THE NDPA STRIKES BACK: ACLU Sues In DC To End The Regime’s Bogus “Safe Third Country” Abuse Of Human Rights & The Rule Of Law! — Regime’s Actions Could Be Characterized As “Crimes Against Humanity!”

https://apple.news/ALbDFozeyQemj7zT-zO0VUA

Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News:

ACLU files lawsuit to halt Trump policy of sending asylum-seekers to Guatemala

Washington — The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday mounted the first legal challenge against the Trump administration’s policy of sending migrants who seek protection at the U.S.-Mexico border to Guatemala, a country with a skeletal asylum regime that has seen an exodus of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens in the past two years because of extreme poverty and endemic violence.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks to halt the implementation of a controversial asylum agreement with the Guatemalan government. Under the deal forged last summer, the U.S. has sent more than 150 asylum-seekers from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala, denying them access to America’s asylum system and requiring them to choose between seeking refuge in the Central American country or returning home.

The agreement, the ACLU said in its 54-page complaint, amounts to “a deadly game of musical chairs that leaves many desperate asylum-seekers without a safe haven, in violation of U.S. and international law.”

“If this rule remains in effect, it means that the U.S. can completely wash their hands of any responsibility to provide safe haven for people fleeing persecution,” Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s top immigration litigator, told CBS News. “It would end asylum at the southern border, plain and simple.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that while it cannot comment on litigation, “the U.S. Government and the Government of Guatemala remain committed to the asylum cooperative agreement and stand behind the integrity of the program.”

For lead plaintiff, returning home isn’t an option

As of last week, 158 Honduran and Salvadoran migrants have been rerouted by the U.S. to Guatemala, including dozens of families and at least 43 children, according to the Guatemalan migration institute. Nine people initially chose to request protection in Guatemala, but five of them have since abandoned their claims, the institute said. The rest have asked for help returning to their home countries.

The lead plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit is a gay man from El Salvador who was sent by the U.S. to Guatemala after asking for asylum at the southern border. The man, identified only by the initials U.T., says he was sexually abused as a child, disowned by his family because of his sexuality and threatened by a gang member who solicited him for sex in El Salvador.

When he arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, he was told he would be sent to Guatemala. He told Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, who make the initial determination about whether migrants should be subject to the U.S.-Guatemala deal, that he feared being sent to Guatemala. His concerns fell on deaf ears.

He was then referred for an interview with an asylum officer and again expressed fear of persecution in Guatemala. Nonetheless, he was deported to the country shortly afterward.

During these types of interviews, migrants must affirmatively say they fear being sent to Guatemala. Even if they do, they have to meet a fear of persecution threshold that is much higher than that of the typical “credible fear” interviews most asylum-seekers at the southern border are subject to.

The ACLU says the man applied for asylum once in Guatemala, but officials there advised him to seek protection in Mexico instead, since Guatemala is “unsafe for gay people.” The State Department warns of “societal discrimination” and police abuse against LGBTI people in Guatemala.

Returning to El Salvador is not an option for the asylum-seeker, who is currently in Mexico, since he “fears that he will be attacked or killed for his sexual orientation if he tries to live openly as a gay man,” according to the ACLU.

“A way for the U.S. to simply pass the buck”

There are five other individual plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit, including a woman and two families who were sent to Guatemala by the U.S. The Tahirih Justice Center and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, two organizations that provide legal services to asylum-seekers, are also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit — which the National Immigrant Justice Center, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and Human Rights First joined the ACLU in filing.

The group is asking the court to prohibit officials from enforcing a regulation the administration unveiled in November to implement the Guatemala deal and similar agreements that the U.S. brokered with Honduras and El Salvador which have not yet been implemented. The suit also challenges a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) guidance document for asylum officers carrying out the agreement.

The ACLU alleged that both measures violate U.S. statutes designed to prevent officials from sending asylum-seekers to places where they may face persecution and that provide legal safeguards for migrants the government seeks to deport quickly. The group also said the policy violates administrative law, since the administration did not give the public a chance to comment on it and failed to provide “reasoned explanations” for dramatically changing the asylum system at the southern border.

The administration maintains that its agreements with Guatemala and the other countries in Central America’s Northern Triangle will foster the “distribution” of asylum claims among nations in the region and provide protection to migrants “closer to home.” But the ACLU says the so-called “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” represent a dramatic departure from the “safe third country” provision in U.S. law that the administration is using to defend their legality.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law an act that codified the “safe third country” concept, allowing the U.S. to enter into bilateral or multilateral agreements to send asylum-seekers to third countries, as long as the U.S. government made sure those asylum-seekers would not face persecution based on a protected ground under U.S. asylum law and would have access to a “full and fair” process to request protection in those nations.

Gelernt and his group believe the accords with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras violate this law because the countries do not have fully functioning asylum regimes, unlike Canada — the only nation which has an official “safe third country” agreement with the U.S.

“There is no way the administration can plausibly claim that Guatemala can provide a safe, fair and full asylum process. This administration has simply thumbed their nose at Congress,” Gelernt said, noting that Canada, a developed country with a robust asylum system, is a safe place for refugees.

“This is not a way to provide people with a fair asylum process but a way for the U.S. to simply pass the buck,” he added.

Guatemala has experienced moderate economic growth since the end of a bloody civil war in the 1990s, but it continues to grapple with high homicides rates, drug trafficking, political instability and widespread poverty, especially among its large indigenous communities in the Western highlands of the country. Only about 262 migrants sought refuge in Guatemala in 2018, according to the United Nations.

The ACLU also noted in its lawsuit that the Trump administration hasn’t publicly revealed any designations certifying that the Northern Triangle countries have the capacity to take in migrants rerouted there by the U.S., despite a requirement that such a certification be included in the government regulation to enforce the asylum agreements.

Sweeping implications for asylum-seekers

All three agreements the U.S. made last year suggest that they could grant the U.S. the power to reroute most asylum-seekers from any country in the world, barring a few exceptions, like unaccompanied children, to Central America. The ACLU underscored the sweeping nature of the deals in its suit, saying that in practice, the U.S. could send asylum-seekers from Afghanistan to one of the Northern Triangle countries, even if they did not travel through there to get to the U.S. southern border.

The administration believes it can include “all populations” in the agreements, and it recently announced it was planning to send Mexican asylum-seekers to Guatemala. The move sparked scathing criticism at home and abroad, with Mexico’s government objecting to the proposal.

Unlike migrants from Honduras and El Salvador, Mexican asylum-seekers do not travel through Guatemalan territory to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. A plan to subject Mexicans to the U.S.-Guatemala accord could, in practice, lead to the U.S. flying a Mexican asylum-seeker from Tijuana, San Diego’s neighboring city, some 1,500 miles away, asking her to seek protection in Guatemala.

How Guatemala continues to implement its “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” with the Trump administration will now be decided by conservative government of President Alejandro Giammattei, who took office on Tuesday.

The asylum agreements with countries in Central America are part of a series of policies the administration rolled out over the past year to restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. These also include a sweeping rule that renders most non-Mexican migrants ineligible for asylum and the Migrant Protection Protocols program, which has required more than 57,000 asylum-seekers from Central America to wait in dangerous Mexican border cities for the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings.

First published on January 15, 2020 / 4:19 PM

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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The bogus “Safe Third Country Agreements” with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, clearly unsafe countries without functioning asylum systems, in violation of U.S. and international laws, are daunting acts of malicious fraud. This fraud is undertaken, in the open, by a neo-fascist regime that has contempt for humanity and human rights, believes itself above the law, and has no fear of being held accountable by the Federal Courts or Congress (notwithstanding Trump’s impeachment).

The regime’s unlawful fraudulent actions are defended in court by DOJ lawyers who believe the obligation of truthfulness before tribunals and other ethical requirements simply don’t apply to them. And, that’s probably with good reason.

The Trump regime has been peddling lies, false narratives, and bad faith legal arguments to the Federal Courts, all the way up to the Supremes, for nearly three years now with no consequences to the lawyers or their political clients. Indeed, Wilbur Ross lied under oath in the “Census Case,” but continues to be the Secretary of Commerce; to my knowledge, the Government lawyers who tried to present, defend, and rationalize. Ross’s census fraud are still on the payroll. A few Supremes even voted to sweep it all under the rug. It took an unusual display of backbone by Chief Justice Roberts to prevent the fraud from being perpetrated on American voters, particularly targeting voters of color.

Private lawyers who conducted themselves in a similar manner would likely be facing state disciplinary proceedings. A private executive who lied under oath like Ross probably would have been referred for a perjury prosecution or held in contempt of court.

But, Federal Judges, who are used to giving U.S. government lawyers pretty much a “free pass,” don’t seem to “get” that they are now dealing with a willfully corrupt, thoroughly dishonest, neo-fascist regime, not “just another Administration.”

When the laws, rules, and our Constitution don‘t apply to our Government, and nobody is held accountable for outrageous official wrongdoing (arguably “crimes against humanity” in the “Safe Third Country Fraud”) we all lose!

Due Process Forever! Complicity In The Face Of Tyranny, Never!

PWS

01-16-20

BAD NEWS FOR TEX. GOV. “GREG THE BIGOT” ABBOTT: U.S. District Judge Blocks Trump’s Illegal Anti-Refugee Order — But, Will Often Complicit Appellate Courts Uphold The Rule Of Law Or “Toady Up” To The Trump Regime’s White Nationalist Agenda?

Michelle Hackman
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-judge-blocks-trump-executive-order-on-refugees-11579108138?emailToken=575893ec6fe4b185f88708c59e175ef6CwUCcHqk/fEL6ReRFZZtuTxDwMXs7aS/qFBj8SMDh/g7NCEloF0znbPD48wkR6yiC0BZsPXe7V5mlXkbIptEUFTrxSHC0xOnxMYTwzWXscuGXaA/C7v5DN5I0vAE+Hef&reflink=article_email_share

Brent Kendall and Michelle Hackman report for the WSJ:

A federal judge in Maryland blocked President Trump’s executive order giving state and local governments the ability to say no to having refugees placed in their communities.

U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday that barred the administration from implementing the president’s order. He said refugee-resettlement organizations that sued to challenge the policy “are clearly likely to succeed in showing, that, by giving states and local governments veto power over the resettlement of refugees within their borders, the order is unlawful.”

Giving states the power to determine whether refugees will be received “flies in the face of clear congressional intent,” Judge Messitte, a Clinton appointee, said in the opinion.

. . . .

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Those with WSJ access can read the complete article at the above link.

This “victory” might be little more than symbolic for refugee advocates. In an unprecedented action, the Trump Administration has slowed the flow of legal refugees to a trickle and could simply use the “bureaucratic veto” to prevent any more from coming, as they have gotten away with in other areas.

Certainly, this should give lie to the Trump Administration’s inevitable argument to Federal Appeals Courts that this is an “emergency” requiring them to intervene prior to the completion of District Court proceedings. But, up until now, neither law nor reality has been much of a factor when it comes to the Supremes, and sometimes the Circuits, going “belly up” and allowing the regime to run roughshod over human lives and the rule of law in the immigration and refugee areas.

Chief Justice Roberts wonders why the judiciary is treated with contempt by the regime and is losing respect from the large majority of the legal community not subservient to Trump. The answer is all too often pretty obvious.

Per MKL, Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” It’s an important message that all too many Federal Judges and other (supposedly responsible) public officials seem to have forgotten in the “Age of Trump” and his corrupt and overtly White Nationalist regime.

PWS

01-15-20

WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!

yhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-us-is-putting-asylum-seekers-on-planes-to-guatemala–often-without-telling-them-where-theyre-going/2020/01/13/0f89a93a-3576-11ea-a1ff-c48c1d59a4a1_story.html

Kevin Sieff reports from Guatemala for WashPost:

By

Kevin Sieff

Jan. 14, 2020 at 4:21 p.m. EST

GUATEMALA CITY — The chartered U.S. government flights land here every day or two, depositing Honduran and Salvadoran asylum seekers from the U.S. border. Many arrive with the same question: “Where are we?”

For the first time ever, the United States is shipping asylum seekers who arrive at its border to a “safe third country” to seek refuge there. The Trump administration hopes the program will serve as a model for others in the region.

But during its first weeks, asylum seekers and human rights advocates say, migrants have been put on planes without being told where they were headed, and left here without being given basic instruction about what to do next.

When the migrants land in Guatemala City, they receive little information about what it means to apply for asylum in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. Those who don’t immediately apply are told that they must leave the country in 72 hours. The form is labeled “Voluntary Return.”

“In the U.S., the agents told us our cases would be transferred, but they didn’t say where. Then they lined us up to get on the plane,” said a woman named Marta, 43, from Honduras. She sat in a migrant shelter here with her 17-year-old son, who nursed a gunshot wound in his left cheek — the work, both say, of a Honduran faction of the MS-13 gang.

“When we looked out the window, we were here,” she said. “We thought, ‘Where are we? What are we supposed to do now?’ ”

After the volcano, indigenous Guatemalans search for safer ground — in Guatemala, or the United States

Human rights organizations in Guatemala say they have recorded dozens of cases of asylum seekers who were misled by U.S. officials into boarding flights, and who were not informed of their asylum rights upon arrival. Of the 143 Hondurans and Salvadorans sent to Guatemala since the program began last month, only five have applied for asylum, according to the country’s migration agency.

“Safe third country” is one of the Trump administration’s most dramatic initiatives to curb migration — an effort to remake the U.S. asylum system. President Trump has called it “terrific for [Guatemala] and terrific for us.”

But an Asylum Cooperation Agreement is bringing migrants to a country that is unable to provide economic and physical security for its own citizens — many of whom are themselves trying to migrate. In fiscal 2019, Guatemala was the largest source of migrants detained at the U.S. border, at more than 264,000. The country has only a skeletal asylum program, with fewer than a dozen asylum officers.

Trump wants border-bound asylum seekers to find refuge in Guatemala instead. Guatemala isn’t ready.

As the deal was negotiated, it drew concerns from the United Nations and human rights organizations. But its implementation, advocates say, has been worse than they feared.

“It’s a total disaster,” said Thelma Shau, who has observed the arrival of asylum seekers at La Aurora International Airport in her role overseeing migration issues for Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman.

“They arrive here without being told that Guatemala is their destination,” she said. “They are asked, ‘Do you want refuge here or do you want to leave?’ And they have literally minutes to decide without knowing anything about what that means.”

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump meet in the Oval Office last month with then-President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Guatemalan government says that it explains asylum options and that migrants are simply choosing to leave voluntarily.

“Central American people are given comprehensive attention when they arrive in the country, and respect for their human rights is a priority,” said Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s migration agency. “The information provided is complete for them to make a decision.”

In Guatemala, lenders that were supported by USAID and the World Bank are now funding illegal migration.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. The United States has signed similar “safe third country” agreements with El Salvador and Honduras, but they have not yet been implemented. In recent days, Trump administration officials have said they are considering sending Mexican asylum seekers to Guatemala to seek refuge.

Human rights groups in Guatemala that have observed the process say migrants here are not given key information about their options — such as what asylum in Guatemala entails and where they would stay while their claims are being processed. Many migrants are aware that Guatemala suffers from the same gang violence and extortion that forced them from their home countries.

Migrants from Guatemala disembark from a raft in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, in June. (Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press)

Paula Arana observed the orientation as child protection liaison for the human rights ombudsman.

“It’s clear that the government is not providing enough information for asylum seekers to make a decision, especially in the three minutes they are given,” she said. “Instead, they are being pushed out of the country.”

The United States had suggested that it would begin implementing the agreement by sending single men to Guatemala. But less than a month after it began, families with young children are arriving on the charter flights. Last week, Arana said, a 2-year-old arrived with flulike symptoms.

On Thursday, a man named Jorge, 35, his wife and two daughters, ages 11 and 15, landed here. A day later, they were clustered together at the Casa del Migrante, a shelter in Guatemala City where government officials took them in a bus. They had been given the papers with 72 hours’ notice to leave Guatemala, and couldn’t figure out what to do.

The family had fled multiple threats from gangs in Honduras, which started with an interpersonal dispute between Jorge’s wife and one of the gang’s leaders. Jorge was certain that going back would mean certain death. Like Marta, Jorge did not want his last name to be published out of fear for his family’s safety.

“We’re thinking about our options. We know we can’t stay here. What would I do? Where would we stay?” he said. “Maybe we need to try to cross to the United States again.”

In western Guatemala, cultivating coffee was once a way out of poverty. As prices fall, growers are abandoning their farms for the United States.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is not participating in the program. But officials say they’re aware of problems with its implementation.

“UNHCR has a number of concerns regarding the Asylum Cooperation Agreement and its implementation,” said Sibylla Brodzinsky, UNHCR’s regional spokeswoman for Central America and Mexico. “We have expressed these concerns to the relevant U.S. and Guatemalan authorities.”

Human rights advocates who have interviewed the asylum seekers, known locally as “transferidos,” say many have decided that their best option is to migrate again to the United States. Smugglers often offer their customers three chances to make it across the border.

Migrants at the Casa del Migrante described spending a week in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in the United States, where they had intended to make their asylum claims. Many carried binders full of evidence they assumed would bolster their cases. On her phone, Marta saved avideo of her son being tortured by MS-13 gang members.

But in their brief conversations with U.S. immigration officials, they were told they would not be given a chance to apply for asylum in the United States.

“We had all this information to show them,” Marta said, leafing through photos of her son’s scars and Honduran court documents. “They said, ‘That’s not going to help you here.’ ”

This school aims to keep young Guatemalans from migrating. They don’t know it’s funded by the U.S. government.

In interviews with The Washington Post, some migrants said they were told vaguely that their cases were being “transferred.” Others were told they were going to be returned to their countries of origin.

“One agent told me, ‘You’re going back to Honduras,’ ” Marta said. But then they arrived in Guatemala City.

“When we looked out the window, we just assumed it was a stop,” her son said.

Marta thought Guatemala might be even more dangerous. They had no connection to the country and nowhere to stay beyond their first few days. When she left the migrant shelter to buy food Friday morning, she said, she stumbled upon a crime scene with a dead body a few blocks away.

During their nine-day detention at an ICE facility in Texas, she said, the family shared a cell with a Guatemalan family that was fleeing violence perpetrated by a different MS-13 group based here.

Agronomy students, some hooded, block a street outside a Guatemala City hotel before lawmakers voted on the deal that made Guatemala a “safe third country” for migrants seeking asylum in the United States. (Oliver De Ros/Associated Press)

“Why would they send us to a country where the same gangs are operating?” she asked.

In the absence of a thorough explanation of their asylum rights in Guatemala, El Refugio de la Niñez is offering a short tutorial to the asylum seekers. So far, 45 have attended.

“The Guatemalan government is completely absent in this whole process,” said Leonel Dubon, the director of the U.N.-funded center. “It sends a clear message. The government isn’t here to offer shelter, it’s here to push people out as quickly as possible.”

The Trump administration negotiated the “safe third country” agreement last year with lame-duck Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales.

As Guatemala pursues war criminals, a dark secret emerges: Some suspects are living quiet lives in the U.S.

Guatemala’s constitutional court initially blocked the deal. Then Trump threatened tariffs on the country and taxes on remittances sent home by Guatemalans living in the United States. It was eventually signed in July.

The new Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, was sworn in Tuesday. He has raised concerns about the agreement, saying he hadn’t been briefed on its details.

At the signing ceremony, Trump said it would “provide safety for legitimate asylum seekers, and stop asylum fraud and abuses [of the] system.”

U.S. asylum officers do not vet the cases of migrants before they are sent to Guatemala.

In her brief conversations with U.S. immigration agents, Marta tried to get them to look at her binder full of documents and photos.

“They weren’t interested,” she said. “They just kept saying that your case will be transferred to an institution that can handle it.”

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Kevin writes about a tragically absurd situation that seems to have fallen “below the radar screen” of public outrage or even discourse. This is wrong! Most days I can’t believe that the county that I proudly served for more than 35 years is engaging in this type of abusive behavior that would be below the level of even some Third World dictatorships.

And, it isn’t just “occasional abuse” — it’s systemized, institutionalized abuse and dehumanization on a global and regular basis — all approved or de facto enabled by feckless and spineless Federal Appellate Courts, all the way up to the Supremes! These are folks who should know better and really have no other meaningful function in our “separation of powers” system other than to protect our individual rights. Authoritarian governments and dictators hardly need “courts” to enforce their will, even if some find it useful to “go through the motions” of creating and employing complicit “judges.” As one of my Round Table colleagues succinctly put it “there appears to be no bottom!”

Clearly, the “Safe Third Country” exception was never intended by Congress, nor does the statutory language permit it, to be used to “orbit” asylum applicants to some of the most dangerous refugee sending countries in the world with thoroughly corrupt governments and non-existent asylum systems. So, why does the Trump regime have confidence that it can and will get away with these atrocities? Because they believe, correctly so far, that the Article III Federal Courts, many of them now stacked with Trump’s hand-selected “toady judges,” are afraid to stand up to tyranny and protect the rights of desperate, mostly brown-skinned, asylum seekers.

Obviously, from an institutional standpoint, the Article III Courts are saying:

“Who cares what happens to a bunch of brown-skinned foreigners. Let ‘em die, rot, or be tortured. Human rights, due process, and human dignity simply don’t matter when they don’t affect us personally, financially, or socially. That’s particularly true because the results of our abuses are taking place, thankfully, in foreign nations: out of sight, out of mind. Not our problem.”

Apparently, many Americans agree with this immoral and illegal approach. Otherwise, the “black robed, life tenured ones” would be pariahs in their communities, churches, and social interactions. They wouldn’t be offered those cushy teaching positions at law schools or a chance to expound before public audiences.

But, not speaking out against bad judges and not insisting on integrity and courage in the Article III courts could ultimately prove fatal for all of our individual rights. Judges who use their privileged positions to turn a blind eye to the oppression of others, particularly the most vulnerable humans among us, and the catastrophic failure of the rule of law and Due Process in the U.S. immigration system can hardly be expected to stand up for the individual rights of any of us against Government oppression.

After all, why should an exulted Federal Appellate Judge or a Supreme Court Justice care about what happens to you, unless your blood is about to spatter his or her pristine black robe? Many of those supportive of or complicit in Trump’s tyranny will personally experience the costs of a feckless Federal Judiciary when their “turn in the barrel” comes. And, the Trump regime’s list of those who’s “lives and rights don’t matter” is very, very long and continually expanding.

All I can say now is that some day, the full truth about what happens to those unlawfully and immorally turned away at our borders will “out.” Then, many Articles III judges will try to disingenuously protect their reputations by saying, similar to many judges of the Third Reich, “Gee, who knew,” or “I was powerless,” or “It was a political problem beyond our limited jurisdiction.”

My charge to the New Due Process Army: Don’t let the complicit judges get away with it in the “Court of History.” You see, know, and experience first-hand every day the results of Article III judicial complicity. Don’t ever forget what those judges have done and continue to do to human lives from their protected and “willfully clueless” ivory towers! Ultimately, you aren’t as powerless as the “complicit ones” think you are!

Due Process Forever; Feckless, Complicit, Immoral Federal Judges Never!

PWS

01-14-20

ADOLFO FLORES @ BUZZFEED: More On The EOIR “Tent Court” Farce!

See below Buzzfeed’s latest story about tent court access.

Immigration “Tent Courts” Aren’t Allowing Full Public Access, Attorneys Say

Observers and reporters can’t watch what some consider to be the most important part of an immigration proceeding.

Adolfo FloresBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on January 13, 2020, at 4:23 p.m. ET

The Trump administration recently agreed to open its “tent courts,” makeshift tribunals where immigrants made to wait in Mexico attend hearings, but lawyers and legal observers say the set up still fails to give the public full access.

Attorneys and advocates said the government is still keeping the public out of what some consider to be the most important part of immigration court proceedings by using judges located inside a Fort Worth, Texas, facility that is closed to the public. The hearings are where immigrants get the opportunity to present arguments and evidence as to why they should be allowed to stay in the US.

Judges at the Fort Worth Immigration Adjudication Center, which the public has no access to, are overseeing the individual merits hearings via video that’s beamed into “tent courts” in Brownsville, Texas. At the same time, the public has also been barred from attending the hearings in person at the “tent court,” effectively closing off public access.

“It’s highly problematic,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Using these adjudication centers and judges is clearly intentional. The agency is trying to operate these cases in secret.”

The facilities in Falls Church, Virginia, and Fort Worth were created by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, as a way to reduce its growing case backlog.

Denying public access is especially concerning because most immigrants in “Remain in Mexico,” formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), are not represented by an attorney, Lynch said. An analysis of 56,004 MPP hearings found that only 4% of immigrants are represented by a lawyer, the rest are having to make their case on their own.

“Many immigrants are walking into these tent courts unrepresented,” Lynch said. “And there’s no way to observe them.”

EOIR refused to confirm whether judges at the adjudication center were listening to merits hearings in Brownsville. But attorneys with clients at the Brownsville “tent court” confirmed to BuzzFeed News that they’ve had cases before judges at the Fort Worth adjudication center and have been rescheduled to judges there in the future.

“All immigration judges hear all case types. Due to pending litigation, we have no further comment,” said Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for EOIR.

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In September, DHS opened two temporary court facilities along the Texas border, one in Brownsville and another in Laredo for immigrants in the “Remain in Mexico” program. Judges in brick and mortar courts throughout the US, officials said, would hear their cases and make rulings via video.

When the “tent courts” started their first hearings, they were immediately criticized for its lack of transparency because reporters, legal observers, and the public couldn’t attend hearings from inside.

Instead, DHS and EOIR said the public could attend the hearings by going to the courtroom where the immigration judges, who would be video conferenced into the “tent courts,” were physically at. But that’s not possible when immigration judges hear merits hearings from adjudication centers closed to the public.

In general, immigration courts are open to the public, although according to the Justice Department, immigrants can request that merits hearings be closed.

At the Brownsville “tent courts,” however, merits hearings are closed automatically by design, said Andrew Udelsman, a fellow in the Texas Civil Rights Project’s racial and economic justice program.

“The case right now appears to be a blanket rule that the public has no access to MPP merits proceedings and that is illegal,” Udelsman told BuzzFeed News. “There is a First Amendment right of public access to court proceedings. That right is being violated by this blanket denial of access to merit proceedings.”

Demonstators, all part of a grassroots group called Witness at the Border supported by ACLU Texas and Children’s Defense Fund Texas, gather to protest outside the Brownsville “tent courts.”

Last week, Reynaldo Leaños Jr., a reporter with Texas Public Radio, tried to attend a merits hearing at the Brownsville “tent court” after a Cuban asylum-seeker invited him to attend. Yet private security contracted by the government told Leaños no one was allowed into the hearings.

Asked by BuzzFeed News why that was the case, a security guard with Ahtna at the facility, who declined to give his name, said it was because the shipping containers the merits hearings are held in were too small to accommodate additional members of the public.

Norma Sepulveda, an immigration attorney who had a hearing last week in Brownsville with a judge located in Fort Worth, said it was “ridiculous” that the merits hearings were being held inside small shipping containers that only fit seven people.

“I don’t know why they put us in these tiny rooms to hold the hearings other than to say there’s no space for anyone else to be present,” Sepulveda told BuzzFeed News. “These hearings are being scheduled with these judges intentionally to be able to conduct them without any oversight.”

Sepulveda said her client’s son, a resident of the US, was initially listed as a witness in the case and was allowed into the room. However, when Sepulveda said she was no longer going to call him to testify he was removed from the room by private security.

“It’s clear to me that the policy is no spectators, if you will, and no family support for individual hearings,” Sepulveda said.

Private security at the “tent courts” in Brownsville also enforcing different rules from one day to the next, that legal observers and attorneys said don’t make sense.

On the first day the public was allowed into the Brownsville facilities, private security agents said reporters weren’t allowed to attend hearings with a pen and notepad. Yet, on the second day they did allow journalists to take notes, but not observers like Udelsman of the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Private security officials are also only allowing the public to view master calendar hearings, the first time people see a judge, which tend to be short preliminary hearings. Requests to attend different master calendar hearings, other than the one room made available, were denied.

“They’re preventing anybody from being able to explain in the most accurate manner possible, what’s happening,” Udelsman said. “You’re prohibiting the public from knowing what’s happening in the courtroom and making life as difficult as possible for the few people who are able to report on what’s happening.”

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

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

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

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

Thanks for passing this along and for all you do, Laura!

“Secret proceedings” and lack of transparency are key steps toward any neo-fascist state!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-14-20

ROGER ALGASE @ ILW.COM: How The Trump Regime’s Gross Immorality, Inhumanity, & Illegality Have Replaced America’s Moral Leadership On The World Stage!

https://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=BXLvi&m=fxzs.sAL1oeaGWA&b=YSYqSh1DOxFOlVXvkRos2A

ImmigrationLawBlogs started a blog post As asylum-seeker kills himself at the border, leading Jewish cleric condemns administration’s inhumanity toward desperate immigrants. Meanwhile, Trump ramps up hate for 2020 election By Roger Algase

01-10-2020, 09:08 AM

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Update: January 11 1:42 pm:

For another viewpoint on the urgency of defeating Trump’s politics of hate against immigrants and other minorities in he upcoming election this November, see Kristian Ramos in The Hill (January 11):

We can’t let ‘white nativism’ politics cloud 2020 election

We can’t let ‘white nativism’ politics cloud 2020 election

Update: January 11 at 9:15 am:

Two late-breaking January 10 news stories show that Trump and his Republican allies are ramping up the hate against legal non-European immigrants in preparation for this November’s election.

The Washington Post reports that Texas has become the first state to bar resettlement of refugees under Trump’s executive order giving them the authority to do so. Admission to the UIS of legal refugees this year is already at an historic low under the agenda of Trump and Miller. Miller reportedly didn’t want to any refugees at all to be admitted this year.

For more on this latest show of bigotry by Texas Republican governor Greg Abbot, see:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2020/01/10/texas-becomes-first-state-publicly-reject-refugees-under-trump-order

On the same day, The Guardian reports that Trump is planning to add unspecified additional countries to his infamous Muslim ban order.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/10/trump-travel-ban-expansion

Both of these developments, which involve barring legal immigrants whose ethnicity or religion doesn’t happen to fit in with Trump’s avowed goal of admitting only immigrants from “Countries like Norway” and with Miller’s goal (expressed in almost 1,000 recent emails) of taking America’s immigration system back to the openly racist 1924 regime (which Adolf Hitler expressed so much admiration for in Mein Kampf) show that exploiting and stirring up more hate against nonwhite immigrants, including those eligible to come to the US legally, will be the order of the day for Trump’s re-election campaign.

My earlier comment follows below:

While the media remain focused on Donald Trump’s apparently now-abandoned threat to commit a war crime by blowing up cultural heritage sites in Iran, as an end result of his dehumanizing 2017 Muslim Ban order; or on the travesty that Senate Republicans are planning in order to “acquit” Trump of cravenly timid Democratic impeachment charges which entirely ignore his High Crimes and Misdemeanors against the basic human rights of nonwhite immigrants, what could very arguably be considered a Crime Against Humanity that the Trump administration is carrying out against desperate asylum seekers at the Mexican border in service of Stephen Miller’s white supremacist agenda is growing worse and worse.

The Guardian reports on January 9 that an obviously desperate Mexican asylum-seeker killed himself on the international bridge after being refused entry to the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/09/mexico-asylum-seeker-refused-us-entry

This may be less surprising than it seems in light of the appalling, inhuman conditions that legitimate asylum seekers fleeing gang violence and other life-threatening conditions in Central America are forced to endure as a result of Trump’s racist and inhuman (as well as almost certainly illegal) “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy. See Vox (December 20, 2019):

In camps on the US-Mexico border, asylym-seekers have been abandoned

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/20/20997299/asylum-border-mexico-us-io,-unhcr-usaid-migration-international-humanitarian-aid-m…

See also: Slate:

Trump’s tent cities are on the verge of killing immigrant children

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/trump-tent-cities-mpp-killing-immigrant-children.html

This horrendous display of inhumanity by the Trump administration as led to a protest by a leading Jewish religious leader, Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (in New York City) America’s leading institution for the Conservative branch of Judaism against what he calls America’s failure to carry out its moral obligation toward desperate asylum seekers and immigrants and other immigrants. See, The Hill, January 9:

https://the hill.com/opinion/immigration/477577/-our-moral-obligation-to-us-migrants-and-asylum-seekers

After visiting overcrowded immigrant border shelters , an ICE detention center and an asylum hearing courtroom along with other Jewish clergy, Eisen writes:

“What we saw was profoundly sobering. The predicament of those trapped at the Mexican border looks increasingly bleak as the federal government enacts more restrictive policies in the name of protecting Americans from the alleged invasion.”

Eisen then explains what motivated him to write:

“When people asked me why I was making this journey, my answer was simple: ‘Because I am a Jew.’ My grandparents arrived in this country seeking a better life, in some cases fleeing pogroms and persecutions, and the Torah’s command to care for the stranger summons me in a voice I dare not ignore. The Bible tells us that Jews are not permitted to stand by in the face of suffering and injustice.”

He then explains that this is not only a Jewish issue.:

“But the crisis at the border is a non-denominational issue and it should be non-partisan.”

Unfortunately, in today’s America, the crisis caused by the Trumps administration’s egregious violations of essential human rights of nonwhite immigrants is anything but non-partisan. One party is blindly following its Leader into making hatred of non-European immigrants, both legal and “irregular”, as the centerpiece of its agenda, while the other party’s leaders are too cowardly to mount an effective defense of immigrants’ human rights which are being trampled on.

Ironically, the driving force of this agenda of anti-immigrant persecution, Stephen Miller, is also the grandchild of a Jewish immigrant. What kind of understanding of the Jewish heritage of care and compassion for the suffering of the stranger in our midst is he showing?

And how much understanding of this tradition of essential humanity does Miller’s boss Donald Trump, who claims to be a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, show in his immigration policy, which includes drastic measures against even the most highly skilled and educated legal immigrants, not only asylum seekers and unauthorized immigrants?

Roger Algase

Attorney at Law

Last edited by ImmigrationLawBlogs; 01-11-2020, 01:43 PM.

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Unfortunately, for America and the world, Roger has it pegged exactly right. Humanity, compassion, decency, and equal justice for all have disappeared from U.S. foreign and domestic policy under Trump. That’s the essence of a White Nationalist kakistocracy. And, as Roger also recognizes, there is more than a little anti-semitism and racism mixed in and driving these policies. It just so happens that Hispanics and folks with brown skins are the current “target of the day.”

But, actually, nobody is safe in the “Age of Trump” as his sycophants and supporters have found out (see., e.g., Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Kristjen Nielsen, Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Michael Cohen, et al.). The only thing or person that Donald Trump has ever cared about is (surprise): Donald Trump. Everybody else, including our nation, the environment, and world civilization, is expendable.

I also appreciate Roger’s “outing” of bigoted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his ridiculous and disingenuous attempt to “bar” refugee resettlement in Texas. For the record, quite contrary to Abbott’s racist whining, few states have benefitted more than Texas from migrants, whether they be refugees, asylum recipients, documented, or undocumented. See, e.g., https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-texas

In the “race to the bottom,” never count out Donald Trump and his GOP stalwarts!

PWS

01-13-20

AILA POLICY BRIEFING: EOIR Still Playing “Hide The Ball” On Tent Court Access!

20011061-AILA Policy Briefing

Policy Brief: Public Access to Tent Courts Now Allowed, but Meaningful Access Still Absent January 10, 2020

Contact: Laura Lynch (Llynch@aila.org) or Leidy Perez-Davis (LPerez-Davis@aila.org)

In September 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opened massive temporary tent facilities in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, that function as virtual immigration courtrooms for vulnerable asylum seekers subject to Remain in Mexico. During the hearings, asylum seekers are held in tents at the ports of entry while judges appear remotely via video teleconference (VTC).

Unlike in other immigration courts, the government barred attorney observers, press, and the public from accessing these facilities, in violation of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regulations requiring immigration hearings to generally be open to the public. Access to the tent courts is critical to ensuring due process, and AILA, along with several other organizations and numerous members of Congress, repeatedly voiced concerns about the lack of transparency. In response, and after months of public demand for access, the Wall Street Journal reported on December 29, 2019, that DHS directed component agencies to open the tent courts to the public.1

The DHS acknowledgement that transparency is both necessary and required is a vital first step toward upholding due process in tent courts. However, thus far, DHS and DOJ have operationalized this directive in a way that fails to allow meaningful access to the tent court facilities and imposed new hurdles to transparency by assigning immigration judges from the Ft. Worth Immigration Adjudication Center.

Tent Court Access Prior to December 29, 2019, Public Access Announcement

When DHS initially opened the tent courts in September 2019, it allowed only asylum seekers and their attorneys of record into the facilities. At one time, even support staff for attorneys of record such as interpreters and paralegals were restricted from entering the tents, though they were later allowed to accompany the attorneys. Attorney observers, press, and members of the public were categorically barred from the tent facilities while hearings were taking place. Representatives from AILA and other court observers were permitted to observe Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings only at the brick-and-mortar courtrooms where the judges appearing by VTC were located. However, remote observation is not an adequate substitute for access to the tent courts because observers are not able to assess how the proceedings are operating from the vantage point of the individual respondent, who is the most gravely impacted by these proceedings.

1 “In an effort to ensure consistency, clarity, and transparency, the acting secretary directed [component agencies] to formalize guidance for public access to these facilities, consistent with immigration courts across the country.” – DHS spokeswoman, Heather Swift. See Michelle Hackman, Wall Street Journal, U.S. Opens Immigration ‘Tent Courts’ to Public, Dec. 29, 2019.

1

Laredo and Brownsville Tent Court Setup from September 2019 through December 2019

Laredo Tent Court Brownsville Tent Court

Laredo tent court proceedings, including both Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings, were conducted via VTC by immigration judges located at the brick-and-mortar San Antonio immigration court, which is nearly 200 miles away. Brownsville tent court proceedings, including both Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings, were conducted by immigration judges located at the Harlingen and Port Isabel immigration courts, as well as the El Paso SPC, which is nearly 800 miles away from the Brownsville tent court.

● Respondents appeared in person at the Laredo tent court.

● Immigration judges from the San Antonio Immigration Court appeared via VTC.

● Attorneys of record appeared either (1) at the Laredo tent court or (2) via VTC from the San Antonio brick-and-mortar courtrooms.

● ICE trial attorneys located at the San Antonio Immigration Court appeared via VTC.

● Interpreters interpreted remotely from the San Antonio Immigration Court.

● Witnesses appeared either (1) at the Laredo tent court or (2) via VTC from the San Antonio brick-and-mortar courtrooms.

● Court observers were only permitted to observe Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings at the brick-and-mortar courts

● Respondents appeared in person at the Brownsville tent court.

● Immigration judges from Harlingen, Port Isabel, or El Paso SCP appeared via VTC.

● Attorneys of record appeared either (1) at the Brownsville tent court or (2) via VTC from the immigration judge location.

● ICE trial attorneys appeared via VTC from the immigration judge location.

● Interpreters interpreted remotely from the immigration judge location.

● Witnesses appeared either (1) at the Brownsville tent court or (2) via VTC from the immigration judge location.

● Court observers were only permitted to observe Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings at the brick-and-mortar courts.

Tent Court Access After December 29, 2019, Public Access Announcement

Master Calendar Hearings

Reports indicate that members of the press and public have been permitted to observe Master Calendar Hearings at the Brownsville and Laredo tent court facilities, in addition to the brick-and-mortar courts where the judges sit. However, this access has not been consistent with access allowed at other immigration courts across the country. For example, Master Calendar Hearings are generally open to the public, but in the tent courts, DHS personnel dictate particular Master Calendar Hearings the public is permitted to observe. Reporters and court observers have encountered other logistical hurdles, such as DHS prohibiting pens and notepads in the tents, which impede their ability to accurately observe and document the hearings.

Access to Individual Merits Hearings2

DOJ and DHS recently imposed significant new barriers that block the public’s ability to observe Individual Merits Hearings taking place at the Laredo and Brownsville tent courts. DOJ recently began assigning individual merits hearings to the Ft. Worth Immigration Adjudication Center (IAC) judges. The Ft. Worth IAC opened in October 2018 and is a remote-only facility that is closed to the public.3 Immigration judges

2 In order to observe asylum hearings, court observers need to obtain permission from the Respondent. See EOIR Immigration Court Practice Manual, Chapter 4.9, Public Access.
3 For more background information about IACs, please see the following materials: AILA’s Policy Brief: FOIA Reveals EOIR’s Failed Plan for Fixing the Immigration Court Backlog, Feb. 21, 2019 (pgs. 4-5); The American Bar

2

AILA Doc. No. 20011061. (Posted 1/10/20)

stationed at these centers adjudicate cases from around the country via VTC. The public has not been permitted to observe hearings at the IAC. Previously, court observers have been able to watch IAC proceedings by video in courtrooms where the respondent and ICE attorney are located.

However, reports indicate that DHS has blocked access to Individual Merits Hearings at the tent courts. If that continues, it would mean that there is no location for court observers or the media to watch the Individual Merits Hearings of respondents in tent courts assigned to IAC judges. For example, an AILA member reported earlier this week that DHS prevented her client’s adult son who is a lawful permanent resident from attending his mother’s Individual Merits Hearing at the Brownsville tent court that was assigned to a judge located at the Ft. Worth IAC. The son was initially permitted to enter the hearing in the tent court because he was listed as a witness in the case. Once the hearing started, the AILA member informed the immigration judge that she did not intend to call the son as a witness and would instead rely on his declaration. Despite empty chairs in the hearing room, security made the son sit in the waiting area for the duration of the hearing because the policy does not permit observers to attend Individual Merits Hearings.

At best, utilizing Ft. Worth IAC immigration judges to adjudicate Individual Merits Hearings at tent courts introduces additional operational complexities. At worst, it will block all public access. See below for more information on how using IAC judges to adjudicate hearings at the tent courts is functioning. AILA is still gathering additional information.

Merits Hearings at Brownsville Tent Court Adjudicated by IAC Judges

● Respondents appear in person at the Brownsville tent court.

● Immigration judges from the Ft. Worth IAC appear via VTC.

● Attorneys of record appear at the Brownsville tent court.

● ICE trial attorneys from an unknown location appear via VTC.

● Interpreters interpret in person at the Brownsville tent court.

● Witnesses appear in person at the Brownsville tent court.

● AILA is still gathering more information on whether DHS and DOJ are

taking steps to facilitate court observers’ access to these hearings.

What Don’t We Know?

DHS and DOJ’s lack of transparency continues to create chaos for court observers at these two tent courts. Below are a few of the many key outstanding questions regarding access to the tent court facilities.

DHS indicated that it has developed formal guidance on public access to tent court facilities but has not yet shared this guidance publicly. Will DHS share this guidance with the public?

What steps are DHS and DOJ taking to ensure meaningful public access to observe both Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings conducted at the tent court facilities, consistent with access allowed at other immigration courts across the country?

In situations where immigration judges from an IAC are assigned to adjudicate Individual Merits Hearings at the tent courts, how will DOJ facilitate public access? Does DOJ have plans to open the IACs to the public in the future?

Association’s 2019 Update Report, Reforming the Immigration System (pgs. 81-82); and The American Immigration Council Blog, The Judicial Black Sites the Government Created to Speed Up Deportations, Jan. 7, 2019.

3

AILA Doc. No. 20011061. (Posted 1/10/20)

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Shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with EOIR’s “Trump Era” user unfriendly policies, misinformation, xenophobia, and anti-Due-Process agenda.

I appreciate “NDPA superstars” Laura and Leidy keeping “on” this story. But, with Congress and the Article III courts taking a “pass” on their Constitutional functions (but, still collecting their paychecks), those “true patriots” like Laura and Leidy defending our Constitution and trying to preserve our democratic institutions face constant unnecessary “uphill battles” because of the dereliction duty by those charged with protecting the public good.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-11-20

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-07/great-race-passing-trump

Ford writes:

OPINION

Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’

By CLYDE W. FORD

JAN. 7, 2020

3:01 AM

The images horrify.

On the banks of the Rio Grande, a child floats lifelessly, her arm around her father, both drowned while trying to cross from Mexico into the United States. Refugees crossing the Mediterranean from Africa into Europe regularly drown. A Honduran mother dragging children flees from tear gas at the U.S. border. Children in cages.

The policies terrify. A border wall. Family separation. The purgatory of waiting for asylum in a third country.

In December, the Washington Post reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to use migrant children in detention as bait. Adults who show up to claim them would be targeted for arrest and deportation.

The words incite fear. “Bad hombres.” “Rapists.” “Criminals.” “Shithole countries.” When uttered by a U.S. president, they carry even greater weight.

Britain, Poland, Italy, the United States. Around the world, countries once proud of welcoming immigrants seem determined to find ever more devious ways to keep them out. Are these signs of a newly ascendant nationalism? Or the last gasps of existential fear?

The worldwide immigration crisis — and the racism apparently driving it — can trace its roots in part to a century-old book, Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race.”

In publishing a centenary edition of the 1916 work, white nationalist Ostara Press praised the book as a “call to American whites to counter the dangers both from non-white and non-north Western European immigration.” Grant proposed a “Nordic race,” loosely centered in Scandinavia, as principally responsible for human social and cultural development. He feared immigration and intermarriage would dilute this race, dooming it to extinction.

Grant’s fears of his “great race” passing are very much alive today.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s ongoing study of emails sent by Stephen Miller to Breitbart News in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election document his affinity for white nationalism. Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, lauds former President Calvin Coolidge for signing the Immigration Act of 1924, which hardened non-white immigration and eased white immigration from Western Europe. It also established the U.S. Border Patrol, the predecessor of Customs and Border Protection and ICE.

Grant’s writing is credited as part of the inspiration for the creation and passage of that 1924 Act. Hitler called Grant’s book, “my bible.” Grant’s ideas defined apartheid. His book fueled the U.S. eugenics movement.

Eugenics is a pseudoscience of race that seeks to breed and maintain a “Nordic stock” of human beings, while culling undesirables — blacks, Jews, Asians, South Americans, homosexuals, the physically and mentally ill, and others — through measures ranging from forced sterilization to death.

In Grant’s day, eugenics attracted the rich and famous — Carnegies, Rockefellers, and the Kelloggs of Corn Flakes fame. Eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, saw birth control work as eliminating “human weeds” and Alexander Graham Bell presided over the scientific directors of the Eugenics Records Office, a research institute in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

Eugenics is very much in vogue among white nationalists and far-right groups worldwide, though refashioned now into broader conspiracies like “replacement theory,” which originated in France with the writings of Renaud Camus and proposes that U.S. and European whites are being intentionally “replaced” through low birth rates and liberal immigration policies.

“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) in 2017. A gunman in Norway who murdered 80 people in 2011 portrayed the act as a defense of the Nordic race from the scourge of Islamic immigration. Similar “replacement theory” fears influenced mass shooters in Christchurch, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Charleston.

Surprisingly, Grant was as an early conservationist who saw in the fate of endangered species — the moose, the buffalo, the redwood tree — a similar fate awaiting his “Nordics.” He helped establish the U.S. National Park system. Modern-day environmental and climate movements have roots in Grant’s work, leading to a convoluted, bizarre specter:

The U.S. and European countries that Grant lauded manufacture the “greenhouse gases” threatening the environment that Grant sought to protect. Meanwhile, the climate crisis produces refugees from countries that Grant abhorred, seeking shelter in countries with draconian immigration policies that Grant helped to create.

Yet Grant was right. His “great race” is passing. Studies cite 2050 as the tipping point, when U.S. whites will become a statistical minority, and most Americans will be people of color. Whether crafted in overtly racist language or couched in covertly racist immigration policies, fear of the “great race” passing is used to win elections, cling to power, manipulate public opinion and grow organizational membership.

Immigrants built America. This new wave is no different. They are the face of the future, deserving new lives in a country that helps them succeed.

Yes, the “great race” is passing. Good riddance. And we should turn to finding ways to help everyone accept this inevitability — and thrive from it.

Clyde W. Ford is the author of “Think Black,” a memoir about his father, the first black software engineer in America.

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

Like those who were behind or “went along to go along” with horrible parts of our history like Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Chinese Exclusion Laws, or Jim Crow, Trump’s supporters and enablers eventually will have much to answer for in the “court of history.”

“Fake news.” “alternative facts,” false narratives, and internet myths might be gospel to Breitbart, Fox News, GOP sycophants, and Trump voters, but eventually, particularly in an age of information and documentation, “truth will out.” And, it won’t be pretty for the “Modern Day Jim Crows” any more than it was for the segregationists and other racists who preceded them.

PWS

01-10-20

INSIDE THE NUMBERS: My “Quick & Dirty” Takeaways From TRAC’s Latest Immigration Court Asylum Stats

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Record Number of Asylum Cases in FY 2019

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Immigration judges decided a record number of asylum cases in FY 2019. This past year judges decided 67,406 asylum cases, nearly two-and-a-half times the number from five years ago when judges decided 19,779 asylum cases. The number of immigrants who have been granted asylum more than doubled from 9,684 in FY 2014 to 19,831 in FY 2019. However, the number of immigrants who have been denied asylum or other relief grew even faster from 9,716 immigrants to 46,735 over the same time period.

More Chinese nationals were granted asylum than any other nationality. Next came El Salvadorian nationals, followed by asylum seekers from India.

Six-nine percent of asylum seekers were denied asylum or other relief in 2019. Nevertheless, 99 out of 100 attended all their court hearings.

Access to an attorney impacted the asylum outcomes. Only 16 percent of unrepresented asylum applicants received asylum or other forms of deportation relief. In contrast, twice the proportion (33%) of asylum applicants with an attorney received asylum or other relief.

Overall, asylum applicants waited on average 1,030 days – or nearly three years – for their cases to be decided. But many asylum applicants waited even longer: a quarter of applicants waited 1,421 days, or nearly four years, for their asylum decision.

To read the full report go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/588/

To examine these results in greater detail by nationality and court location, TRAC’s free asylum app is now updated with data through the end of November 2019 at:

https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/

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

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

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

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

Follow us on Twitter at

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

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

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

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

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

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SOME INTERESTING TAKEAWAYS:

Contrary to regime false narratives, non-detained asylum seekers continued to show up for their hearings approximately 99% of the time.
Contrary to recent EOIR claims, representation of asylum seekers continued to make a huge difference: twice as many represented asylum seekers received relief.
Nearly 20,000 individuals were granted asylum in FY 2019, twice as many as in FY 2014, although the number of cases denied grew even faster by 4.5x, to 46,735.
The three “Northern Triangle” countries, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras ranked among the top five in number of asylum claims granted.
Session’s biased decision in Matter of A-B- appears to have been responsible for artificially depressing asylum grant rates starting in June 2018.
Even with extraordinary efforts by the regime to “game” the asylum system against applicants, 31% of the applicants still were successful in gaining relief in FY 2019.
The New Due Process Army continues to “take the battle” to the regime: despite regime efforts to inhibit and discourage representation, nearly 85% of asylum applicants were represented in FY year 2019, a slight increase over the previous FY.
Unrepresented asylum applicants are “railroaded” though the system at a much higher rate than represented applicants: nearly half of the unrepresented asylum cases that started in 2019 were completed, as opposed to approximately 10% of the represented ones.
Non-detained, represented asylum applicants wait an average of three years for a merits hearing in Immigration Court.
The number of asylum cases decided by Immigration Judges has risen 250% over the past five fiscal years.
Asylum cases were 22.6% of the Immigration Court final decisions in FY 2019, as opposed to 10.7% in FY 2014.
Deciding more asylum cases while intentionally “stacking” the system against asylum seekers has not stopped the mushrooming Immigration Court backlogs.

PWS

01-09-20

EXILED: HOW THE TRUMP REGIME’S JUDICIALLY-ENABLED TRASHING OF ASYLUM LAW & DUE PROCESS HAS LEFT AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY OF LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS MAROONED IN A STRANGE & DANGEROUS LAND — “With The List’s queue regularly stretching longer than six months, many migrants fall victim to predatory robbery, kidnapping or murder before they can find refuge; others find the wait in one of the most dangerous cities in the world simply unendurable. . . . But for many people . . . going home is not an option.”

Jack Herrera
Independent Reporter covering Migration & Human Rights

Someone using POLITICO for iOS wants to share this article with you:

How Trump Created a New Global Capital of Exiles

By Jack Herrera

TIJUANA, Mexico—If you go early in the morning to the plaza in front of El Chaparral, the border crossing where a person can walk from Mexico into the state of California, you’ll hear shouts like “2,578: El Salvador!” and “2,579: Guatemala!”—a number, followed by a place of origin. Every day, groups of families gather around, waiting anxiously underneath the trees at the back of the square. The numbers come from La Lista, The List: When a person’s number is called, it’s their turn to ask for asylum in the United States.…

READ FULL ARTICLE ON POLITICO.COM »

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“Going home is not an option.” My friend and colleague on the Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges, Judge Jeffrey S. Chase used a similar observation as the lead in his recent blog: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/12/23/hon-jeffrey-s-chase-crime-refugee-protection-the-implication-that-refugees-should-either-stay-or-return-home-ignores-the-impossibility-of-such-request-as-refugees-by/.

We should never forget the life-tenured Article III judges, mostly on the appellate level including the Supremes, whose abandonment of both their oaths of office and their humanity has enabled the Trump Regime’s all-out assault on the rule of law and our democratic institutions to succeed to the extent it already has.

Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. justice system and all the laws he doesn’t like or doesn’t want to follow counts heavily on the complicity or the outright assistance off Article III Federal Judges. To date, notwithstanding some wimpy disingenuous protests from Chief Justice Roberts, bemoaning the predictable lack of respect for the judicial system that he and his colleagues enabled by their complicity, the higher level Article IIIs haven’t disappointed Trump. That’s how the regime’s scofflaws can, without any legislative action, create “exile cities” in “unsafe third countries” right at our border, in violation of both the guarantees of our asylum laws and the Constitutional right to Due Process!

I spent many years of my career dealing daily with the results of failed states, authoritarian regimes, and fallen democracies. I know a lot about how oppression works and how democracies and constitutional republics fail.

I have some very bad news for the “life-tenured ones” in their ivory towers: failed states, authoritarian regimes, and failed democracies ultimately have no use for anything approaching an independent judiciary. Maybe those Article III appellate judges should think and reflect before they cast their next votes to empower autocracy over democracy.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-20

“SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?

“SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were Their Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?

Robbie Whelan
Mexico City Correspondent
Wall Street Journal

\https://apple.news/A7aogQqflTgq9ZgbhJJzr1A

Robbie Whelan reports for the WSJ:

Latin America

Violence Plagues Migrants Under U.S. ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program

Migrants seeking shelter in the U.S. under Trump administration policy report rising numbers of kidnappings by criminal groups

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico—Every morning, Lorenzo Ortíz, a Baptist pastor who lives in Texas, drives a 12-seat passenger van packed with food and blankets across the border to pick up migrants who have been dropped off in Mexico and ferry them to shelters.

His mission is to keep the migrants safe from organized crime groups that prowl the streets of this violent Mexican border town. Since the Trump administration began implementing its Migrant Protection Protocols program at the start of 2019—widely known as Remain in Mexico—some 54,000 migrants, mostly from Central America, have been sent back to northern Mexico to wait while their asylum claims are processed. Mexico’s government is helping implement it.

But in cities like Nuevo Laredo, migrants are sitting ducks. Over the years, thousands have reported being threatened, extorted or kidnapped by criminal groups, who prey upon asylum seekers at bus stations and other public spaces.

“Over the last year, it’s gotten really bad,” Mr. Ortíz said.

A typical scheme involves kidnapping migrants and holding them until a relative in the U.S. wires money, typically thousands of dollars, in ransom money. Gangs have also attacked shelters and even some Mexican clergy members who help migrants.

There have been 636 reported cases of kidnapping, rape, torture and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico, according to Human Rights First, which interviews victims in border cities and advocates for migrants’ due process rights. At least 138 of these incidents involved kidnappings of children.

Many more cases of extortion and violence go unreported for fear of retribution. As more migrants are returned to dangerous areas such as Nuevo Laredo under Remain in Mexico, the situation is expected to worsen, the nonprofit Human Rights First said in a recent report.

The Mexican government has played down the violence. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard recently acknowledged kidnapping incidents, but said that “it’s not a massive number.” Only 20 such cases have been investigated by the government, he added.

The Trump administration has credited the program with deterring migrants from attempting to cross into the U.S. Monthly apprehensions of migrants at the U.S. Southern border have plunged from more than 144,000 in May to 33,500 in November. The Remain in Mexico program was expanded in June.

On a recent visit to the border, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been a “game-changer” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers because it has freed them from having to perform humanitarian duties.

But Mr. Ortíz’s daily commute back and forth over the border highlights what migrants’ advocates say is a key element of the program—it isolates migrants not only from the legal counsel they need to argue their asylum claims, but from resources like food, shelter and medical care that are abundant on the U.S. side, but near-nonexistent in Mexico.

“You have all this infrastructure to help feed and clothe and house people set up on this side, in Laredo and Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and then suddenly the administration changes the policy, and you have to send it all to Mexico, because now everyone is on the other side,” said Denise LaRock, a Catholic Sister who helps distribute donations to asylum seekers through the nonprofit Interfaith Welcome Coalition. Mexico has been unable to provide enough safe shelter and other resources to migrants.

In Matamoros, another large recipient of asylum seekers under the program across the border from Brownsville, Texas, a tent city of more than 3,000 people has sprung up. Migrants there have complained of overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and insufficient medical treatment. In November, a migrant from El Salvador was murdered in Tijuana, opposite San Diego, while waiting with his wife and two children for an asylum hearing under the Remain in Mexico program.

On a recent, briskly-cold Wednesday, Mr. Ortíz, dressed in a ski vest and a baseball cap with the logo of the U.S. Chaplain International Association, picked up six migrants, including two children aged 8 and 14, at the immigration office in Nuevo Laredo. All were from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, and were returning from legal appointments in the U.S. Hearings take place in makeshift courts set up in tents in Laredo, just across the bridge over the Rio Grande that separates the two cities.

At the front door of the office, six young men sat idly around a motorcycle, hats pulled low over their heads, watching the scene unfold, periodically walking up to the church van and peering in. Mr. Ortíz said these men were “hawks” or lookouts for criminal gangs.

“They know who I am, I know who they are,” he said. “You have to know everyone to do this work. The cartels respect the church. I’ve driven all around Nuevo Laredo in this van, full of migrants, and they never mess with me.”

At one point two of the lookouts asked the pastor for some food. He gave them two boxes of sandwich cookies. They clapped him on the shoulder, eating the treats as they walked back to their observation post.

Mr. Ortíz, a native of central Mexico, came to the U.S. at age 15 and eventually built a small contracting business in Texas. He became an ordained Baptist minister about a decade ago and three years ago began ministering to migrants full time. This year, he converted several rooms of his home in Laredo, Texas, into a dormitory for migrants and built men’s and women’s showers in his backyard.

After picking up the migrants, Mr. Ortíz ferried the group to an unmarked safe house with a chain-locked door on a busy street in the center of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Inside, about 90 migrant families crowded into rows of cots set up in a handful of bedrooms and a concrete back patio. Among the Central Americans are also migrants from Peru, Congo, Haiti, Angola and Venezuela.

Reports of migrant kidnappings have increased since the Remain in Mexico program began, Mr. Ortíz said. In September, armed men stormed the safe house—one of two that the pastor brings migrants to—and detained the shelter’s staff for about an hour.

Since then, Mr. Ortíz said, the volunteer staff has stopped allowing migrants to leave the house unaccompanied, even to buy milk for young children at a nearby store.

Rosa Asencio, a schoolteacher fleeing criminal gangs in El Salvador and traveling with her two children ages 4 and 7, was returned to Nuevo Laredo under Remain in Mexico. She says she hasn’t been outside the shelter for nearly three weeks. “They can kidnap you anywhere,” she said.

María Mazariegos, an Honduran housekeeper, said she was kidnapped along with her 12-year-old daughter Alexandra from the bus station in Nuevo Laredo in September.

Gang members held her in a windowless cinder-block room that bore signs of torture for three days with one meal of tortillas and beans. She was released after her family members in the U.S. convinced her captors that they didn’t have the money to pay a ransom.

Then, two weeks later, while she was returning from a court appointment in the U.S., a shelter staff member confirmed, another group tried to kidnap her. An escort from the shelter was able to talk the kidnappers out of it.

She has court hearing under Remain in Mexico rules on Jan. 22, where a judge is expected to decide on her asylum case. If she is rejected, she plans to move to the Mexican city of Saltillo, where she has heard there are more jobs and less violence.

“Just about anywhere is better than here,” Ms. Mazariegos added.

Write to Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com

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These two quotes really tell you all you need know about this grotesquely immoral and illegal “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” (sometimes totally disingenuously referred to as the “Migrant Protection Protocols”) and the sleazy U.S. Government officials responsible for it:

There have been 636 reported cases of kidnapping, rape, torture and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico, according to Human Rights First, which interviews victims in border cities and advocates for migrants’ due process rights. At least 138 of these incidents involved kidnappings of children.

. . . .

On a recent visit to the border, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been a “game-changer” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers because it has freed them from having to perform humanitarian duties.

Let’s not forget that the Immigration “Court” system that has life or death power over these asylum claims has been twisted and “gamed” against legitimate asylum seekers, particularly women and children with brown skins, by the White Nationalist politicos who unconstitutionally control it. All this while the Article III appellate courts look the other way and “swallow the whistle” on protecting the legal and constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us.

Let’s see, essentially: “It’s great program because it allows us to evade our humanitarian duties under humanitarian laws and concentrate on faux law enforcement directed against individuals who are not legitimate targets of law enforcement.” Doesn’t say much for the legal and moral authority of the Article III, life-tenured judges who think this is acceptable for our country.

Obviously, this has less to do with the law, which is clearly against what the “regime” is doing, or legitimate law enforcement, which has little to do with the vast majority of legal asylum seekers, and lots to do with vulnerable, brown-skinned individuals desperately seeking justice being “out of sight, out of mind” to the exalted, tone-deaf Article III Judges who are failing to do their Constitutional duties. “Going along to get along” appears to be the new mantra of far too many of the Article III appellate judges.

Assuming that our republic survives and that “Good Government” eventually returns to both the Executive and the Legislative Branches, an examination of the catastrophic failure of the Article III Judiciary to effectively stand up for the Constitutional, legal, and individual human rights of asylum seekers obviously needs reexamination and attention.

The glaring lack of legal expertise in asylum, immigration, and human rights laws as well as basic Constitutional Due Process, and the total lack of human empathy among far, far too many Article III appellate jurists is as stunning as it is disturbing! The past is the past; but, we can and should learn from it. At some point, if we are to survive as a nation of laws and humane values, we need a radically different and more courageous Article III Judiciary that puts humanity and human rights first, not last!

The “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” will not go down in history as a “law enforcement success” as Wolf-man and the other Trump regime kakistocrats and their enablers and apologists claim; it eventually will take its place as one of the most disgraceful and cowardly abandonments of American values in our history. And, the role of the complicit Supreme Court Justices and Court of Appeals Judges who turned their backs on our asylum laws, our Constitution, and human decency will also be spotlighted!

As I was “indexing” this article, I “scrolled through” the name and thought of my old friend the late Arthur Helton, a courageous humanitarian, lawyer, teacher, role model, and occasional litigation opponent (during my days at the “Legacy INS”). Arthur, who literally gave his life for others and his steadfastly humane view of the law, was a believer in the “fundamental justice” of the American judicial system. I wonder what he would think if he were alive today to see the cowardly and complicit performance of so many Article III appellate judges, all the way up to and including the Supremes, in the face of the unlawful, unconstitutional, institutionalized evil, hate, and tyranny of our current White Nationalist regime.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-31-19

THE KEY TO “JUDICIAL” ADVANCEMENT IN BARR’S BIASED, NATIVIST POLITICAL REGIME: DENY ALL ASYLUM CASES — Regime Flaunts “Generous” Standard Established By Supremes In Cardoza-Fonseca, Mocks Due Process — A “Kakistocracy In Action!”

Bryan Johnson, Esquire
Immigraton Attorney
New York, NY

https://amjolaw.com/2019/12/24/immigration-judges-asylum-grants-denials-in-fy-2018-2019/

Immigration Judges Asylum Grants & Denials in FY 2018-2019

by Bryan Johnson on December 24, 2019

After over 7 months, EOIR finally provided the Immigration Judges’ asylum grants and denials for FY 2018 and FY 2019, respectively.

To see the same statistics from FY 2014 to FY 2017, see this previous post. (which took less than 1 month for responsive records)

Of note is the asylum grants and denials for the 6 Immigration Judges who AG William Barr hand-picked for the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2019:

2 of the 6 new BIA members–Hunsucker and Cassidy–denied all their asylum cases in FY 2019.

All 6 of the new BIA members had asylum grant rates of below 10% in FY 2019.

Judge Gorman and Goodwin’s asylum grant rates dropped precipitously in FY 2019–from 14% to 3% and 9% to 3 %, respectively.

Immigration :

FY 2018: 210 asylum denials. 3 asylum grants. Grant rate: 1.4%

FY 2019: 166 asylum denials. 9 asylum grants. Grant rate: 5%

Immigration Judge Earle Wilson:

FY 2018: 226 asylum denials. 9 asylum grants. 3.8% grant rate.

FY 2019: 110 denials. 3 asylum grants. 2.6 % grant rate.

Immigration Judge William Cassidy:

FY 2018: 24 asylum denials. 1 asylum grant. 4% grant rate.

Bryan Johnson, Esquire
Immigraton Attorney
New York, NY

FY 2019: 40 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

Immigration Judge Keith Hunsucker:

FY 2018: 19 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

FY 2019: 35 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

Immigration Judge Stephanie Gorman:

FY 2018: 174 asylum denials. 30 asylum grants. 14.7% grant rate.

FY 2019: 281 asylum denials. 11 asylum grants. 3.76% grant rate.

Immigration:

FY 2018: 302 asylum denials. 33 asylum grants. 9.85 % grant rate.

FY 2019: 177 asylum denials. 6 asylum grants. 3.27% grant rate.

For reference purposes, the average grant rate for FY 2018 and FY 2019 was 33% and 29%, respectively.

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Go to the link for complete individual Immigration Judge asylum stats.

The idea that a “court” system is providing “fair and impartial” decisions to asylum seekers by advancing to important appellate positions biased, obviously unqualified, anti-asylum “jurists”with grant rates that are a small fraction of the already artificially and unethically suppressed “national average” is a total fraud — a grotesque national disgrace rivaled only by the gutless Article III judges who have allowed and encouraged this to happen on their watch!

Somewhat remarkably, after three years of concerted efforts to “zero out” asylum grants, including gimmicks like illegally and unethically rewriting asylum law to screw refugees, denying the statutory and Constitutional right to counsel, using coercive and punitive detention, abusive criminal prosecutions, and family separation to coerce asylum seekers into giving up viable claims, production quotas encouraging rote asylum denials, packing the Immigration Courts with appointees from enforcement backgrounds, and stacking the BIA with anti-asylum zealots, the overall asylum grant rate is still 29%.

That suggests that under a fair and impartial judicial system asylum seekers could and should succeed in the vast majority of cases. With no material improvements in worldwide refugee-creating conditions, and indeed a record number of refugees fleeing oppression, there is no bona fide explanation for how grant rates would go from 43% in FY 2016 to 29% in FY 2019 without any legislative changes. And, let’s be clear: the 43% in 2016 was already artificially suppressed from 56% in FY 2012. Even the 2012 rate was unrealistically low. A realistic grant rate under a properly generous application of asylum law probably would have been in the 70%-80% range.

The answer is obvious: Government fraud and misfeasance in asylum adjudication on a massive scale, motivated by a White Nationalist, racist, nativist political agenda that clearly violates both the asylum laws and our Constitution. And, this doesn’t even take into account the many asylum seekers artificially denied access to the system at all through the “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico Program,” and ludicrously illegal and fraudulent “Safe Third Country” agreements with patently unsafe and corrupt failed states.

Yet, while it’s all happening in plain view, indeed touted by Stephen Miller and other racist officials, the Article III Courts of Appeals and the Supremes have taken a dive. They are are allowing the “Second Coming of Jim Crow” to unfold before their eyes, every day, without taking the strong, courageous judicial actions necessary to preserve Due Process and fundamental fairness and to “just say no” to the overt racism driving anti-asylum policies.

Sure, the stock market is up and we’re essentially at full employment. But, that really has little or nothing to do with justice, morality, values, and the rule of law. Eventually, the inevitable economic cycles will turn again.

With social justice, integrity, the rule of law, and our republic in shambles, how will the Article IIIs and the other cowardly enablers justify their roles and dereliction of their duty to stand up for the rights of the most vulnerable among us? And, who will stand up for them and their rights when the anti-American forces driving Trumpism decide that these toady judges’ complicit role is no longer essential to the planned destruction of American democracy?

In INS v. Cardoza Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 452 (1987), Justice Blackmun, in his concurring opinion, cautioned:

“The efforts of these courts stand in stark contrast to — but, it is sad to say, alone cannot make up for — the years of seemingly purposeful blindness by the INS, which only now begins its task of developing the standard entrusted to its care.” INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 452 (1987).

Unfortunately, after years of progress under Administrations with more integrity and intellectual honesty, the interpretation and application of U.S. asylum law is now in, perhaps terminal, regression under this corrupt and intellectually dishonest White Nationalist regime and the kakistocracy it has constructed within the immigration bureaucracy, including the parody of justice and Due Process that takes place daily in the Immigration “Courts.”

Even more tragically, this time around the Supremes and the Article III Circuit Courts, far from being part of the solution and fearless defenders of the rule of law and the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers, have become a key part of the “purposeful blindness” feeding and driving the problem — in effect, “slaughtering the innocents.” By their complicity and fecklessness, they are ripping apart our system of justice and our established constitutional order. I’m sure that Justice Blackmun would be both horrified and outraged by the institutional cowardice and dereliction of duty by his black-robed, life tenured successors.

Due Process Forever; Corrupt, Complicit Federal Courts Never!

PWS

12-28-19

HOW TO RUIN A COURT SYSTEM: SOME OF THE “BEST & BRIGHTEST” IMMIGRATION JUDGES QUIT IN PROTEST OVER REGIME’S BIASED POLICIES AND “WEAPONIZATION” OF IMMIGRATION COURTS INTO DHS ENFORCEMENT TOOL BY DOJ POLITICOS!

CNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla Alvarez
Politics Reporter, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/politics/immigration-judges-resign/index.html

Priscilla Alverez reports for CNN:

Immigration judges quit in response to administration policies

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

Updated 6:39 AM ET, Fri December 27, 2019

Washington (CNN)Lisa Dornell loved her job. For 24 years, she sat on the bench in Baltimore’s immigration court, hearing hundreds of cases of immigrants trying to stay in the United States.

“It was an honor. It was a privilege to be able to preside over so many different cases and be able to grant relief to people who needed relief,” Dornell told CNN in an interview.

But she walked away from that job in April — a decision that still invokes a wave of emotion when she recalls it. “The toxic environment made it both harder and easier to leave,” Dornell said.

Over the past year, in the heat of a border migration crisis, 45 judges have left, moved into new roles in the immigration court system — which is run by the Justice Department — or passed away, according to the department. That’s nearly double the number who departed their posts in fiscal years 2018 and 2017, when 24 and 21 judges left, respectively, according to data provided by the judges union.

The reasons why individual judges have moved on from their posts on the bench vary, but in interviews with judges who left in recent months, one theme ties them all together: frustration over a mounting number of policy changes that, they argue, chipped away at their authority.

Their departures come as the Justice Department faces a backlog that exceeds 1 million cases. The bogged-down system has led to immigration cases being pushed out years in the future, leaving many immigrants residing in the US unsure if they’ll be allowed to stay or be ordered removed.

Immigration judges accuse Justice Department of unfair labor practices

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nation’s immigration system, specifically taking issue with the practice of releasing immigrants while they await their court dates. To remedy that, the administration has sought to hire more immigration judges. Most recently, the immigration judge corps hit a record high, though the Justice Department still has to contend with judges leaving over policy disagreements.

In a statement to CNN, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review spokeswoman, Kathryn Mattingly, said the agency “continually plans for attrition, and both improvements to the hiring process and a policy of ‘no dark courtrooms’ help minimize the operational impact of (immigration judge) separations and retirements.”

The agency doesn’t track individual reasons for retirements or departures, Mattingly said.

Immigration judges — employees of the Justice Department — are charged with following the policies set by each administration.

“The nature of the job ebbed and flowed as administrations changed,” Dornell recalled. “It was always tolerable. We all work with a realization that it’s the prerogative of the administration to implement policies as they see fit.”

The Trump administration was no exception. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, implemented a series of changes to the immigration court system that have continued under his successor, William Barr.

The Justice Department has imposed case quotas, given more power to the director charged with overseeing the courts, reversed rulings, curtailed judges’ ability to exercise discretion in some cases and moved to decertify the union of immigration judges.

Over time, those actions prompted immigration judges, some of whom were retirement eligible and had decades of experience, to leave the department despite initial plans to stay longer.

“I felt then and I feel now that this administration is doing everything in its power to completely destroy the immigration court system, the board of immigration appeal and the immigration system in general,” said Ilyce Shugall, who served as an immigration judge in San Francisco from 2017 until March of this year. “And I just couldn’t be a part of that.”

‘It started to wear on me’

Over his nearly two-year tenure as attorney general, Sessions transformed the courts by flexing his authority to overrule decisions, hire more immigration judges and set a case quota for judges.

One of Sessions’ addresses to the workforce, in particular, resonated with judges. In a June 2018 speech in Washington, Sessions denounced the system, which he believed was encouraging migrants to make baseless asylum claims, and reminded judges of their role in cracking down on those claims.

“You have an obligation to decide cases efficiently and to keep our federal laws functioning effectively, fairly and consistently,” Sessions said. Later that day, he issued a ruling that removed asylum protections for victims of domestic violence and gang violence.

“To be honest with you, in that meeting room, there were a number of judges that cheered and clapped when he announced it,” said former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil, referring to the ruling that would follow his address. “It was grotesque to me.”

Jamil, who had been based in the San Francisco immigration court, had a docket that included migrants who had fled their home countries, claiming they were victims of domestic violence. Sessions’ decision took direct aim at those cases.

Another judge in attendance at Sessions’ speech, Denise Slavin, recalled jaws dropping. Slavin had become a judge in 1995, serving in Florida before finishing her tenure in Baltimore in April of this year.

Sessions’ address and follow-up ruling was among a series of policy changes that began to wear on judges.

“When you’ve been around that many administrations, you learn to adapt. You see a lot of different things. Nothing like this,” said James Fujimoto, a former Chicago immigration judge who started on the bench in 1990 and also retired in April.

In particular, the administration began rolling out changes that dictated the way judges were expected to proceed with cases, thereby tightening control of the immigration courts. For example, the Justice Department said it would evaluate immigration judges on how many cases they close and how fast they hear cases.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department also issued a new rule that gives more power to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. It allows the Justice Department-appointed director — currently James McHenry — to step in and issue a ruling if appeals are not completed within a certain time frame.

“It started to wear at me,” said Jennie Giambastiani, a former Chicago immigration judge who joined the bench in 2002 and left this year. “The great number of cases coming in and the way it was expected we handle them.”

Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told CNN that for the majority of people leaving their roles it’s a result of the “hostility and insulting working conditions.”

Tabaddor noted that there’s been a pattern of new judges either leaving to return to their old jobs or taking other jobs within the government.

“This is not what they signed up for,” Tabaddor said, referring to policies designed to dictate how judges should handle their dockets.

Judges who have since left the department expressed similar concern over those policies. Dornell called the situation “intolerable.”

Shugall recalled the challenges she had faced in trying to move forward with cases in a way she thought was appropriate. “I felt like as more and more policies were coming down, it was making it harder and harder to effectively hear cases in the way that I felt was appropriate and in compliance with the statute regulations and Constitution,” Shugall said.

At an event earlier this year, McHenry rejected criticism that judges are vulnerable to pressures from the attorney general.

“Most judges that we’re familiar with, and I don’t think that immigration judges are any exception, when they’re on the bench, they know what their role is as a judge,” he said. “We’ve had no allegations of anyone reaching down to specific judges telling them, ‘You have to rule this way; you have to rule that way.’ ”

Justice Department hires new judges

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced 28 new immigration judges, bringing the number of such judges to more than 465, a record high. The majority come from government backgrounds.

It’s not unusual for administrations to hire people who’ve worked in government, but under the Trump administration, Booz Allen Hamilton, at the direction of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, issued a report recommending that the agency diversify the experience of immigration judges.

The Justice Department’s hiring practices have been criticized by House Democrats, who say whistleblowers have previously raised concerns about political discrimination in the hiring of immigration judges. The department has denied that political ideology has been a factor.

The direction of the nation’s immigration courts is also a source of concern among immigrant advocate groups. This month, groups filed a wide-ranging lawsuit, alleging that the Trump administration has manipulated the immigration court system to serve an “anti immigrant agenda.”

It remains to be seen what changes, if any, are in store for the court system, but some of those who have already left their posts as judges carry guilt for departing, concerned about who may fill their jobs.

“The biggest thing I contended with is who is going to replace me,” Jamil said. “I knew I was a fair judge.”

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

I’m proud to say that all of the quoted former Immigration Judges are members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, committed to preserving and advancing Due Process and judicial independence.

Apparently, EOIR headquarters and DOJ bureaucrats now refer to Immigration Judge decisions as “policy decisions,” thereby dropping any pretense that they are fair and impartial quasi-judicial adjudications under the law.

As for the ludicrous claim that this is anything approaching a legitimate independent judiciary, as one of my Round Table colleagues succinctly put it: “The political arm of DOJ’s assertion that IJs are treated independently is so much BS.”

Yup! Congratulations and many thanks to Judge Dornell and the others who spoke out in this article!

So, Immigration Judges, who lack the life tenure and protections of independence given to Article III Judges, put their careers and livelihoods on the line for Due Process and the rule of law, and, frankly, to save vulnerable lives that deserve saving. Meanwhile, the majority of Supreme Court Justices and far too many Article III Courts of Appeals Judges just bury their judicial heads in the sand and pretend like the outrages against Due Process, fundamental fairness, and the rule of law aren’t really happening in Immigration Court and that human lives aren’t being ruined or lost by their derelictions of duty. Has to make you wonder about their ethics, courage, and commitment to their oaths of office, as well as what the purpose of life tenure is if all it produces is complicity in the face of tyranny that threatens to destroy our Constitution and bring down our republic.

The Article IIIs are providing some rather sad examples and bad role models for today’s aspiring lawyers.

PWS

12-27-19

“THE GIFTS OF THE MAGA-I:” DESPAIR, DEHUMANIZATION, DEATH — “[W]e keep wondering, how many 7-year-old girls would need to die for this to be something that would get in the headlines and stay in the headlines for a day or two?”

Kristin Clarens, Esquire
Project Adelante

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/trump-tent-cities-mpp-killing-immigrant-children.html

JURISPRUDENCE

Trump’s Tent Cities Are on the Verge of Killing Immigrant Children

By DAHLIA LITHWICK

DEC 23, 20191:17 PM

The tent camp set up by asylum-seekers next to the bridge to the U.S. in Matamoros, Mexico, seen on Dec. 9.

John Moore/Getty Images

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On this week’s episode of Amicus, Slate’s podcast about the Supreme Court, Dahlia Lithwick was joined by Kristin Clarens, an attorney with Project Adelante, a group of multidisciplinary professionals, including lawyers, doctors, ministers, and psychologists, working across the country to help mobilize and concentrate support for asylum-seekers at the border. A transcript of the interview, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, follows.

Dahlia Lithwick: Can you just start by explaining what it is that you do and how as a lawyer you were able to kind of amble in and out of border facilities, detention facilities?

Kristin Clarens: People who previously would have been detained [in the U.S.] are now living in sort of makeshift refugee camps on the Mexico side of the border because of the “Remain in Mexico” policy. So now it’s incredibly easy to amble in and out, as easy as it is for the cartel members and other organized criminals who are circulating in these camps.

The Remain in Mexico policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols, is just about a year old. Can you describe what the world was like before it, what the world has been like since?

The estimates are that there are around 3,000 people [in the tent camp in Matamoros] living just in squalor and in tents, and that 80 percent of them are families with young children. A year ago, in the Rio Grande Valley, most of those people would come to the United States either after asking for permission at a port of entry or after crossing without permission and they would be apprehended, put into one of the temporary facilities that so many of us have seen on the news with the kids in cages and the very overcrowded conditions, lack of sanitation and medical care. After that, the families and young kids were sent to longer-term detention centers where many of us, many lawyers who speak Spanish, have worked across the country.

As of June or July of this year, the United States government started implementing something that they call, I think very ironically, the Migrant Protection Protocols, which is a policy guideline that says that border patrol agents are able to return asylum-seekers to Mexico for the duration of their immigration hearings. So now an asylum-seeker who comes up from Central America arrives in these incredibly sketchy and stressful border towns, asks for asylum at the port of entry, and after a quick trip to one of the cage facilities, they are sent back into the streets of Mexico.

That moment where they’re shoved back into Mexican territory from the U.S. officials is an incredibly vulnerable one. It’s kind of like bad guys lurking on the sides.

Now that you’re looking at the tent cities in Mexico, what kinds of things are you seeing, what kinds of legal aid are you able to provide if you are in Matamoros trying to help?

The legal aid that we’re able to provide at this point is becoming so much more limited because the statistics out now are that 0.1 percent of asylum-seekers who have their cases heard in the MPP courts—many of whom have valid claims, who would have succeeded with time and due process and legal support—0.1 percent are succeeding. Nothing has changed with respect to the nature of the cases—single women who have been persecuted specifically because they’re vulnerable in their home countries by gangs and by other types of organized crime. They’re incredibly vulnerable living in these—it’s just like a tent, the kind of tent that you would take to go camping in the woods in the summer. Except for single women—sometimes pregnant with young children with no other form of support, no network whatsoever—living for months at a time in freezing cold conditions in rain and in superhot conditions the next day, just incredibly exposed on every single level.

The circumstances change almost weekly with respect to the parameters and expectations, the due process provided in the MPP camp, and also, with respect to just the feasibility of [the legal support] we can offer as the numbers of people on the ground grow and the backlog increases in the MPP courts.

The camp facility where people are sort of constrained physically has somewhere between 2,600 and 3,000 people in it at any given day, and it’s growing. But the total number of people who’ve been returned to Mexico under MPP is closer to 68,000. So only a small fraction of the people who need legal services are even visible at this point.

On the ground and at least at Matamoros, people don’t have enough showers, they don’t have enough food. There’s rampant illness. I mean, you are seeing kids with tremendous medical and nutritional and other needs that are not getting that.

There’s sort of a group that’s come onto the scene over the past month that’s providing mobile health care via a clinic and also a humanitarian support to try and improve the shelters. They’re all volunteer based. It’s kind of all of us rolling up our sleeves and trying to figure out the best way to get support in there. But it’s subject essentially to the whims of the Mexican government. At any point, this could be shut down, or relocated, or people could just be forced to scatter. You just don’t know how things are going to unfold when the United States government’s policies might be enjoined, or when the Mexican government may decide that it can no longer tolerate these large refugee camps.

“How many 7-year-old girls would need to die for this to be something that would get in the headlines and stay in the headlines for a day or two?”

— Kristin Clarens

The Mexican government initially restricted humanitarian groups’ access to sort of building things like toilets and showers and did so themselves in Matamoros. But the facilities that they built were really not adequate. They have showers that are not linked to any sort of drainage systems so there’s just big puddles of disgusting water that smelled bad and it’s just really kind of dehumanizing. Prior to the existence of the showers though, people were bathing in the river, which is contaminated with human waste, and people were getting sick and these awful skin infections all over. Little kids were swimming in the same place where little kids were also vomiting and having diarrhea. It’s just kind of a recipe for humanitarian crisis, within 100 feet of an American city.

You’ve been dealing this week with a critically ill child.

It’s really difficult for people who could die at any minute of their illnesses to get medical care in Matamoros for a variety of reasons. It’s hard for them to get around. It’s a scary city and it’s not safe. And so, this past week, we heard about several more critically ill migrants waiting at the tent city, including a 7-year-old who had, I think it can best be described as, sort of a breach in her abdominal wall.

So her fecal matter was leaking out and kind of reinfecting her, kind of getting reabsorbed by parts of her body as she wasn’t able to access clean water or water at all, to drink or to bathe herself to prevent just massive infection that could really quickly turn to a life-and-death situation. So, we did the best we could. I’ve been on the bridge trying to cross with people and been kind of mistreated and treated aggressively by the Border Patrol agents, and I know how scary and hard that is. I can’t imagine having gotten that experience as a 7-year-old girl who has to wear a diaper because her stomach is no longer able to contain her intestines. Fortunately, she was able to cross after, I think, a collective eight or nine hours waiting on the bridge and advocating and negotiating with Border Patrol. She was able to get across and get to the hospital on Tuesday night.

I had to try to twist your arm to get you to come talk about her story, because nobody died so it feels like nobody is going to care?

That’s the sense that I get in trying to focus attention on this in such a stressful time in America. It seems scary. Our government is unstable and stressful right now, and at the same time, these incredible egregious human rights violations are happening at our Southern border. And it’s like, how do we cut through this noise and really stand up for the weakest people that our country is negatively impacting right now? And I don’t have those answers, but we keep wondering, how many 7-year-old girls would need to die for this to be something that would get in the headlines and stay in the headlines for a day or two?

You can listen to Amicus in the player below or via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, Justice, and the Courts

Divided Realities

Lawyers on the crisis at the border, and a cacophony of bad faith in the Capitol.

01:10:57

SHARESUBSCRIBECOOKIE POLICY

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Donald Trump Immigration Mexico

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As the article points out, vulnerable refugees with valid asylum claims that might well have been granted prior to the Trump White Nationalist kakistocracy are now being railroaded without legal representation or any semblance of fairness, impartiality, or due process.

Another way of putting Kristin Clarens’s very valid concerns: “How many seven-year old girls would have to die before complicit, tone-deaf, life-tenured Supreme Court Justices and Article III Appellate Judges take off their blinders, get out of their ivory towers, stop kowtowing to Trump and the forces of White Nationalist darkness and evil, and start seeing Trump’s victims as human beings, or even as their own children or grandchildren?”

Thank goodness for courageous, talented, dedicated folks like Kristin who represent the “True Spirit of Christmas” in an age where kindness, compassion, mercy, and justice have been forgotten and are daily being trampled by the regime, its supporters, and enablers.

Merry Christmas,

PWS

12-25-19

A VERY TRUMPY CHRISTMAS: PERVERTING ASYLUM REGS; USING VULNERABLE KIDS AS BAIT; ORBITING REFUGEES TO DEADLY ASYLUM-FREE ZONES; SCREWING WITH LEGAL IMMIGRANTS; DEATH CAMPS; STAR CHAMBERS; MORE PROSECUTORS AS JUDGES; & OTHER “GIFTS” FROM THE REGIME & ITS ARTICLE III JUDICIAL ENABLERS — Get The “Holiday Horror Update” On All Of America’s Human Rights Abuses & Gratuitous Cruelty From The Gibson Report 12-23-19

Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

TOP UPDATES

Trump Administration Proposes Adding Minor Crimes to List of Offenses that Bar Asylum

NYT: The new rule, issued by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, would expand the list of crimes that bar migrants from asylum to include misdemeanor offenses, including driving under the influence, possession of fake identification and drug possession, including having more than 30 grams of of marijuana… The administration would also deny asylum to migrants caught crossing the border after receiving a deportation order and those who illegally received public benefits.

Under secret Stephen Miller plan, ICE to use data on migrant children to expand deportation efforts

WaPo: The White House sought this month to embed immigration enforcement agents within the U.S. refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, part of a long-standing effort to use information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation, according to six current and former administration officials.

Guatemala Is Set to Finalize Deal With U.S. to Accept Mexican Asylum Seekers

WSJ: Guatemala is set to finalize within days a deal to expand its asylum agreement with the U.S. to begin accepting Mexican migrants sent from the southern U.S. border, U.S. and Guatemalan officials familiar with the talks said.

The employment green card backlog tops 800,000, most of them Indian. A solution is elusive.

WaPo: An estimated 800,000 immigrants who are working legally in the United States are waiting for a green card, an unprecedented backlog in employment-based immigration that has fueled a bitter policy debate but has been largely overshadowed by President Trump’s border wall fight and the administration’s focus on migrant crossings from Mexico.

The radical immigration changes under Trump that went unnoticed

Quartz: Social media tracking, Increased denaturalization efforts, Expansion of “public charge” definition, Domestic violence no longer grounds for asylum, Limits to Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Secret policies.

International Students Worry As A Popular Work Program Is Questioned

WGBH: Concerns are growing as the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia considers a legal motion filed by a private group to cancel the federal program.

Deaths in custody. Sexual violence. Hunger strikes. What we uncovered inside ICE facilities across the US

USA Today: A USA TODAY Network investigation revealed sex assaults, routine use of physical force, poor medical care and deaths at facilities overseen by ICE.

Contrasting Experiences: MPP vs. Non-MPP Immigration Court Cases

TRAC: MPP Results in Slightly Longer Wait Times for First Hearing…Asylum Seekers in the US are 7 Times More Likely to Have an Attorney…Most Asylum Seekers Attend Their Hearings Unless Forced to Remain in Mexico.

Former Immigration Judges Send Letter Expressing Concern Over Lack of Public Access to MPP Hearings

On 12/10/19, former immigration judges sent a letter to EOIR requesting that it investigate violations of due process rights during MPP hearings and ensure that the public has appropriate access to all immigration courts. AILA Doc. No. 19121700

Executive Office for Immigration Review to Swear in 28 Immigration Judges, Bringing Judge Corps to Highest Level in History

Includes:

Susan F. Aikman, Immigration Judge, Batavia Immigration Court

Jennifer Chung, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

Diane L. Dodd, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

David A. Norkin, Immigration Judge, New York, Varick Immigration Court (yes, former court administrator)

John J. Siemietkowski, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

Rantideva Singh, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

New Permanent ACIJ at New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court

EOIR: Effective January 20, ACIJ Carrie Johnson will be the permanent ACIJ for the New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court. ACIJ Johnson is currently the ACIJ for the Newark and Elizabeth Immigration Courts and will remain in those positions. ACIJ Sheila McNulty will continue to serve as the Acting ACIJ for the New York – Broadway, New York – Varick, Fishkill, and Ulster Immigration Courts.

New York sees surge in new driver’s licenses thanks to undocumented immigrants

NY Post: New York State saw a 133 percent surge in new learner permits issued Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as undocumented immigrants were able to apply for licenses for the first time. See also As Historic ‘Green Light’ Law Goes Into Effect, Immigrants Warned of Driver’s License Scams and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signs bill allowing undocumented immigrants to get licenses.

How ICE Uses Social Media To Surveil And Arrest Immigrants

Intercept: In this case, ICE used Thomson Reuters’s controversial CLEAR database, part of a growing industry of commercial data brokers that contract with government agencies, essentially circumventing barriers that might prevent the government from collecting certain types of information. See also California DOJ Cuts Off ICE Deportation Officers from State Law Enforcement Database.

U.S. citizenship path for thousands of Liberians tucked in spending bill

Reuters: The pathway to citizenship – even for a relatively small cohort of immigrants – is a victory for pro-migrant activists and lawmakers who pushed for citizenship for Liberians covered by temporary deportation relief programs.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Immigrants’ Appeal of Removal Order Subject to Equitable Tolling

Bloomberg: The 30-day limitations period for an immigrant to appeal an order requiring him to be removed from the U.S. isn’t jurisdictional, and thus may be equitably tolled, the Second Circuit said Dec. 19.

USCIS Releases Policy Alert on the Effect of Travel Abroad by TPS Beneficiaries with Final Orders of Removal

USCIS updated its policy manual to clarify the effect of travel abroad by TPS beneficiaries with final removal orders. Per USCIS, TPS beneficiaries who depart and return to the U.S. based on authorization to travel remain in the exact same immigration status and circumstances as when they left. AILA Doc. No. 19122036

Rakoff Refuses to Dismiss Lawsuit to Halt Immigration Arrests at State Courthouses

NYLJ: U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York said the lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez raised valid claims that the practice could have deleterious effects on the criminal justice system.

Cert granted in Pereida v. Barr

SCOTUSblog: The justices will decide whether a noncitizen who is convicted of a state crime can apply for relief from deportation – such as asylum or cancellation of removal – when the state-court record is ambiguous about whether his conviction corresponds to an offense listed in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Lawsuit says Trump’s green-card rules show preference for ‘the wealthy and the white’

WaPo: Organizations critical of President Trump’s immigration policies filed a broad lawsuit Thursday challenging new restrictions for green-card seekers who may need government help to pay for food and health care…It seeks to block the State Department from moving forward with its public-charge rules, and specifically singles out Trump’s October decree — titled “Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Will Financially Burden the United States Healthcare System” — requiring green-card applicants to have “approved” medical coverage or sufficient resources to pay for their medical costs out of pocket.

Lawsuit Says Immigration Courts Are Now Deportation Machines

AP: The lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Washington, D.C., and Innovation Law Lab of Portland, Oregon, said that instead of being fair and impartial, judges in immigration courts answer to Attorney General Robert Barr and are pushed to deny applications for asylum.

DOJ and DHS Propose Rule to Bar Asylum Eligibility for Individuals Convicted of Certain Criminal Offenses

DOJ and DHS issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking to provide seven additional mandatory bars to eligibility for asylum for individuals who commit certain criminal offenses in the U.S. The proposed rule would also remove provisions regarding reconsideration of discretionary denials of asylum. AILA Doc. No. 19121835

Featured Issue: Denaturalization Efforts by USCIS

The Trump administration announced the opening of an office to focus on identifying immigrants who are suspected of cheating to get their green cards or citizenship and will seek to denaturalize these individuals. Watch this page for updates and resources from AILA. AILA Doc. No. 18072705

USCIS Provides Q&As from Special Immigrant Juvenile Policy Clarifications Engagement

USCIS provided Q&As from its December 10, 2019, engagement on the recent Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) adopted AAO decisions and the corresponding policy manual update. AILA Doc. No. 19122002

The U.S. Resumes Returning Mexican Nationals to the Interior of Mexico

ICE and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior announced the continuation of the Interior Repatriation Initiative. The first 2019 repatriation flight of approximately 150 Mexican nationals departed Tucson International Airport on December 19, 2019. AILA Doc. No. 19122000

ACTIONS

USCIS and EOIR Joint Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Bars to Asylum Eligibility Comments are due 1/21/20.

USCIS Proposed Rule with Adjustments to Fee Schedule and Other Changes Comments are due 12/30/19 (EXTENDED).

DHS Proposed Rule on Employment Authorization for Asylum Applicants Comments are due 1/13/20.

Think Immigration: Individuals Seeking Protection in El Paso Detention Centers Continue to Face the Impossible. Help Us Push Back.

RESOURCES

TRAC’s updated MPP web query tool

AO: Asylum Lesson Plans

AILA Submits Amicus Brief on Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) Proceedings

Featured Issue: Public Charge Changes at USCIS, DOJ, and DOS

New Education Report Uncovers Pressing Need for Quality Programs and Funding to Support the Integration and Success of New York’s Young Children and Their Immigrant Families

EVENTS

1/15/120 NY Counts 2020 State Convening

1/16/20 Resilience 2.0: Next Steps Lawyers Can Take to Make Bouncing Back Part of the Culture

2/6/20 Basic Immigration Law 2020: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas

2/7/20 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Forms of Immigration Relief 2020

2/28/20 5th Annual New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference

7/23/20 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2020

ImmProf

Monday, December 23, 2019

A Kidnapped Kidnappeed After They Were Denied the Ability to Claim Asylum, Trapped in Mexico

Sunday, December 22, 2019

What’s next in the privatization of immigration? Privatized visa processing

25 Jewish members of Congress call on Trump to fire Stephen Miller over leaked emails

Surprise, Surprise: Few Asylum-Seekers Winning Cases Under ‘Remain In Mexico’ Program

Boundless: Immigration Policies with the Biggest Impacts in 2019

America’s Voice — Immigration: Decade in Review

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Executive Office for Immigration Review to Swear in 28 Immigration Judges, Bringing Judge Corps to Highest Level in History

Fourth Circuit willing to review challenge to Census Bureau’s inadequate preparations

Friday, December 20, 2019

Legal challenge to State Department public charge rules

Deep Political Divide on Race and Immigration

Democrats Blast Trump’s Immigration Policies at Debate

The Most Disturbing and Most Inspiring Immigration Stories of 2019

Thursday, December 19, 2019

The Story Behind Neil Gaiman’s What You Need To Be Warm

What You Need to be Warm by Neil Gaiman

Lawsuit says immigration courts are deportation machines

The radical immigration changes under Trump that went unnoticed

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

India’s Supreme Court to Hear Challenges to Nation’s Citizenship Amendment Act

The Beat Goes On! Joint Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Restrict Certain “Criminal Aliens'” Eligibility for Asylum

BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Grants Review in Criminal Removal Case

The President’s Anti-Impeachment Letter to Speaker Pelosi

USCIS Expands Guidance Related to Naturalization Requirement of Good Moral Character

Immigration Article of the Day: Deporting Chevron: Why the Attorney General’s Immigration Decisions Should not Receive Chevron Deference by Richard Frankel

International Migrants Day 18 December

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Must Watch TV: 60 Minutes Interview with El Salvador’s President

From the Bookshelves: A Federal Right to Education: Fundamental Questions for Our Democracy by Kimberly Jenkins Robinson (editor)

How Birthright Citizenship Could Threaten the “Samoan Way”

Call for Proposals: Crimmigration, Capital, and Consequences 5th Biennial CINETS Conference

Monday, December 16, 2019

What Will Conservative Win in UK Mean for Immigration?

New Jersey Bill to Expand Driver’s Licenses Passes Legislature

Canadian border rights withering, too

The Bishop and the Imam: A Conversation on Immigration

National Partnership for New Americans Seeking ED

Top 10 Immigration Stories of 2019

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Note that DOJ/EOIR rally outdid themselves on Immigration Judge appointments with 27 “Government insiders,” most from DHS or other enforcement backgrounds, and only one “outside” appointment from private practice. As one of my Round Table colleagues quipped: “I guess they must have run out of ICE Assistant Chief Counsel.”

Time to be happy and thankful if you’re not a migrant seeking justice and mercy in Trump’s America.

Behind every tyrannical regime are complicit judges who fail to stand up for justice for the most vulnerable and deserving of protection!

Thanks again, Elizabeth for all you do for the New Due Process Army and the cause of American justice!

PWS

12-24-19

WE KNOW THAT SESSIONS, WHITAKER, & BARR HAVE TURNED THE DOJ INTO A LEGAL, MORAL, PROFESSIONAL, & ETHICAL CESSPOOL — Some Federal Judges Are Beginning To Take Notice: “To say the least, it is disappointing that [DOJ] counsel, after consulting with other counsel including ‘prosecutors and appellate attorneys’ in this District’s United States Attorney’s office, submitted a legal memorandum to the Court that failed to acknowledge contrary case law that did not support its position.”

Hon. Elizabeth A. Wolford
U.S. District Judge
WDNY

Dan Kowalski over @ LexisNexis Immigration Community reports:

FW: due process victory: Hassoun v. Searls

“[T]he Court finds that 8 C.F.R. § 241.14(d) is not a permissible reading of § 1231(a)(6), and that it is accordingly a legal nullity that cannot authorize the ongoing, potentially indefinite detention of Petitioner. … The Court further finds that an evidentiary hearing is necessary before it can determine the lawfulness of Petitioner’s continued detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226a.”

Note also the roasting, on page 11, of DOJ lawyers for failure to do basic 1L legal research: “To say the least, it is disappointing that Respondent’s counsel, after consulting with other counsel including “prosecutors and appellate attorneys” in this District’s United States Attorney’s office, submitted a legal memorandum to the Court that failed to acknowledge contrary case law that did not support its position.”

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/hassoun_op.pdf

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

I hear and appreciate U.S District Judge (WDNY) Elizabeth A. Wolford’s outrage and frustration.

But, for hard working members of the New Due Process Army this is “just another day at the office” in dealing with the Trump Regime’s unethical, scofflaw, fact free White Nationalist nativist agenda: lies and pretexts presented to the Supremes to hide an intentional census undercount directed at reducing Hispanic voting and political power; false narratives about migrants and crime; a bogus largely self-created “border emergency;” fraudulent “national security” justifications; EOIR “administrative changes” intended to undermine the right to representation and eliminate due process; twisted unethical “precedents” entered by the chief prosecutor that always come out against the individuals; misogynist racist misinterpretations of asylum law intended to kill, maim, and torture vulnerable women of color; child abuse cloaked in disingenuous “law enforcement” rationales; bogus “civil detention” to punish lawful asylum seekers; a grotesquely dishonest “Migrant Protection Protocol” intended to subject migrants to deadly conditions in Mexico; “Safe” Third Countries that are among the most dangerous in the world without functioning asylum systems; irrational “public charge” regulations intended to reduce legal immigration without legislation; EOIR’s distorted statistics intentionally manipulated to minimize asylum grants and cover up the anti-asylum bias improperly infused into the system; vicious unsupported attacks on the private bar by the Attorney General and other regime politicos. The list goes on forever.

Unfortunately, this scofflaw and unethical behavior will continue until Federal Judges back up their words with actions: declarations of unconstitutionality; sanctions against the Government for frivolous litigation; removing political control over EOIR; referring Barr and other DOJ attorneys who are abusing the justice system to bar authorities for possible discipline.

“This ain’t your Momma’s or Papa’s DOJ!” (Or for that matter one that those of us who served in the recent past would recognize.) Its antecedents and “role models” are America’s vile, deadly, discredited Jim Crow era and 20th & 21st Century fascist regimes.

Time for Article III Judges to get out of their ivory towers, stop tiptoeing around Government corruption, dishonesty and misconduct, and start looking at things from the human perspective of the individuals and their courageous attorneys caught up in this legal, moral, and ethical quagmire and fighting not only for their own lives but for the future of our nation! There is and will be “only one right side of history” in this existential struggle!

Due Process Forever; The Corrupt White Nationalist Immigration Agenda Never!

PWS

12-21-19

Laredo Tent Court	Brownsville Tent Court
Laredo tent court proceedings, including both Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings, were conducted via VTC by immigration judges located at the brick-and-mortar San Antonio immigration court, which is nearly 200 miles away.	Brownsville tent court proceedings, including both Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings, were conducted by immigration judges located at the Harlingen and Port Isabel immigration courts, as well as the El Paso SPC, which is nearly 800 miles away from the Brownsville tent court.
● Respondents appeared in person at the Laredo tent court. ● Immigration judges from the San Antonio Immigration Court appeared via VTC. ● Attorneys of record appeared either (1) at the Laredo tent court or (2) via VTC from the San Antonio brick-and-mortar courtrooms. ● ICE trial attorneys located at the San Antonio Immigration Court appeared via VTC. ● Interpreters interpreted remotely from the San Antonio Immigration Court. ● Witnesses appeared either (1) at the Laredo tent court or (2) via VTC from the San Antonio brick-and-mortar courtrooms. ● Court observers were only permitted to observe Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings at the brick-and-mortar courts	● Respondents appeared in person at the Brownsville tent court. ● Immigration judges from Harlingen, Port Isabel, or El Paso SCP appeared via VTC. ● Attorneys of record appeared either (1) at the Brownsville tent court or (2) via VTC from the immigration judge location. ● ICE trial attorneys appeared via VTC from the immigration judge location. ● Interpreters interpreted remotely from the immigration judge location. ● Witnesses appeared either (1) at the Brownsville tent court or (2) via VTC from the immigration judge location. ● Court observers were only permitted to observe Master Calendar Hearings and Individual Merits Hearings at the brick-and-mortar courts.

Due Process Forever! Complicity In The Face Of Tyranny, Never!

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Ford writes:

Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’

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Immigration judges quit in response to administration policies

‘It started to wear on me’

Justice Department hires new judges

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