considerations are hallmarks of good judges. It is time for EOIR’s leadership to live up to the trust placed in them and begin to display such characteristics.
Likewise, individual judges must continue to be guided by the need to do what is just and right, and not what is expedient. We have faith that if forced to choose between meeting randomly imposed quotas and doing justice, those on the bench will choose the latter.
We further call for Congress to take the long overdue but critically needed action of making immigration judges part of an independent, Article I court that is outside of the Executive Branch and free from abuse or pressure by politically-appointed officials.
Lastly, we call on the public to observe and insist on accountability for those who abuse the public trust placed in them to dispense justice to those most vulnerable members of our society.
Hon. Steven Abrams
Hon. Sarah M. Burr
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. George T. Chew
Hon. Bruce J. Einhorn
Hon. Cecelia Espenoza
Hon. Noel Ferris
Hon. John F. Gossart, Jr.
Hon. Rebecca Jamil
Hon. William P. Joyce
Hon. Edward Kandler
Hon. Carol A. King
Hon. Elizabeth A. Lamb
Hon. Margaret McManus
Hon. Charles Pazar
Hon. George Proctor
Hon. Lory D. Rosenberg
Hon. Susan Roy
Hon. Paul W. Schmidt
Hon. Polly A. Webber
How do you uphold your oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” when the chief “enemy of the Constitution” is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, your so-called “boss?”
Yes, youʼve heard about the family separations. Youʼve heard about the travel ban. But there are dozens of ways the Trump administration is cracking down on immigration across many agencies, sometimes in ways so small and technical it doesnʼt make headlines. This week, the quiet bureaucratic war that’s even targeting legal immigrants.
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Long, but highly documented, compelling, and well worth the listen if you really want to know about the ugly, depraved policies of Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, Cissna, Gene Hamilton, and the rest of the White Nationalist Racist Brigade.
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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. In August 2018, Immigration Courts remained overwhelmed with record numbers of cases awaiting decision. As of August 31, 2018, the number had reached 764,561. In July, the number of cases awaiting decision was 746,049 cases. This is a significant increase – up 41 percent – compared to the 542,411 cases pending at the end of January 2017, when President Trump took office.
California, Texas, and New York have the largest backlogs in the nation at 142,260, 112,733, and 103,054 pending caseloads respectively. While California is the state with the most pending cases, New York City’s immigration court topped the list of immigration courts with highest number at 99,919 pending cases at the end of August.
To view further details see TRAC’s immigration court backlog tool:
In addition to these most recent overall figures, TRAC continues to offer free monthly reports on selected government agencies such as the FBI, ATF, DHS and the IRS. TRAC’s reports also monitor program categories such as official corruption, drugs, weapons, white collar crime and terrorism. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through July 2018, go to:
Even more detailed criminal enforcement information for the period from FY 1986 through August 2018 is available to TRACFed subscribers via the Express and Going Deeper tools. Go to http://tracfed.syr.edu for more information. Customized reports for a specific agency, district, program, lead charge or judge are available via the TRAC Data Interpreter, either as part of a TRACFed subscription or on a per-report basis. Go to http://trac.syr.edu/interpreter to start.
If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:
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 US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
At approximately 20,000 more backlogged cases per month, the “Gonzo-ized” version of the US Immigration Courts are on track to jack the backlog up to 1 million by the end of FY 2019! Talk about self-inflicted, totally unnecessary chaos!
Hiring more new Immigration Judges won’t solve the problem because 1) if they do the job right, they will be slow and deliberative, 2) if they are slow, they will be fired, 3) but if they do it “Gonzo’s way” and give Due Process a pass, many of their cases will be sent back by the Courts of Appeals, adding to the mess.
Gonzo’s recent “My Way or the Highway” speech to new IJs where he unethically urged them to violate their oaths of office by ignoring relevant humanitarian factors in asylum cases (which actually are supposed to be humanitarian adjudications) and just crank out more removal orders to carry out the Administration’s White Nationalist agenda is a prime example of why more judicial bodies can’t solve the problem without a complete overhaul of the system to refocus it on Due Process — and only Due Process.
Someday, the Immigration Courts will become independent of the DOJ. That should include a professionally-administered, transparent, merit-based, judicial selection and retention system with provision for meaningful public input. (Such systems now are used for selection and retention of US Bankruptcy Judges and US Magistrate Judges.) When that happens, those Immigration Judges who “went along to get along” with Gonzo’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant, ignore Due Process system might be challenged to explain why they are best qualified to be retained in a new system that requires fair, impartial, and scholarly judges.
This court system can be fixed, but not by the likes of Gonzo Apocalypto; also, not without giving the Immigration Judges back authority over their dockets and leverage to rein in a totally undisciplined, irresponsible, unprofessional, and out of control ICE. (Responsible, professional, practical, humane leadership at DHS and ICE is also a key ingredient for a well-functioning and efficient court system.)
Amid huge backlog, L.A. will get more immigration judges
Head of national jurist group says they’re ‘being used … as a political tool.’
By Andrea Castillo
Los Angeles has the nation’s second-largest immigration court backlog, with 29 judges handling 72,000 pending cases.
That’s including four judges who started within the last few months. An additional 10 were expected to be sworn in this week, according to Judge Ashley Tabaddor, who leads the National Assn. of Immigration Judges.
But she says that won’t fix the problem.
“We’re just transparently being used as an extension of the executive branch’s law-enforcement policies, and as a political tool,” she said.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions welcomed 44 new judges earlier this month, addressing them at a kickoff for their training with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. He said the administration’s goal is to double the number of judges active when President Trump took office.
“As you take on this critically important role, I hope that you will be imaginative and inventive in order to manage a high-volume caseload,” Sessions told them. “I do not apologize for expecting you to perform, at a high level, efficiently and effectively.”
There are 351 judges in about 60 courts around the country — up from 273 judges in 2016. These judges manage a backlog of nearly 750,000 cases,a figure that has grown from a low of less than 125,000 in 1999. Last year, Sessions introduced a “streamlined hiring plan” that cut the hiring timefor immigration judge candidates by more than half.
The EOIR has the funding for 484 judges by the end of the year, spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said.
Tabaddor said the impending quotas and production deadlines, which take effect next month, have caused severe anxiety among judges. Justice Department directives that were announced in April outlined a quota system tied to performance evaluations under which judges will be expected to complete 700 cases a year to receive a “satisfactory” rating.
Hiring more judges won’t be enough to alleviate the pressure they’re all under, Tabaddor said.
“It’s pitting the judges’ livelihood against their oath of office, which is to be impartial decision-makers,” she said, calling it an “assembly-line formula.”
Tabaddor said there also isn’t enough space for new judges, so some might not start right away. She described the downtown L.A. offices as cramped, with law clerks sharing offices or cubicles. And she said additional support staff members have yet to be hired.
Yup! As long as the Immigration Courts are under DOJ, and particularly under the rule of “Gonzo Apocalypto,” it will be an exercise in “throwing good money after bad.” As I’ve said before (perhaps in the LA Times?), what Sessions is doing is like “taking an assembly line that is producing defective cars and making it run faster so that it will produce even more defective cars.” More or less the definition of insanity, or at least “fraud, waste, and abuse” of Government resources. But, accountability went out the window as soon as Trump took over and the GOP controlled both the Executive and Congress.
For a glimpse of what Immigration Court will look like under the new “Gonzo Quotas,” check out this great video:
Newly released memo reveals secretary of homeland security signed off on family separation policy
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen previously denied existence of policy
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight have obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestthat provides new insights into internal decision-making behind the separation of thousands of parents from their children at the border earlier this year.
The biggest revelation in the documents is a memo dated April 23, in which top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials urged criminal prosecution of parents crossing the border with children—the policy that led to the crisis that continues today. The memo, first reported on by the Washington Poston April 26, but never previously published, provides evidence that Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on a policy of family separation despite her repeated claims denying that there was such a policy. The Post appears to have obtained a copy of the memo prior to its signature.
The memo states that DHS could “permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.” It outlines three options for implementing “zero tolerance,” the policy of increased prosecution of immigration violations. Of these, it recommends “Option 3,” referring for prosecution all adults crossing the border without authorization, “including those presenting with a family unit,” as the “most effective.”
The last page of the memo contains a signature approving Option 3, but the signature—almost certainly Nielsen’s, given that the memo is addressed to her—was blacked out by FOIA officers on privacy grounds. FOIA officials also appear to have redacted the date of the signature indicating approval.
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight intend to appeal the redaction of the memo. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a high-level public official; using privacy exemptions to hide her role in major policy decisions is unacceptable.
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight did obtain an unsigned, unredacted copy of the same memo, but are unable to post the full document for reasons of source protection. The full memo recommends prosecuting and separating parents because:
…it is very difficult to complete immigration proceedings and remove adults who are present as part of FMUAs [family units] at the border. In fact, only 10 percent of non-Mexican FMUA apprehended during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 surge have been repatriated in the nearly four years since their illegal crossing. Of these options, prosecuting all amenable adults will increase the consequences for illegally entering the United States by enforcing existing law, protect children being smuggled by adults through transnational criminal organizations, and have the greatest impact on current flows.
The memo references a pilot of the zero tolerance/family separation policies in the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which the Project On Government Oversight has previously investigated. The memo does not discuss any plan for reuniting separated families, or the harmful effects of separation on children, nor does it reflect any input from the government agencies who would be responsible for caring for the separated children.
The records released in response to the FOIA also include internal DHS directives sent in June and July following court orders to stop separating families, and internal emails discussing failed efforts to bring families back together. One troubling email explains that in July, DHS leadership instructed employees to deport families as quickly as possible, as a way of clearing out space for new families. The email raises questions on whether those deportations violated due-process protections.
At least 182 children remain separated from their parents months after a court-imposed deadline requiring the administration to reunite all of the separated families, according to a court filing dated September 20. The government has not taken all necessary measures to reunify families, according to immigration rights lawyers and non-profit groups.
Katherine Hawkins, an investigator at POGO, said of the DHS documents, “This is a small part of what must be an extensive paper trail on family separation, which needs to be made public so that the officials responsible can be held to account.”
“The newly disclosed documents provide a window into the internal policymaking behind the crisis that continues to haunt thousands of children,” said Lisa Rosenberg, Executive Director of Open the Government. “The administration needs to make available records that are still secret in order to fully understand why decisions were made to separate children from their families, and who made them.”
I’ve raised this point several times before. There is obviously a “paper trail” here, and some agency lawyers knew the truth about the policy that Nielsen was denying publicly and in court.
So, where is the “due diligence” from the DOJ lawyers representing Nielsen, Sessions, the DHS, and DOJ in court? Did the DHS attorneys who knew what the true policy was call the DOJ attorneys and tell them to retract their court denials? Did the DOJ lawyers check with their DHS/ICE colleagues before telling a court that a policy they conceded was unconstitutional wasn’t in effect?
Who is lying here and what has happened to the code of ethics (formerly?) applicable to Government lawyers? And why aren’t more Federal Judges “pushing back” on DOJ attorneys for their sometimes obviously untrue and other times thinly reasoned and meagerly supported positions in court?
While Trump is the undisputed “King of Liars,” Sessions and Nielsen also have well-established reputations for intentional lack of candor and twisting and misrepresenting facts, particularly on immigration policies. So why isn’t there some higher duty on Government lawyers to do “due diligence” when dealing with these known liars?
Thanks to the fabulous Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis for passing this item along.
Abigail Becker reports from Madison, WI for The Capital Times:
Gissell Vera was on her way to school Friday morning, but turned around when she received a text message from her aunt informing her that someone had knocked “aggressively” at her door.
Vera, 18, is the strongest bilingual speaker in her family and her language skills were needed at home to get information from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who came to detain her uncle, Erick Gambao Chay.
“They’re basically destroying our family,” Vera said at a press conference Monday at Centro Hispano. “Why are they doing that? It’s just chaos.”
Gambao Chay, a father of three children under the age of 10, was one of approximately 11 individuals known to be detained by ICE agents in the Madison area starting Friday, according to Voces de la Frontera, an immigrants rights advocacy group based in Milwaukee.
Over the weekend, reports of co-workers, employees and family members surfaced on social media, heightening tension in the community.
“It may seem a small number, but these are the breadwinners from the families,” Dane County immigration affairs specialist Fabiola Hamdan said. “They are the ones that are (leaving) behind kids, moms, wives and the community … it’s a super hard day for us, not only Latinos but all immigrants.”
Kazbuag Vaj, the co-executive director of Freedom Inc., reminded those at the press conference that the issue of immigration does not only affect the Latino community. Vaj works with Hmong and Cambodian refugees who could also be vulnerable to ICE.
“As a community that’s already heavily policed because we live in low-income housing and we live right around this area … having ICE, an additional militarism, in this community adds additional stress to the families,” Vaj said. “We are in crisis also.”
‘They are not police’
Voces de la Frontera also reported that ICE agents arrested 15 people in Arcadia, three people in Milwaukee and five in Green Bay as of Monday morning. In some cases, including the arrest of Vera’s uncle, ICE agents are “falsely identified themselves as police,” they said.
Vera explained to a packed room of reporters, local and state officials, and dozens of community members that her family is used to working with local police officers.
“We live in a very unsafe neighborhood, so it’s normal for law enforcement to come and ask questions,” she said. “We always cooperate because we live in a really united community.”
The agents identified themselves with ICE and arrested Gambao Chay as his children clung to him. Gambao Chay’s three children and wife were previously hiding in the attic for fear of deportation.
“Once my uncle walked up to the door, they said, ‘We’re ICE police and you have to come with us because you haven’t been behaving well and you don’t have the right to be here,’” Vera said.
Mayor Paul Soglin said the tactic is a lie used by ICE to “create confusion and worsen an already bad situation.”
“We are going to continue to protest the use of police in regards to ICE’s activities,” Soglin said. “They are not police. They are federal agents who are using their authority to come into a local situation.”
Soglin said the city’s priority is to identify the individuals who have been detained and get them access to legal services. He also requested a meeting with mayors from across the nation and ICE officials to discuss the lack of communication with local agencies.
“We do not need you making your determination that someone who may have some traffic violations, someone who may only be undocumented or have some other minor offenses is someone who is of danger to our community,” Soglin said, directing his comments to the federal agency.
Madison Police Chief Mike Koval and Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney have reiterated their commitment to the Madison and Dane County community and not to enforcing immigration law.
Koval said Friday that he was not informed that ICE would be in the area even though the MPD has a standing agreement with the agency to be notified when agents will be in the community. Koval has reiterated that enforcement of immigration laws remains primarily with the federal government.
“To this end, MPD will not self-initiate contact, detain, arrest, or investigate any person(s) solely for a suspected violation of immigration status laws,” according to the department’s code of conduct.
MPD cooperates with ICE when the operation deals with “serious crimes directly relating to public safety” including the following situations as listed in the MPD’s standard operating procedure on the enforcement of immigration laws:
The individual is engaged in or is suspected of terrorism or espionage.
The individual is reasonably suspected of participating in a criminal street gang.
The individual is arrested for any violent felony.
The individual is a previously deported felon.
Mahoney has refused to cooperate with ICE and rejected requests by ICE to hold people for 48 hours after they post bail or serve their sentences so ICE officials can arrange to detain them.
“Raiding our community without notifying local law enforcement puts our community at risk,” Mahoney said.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan called ICE an “increasingly rogue agency” and has strayed from what said is the agency’s original purpose, which was to “protect domestically from terrorism.” Pocan said the agency would publish a list online of individuals who have been detained within the next two days.
“To not tell the sheriff you’re coming in and doing raids, to not tell the Madison police, to not talk to your federal representatives along the way, is exactly what’s wrong with the agency,” Pocan said.
Those who have been affected by ICE can call Hamdan, the Dane County’s immigration affairs specialist, at 608-242-6260.
GREEN BAY – A father of eight children, and a man preparing for his children’s baptism, were among at least six people arrested in Green Bay this weekend in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation carried out in more than a dozen Wisconsin counties.
No one from ICE could say Monday who had been arrested, or what charges they might face.
“Yesterday, ICE knocked on my door and took my ex-husband and the dad of my kids,” Cruz Sedano said through a translator at a community meeting Monday. “… we were all preparing for my (children’s) baptism.”
The ICE operation was unusual in that Green Bay authorities had no notice that an operation was planned. The agency in the past has alerted police when they’ve planned an operation, and sometimes asks for assistance, city Police Chief Andrew Smith said.
Police officials and a representative from the mayor’s office met with members of the Hispanic community Monday night at Peace United Methodist Church, which hosted a community meeting with the hope of answering questions and calming fears about the arrests.
As children played outside the meeting, Smith and Celestine Jeffreys, chief of staff to Mayor Jim Schmitt, tried to reassure people that the city wants to protect community residents within the bounds of the law. But they also acknowledged that ICE has the authority to enforce federal immigration statutes.
“Unfortunately, this is the ugly balance that we have to strike as a municipality in between the community and the federal government,” Jeffreys said. “So we cannot inform the community that ICE is here … I know that’s an answer you don’t want to hear.”
‘Very afraid’
The arrests clearly sent ripples of fear through the Hispanic community, whose members worry a loved one or neighbor could be arrested and deported.
Maria Plascencia, director’s assistant at the Green Bay-area Hispanic resource center Casa ALBA Melanie, said her group fears “many more” arrests are possible.
“This community is very afraid to send their kids to school, because they do, it (might be) the last time they will see them,” Plascencia said.
She said her agency has fielded questions since Friday from community members who had family members arrested.
Smith said the arrests were part of an ICE operation in 14 counties. Milwaukee, Dane and Trempealeau counties also saw similar arrests by Immigration and Customs agents, the group Voces de la Frontera reported.
An ICE spokesman wouldn’t discuss details of the Green Bay arrests Monday afternoon, but said in a statement the agency focuses on people “who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security.”
‘Targeted arrests’
“ICE officers are out in the community every day conducting targeted arrests,” the statement said. “ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy. While looking for those specific individuals, ICE officers sometimes encounter others who have violated U.S. immigration laws.
“However, as leadership has made clear, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of U.S. immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.”
Police chief Smith said this ICE visit was different. “It’s been their standard operating procedure to let local law-enforcement know,” Smith said. “They did not call us this time.”
ICE will typically inform police about who the group is looking for, and inform the department about specific individuals if they are wanted for felony crimes, Smith said.
He said Green Bay police do not ask people they arrest about citizenship, saying that remains a federal issue and that the department’s priority remains keeping the city’s residents and visitors safe.
“I understand there’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot anxiety, there’s lot of apprehension,” he told the group. He reminded them that police are here to protect “anybody who’s been a victim of a crime … who’s being extorted (because they might be worried about their citizenship status) … or being used by their landlord or their bosses.”
At least two of the people arrested this weekend were in the U.S. as part of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, said the Rev. Ken DeGroot, co-founder of Casa ALBA.
DACA allows some people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children to receive deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a U.S. work permit in the U.S.
‘Tearing apart families’
At Monday night’s meeting, Sedano told the audience about the arrest of her former husband, Antonio Juarez. She said ICE officers arrested Juarez, father of her two children, allowed other family members to remain inside the house.
“I do have to say that ICE behaved well with us,” she said in Spanish. “… they returned all of his belongings, and gave us phone numbers so that we could be in contact with them.”
DeGroot, though, said the arrests are bad for the community.
“They’re tearing apart families, they’re arresting good people. They’re causing tremendous suffering and trauma,” he said. “They are also depriving families of being supported.”
He said his group is advising people not to open their doors for people they don’t know. If someone says he or she is part of law enforcement, DeGroot said, the person should insist on seeing a warrant from a judge.
President Donald Trump has declared cracking down on illegal immigration to be one of his priorities. The crackdown, which includes discussion of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, has proven controversial, particularly among advocates for immigrants from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.
‘Same fears, same dreams’
Witnesses in Green Bay said one man was convinced to come outside his house to answer questions about ownership of a car parked outside, and one of the men arrested is a father of eight.
Smith said the people who were arrested were taken to Dodge County. Dodge’s sheriff, Dale Schmidt, said the jail has a contract with the federal government to house prisoners and houses federal inmates daily.
Schmidt wouldn’t say if any prisoners were from this weekend’s ICE arrests.
Voces de la Frontera said 11 people had been arrested in the Madison area, three in Milwaukee and 15 in Trempealeau County, north of La Crosse. The group said arrests were made at workplaces, during traffic stops and in homes.
“Many of us are great people, hard-working, with the same fears and same dreams as anyone else,” said Plascencia, the Casa ALBA official.
In Madison, Mayor Paul Soglin planned to meet with law enforcement officials and community organizers to get a better idea of the number of people detained by ICE officials, the Associated Press reported.
Madison officials say ICE detained immigrants without prior communication with the police department. Police Chief Mike Koval says the department has an agreement with ICE to know when and where arrests are made.
Shelby LeDuc contributed to this story.
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Tearing families apart and spreading terror in American communities. Small wonder that the “Sanctuary Cities” movement is growing and that “Abolish ICE” is gaining steam.
Remember, I predicted early on that under the inhumane, senseless, and ultimately ineffective leadership of Trump, Sessions, Homan, and Nielsen, ICE would become the most despised law enforcement agency in America. They are ahead of schedule.
Sherrilyn Ifill, 54, is a lawyer living in Maryland and New York. She became the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund just after President Obama was sworn in for his second term. Below, she discusses our current political situation, what gives her hope and more.
On the Justice Department under the Trump administration: “During the Obama administration I was trying to push [Obama] further than whatever the administration was already doing in the civil rights space, because that’s kind of my job. But there’s no question that the Obama administration really worked in many instances as a partner. That is not the case now. Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions has made clear that he has no intention of investigating police departments for patterns and practices of discrimination. The Justice Department has essentially all but abandoned civil rights as a priority, and so they are no longer working as a partner with us.
That means that our work has increased. We have had to function as a kind of private DOJ, trying to take up the slack. The DOJ and the attorney general should be the chief enforcer of the nation’s civil rights law. But what we see with Attorney General Sessions is no attempt to prioritize civil rights. In fact, to the contrary, working against us, working against civil rights implementation, working against the progress of civil rights that we’ve achieved.”
On what she would say to President Trump if he invited her to the White House: “I cannot imagine what the circumstance of that invitation would be, so it’s an impossible question to answer. I don’t do ceremonial visits. I’m interested in substance. So there would be a lot I would have to know in advance about what was going to happen. The president has been so explicitly hostile to civil rights and racial justice that I would have to have a very clear understanding of what reversals he was prepared to make to his policies. And in the absence of those, I can’t imagine a circumstance in which I would attend such a meeting.”
On Trump’s comments that black Americans are doing better economically than ever before: ”He does state that, and I think the figures that he uses are convenient in terms of job numbers. But look more closely at wage stagnation and, in fact, wage decreases. Look at the ways in which the failure to invest in infrastructure has left African American communities stranded in terms of transportation. Look at the voter suppression that disempowers African Americans from being able to even control their own destiny in the places where they live. Look at the assault on education and the ways in which the Department of Education is prepared to leave students who are victims of for-profit colleges stranded. Look at the ways which they are seeking to fight and undercut affirmative action. All of these are also part of economic opportunity. And the president conveniently leaves that out of the narrative. Those are things that are necessary to give African Americans a chance.”
On her book about the legacy of lynchings in America, and what the country needs to heal: “What America does not need, in my view, is one national conversation. The book really makes the case for the importance of local communities engaging in truth and reconciliatory processes. The recognition that racial discrimination, and particularly acts of racial pogroms, which essentially is what happened in the period in which lynching was so prevalent in this country, that those local communities need to deal with that, grapple themselves with that history and themselves take on the responsibility for how you stitch back together a community that has been broken for decades, how you confront a painful truth.”
On what gives her hope: “I’m excited to see the continuous mass mobilization that people have engaged in, beginning with the Women’s March and continuing since then, in which people understand the need to come out of their homes to see one another and to say what they believe in. I’ve also really been encouraged by the ways in which the rule of law, for the most part, has held despite President Trump’s excesses. The crisis of this administration’s governance has compelled people to reimagine what it means to be a real citizen in this country. And that gives me optimism, because I think the other way was not sustainable. The benign citizenship performance that most Americans were engaged in was simply not sustainable. Now people understand that they are needed. Their voice is needed, every vote is needed, their engagement is needed.”
Undoubtedly, our Civil Rights Laws were passed to protect African-Americans and similarly situated individuals so that they could enjoy the same advantages and benefits once accorded only to Whites. But, Jeff Sessions believes that civil rights are just about protecting White Power & Privilege against African-Americans, Hispanics, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and other “uppity” minorities.
Similarly, the Bill of Rights was adopted to protect individual rights against Government overreach. But, Jeff Sessions believes that the right of police to enforce the law using brutality and unnecessary and indiscriminate force is superior to the individual Constitutional rights of people of color.
The solution to restoring reason and the true rule of law (not the perverted “rule of Sessions”): regime change!
SOME UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES HAVE RECEIVED DOCUMENTS, ORDERING THEM TO ARRIVE AT THE COURTHOUSE FOR HEARINGS AT MIDNIGHT, ON WEEKENDS, OR ON DATES THAT DON’T EXIST SUCH AS SEPTEMBER 31, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS REPORTED THIS WEEK. (PHOTO CREDIT: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES)
Some undocumented immigrants living in the United States have received fake documents, ordering them to arrive at the courthouse at midnight, on weekends, or on dates that don’t exist, such as September 31, according to a report by The Dallas Morning News.
According to the outlet, roughly two dozen immigrants arrived at a Texas courthouse last week for their hearings only to be turned away by court staffers who told them their names were not on the docket and that they had been given “fake dates.”
The immigrants had been taken into custody during a raid conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month. Some 159 undocumented immigrants, many of them without a criminal record, were detained at the Load Trail trailer factory in Sumner, Texas “about 100 miles northeast of Dallas.”
According to the Morning News, the raid was described by ICE officials as “one of the largest such operations at a single workplace in a decade.”
55 undocumented immigrants remain in ICE custody after one of the largest raids in a decade
The immigrants were later given their “fake” court dates by ICE officials, who apparently never coordinated with immigration courts to clear the dates, resulting in what advocates have described as “chaos.”
“The immigration court system is confusing enough on a normal day,” Ashley Huebner, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Morning News. “But to have an individual who probably does not speak English…and receives a document in which DHS has purposely listed a fake date and time is a real different level of confusion and absurdity.”
“Fake dates,” sometimes called “dummy dates,” are not a phenomenon unique to Texas. According to the Morning News, reports of fake court dates have sprung up in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, nor the Justice Department have offered a clear explanation for why undocumented immigrants are being handed fake court dates.
ICE spokesman Tim Oberle shifted the blame to a court agency known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review saying it “is responsible for setting and resetting appearance dates upon receipt of a notice to appear filed by” ICE.
The court debacle comes as the national immigration backlog continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Reports suggest that, even without any new arrests, it could take up to four years to eliminate the backlog in its entirety.
Additionally, ICE has requested $1 billion dollars from the federal government to keep with the Trump administration’s demands of detaining an average of 43,000 undocumented immigrants a day. Health and Human Services officials have also requested hundreds of additional beds at a juvenile detention camp in Tornillo, Texas, to partly accommodate the surge in detained minors over the past year.
As ThinkProgress previously reported, the current number of children detained in immigration facilities stands at nearly 13,000.
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Come on, Man! Figuring out how to serve Notices to Appear with correct court dates is hardly “rocket science,” as pointed out by the Supremes in Pereira. To be fair, the “original Periera problem” began during previous Administrations. But, under Jeff Sessions, the DHS and DOJ have shown an uncanny ability to mindlessly and incompetently “double down” on every illegal and/or unwise immigration policy or program that has failed in the past.
Since Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump, and Kirstjen Nielsen don’t believe in tempering justice with mercy, perhaps it’s just as well that their cruelty and stupidity is often tempered with incompetence.
Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist Michael Hiltzik reports for the LA Times:
Another judge slaps down Jeff Sessions for trying to punish ‘sanctuary’ cities like L.A.
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions just can’t win in his attempts to punish local communities for “sanctuary” laws. (Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images)
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions must be getting tired of so much winning in his campaign to punish cities and states with the temerity to challenge his attempted crackdown on immigration.
In the latest episode, U.S. Judge Manuel L. Real of Los Angeles enjoined him from withholding more than $1 million in federal law enforcement assistance funding from L.A. because the city declared itself a “sanctuary” community. Real ruled that Sessions was way out of line in attempting to add conditions to a federal grant program designed to be based strictly on a community’s population and crime rates.
Real’s injunction tracks a nationwide injunction issued in April by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. In that case, brought by the city of Chicago, the appellate panel ruled 2-1 that Sessions’ actions “evince … a disturbing disregard for the separation of powers” principle enshrined in the Constitution.
The Attorney General repeatedly characterizes the issue as whether localities can be allowed to thwart federal law enforcement. That is a red herring.
7TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
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“The power of the purse does not belong to the Executive Branch,” the majority reminded Sessions. “It rests in the Legislative Branch,” which in this case didn’t delegate to Sessions the authority to impose conditions on the law enforcement grants.
Several federal courts have slapped down Sessions’ efforts to bludgeon local communities into doing the federal government’s dirty work of immigration enforcement, so it’s proper to take a quick look at Sessions’ viewpoint.
Sessions started throwing conniptions about sanctuary communities in March 2017, a couple of months after President Trump issued an executive order calling for federal funds to be withheld from communities that he said were out to thwart immigration agents. “Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States,” Trump asserted.
Trump’s order recognized that the law might constrain how the Department of Justice might act, so Sessions attempted to gin up a legal rationale. He asserted that jurisdictions across the nation were actively violating federal immigration laws, pumping undocumented immigrants back onto the streets even after their convictions for serious crimes. Sessions has cited two provisions of federal law, “Section 1373” and immigration detainers.
The first, enacted in 1996 under Bill Clinton, prohibits anyone from interfering with the exchange of information with federal authorities about the immigration status of any person. The law says merely that once local officials have that information, they can’t be stopped from trading it to the feds. Nothing in the law, however, requires local officials to collect information about the immigration status of anyone they have in custody in the first place.
“Detainers” are requests by immigration officials that local police hold immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and suspected or accused of a serious crime for 48 hours, or until the immigration authorities can decide if they want to take further action themselves. The Congressional Research Service found in 2015 that local policies vary widely about when to honor detainers, with many honoring those for people held for serious felonies but not for suspects in minor misdemeanor cases. Some require commitments from the federal government to cover the cost of detention or even the locality’s legal liability. Demanding compliance with all detainers, some experts say, raises the possibility of federal commandeering of local resources for federal purposes, which happens to be unconstitutional.
Since Sessions began griping about sanctuary laws — many of which were enacted decades before Trump became president — federal judges have recognized consistently that localities have a legitimate interest in creating a trustful relationship between the police and the communities they serve. In communities with large populations of immigrants, that relationship can be easily destroyed if the cops become viewed as immigration agents. Residents will be reluctant to report crimes, much less help police find wrongdoers or testify against them. The result is more dangerous, not safer, communities.
In July, for example, Federal Judge John Mendez of Sacramento rejected the administration’s attempt to block three sanctuary laws enacted by the state Legislature in 2017. Mendez found that for the most part the laws fell squarely within the state’s authority to manage its own law enforcement resources and keep them from being “commandeered” by the federal government for its own purposes.
Nothing in the sanctuary laws “actively obstructs” federal officials, Mendez found; they only required state officials not to participate in federal immigration enforcement, except on their own terms. “Standing aside,” he wrote, “does not equate to standing in the way.”
Sessions hasn’t had any more success in trying to block federal funds for sanctuary cities. That’s the subject of the appeals court and Los Angeles cases. Both pertain to the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, a federal program enacted in 2005 and named after a New York police officer slain while guarding an immigrant who had agreed to testify against drug dealers.
Congress established a strict formula for the Byrne funds, requiring that 50% be disbursed each year to states in amounts proportionate to their population and crime levels, with the remaining 50% tied to states’ proportions of violent crime. The city and county of Los Angeles, which were to receive a combined $1.9 million in the current fiscal year, planned to use the money for anti-gang programs, among other things.
Before making the disbursements, however, the DOJ said that applicants would have to certify their compliance with Section 1373 and agree to other forms of cooperation with immigration officials.
The appeals court in Chicago thought little of the DOJ’s arguments. “The Attorney General repeatedly characterizes the issue as whether localities can be allowed to thwart federal law enforcement,” the majority observed. “That is a red herring.” They ridiculed Sessions for being “incredulous that localities receiving federal funds can complain about conditions attached to the distribution of those funds.” But that was just too bad, they concluded: He simply doesn’t have the authority to attach any conditions to the program, other than those dictated by the formula.
Judge Real came to the same conclusion. Sessions’ policy faced Los Angeles with “an impossible choice: Either it must certify compliance with unconstitutional and unlawful directives that impinge on the City’s sovereignty, damage community trust, and harm public safety, or it will lose congressionally authorized Byrne JAG funding.” Real wasn’t inclined to force the city to make that choice.
For a federal officer charged with upholding the law, Jeff Sessions seems to need an awful lot of reminding of what the law says. It’s time he took the lessons he’s getting from federal courts to heart.
Michael Hiltzik
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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik writes a daily blog appearing on latimes.com. His business column appears in print every Sunday, and occasionally on other days. As a member of the Los Angeles Times staff, he has been a financial and technology writer and a foreign correspondent. He is the author of six books, including “Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age” and “The New Deal: A Modern History.” Hiltzik and colleague Chuck Philips shared the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for articles exposing corruption in the entertainment industry.
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Once upon a time, many years ago, I worked at a U.S. Department of Justice that functioned like “America’s law firm.” Every adverse decision was carefully studied by the agency, the litigator, and the Solicitor General’s Office. When the reviewing court appeared to have “the better view of the law,” or when the agency position was repeatedly rejected and there was no “Circuit split,” the rules, regulations, BIA interpretations, and even the statute sometimes were changed to adopt the Federal Courts’ “better-reasoned view of the law.”
Indeed, while serving in the Legacy INS General Counsel’s Office under then General Counsel Sam Bernsen, I remember drafting successfully enacted legislation (known as the “INS Efficiency Act”) that actually adopted into law some Federal Court decisions that had reversed INS and also tried to fashion some “legislative compromises” that we thought would pass muster in the Article IIIs. Amazingly, it was enacted into law with only minor modifications to my original draft.
Yup, it wasn’t always popular with the “operating divisions” of the INS. But, it was the job of “us lawyers” to “sell them” on why compliance with legal standards was important. And, indeed, I remember getting the essential support of “upper level management” — at that time the Commissioner, General Leonard Chapman, Jr., and his Deputy Jim Greene, certainly supporters of strong immigration enforcement, for the legislative changes our Office drafted.
In other words, we were trying to make Government work effectively within legal boundaries rather than continuing to bother the Federal Courts with untenable or legally weak positions. Folks committed to “Good Government.” Imagine that!
Nowadays, under Jeff Sessions, the DOJ has abandoned any semblance of good lawyering or legal excellence and has, with a few exceptions (possibly Bob Mueller’s operation and the FBI under Director Chris Wray), been turned into a “White Nationalist propaganda factory.” Today’s hollow semblance of a DOJ consistently presents “jaw dropping” legal positions that are both bad policy and supported by weak to nonexistent legal arguments that sometimes fail to pass the “straight fact test.”
That’s because Jeff Sessions doesn’t operate as a lawyer. No, he’s a “Minister of Propaganda” who spreads racially-driven bogus views, false narratives, and misleading statistics, then feigns shock and outrage when the “real” Federal Courts consistently “stuff” him and apply the actual law and Constitution. When your legal positions are not drawn from the law, the Constitution, input from career lawyers, and consultation with experts in the field, but rather taken from “cue cards” prepared by widely discredited White Nationalist restrictionist groups, the results are bound to be ugly.
The only surprising thing is that such a stunningly biased and unqualified individuals as Jeff Sessions has been given the opportunity to destroy the integrity of the U.S. Department of Justice and to make it a subservient tool of his attack on American values and our entire justice system. Sen. Liz Warren tried to tell ’em. But they wouldn’t listen. Now, Jeff Sessions is dragging all of America down in the muck with him.
Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg, who represented the plaintiffs, said that many parents were evaluated for “credible fear” after having their children removed, but before they were told where the children had been taken. He said his team submitted evidence showing that, during the interviews, the parents were “out of their minds with trauma, focused solely on the well-being and the whereabouts of their kids.”
In one piece of evidence included in the case, a recording of an immigration judge questioning a mother about her asylum claim, the mother can be heard crying too hard to answer the judge’s questions and says that she feels sick, Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg said. After a few minutes, he said, the judge affirms an asylum officer’s finding that the woman’s fear of returning to her home country is not credible and asks that she be taken to see a doctor.
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Read Caitlin’s full article concerning the recent proposed settlement at the above link.
Obvious question: Why would somebody like Jeff Sessions be given authority over a “court system” that is supposed to insure Due Process for asylum applicants? That’s even worse than having the fox guard the henhouse! The results are as horrible and unlawful as they are predictable.
