Category: Guatemala

GONZOISM LIVES: Whitaker Delivers “Gonzo Apocalypto Like” Racially Tinged Xenophobic Rant On Immigration Enforcement, Including Bogus Stats and False Narratives — Targets U.S. Courts For Upholding Constitution & Rule Of Law Against White Nationalist Assault!

https://apple.news/ALcj5KtVpQ-6BYe6egb-ipw

R.G. Ratcliffe reports for Texas Monthly:

The word had come down from the U.S. Department of Justice last summer: people who enter the country without authorization are to be referred to as “illegal aliens,” not “undocumented immigrants.” So when Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was in Austin Tuesday to give a pep talk to the U.S. attorneys there, and he referred to these immigrants ten times as “illegal aliens,” and once resorted to a slang term that is sometimes considered racist as he described Austin as a Top 20 city, with “over 100,000 illegals” living in the area.

Immigrant advocates for years have tried to dissuade people from using terms like “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” because a person cannot of themselves be illegal. A person can commit an illegal act, such as entering the country without authorization or in violation of the law. Terms such as these, advocates say, dehumanize immigrants. The Associated Press in 2013 removed the term “illegal alien” from proper usage for journalists for this very reason.

But the Department of Justice memo says that since the word “undocumented” does not appear in the U.S. Code, attorneys and public information officers should refer to people who enter the country illegally as “illegal aliens.” In the most literal sense, this may be true, but it also advances the Trump Administration’s efforts to portray all immigrants who enter the country illegally as part of a force of darkness.

“More important than the financial cost we pay is the cost we pay in American lives. Massive illegal immigration makes all of us less safe,” Whitaker told the attorneys.

“We know that the vast majority of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl that are killing record numbers of Americans was not made in this country. It came over the Southern border. We also know that vicious gangs like MS-13 recruit new members from the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who cross our border illegally every year. The result is that Americans die every year because we do not have a secure Southern border.” He did not mention that MS-13 got its start on the streets of Los Angeles.

Whitaker pointed to the case of Juan Lopez in Austin. Lopez last month was sentenced to 49 years in prison for raping a family friend as the woman’s child watched. Lopez had been deported after serving a sentence for homicide and then re-entered the country illegally. “It is a crushing failure to secure our border and just one example of where we can do better.”

Without giving exact details, Whitaker said the U.S. Border Patrol had apprehended more than 50,000 people in the past two months who have crossed the U.S. border illegally from Mexico, including 23,000 people in family units. “That’s the size of a small city every single month.” He said the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally is equal to the population of Georgia.

Whitaker repeatedly emphasized the prosecution of people who enter the country illegally, but he never mentioned President Trump’s push for a border wall. He did, however, criticize federal courts that have blocked Trump’s efforts to block immigration.

Whitaker took no questions from the news media gathered for the event. It was one-way messaging. Journalists did not have a chance to ask about the wall or whether Whitaker thought the millions of people already living in the country illegally should be deported. We didn’t get a chance to ask whether immigration reform laws would ameliorate the situation. There were no questions about reports that he is under consideration to serve as the president’s chief of staff, or the status of a Department of Justice investigation into whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke used his office for personal gain.

Whitaker’s time in office is short. Former Attorney General William Barr has been nominated by Trump to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But while he holds the office, Whitaker should know a news conference without questions is just a dog and pony show that depends on media complicity.

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Here’s the “full text” of Whitaker’s Speech: https://t.co/KeNU8OQXJd

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  • Whitaker continues to spread the false narratives attempting to connect migrants with increased crime and drug trafficking; there is no such documented connection;
  • Whitaker also tries to connect migrants with gang activities; but, it’s much more likely that an asylum applicant from the Northern Triangle will be fleeing from gangs than a member of one;
  • Whitaker ignores the U.S.’s own role in both creating the gang problem in the Northern Triangle (it actually was “deported” from Los Angeles, as noted by Ratcliffe) and following questionable strategies to combat gangs in both the U.S. and the Northern Triangle;
  • The vast, vast majority of the 11 million or so undocumented individuals in the U.S. are not criminals; at worst, they are just seeking safety and a better life for themselves and their families, very understandable human tendencies; even assuming that they ultimately don’t belong here, why intentionally demean and dehumanize them by using the racially tinged term “illegal alien” and “illegals,” rather than treating them with the respect and humanity due all human beings;
  • The comparison between the “State of Georgia” and the number of undocumented individuals is directly out of one of Sessions’s inflammatory speeches to EOIR; the real point is that undocumented individuals are like our “51st state” — they contribute much to our economy and society (just ask those who worked for Trump) and ask for relatively little — Trump and the GOP have routinely and disgracefully exploited their labor and contributions while denying their fundamental humanity;
  • Well over one million of the undocumented population are actually here with legal permission: mainly through DACA and TPS; while the Administration would like to terminate those programs, they have not yet been able to do so; consequently, the individuals are not here “illegally” — they can’t be removed until their current status is terminated.
  • Whitaker mis-states the asylum approval rate: it’s actually 35% for 2018, not “a five-year average of 20%” as Whitaker falsely claims (since the 35% was a “recent low” the real five-year average per TRAC is much higher, well in excess of 40% — indeed up until FY 2016, asylum approvals actually exceeded denials, until the Trump Administration started interfering with the system); for the Northern Triangle it’s 23%, 20%, and 18% for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras respectively, multiples of Whitaker’s false claim of 9%; and the “allowed to remain in the U.S.” for asylum applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras whose cases were decided by Immigration Judges during FY 2018 were 31%, 25%, and 24% respectively);
  • More important, except for the restrictionist right, nobody familiar with our asylum system doubts that the approval rate for the Northern Triangle would be much higher, perhaps twice as high or more, if individuals were 1) given reasonable access to lawyers; 2) time to gather evidence and prepare their cases; and 3) had their claims adjudicated by a fair, impartial, apolitical, independent judges, well-trained in asylum law, and committed to the generous principles established by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca (not today’s politicized and captive EOIR);
  • Many of those denied asylum, whether properly or not, clearly face harm or death upon return — but, Whitaker doesn’t admit that we’re really knowingly returning individuals to possible death;
  • Actually the Federal Courts are the ones upholding the “rule of law” against the efforts of biased, unqualified, political hacks like Whitaker who are committed to carrying out a racist, White Nationalist agenda that mocks our Constitution and our national values.
  • As noted by Ratcliffe, Whitaker lacked the guts to take questions; not really surprising for someone so committed to various false and misleading narratives.

The appointment of Whitaker as Acting AG is every bit as much of a national disgrace as the tenure of White Nationalist Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. That Trump’s next AG Bill Barr called Sessions “outstanding” does not bode well for the rule of law, or the legal rights and human dignity of people of color and other vulnerable groups who are the most in need of those protections.

Fortunately, the New Due Process Army is in the field and “ready for action” against the further abuses planned by Whitaker and Barr.

PWS

12-12-18

Related posts:

  1. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
  2. PROFESSOR STEPHEN LEGOMSKY IN USA TODAY: Gender Is Clearly a “Particular Social Group” – Congress Must Amend The Law To Insure That Neither Bureaucratic Judges Nor Political Hacks Like Sessions & His Ilk Can Deprive Women & LGBTQ Individuals Of The Protections They Need & Deserve!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

UPI ANALYSIS OF LATEST EOIR ASYLUM STATS ACTUALLY SHOWS THAT MANY FROM NORTHERN TRIANGLE (PARTICULARLY EL SALVADOR) HAVE VALID CLAIMS FOR PROTECTION, BUT SESSIONS’S POLITICAL ACTIONS AND CONTROL OVER U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES ARTIFICIALLY FORCED THE GRANT RATE DOWN! – It’s Time For An Independent “Article I” U.S. Immigration Court & A Level, Apolitical Playing Field For Asylum Applicants!

https://apple.news/AHg-L3Cy-SEG6Gi9SR1rk_w

Patrick Timmons reports for UPI:

Asylum denials jump; immigration judges’ discretion attacked

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 10 (UPI) — New data about the number of asylum applications granted by the United States this year show how the Trump administration has dramatically narrowed asylum granted to people fleeing persecution in their home countries — though significantly more Central Americans have been admitted over the past decade.

“Asylum acceptance rates are at a 20-year low, and the recent TRAC data confirms that,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst for the non-partisan and independent Migration Policy Institute, referring to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

For fiscal 2018, TRAC’s statistics show immigration judges denied 65 percent of asylum claims — up from 42 percent in 2017. There were 42,224 asylum cases decided in 2018, an 89 percent increase over the total number of cases decided in 2016.

Due to a backlog in the immigration system, some asylum seekers have been able to live in the United States for three years to five years while their claims are adjudicated, a situation the administration has tried to address by changing some rules and practices.

“This administration is trying to address people who are trying to take advantage of the system. But unfortunately this administration’s approach tends to punish asylum seekers rather than just specifically looking at those individuals who are taking advantage of the system,” Pierce said.

The administration’s broad approach to all asylum seekers has had the effect of narrowing asylum by increasing immigration judges’ workloads by setting quotas, ending discretionary decision making and rewriting immigration rules to deny relief to asylum seekers fleeing domestic and gang violence.

Immigration experts told UPI the administration’s changes to how immigration judges work has spiked a general increase in asylum denials.

Northern Triangle

There has been an increased flow of asylum seekers from Central American countries, particularly those from the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

And the fact that more of them are getting approved shows they are “sincere humanitarian migrants,” Pierce said.

A new TRAC tool shows Central Americans now fare better than in previous years. Salvadorans receive asylum in rates higher than Guatemalans or Hondurans. In 2004, Salvadorans’ asylum approval rate was 6 percent. In 2018, it rose to 23 percent. Guatemala’s grant rate in 2018 was 18 percent, the lowest of three countries, with Honduras at 20 percent.

Pierce said that changes in immigration law under the Obama administration help account for significant changes in asylum approval rates for people fleeing the Northern Triangle. Immigration judges over the past decade were more accepting of domestic and gang violence as grounds for asylum, with successes helping to develop case law.

The rise in asylum for Salvadorans has to do with direct violent threats, rather than domestic violence, which is a common claim among Guatemalan asylum seekers, or gang violence, common among Hondurans.

“The circumstantial evidence suggests El Salvador tends to have the most direct violent threats,” said Everard Meade said, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Data comparing the Northern Triangle countries’ asylum seekers’ claims is hard to come by. However, Meade said in 2014 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued its report, “Children on the Run,” about unaccompanied Central American minors highlighting direct violence in El Salvador as a reason for flight. UNHCR interviewed almost 400 children with 66 percent of El Salvadorans reporting flight for threat of direct violence Guatemalans reported 20 percent, Hondurans at 44 percent.

But Central Americans’ asylum approvals might be a blip. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions this year removed domestic violence and gang violence as grounds for asylum in immigration court proceedings.

“These private acts of violence claims are typically the ones we are seeing from the Northern Triangle,” Pierce said, “including El Salvador.”

Discretionary decision-making

The general picture, however, is that more people are failing to win asylum than ever before because the Trump administration has changed how judges work.

“The asylum decisions and denial data for fiscal year 2018 is really about discretionary relief that used to be available under [President Barack] Obama but is not available under [President Donald] Trump anymore,” Meade said.

Prior to Trump-Sessions, immigration judges used to employ a form of discretionary relief called administrative closure. This was a form of temporary protection against deportation that did not grant any permanent immigration status, unlike asylum, which is a pathway to citizenship.

“Immigration judges had people coming before them who had really compelling stories but those stories did not necessarily cleave close enough to the asylum standard to grant them asylum. But the judges really felt they did not want to return them to dangerous situations, either. They also felt they were people who were credible, who had told the truth, and so they were administratively closing their cases,” Meade said.

The practice of administrative closure ended this year with a Sessions memorandum.

“Administrative closure was a widespread practice and that is exactly what explains how the denial rate can go up so dramatically without the grant rate going down. Actually, the grant rate has gone up. In defense of the institutions, the modest increase in the grant rates suggest people have some really good asylum claims,” Meade said.

The situation in El Paso

Carlos Spector, a veteran El Paso immigration lawyer, said that although the asylum rate has increased nationwide, there is little evidence of successful asylum claims in El Paso’s immigration court.

“This year, I have lost some asylum cases that had really compelling claims,” Spector said, adding that 98 percent of his clients are Mexican.

Mexicans generally do not fare well in immigration court. In 2018, 14.5 percent of Mexican asylum seekers received asylum. Part of the reason is that immigration judges were administratively closing cases, protecting from deportation but stopping short of permanent relief.

For 2018, the latest TRAC data reveal El Paso’s immigration judges reviewed 297 cases, granting asylum 47 times. In 2017, they reviewed 148 cases and granted asylum 12 times. These low asylum rates, some of the lowest in the nation, mean El Paso’s immigration judges have a reputation for enforcing law and order, Spector said.

“I’ve been tracking asylum cases of Mexican nationals for the past few years and it is more or less the same rate along the border from San Diego to Brownsville,” Spector said.

“Because we are on the border and these judges are political appointees and these judges do understand the government’s mandate of holding or guarding the border and they take that law enforcement approach,” Spector said, “the denials are much, much higher on the U.S.-Mexico border, and they always have been.”

TRAC compiled asylum approval and denial statistics for fiscal year 2018, the first full year of Trump’s presidency, based on Freedom Of Information Act requests to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, the agency charged with adjudicating defensive asylum claims in immigration court.

Photoby Ariana Drehsler/UPI : Jose Hernández, 17, styles his hair at El Barretal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2018.

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Just as I have been saying all along!  The Trump Administration’s claim that low asylum approval rates indicate the system is being “gamed” by applicants is a bogus cover up. Even taken at “face value,” a 20-25% chance of being granted asylum hardly shows a system being “gamed.” At most, it shows that Immigration Judges are applying a much more restrictive standard than Asylum Officers considering “credible fear” claims at the border. Far from being “gaming,” that would be consistent with (although not necessarily required by) an intentionally much more generous standard for getting a fair adjudication in a removal hearing (“passing credible fear”) than for actually achieving relief (“a favorable order from an Immigration Judge after a full merits hearing”).

But, what really appears to be going on here are artificially restrictive, politically inspired “tweaks” to asylum law and procedures specifically intended to disadvantage those in danger from the Northern Triangle. Additionally, inappropriate detention policies are intended to force many more applicants to proceed without lawyers or to abandon appeals — making it like “shooting fish in a barrel” for those Immigration Judges with a predilection to deny relief who are under great pressure to “produce” more final orders of removal. It also appears that a disturbing number of Immigration Judges along the Southern Border view themselves as agents of DHS and Administration enforcement policies, rather than as fair and impartial decision makers committed to giving asylum seekers the “benefit of the doubt” under the law.

This all adds up to what appears to me to be a significant “cover up” of politicized wrong-doing and a mass denial of Due Process orchestrated by the Administration through the Department of Justice.

Why are the Administration, DHS, and DOJ so afraid of giving asylum applicants fair access to lawyers, time to prepare and document their cases, and timely fair hearings before impartial quasi-judicial adjudicators whose  sole focus is getting the right substantive result, rather than achieving some type of assembly line enforcement-related “production quotas?”

Why waste time on “gimmicks” — most of which eventually prove to be illegal, ineffective, or both — rather than  concentrating on getting to the merits of these cases in a timely manner and “letting the chips fall where they may.”

Surely, among a largely artificially created 1.1 million case “backlog” there are hundreds of thousands of cases that could be “administratively closed” as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion to allow more recently arrived cases to be timely heard without increasing backlogs or creating further wasteful “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

Eventually, the “mask will be ripped off” what’s really happening in  our U.S. Immigration Court system. When that happens, the results could be ugly and damaging to the reputations of those orchestrating and enabling what certainly appears to be a disgraceful and intentional miscarriage of justice!

PWS

12011-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

TRUMP THROWS TEMPER TANTRUM – THREATENS PARTIAL SHUTDOWN OF USG & ILLEGAL ACTIONS IF CONGRESS WON’T WASTE $5BILLION ON USELESS “WALL STUNT” – WILL ANOTHER OVAL OFFICE MELTDOWN FORESHADOW A “TRUMP SHUTDOWN?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-border-wall-government-shutdown.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

 

Julie Hirshfield Davis and Michael Tackett report for the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday vowed to block full funding for the government if Democrats refuse to embrace his demand for a border wall, saying he was “proud to shut down the government for border security” in an extraordinarily public altercation with Democratic congressional leaders at the White House.

“If we don’t have border security, we’ll shut down the government — this country needs border security,” Mr. Trump declared in the Oval Office, engaging in a testy back-and-forth with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, even as they repeatedly asked him to keep their negotiating disputes private.

“It’s not bad, Nancy; it’s called transparency,” Mr. Trump snapped after one such interjection by Ms. Pelosi, who appeared to trigger the president’s temper when she raised the prospect of a “Trump shutdown” over what she characterized as an ineffective and wasteful wall.

“The American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything, and that we should not have a Trump shutdown,” Ms. Pelosi said.

. . . .

Mr. Trump had begun the day appearing to soften his stance somewhat on the wall. In a series of morning tweets, he falsely stated that substantial sections of the “Great Wall” on the southwestern border that he has long championed have already been completed, and he suggested that his administration could continue construction whether Democrats fund it or not.

That would be illegal, but it suggested that he was looking for a way to keep the government funded past Dec. 21, even if Democrats balk at wall funding.

. . . .

“People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of the messages. “If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!”

. . . .

It was not clear what Mr. Trump was referring to. American troops he dispatched to the border on the eve of midterm congressional elections as part of what the president called an effort to head off a migrant “invasion” have put up concertina wire along existing fences and barriers, but the administration has yet to spend much of the $1.3 billion Congress approved for border security last year. Under restrictions put in place by Congress, none of that money could be used to construct a new, concrete wall of the sort the president has said is vital.

The president does not have the legal authority to spend money appropriated for one purpose on another task, such as wall-building.

In a joint statement on Monday night, Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi warned that the country could not afford a “Trump Shutdown.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of Julie’s and Mike’s report at the above link.

“Duh,” walls as an effective means of national security went out of vogue about the beginning of the fifth century CE. But, of course, you would have to understand something about history to know how useless walls currently are as a defensive mechanism (as opposed to one for keeping subjugated people “in” like the Berlin Wall). Ironically, some of the same folks who cheered the destruction of the Berlin Wall idiotically cheer for “Trump’s Folly.”

While a wall might kill some more migrants and force smugglers to change routes and raise fees accordingly, in terms of border security it’s a classic case of “good money after bad.” Indeed, the Government would do well to stop treating refugees and other would be migrants as “criminals” to instead concentrate on stopping drug smugglers, human traffickers, terrorists, and fraudsters who actually mean to do our country harm, rather than coming in to pick our crops, make our food, build our houses, care for our sick, elderly, and children etc.

Totally contrary to Trump’s false narrative, most of those arriving at our Southern Border by “caravan” these days are not threats to the U.S. At worst, some are desperate individuals who probably face some real dangers in their home countries but don’t fit our rather arcane, restrictive, and unduly legalistic applications of refugee and asylum laws. The ones who belong should be screened, let in, and assimilated. The ones who don’t, after having a fair opportunity to present their claims for refuge, should be returned in a humane and respectful manner.

Yes, there appears to be a very small number of “bad guys” who have “infiltrated” the caravans, probably as much to prey on the vulnerable migrants as to reach the U.S. The current system appears more than adequate to identify these individuals and block their entry or promptly remove them. And, the system could and would work even better if the Administration separated border security functions from asylum adjudication functions. But, that might not provide “red meat” to a political base.

So, perhaps we can look forward to a “Trump Shutdown” over “Trump’s Folly!”

PWS

 

Related posts:

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  2. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!

“Bottomless Pinocchios” — A Catalog Of The Liar-in-Chief’s Most Repeated Lies — Not Surprisingly, A Number Of Them Involve Immigration!

🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥

https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/the-false-claims-that-trump-keeps-repeating/2018/12/09/c2859d36-fc0c-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html

Glenn Kessler and Joe Fox report for the Washington Post:

The Fact Checker has evaluated false statements President Trump has made repeatedly and analyzed how often he reiterates them. The claims included here – which we’re calling “Bottomless Pinocchios” – are limited to ones that he has repeated 20 times and were rated as Three or Four Pinocchios by the Fact Checker.

The Trump tax cut was the biggest in history

Trump repeated some version of this claim 123 times

Even before President Trump’s tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history – bigger than Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line in the president’s rallies. Read more

No, President Trump’s tax cut isn’t the ‘largest ever’

Overstating the size of U.S. trade deficits

Trump repeated some version of this claim 117 times

President Trump frequently overstates the size of trade deficits. But he tips into Four-Pinocchio territory with his repeated use of the word “lost” to describe a trade deficit. (Alternatively, he sometimes says China “made” or “took out” $500 billion.) Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates. Read more

Fact-checking Trump’s tough trade talk

The U.S. economy has never been stronger

Trump repeated some version of this claim 99 times

In June 2018, the president hit upon a new label for the U.S. economy: It was the greatest, the best or the strongest in U.S. history. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Read more

Is this the ‘best economy ever’?

Inflating our NATO spending

Trump repeated some version of this claim 87 times

During the presidential election, Trump consistently inflated the U.S. contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Once he became president, his inaccuracy has persisted, but with a twist. He often claims that “billions and billions” of dollars have come into NATO because of his complaints. All that is happening is that members have increased defense spending as a share of their economies — a process that was started before Trump even announced his candidacy. Read more

President Trump’s ongoing misunderstanding of NATO funding

The U.S. has started building the wall

Trump repeated some version of this claim 86 times

President Trump has sought $25 billion to fund his long-promised wall along the southern border. But Congress has not given it to him. There was nearly $1.6 billion included in the appropriations bill he signed early in 2018 for border protection, but the legislative language was specific: None of the funds could be used for Trump’s border wall prototypes. Instead the money was restricted to fencing, and it was generally used for replacement fencing. He also frequently overstates the amount of money he has obtained for the nonexistent wall. Read more

Has construction of Trump’s border wall started?

The U.S. has the loosest immigration laws in the world — thanks to Democrats

Trump repeated some version of this claim 52 times

Trump repeatedly claims that the United States has the loosest immigration laws, but that’s simply not true. In fact, the United States has among the world’s most restrictive laws, placing it 25th among developing nations in welcoming immigrants, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The president frequently blames Democrats for the current legal system but that’s wrong, too — much of current immigration policy was decided either under a Republican president or through court cases. Read more

Is there a law that requires families to be separated at the border?

Democrats colluded with Russia during the campaign

Trump repeated some version of this claim 42 times

Throughout the special counsel’s investigation of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump has sought to deflect attention by asserting that the Democrats colluded with Russia. But he has little evidence to make his case, which largely rests on the fact that the firm hired by Democrats to examine Trump’s Russia ties at the same time was working to defend a Russian company in U.S. court. In fact, U.S. intelligence agencies found that Russian entities hacked Democratic leaders’ email during the campaign. Read more

Did Hillary Clinton collude with the Russians to get ‘dirt’ on Trump to feed it to the FBI?

The border wall will stop drug trafficking

Trump repeated some version of this claim 40 times

In demanding a wall on the southern border, Trump has asserted that it would stop the flow of drugs. But the Drug Enforcement Administration says that most illicit drugs enter the United States through legal ports of entry. Traffickers conceal the drugs in hidden compartments within passenger cars or hide them alongside other legal cargo in tractor-trailers and drive the illicit substances right into the United States. Meanwhile, fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, can be easily ordered online, even directly from China. Read more

Will a border wall stop drugs from ‘pouring in?’

U.S. Steel is building many new plants

Trump repeated some version of this claim 37 times

This is one of Trump’s strangest claims. Since he imposed tariffs on steel, the president has repeatedly claimed that U.S. Steel was building new steel plants. Depending on his mood, the number has ranged from six to nine plants. But U.S. Steel made no such announcement. It merely stated that it would restart two blast furnaces at the company’s Granite City Works integrated plant in Illinois — one in March and the other in October, for a total of 800 jobs. The company in August also said it would upgrade a plant in Gary, Ind., but without creating any new jobs. Read more

The U.S. has spent $6 trillion (or more) on Middle East wars

Trump repeated some version of this claim 36 times

Trump started making a version of this claim shortly after taking office, first claiming $6 trillion but then quickly elevating it to $7 trillion. Trump acts as if the money has been spent, but he is referring to a study that included estimates of future obligations through 2056 for veterans’ care. The study combines data for both George W. Bush’s war in Iraq (2003) and the war in Afghanistan (2001), which is in Central/South Asia, not the Middle East. The cost of the combined wars will probably surpass $7 trillion by 2056, when interest on the debt is considered, almost four decades from now. Read more

Has the U.S. spent $7 trillion in the Middle East?

Thousands of MS-13 members have been removed from the country

Trump repeated some version of this claim 33 times

Within six months of becoming president, the president began claiming that his administration had deported thousands of members of the violent MS-13 gang. There had been a crackdown, but the count is in the hundreds. Then, he expanded the claim to say thousands had been deported or imprisoned. But there is nothing that supports these claims. For most of the country, MS-13 is not a threat; the estimated 10,000 members are concentrated in a few Hispanic communities, primarily around Long Island, Los Angeles and the Washington area. Read more

McCain’s vote was the only thing that blocked repeal of the Affordable Care Act

Trump repeated some version of this claim 30 times

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) dramatically refused to advance in the Senate a limited repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but Trump has repeatedly used that vote as his all-purpose excuse for the failure to eliminate the health-care law. This oversimplifies the precarious state of Obamacare repeal at the time. The Senate version of full repeal had failed, with nine “no” votes from Republicans. Even if McCain had supported the “skinny” repeal, lawmakers still would have had to negotiate a compromise agreement and passage was not assured. Read more

Robert S. Mueller III is biased because of conflicts of interest

Trump repeated some version of this claim 30 times

Trump has often misleadingly claimed the “witch hunt” is tainted because of conflicts of interest, such as an unverified (and denied) dispute over golf fees when Mueller was a member of a Trump golf club. Eleven out of 16 attorneys on Mueller’s team have contributed to Democrats, including Clinton and Obama; 13 are registered Democrats. Under federal law, Mueller is not allowed to consider the political leanings of his staff when hiring them, but he took action against a former team member when texts expressing anti-Trump sentiments were discovered. Read more

Fact Check: Do the political preferences of Mueller’s team risk its independence?

Inflating gains from a 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia

Trump repeated some version of this claim 23 times

Trump has repeatedly inflated the gains from his 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, upping the amount from $350 billion to $450 billion when he came under fire for defending crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to the CIA, Mohammed ordered the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The administration, with double-counting, could only document $270 billion in tentative agreements. Separately, Trump inflated the jobs said to be created from the purported investments. Many are in Saudi Arabia, indicating few jobs would be created for Americans. Read more

Fact Check: The Trump administration’s tally of $350 billion-plus in deals with Saudi Arabia

About this story

Source: Washington Post reporting. Reporting by Glenn Kessler, Meg Kelly, Salvador Rizzo, Michelle Ye Hee Leeand Nicole Lewis. Meg Kelly also contributed to this story.

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

More bogus border narratives are unfolding as I’m writing this. Disingenuous CBP officials are manipulating data to tell the Senate that the border is out of control.

What is really happening is that kids and other asylum seekers are basically turning themselves in to be processed and get the hearings to which they are entitled.  Why? Because the Trump Administration has purposely slowed down the process at legal Ports of Entry.

Clearly, instead of wasting money on troops and unneeded detention, the Administration should be sending Asylum Officers to the border to complete the screening. Once screened, those with “credible fear” can be matched with lawyers. Represented asylum applicants show up for hearings nearly 100% of the time, thus making prolonged detention unnecessary.

Also, since it now appears that the bulk of the “artificial backlog” in Immigration Court actually was “illegally commenced” though defective notices, those cases could simply be removed from the docket. That would free up U.S. Immmigration Judges to hear asylum cases within a reasonable (6-18 month) time frame.

Where there is a will, there’s a way. Additionally, as I often point out, doing things the right, legal way would likely cost far less than the “publicity stunts” now being conducted by the Administration at the border. But, doing the right thing and making the laws work just isn’t something that Trump and his minions are interested in, as the “Bottomless Pinocchios” related above show!

PWS

12-11-18

🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE ON WHY JUDGE BYBEE’S 65-PAGE EVISCERATION OF TRUMP’S LAWLESS ASYLUM ORDER IS SO IMPORTANT: “The next time Trump floats a flagrantly lawless idea, then, it’s worth remembering that nativist bluster cannot transmogrify an illegitimate command into a permissible executive order. Just because the president considers ending citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants, for instance, does not mean he can actually get away with it. Like the INA, the Constitution grants certain rights that the president cannot unilaterally rescind—including birthright citizenship. Bybee felt no compunction to pretend that Trump’s illicit scheme has any legitimacy. Neither should the rest of us.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/bush-judge-rejects-trump-asylum-plan.html

Stern writes:

If there were any lingering doubt that Donald Trump’s latest plan to curb asylum is flatly unlawful, Judge Jay Bybee quashed it on Friday.

In a meticulous 65-page opinion, Bybee—a conservative George W. Bush appointee—explained that the president cannot rewrite a federal statute to deny asylum to immigrants who enter the country without authorization. His decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a twofold rebuke to Trump, halting the president’s legal assault on asylum-seekers and undermining his claim that any judge who blocked the order is a Democratic hack. The reality is that anyone who understands the English language should recognize that Trump’s new rule is illegal. Like so many of Trump’s attention-grabbing proposals, this doomed policy should never have been treated as legitimate in the first place.

Friday’s ruling involves a proclamation that Trump signed on Nov. 9, ostensibly to address the “continuing and threatened mass migration of aliens with no basis for admission into the United States through our southern border.” The order alluded darkly to the caravan of asylum-seekers then approaching the border, which Trump tried and failed to exploit as a campaign issue. To remedy this “crisis” and protect “the integrity of our borders,” he directed the federal government to deny asylum to any immigrant who enters the United States unlawfully.

Ten days later, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar halted the new rule, holding that it likely exceeded the president’s authority. Trump responded by dismissing Tigar, a Barack Obama appointee, as an “Obama judge.” The comment led to a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who told the AP: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

As Trump escalated his feud with Roberts, his Department of Justice appealed Tigar’s ruling to the 9th Circuit. It faced a seemingly propitious panel: Bybee, Judge Edward Leavy, and Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz. Bybee is a very conservative jurist who authored the original “torture memo,” justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation of detainees. Leavy is a staunchly conservative Reagan appointee; only Hurwitz, an Obama appointee, leans to the left. Under Trump’s partisan vision of the judiciary, the DOJ would seem to have a good shot at reviving the asylum rule.

But Bybee didn’t bite. In a crisp and rigorous opinion for the court, he wrote that Tigar was correct to conclude that the policy almost certainly violates the law. The problem, Bybee explained, is that Congress expressly provided asylum-seekers with the right that Trump now seeks to revoke: an ability to apply for asylum regardless of how they came into the country. The Immigration and Nationality Act states that “[a]ny alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival …), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section.” This provision implements the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which the United States has ratified. It directs signatories not to “impose penalties [on refugees] on account of their illegal entry or presence.”

The plain text of the law couldn’t be clearer: Immigrants in the U.S. are eligible for asylum whether they arrived legally (through a “designated port of arrival”) or illegally. If the president wants to change that fact, he’ll have to convince Congress to break its treaty obligations and alter the law.

In light of the proclamation’s fundamental illegality, Bybee, joined by Hurwitz, affirmed Tigar’s nationwide restraining order. Leavy dissented in a curious five-page opinion insisting that the INA grants the executive branch power “to bring safety and fairness to the conditions at the southern border.” His anemic analysis is no match for Bybee’s thorough demolition of the DOJ’s illogical position. It seems quite likely that a lopsided majority of the Supreme Court will eventually agree with Bybee’s majority opinion.

It is satisfying to see a “Bush judge” (in Trumpian parlance) hand the president such a stinging legal defeat. Roberts overstated the case in totally dismissing the role of partisanship in the judiciary; of course some judges are political. But for now, a majority of the federal judiciary remains willing to stand up to the president, at least when he issues blatantly illegal orders. Judges like Roberts and Bybee may let Trump manipulate ambiguous laws to do some very bad things to immigrants. But they are not willing to let the president ignore a clear and constitutional directive from Congress.

The next time Trump floats a flagrantly lawless idea, then, it’s worth remembering that nativist bluster cannot transmogrify an illegitimate command into a permissible executive order. Just because the president considers ending citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants, for instance, does not mean he can actually get away with it. Like the INA, the Constitution grants certain rights that the president cannot unilaterally rescind—including birthright citizenship. Bybee felt no compunction to pretend that Trump’s illicit scheme has any legitimacy. Neither should the rest of us.

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

Stern points out that contrary to Trump’s belief that he can bully, co-opt, and control the judicial system, in the way that other authoritarian fascists have done in the past, even so-called “conservative” judges have lines beyond which they won’t be pushed.   And, lifetime tenure protects them from retaliation by Trump and his corrupt White Nationalist cronies.

Few things can be more important than having judges across the board, regardless of judicial philosophy, stand up to Trump and his lawless abuses of Executive Power as well as “pushing back” on a Department of Justice that has, with a few exceptions, lost its professionalism, moral compass, and courage, along with any semblance of independence.

PWS

12-10-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success

WINNING ASYLUM

WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success*

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

NEW YORK CITY BAR

DECEMBER 4, 2018

 

Good evening, and thanks so much for inviting me.  In the “old days,” I would have started with my comprehensive disclaimer. But, now that I’m retired, I’m just going to hold the Bar Association, my fellow panelists, and anyone else of any importance whatsoever “harmless” for my remarks tonight.  They are solely my views, for which I take full responsibility. No sugar-coating, no bureaucratic doublespeak, no “party line,” no BS – just the unvarnished truth, as I see it!

“We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence; therefore, they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.” “Good lawyers, using all of their talents and skill, work every day—like water seeping through an earthen dam—to get around the plain words of the INA to advance their clients’ interests. Theirs is not the duty to uphold the integrity of the act. That is our most serious duty.”

 

Those, my friends, are obviously not my words. They are the words of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Incredibly, this totally biased, xenophobic, misinformed, and glaringly unqualified individual was in charge of our U.S. Immigration Court system which helps explains why it is such a total mess today. And Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s certification of two cases yesterday promises a continuation of improper political interference with the Immigration Courts in derogation of Due Process.

 

One of Sessions’s most cowardly and reprehensible actions was his atrocious distortion of asylum law, the reality of life in the Northern Triangle, and Due Process for migrants in Matter of A-B-. There, he overruled the BIA’s important precedent in Matter of A-R-C-G-, a decision actually endorsed by the DHSat the time, and which gave much need protection to women fleeing persecution in the form of domestic violence. Take it from me, Matter of A-R-C-G-was one of the few parts of our dysfunctional Immigration Court system that actually worked and provided a way of consistently granting much needed protection to some of the most vulnerable and most deserving refugees in the world.

 

Sessions is gone. But, his ugly legacy of bias and unfairness remains. Fortunately, because he was a lousy lawyer on top of everything else, he failed to actually accomplish what he thought he was doing: wiping out protection for refugee women, largely from Central America. That’s why it’s critically important for you, as members of the “New Due Process Army” to fight every inch of the way, for as long as it takes, to restore justice and to force our U.S Immigration Courts to live up to their unfulfilled, and now mocked, promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all!”

 

I’m going to give you seven very basic tips for overcoming Matter of A-B-.  I’m sure that my colleagues, who are much more involved in the day to day litigation going on in the courts than I am, can give you lots of additional information about addressing specific issues.

 

First, recognize that Matter of A-B- really doesn’t change the fundamental meaning of asylum.It just rejected the way in which the BIA reached its precedent in A-R-C-G-— by stipulation without specific fact-findings based on the administrative record. Most of it is mere dicta. On a case by case basis, domestic violence can still be a proper basis for granting asylum in many cases. Indeed, such cases still are being granted by those Immigration Judges committed to following the rule of law and upholding their oaths of office, rather than accepting Sessions’s invitation to “take a dive.”

 

Just make sure you properly and succinctly state your basis, establish nexus, and paper the record with the overwhelming amount of reliable country condition information and expert opinion that directly contradicts the bogus picture painted by Sessions.

 

Second, resist with all your might those lawless judges in some Immigration Courts who are using, or threatening to use, Sessions’s dictum in Matter of A-B- to deny fair hearings or truncate the hearing process for those claiming asylum through domestic violence.If anything, following the overruling of A-R-C-G-,leaving no definitive precedent on the subject, full, fair case-by-case hearings are more important than ever. Under Due Process, asylum applicants are entitled to a full and fair opportunity to present their claims in Immigration Court. Don’t let wayward, biased, or misinformed Immigration Judges deny your clients’ constitutional and statutory rights.  

 

Third, keep it simple. Even before A-B-, I always said that any proposed “particular social group” (“PSG”) longer than 25 words or containing “circular” elements is D.O.A. I think that it’s time to get down to the basics; the real PSG here is gender! “Women in X country” is clearly a cognizable PSG.  It’s undoubtedly immutable or fundamental to identity; particularized, and socially distinct. So, it meets the BIA’s three-part test.

 

And, “gender” clearly is one of the biggest drivers of persecution in the world. There is no doubt that it is “at least one central reason” for the persecution of women and LGBT individuals throughout the world.

 

Fourth, think political. There is plenty of recent information available on the internet showing the close relationship between gangs and the governments of the Northern Triangle. In some cases, gangs are the “de facto government” in significant areas of the country. In others, gangs and local authorities cooperate in extorting money and inflicting torture and other serious harm on honest individuals who resist them and threaten to expose their activities. In many cases, claiming political or religious persecution will be a stronger alternative ground than PSG.

 

Fifth, develop your record.  The idea that domestic violence and gang-based violence is just “common crime” advanced by Sessions in A-B-is simply preposterous with regard to the Northern Triangle. Establish records that no reasonable factfinder can refute or overlook! Use expert testimony or expert affidavits to show the real country conditions and to discredit the watered down and sometimes downright false scenarios set forth in Department of State Country Reports, particularly under this Administration where integrity, expertise, and independence have been thrown out the window.

 

Sixth, raise the bias issue. As set forth in a number of the Amicus Briefs filed in Matter of A-B-, Sessions clearly was a biased decision maker. Not only had he publicly dismissed the claims of female refugees suffering from domestic violence, but his outlandish comments spreading false narratives about immigrants, dissing asylum seekers and their “dirty lawyers,” and supporting DHS enforcement clearly aligned with him with one party to litigation before the Immigration Courts. By the rules governing judicial conduct there was more than an “appearance of bias” here – there was actual bias. We should keep making the record on the gross violation of Due Process caused by giving a biased enforcement official like Sessions a quasi-judicial role.

 

Seventh, and finally, appeal to the “real” Article III Courts. What’s happening in Immigration Court today is a parody of justice and a mockery of legitimate court proceedings. It’s important to “open the eyes” of the Article III Judges to this travesty which is threatening the lives of legitimate refugees and other migrants.

 

Either the Article III’s do their jobs, step in, and put an end to this travesty, or they become complicitin it. There’s only one “right side of the law and history” in this fight. Those who are complicit must know that their actions are being placed in the historical record – for all time and for their descendants to know – just like the historical reckoning that finally is happening for so- called “Confederate heroes” and those public officials who supported racism and “Jim Crow.”

 

Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness and decency! Join the New Due Process Army and fight to vindicate the rights of asylum seekers under our laws against the forces of darkness and xenophobic bias! Due process forever!

 

 

*This is not a “verbatim transcript” of what I said. Rather it is a compendium and extension of the “talking notes” that I used as a member of the panel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

THE GIBSON REPORT 12-10-18 – COMPILED BY ELIZABETH GIBSON, ESQUIRE, NY LEGAL ASSISTANCE GROUP

THE GIBSON REPORT  12-10-18 – COMPILED BY ELIZABETH GIBSON, ESQUIRE, NY LEGAL ASSISTANCE GROUP

 

TOP UPDATES

 

The Department of Justice just took a step to make asylum even more difficult for Central Americans

CBS: Although his asylum claim was rejected in 2013, then dismissed again in 2017 on appeal, courts affirmed that Mr. L-E-A-‘s claim that kinship constituted “membership in a particular social group” was legally sound.…Stripped of the legalese, in Monday’s filing Whitaker raised Mr. L-E-A-‘s immigration case as an opportunity to reconsider whether persecution based on family ties is an acceptable reason to be granted asylum in the United States. While a decision won’t be issued until at least late January, immigration advocates aren’t optimistic.

 

Asylum Decisions and Denials Jump in 2018

TRAC: Fiscal year 2018 broke records for the number of decisions (42,224) by immigration judges granting or denying asylum. Denials grew faster than grants, pushing denial rates up as well. The 42,224 decisions represented a 40 percent jump from decisions during FY 2017, and an 89 percent increase over the number of asylum decisions of two years ago.

 

The Trump Administration Is Considering Making People Pay For The Right To Apply For Asylum

Buzzfeed: The proposal, included in a not-yet-finalized draft regulation, would charge applicants, if they are already residing in the US, $50 to apply for asylum.

 

U.N. Approves Sweeping Deal on Migration, but Without U.S. Support

NYT: More than 160 countries adopted a sweeping international accord on migration on Monday…The text of the accord was approved in July by every member of the United Nations except the United States. But it has since gotten caught up in a nationalist movement in Europe that has centered on the issue of immigration and prompted around a dozen countries to reject the compact outright, or to pull back from endorsing it in Morocco.

 

AG Nominee William Barr

ImmProf: Westlaw research – checking out his mentions in Law Reviews & Journals. Here are a few choice snippets, arranged by topic.

 

Paying to Be Locked Up

The American Scholar: The contracts, corporate relationships, and procedures that CCA and GEO Group cultivated in running private prisons were all too easy to duplicate in private detention centers—never mind that the stated purposes of these two operations are fundamentally different. When we privatize functions the government has traditionally undertaken, such as incarceration and detention, corporations then set the rules governing human interaction, using profit rather than legal or human rights standards as their guidelines.

 

At least 4,000 migrants on way to U.S. have died or gone missing in last four years

AP: These Latin American migrants are among about 56,800 worldwide who died or disappeared over the same period, the AP found. While migrants everywhere face risks, the Mexico route holds the added danger of drug trafficking and gang violence. More than 37,000 people have gone missing throughout Mexico because of this violence, with the highest number in the border state of Tamaulipas, through which many migrants cross.

 

Migrants relocated to New Shelter in Tijuana

WaPo: Several thousand people are now sleeping in tents and bedrolls at the government-run shelter formerly known as El Barretal. It was set up over the weekend after a sports complex where migrants had been staying became overrun by trash and raw sewage during days of heavy rain.

 

After losing court battle, Pentagon will send green-card holders to recruit training 

WaPo: The Pentagon will begin sending a backlog of thousands of green-card holders to recruit training, suspending a policy adopted by the Trump administration last year that required more-stringent background checks for some immigrants wanting to serve, according to two defense officials and an internal memo. See also: He’s a U.S. soldier deployed on the southern border — and an unlawful immigrant.

 

Court Defeat Leads DA to Change Tune on Jury-Trial Limits

CourthouseNews: Just a week after New York’s highest court found that the risk of deportation entitles noncitizens to jury trials on misdemeanor charges, the Bronx district attorney changed her tune Tuesday about seeking the U.S. Supreme Court’s review.

 

One Reason The US And Mexico Can’t Agree On Having Asylum-Seekers Wait In Mexico: The Trump Administration Itself Is Divided

Buzzfeed: The Justice Department wants asylum applicants turned away without any vetting of their claims. Homeland Security wants them screened for fears of staying in Mexico.

 

Death is waiting for him

WaPo: “Your honor, this is a difficult case,” Osorio told Judge John Bryant, asking to speed the process. “I represented their father, Santos Chirino Cruz. . . . I lost the case in this courtroom . . . . He was murdered in April.”

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

The Council and Other Immigrant Rights Organizations File Amicus Brief Arguing Acting AG Whitaker Lacks Authority to Decide Immigration Case

AIC: In Matter of Negusie, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions referred to himself the question of whether coercion and duress are relevant to the application of the immigration statute’s persecutor bar for individuals seeking asylum or withholding of removal. Sessions resigned as Attorney General before adjudicating the case. Following his resignation, President Trump designated Sessions’ chief of staff, Matthew G. Whitaker, as Acting Attorney General. The amicus brief argues that Mr. Whitaker lacks the authority to adjudicate Matter of Negusie, or any other immigration matter.

 

Acting AG Refers BIA Case to Himself and Invites Amicus Regarding “Particular Social Group” Membership

The Acting AG referred a BIA decision to himself for review whether an individual may establish persecution on account of membership in a “particular social group” based on membership in a family unit. Amicus briefs are due by 1/18/19. Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 494 (A.G. 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18120432

 

Acting AG Refers BIA Case to Himself and Invites Amicus Regarding Cancellation of Removal and Impact of Multiple DUIs

The Acting AG to review cancellation of removal eligibility and the impact of multiple convictions for driving while intoxicated or driving under the influence with regards to “good moral character.” Amicus briefs are due by 1/18/19. Matter of Castillo-Perez, 27 I&N Dec. 495 (A.G. 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18120437

 

BIA Holds North Dakota Statute Is Not a Crime of Child Abuse

Unpublished BIA decision holds that contributing to deprivation of a minor under N.D. Code 14-10-06(1) is not a crime of child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment because it prohibits allowing a minor to enter a liquor store. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Kuot, 12/6/17) AILA Doc. No. 18120509

 

CA1 Upholds IJ/BIA Denial for Lack of Corroborating Evidence to Support Otherwise Inconsistent Claims

The court held that substantial evidence supported IJ/BIA denial because petitioner failed to adequately corroborate vague and inconsistent testimony of past persecution with reasonably-available evidence. (Avelar-Gonzalez v. Whitaker, 11/15/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120435

 

CA1 Upholds BIA Denial of Untimely MTR for Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, Noting Failure of Due Diligence

The court held petitioner’s four and a half-year delay in filing MTR was failure to pursue case with the due diligence needed for equitable tolling and held it did not have jurisdiction to review due process claims not raised previously before BIA. (Pineda v. Whitaker, 11/19/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120436

 

CA3 Grants in Part and Denies in Part, Holds Child Pornography Conviction Per NJ Statute Is Not Aggravated Felony But Is Removable Ground of Child Abuse

The court overruled BIA, holding NJ Stat. Ann. 2C:24-4(b)(5)(b) is broader than its agg felony federal counterpart, but agreed with BIA that it matches federal (BIA) definition of “child abuse”; thus, petitioner is removable, but can request cancellation. (Salmoran v. Att’y Gen., 11/26/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120407

 

CA5 Affirms BIA’s Refusal to Reopen, Finds Petitioner Was Not Entitled to Actual Notice of Hearing and Failed to Rebut Presumption of Delivery

The court held BIA was not arbitrary in determining that because petitioner failed to correct address error on personally-served NTA, he was not entitled to actual notice; and that affidavit did not rebut presumption of delivery of unreturned NOH. (Mauricio-Benitez v. Sessions, 11/8/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120408

 

CA5 Vacates Deportation Order, Holds Petitioner Was a Naturalized Citizen—Not Alien—on Date of Conviction and Not Subject to Removal Statute

The court held BIA erred in misapplying §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) to a naturalized citizen at time of conviction; it found, per Costello, that a denaturalization could not retroactively make petitioner an “alien as matter of law” at time of conviction. (Okpala v. Whitaker, 11/15/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120409

 

CA6 Upholds Denial of Cancellation for a “Habitual Drunkard”; Rejects Void for Vagueness Due Process and Equal Protection Challenges to the Term

The court held petitioner does not have liberty interest in discretionary cancellation, thus, does not reach void for vagueness argument; it also held “habitual drunkard” is rationally related to “good moral character” and does not violate equal protection. (Tomaszczuk v. Whitaker, 11/20/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120410

 

CA9 Votes to Deny Petitions for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc for Class of Unrepresented Children in Removal Proceedings Claiming Right-to-Counsel

The court denied, pursuant to §1252(b)(9), the habeas petitions for a class of thousands of children seeking asylum, SIJS, or relief from removal who claim due process and statutory rights to appointed counsel during their removal hearings. (J.E.F.M. v. Whitaker, 11/13/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120411

 

CA9 Upholds BIA Denial of Cancellation, Finds Bribery a CIMT and “CIMT” Not Unconstitutionally Vague

The court held that bribery under 18 USC §666(a)(2) categorically matches federal definition of CIMT; it also held that “CIMT” is not unconstitutionally vague per Jordan and Tseung-Chu. (Martinez-de Ryan v. Whitaker, 11/16/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120412

 

CA9 Denies Government’s Motion for Stay of Restraining Order Enjoining Interim Final Rule on Asylum Claims

The court denied the government’s motion for a stay of the district court’s temporary restraining order enjoining the government from implementing the 11/9/18 interim final rule on asylum claims along the southern border. (East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, 12/7/18) AILA Doc. No. 18121000

 

Case Challenging Interim Final Rule on Asylum Claims at the Southern Border

The Ninth Circuit issued an order denying the government’s motion for a stay of the district court’s 11/19/18 temporary restraining order enjoining the government from implementing the 11/9/18 interim final rule on asylum claims along the southern border. The court wrote that it “agree[s] with the district court that the Rule is likely inconsistent with existing United States law.” (East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, 12/7/18) AILA Doc. No. 18110942.

 

NY App. Div. 2d Dept. Grants Habeas, Holds State/Local Law Enforcement Not Authorized by NY Law to Make Arrests for Civil Immigration Violations

The court held that sheriff’s additional 48-hour detention of a released prisoner pursuant to ICE detainer/warrant constituted a new arrest and sheriff did not have authority per NY law to effectuate such arrest for a civil immigration violation. (Francis v. DeMarco, 11/14/18) AILA Doc. No. 18120413

 

AILA and the Council Submit Amicus Brief Challenging BIA Decision on Motions to Reopen

AILA and the American Immigration Council submitted an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit’s Amaya v. Whitaker, challenging the BIA decision that the reinstatement statute bars all motions to reopen. AILA Doc. No. 18120406

 

U.S. Representatives Send Letter to President Trump on “Remain in Mexico” Policy

On 11/30/18, Representatives Meng (D-NY), Price (D-NC), and Castro (D-TX) sent a letter to President Trump urging him to stop negotiations with incoming President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on the “remain in Mexico” plan for asylum seekers. AILA Doc. No. 18120333

 

Announcements of ICE Enforcement Actions

ICE arrested 105 individuals during a five-day period in New Jersey. AILA Doc. No. 17041232

 

EOIR Data

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, December 10, 2018

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Friday, December 7, 2018

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Monday, December 3, 2018

 

AILA NEWS UPDATE

http://www.aila.org/advo-media/news/clips

 

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

Elizabeth’s first item reminds us of the cruelty and stupidity of the Trump Administration. Rather than working with the UNHCR, NGOs, and the international community to solve the humanitarian problem of refugees fleeing the Northern Triangle, the Administration continues to focus on petty and likely illegal steps to “further shaft” vulnerable asylum seekers. Certainly not America’s finest moment. Not to mention that the Administration’s racist driven, unilateral, “enforcement only” approach to humanitarian flows of migrants is not solving the problem (in fact, making it worse) and is also losing in the Article III Courts on a regular basis.

It’s what we referred to in Government as “fraud, waste, and abuse!”

PWS

12-10-18

Related posts:

  1. BIA SEEKS TO REPEAL CAT BY MISINTERPRETATION; MUSALO’S FACT FINDING MISSION TO EL SALVADOR SHOWS MALICIOUS ABSURDITY OF REGIME’S BOGUS “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY” ASSAULT ON HUMAN RIGHTS; 9th & 11th CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO TANK ON THE RULE OF LAW; & OTHER LEGAL NEWS ABOUT THE WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME & THE RESISTANCE — The Gibson Report — 12-10-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group
  2. THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-13-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group
  3. DAG ROSENSTEIN INADVERTENTLY MAKES COMPELLING ARGUMENT FOR INDEPENDENT ARTICLE I U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT IN SPEECH TO NEW JUDGES — Places Emphasis On Executive, Fealty To Attorney General, Not Independence. Impartiality, & Insuring Due Process! — REAL “Courts” Don’t Answer to Prosecutors!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

THE HILL: MORE FROM NOLAN ON ASYLUM AT THE BORDER

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/419492-most-recent-court-order-on-immigration-will-have-serious-unintended

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Immigration advocacy organizations filed a motion asking a U.S. District Court in Northern California to stop the rule from going into effect.

The parties agreed that the proclamation did not render any alien ineligible for asylum. District Judge Jon S. Tigar found, therefore, that the case did not present the question of whether section 212(f) authorizes the president to directly limit asylum eligibility, so he did not include the proclamation in his decision.

This was a mistake. Although the proclamation doesn’t say that it is making the illegal crossers ineligible for asylum, it prevents them from getting relief of any kind that would allow them to enter the United States.

Judge Tigar granted a temporary restraining order which prohibits any action to continue the implementation of the rule and requires a return to the pre-rule practices for processing asylum applications.

. . . .

Judge Tigar’s restoration of pre-rule practices for processing asylum applications means that the illegal crossers will not be prevented from establishing a credible fear of persecution in the expedited removal proceedings, which will entitle them to an asylum hearing before an immigration judge.

But the immigration judge will have to deny their applications because asylum would permit then to enter the United States – and the proclamation bars their entry.

Moreover, the denial will make them statutorily ineligible for asylum if they file another asylum application later.

The first paragraph in the asylum provisions states that any alien who is physically present in the United States may apply for asylum, but the second paragraph provides three exceptions.

One of the exceptions states that asylum is not available to an alien who has filed a previous application that was denied, unless he can show a change in circumstances which materially affects his eligibility for asylum.

The rule that Judge Tigar suspended would have avoided this problem by preventing the asylum seekers from getting to a hearing before an immigration judge at which their applications would be denied.

It is possible that when the proclamation is terminated, a court will find that the termination materially affects asylum eligibility and therefore that the bar to future asylum applications no longer applies.

But the third paragraph provides that no court shall have jurisdiction to review any determination on the exceptions. The courts, therefore, will not be able to reinstate asylum eligibility on this or on any other basis.

It will be up to Trump to decide whether aliens whose applications are denied on account of the proclamation will be able to file another asylum application when the proclamation is lifted.

Indefinite detention

Illegal crossers, however, may be able to avoid persecution by applying for withholding of removal.

Relief under the withholding provision just prohibits sending an alien to a country where it is more likely than not that he would be persecuted. Consequently, withholding would not violate the entry prohibition in the proclamation.

The relief would apply only to the alien who is at risk of being persecuted. It would not include his spouse or children.

The proclamation, nevertheless, would be a serious problem for aliens who are granted withholding. It would prevent them from being released from detention while arrangements are being made to find a suitable country that is willing to take them, and that may not even be possible, depending on the case.

Asylum seekers who go to ports of entry instead of making an illegal crossing are experiencing problems. Nevertheless, it might be wise to try at least some of the ports of entry before resorting to an illegal crossing.

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

Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article.

I’m not aware that anyone at DHS or EOIR has actually taken the legal position that Nolan has outlined. If they did, I would expect ACLU to have them instantly back before Judge Tigar on a contempt of court motion.

Also, that this theory hasn’t been pursued  before Judge Tigar would make it unlikely that it would be argued before the Supremes, assuming that the case eventually winds up there (which I don’t). I do concede, however, that because the “Supremes are supreme” they basically can do whatever they want, including pursuing theories not argued or decided below. Most of the time, however, they prefer a more judicially (and politically) prudent approach.

I agree with Nolan’s bottom line that notwithstanding the inconvenience and the apparent slowdown by the Administration in asylum processing, asylum applicants would be well advised to patiently and peacefully wait in line to pursue their applications at ports of entry. There are also several cases pending which ultimately could provide some  relief from both the intentional slowdown of processing at the ports of entry, and the skewing of the credible fear process against applicants from the Northern Triangle.

Stay tuned.

PWS

12-07-18

 

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)
  2. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

“CLOWN COURT:” NOT SO FUNNY WHEN THE SENTENCE IS DEATH — Administration’s Policies Aim At Making Already Broken System More Unfair, Arbitrary, Deadly!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/asylum-deported-ms-13-honduras/?utm_term=.28c1c97d4da9&wpisrc=nl_buzz&wpmm=1

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

On the day he pleaded for his life in federal immigration court, Santos Chirino lifted his shirt and showed his scars.

Judge Thomas Snow watched the middle-aged construction worker on a big-screen television in Arlington, Va., 170 miles away from the immigration jail where Chirino was being held.

In a shaky voice, Chirino described the MS-13 gang attack that had nearly killed him, his decision to testify against the assailants in a Northern Virginia courtroom and the threats that came next. His brother’s windshield, smashed. Strangers snapping their photos at a restaurant. A gang member who said they were waiting for him in Honduras.

“I’m sure they are going to kill me,” Chirino, a married father of two teenagers, told the judge.

It was 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, and Chirino was seeking special permission to remain in the United States. His fate lay with Snow, one of hundreds of administrative judges working for the U.S. Justice Department’s clogged immigration courts.

Their task has become more urgent, and more difficult, under President Trump as the number of asylum requests has soared and the administration tries to clear the backlog and close what the president calls legal loopholes.

In the process, the White House is narrowing the path to safety for migrants in an asylum system where it’s never been easy to win.

Snow believed Chirino was afraid to return to Honduras. But the judge ruled that he could not stay in the United States.

Nearly a year after he was deported, his 18-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son arrived in the Arlington immigration court for their own asylum hearing. They were accompanied by their father’s lawyer, Benjamin Osorio.

“Your honor, this is a difficult case,” Osorio told Judge John Bryant, asking to speed the process. “I represented their father, Santos Chirino Cruz. . . . I lost the case in this courtroom . . . . He was murdered in April.”

When Osorio paused, the judge blanched and stammered.

“You said their father’s case — did I understand I heard [it]?” Bryant asked, eyes wide.

“No,” Osorio said. “In this court. Not before your honor.”

“Well good, because — all right, my blood pressure can go down now,” Bryant said. “Yeah. I mean. Okay.”

The immigration courts declined a request for comment from Snow. But in an essay published in USA Today — after Chirino was deported but before he was killed — the judge said deportation cases could be heartbreaking.

“Sometimes, there is not much to go on other than the person’s own testimony,” he wrote. “Yet this is not a decision we want to get wrong. I’ve probably been fooled and granted asylum to some who didn’t deserve it. I hope and pray I have not denied asylum to some who did.”

Santos Chirino was killed in April 2017 after he was denied asylum and deported.

Sitting in judgment

Chirino’s daughter and son, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety, are among 750,000 immigrants facing deportation in the U.S. immigration courts. A growing number, like Chirino and his family, say they would be in grave danger back home.

A decade ago, 1 in 100 border crossers was seeking asylum or humanitarian relief, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Now it’s 1 in 3. The intensifying caseload — nearly 120,000 asylum cases filed last year alone, four times the number in 2014 — has upped the pressure on one of America’s most secret and controversial court systems.

Judges say they must handle “death-penalty” cases in a traffic court setting, with inadequate budgets and grueling caseloads. Most records aren’t public, most defendants don’t speak English and many don’t have lawyers to represent them. Cases often involve complex tales of rape, torture and murder. Approval rates can vary widely.

The Trump administration has imposed production quotas and ordered judges to close cases more quickly. They also must enforce a stricter view on who deserves protection in the United States.

Under federal immigration law, fear isn’t enough to keep someone from being deported. Asylum applicants must prove they are a target based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, which for years has included being a victim of gang or domestic violence.

Before he was forced to resign Nov. 7 , Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that victims of gangs or domestic abuse generally would not qualify for asylum. He told a crop of new immigration judges that “the vast majority” of claims are invalid, and warned them not to rule based on a sense of “sympathy.”

“Your job is to apply the law — even in tough cases,” Sessions said.

Immigration Judge Lawrence Burman, the secretary-treasurer of the National Association of Immigration Judges , said “there’s a lot of unfairness” that could result from Trump’s crackdown. “We sometimes send people back to situations where they’re going to be killed,” said Burman, who serves at the Arlington immigration court. “Who wants to do that?”

The government doesn’t track what happens after asylum seekers and other immigrants are ordered deported. But Columbia University’s Global Migration Project recently tracked more than 60 people killed or harmed after being deported.

Judges’ powers are limited, immigration lawyers say, by outdated asylum laws that were designed to protect people from repressive governments rather than gangs or other threats. In Central America, many migrants flee towns where gangs and drug cartels are in control, not the government. If migrants don’t meet the strict definition of an asylee, judges must send them back to dangerous situations.

“It can be depressing. We’ve had judges quit because of that . . . or they just couldn’t stand it anymore,” Burman said. “You have to fit into a strict category, and if you don’t fit into a category, then you can’t get asylum, even if your life is in danger.”

Grafitti with a scratched-out MS-13 gang tag, near the home of Santos Chirino’s family in Virginia. Translated, the graffiti says, “If you are not of the [MS], don’t speak to me.”

‘Best of luck to you and your family’

At Chirino’s asylum hearing, Snow gently urged him to slow down as he testified from Farmville Detention Center in Virginia over the immigration court’s often glitchy version of Skype.

Osorio laid out evidence that his client’s life was in danger, according to an audio recording of the hearing. He explained how MS-13 gang members had stabbed Chirino with a screwdriver at a soccer game in Northern Virginia in 2002, and his testimony had helped send them to jail. At least one man was deported to Honduras. Now the U.S. government was trying to expel Chirino for his role in a 2015 bar fight, which he said started when gang members there snapped his photo.

Chirino told Snow he believed the police could protect him if he stayed in the United States. Osorio said gang members could easily “finish the job that they started” in Honduras, where gang violence is rampant and most serious crimes are never solved. Chirino’s friends and relatives echoed that belief in letters to the court. “Death is waiting for him,” wrote his uncle, Felipe Chirino, in Honduras.

“He can never go back,” wrote his brother, Jose Chirino, in Virginia.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutor Elizabeth Dewar expressed skepticism that Chirino was really in danger after so many years away from Honduras. Noting that Chirino never reported the threats against him to the police, she told Snow: “Those aren’t the actions of someone that is in fear for their life.”

Santos Chirino explains why he’s afraid to go back to Honduras
6:21

After more than two hours in court, Snow was unsure. Immigration judges often dictate their decisions immediately after a hearing. But Snow, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said cases increasingly were too complex for that, and he didn’t want to “rush this one through.”

“I’ll do it as quickly as I can,” he told the lawyers.

“Sir?” He turned to Chirino on the television screen. “There are some complicated issues and I feel to be fair to you I need to do a written decision. . . .

“Either way, no matter how the case goes, it’s unlikely I’ll see you again. So best of luck to you and your family in the future.”

Snow’s options were limited by a technicality. Chirino could not qualify for full asylum because he failed to apply for the protection within a year of arriving in the United States or soon after the gang attack.

But the judge could still halt Chirino’s deportation temporarily, under either the Immigration and Nationality Act or the Convention Against Torture, because of the danger he would face in Honduras.

Unlike asylum, those protections do not lead to U.S. citizenship. They also are much harder to grant. Applicants must prove that there’s a “clear probability” of harm — at least 51 percent. To win asylum, in contrast, they must prove there is a 10 percent chance they’ll be harmed if they are deported.

In a ruling three months later, Snow wrote that Chirino fell short of the high standard the law required: He hadn’t proved that MS-13 would find him in Honduras, or that they were even looking for him.

“The Court is sympathetic to the risks facing the respondent,” Snow wrote. But the evidence, he said, was “insufficient to support a clear probability” that he’d be killed.

‘Should I have pitched it a different way?’: Lawyer reflects on Santos Chirino’s asylum case

Osorio urged Chirino to appeal. The construction worker told Osorio that he couldn’t stand being locked up. Chirino paced the closet-like meeting room where they met and sobbed through the glass when his family visited. Some detainees — especially hardened criminals — can withstand the months or years of detention it takes to win their cases, immigration attorneys say. Others unravel. Their hair falls out, they lose weight. Some have committed suicide.

When Chirino gave up, Osorio felt so disheartened he offered to represent his children free.

Chirino was deported Aug. 26, 2016. His brother Belarmino, also convicted in the bar fight, had been sent back a month earlier.

Their parents’ home became a different kind of jail.

“I fear for my life on a daily basis,” Chirino wrote in an affidavit to support his children’s cases, explaining that he rarely went outside. He said MS-13 would probably kill his children if they returned to Honduras “because they are part of my family.”

On April 9, 2017 — Chirino’s 38th birthday — he decided to venture out, relatives said. He loved soccer, and in Virginia he used to play on a team named after his hometown.

He and Belarmino went to the city of Nacaome to watch a game. After they arrived, family members said, the air filled with popping sounds and screams.

Chirino was found in a red Toyota pickup, shot in the throat. His brother was on the ground, near a rock allegedly used to bash him in the head. Police recovered five bullet casings.

Relatives called Chirino’s wife and children with news of the deaths. Then his daughter phoned Osorio’s office, screaming.

The lawyer instructed her to gather the death certificates, police documents and gruesome photos that had been posted to a Honduran news website. He said he would use them as evidence for the teens’ asylum cases. And he wrote a letter to Snow, with the gory documents attached.

“Santos was murdered by purported gang members,” Osorio wrote. “Santos was telling the truth.”

The official record on the brothers’ murders remains unclear. Relatives said the brothers were attacked by gang members. But an initial police report provided by the family said people had been drinking and a fight ensued.

Honduran officials did not respond to multiple requests for information about the case.

Santos Chirino’s daughter, above, and son were brought to the United States in 2014 as threats against the family began to escalate. They are seeking asylum and are waiting for their case to be heard in Arlington immigration court.

An uncertain future

Four months after the killings, Chirino’s children arrived for a scheduling hearing in Bryant’s courtroom in Arlington. Unlike their father, they appeared in person beside Osorio, sinking uneasily into the cushioned chairs.

The siblings were raised by their grandparents in Honduras. In 2014, as threats against his family continued to escalate, Chirino and his wife brought the children to the United States.

Chirino wouldn’t let his daughter take an after-school job, telling her to study hard so she could one day become a nurse.

Now she and her brother were facing deportation too.

“I want to extend my deepest sympathy upon the death of your father,” Bryant told the siblings, after Osorio explained what had happened. “My father died many, many years ago . . . I understand how painful that is.”

“It is even more painful because of the manner in which your father died,” he added, as Chirino’s daughter wiped her eyes.

Bryant scheduled a full deportation hearing for March 2018. A snowstorm postponed it. The judge’s next available date was in 2020.

Immigration lawyer explains Santos Chirino’s death in court
1:41

Osorio says it is unclear how the Trump administration’s recent changes in asylum policy will affect the siblings’ cases. But the answer could come sooner than expected.

On Nov. 24, Chirino’s son, who had recently turned 21, was charged in Loudoun County with public intoxication and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Police had stopped the car he was riding in and arrested the driver for speeding and other charges.

After posting bail on the misdemeanor charges, Chirino’s son was transferred to Farmville, where his father had been held. ICE released him on bond, his sister said. Osorio is waiting to hear whether a new immigration hearing will be scheduled for him.

The attorney says he will do everything possible to ensure that the young man and his sister can remain in the United States. Their mother, Chirino’s widow, has kidney disease and is on dialysis, hoping for a transplant. Her condition is one of the factors Osorio plans to raise in court.

He has won other asylum cases since Chirino’s death, victories he describes as bittersweet.

“And this is what haunts me,” he emailed late one night. “Did I leave something laying on the table? Or is that just the dumb luck of our system, that in a different court, with a different judge and a different prosecutor, you get an entirely different outcome based on supposedly the same law?”

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

Go to the link for pictures by Carolyn Van Houten, recordings from the actual hearing, and an interview with Attorney Benjamin Osorio.

This happened during the last Administration at Arlington. Arlington is rightfully considered to be one of the best U.S. Immigration Courts with fair, scholarly, courageous judges who generally have been able to resist political pressure from above to cut corners and “send enforcement messages.” I saw nothing in this article to change that impression.

The decency, humanity, courage, and competency under pressure of judges like Judge John M. Bryant and Judge Lawrence O. Burman also comes through. That’s what the system should be promoting and attracting (but isn’t). Maria also movingly portrays the anguish and self-examination of a smart, caring, competent, hard-working immigration attorney like Benjamin Osorio.

But, even in Arlington, we all recognized that we were operating under less than ideal conditions that increased the likelihood of life-threatening mistakes and miscarriages of justice.  And, even before Trump and Sessions, we were constrained by unduly restrictive interpretations of asylum law and intentional docket manipulation by DOJ politicos intended to reduce the number of asylum grants, prevent “the floodgates from opening,” and “send enforcement messages.” All of these are highly improper roles for what is supposed to be a Due Process focused, fair, and impartial court system.

Sadly, situations like Maria describes can’t always be prevented. I know Judge Snow to be a fair, scholarly, and conscientious jurist who always is aware of and considers the human implications of his decisions, as all of us did at Arlington. This comes through in the quote from his article in USA Today highlighted by Maria above.

If things like this happened in Arlington before Trump and Sessions, it certainly raises the question of what’s happening elsewhere right now. In some other Immigration Courts some judges are well-known for their enforcement bias, thin knowledge, and lack of professionalism.

Rather than instituting necessary reforms to restore Due Process, recognize migrants’ rights, require professionalism, and make judges showing anti-asylum, anti-female, and anti-migrant biases accountable, under Trump the Department of Justice has gone in exactly the opposite direction. “Worst practices” have been instituted, precedents and rules promoting fairness for asylum applicants reversed, judges encouraged to misapply asylum law to produce more denials and removals, the BIA turned into a rubber stamp for enforcement, and judges showing pro-DHS and anti-migrant bias insulated from accountability and empowered to crank out more decisions that deny Due Process.

One of the most despicable of the many despicable and dishonest things that Jeff Sessions did was to minimize and mock the stresses put on the  respondents, their conscientious lawyers, the judges, the court staff, and the DHS litigation staff by the system he was maladministering. While a decent human being and a competent Attorney General could and should have dealt with these honestly with an eye toward working cooperatively with all concerned to build a better, fairer, less stressful system, Sessions intentionally did the opposite. He insulted lawyers, made biased, unethical statements to Immigration Judges, hurled racially inspired false narratives at asylum applicants and migrants, manipulated and stacked the law against asylum applicants, artificially “jacked up” backlogs, and ratcheted up the stress levels on the judges by demeaning them with “production quotas.” (Other than that, he was a great guy.)

Contrary to what Jeff Sessions said, being a U.S. Immigration Judge is one of the toughest judicial jobs out there, requiring a very healthy dose of sympathy, empathy, and compassion, in addition to critical examination of claims under a legal framework and our Constitution.

I had to remove some individuals I found to be in danger because I couldn’t fit them into any of the protections available under law. But, it certainly made me uncomfortable. I did it only reluctantly after exploring all possible options including, in some cases, “pushing” ICE to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in some humanitarian situations. That’s what “real judging” is about, not the simplistic, de-humanized, mechanized assembly line enforcement function falsely promoted by Sessions.

We should be concerned about laws and interpretations that fail to protect lives. We should be working hard to insure, to the maximum extent possible, that we save lives rather than returning folks to death. We must insure that no biased, unethical, and unprincipled person like Jeff Sessions ever gets personal control of this important court system in the future.

Instead, the Trump Administration is working overtime to guarantee more miscarriages of justice, violate international laws, and achieve more preventable deaths of innocent folks. We should all be deeply ashamed of what America has become under Trump.

PWS

12-06-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Trump, DHS Promise, “Reign Of Terror” Directed At Families In Ethnic Communities — “Orphaning” U.S. Citizen Children And/Or Feeding Them & Other Vulnerable Kids To MS-13 & Other Gangs As “Fresh Meat” America’s New Objectives! — But, The Law & Reality Could Be Problems For Trump & His Sycophants @ ICE!
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

THE GIBSON REPORT – 12-03-18 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group – Learn About Trump’s Self-Created “Bogus Border Crisis!”

THE GIBSON REPORT – 12-03-18 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group – Learn About Trump’s Self-Created “Bogus Border Crisis!”

 

TOP UPDATES

Trump designates Dec. 5 as National Day of Mourning for President George H.W. Bush, federal offices to close

It’s unclear what this means for EOIR and USCIS at this time with mixed reports.

The US has made migrants at the border wait months to apply for asylum. Now the dam is breaking.

Vox: Before 2016, and in some cases as recently as six months ago, they would have had no problem and no delay. But for the last several months, the Trump administration has made a practice of limiting the number of asylum seekers allowed to enter the US each day — a policy it calls “metering.”

 

Incoming Mexican president faces immediate border test

Politico: The new Mexican government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador will press the United States to invest least $20 billion in Central America and, reportedly, faster asylum processing in exchange for allowing migrants to remain in Mexico while they seek refugee status in the U.S.

Caravan women launch hunger strike, putting pressure on U.S. and Mexico

Politico: A group of migrant women in the caravan announced Thursday that it would begin a hunger strike to protest the slow pace at which the women are being allowed to apply for asylum, as officials from the United States and Mexico are set to meet this weekend to negotiate a plan to process their claims.

 

U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Total Dips to Lowest Level in a Decade

Pew: The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on 2016 government data. The decline is due almost entirely to a sharp decrease in the number of Mexicans entering the country without authorization.

 

The key reason why Central Americans don’t want asylum in Mexico

Quartz: Mexican immigration authorities are even less prepared than the US to process them. The Mexican agency charged with helping refugees, COMAR by its Spanish acronym, only has four offices, and none near the border. Earlier this year, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission warned of the “possible collapse” of the country’s refugee protection system as COMAR’s backlog grew to 60% of applications. It also identified “situations of risk of torture and abuse” in immigrant detention centers, which it found had no adequate living conditions or access to medical attention.

 

ICE Threatens ‘Likely Increase’ of Immigration Raids in New Jersey

NBC: The federal agency’s threat came a day after the New Jersey attorney general announced new restrictions on local law enforcement cooperation with ICE.

Successes at One Year and Expanding the Movement for Universal Representation

Vera: The Vera Institute of Justice is excited to announce that we are expanding our Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Network –  currently a diverse group of a dozen cities and counties across America dedicated to providing publicly funded universal representation for people facing deportation.

 

Senate panel delays vote on Trump pick to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement

WaPo: A key Senate committee postponed a vote Wednesday on President Trump’s pick to lead the main agency handling immigration enforcement as a coalition of unions raised “serious concern” about Ronald D. Vitiello’s ability to effectively oversee the agency.

 

Immigrant rights groups find Trump is their best fundraiser

CBS: The American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed more than 50 immigrants’ rights lawsuits against the Trump administration, recorded its most successful #GivingTuesday in years. That wasn’t just the case just for the ACLU. This year’s day for charitable giving was the biggest ever, raking in nearly $400 million in donations online in the U.S. alone, according to the 92nd Street Y.

 

Campaign is under way to close Alabama facility routinely identified by advocates and detainees as one of the worst in US

Guardian: Housed in the Gadsden county jail since the late 1990s, the gray slab of concrete that is the Etowah Detention Center, is routinely identified by lawyers, advocates and detainees as one of the worst Ice facilities in the United States. It has one of the longest detention times of all Ice facilities.

 

USCIS FY 2019 budget

In what appears to be a new development, Page 71 of the USCIS FY 2019 budget indicates that USCIS wants to transfer “$207.6 million in Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) fees to ICE to support immigration investigation and enforcement.”

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Deportation may be worse than jail, a court just ruled. Why that’s a big deal.

WaPo: New York’s highest court boldly ruled Tuesday that deportation may be a more severe consequence than even a few months behind bars. The divided decision created a situation in which two individuals charged with the same low-level offense have vastly different trial rights — a noncitizen is entitled to a jury trial, while a U.S. citizen is not. [Note: This is obviously being appealed.]

Baltimore sues Trump administration over legal immigrants’ access to public benefits

WaPo: The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration’s expanded definition of “public charges” has had a chilling effect on the city’s immigrant community, which Baltimore officials see as key to its revival. Legal immigrants have stopped using school programs, food subsidies, housing vouchers and health clinics for which they are eligible, the lawsuit says, hurting the city’s mission to welcome immigrants and creating long-term expenses as Baltimore deals with a sicker and less-educated community.

 

US sued for $60 million after infant in detention later died

AP: Juarez’s lawyers said Mariee developed a respiratory illness while she and her mother were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. They accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of releasing the pair while Mariee was still sick.

The National Vetting Center Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Working Group Releases Its Charter

Approved National Vetting Center Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Working Group Charter, established pursuant to National Security Presidential Memorandum-9, “Optimizing the Use of Federal Government Information in Support of the National Vetting Enterprise,” dated February 6, 2018. AILA Doc. No. 18112870

CBP Commissioner Issues Statement on Closing of San Ysidro Port Due to Caravan

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan conducted a call with media and released his opening remarks, “We will continue to monitor the situation closely. And while we seek to maintain lawful trade and travel to the maximum extent, we will be prepared to close San Ysidro again if….”AILA Doc. No. 18112762

 

DHS Issues Statement on San Ysidro Port of Entry Closure

DHS Secretary Nielsen issued a statement after CBP closed the San Ysidro port of entry on 11/25/18, stating “As I have continually stated, DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons.” AILA Doc. No. 18112734

 

Deaths at Adult Detention Centers

Continually updated list of press releases issued by ICE announcing deaths in adult immigration detention. AILA Doc. No. 16050900

 

CBP Describes Logistics of Operation Secure Line

CBP released information on the role that the American military troops plays with CBP along the United States/Mexico border. AILA Doc. No. 18112831

 

USCIS Provides Q&As from Teleconference on Continued Expansion of NTA Policy Guidance

USCIS provided Q&As from a 11/15/18 teleconference on the continued expansion of the implementation process of the 6/28/18 NTA memorandum. AILA Doc. No. 18110836

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

ImmProf

 

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Friday, November 30, 2018

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Monday, November 26, 2018

 

AILA NEWS UPDATE

http://www.aila.org/advo-media/news/clips

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

I draw your attention to Elizabeth’s “Item 2” which is a lengthy, outstanding article by Dara Lind of Vox News on the fake, self-created “Trump Border Crisis.”

The only quibble I have with Dara’s article is the suggestion that there might be a need for more detention space. I say BS! Unquestionably, by working together with the UNHCR, the Mexican Government, and NGOs such as the ACLU, KIND, and the ABA, the DHS could find suitable placements for individuals waiting for credible fear interviews once they had passed a basic screening and background check.

Indeed, one of the key findings of a recent TRAC Report on Immigration Court Asylum Decisions is that 98.6% of asylum seekers appear in court for their decisions, win or lose! http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/539/ This stands in sharp contrast to the false claims by the Administration and its “bureaucratic mouthpieces” that asylum seekers “bolt” once they get into the country.

When given access to competent legal assistance and a chance to understand both the system and their obligations, almost all appear. Clearly, the Administration should be working with the private sector to get asylum seekers represented rather than undertaking cruel and overall futile and wasteful efforts to detain, deter, and punish them.

And how about some truthful narratives, rather than the bogus ones taken right out of the right-wing restrictionist playbook? Again, it’s past time for some Congressional oversight and accountability for the many falsehoods about immigration purveyed not only by the Trump politicos (like Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, et al.) but also by career officials who should know better. Indeed, in many cases, such as TPS and the Travel Ban, the Administration’s bogus narratives directly and demonstrably contradict the Government’s own information and recommendations by career officials with expertise in the areas. This shameful abuse of our civil service system and its expertise by biased, prejudiced, and unqualified politicos must stop.

And, as always, thanks Elizabeth for all you do for the New Due Process Army!

PWS

12-03-18

 

Related posts:

  1. THE GIBSON REPORT — 04-09-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Project — Why Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan Should End Up In Jail If He Follows Trump’s Unlawful & Unconstitutional Plans!
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-13-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group
  4. BIA SEEKS TO REPEAL CAT BY MISINTERPRETATION; MUSALO’S FACT FINDING MISSION TO EL SALVADOR SHOWS MALICIOUS ABSURDITY OF REGIME’S BOGUS “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY” ASSAULT ON HUMAN RIGHTS; 9th & 11th CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO TANK ON THE RULE OF LAW; & OTHER LEGAL NEWS ABOUT THE WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME & THE RESISTANCE — The Gibson Report — 12-10-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION “POLICIES” ARE BASED ON RACISM, CRUELTY, LIES, & KNOWINGLY FALSE NARRATIVES — THE GOP HAS SOMETIMES ENCOURAGED, & OTHER TIMES ENABLED, THESE OUTRAGES AGAINST HUMANITY & THE RULE OF LAW — Now Some Accountability For These Despicable Actions Are On the Horizon!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/11/28/the-true-depths-of-trumps-cruelty-are-about-to-be-exposed/

Greg Sargent writes for the WashPost:

The House GOP’s near-total abdication of any oversight role has done more than just shield President Trump on matters involving his finances and Russian collusion. It has also resulted in almost no serious scrutiny of the true depths of cruelty, inhumanity and bad-faith rationalization driving important aspects of Trump’s policyagenda — in particular, on his signature issue of immigration.

That’s about to change.

In an interview with me, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee vowed that when Democrats take over in January, they will undertake thorough and wide-ranging scrutiny of the justifications behind — and executions of — the top items in Trump’s immigration agenda, from the family separations, to the thinly veiled Muslim ban, to the handling of the current turmoil involving migrants at the border.

“We will visit the border,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who is expected to chair the committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security, told me. “We will hold hearings in committee on any and all aspects of DHS. … We will not back off of this issue.”

This oversight — which could result in calling for testimony from Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — will include scrutiny of the administration’s justifications for its policies. Importantly, Thompson tells me Democrats will seek to grill officials on what went into Trump’s public statements on various aspects of the issue, many of which are falsehoods.

On asylum seekers, for instance, Trump’s public rationale for his various efforts to restrict their ability to apply (which is their legal right), is based on lies about the criminal threat they supposedly pose and absurd exaggerations about the rates at which they don’t show up for hearings.

Migrant caravan crisis escalates with tear gas at border fence

U.S. authorities fired tear gas at members of a Central American migrant caravan who had rushed the fencing along the U.S. border with Mexico on Nov. 25. (Video: Drea Cornejo , Blair Guild/Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters/The Washington Post)

To be clear, Trump has used these rationales to justify actual policies with real-world impact, such as the effort to cruelly restrict asylum-applications to only official points of entry. Trump has also threatened a total border shutdown. Hearings could reveal that the justifications are nonsense, and spotlight their true arbitrary and cruel nature (putting aside for now that their real motive is ethno-nationalism).

“All this innuendo we hear about criminals coming in the caravan, we just want to know, how did you validate this?” Thompson told me, adding that DHS officials would be called on in hearings to account for Trump’s claims. “Policy has to be backed up with evidence. So we will do rigorous oversight.”

This will also include a look at the recent tear-gassing of migrants, and the administration’s public statements about it and justifications, Thompson said. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the fact that tear gas appears to have impacted children by claiming they were used as “human shields.”

The use of the military as a prop

Thompson said such scrutiny could dovetail with an examination of Trump’s use of the military at the border as campaign propaganda, though that might involve the House Armed Services Committee. “We have to get full disclosure in a public setting or a classified setting,” Thompson said. “Under no circumstances will we not get information.”

By the way: Even if you take some of Trump’s complaints about asylum seeking seriously — there are serious issues with backlogs that have real consequences — you should want this oversight. If done well, it could shed light on actual problems, such as the role of the administration’s deliberate delays in processing asylum seekers in creating the current border mess, to the real need to reorganize the bureaucracy to relieve backlogs and to pursue regional solutions to the root causes of migration surges.

The overall goal, Thompson said, will be this: “As a nation of immigrants ourselves, we want to make sure that our process of immigration that includes asylum-seekers is constitutional and represents American values.”

Family separations and the travel ban

Thompson told me the committee would also look at the process leading up to the travel ban, which proceeded despite the fact that two internal Homeland Security analyses undercut its national security rationale.

Democrats can demand that DHS officials justify that policy. “What did you use to come up with this travel ban? How did you select these countries?” Thompson said, previewing the inquiry and vowing subpoenas if necessary. “We will ask for any written documentation that went towards putting the ban in place, what individuals were consulted, and what the process consisted of.”

Thompson also said the run-up to the implementation of the family separation policy and its rationale would receive similar scrutiny, as well as at the conditions under which children have been held, such as the reported Texas “tent city.” “Somebody is going to have to come in and tell us, ‘Is this the most efficient way to manage the situation?’” Thompson said. But also: “How did we get here in the first place?”

What can Democrats do?

One big question: What will House Democrats do legislatively against such policies? Thompson told me the goal is to secure cooperation with DHS, but in cases where the agency continues policies that Democrats deem terribly misguided or serious abuses, they can try to legislate against them. That would run headlong into Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate, at which point one could see discussion of targeted defunding of certain policies, though whether that will happen or what that might look like remains to be seen.

“As far as I’m concerned, no option is off the table,” Thompson said. Some more moderate House Democrats who won tougher districts might balk at such a stance, but Thompson said: “Every committee has responsibilities, and we have to carry them out.”

The big story here is that Trump has relied on the outright dismissal of his own administration’s factual determinations to justify many policies, not just on immigration, but also with his drive to weaken efforts to combat global warming despite the big report warning of the dire threats it poses.

The administration will strenuously resist Democratic oversight, and I don’t want to overstate what it can accomplish. But House Democrats must at least try to get into the fight against Trump’s war on facts and empiricism wherever possible. And when it comes to the humanitarian crises Trump has wrought on immigration, this is particularly urgent.

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

Finally, some much-needed, long-overdue accountability, fact-finding, and truth about Trump’s intentionally cruel and usually lawless immigration policies and those sycophants and toadies who implement them and egg him on. No, it won’t necessarily change things overnight. But, having some “pushback” and setting the factual record straight for further action is an important first step. And, I hope that the absolutely avoidable politically created mess in the U.S. Immigration Courts, and their disgraceful abandonment of Due Process as their sole focus, is high on the oversight list!

 

PWS

12-02-18

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

ETHICS FREE ZONE – DHS AND DOJ OFFICIALS & THEIR LAWYERS SIT AROUND DISCUSSING HOW BEST TO VIOLATE LAWS AND SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS — “‘Credible fear’ was created over 20 years ago to be the standard for those arriving and not deemed admissible. It was designed to be a low bar, as those at the border have just arrived, are often scared of government officials, are sometimes traumatized, usually don’t yet have legal counsel, and have very limited ability to gather evidence,” [Retired Immigration Judge] Chase told BuzzFeed News. “Imposing a higher standard for political purposes would be contrary to our treaty obligation to not return genuine refugees.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/trump-asylum-mexico-waiting-disagree

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News, quoting extensively from “Our Gang” Leader Hon. Jeffrey Chase:

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security and Justice Department officials are feuding over a controversial plan that would force asylum-seekers at the southwestern border to remain in Mexico until their cases are decided, according to sources close the administration.

Department of Justice officials have been pushing for asylum-seekers at the border to be immediately returned to Mexico as they arrive at the border, instead of first undergoing screening for fear of persecution or torture if they are not allowed in.

Department of Homeland Security officials want asylum-seekers screened for persecution, torture, and fear before being immediately returned to Mexico, to ensure that there are no serious concerns for their safety in Mexico.

The dispute highlights the fact that key details regarding the plan are still up in the air.

A Justice Department official said there was no dispute over the screening process but that the matter was under consideration between both agencies. The official said the discussion between the two US departments were “a normal part of the process.” DHS declined to comment.

Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge, said the dispute goes to the very heart of asylum law, which grants foreigners who otherwise would not be admissible the right to enter the country if they can show that they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they are returned to the country they came from.

“‘Credible fear’ was created over 20 years ago to be the standard for those arriving and not deemed admissible. It was designed to be a low bar, as those at the border have just arrived, are often scared of government officials, are sometimes traumatized, usually don’t yet have legal counsel, and have very limited ability to gather evidence,” Chase told BuzzFeed News. “Imposing a higher standard for political purposes would be contrary to our treaty obligation to not return genuine refugees.”

BuzzFeed News reported earlier this month that the administration had been considering such a plan and that discussions with Mexico had been ongoing. The Washington Post reported last week that a deal had been agreed upon with Mexico and that asylum-seekers would remain in that country while their cases were being adjudicated. But that story was later denied by Mexican officials, and the status of any talks is uncertain. A new administration takes office in Mexico on Saturday.

The proposal was first focused on individuals who come to a port of entry to request asylum but has since been extended to include those apprehended between border crossings as well, sources said.

The discussions appear to be a renewed effort to implement a directive first raised in an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in the early days of his administration in 2017. The Mexican government publicly rejected that plan, and the Trump administration made no effort to implement the president’s instructions.

In the executive order, Trump had directed the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to pursue the option. In a memo written by then-DHS chief John Kelly, officials were told to return individuals at the border “to the extent appropriate and reasonably practicable.” Kelly cited a statute that states that certain individuals can be sent back to the contiguous country they arrived from.

Advocates have said that implementation of such a measure would put families and migrants in danger and would be quickly challenged in court.

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

Well said, Jeffrey! There was a day, obviously in the past, when DOJ lawyers were concerned with assuring compliance with the law and applicable court decisions, rather than thinking of various ways to “push the envelope” by engaging in facially illegal, and certainly immoral, conduct. Hopefully, such evasion of both their oaths of office and ethical standards will be considered by future employers in the private sector.

The irony here is that with a different Administration in place, cooperation among the U.S., Mexico, and the UNHCR in ways that strengthened the Mexican asylum system, improved conditions for refugees and asylees in Mexico, encouraged regular refugee processing by both countries in or near the Northern Triangle, improved reception and processing for those at the U.S. border, and most important, constructively addressed the problems in the Northern Triangle forcing folks to flee would be a win-win-win-win for all involved.

The flow of refugees from the Northern Triangle is primarily a humanitarian, not a law enforcement situation.  Among other things, a humanitarian approach would promote advantages of applying in Mexico and reasons why it could be a rational choice for some asylum seekers; it would eschew illegal threats, cynically and intentionally created inhumane, even life-threatening, conditions, and improper sanctions to “deter” individuals from asserting their legal rights to apply for asylum in the U.S. under both our law and international law. Sadly, all of the latter are exactly what the Trump Administration is engaged in at present, with the assistance of their ethically-challenged Government “legal” team.

PWS

12-01-18

Related posts:

  1. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

US DISTRICT JUDGE TIGAR STUFFS ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ STAY REQUEST!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/30/politics/asylum-injunction-ruling-immigration/index.html

Ariane de Vogue and Geneva Sands, report for CNN:

Washington (CNN)A federal judge in California on Friday left in place a nationwide injunction that blocks the President’s asylum restrictions from going into effect.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said the government had not shown that the President’s policy “is a lawful exercise of Executive Branch authority.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice had asked Tigar to lift his temporary restraining order — issued November 19 — while the appeals process plays out.
But Tigar refused to do so, holding that the government had failed to convince him that asylum seekers with legitimate claims would not suffer “significant harms” due to the new policy.
RELATED: Trump rails against 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in wake of asylum ruling
The move comes after President Donald Trump lashed out last week at Tigar, and said he would ultimately prevail in the case before the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month, Trump signed a proclamation that would have prevented most migrants who crossed the southern border illegally from seeking asylum.
The American Civil Liberties Union immediately sued the administration on behalf of asylum assistance groups in California. Within 10 days of the President’s proclamation, Tigar granted the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order. The policy has since been in legal limbo.
“We are pleased the district court continues to recognize the harm that will occur if this illegal policy goes into effect,” ACLU lead attorney Lee Gelernt said in a statement Friday.
Asked for comment, the Justice Department referred CNN to a statement issued by Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Katie Waldman and Justice Department spokesman Steven Stafford after the temporary restraining order was issued, which says in part: “Our asylum system is broken, and it is being abused by tens of thousands of meritless claims every year. As the Supreme Court affirmed this summer, Congress has given the President broad authority to limit or even stop the entry of aliens into this country.”
When he issued his order on November 19, Tigar said the Trump administration policy barring asylum for immigrants who enter outside legal checkpoints “irreconcilably conflicts” with immigration law and the “expressed intent of Congress.”
“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Tigar wrote, adding that asylum seekers would be put at “increased risk of violence and other harms at the border” if the administration’s rule is allowed to go into effect.
On behalf of the administration, Department of Justice attorneys had argued that the court’s injunction “directly undermines the President’s determination that an immediate temporary suspension of entry between ports of entry is necessary to address the ongoing and increasing crisis facing our immigration system.”

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

The statements issued by the DOJ and DHS claiming that there are “tens of thousands of meritless asylum applications” are misleading, at best. While it is true that more asylum applications are denied than are granted, (a stark reversal of the situation only a few years ago), that by no means makes them “meritless” or means that the individuals didn’t have a right to have their cases fairly adjudicated under our laws.

Indeed, the latest TRAC statistics showing a continuously declining asylum grant rate under Trump, notwithstanding worsening conditions in the Northern Triangle and in most other asylum sending countries, strongly suggests that it is the Government’s bias and blatant politicization of the Immigration Court system that is the real abuse here.

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/539/

Clearly, Session’s perversion of the law and facts in Matter of A-B- in an effort to deny protection to one of the most clearly persecuted groups in the world — women who are victims of gender based persecution in the forms of domestic violence — is a prime example of the type of improper racist-inspired political meddling that has been allowed to take place. It has destroyed the remaining integrity of the Immigration Court system, as well as endangered the lives of many deserving refugees in need of protection to which they are legally entitled but are being denied for improper reasons. When history eventually sorts out this sordid episode, the racist officials and the “go along to get along” judges and other government officials will be clearly identified for what they are.

The idea that the U.S. Government, which has purposely created a bogus “emergency” at the Southern Border with the political stunt of sending troops rather than Asylum Officers and Judges, is preposterous! While the poor asylum seekers face a genuine danger intentionally and cynically created by Trump and his White Nationalists, they pose no real threat to the U.S. Fortunately, Judge Tigar saw through the Administration’s contemptuous threats and disingenuous arguments to the contrary.

PWS

111-30-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

THE HILL: Here’s Nolan’s Somewhat Different Take On The Effect Of Trump’s Executive Order!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/418364-trumps-proclamation-still-bars-the-entry-of-asylum-seekers-who-cross

 

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Judge Tigar acknowledged the stipulation and concluded that the case therefore did not present the question of whether section 212(f) authorized Trump to directly limit asylum eligibility by proclamation.

I believe – based on my own experience – the situation is a Catch 22.

The proclamation does not render illegal crossers ineligible for asylum. It bars their entry into the United States.

It’s the not being able to enter that keeps them from getting asylum.

The temporary restraining order prevents Trump from taking any action to continue or to implement the rule, but it leaves his proclamation untouched.

Accordingly, while the injunction is in effect, immigration judges won’t be able to find illegal crossers “ineligible” for asylum for violating the proclamation. But neither will they be able to grant asylum to them. They are barred by the proclamation from entering the United States, and they can’t be asylees if they aren’t allowed into the country.

. . . .

The immigration organizations almost certainly will file another motion for a preliminary injunction that will request a restraining order to prevent the implementation of the proclamation too.

That will be more challenging in view of the Supreme Court’s holding in the Travel Ban case that section 212(f) “exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President the decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions.”

It would be better if the asylum seekers just would comply with our laws by requesting asylum at one of the 48 ports of entry on the Mexican border instead of crossing illegally.

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Please click the above link to read Nolan’s complete article in The Hill.

It actually appears that most members of the “Migrant Caravan” are doing just what Nolan suggests: waiting at ports of entry to be screened for asylum. The real problem here is that the Trump Administration is purposely not processing individuals in a reasonable or timely manner. To the extent that there is a “crisis,” it is entirely self-created by the Administration.

Very recent studies show, there is no “immigration crisis” in the U.S. today. https://apple.news/AZ5i84P0YQRiJSItfS1fgtQ

The number of undocumented individuals has leveled off and even declined. Two thirds of them have been there more than a decade and have basically integrated into our society. Fewer than 20% actually arrived within the past five years, and the majority of the “recent arrivals” appear to be non-immigrant “overstays” rather than irregular border crossers. With a better and wiser Administration, current laws can actually accommodate and fairly process those arriving from the Northern Triangle and claiming asylum.

Indeed, the “numbers” suggest, as I have said many times, that a “rational” approach to immigration would be to remove the many cases of those with no serious crimes from the Immigration Court dockets pending the passage of legalization legislation (favored by a majority of voters). That would free up adequate time for those courts to timely hear cases of recently arriving asylum applicants, those with serious criminal convictions, and other more recent arrivals. And, it would cost the taxpayers less than the bone-headed fake immigration crises and bogus responses being orchestrated by the Administration is support of their racist, White Nationalist agenda.

In any event, the “border crisis” is just another self-created scam, fairly typical of Trump and his corrupt and incompetent Administration.

PWS

11-29-18

Related posts:

  1. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)
  4. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

HERE’S WHAT THE DISHONEST SCOFFLAW OFFICIALS IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Many Who Escape From The Northern Triangle Are, In Fact, Refugees — When They Are Given Access To Competent Counsel & Fair Hearings Before Fair & Impartial Judges, They Often Succeed In Getting Protection! – Here’s Another “Real Life” Example!

“New Due Process Army” stalwart, Professor Alberto Benitez of the George Washington Law Immigration Clinic, reports:

Friends,
Please join me in congratulating Immigration Clinic student-attorney Megan Elman, and her clients, R-G, his wife, J, and their two kids, ages 10 and 5 respectively, R and L, from El Salvador.  This afternoon, after a two and a half-hour hearing, IJ Cynthia S. Torg granted the clients’ asylum application.
R-G was a maritime police officer, and because of that status, he and his family were threatened with death by mara gang members.  During an outing at the beach, the family had a gun pointed at them while being threatened. One of the maras told R-G that his order was only to tell him to move away, but he wished he had been given the order to kill him, because he would have preferred to cut off R-G’s head and hang it from  a tree.  Afterward, R and J tried to file a complaint with their local police, but were advised by the police not to bother and instead flee the country.  That night, unknown, masked, armed men appeared outside their house.  Eventually the men left, but the family decided to flee to the USA.
Congratulations also to Sarah DeLong, Jonathan Bialosky,  Solangel González, and Sam Xinyuan Li, who previously worked on this case. 
**************************************************
Alberto Manuel Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law
Director, Immigration Clinic
The George Washington University Law School
650 20th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-7463
(202) 994-4946 fax
abenitez@law.gwu.edu
THE WORLD IS YOURS…
**************************************************
Contrary to what the Trump Administration and EOIR Management would have you believe, these types of cases are neither unique nor extraordinary in their factual setting. I encountered lots of “slam dunk” Northern Triangle asylum, withholding, and/or CAT cases at the Arlington Immigration Court.
What is unusual is that these individuals; 1) got access to the hearing process, 2) had access to competent pro bono counsel, 3) had sufficient time in a non-detained setting to gather evidence in support of their applications, 4) were given sufficient time to fully present their cases in court, 5) didn’t have to wait many years for their final hearing, and 6) and perhaps most significantly, were fortunate enough to have a fair, impartial, and scholarly Immigration Judge like Judge Cynthia S. Torg, to decide their cases. I’d also infer from this description that the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel played a constructive role in critically, yet fairly and professionally, developing the facts so that the Immigration Judge could make an immediate decision and appeal could be waived.
Imagine how this case might have come out had it occurred in Atlanta, Charlotte, or El Paso where the Immigration Judges are notorious for prejudging asylum cases against the applicants and merely providing the “trappings of due process.” Or, if these individuals had been forced to “represent” themselves in a godforsaken so-called “detention court” unprepared, traumatized, and within a short time after arrival. Or, if the Immigration Judge had insisted on truncating the process to complete her “quota” of four cases per day. Or, if under the Trump regime, they had never been given access to the Immigration Court hearing process in the first place. Or, if the Assistant Chief Counsel had appealed to the BIA where delays are common and panels vary widely as to their commitment to a fair, impartial, and overall generous view of asylum law in accordance with their own (often cited, not always followed) precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi! Or, if after the fact, a political hack like Jeff Sessions had arbitrarily and unethically intervened to deny relief to satisfy his White Nationalist restrictionist “agenda.”
The truth is that many, perhaps the majority, of the Northern Triangle asylum cases could be efficiently and promptly granted by the USCIS Asylum Office. With the “reinstatement” of A-R-C-G- (recognizing domestic violence) and some positive precedents (when’s he last time you saw one of those from the BIA on asylum?) covering recurring situations such as this one, many more Northern Triangle asylum cases could be granted by stipulation of counsel following short hearings before the Immigration Judges.
On the flip side, in a fairer system, it would be easier for everyone to recognize situations that didn’t merit protection under the law after fair hearings. My experience in Arlington was that when I listened carefully and issued a clear and reasoned explanation of why protection could not be granted, the applicants often (not always) would waive appeal and accept my order as final. Actual, as opposed to cosmetic, fairness helps both sides to accept the decisions below.
That’s precisely what the biased Jeff Sessions has “disempowered” in this now inherently unfair court system. A system run by political officials in the Trump Administration (or any other Administration for that matter) can never be perceived as fair.
Issuance and enforcement of more positive precedents by the BIA (without the current political interference by the DOJ) would also lead to greater uniformity, as judges in places like Atlanta, Charlotte, El Paso, Stewart, etc., would be required to follow the asylum laws and apply them in the generous manner required by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca, rather than acting on their enforcement biases against asylum seekers and trying to “lead the league” in producing rote unfair removal orders to the delight of the DOJ politicos.
If restructured into an independent court system with Due Process as the one and only goal and a merit selection system for judges going forward, the Immigration Courts have the potential to make justice with efficiency the norm, rather than the exception. But, that’s not going to happen in the current  politically compromised and incompetently administered structure of EOIR within DOJ.
America needs an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution demands it! 
PWS
11-28-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!