COURT OBSERVATION TEAMS EXPOSE SYSTEMATIC INJUSTICE IN AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT COMPLETELY DYSFUNCITONAL COURT SYSTEM – Our U.S. Immigration Courts, “Where The Rubber Meets The Road,” Are Running On Four Flat Tires, Leaving A Human Carnage Of Injured & Dying Victims In Its Wake! — This Is What “Irreparable Harm” Looks Like!

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Rewire.News reports:

All eyes are on the border crisis our government has created.

The news of horrific conditions at immigrant detention centers, an onslaught of restrictions preventing refugees from seeking asylum, and reports of ICE raids have sent thousands of people to the streets to protest.

Amid these atrocities, many people in the United States are asking how they can help. For those who want to contribute, there is a simple way that doesn’t require donating money, living in a border town, or speaking Spanish: volunteering as a court observer.

Court observers attend asylum hearings to shed light on the immigration court system, which is among the least transparent institutions of the justice system. Qualifications are minimal—one needs only a valid government photo ID and the ability to observe in silence and take legible notes, since recording devices aren’t allowed. Volunteers can plug into different programs to share their observations, as well as discuss the process with family and friends or post their findings on social media. Collectively, this information can be used to highlight judges or courts that are particularly unfriendly to asylum seekers. It can also empower advocates pushing for systemic reform of the 50 immigration courts in 29 states, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands deciding the fate of every asylum seeker, many of whom are forced to return to the place they just barely escaped from.

“The immigration court system has been so insulated from public view,” Michele Garnett McKenzie, deputy director of The Advocates for Human Rights, an organization that has been running a court observation program since 2017, told Rewire.News. “It’s small, it’s under the radar, and it lulls us to thinking that there are a set of rules and if the rules are followed, justice will be done.”

Reports, however, are surfacing of judges who haven’t granted a single asylum out of 200 cases. Asylum seekers who are deported are sent back to a place where they might be tortured or killed.

Ariel Prado, who organizes the volunteer-based court watch program in Atlanta, Georgia, for Innovation Law Lab, hasn’t encountered a judge who has denied 100 percent of asylum cases. “But there are judges in Atlanta with a denial rate in the high 90s,” Prado told Rewire.News.

These high denial rates don’t tell us the full story, Prado noted. “You might think [the judges] have a different understanding of the law or they have a constrained understanding of what asylum is or they apply the law differently,” Prado said. “In [immigration court], it’s a much more human level than that. You see women who describe sexual abuse, repeated rape over the span of the year, being in captivity, being forcefully drugged … and you watch mostly male judges almost doze off through the testimony and totally trivialize [the woman’s] experience in their summary.”

Other advocates echo similar frustrations. Emem Maurus is an immigration attorney for Al Otro Lado, a bi-national nonprofit serving asylum seekers who seek to migrate to the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico. The organization recently launched a court observation program to collect information and bring transparency to Migrant Protection Protocols. Without accountability, Maurus told Rewire.News, “it’s a black hole in terms of what’s happening” to asylum seekers. Maurus described a judge who asked an asylum seeker to designate the country of his removal in case his asylum was denied. “The man said, I can’t go back to Honduras,” said Maurus. The judge then asked the government lawyer for a recommendation. “[The government lawyer] very glumly said, ‘Honduras.’ And the judge said, ‘OK, Honduras,’” added Maurus.

Although Maurus finds these incidents difficult to observe, they believe it’s crucial to document “the human cost of [the collective policies] that Trump [has] enacted.”

Under the “Remain in Mexico” policy, asylum seekers are forced to wait in Mexico for their case to be heard, and when they eventually appear for court, most are unrepresented. Lack of representation can be detrimental to an asylum case.

As part of her court observation for Al Otro Lado, volunteer Sarah Gibb Millspaugh records whether asylum seekers appear with a lawyer and if they try to obtain council. Although the San Diego immigration court provides asylum seekers with a list of legal aid, only 5 percent of people she observed had legal representation. “When you’re living in shelters, [it is difficult] to find a lawyer across the border that will connect with you in Mexico,” Millspaugh told Rewire.News. “The list they had posted in the court were all in San Diego and not in Tijuana.”

Compounding the issue, many U.S.-based immigration law firms don’t answer phone calls from Mexico, according to Maurus. And there are other obstacles. In several immigration courts, interpreters communicate through video as they aren’t present. “So if the judge talks to the prosecutor, it doesn’t get interpreted for the asylum seeker,” said McKenzie. “The interpreters only translate questions addressed to the asylum seekers.” Given such circumstances and the lack of adequate representation, it is highly unlikely for asylum seekers to receive a fair trial.

Millspaugh found the immigration judges she observed to be compassionate. Even so, like other advocates, she thinks the law is unjust. “Some of the most emotional points were that [the judge] said we’ll review [the] case at the next hearing in September.” This meant the asylum seekers would have to live in Mexico shelters for another two-and-a-half months or on the streets of one of the most dangerous cities in the world, with no money or means to protect themselves. “A woman said a man had followed her twice, [while she was in Mexico awaiting her court hearing], [trying] to take her daughter,” Millspaugh added. “Her daughter was about three.” A man and his son who had been threatened in Mexico asked the judge if she could hold the hearing any sooner. Due to a backlog in cases, the judge was able to expedite the case by only two weeks.

Millspaugh observed another judge who asked asylum seekers to not bring their children to their court hearing. Afterwards, Millspaugh wrote the judge a letter stating that given the unstable and unsafe conditions in Mexico, asylum seekers have no choice but to bring their children to the court. “I wouldn’t leave my child in Mexico. I would bring my child,” said Millspaugh.

The advocates Rewire.News spoke to encouraged people of all backgrounds to volunteer as court observers. Given the background and different experiences of volunteers, McKenzie believes they can observe court hearings from different angles. “[We have] an amazing array of retired people who go [into the immigration courts] with 40 years of professional experience as a psychologist or a child protection worker,” she said.

Prado, who is helping develop an Immigration Court Watch browser-based app, believes who controls the narrative is important. “It’s all [up to] the community to investigate where the truth lies. Court observation is the core of truth finding and it’s meant to be a national project.”

Scheduled to launch in mid-August, the app uses standardized forms to document immigration judges’ conduct, the hearing outcome, and other factors. “That way we can compare the immigration judge conduct and hearing outcomes by more than just [what the government and the Department of Justice] is willing to share,” said Prado. The forms are uploaded onto the app, which will read responses, ask follow-up questions, and store the information in a centralized location.

“Court observation makes sure what happens [to asylum seekers] isn’t completely shrouded and opaque,” Prado said. There are times, however, that immigration judges determine a hearing should be closed to the public in order to protect the asylum seeker from having to share sensitive details in front of an audience. Other times a judge would rather not be scrutinized or might be concerned the observers will be disruptive. Prado noted it would be ill-advised for observers to challenge the judge. Instead they should document they were ordered to leave the immigration court along with any reasons the judge provides.

McKenzie believes court observation could help the justice system become accountable and even change the behavior of the judges. “The system is designed to operate for the benefit of the system and not the public,” McKenzie said. “Without public engagement there is no sunshine, no transparency. Transparency and accountability are fundamental to protecting the human rights of the people.”

When Millspaugh shared her experience as a volunteer court observer with friends, they were concerned that it is difficult to witness such heartbreaking proceedings. But Millspaugh is undeterred, as she feels contributing to stopping human rights violations is empowering. “There is something that’s very life-giving … about actually engaging in the system. When we know what’s happening and we’re not connecting with it, there is a helpless despair we can feel. We can do something. Even if we [don’t] stop it, we are mitigating the horrors that are inflicted.”

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As this article aptly points out, every concerned American can take part in supporting the many traumatized individuals being sentenced to injustice in our disgracefully broken U.S. Immigration Courts. You don’t have to be a lawyer or a journalist. These “courts that function more like star chambers” have been “weaponized” by the Trump Administration against the very individuals they are supposed to be protecting against unlawful Government actions, Executive overreach, and the intentional misconstruction of the laws granting asylum and other immigration benefits.

This article also correctly points out that the so-called “border crisis,” largely created and totally aggravated by this “maliciously incompetent” Administration, has been used to divert attention from the gross violations of legal and human rights and basic morality that the Administration inflicts daily in the “captive” Immigraton Courts as it mocks constitutional Due Process and fundamental fairness.

History will record the intentional misdeeds, lack of human empathy, and the often life-threatening harm being cowardly and unfairly inflicted on those seeking mercy and refuge under our laws.

PWS

08-03-19

THE VOICE OF REASON: ANGELINA JOLIE @ TIME ON WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NOT BE ABANDONING OUR TRADITIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LEADERSHIP ROLE! — “It is troubling to see our country backing away from these, while expecting other countries, who are hosting millions of refugees and asylum seekers, to adhere to a stricter code. If we go down this path, we risk a race to the bottom and far greater chaos. An international rules-based system brings order. Breaking international standards only encourages more rule-breaking.” — Advocates Independent Article I Immigration Court For Fair & Impartial Adjudication Of Asylum Claims!

https://apple.news/ARnAxuYYATOy78Bq8BYOy7g

Angelina Jolie writes in Time:

Angelina Jolie: The Crisis We Face at the Border Does Not Require Us to Choose Between Security and Humanity

Angelina Jolie

Jolie, a TIME contributing editor, is an Academy Award–winning actor and Special Envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees

We Americans have been confronted by devastating images from our southern border and increasingly polarized views on how to address this untenable situation.

At times I wonder if we are retreating from the ideal of America as a country founded by and for brave, bold, freedom-seeking rebels, and becoming instead inward-looking and fearful.

I suspect many of us will refuse to retreat. We grew up in this beautiful, free country, in all its diversity. We know nothing good ever came of fear, and that our own history — including the shameful mistreatment of Native Americans — should incline us to humility and respect when considering the question of migration.

I’m not a lawyer, an asylum seeker, or one of the people working every day to protect our borders and run our immigration system. But I work with the UN Refugee Agency, which operates in 134 countries to protect and support many of the over 70 million people displaced by conflict and persecution.

We in America are starting to experience on our borders some of the pressures other nations have faced for years: countries like Turkey, Uganda and Sudan, which host 6 million refugees between them. Or Lebanon, where every sixth person is a refugee. Or Colombia, which is hosting over 1 million Venezuelans in a country slightly less than twice the size of Texas. There are lessons — and warnings — we can derive from the global refugee situation.

The first is that this is about more than just one border. Unless we address the factors forcing people to move, from war to economic desperation to climate change, we will face ever-growing human displacement. If you don’t address these problems at their source, you will always have people at your borders. People fleeing out of desperation will brave any obstacle in front of them.

Second, countries producing the migration or refugee flow have the greatest responsibility to take measures to protect their citizens and address the insecurity, corruption and violence causing people to flee. But assisting them with that task is in our interest. Former senior military figures urge the restoration of U.S. aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, arguing that helping to build the rule of law, respect for human rights and stability is the only way to create alternatives to migration. The UN Refugee Agency is calling for an urgent summit of governments in the Americas to address the displacement crisis. These seem logical, overdue steps. Our development assistance to other countries is not a bargaining chip, it is an investment in our long-term security. Showing leadership and working with other countries is a measure of strength, not a sign of weakness.

Third, we have a vital interest in upholding international laws and standards on asylum and protection. It is troubling to see our country backing away from these, while expecting other countries, who are hosting millions of refugees and asylum seekers, to adhere to a stricter code. If we go down this path, we risk a race to the bottom and far greater chaos. An international rules-based system brings order. Breaking international standards only encourages more rule-breaking.

Fourth, the legal experts I meet suggest there are ways of making the immigration system function much more effectively, fairly and humanely. For instance, by resourcing the immigration courts to address the enormous backlog of cases built up over years. They argue this would help enable prompt determination of who legally qualifies for protection and who does not, and at the same time disincentivize anyone inclined to misuse the asylum system for economic or other reasons. The American Bar Association and other legal scholars and associations are calling for immigration court to be made independent and free from external influence, so that cases can be fairly, efficiently and impartially decided under the law.

There are also proven models of working with legal firms to provide pro-bono legal assistance to unaccompanied children in the immigration system without increasing the burden on the U.S. taxpayer. Expanding these kinds of initiative would help to ensure that vulnerable children don’t have to represent themselves in court, and improve the effectiveness, fairness and speed of immigration proceedings. Approximately 65% of children in the U.S. immigration system still face court without an attorney.

We all want our borders to be secure and our laws to be upheld, but it is not true that we face a choice between security and our humanity: between sealing our country off and turning our back to the world on the one hand, or having open borders on the other. The best way of protecting our security is by upholding our values and addressing the roots of this crisis. We can be fearless, generous and open-minded in seeking solutions.

TIME Ideas hosts the world’s leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

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Wow! Great thoughts on how caring people might actually help to constructively address human migration issues rather than cruelly making them worse through “malicious incompetence.”

It’s painfully clear that we have the wrong “celebrity” leading our nation. But, Jolie wasn’t on the ballot (not will she be). Nevertheless, in a saner and more law-abiding Government, there should be a place for ideas and leadership from Jolie and others like her.

HISTORICAL NOTE: If my memory serves me correctly, Angelina Jolie once appeared before my esteemed retired colleague U.S. Immigration Judge M. Christopher Grant, as an expert witness in an asylum case before the Arlington Immigration Court.

PWS

08-02-19

HONDURAS SINKING INTO THE SEA: No “Wall” (Or Dike) Will Stop The Eventual Flood Of Environmental Refugees

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jul/31/hond uras-community-coastal-towns-rising-sea-le?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Nina Lakhani
Central American Reporter,
The Guardian

Nina Lakhani reports for The Guardian:

Eric Pineda runs a modest beachfront restaurant which serves up plates of fresh fish and rice – and faces imminent destruction.

A recent tidal surge razed the nightclub next door, leaving a pastel pink ruin, and in the past two years, several other businesses between Pineda’s property and the Pacific Ocean have been destroyed by sudden waves.

“Every year, the ocean is getting closer and higher. I think we’ve got a year – maybe two – before the water takes us too,” said Pineda, 24. “It won’t be long.”

Golden beaches once helped transform this fishing community on the Gulf of Fonseca into a thriving tourist destination. Nowadays, however, there are barely a few metres of sand left, and rising water levels and tidal surges have wiped out roads, homes and businesses. Locals estimate that around a metre of ground is lost every year – which means this entire community will soon be under water. The same predicament is faced by settlements along the Pacific coast of Honduras, where land and its people are disappearing fast.

In recent years, millions of people have fled Central America to escape grinding poverty, institutional collapse and untrammeled violence. But another factor behind the exodus has received less attention: conflicts over natural resources which have been intensified by corporate expansion and climate change.

Running Dry

Violence and poverty have forced millions of Central Americans to flee their homes, but as the climate crisis deepens, drought, famine and environmental destruction are playing a growing role in driving the exodus

Living without water: the crisis pushing people out of El Salvador

’People are dying’: how the climate crisis has sparked an exodus to the US

Why I’m fleeing Honduras to seek asylum in the US

More from this series

Sea levels are rising around the world, but in this region another local factor is helping speed up coastal degradation: swathes of mangrove forests have been destroyed to make way for industrial shrimp farms which have proliferated even inside protected reserves.

Many Honduran shrimps are exported to the US and the UK, where they are sold in major supermarket chains including Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer.

“The industry destroys huge mangrove sites promising development, but actually creates very few jobs – and actually increases poverty by restricting fishing access for locals,” said Dina Morel, director of a local marine conservation organization, known by its acronym Coddeffagolf.

According to Morel, shrimp farms are routinely approved in protected areas and environmental violations rarely punished as officials often have vested interests in the profitable industry.

“The consequences of losing this essential ecosystem are clear,” said biologist Víctor Bocanegra. “Environmental vulnerability, food insecurity, poverty and social decomposition, which all leads to forced migration.”

Mangroves are essential to healthy, resilient coastlines. The sturdy trees protect shorelines from storms and floods, and help prevent erosion by stabilizing sediments with their intertwined roots.

They are key factors in marine biodiversity, providing food, clean water, shelter and safety for fish and invertebrates such as crabs, lobsters and prawns.

In order to take advantage of this natural symbiosis, acres and acres of shrimp farms have been built inland in ocean inlets which were once safe havens for tidal waves. But the farms block the natural flow of water, causing high tides and storm surges to immerse beach communities instead.

On Cedeño beach, Ariana Tees, 70, is frying fish caught by her husband, Manuel, 67, in a makeshift tarpaulin kitchen just metres from the sea. This is where they live, work, eat and sleep, but every month they are forced further and further back as the ocean inches closer inland.

Every year, the ocean is getting closer and higher. I think we’ve got a year – maybe two – before the water takes us too

Eric Pineda

“Of course we’re scared,” said Tees. “But we’ve nowhere else to go, and there’s no protection from the government, not even a barrier.”

Manuel, who has been fishing since he was a child, said: “Every year there is less fish, and the surges have nowhere to go – so the water comes here looking for an exit. We’ve woken up in the middle of the night surrounded by water.”

He paused, before concluding: “Basically we’re fucked.”

The shrimp industry in southern Honduras dates back to the 1970s, but grew exponentially in the 1990s. As a result, in 2000, seven mangrove forests covering over 150,000 acres were designated protected reserves.

Despite this, half the region’s mangroves were destroyed between 2000 and 2010 – largely as a result of fishing concessions sanctioned before the decree, according to research by Coddeffagolf.

No one knows exactly how much of the protected areas remain intact, but satellite images seen by the Guardian suggest the situation is critical.

The extent of the deforestation can be seen from a mountain peak in San José de Las Conchas, 20 miles north of Cedeño, where the panorama reveals only slivers of protected mangroves nestled between massive manmade shrimp lagoons and the turquoise ocean.

We’ve woken up in the middle of the night surrounded by water.

Manuel Tees

Locals say shrimp companies build farms in secret – hidden from view by a ring of mangroves – then obtain permits retrospectively.

Sales figures suggest shrimp farms are expanding: $216m of shrimps were exported last year, a figure expected to rise by up to 20% in 2019.

FundeSur, a social responsibility foundation created by the shrimp industry in 2014, claims to invest $0.02 for every pound of shrimp exported into health, education and environmental projects.

But reforestation programmes, which require years of nurturing to ensure hardy shrubs, are rare. FundeSur did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“There is more deforestation than reforestation, that’s evident for everyone to see,” said Nelson Martínez, a grassroots organiser from Guapinol, a nearby community badly damaged by a tidal surge three years ago. “Unless the mangroves are saved, Guapinol will disappear too.”

A thin strip of land sandwiched between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Central America is especially vulnerable to the global climate emergency.

Between 1998 and 2017, Honduras was the second country or territory most affected by extreme weather events such as floods, storms, droughts and wildfires, according to the Global Risk Index. (Puerto Rico came first.)

Hurricane Mitch – the most deadly storm in the western hemisphere in over two centuries – left at least 8,000 people dead and a million others homeless and landless when it struck in 1998. It set the country’s economic development back at least 50 years and triggered the first wave of post-cold war Central American migration to the US.

Yet, investment in climate mitigation and adaption programmes such as reforestation and flood defences is falling.

Only 0.5% of the central government budget is allocated to environmental protection this year, down from 1.2% in 2010, according to analysis by economist Hugo Pino, a former finance minister and central bank governor.

Since a 2009 coup, a profusion of water-guzzling megaprojects – including dams, mines, and African palm plantations – has fuelled social conflicts, state repression and migration.

Berta Cáceres, a Goldman environmental prize winner, was murdered in March 2016 in retaliation for leading opposition to the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the river Gualcarque, relied upon by the indigenous Lenca people for food, water and medicines.

“The key issue connecting climate change and governments is water governance – the politics deciding who gets priority to enough good quality water,” said Professor Raúl Pacheco-Vega, an environmental politics scholar at the centre for economic research and teaching (Cide) in Mexico.

In Honduras, the upshot of water politics is stark: every year during the rainy season, countless communities are cut off, lives are lost, and roads, bridges and schools are damaged. It is a cycle of environmental destruction that exacerbates poverty and drives migration as families search for food, water and safety.

In October, six people were killed after two days of torrential rain triggered landslides and the River Choluteca burst its banks. The town of Marcovia, 14 miles inland from Cedeño, was inundated and its habitants forced to leave.

Soon after, hundreds of people from the nearby city of Choluteca joined a caravan of migrants heading north through Mexico to the US border.

Half a million Hondurans heading north have been apprehended by US and Mexican officials since October 2016.

The motives for migration are always complex, but in this region, environmental factors are increasingly important.

Pedro Landa from Eric, a Jesuits human rights research organisation, said the lessons from Mitch were never learned. “Since the [2009] coup, the state has been increasingly controlled by mafia politicians with no interest in guaranteeing water supplies or economic development for ordinary people, just for themselves.”

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White Nationalist political slogans and cruel “enforcement-only” gimmicks can’t solve the real human problems and global forces driving migration. That would take expertise, empathy, courage, vision, and intellectual capacity, five qualities conspicuously lacking in Trump and the shallow toadies who make up his Administration.

PWS

08-01-19

CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS, DOCUMENTED OR NOT, HAVE CONTRIBUTED MUCH MORE THAN DONALD TRUMP TO 21st CENTURY AMERICA’S PROSPERITY (Indeed, They Are Even Responsible For Some Of Trump’s Few Actual Business Successes): So, How Do Trump, “Big Mac With Lies,” “Cooch Cooch,” & Other GOP Racists Get Away with Their False & Dehumanizing Attacks On Those Who Are ACTUALLY “Making America Great?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administrations-new-policy-again-shows-its-contempt-for-central-americans/2019/07/30/070b3b1a-b2ff-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html

The Washington Post Editorial Board:

HERE’S WHAT the State Department recommends for U.S. travelers to Guatemala: Do not walk or drive at night. Request security escorts. In the capital, Guatemala City, do not hail taxis on the streets and avoid 10 specific neighborhoods, including one around the airport.

Here’s what the Trump administration recommends to non-U.S. travelers to Guatemala, namely those from other Central American countries: Stay there and apply for asylum. Don’t even think about continuing north to the U.S. border.

The juxtaposition is absurd but no less so than the agreement the administration struck last week with Guatemala — that it be considered a “safe third country” to which the United States will return asylum seekers if they have not already sought refuge there. If the administration’s contempt for Central Americans fleeing violence, hardship and persecution was not already clear, this new policy clarified it.

The rule, set to take effect in the coming weeks if U.S. or Guatemalan courts don’t block it, is mainly aimed at migrants from El Salvador and Honduras. They constitute the second- and third-largest cohorts of asylum seekers crossing the U.S. southwestern border in recent months, and most of them traverse Guatemala on their trek northward. (The largest cohort is Guatemalans themselves, who accounted for a majority of the more than 100,000 migrants stopped at the border monthly this past spring.)

President Trump, irate at the migrant flow, has used slander — “these are bad people,” he told reporters — and a grab bag of legally dubious deterrent measures. He is right that Customs and Border Protection and other agencies are struggling to handle the tide, which resulted in nearly 700,000 apprehensions in the current fiscal year through June, compared with scarcely 400,000 the entire previous year. But it is morally indefensible to attack a migration problem by putting migrants themselves at risk. That is precisely what the administration’s new move would do.

The United States maintains a safe-third-country agreement with Canada, meaning that asylum seekers can be returned to that country to apply for refuge if they crossed the border from there. That makes sense because Canada is generally safe; Guatemala is anything but. And the retort of acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan, who noted that parts of the United States are also unsafe, is risible. Guatemala’s crime rate dwarfs that of the United States; the homicide rate there is five times higher.

The probable result of the administration’s policy, if it goes into effect, will be to transform legal asylum seekers into undocumented immigrants. They are unlikely to seek refuge in Guatemala, which has no administrative mechanism to process thousands of asylum applications — and which agreed to the deal with the United States only after Mr. Trump threatened severe sanctions. Instead, many will likely cross illegally into the United States and live in the shadows.

Mr. Trump’s response is to build his border wall, which got a lift last week when the Supreme Court said construction could proceed while challenges to funding it continue in the courts. But walls can be scaled, tunneled under and circumnavigated; Mr. Trump’s wall would not stanch the flow of migrants nor improve the conditions that drive them from their countries.

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More confirmation of my observation that “Big Mac With Lies” is one of America’s most dangerous White Nationalist racist liars and enablers. Imagine what an ethical, honest public servant could do by having the courage and integrity to “blow the whistle” on Trump’s lies, fabrications, and racist attacks on the rule of law and on humanity!

Yes, the Post is right that “Big Mac’s” bogus claims about Guatemala are “risible,” meaning in plain English “laughable.” But there is nothing “funny” about a dishonest and cowardly public official whose lies and false narratives are killing innocent, vulnerable humans who (perhaps misguidedly) looked to the U.S. for legal protection.

Most outrageously, “Big Mac” and company think that they essentially can “get away with murder” (perhaps emboldened by Trump’s claim that he could shoot someone in board daylight and escape accountability). While, thanks to the Supremes, public officials have insulated themselves from most legal accountability for many of their outrageous misdeeds, it’s up to history and future generations to insure that the legacy of McAleenan and his fellow “Germany 1939’ers” reflects their disingenuous disregard for the law, truth, and human values and their spineless support for the toxic policies of the worst and most immoral President in U.S. history. No, “just following orders” won’t be a defense for “Big Mac” before the Court of History.

PWS

07-31-19

ACLU COURT EVIDENCE SUGGESTS McALEENAN LIED TO CONGRESS WHILE VIOLATING COURT ORDER ON CHILD SEPARATIONS — Continuing Separations Appear To Be Part Of Intentional Misapplication & Misinterpretation Of Narrow “Exception” — “Best Interests Of Child” Buried Beneath A Web Of Deception

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/aclu-us-has-taken-nearly-1000-child-migrants-from-their-parents-since-judge-ordered-stop-to-border-separations/2019/07/30/bde452d8-b2d5-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for the WashPost:

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union told a federal judge Tuesday that the Trump administration has taken nearly 1,000 migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border since the judge ordered the United States government to curtail the practice more than a year ago.

In a lengthy court filing in U.S. District Court in San Diego, lawyers wrote that one migrant lost his daughter because a U.S. Border Patrol agent claimed that he had failed to change the girl’s diaper. Another migrant lost his child because of a conviction on a charge of malicious destruction of property with alleged damage of $5. One father, who lawyers say has a speech impediment, was separated from his 4-year-old son because he could not clearly answer Customs and Border Protection agents’ questions.

Acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan has said that family separations remain “extraordinarily rare” and happen only when the adults pose a risk to the child because of their criminal record, a communicable disease, abuse or neglect. Of tens of thousands of children taken into custody at the border, 911 children were separated since the June 26, 2018, court order according to the ACLU, which cited statistics as of June 29 that the organization received from the government as part of ongoing legal proceedings.

During a July 12 tour of a detention center in McAllen, Tex., reporters saw almost 400 men being held in cages. They allegedly crossed the border illegally. (The Washington Post)While the judge recognized that parents and children might still be separated when a parent is found to pose a risk to their child, the ACLU and others say federal immigration and border agents are splitting up families for minor alleged offenses — including traffic violations — and urged the judge Tuesday to clarify when such separations should be allowed.Approximately 20 percent of the new separations affected children under 5 years old, the ACLU said, compared with about 4 percent last year.

“They’re taking what was supposed to be a narrow exception for cases where the parent was genuinely a danger to the child and using it as a loophole to continue family separation,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an interview. “What everyone understands intuitively and what the medical evidence shows, this will have a devastating effect on the children and possibly cause permanent damage to these children, not to mention the toll on the parents.”

[Accused of gang ties, separated parents struggle to get their kids back]

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment Tuesday.

The tally of child separations adds to the approximately 2,700 children who were taken from their parents during a chaotic, six-week period from May to June 20 last year, when a Trump administration border crackdown triggered one of the worst crises of his presidency.

The policy sought to deter a crush of asylum seekers, who were surrendering as families at the U.S. southern border, by prosecuting parents for the crime of illegal entry and sending their children to federal shelters. Reports of traumatized, crying children led to widespread demands to reunite the families.

Venezuelan migrant mothers and their children turn themselves in to law enforcement officials to seek asylum after illegally crossing the Rio Grande near Mission, Tex., on July 25. (Loren Elliott/Reuters)

Trump ordered federal officials to stop separating families on June 20, 2018, and said it is the “policy of this Administration to maintain family unity” unless the parent poses “a risk” to the child.

Six days later in San Diego, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ordered the Trump administration to reunite the families, a process that dragged on for months because the government had failed to track the parents and children after splitting them up. A still-unknown number of families were separated before the policy officially began.

McAleenan, who at the time signed off on the zero tolerance policy and carried it out as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in May that family separations are “extraordinarily rare” and make up a tiny portion of the now more than 400,000 families taken into custody at the border since the court ruling.

Central American migrants walk along train tracks as they head toward the United States in Saltillo, Mexico, on July 24. (Daniel Becerril/Reuters)

At that time, he testified, about one to three family separations happened out of about 1,500 to 3,000 family members apprehended each day. He also said then that separations occur “under very controlled circumstances.”

Testifying before the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 18, McAleenan emphasized that the separation process is “carefully governed by policy and by court order” to protect the children.

“This is in the interest of the child,” he said. “It’s overseen by a supervisor, and those decisions are made.”

[IG: Trump administration took thousands more migrant children from parents]

Of the 911 child separations, 678 were for alleged criminal history, the ACLU said Tuesday, citing government records. Offenses included drunken driving, assault and gang affiliation, as well as theft, disorderly conduct and minor property damage.

Many cases lacked details about the alleged crimes, the ACLU said, and several charges were decades old. Among those separated because of concerns about parental fitness were an HIV-positive father of three young daughters and a mother who broke her leg and required surgery.

Child advocates and medical professionals have repeatedly warned that separating children from their parents can lead to lasting severe physical and emotional disorders.

“Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire,” Jack Shonkoff, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School, said in an affidavit included in the ACLU’s motion. “Prolonging that separation is like preventing the first responders from doing their job and letting the fire continue to burn.”

Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a child advocate for unaccompanied and separated children, told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform that the group represented about 120 children and found that nearly all separations were “contrary to the best interests of the child.”

“DHS officials with no child welfare expertise are making split-second decisions, and these decisions have traumatic, lifelong consequences for the children and their families,” Nagda said in her testimony. She also filed an affidavit in the ACLU’s case Tuesday.

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

It’s with very good reason that I consider “Big Mac With Lies” to be one of the most dishonest and dangerous public officials in America.

Some reporters seem to mistakenly “cut him some slack” because he: 1) served in the Obama Administration (which had its own very dismal record on treatment of families and children seeking asylum); and 2) unlike folks such as “Gonzo,” “Cooch Cooch,” Miller, Kobach, et al., he’s not a “lifelong White Nationalist ideologue.”

But, I don’t see how being a liar, apologist, “cover up artist,” and human rights abuser in support of a racist White Nationalist Administration is somehow “better” than being a “true believer” in White Nationalist racism. Falsely claiming that Guatemala and Mexico are “Safe Third Countries,” that asylum applicants won’t show up for hearings (when they almost always do, particularly when they are given access to lawyers and have the system properly explained to them), and falsifying stats to paint an untruly negative picture of asylum seekers from Central America is no less vile than Trump’s lies and racist tweets.

As a lawyer and a graduate of Amherst Collge and Chicago Law, “Big Mac” is cerainly smart enough to know that places like Guatemala and Mexico don’t come remotely close to satisfying the legal definition of a “Safe Third Country.” He also has enough Government immigration enforcement experience to know for sure that the extralegal, cruel, and ineffective “enforcement only” approach he disingenuously advocates as a “Trump toady” won’t come anywhere near to solving the problems driving forced migration or saving the lives of the vulnerable.

I actually have a better understanding of what drives the Trumps, “Gonzos,” Millers, and “Cooch Cooches” of the world than what drives corrupt public servants like McAleenan to violate their oaths of office and to pick on those whose rights and human dignity they should be standing up for, no matter how vile the leadership of the Administration they nominally serve (actually, they serve the American people, not any particular political leader) might be.”Big Mac” is a disgrace to honest Federal civil servants and to all Americans who believe in democracy and “good government.” History must hold him accountable.

PWS

08-01-19

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

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

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

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

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

CONTACTS:

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

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

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

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

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 19072905.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

07-30-19

HOW LOW CAN THEY GO? — Many Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Worse Than Sessions’s Targeting Of Abused Women Refugees — But, Barr Seeks To Outdo Him With Unprovoked Attack On Persecuted Families!

MATTER OF L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019)

https://www.justice.gov/file/1187856/download

DOJ HEADNOTE:

(1) In Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017), the Board of Immigration Appeals improperly recognized the respondent’s father’s immediate family as a “particular social group” for purposes of qualifying for asylum under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

(2) All asylum applicants seeking to establish membership in a “particular social group,” including groups defined by family or kinship ties, must establish that the group is (1) composed of members who share a common immutable characteristic; (2) defined with particularity; and (3) socially distinct within the society in question.

(3) While the Board has recognized certain clans and subclans as “particular social groups,” most nuclear families are not inherently socially distinct and therefore do not qualify as “particular social groups.”

(4) The portion of the Board’s decision recognizing the respondent’s proposed particular social group is overruled. See Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. at 42– 43 (Part II.A). The rest of the Board’s decision, including its analysis of the required nexus between alleged persecution and the alleged protected ground, is affirmed. See id. at 43–47 (Part II.B).

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

As my friend Dan Kowalski of LexisNexis has pointed out, the AG’s ruling conflicts with most Circuit Court precedents which have recognized the nuclear family as the “quintessential particular social group.” So, Barr’s latest assault on human rights and the rule of law is likely to engender years of unnecessary and wasteful litigation.

But, the New Due Process Army and the Roundtable will be leading the change for truth, justice, and the American way!

PWS

07-29-19

THE BALTIMORE SUN EDITORIAL BOARD WITH THE PERFECT RESPONSE TO TRUMP’S LATEST RACIST ATTACK ON TRUTH AND HUMAN DECENCY: “Better to have a few rats than to be one!”

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-0728-trump-baltimore-20190727-k6ac4yvnpvcczlaexdfglifada-story.html

King Rat — KIng Rat
President of the United States

Better to have a few rats than to be one

By BALTIMORE SUN EDITORIAL BOARD

BALTIMORE SUN |

JUL 27, 2019 | 6:36 PM

Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings, the House Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman. (Kenneth K. Lam / Baltimore Sun)

In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.

Donald J. Trump

✔

@realDonaldTrump

· Jul 27, 2019

Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA……

Donald J. Trump

✔

@realDonaldTrump

….As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run,” which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb.”

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In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from.

David Zurawik: Trump’s Twitter attack on Cummings and Baltimore: undiluted racism and hate »

This is a president who will happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. Fox News rang the bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into action.

As heartening as it has been to witness public figures rise to Charm City’s defense on Saturday, from native daughter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, we would above all remind Mr. Trump that the 7th District, Baltimore included, is part of the United States that he is supposedly governing. The White House has far more power to effect change in this city, for good or ill, than any single member of Congress including Mr. Cummings. If there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone’s, perhaps more because he holds the most powerful office in the land.

Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.

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

Tellingly, what set off this latest barrage of racist lies was Cummings’s very legitimate anger at and criticism of the Border Patrol and Kevin “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan during a recent oversight hearing.

The Border Patrol atrocities that Cummings cited, and that “Big Mac” and his GOP backers deny, have all been documented beyond a reasonable doubt by countless reporters, lawyers, Congressmen, the victims themselves, and, most tellingly, the DHS’s own Inspector General. They aren’t “matters of opinion;” they are irrefutable facts that McAleenan disingenuously continues to deny, obscure, and cover up.

Beyond that, recent reports about the racist website in which many Border Patrol personnel, including Chief Carla Provost, participate show that the Border Patrol has a serious racism and lack of professionalism problem that is right out in the open that McAleenan has failed to solve and appears to minimize. No, he’s too busy abusing children and other migrant detainees and dishonestly promoting “Safe Third Country” agreements that violate the statute and his oath of office. In a normal times, McAleenan would be a strong candidate for removal from office and criminal prosecution. Here, he’s just another dishonest Trump stooge.

Hang in there Chairman Cummings! Don’t let the vile racists and White Nationalists who have taken over our Government and are trampling both our Constitution and human decency off the hook!

And, “Go Baltimore, a great American City!”

PWS

07-28-19

SENTENCED TO DEATH WITHOUT DUE PROCESS: Trump’s Legal Shenanigans Kill Innocent People!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/opinion/politics/expedited-deportation-trump-immigration.html

Beth Werlin writes in The NY Times:

The Trump administration’s expansion of the use of fast-track deportations through “expedited removal” will create a “show me your papers” regime nationwide in which people — including citizens — may be forced to quickly prove they should not be deported. This policy allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to quickly deport someone without going before an immigration judge, undermining American principles of fundamental fairness and putting United States citizens, permanent residents and asylum-seekers at risk of wrongful deportation.

For 15 years, the government has been applying expedited removal in a limited way to those within 100 miles of the Canadian or Mexican border who have been in the United States for less than two weeks. The entire process consists of an interview with an immigration officer during which the burden is on the individual to prove a legal right to remain in the United States. One could be questioned, detained and deported very swiftly with little time to consult a lawyer or to gather evidence to prevent deportation. The extremely short timeline of the expedited-removal process increases the chances that a person who is legally entitled to stay in the United States can end up being removed anyway. The government now says it will apply it across the country for many people who cannot prove they have been present in the United States for two years or more. The expansion could affect thousands of people nationwide.

During just one year of the Trump administration, 27,540 citizens were questioned by ICE — five times more than the last year of the Obama administration. The expansion of the expedited removal process will further increase the number of people questioned, creating a heightened risk that citizens will be arrested, detained and wrongfully deported.

The process has many shortcomings. First, in expedited removal proceedings, immigration officers serve as both prosecutor and judge — charging someone as deportable and making a final decision to deport him, often all within a day. These rapid deportation decisions fail to take into account many critical factors that an immigration judge would consider, including whether the individual is eligible to apply for lawful status in the United States or whether he has citizen family members.

Second, there is generally no opportunity to consult with a lawyer. Having one can make all the difference. With a lawyer, a person is 10 times more likely to prevail in an immigration case. Moreover, there is typically no judicial oversight, with relatively low-level government officers authorized to issue the deportation orders.

Despite the backlogs in the immigration court system and even though the courts often fail to live up to expectations, they can help ensure a basic level of fair process. They safeguard against unlawful removals, afford people the opportunity to obtain counsel, and provide a streamlined appeal process.

This is particularly critical today, given that many people who will be subject to expedited removal are asylum seekers. These particularly vulnerable people could face serious harm or death in their countries of origin if they’re deported.

The lack of safeguards and information in expedited removal is compounded by well-documented abuse of the process. Immigration officers applying expedited removal are obligated to inform individuals of their opportunity to seek asylum and refer a person who expresses a fear of returning to their home country for a “credible fear interview.” Unfortunately, multiple investigations have revealed that officers at the border sometimes fail to fulfill these obligations.

One hallmark of the American justice system is a fair day in court before an impartial decision maker. This is the ultimate distortion of that system. Rather than strengthening the immigration court system, the administration is planning to bypass it entirely, and the human costs will be great.

Beth Werlin is the executive director of the American Immigration Council

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

Trump’s cruel abuse of vulnerable refugees and his wanton destruction of the U.S. Immigration Court system are national disgraces!

PWS

07-27-19

FRAUD & ABUSE: TRUMP SEEKS DEATH AND DISRUPTION FOR REFUGEES: Claims To Have Duressed Guatemala, One Of The, Poorest, Most Corrupt, Most Dangerous REFUGEE SENDING Countries Into Outrageously Illegal “Safe Third Country” Agreement! — “Big Mac With Lies” Says Guatemala Not Much Different From U.S.!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-he-has-agreement-with-guatemala-to-help-stem-flow-of-migrants-at-the-border/2019/07/26/23bf0cba-afe3-11e9-b071-94a3f4d59021_story.html

Seung Min Kim
White House Reporter
Washington Post

Kevin Sieff
Latin American Correspondent, Washington Post

Abigail Hauslohner
National Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

From the Washington Post:

By Seung Min Kim ,

Kevin Sieff and

Abigail Hauslohner

July 26 at 6:45 PM

President Trump on Friday said he has struck a deal that would designate Guatemala as a safe third country for people seeking asylum in the United States — a plan that is facing significant legal hurdles in the Central American country as the Trump administration continues to struggle with the high number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border.

The White House did not immediately release details of the agreement, and it is unclear how it would be implemented considering Guatemala’s constitutional court has ruled any safe third country agreement would require legislative approval and the proposal has been widely criticized there.

Trump announced the arrangement in a previously unscheduled appearance in the Oval Office with Enrique Degenhart, the Guatemalan minister of government, and acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan.

“We’ve long been working with Guatemala, and now we can do it the right way,” Trump said Friday. He claimed the agreement will put “coyotes and the smugglers out of business.”

He added: “These are bad people.”

Trump said the agreement will offer safe harbor for asylum applicants deemed legitimate, and that he plans to sign agreements with other countries soon.

The announcement comes just days after Trump threatened retaliation against Guatemala as discussions stalled over designating the Central American nation as a safe third country, which means migrants traveling through the country on their journey to the United States would be directed to first seek protection there.

The Trump administration has been seeking to sign these agreements to cut down on the number of Central American migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, which officials say is overwhelming the U.S. immigration system. The administration has come under heavy criticism from Democrats and immigration advocates who argue asylum seekers and other migrants face inhumane conditions in the U.S. facilities where they are being housed.

On a call with reporters Friday, McAleenan said the agreement with Guatemala would “be up and running in August,” after the two governments had completed several steps to ratify the deal. Under the agreement, Salvadorans and Hondurans would need to seek asylum in Guatemala, McAleenan said.

“If you have, say, a Honduran family coming across through Guatemala to the U.S. border, we want them to feel safe to make an asylum claim at the earliest possible point,” he said. “If they do instead, in the hands of smugglers, make the journey all the way to the U.S. border, [they would] be removable back to Guatemala.”

Guatemala’s only public statement about the agreement did not explicitly say it would serve as a safe third country, but alluded vaguely to “a plan that will be applied to Salvadorans and Hondurans.”

The statement said the United States would allocate temporary agricultural work visas to Guatemalans, adding that country’s president, Jimmy Morales, negotiated the deal “to counter grave economic and social repercussions.”

A proposal to designate Guatemala as a safe third country is already facing significant legal and logistical challenges. For one, the deal would force thousands of Hondurans and Salvadorans to apply for asylum in Guatemala, one of the region’s poorest countries, which has in some cities struggled to defeat transnational gangs, including MS-13.

Last year, Guatemala received 259 asylum applications, a tiny number compared with the United States and even Mexico. Of those, not a single application was approved, in part because the country is still building institutions to review those cases.

“Guatemala’s asylum system isn’t prepared to increase its capacity to 50,000 in less than a year,” said one United Nations official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which currently supports Guatemala’s fledgling asylum system, was not consulted as part of the negotiations, officials said. McAleenan also likened the third party agreement to arrangements between European countries and Turkey to stem the Syrian migrant crisis in 2015. He declined to say whether the U.S. government would be providing any assistance to Guatemala to improve safety and security for Honduran and Salvadoran refugees.

When read the State Department’s description of the security situation in Guatemala, which includes notations that murder is “common,” gang activity is “widespread” and police are ineffective, McAleenan, the Homeland secretary, said one should not “label an entire country as unsafe,” and likened Guatemala to parts of the United States.

The announcement prompted immediate backlash from Democratic lawmakers and human-rights groups who warned that Guatemala did not have the capacity to accept all the migrants who would now be required to apply for asylum there, nor is such an arrangement legal.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who along with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) toured Border Patrol facilities in El Paso on Friday, noted that Guatemala has one of the world’s highest homicide rates and that they had visited with families earlier in the day who said they had fled the country because of the danger.

“It’s just Kafkaesque to say about that country, ‘Oh, safe third country,’ ” Kaine said. “You can’t just attach a label of safe third country and make it so.”

The Trump administration has taken a variety of unilateral actions to address the challenges at the border, and it has also received an additional $4.6 billion from Congress to deal with the crisis.

In June, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 94,000 migrants at the southern border, a 29 percent drop from the 133,000 who were detained in May. Border crossings tend to drop as the temperature rises in the summer, but administration officials have pointed to the lower figures as a sign that Trump’s border plan is working.

For months, Morales dispatched members of his administration from Guatemala to Washington to negotiate a safe third country agreement with the United States. But earlier this month, shortly before Morales was scheduled to sign the agreement in the White House, Guatemala’s constitutional court ruled he did not have the authority to sign the deal without legislative approval.

The meeting with Trump was canceled. In a statement, Morales then denied he had ever attempted to negotiate such an agreement. He is in the twilight of his scandal-ridden presidency, with elections scheduled for Aug. 11.

But when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Guatemala and tax remittances, Morales resumed negotiations. Members of the country’s business community urged him on, raising alarm about the impact of tariffs, but most Guatemalans believe the country is wildly unprepared to offer asylum to thousands of Central Americans.

A number of Guatemalan congressmen and human rights officials said they would soon challenge the legality of Friday’s agreement in the country’s courts.

Jordán Rodas, Guatemala’s human rights prosecutor, said the country’s interior minister, who signed the deal on Friday, “does not have the power to sign an agreement of this nature.”

He said he was analyzing the agreement, and if he determined it was illegal, he would demand the constitutional court suspend its implementation.

“We are two weeks from an election,” said Edgar Gutierrez, one of five Guatemalan ex-foreign ministers who had earlier filed a petition in the court to block the signing of the agreement. “The signing of this accord will destabilize the country.”

Some Guatemalan analysts said the timeline for the agreement made it even more unrealistic.

“One month to be a safe country,” said Pedro Pablo Solares, a leading Guatemalan columnist who frequently writes about migration. “It couldn’t be more absurd.”

This year, for the first time in history, more Guatemalans have been apprehended at the U.S. border than citizens of any other country. It remains one of the region’s poorest countries, where migration is seen by many as the only way into a tiny middle class. In 2017, Guatemalans received a total of $8.2 billion in remittances, 11 percent of Guatemalan GDP.

Guatemalan politicians and analysts were taken aback by the agreement, which most discovered through a White House tweet.

“One characteristic of this government is that it does whatever it wants, in spite of what the law says. This is another example,” said Sandra Morán Reyes, a congresswoman from the Convergencia party.

Sieff reported from Mexico City. Mary Beth Sheridan in Mexico City and Bob Moore in El Paso contributed to this report.

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

Wow! Talk about turning the law, logic, and human morality on its head! “Safe Third Country” agreements are supposed to be between countries with fair, due process oriented asylum systems, like the existing agreement between the U.S. and Canada. They are not a gimmick for dishonest officials like Trump and McAleenan to “outsource” legal protection responsibilities to dangerous, poor, REFUGEE SENDING countries like Guatemala that can’t possibly live up to their international obligations under the U.N Convention.

This is nothing short of high level fraud that will result in death, torture, and abuse of asylum seekers! Not to mention that the presence of lots of deported asylum seekers will further destabilize the already unstable country of Guatemala. Trump is about to create an unmitigated international disaster by grossly unlawful conduct. Will we be able to stop him before it’s to late for us and for the rest of humanity?

PWS

07-27-19

ROUNDTABLE NEWS: Judge Jeff Chase & I Quoted By Nicole Narea In Law360 On How Trump’s Latest Assault On Immigrants’ Rights Could Go Belly Up Even With Some Statutory Support!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1182014/deportation-rule-may-violate-due-process-procedural-law

Deportation Rule May Violate Due Process, Procedural Law

By Nicole Narea

Law360 (July 25, 2019, 8:31 PM EDT) — The Trump administration’s recent expansion of its power to fast-track deportations is likely to invite legal challenges if the new process is seen as a violation of administrative law and the Constitution’s due process guarantees.

Under a rule published Monday, unauthorized noncitizens across the entire U.S. — not just those apprehended within 100 air miles of a land border — who arrived in the last two years via a land border could be subject to expedited removal proceedings and deported without an immigration court hearing. The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to challenge the rule, which went into effect Tuesday and, by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s estimates, will affect more than 20,000 immigrants a year.

Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, however, the rule may not qualify for an exception to the Administrative Procedure Act’s public notice requirements that allows the DHS secretary to unilaterally change the scope of the agency’s expedited removal authority. It also raises due process concerns for individuals who may not be able to prove their period of residency in the U.S. and for asylum-seekers who might be erroneously subject to expedited deportation.

“Unleashed expedited removal undermines our immigration system and the rule of law,” said Shoba Wadhia, a professor at Penn State Law in University Park.

Administrative Procedure Act

To justify the rule, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan invoked his authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to have “sole and unreviewable discretion” to alter the scope of expedited removal proceedings. The rule is therefore exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement to give the public an opportunity to comment on it before it goes into effect, DHS said in its announcement.

But Paul Schmidt, former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals during the Clinton administration, said there “does not appear to be any legitimate reason” for noncompliance with the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements, especially given that the rule had such a long gestation period. Trump has been considering such a rule since the first days of his administration.

Wadhia said opponents of the rule could argue that the government failed to show “good cause” that invoking notice and comment is in fact “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest” as the APA requires.

“The government’s position that there is a ‘good cause’ lacks integrity,” she said.

Most lawsuits that have succeeded in challenging Trump immigration policies have brought claims under the APA, including the recent challenge to a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately found that the decision to include the question on the census did not abide by the APA’s requirement that agencies provide a reasoned explanation for their actions.

Due Process Issues

Ken Johnson, dean of University of California, Davis School of Law, said the new rule could also be subject to due process challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s 1982 case Landon v. Plasencia, in which the justices applied a balancing test of interests in deciding the constitutionality of immigration admission procedures. That decision established that the interests of a noncitizen who has lived in the country for two years are much weightier than the interest at stake for a noncitizen who has been in the country for only two weeks because they have stronger ties to their community, he said.

Since the new rule expands expedited removal to apply to individuals who have lived in the U.S. for up to two years, they may be entitled to a higher standard of due process. Trump’s expansion of expedited removal also appears to exceed the limits provided by the Immigration and Nationality Act, resulting in further due process concerns.

Jeff Chase, a former legal adviser to the BIA and immigration judge, said the original intent of expedited removal was to stem an increase of inadmissible noncitizens arriving at airports in the 1990s who were paroled into the U.S. after announcing they were seeking asylum. The new rule, however, far surpasses that purpose.

“The present rule extends the application well beyond the purpose of controlling entry to the country, and now threatens to deprive those already here of their rights to apply for relief,” he said.

He said he also anticipates that expedited removal will be mistakenly applied to those beyond the scope of the rule, impacting those with a period of residence longer than two years, whose “attempts to stay under the government’s radar will create difficulty meeting their burden of establishing their period of residence in the U.S.”

Wadhia said that genuine refugees may also be erroneously denied due process, turned away as opposed to referred to an asylum officer to determine whether they have fear of persecution in their home countries, as required by law. Even if they have a credible fear interview, they are unlikely to pass in light of reports that asylum officers have been pressured to significantly lower their credible fear approval rates, Chase said.

Even U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied children and others who are exempt from expedited removal by statute could be unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the DHS, Wadhia said.

“The opportunity for profiling and violations of due process by DHS is rampant,” she said.

–Editing by Breda Lund and Kelly Duncan.

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

The Government’s case for an “emergency” exemption to the APA is laughable. This bogus “immigration emergency” is actually a human rights tragedy that has been unfolding in “super slow motion” before us since before last Thanksgiving. Virtually every part of it is a predictable result of Trump’s “maliciously incompetent” racist-driven approach to migration situations. To say that it now requires an “emergency” exemption, when Trump announced the proposed policy change in an Executive Order over two years ago, and his incompetent agencies have been fiddling around with it ever since, is simply absurd.

The Constitutional problem raised by Dean Johnson and others is very real.

And, there is no question that Trump’s DHS will misuse this authority to detain and deport lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens. Indeed, it’s already happening even without the regulatory change. See, e.g., “Texas-Born Student Held In Immigration Custody For Weeks Released,” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-student-immigration-custody-detention_n_5d36f637e4b020cd99498588.

Yes, some Federal Judges can be tone deaf to the plight of ordinary individuals, particularly when they wrongly think that they are “above the fray.”

Perhaps we need to hope that the DHS wrongfully detains a Federal Judge, a Federal Judge’s spouse, or the child of a Federal Judge so that the message about how Trump’s misguided policies affect ALL of us gets through to the “Judicial Ivory Tower” sooner, rather than later.

PWS

07-26-19

TAL @ SF CHRON: 9TH CIR. STICKS A FORK IN CORE OF “GONZO APOCALYPTO” SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM — Many Of DOJ’s Wasteful “Criminal” Prosecutions Of Harmless Asylum Seekers Were Illegal — Conservative Icon Judge Jay Bybee Becoming A Key Judicial Voice For The Rule Of Law Against Trump & Co’s Executive Abuses!

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Ninth-Circuit-ruling-could-wipe-out-hundreds-of-14152171.php

Ninth Circuit ruling could wipe out hundreds of family separations convictions

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in California substantially narrowed the government’s ability to charge people for crossing the border illegally — a case that could invalidate hundreds of prosecutions that were at the core of the Trump administration’s separations of migrant families last year.

The ruling comes as the federal law in the case, which makes it a crime to cross the border without authorization, is under scrutiny in the Democratic presidential campaign, with several candidates arguing it should be done away with altogether.

Wednesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena could bolster the Democrats’ argument that the Trump administration is misusing the law to criminalize well-intentioned immigrants seeking asylum. It also adds further questions to the administration’s widely criticized prosecutions that resulted in thousands of family separations last year.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The 2-1 decision overturning a lower court ruling concerned the provision of U.S. law that makes improper entry to the country a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail. The law has three parts: entering the U.S. at an improper time or place, eluding immigration officers or entering the U.S. using false pretenses.

In an opinion written by Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush-appointee, the court decided that the second part — eluding officers — could only apply to immigrants who are at a valid border crossing but who try to enter by evading detection, not immigrants picked up on the U.S. side having crossed somewhere else. That was the case with Oracio Corrales-Vazquez, a Mexican national whom officers found hiding in bushes miles from the border, whose conviction the court overturned.

Because part one of the statute already covers immigrants who surreptitiously enter where there is no legal crossing, the court held, the second part must exist to cover some separate activity. Otherwise, the court said, it would be redundant.

Circuit has already held that part one of the illegal-entry crime — entering at an improper time or place — does not apply to people who cross the border where officials can see them, in person or over cameras, and then seek out an officer and claim asylum. Those migrants are clearly not trying to avoid detection, court rulings have held.

It has become standard practice for federal authorities in Southern California to charge border crossers only using part two to avoid the defense to part one, said Kara Hartzler, an attorney with the nonprofit San Diego Federal Defenders who brought the case. Now, federal attorneys will not have part two as a back door to charge asylum seekers with illegal entry.

The court ruling means thousands of similar convictions could be thrown out, including hundreds that were the basis for family separations the Trump administration carried out last summer in the name of prosecuting a crime.

“All of the criminal cases that led to being separated from their families, … at least in San Diego, are at least convictions where the person was actually innocent because of this ruling,” Hartzler said.

David Leopold, a former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, recalled then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen telling Congress the family separations were justified because the adults taken into custody had been charged with illegal-entry crimes.

“Well, here they weren’t even prosecuting those cases correctly,” Leopold said. “It puts a question mark next to every one of those convictions, which led to separation of children and in some cases the permanent separation of child from parent.”

The Trump administration separated thousands of families in the two months the program was in effect, before the president stopped it and a federal judge in San Diego ruled the practice was unconstitutional. In hundreds of those cases, parents were deported without their children, many of whom will not be reunited as the youths pursue a right to stay in the U.S.

The Justice Department does not make prosecution data public that would identify how many separated families could be affected by Wednesday’s ruling, but there could be hundreds of such cases. Nearly 4,000 immigration-related offenses were brought in the Southern District of California in 2018, according to court data, of which the most common charge is illegal entry.

The ruling also comes as some Democrats are attacking the notion that crossing the border should be a criminal rather than civil offense. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro has made repealing the law a central focus of his presidential campaign, pointing to the Trump administration’s use of the law as a justification for separating the families last year. Twelve Democratic candidates have embraced the idea, according to a Politico tracker.

Castro and other critics of the law say it criminalizes asylum seeking. Other parts of the law make clear that an immigrant can file an asylum claim regardless of whether they entered the country legally.

Bill Hing, professor of law and migration studies at University of San Francisco, supports Castro’s arguments to remove the criminal part of the law, saying deportation is “already a pretty severe penalty” for anyone found not to have a valid asylum claim.

“Especially now, the vast majority of people gathered at the border are coming to seek protection — why criminalize that activity?” Hing said. “The statute should require something much more criminal in intent, and when it’s just simply to cross the border to seek protection, I think there’s a good argument that we should decriminalize that activity.”

The ruling applies only to the nine states covered by the Ninth Circuit, including California and Arizona along the Mexican border. But Hing says lawyers could seek similar rulings in other border states.

“Conceptually it actually makes sense,” Hing said. “It doesn’t make sense to have two parts of a law where the same act could qualify for the violation of both.”

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

Appointed by President George W. Bush, Judge Jay Bybee has been a controversial figure. His confirmation was strongly opposed by many Human Rights and Civil Rights groups because of his role in justifying torture while serving in the Bush DOJ.

Nevertheless, in this case, and in the earlier case of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Trump, blocking an illegal attempt by Trump to bar Central American asylum seekers, Judge Bybee has been a strong and courageous voice for the rule of law, reason, and Constitutional separation of powers in the face of Trump’s intentional overreach in the area of immigration. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/12/10/mark-joseph-stern-slate-on-why-judge-bybees-65-page-evisceration-of-trumps-lawless-asylum-order-is-so-important-the-next-time-trump-floats-a-flagrantly-lawless-idea-then/.

Indeed, many observers believe that Judge Bybee’s scholarly opinion in East Bay Sanctuary was key to Chief Justice Roberts voting with the Supremes’ so-called “liberal wing” to reject the Administration’s bogus attempt to “end run” the system in that case by going directly to the Supremes without allowing the lower court proceedings to be completed. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/12/21/i-was-right-barely-chief-justice-roberts-saves-asylum-rule-of-law-administrations-request-to-implement-order-truncating-asylum-law-turned-down-5-4/.

Unfortunately, this much needed decision comes too late for many families who have been irreparably damaged by “Gonzo Apolcalypto’s” vile illegal and immoral abuse of Government prosecutorial authority. It’s too bad that there does not appear to be any way of holding “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions personally liable for his abuse of office, unconscionable distortion of our justice system, and the lifetime damage he inflicted on so many innocent children and families.

The case is US v. Oracio Corrales-Vazquez, and here’s a link to the full opinion: https://www.courtlistener.com/pdf/2019/07/24/united_states_v._oracio_corrales-Vazquez.pdf

And, of course, thanks to Tal for her continued incisive reporting on the most important issues facing America!

PWS

07-26-19

DUE PROCESS & RULE OF LAW PREVAIL ANYWAY — USD JUDGE TIGAR STOPS TRUMP’S ASYLUM TRAVESTY FOR NOW! — Conflicting Decisions On Same Day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/asylum-ruling-tro.html

Miriam Jordan & Zolan Kanno-Youngs report for The NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to continue accepting asylum claims from all eligible migrants arriving in the United States, temporarily thwarting the president’s latest attempt to stanch the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction against a new rule that would have effectively banned asylum claims in the United States for most Central American migrants, who have been arriving in record numbers this year. It would have also affected many migrants from Africa, Asia and other regions.

The decision came on the same day that a federal judge in Washington, hearing a separate challenge, let the new rule stand, briefly delivering the administration a win. But Judge Tigar’s order prevents the rule from being carried out until the legal issues can be debated more fully.

The rule, which has been applied on a limited basis in Texas, requires migrants to apply for and be denied asylum in the first safe country they arrive in on their way to the United States — in many of the current cases, Mexico — before applying for protections here. Because migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala make up the vast majority of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border, the policy would virtually terminate asylum there.

“This new rule is likely invalid because it is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws,” Judge Tigar wrote in his ruling on Wednesday, adding that the government’s decision to put it in place was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The government, which is expected to appeal the decision, has said that the rule intends to prevent exploitation of the asylum system by those who unlawfully immigrate to the United States. By clogging the immigration courts with meritless claims, the government argues, these applicants harm asylum seekers with legitimate cases who must wait longer to secure the protection they deserve.

Under the policy, which the administration announced on July 15, only immigrants who have officially lost their bids for asylum in another country or who have been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply in the United States.

Hondurans and Salvadorans have to apply for asylum and be denied in Guatemala or Mexico before they become eligible to apply in the United States, and Guatemalans have to apply and be denied in Mexico.

The policy reversed longstanding asylum laws that ensure people can seek safe haven no matter how they got to the United States. On July 16, the day the new rule went into effect — initially in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy in court in San Francisco. The case in Washington was filed separately by two advocacy organizations, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Raices.

“The court recognized, as it did with the first asylum ban, that the Trump administration was attempting an unlawful end run around asylum protections enacted by Congress,” said Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U. lawyer who argued the case in San Francisco.

The groups challenging the rule argued that immigration laws enacted by Congress expressly state that a person is ineligible for asylum only if the applicant is “firmly resettled” in another country before arriving in the United States. The laws also require an asylum seeker to request protection elsewhere only if the United States has entered into an agreement with that country and the applicant was guaranteed a “full and fair procedure” there, they said.

Judge Tigar agreed. “The rule provides none of these protections,” he said in his ruling.

During a hearing in the case on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Justice Department, Scott Stewart, said that a large influx of migrant families had spawned a “crisis” that had become “particularly stark” and created a “strain” on the asylum system.

“Migrants understand the basics of the incentives and are informed about how changes in law and policy can affect their options,” Mr. Stewart told the judge.

Judge Tigar voiced concern about forcing asylum seekers to apply for protection in Mexico or Guatemala. “We don’t see how anyone could read this record and think those are safe countries,” he said, referring to the rule’s language that migrants must apply to the first safe country.

The judge also said that the government did not address the “adequacy of the asylum system in Guatemala,” which is not equipped to handle a surge in applications.

Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International, said it was inhumane and cruel to force people fleeing violence to seek safety in places that are as dangerous as the homes they fled. “Everyone seeking protection has the right to humane treatment and a fair asylum process under U.S. and international law,” she said.

In federal court in Washington, two advocacy groups made similar arguments against the new policy.

But that judge, Timothy J. Kelly, found that the groups did not sufficiently support their claim that “irreparable harm” would be done to the plaintiffs in the case if the policy were not blocked. While the rule would affect migrants seeking asylum, the judge said, “the plaintiffs before me here are not asylum seekers.”

“They are only two organizations, one of which operates in the D.C. area, far from the southern border,” he added.

In recent years, the number of migrants petitioning for asylum has skyrocketed.

Migrant families and unaccompanied children have been turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents and then requesting asylum, which typically enables them to remain in the United States for years as their cases wind through the backlogged immigration courts. Only about 20 percent of them ultimately win asylum, according to the government, and many of those whose applications are rejected remain in the country unlawfully.

The administration announced the new asylum policy despite the fact that Guatemala and Mexico had not agreed to the plan, which means those countries have made no assurances that they would grant asylum to migrants intending to go to the United States. Talks with Guatemala broke down and the country’s president, Jimmy Morales, backed out of a meeting that had been scheduled for July 15 at the White House. On Wednesday, President Trump said that his administration was considering imposing tariffs on Guatemalan exports or taxing money sent home by migrants.

The new asylum rule is just one of many efforts by the Trump administration to curb the entry of migrants.

At ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection agents have significantly slowed the processing of applicants through metering — limiting how many migrants are processed to as few as a dozen per day.

And some 16,000 migrants are waiting in Mexican border towns like Tijuana under a policy commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until the day of their court hearing. The policy makes it more difficult for the migrants to secure a lawyer to represent them in the United States, undermining their chances of winning protections.

In November, President Trump unveiled a separate policy that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Judge Tigar, who was also hearing that case, issued a temporary restraining order blocking that rule. The case is currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Washington, and Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.

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

It’s a much more reasonable order than that issued by Judge Kelly in DC earlier in the day which declared “open season” on asylum seekers. Judge Tigar has been on the front lines of Trump’s war on Due Process and the rule of law. Significantly, he pointed out the absurdity of the Trump Administration’s outrageous scofflaw attempt to classify Guatemala, one of the most dangerous countries in the world, without a functioning asylum system, as a bogus “safe third country.”

It’s on to the appellate courts!

PWS

07-24-19

THEIR LIVES & RIGHTS DON’T MATTER: US District Judge Timothy Kelly OK’s Trump’s Plan To Shaft Asylum Seekers Pending Further Litigation!

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/744860482/trump-administrations-new-asylum-rule-clears-first-legal-hurdle

Vanessa Romo reports for NPR News:

Updated at 12:40 p.m. ET

A federal judge on Wednesday let stand a new Trump administration rule requiring most asylum-seekers to ask for protection in another country before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s in the greater public interest to allow the administration to carry out its immigration policy,” U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Washington, D.C., said from the bench.

Immigrant Advocates Plan To Challenge New Trump Administration Asylum Rule July 15, 2019

Two immigrant rights groups — the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and RAICES, or Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services — had sued to try to block the new rule, arguing it would strip asylum eligibility from migrants fleeing dangerous situations.

But Kelly ruled that the administration’s interest outweighs the damages that might be experienced by the organizations helping migrants. And he expressed “strong doubts” that plaintiffs can show the government overstepped its authority by issuing the rule.

“I’m not saying it would cause no irreparable harm” to migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, said before the ruling. But, he stated the immigrant rights organizations had failed to show how many clients they would be unable to reach as a result of the new rule, how many people would be turned away and how many migrants would ultimately qualify for asylum. He added that both CAIR Coalition and RAICES had failed to demonstrate that the new rule would “greatly increase” the amount of time it takes to prepare for migrants’ imminent danger interviews.

NATIONAL

Federal Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Asylum Ban

“We are disappointed in the court’s decision today, but we will continue to fight to ensure that this harmful rule does not unjustly impact children and adults who apply for asylum as well as immigration legal service providers’ ability to help asylum seekers,” Claudia Cubas, CAIR Coalition’s litigation director, said in a statement.

“This new rule is contrary to our laws and we will continue to challenge this attempt to remove asylum [eligibility] from those who are fleeing violence and persecution around the world,” Cubas added.

Another federal court in California is hearing a separate challenge to the new rule. Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco will hold a hearing in that case Wednesday.

NATIONAL

Federal Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Asylum Ban

In November, Tigar issued a nationwide restraining order against a Trump administration policy seeking to limit asylum eligibility to only those who cross at legal points of entry.

The Trump administration has been taking steps to slow the flow of migrants, mostly from Central America, across the southern border.

On Monday, the administration announced another rule change to expand the number of undocumented immigrants who can be put into fast-track deportation proceedings. Immigrant advocates also plan to challenge that policy in court.

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

Obviously, Judge Kelly neither understands what is at risk for asylum seekers nor appreciates the difficulty in representing asylum seekers under constant attack by the Trump Administration.

While Trump has had his problems in Federal Court, ultimately he counts on the complicity of Federal Judges like Judge Kelly in his scheme to destroy the asylum system and endanger the lives of asylum seekers.

PWS

07-24-19

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

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

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schumer again calls for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’

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

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

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

[Trump administration weighs expanding expedited deportation]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Momentary border reprieve rests on a rickety foundation]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Problems with this rollout:

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

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

PWS

07-22-19

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

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