☠️⚰️ “I WANT TO DIE,” SAYS 7-YEAR OLD VICTIM OF AMERICA’S FAILURE TO HONOR ASYLUM LAWS! — “Biden’s Wall” Of Bad Tech & Bad Bureaucracy Cheaper, More Effective At Inflicting “Cruelty For Cruelty’s Sake” Than “Trump’s Folly!”🤮

Biden Statue of Liberty
Biden Betrays Promises to Refugees
Steve Sack @ Star Tribune
Republished under license

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/03/11/asylum-seekers-mexico-border-app/

Arelis R. Hernandez
Arelis R. Hernandez
Southern Border Reporter
Washington Post

Arelis R. Hernandez reports for WashPost:

MATAMOROS, Mexico — It was supposed to be his last day in Mexico. The 7-year-old Venezuelan boy beamed as he bade farewell to his teacher, Liliana Carlos, at a school for migrant children living in tents while waiting for their chance to enter the United States.

His family, finally, had obtained an appointment in February with U.S. Customs and Border Protection after weeks of trying to use a new app to secure a slot.

Now they hoped to be allowed to begin a new life in America. No more sleeping on the ground. No more threats of kidnapping. No more watching his mother cry.

But instead of the safety his family longed for inside the United States, the boy returned to the Sidewalk School, inconsolable, his teacher recalled. CBP officials on the border bridge sent back about 50 families, including his. They’d all made appointments online as family units. But agents were now enforcing a rule requiring each child to register individually.

“We are never going to leave,” Carlos recounted the boy telling her as she ushered the wailing child into an alcove known as the “calm corner.”

. . . .

Two weeks after the boy was sent back to the Sidewalk School, Carlos said her once hopeful student still doesn’t have a new appointment. The child’s name is being withheld by The Washington Post out of concerns for his safety.

She tried to console him, she recalled, but he was despondent, telling her: “I want to die.”

. . . .

Within a northern Mexico safe house, a 30-something-year-old asylum seeker ran his fingers across the bumpy scar tissue that had healed unevenly around his wrists. The marks are remnants of the torture he endured two weeks earlier.

His voice quivered as he recalled black-clad kidnappers ambushing the house where he was living at 1 a.m. in late January. They bound his hands and feet with electric cables and threw him in the trunk of a vehicle.

For two days, he was repeatedly burned and beaten.

The Washington Post is withholding the man’s name and other identifying characteristics for safety reasons because he is still in Mexico. But the man showed a reporter the lacerations and described how men pistol-whipped and beat him. Dark circular scars mark the spots on his legs where his captors pressed lit cigarettes into his flesh.

“The app doesn’t feel fair,” said the man, who was denied an exemption to the Title 42 rule barring most migrants from entering and has failed to secure an appointment. “I need protection in the United States.”

. . . .

Nearby in Reynosa, a three-acre lot covered in human feces near a sandy river peninsula overrun by Mexican cartel members sits adjacent to a camp for migrants.

They sleep and eat 50 feet away from the open pit. Soiled toilet paper clings to cactus needles. A toxic plume of nostril-singeing smoke rises over the encampment from a trash heap at the river’s edge where plastic burns.

Nearby, a collection of tall glass candles bearing the image of La Santa Muerte, a Grim Reaper-like Mexican folk saint worshiped by narcos, have been placed in a circle drawn into the sand.

This is Camp Rio, where at least 1,000 Haitian asylum seekers are spending each day they can’t get an appointment.

Many Black migrants are pushed to the fringes of border cities to wait in subhuman conditions. They have more difficulty accessing shelters than those with lighter skin and often experience racism in Mexico.

. . .

The crowd of people around the attorneys swelled. Parents with upcoming dates wondered what would happen if they sent their small children across the bridge alone as unaccompanied minors. D’Cruz begged them not to.

“If we don’t, we will lose everything we’ve worked for,” a woman from Nicaragua said, pressing her bewildered daughter against her leg.

Advocates counted between 40 and 50 children surrendered at the bridge alone days later.

Back at the Sidewalk School, the number of children enrolled has swelled. Carlos, the coordinator, said they went from teaching a handful of kids each day to more three dozen in recent weeks. She said that means more and more children, and their families, aren’t getting appointments.

The longer they despair in Mexico, parents say, the more they consider sending their children to the United States alone.

Valentina Sanchez, 24, of Venezuela, and her husband had appointments in February. Their 3-year-old son did not. He crossed and she stayed behind with the toddler.

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

Read the complete article at the link. 

Folks, tragically, we’ve seen in the last few days how totally unsafe Mexico is even for U.S. citizens! Yet, the Biden Administration thinks it’s “A-OK” to propose illegally repelling tens of thousands of non-Mexicans back to danger, torture, exploitation, and death without fairly considering their legal claims for refuge and without insuring that those making such life and death decisions are actually qualified to do so (hint, many aren’t). 

At the current rate of 800 “interviews” per day, it would take the Administration four months just to process the 100,000 humans already waiting at the border (4 interviews/officer/day). If the Administration had started with a plan to hire and train 1,000 Asylum Officers over the more than 2.5 years they have been in office, the job could be done in less than a month! 

The Administration can (and does) make all the false claims that “CBP One” works that it wants. As Arelis and others who actually interface with asylum seekers on the border have documented, the facts say otherwise!

I happened to be watching “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd. House Judiciary Chair Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said we need a “surge” of Asylum Officers to the border, grant asylum to those who qualify, remove those who don’t, use more TPS strategically, and open more pathways to legal immigration. Not “rocket science” by any measure!

Yet, although Biden has “dabbled” in some of these initiatives, he still has no systemic plan for reinstating asylum law in a fair and effective manner at the border. Sen. Menendez correctly noted that if Biden continues on the course he has charted, he will go down as the “Asylum Denier In Chief.”

Senator Menendez also said that if Biden has the poor judgement to reinstitute “family detention,” it will fail just as it did in both the Obama and Trump Administrations. He characterized having eliminated family detention upon  assuming office as one of the best moves that Biden has made on immigration. Talk about “taking points off the scoreboard!”

Thanks to Arelis Hernandez and a few other reporters who refuse to let the human disaster of the Biden Administration’s treacherous abandonment of the law at the border and the values it represents go unnoticed! It doesn’t have to be this way! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-12-237

🇺🇸⚖️🗽 GROUPS LEADING RESISTANCE 🛡⚔️ TO BIDEN’S “MILLER LITE” ASSAULT ON ASYLUM SEEK COMMENTS OPPOSING LATEST ASYLUM-BASHING, SCOFFLAW PROPOSALS! 

Here’s the link to the “comment website:”

https://immigrationjustice.quorum.us/campaign/44910/

Stephen Miller Monster
“I’m gone, but my ‘evil spirit’ lives on in the West Wing! They have even ‘one-upped’’ me with a ‘family separation app’ called CBP One! Never has inflicting gratuitous cruelty been so easy!” Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

The Biden proposal has picked up somewhat tepid endorsements from the likes of Trumpsters DHS official Chad Wolf and leading GOP insurrectionist Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Tells you all you really need to know about just how cruel and counterproductive these harebrained proposals are! 

These are the folks that the Biden administration is pandering to while ignoring and disrespecting experts and asylum advocates who have centuries of collective experience working on asylum and the border. They also have plenty of good ideas for real asylum/human rights/border reforms that will combat cruelty and promote orderly compliance with the rule of law. The Biden Administration just isn’t interested in, or perhaps capable of, “doing the right thing.” 

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

Here’s the text of my “custom revision” of the standard comment posted on the website: 

I am a retired US DOJ attorney with more than 35 years of  government experience, all of it in the immigration field, mostly in senior positions. I have been involved in immigration and human rights, in the public and private sectors, for five decades 

My last 21 years were spent as an EOIR Judge: eight years as an Appellate Immigration Judge on the BIA (six of those years as BIA Chair), and 13 years as an Immigration Judge at the (now legacy) Arlington Immigration Court. I was involved in the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980 as well as developing implementing regulations and setting precedents thereunder.  

I state unequivocally that these unnecessary proposed regulatory changes are a disavowal of more than four decades of U.S. (and international) asylum law as well as a shocking betrayal of the promise by the Biden Administration to stand up for the rights of legal asylum seekers and end the White Nationalist attempt by the Trump Administration to kill asylum without legislation. 

The proposed rule is contrary to well-established United States law regarding the right to seek asylum in our country. There is absolutely no basis in law for the proposed “presumption of denial” for those who seek asylum outside a port of entry or who have transited other countries (as most have) without seeking asylum. 

Indeed, the Administration’s approach is in direct contravention of the INA, which establishes rigorous criteria for designating “safe third countries” for asylum seekers. Only Canada has met those rigorous criteria to date, and even then only for a very limited class of applicants. 

The idea that Mexico or other countries in Central America that asylum seekers customarily transit on the way to our southern border are “safe havens” for asylum seekers is patently absurd and counterfactual! Indeed, all legitimate experts would say that these are some of the most dangerous countries in the world — none with a fairly functioning asylum system.

Individuals are specifically entitled by the Refugee  Act of 1980, as amended, to access our asylum system regardless of how they enter, as has been the law for decades. They should not be forced to seek asylum in transit to the United States, especially not in countries where they may also face harm. The ending of Title 42—itself an illegal policy—should not be used as an excuse to resurrect Trump-era categorical bans on groups of asylum seekers.  

As you must be aware, those policies were designed by xenophobic, White Nationalist, restrictionists in the last Administration motivated by a desire to exclude and discriminate against particular ethnic and racial groups. That the Biden Administration would retain and even enhance some of them, while disingenuously claiming to be “saving asylum,” is beyond astounding.

The rule will also cause confusion at ports of entry and cause chaos and exacerbate backlogs in our immigration courts. Even worse, it will aggravate the already unacceptable situation by making it virtually impossible for most asylum seekers to consult with pro bono counsel before their cases are summarily rejected under these flawed regulations.

People who cannot access the CBP One app are at serious risk of being turned away by CBP, even if the rule says otherwise. Additionally, every observer has noted that the number of “available appointments” is woefully inadequate. In many cases, observers have noted that this leads to “automated family separation.” Rather than fixing these problems, these proposed regulations will make things infinitely worse.  

Additionally, as was demonstrated by the previous Trump Transit Ban, the rule is likely to create confusion and additional backlogs at the immigration courts as individual judges attempt to apply a complicated, convoluted rule. 

Under the law, the U.S. Government has a very straightforward obligation: To provide asylum seekers at the border and elsewhere, regardless of nationality, status, or manner of coming to the U.S., with a fair, timely, opportunity to apply for asylum and other legal protections before an impartial, expert, adjudicator. 

The current system clearly does not do that. Indeed,  EOIR suffers from an “anti-asylum,” often misogynist “culture,” lacks precedents recognizing recurring asylum situations at the border (particularly those relating to gender-based persecution), and tolerates judges at both levels who lack asylum expertise, are not committed to due process and fundamental fairness for all, and, far from being experts, often make mistakes in applying basic legal standards and properly evaluating evidence of record, as noted in a constant flow of “reversals and rebukes” from Circuit Courts.  

We don’t need more  mindless  “deterrence” gimmicks. Rather, it’s past time for the Administration to reestablish a functioning asylum system.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The treachery of an Administration that abandons humane values, and fears bold humanitarian actions, never!

PWS

02-26-23

🗽DON’T “NORMALIZE” INHUMANITY & SCOFFLAW TREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS AT OUR BORDERS! — Heidi Altman, Policy Director, NIJC, Reflects On Administration’s “Miller Lite” Proposal To Deter Legal Asylum Seekers From Seeking Protection, Episode 34 Of The “Lawful Assembly Podcast,” With Rev. Craig Mousin of DePaul University!

Heidi Altman
Heidi Altman
Director of Policy
National Immigrant Justice Center
PHOTO: fcnl.org
Rev. Craig Mousin
Rev. Craig Mousin
Ombudsperson
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy
DePaul University
PHOTO: DePaul Website

LISTEN HERE:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1744949/12312323Lawful Assembly Podcast

Episode 34: Support Humanitarian Asylum Welcome

FEBRUARY 23, 2023 CRAIG B. MOUSIN SEASON 1 EPISODE 34

Lawful Assembly Podcast

Episode 34: Support Humanitarian Asylum Welcome

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24:29

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LAWFUL ASSEMBLY PODCAST

Episode 34: Support Humanitarian Asylum Welcome

FEB 23, 2023 SEASON 1 EPISODE 34

Craig B. Mousin

In this interview, Rev. Craig B. Mousin, an Adjunct Faculty member of DePaul University’s College of Law, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Program, and the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy interviews Heidi Altman, the Policy Director of the National Immigrant Justice Center (www.immigrantjustice.org).  Ms. Altman discusses a proposed rule that will effectively preclude most asylum-seekers from safely and effectively applying for asylum in the United States. She advocates for humanitarian asylum welcome.  She previously served as the legal director for the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and was a Teaching Fellow in the immigration clinic at Georgetown University Law School.

ACTION STEPS 

1.       Invite friends and family to learn how the proposed rule will undermine refugee protection and encourage them to respond to their elected representatives and the Biden administration urging withdrawal of the proposed rule.

2.      The Sanctuary Working Group of the Chicago Religious Leadership Network currently serves and advocates alongside newly arrived asylum seekers in the Chicagoland area.  There are many impactful ways you can help asylum seekers, from providing sponsorship and temporary housing to covering legal fees and advocating for policy change.  Interested individuals, faith communities, or organizations may contact CRLN staff/consultant David Fraccaro at davidfraccaro99@gmail.com to talk about ways to partner together in supporting and protecting our newest neighbors.

RESOURCES

“Solutions for a Humane Border Policy,” National Immigrant Justice Center, January 17, 2023: https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/solutions-humane-border-policy

“Proposed Ban on Asylum Violates US Law and Catholic Social Teaching,” Catholic Legal Immigration Network, February 22, 2023: https://www.cliniclegal.org/press-releases/proposed-ban-asylum-violates-us-law-and-catholic-social-teaching

“Biden Asylum Ban Will Endanger Refugees, Center for Gender and Refugee Rights, February 21, 2023: https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/news/biden-asylum-ban-will-endanger-refugees

The proposed rule is scheduled for publication on February 23, 2023:  https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-03718.pdf

 

Craig Mousin volunteers with the National Immigrant Justice Center. We welcome your inquiries or suggestions for future podcasts.  If you would like to ask more questions about our podcasts or comment, email us at: mission.depaul@gmail.com

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

Thanks, Craig and Heidi for a very interesting and informative session!

Taylor Swift
T. Swift. Loss of chance to attend her latest concert due to Ticketmaster SNAFU caused immediate bipartisan Congressional outrage and hearings! Loss of chance to plead for life because of DHS CBP One App SNAFU, not so much! Dehumanization of our fellow humans degrades our society.
LOS ANGELES – Swift at 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 14, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Glenn Francis/Pacific Pro Digital Photography) Creative Commons License.

Here are “my takeaways:”

  • Asylum seekers have a legal right, established by the Refugee Act of 1980 and international conventions, to seek asylum at our border or in the U.S., regardless of status and/or nationality;
  • The Trump and Biden Administrations have abrogated this right without legislation;
  • The Trump Administration’s anti-asylum actions and intentional dehumanization of asylum seekers was rooted in White Nationalist nativism;
  • Despite recognition during the 2020 campaign of the invidious motivation for Trump’s anti-asylum policies, the Biden Administration has retained, or even enhanced, the dehumanization and denial of rights to asylum seekers at the border;
  • Over the past two Administrations, acceptance of the basic rights and obligations of the U.S. toward asylum seekers, incorporated in the Refugee Act of 1980, has been eliminated or reduced to a superficial “shell” (“asylum in name only,” as some advocates have termed Biden’s latest proposed anti-asylum border policies);
  • By abandoning the framework set forth in the Refugee Act of 1980, the Trump and Biden Administrations have re-injected the ad hoc approach,  disorder, nationality bias, and ideological preferences at the border that the Refugee Act of 1980 was specifically enacted to eliminate;
  • There is much under-appreciated support for welcoming, fairly treating, and helping refugees and asylum seekers among Americans in communities throughout our nation;
  • NGOs and experts have dozens of great ideas for restoring and improving the legal right to seek asylum in fair, humane, non-discriminatory ways which they have shared or are happy to share with the Biden Administration;
  • The Biden Administration to date has shown little if any interest in adopting and implementing better humanitarian solutions for asylum seekers at the border;
  • Both parties lack leaders with the integrity and courage to stand up for the legal and human rights of asylum seekers;
  • We must continue to discuss ways to break the cycle of dehumanization, cruelty, and scofflaw treatment of asylum seekers and replace it with enhanced humanitarian procedures and a welcoming culture, in accordance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.N. Convention and Protocol, and the very best traditions of our nation of immigrants.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-24-23

🏴‍☠️ AMERICAN OUTLAWS: THE CONTINUING SAGA OF EOIR’S FLAWED DECADE-LONG QUEST TO DENY PROTECTION TO HONDURAN WOMAN — LATEST CHAPTER: BIA Rebuked By 1st Cir. For Not Complying With Court Order!

Outlaws
BIA panel gets ready to “gun down” — in “cold blood” —  another meritorious appeal by immigrant! Court orders are no match for this gang that “shoots from the hip.”
PHOTO: Republic Pictures (1957), Public Domain

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA1 on Evidence…Round 2! – Aguilar-Escoto II

Aguilar-Escoto II

“For the second time, petitioner Irma Aguilar-Escoto, a native and citizen of Honduras, asks us to vacate the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA” or the “Board”) rejection of her claim for withholding of removal. When this case was last before us, we vacated the BIA’s prior order and instructed the Board to consider the potentially significant documentary evidence submitted in support of Aguilar’s claim. See Aguilar-Escoto v. Sessions, 874 F.3d 334, 335 (1st Cir. 2017). Today, we conclude that the BIA again failed to properly consider significant documentary evidence. Consequently, we vacate the Board’s removal order and remand for further proceedings.”

[Hats off to Kenyon C. Hall, with whom Jack W. Pirozzolo, Sidley Austin, LLP, Charles G. Roth, National Immigrant Justice Center, and Carlos E. Estrada were on brief, for petitioner!]

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

This case is a microcosm of everything that’s wrong about EOIR, a “captive,” denial-biased “court” system operating within the DOJ, an enforcement agency within the Executive Branch, over three different Administrations — two Dem and one GOP! But, there is more to this story!

THE REST OF THE STORY:

In 2013, this respondent appeared before an IJ and presented a well-documented claim for withholding of removal to Honduras based on domestic violence. Among the respondent’s documentation were a psychological report, three police reports, a medical report from Honduras, a protection order from a Honduran court, the respondent’s declaration, and affidavits from family members. In the first flawed decision, in 2014, the IJ denied the claim.

The respondent appealed to the BIA. In another flawed decision, entered in 2016, the BIA denied the appeal. In doing so, the BIA denied an asylum claim that the respondent did not make and ignored key documentary evidence that went to the heart of the respondent’s claim. This suggests that the BIA merely slapped a “form denial” on the case which reflected neither the nature of the case below nor the actual record before them. Immigration practitioners say this type of performance is all too common in the dystopian world of EOIR.

Consequently, the respondent, represented pro bono by NDPA stalwart Carlos E. Estrada, a solo practitioner, sought review in the First Circuit. That petition succeeded! In 2017, the First Circuit vacated the BIA’s erroneous decision and directed the BIA to redo the case, this time considering the material, independent evidence of persecution that the BIA had previously ignored.

At this point, the respondent and her attorney had every reason to believe that their ordeal was over and that justice, and potentially life-saving protection, was “just around the corner.” But, alas, those hopes were dashed!

The BIA botched it again! In 2018, in what appeared to be one of the BIA’s “standard any reason to deny” opinions, the BIA purported to “affirm” the 2014 flawed decision of the IJ. In doing so, “the BIA erred by failing to follow this Court’s [1st Circuit’s] instruction to independently consider on remand the documentary evidence and to determine whether that evidence sufficed to establish past persecution.” Basically a “polite description” of “contempt of court” by the BIA.

Among the problems, the BIA failed to mention or evaluate one of the police reports that went directly to the basis for the BIA’s denial. Indeed, in a rather brutal example example of just how un-seriously the BIA took the court’s order, they erroneously stated that there were only two police reports. Actually, the record contained THREE such reports — since 2013!

Faced with the need for yet a second trip to the First Circuit, pro bono solo practitioner Carlos Estrada was “stretched to his pro bono limits.” Fortunately, the amazing pro bono lawyers at Sidley Austin LLP and National Immigrant Justice Center (“NIJC”) heeded the call and assisted Estrada and his client in their second petition for review.  

With help from this “team of experts,” for the second time, the respondent “bested” EOIR and DOJ in the Circuit! While conceding that the BIA had errored in not complying with the court order, OIL, now under the direction of Dem A.G. Merrick Garland, advanced specious “alternative reasons” for upholding the BIA’s second flawed decision. These were emphatically rejected by the First Circuit! That court also noted that the (supposedly “expert”) BIA had applied the wrong legal standard in the case!

A rational person might think that after nearly a decade, this “charade of justice” would finally end, and the respondent would get her long-delayed, thrice-erroneously-denied relief. But, that’s not the way this dysfunctional and disreputable system works (or, in too many cases, doesn’t).

The First Circuit “remanded” the case to EOIR a second time, thus giving the BIA a totally undeserved THIRD CHANCE to improperly deny relief. Who knows if they will, or when they might get around to acting. 

But, within Garland’s dystopian system, which lacks quality control, doesn’t require recognized expertise in human rights from its “judges,” and tolerates a BIA dominated by Trump-appointed appellate judges known for their records of hostility to asylum and related forms of protection from persecution and/or torture, a result favorable to the respondent, within her lifetime, is far from guaranteed.

As Attorney Carlos Estrada summed it up to me, “I just couldn’t do it [the second petition for review] pro bono by myself.  I’m a solo practitioner.  Such a waste of time and effort.” 

Indeed, Garland’s failure to institute even minimal standards of due process, fundamental fairness, impartiality, expertise in his EOIR “court” system is unfairly stretching scarce pro bono resources beyond the limits, as well as denying timely, often life-saving or life-determining justice to individuals. 

In a fair, functional, professional system, Estrada, Sidley Austin, and NIJC could be helping others in dire need of pro bono assistance. The respondent could have been enjoying for the last decade a “durable” grant of protection from persecution instead of having her life “up in the air” because of defective decision-making at EOIR and ill-advised “defenses” by OIL. The system could be adjudicating new cases and claims, instead of doing the same cases over and over, for a decade, at three levels of our justice system, without getting them right.  

If you wonder why Garland’s broken EOIR is running an astounding 2.1 million case backlog, it’s NOT primarily because of the actions of respondents and their lawyers, if any! It has much to do with “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” in “full swing” under Garland, incredibly poor judicial administration by DOJ/EOIR, poor judging by too many incumbents who lack the necessary expertise and demonstrated commitment to due process and fundamental fairness, poor administrative and judicial practices, inadequate training, and a toxic “culture of denial and disrespect for immigrants’ rights” that has been festering for years!

Do YOU think that sagas like this represent a proper approach to “justice in America at the retail level.” I don’t! But, incidents like this occur on a daily basis at EOIR, even if most escape the public spotlight! 

“Out of sight, out of mind!” But, sadly, not so for the individuals whose lives are damaged by this system and their long-suffering attorneys, whose plights continue to be studiously ignored by Garland and his lieutenants. (Has Garland EVER offered to meet with the private, pro bono bar to find out what really is happening in “his” courts and how he might fix it? Not to my knowledge!)

Hats way off to Carlos E. Estrada, Esquire; Kenyon C. Hall, Jack W. Pirozzolo, and the rest of the folks at Sidley Austin, LLP (I note that Sidley generously has provided outstanding pro bono briefing assistance to our “Round Table” in the past); and Charles G. Roth and his team at the National Immigrant Justice Center for this favorable outcome and for insuring that justice is done. Garland and the Dems might not care about justice for persons in the U.S. who happen to be migrants, but YOU do! That, my friends, makes all the difference in human lives and in our nation’s as yet unfulfilled promise of “equal justice for all.”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-10-23

☠️🤮🤯 HOW CAN JUDGES WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT TORTURE IS FAIRLY PREDICT ITS FUTURE PROBABILITY? — THEY CAN’T! — 1st Cir. “Outs” EOIR’s CAT Denial Conveyor Belt!

Torture
“Just a little unpleasantness, harassment, and even basic suffering,” nothing to worry about, say Garland’s EOIR judges! Too many EOIR judges still operate in an “alternate reality” where legal rules, humanity, logic, and common sense are suspended!
Wood engraving by A.F. Pannemaker after B. Castelli. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Hernandez-Martinez v. Garland, 1st Cir.

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/21-1448P-01A.pdf

. . . .

In March 2014, Hernandez-Martinez was on his way to work when two men approached him, demanding money and threatening to kill him if he did not pay. Hernandez-Martinez did not know who the men were. The men told him that they knew where he lived and would harm him or his wife if he did not comply. They also instructed him not to go to the police.

Hernandez-Martinez went to the police later that day. Two police officers told Hernandez-Martinez not to be afraid because they would “take matters into their own hands,” and they offered to drive him home. Instead, they delivered him to the men who had threatened him earlier. The men hit Hernandez-Martinez in the face, cut his waist with a knife, burned his right foot with motorcycle exhaust, dragged him, repeated their threats, and beat him senseless. The police appeared to know his assailants and laughed while the men were assaulting him. Hernandez-Martinez recovered consciousness in a hospital, where he stayed for three or four days. When he had sufficiently recovered, he promptly fled to the United States to join his wife and then four- or five- year-old son, who had already made the journey.

. . . .

The IJ’s reasons are not at all clear. She more or less simply stated the elements of a CAT claim and asserted that Hernandez-Martinez did not establish those elements without specifying which elements were found wanting, or why.2 In addressing the asylum claim, the IJ did comment on the severity of harm inflicted on Hernandez-Martinez, stating that the abuse he suffered did not “rise above the level of unpleasantness, harassment, and even basic suffering.” We agree with the government that were this a supportable description of the harm inflicted, it would not support a CAT claim. We disagree, though, that the facts found support such a description. More to the point, as a matter of law we reject the implicit claim that the harm visited upon Hernandez-Martinez was not severe enough to qualify as torture.

. . . .

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

It’s actually pretty hard to get a “rise to the level of torture” case wrong as a matter of law! But three levels of Garland’s DOJ managed to pull it off! 

EOIR’s “holdover Ashcroft/Sessions/Barr era” deny every CAT claim approach seems to be running into problems in the “real” Federal Courts. Nothing that competent BIA Appellate Judges couldn’t solve. But, don’t hold your breath!

This absurdist CAT “adjudication” and its beyond absurd, unethical defense by OIL (“doesn’t even rise to the level of persecution,“ citing inapposite cases, gimmie a break) falls below minimum legal and professional standards in every conceivable way: at the IJ, the BIA (“summary affirmance”), and OIL!

That nearing the halfway point of the Biden Administration there is no Senate-confirmed Assistant AG running the all-important Civil Division, which supervises OIL, shows just how grossly deficient and indolent Dems’ approach to “justice at Justice” has been — both within the Biden Administration and in the Senate.

This stunningly defective, shallow, basically non-existent “analysis” by this IJ shows an out of control system where judges feel free to enter defective deportation orders in life or death cases without much thought and without fearing any accountability from the BIA. The latter obviously is an “any reason to deny” assembly line where clearly unacceptable performance by IJs is “rubber stamped” so long as the result is “deny and deport!”

What’s happening at Garland’s EOIR is analogous to  a patient going into the hospital for knee replacement, getting a lobotomy by mistake, and dying to boot. Yet, the “hospital administrator “ shrugs it off as just “business as usual,” a “minor mistake” — “good enough for surgery” and lets the team of quacks keep operating and killing folks!

Gosh, even lesser legal luminaries like Gonzalez and Mukasey finally “got” that EOIR was totally out of control and off the wall in the aftermath of Ashcroft’s “due process purge” and  mal-administration. They actually took some “corrective action,” even if largely ineffectual and mostly cosmetic.

It’s also no accident that a disproportionate amount of EOIR’s bad judging and docket mismanagement is inflicted on migrants of color, particularly those from Latin America and Haiti, and their representatives.  Much as the Biden Administration tries to ignore it, there is a clear connection between institutionalized xenophobia and racial bias in our immigration system and the problematic state of racial justice elsewhere in the U.S.

Contrast the truly abysmal, unacceptable performance by the EOIR judges and OIL attorneys in this case with the outstanding performance of Judge Brea Burgie and private attorney Alexandra Katsiaficas in the asylum grant from Denver I highlighted yesterday. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/02/06/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%97%bd%f0%9f%a7%91%f0%9f%8f%bb%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%a9%f0%9f%92%bc-modeling-eoirs-potential-in-denver-judge-brea-c-burgie-attorne/.

Obviously, there is expert judicial talent on the EOIR bench and in the private sector that could be recruited and elevated to fuel a “due process, great judging, and best practices renaissance” in this dysfunctional, inherently unfair, and grotesquely mal-administered system! But, equal justice and minimal professional standards at EOIR can’t wait! Lives are going down the drain, and wasteful corrections and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” further cripple this already “rock bottom” system every day.

Garland must finally “swap out the deadwood and under-performers” at the BIA and senior management at EOIR HQ in Falls Church. He needs to bring in the available,  proven talent from both Government and the private sector to lead and guide his mockery of a court system back to at least a minimal level of competence, professionalism, and accountability.

It’s well within Garland’s authority to “end this disreputable, deadly ‘clown show’ at EOIR!” Dems both inside and outside Government should be demanding reforms and accountability!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-07-23

 

⚖️🗽🧑🏻‍⚖️👩‍💼 MODELING EOIR’S POTENTIAL IN DENVER! — Judge Brea C. Burgie & Attorney Alexandra Katsiaficas Show How Good Judging & Effective Advocacy Can Combine For A Gender-Based Asylum Grant To Female Refugee From El Salvador!

Violence Against Women
“The DOJ issues a hollow statement condemning FGM. But, when it comes to building on a 27-yr-old precedent to help gender-based refugees, they have been largely indifferent to suffering and the dire need for protection.”
PHOTO: Creative Commons 4.0

Dan Kowalski from LexisNexis Immigration Community sent in this recent asylum victory from the Denver Immigration Court:

IJ Burgie 1-24-23

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

Hats off to Judge Burgie and Attorney Alexandra Katsiaficas for showing how effective advocacy and good judging can save lives and “move” cases at the “retail level” of EOIR.

This decision is comprehensive, straightforward, understandable, and logical. This is exactly the type of precedent that the BIA should be (but isn’t) issuing and enforcing on a consistent, nationwide basis! Why isn’t EOIR getting the job done under Garland?

While Judge Burgie didn’t cite Matter of A-R-C-G- on asylum based on domestic violence, she did cite a number of my “favorite precedents” from the long-gone but not totally forgotten “Schmidt-Board:” Matter of Kasinga, Matter of O-Z- & I-Z-, Matter of D-V-, and Matter of S-P-, as well as the BIA’s oft-cited but seldom followed “seminal” asylum case Matter of Acosta, which was the starting point for Kasinga and other favorable asylum precedents of the past. 

Judge Burgie also cited and followed favorable 10th Circuit precedent. She got the “unwilling or unable to protect,” “internal relocation,” and “nexus” issues correct. She used the regulatory presumption based on past persecution effectively. Significantly, she also included a correct additional analysis of why this case, and others like it, should be granted based on “egregious past persecution” (“Chen grant”) even in the absence of a current well-founded-fear. Most of these cases should be “easy grants” preferably at the Asylum Office, but if not, at EOIR. 

Instead, some IJs and many BIA panels “invent” reasons to deny that mock asylum law and distort the reality of conditions for women in the Northern Traingle and elsewhere!

I recently commented elsewhere on the irony of Garland’s DOJ issuing a “pro forma declaration” endorsing “Zero Tolerance for FGM Day,” while doing such a poor overall job of actually protecting those who have suffered that and other forms of gender based persecution. Action over hollow rhetoric, please!

Seems to me EOIR didn’t do a very good job of “building on the saving potential” of Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996), my “landmark” opinion finding that FGM could be a basis for granting asylum. Indeed, after the “Ashcroft purge” removed those of us BIA judges committed to protecting refugees suffering from gender based persecution, the BIA intentionally misconstrued Kasinga and shamefully tried to limit it.  

So transparently horrible was this effort that one of Ashcroft’s Bush II successors, AG Mukasey, hardly a voice for progressive jurisprudence and women’s human rights, finally had to intervene to put a stop to the BIA’s deadly nonsense. See Matter of A-T-, 24 I&N Dec. 617 (A.G. 2008). This was only after after blistering criticism of the “post-purge” BIA’s disingenuous approach by some of Judge Mukasey’s “former Article III superiors” on the Second Circuit.  See Bah v. Mukasey, 529 F.3d 99, 124 (2d Cir. 2008) (“The BIA refers, in passing, to the act of female genital mutilation as “reprehensible,” . . . but its entirely dismissive treatment of such claims in these cases belies any sentiment to that effect.” Straub, Circuit Judge concurring).

Judge Staub’s criticism of the BIA’s shallow and disingenuous treatment of too many asylum claims, particularly those based on gender persecution, remains just as true today under Garland as it was then.  “Throwaway lines” — basically “boilerplate” —disingenuously expressing sympathy, but then misconstruing facts and law to deny life-saving protection, are no substitute for competent, fair judging at EOIR!

More than a quarter-century after Kasinga, I still don’t see much commitment at DOJ/EOIR to consistently protecting women from gender-based persecution. That being said, some IJs, particularly (but not only) those with expertise gained by representing asylum seekers, like Judge Burgie, are doing a good job of applying Cardoza, Kasinga, A-R-C-G-, D-V-, O-Z-&I-Z-, the regulatory presumption, expert testimony, and an honest reading of country conditions to grant desperately-needed protection in gender-based cases. The BIA, not so much. 

Also, while issuing this statement, DOJ is “sitting on” gender based regulations, promised by President Biden on “day 1” to be delivered by the Fall of 2021! Reportedly, there is considerable “Miller Lite” restrictionist opposition within the Administration to treating protection claims for gender-based refugees fairly, generously, and consistently. See, e.g., https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-biden-asylum-limits-us-mexico-border-arrivals/.

Kind of makes me wonder what, if anything, Dems REALLY stand for when the chips are down, human lives are at stake, and courageous, informed, bold leadership is required! GOP White Nationalist nativist bullies are only too happy to express their disdain for the rights and contempt for the humanity of all vulnerable refugees. They specifically target women. 

But, when it comes to standing up for the legal and human rights of asylum seekers, most of them already written into our laws, Dems often “hide underneath the table.” That’s particularly true of this Administration’s incredibly poor and spineless approach to asylum at the Southern Border and their failure to address the asylum disaster at EOIR.

And, it’s not that Biden’s morally and legally vapid approach to asylum seekers has won any support from the right, progressives, or independents. Almost everyone is suing or threatening to sue the Administration about some aspect of their hapless, mushy, often self-contradictory handling of asylum. It’s a traditional, perhaps endemic, problem that once elected, Dems have a hard time distinguishing friends from foes. At least on immigration, they spend far too much time catering to the views and bogus criticisms of the latter while ignoring the informed views and experiences of the former.

Judge Burgie is a Barr appointee, but has a diverse background that includes not only service as an EOIR JLC and fraud and abuse prevention counsel, but also time representing and advocating for refugees and asylum seekers. Her asylum grant rate has gone up steadily over three years on the bench and currently stands at approximately 75%, well within the range I’d expect from a competent, expert IJ handling a non-detained docket.

That’s about 2X the national average grant rate of 37.5%. And, the latter is “up” from its artificially suppressed rate under Trump! Better EOIR judges at the “grass roots level” can make a difference and save lives even in the absence of leadership from Falls Church and “Main Justice!”

As this case confirms, there is “substantial judicial potential” on the the EOIR bench, most of it at the trial level. That’s particularly true of some of Garland’s most recent appointments who are widely-recognized and universally-respected asylum experts — “practical scholars” if you will. 

But, EOIR still has not reached the “critical mass” of outstanding jurists necessary to “turn this broken system around” in the absence of leadership, positive examples,  and operational reforms “from the top!” 

That’s why I advocate for “change from below as the way to go” to save some lives and institutionalize fair judging and best practices at EOIR. So, NDPA heroes, keep those applications flowing for  upcoming vacancies on the Immigration Bench, at all levels. I want YOU to bring justice to the broken “retail level” of our legal system! Seehttps://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/01/12/-i-want-you-to-be-a-u-s-immigration-judge/.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-06-23

🗽”HUMANE BORDER POLICIES ARE POSSIBLE” — NIJC HAS 5 STRAIGHTFORWARD POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A HUMANE, ORDERLY BORDER! — The Biden Administration Appears Uninterested!🤯 

Julia Toepfer
Julia Toepfer
National Immigrant Justice Center (“NIJC”)
Humane border policies are possible. Here are five solutions.

The United States continues to struggle to create and implement humane border policies that respect domestic and international law and the dignity of people seeking protection. NIJC’s policy experts convened with other experts to suggest five solutions for a humane border policy. Read more about the solutions and see our graphics series.

AUTHOR NIJC Policy Team

The U.S. government and governments around the world are grappling with an increase in the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes by political and social oppression. Despite campaign commitments to restore humanity to immigration policy, the Biden administration has largely continued Trump-era policies at the U.S.-Mexico border. These policies blatantly undermine domestic and international asylum law; result in countless deaths; and create rather than mitigate chaos as people blocked from protection have little choice but to resort to multiple and more dangerous border crossing attempts.

What should the Biden administration be doing to address the humanitarian need at the border? There are other ways to address the situation at the border, leading with empathy and courage in compliance with the Refugee Act of 1980.

The administration can and should: 1) develop and support robust communication and planning between federal, state and local governments, and civil society, so that those arriving migrants in need of additional support can be matched with a destination with capacity to provide services; 2) fully fund and support civil society, including social and legal service providers; 3) create non-custodial, humanitarian reception centers at the border, instead of jailing migrants and asylum seekers; and 4) overhaul the federal immigration budget by moving funds away from detention and enforcement and toward asylum processing and humanitarian needs.

While taking these steps the administration must 5) abide by its obligation to ensure asylum access to those arriving at the United States’ borders and ports. The Refugee Convention, which Congress incorporated into U.S. law, was borne out of the horrors of World War II and the Nazi Genocide. It reminds us of a history we must not repeat, when the United States was among those countries that turned European Jewish refugees away, back to their deaths. Policies developed during the Trump administration, including the Title 42 mass expulsions policy and asylum bans that deny protection on the basis of a person’s manner of entry, stand in blatant violation of this obligation.

Processing large – even unprecedented – numbers of asylum seekers is possible. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was an outpouring of support and political will to welcome Ukrainians forced to flee. In only a five-month period following the invasion, the United States processed and received more than 100,000 Ukrainians. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has tremendous authority and resources at its fingertips; with political will and a reprioritization of funding, the United States absolutely has the means to become a leader in the response to the global refugee crisis and to provide dignity and respect to those arriving at the border in search of safe haven.

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

Get more details at the above link.

This is exactly the kind of practical, progressive thinking and planning that the Biden Administration should have been ready to “run with” upon taking office. They also needed a different leadership team with the skills, expertise, and guts to put policies like this in place and stick with them. 

Instead they have been cowed by nativists and wobbly Dem “faux centerists” into an ill-defined and ineptly led program of “Miller Lite” deterrence lamely leavened with arbitrary stabs at amelioration untethered to a statutory framework! They also needed a much better legal team led by skilled, dedicated litigators with proven ability to defend humanitarian legal policies against predictable scurrilous, but determined, well-financed litigation by White Nationalist advocates designed to block progress and insure that equal justice for all would remain a slogan rather than a reality!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-03-23

🤮☠️ EGREGIOUS “ETHNOCENTRIC” JUDGING! — BIA IGNORES RECORD IN FABRICATED DENIAL OF GUATEMALAN  CLAIM — 3RD CIR PUZZLED BY BIA’S CONDUCT: “At times, the IJ’s decision completely conflicts with the record. Yet, for reasons that are not at all apparent, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision in its entirety.“

Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel cutting down the backlog by trampling asylum seekers and their legal rights! Guatemalans are a favorite target for Garland’s “Band of Bullies” at EOIR. 
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-on-guatemala-law-facts-and-standard-of-review-saban-cach-v-atty-gen

pastedGraphic.png

Daniel M. Kowalski

25 Jan 2023

  • persecution
  • standard of review
  • Guatemala
  • asylum

CA3 on Guatemala, Law, Facts and Standard of Review: Saban-Cach v. Atty. Gen.

Saban-Cach v. Atty. Gen.

“Based on past experiences, if returned to Guatemala, Selvin Heraldo Saban-Cach fears being persecuted by a local gang because of his identity as an indigenous person. Accordingly, he seeks withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act and protection from removal under the Convention Against Torture. The Immigration Judge denied his applications and ordered his removal, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed. This petition for review followed. For the reasons that follow, we will grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. … Although the BIA need not write an overly detailed explanation of its review of an IJ’s decision, it must provide an adequate explanation of its ruling and afford us an opportunity to review it. Here, the BIA did neither. At times, the IJ’s decision completely conflicts with the record. Yet, for reasons that are not at all apparent, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision in its entirety. … The BIA must review the first, factual question for clear error and the second, legal question de novo. In affirming the IJ’s decision of the second question regarding acquiescence, the BIA concluded that it found “no clear error in the [IJ]’s predictive fact-finding.” Accordingly, in addition to not bifurcating the Myrie step-two inquiry, the BIA also erred by applying this heightened standard of review to a legal question. Because of these errors, “we have little insight into the basis for [the BIA’s] determination that the IJ’s opinion ‘clearly reflects that [s]he used the proper “willful blindness” standard in relation to the issue of acquiescence.’” Accordingly, on remand the BIA needs to reassess each question.”

[Hats way off to Stephanie Norton, CSJ Practitioner-in-Residence, Detained Immigrant Project Education, Seton Hall!]

Stephanie Norton
Stephanie Norton
CSJ Practitioner-in-Residence, Detained Immigrant Project Education, Seton Hall Law
PHOTO: Seton Hall Law website

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

Congratulations to NDPA star Stephanie Norton! This is yet another example of the great talent “out here” who could replace mal-functioning EOIR judges. Human lives are at stake, this system is dysfunctional, crying out for bold reforms! Wonder how the Dems will try to “spin” their miserable performance at EOIR in 2024?

The IJ’s and BIA’s findings of “no past persecution” in this case rise to the level of absurd! Here’s what happened:

The BIA recognized that gang members had attacked Saban-Cach on multiple occasions and that the worst attack left him unconscious after he was stabbed with a broken glass bottle. However, the BIA agreed with the IJ that, in the aggregate, this abuse did not rise to the level of persecution. The BIA explained that, “because most of the incidents did not involve physical injuries, and because the worst attack did not require him to seek professional medical care for his physical injuries, the applicant did not establish harm rising to the level of past persecution.”

Come on man! No competent, fair minded judge would reach such a totally ridiculous conclusion based on such shallow, specious, and basically “made up reasoning!” Not incidentally, it also directly conflicted with Circuit precedent as well as with the realities of life in Guatemala!

The BIA also ran roughshod over its OWN binding precedent, Matter of O-Z- & I-Z-, 23 I&N Dec. 22 (BIA 1998) (cumulative harm is persecution), which should have made a finding of past persecution a “no brainer” for a panel of competent asylum adjudicators! The sloppy, biased, “any reason to deny” culture at EOIR is a major cause of their out of control backlog. Efforts to deny easily grantable cases, and failure to direct wayward asylum-denying IJs to get it right in the first place, is a drag on our entire justice system — all the way up to the Courts of Appeals!

That’s because EOIR’s “any reason to deny” approach to asylum encourages, and often rewards, frivolous litigating positions by ICE, discourages stipulations and settlements in cases that should easily be granted, and results in OIL taking ethically and legally flawed positions in the Courts of Appeals. For example, in this case the 3rd Circuit characterized parts of OIL’s position as “disingenuous,” “puzzling and disappointing,” and pointedly stated that “[r]egrettably, the government’s response brief doubles down on this inaccuracy.”

So, these are the legal quality and ethical standards set at DOJ by AG Merrick Garland, a former Circuit Judge himself who certainly should be expected to “know better.” Apparently, in his view, due process, fundamental fairness, impartial adjudication, adherence to the law, judicial and legal ethics don’t apply when it’s “only migrants” whose lives are at stake! While this is a common approach from White Nationalist GOP politicos, don’t we deserve better from a Dem Administration that claims to care about racial justice, but whose actions with respect to migrants say otherwise?

The court also blasted EOIR for “ethnocentric” judging and failure to fairly evaluate cases.

We have previously cautioned IJs and the BIA against ethnocentric evaluations of petitioners’ resources. Petitioners primarily come from countries in the poorest and most dangerous regions of the world. Any presumption that they enjoy the same kinds of resources as their adjudicators is shortsighted and unfair. Unless the record supports it, IJs and the BIA should not assume that their own views of appropriate medical care and its ready accessibility make up a universal reality.

Petitioners for relief under the asylum system must be afforded the just hearing that due process and basic fairness demands. The immigration system can only provide a fair and neutral determination of the claims of people from different cultural and economic circumstances if adjudicators diligently avoid unrealistic assumptions about petitioners’ circumstances.

Any competent asylum practitioner would understand what the court is getting at. But, EOIR IJs at both the trial and appellate level make these basic mistakes time after time.

The 3rd Circuit and other courts might claim to find the BIA’s “entire” affirmance of a decision often in “complete conflict” with the record to be inexplicable. But, WE know that it’s because the “deportation assembly line” works on the “principle” of “any reason to deny” and “keep cranking out those final orders of removal.” To Hell with justice, quality, fairness, and the human lives involved!

Also, Guatemalan applicants, along with others from the Northern Triangle, are “de facto disfavored” in EOIR’s asylum adjudications. That’s right “in line” with the bias against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle exhibited by both the Trump and Biden Administrations. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/01/25/historical-perspective-from-yael-schacher-refugees-international-biden-administrations-bias-against-refugees-fleeing-the-northern-triangle-is-baked-into-the-prob/.

It’s also part of an ingrained institutional bias at EOIR against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle and Latin America that Garland has failed effectively to address! See, e.g.,  https://immigrationcourtside.com/justice-betrayed-the-intentional-mistreatment-of-central-american-asylum-applicants-by-the-executive-office-for-immigration-review/;  https://immigrationcourtside.com/appellate-litigation-in-todays-broken-and-biased-immigration-court-system-four-steps-to-a-winning-counterattack-by-the-relentless-new-due-process-army/.

This disasterous, backlogged, “star chamber system” is neither appropriately staffed nor competently operated to afford individuals “the just hearing that due process and basic fairness demands.” How is this due process and fundamental fairness required by our Constitution?

Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style. — AG Merrick Garland appears to be blissfully unconcerned about the methods applied by too many of his EOIR “judges,” and his DOJ attorneys who “run interference” for them, to achieve “removal for any reason, at any cost!”

Until a court has the guts to “pull the plug” on EOIR’s ongoing, deadly clown show 🤡, declare it unconstitutional, and require at least minimal due process reforms, these outrages will continue! “Puzzling” about recurring miscarriages of justice at EOIR, as the 3rd Circuit did here, is one thing; acting decisively to enforce the Constitution by stopping the abuse, once and for all, is quite different. Requiring EOIR judges with demonstrated expertise in asylum law, willing to professionally review records, and decide cases of asylum seekers correctly, without “ethnocentrism” or bias, would be a logical starting point! It should be a “no brainer!”

Clown Court
“When you walk into your EOIR ‘courtroom’ and this guy takes the bench, you’re probably in for a BAD day! Isn’t it time to finally END the ‘Clown Show’ in our dystopian Immigration ‘Courts?'”
PHOTO: Clown Civertan.jpg, Creative Commons License

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-27-23

⏳HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE FROM YAEL SCHACHER @ REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL: Biden Administration’s Bias Against Refugees Fleeing The Northern Triangle Is “Baked Into” The Problematic History Of U.S. Refugee & Asylum Programs!☹️

Yael Schacher
Yael Schacher
Historian
Senior U.S. Advocate
Refugees International

https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/23/bidens-announced-asylum-transit-ban-undermines-access-life-saving-protection/

Yael Schacher writes in WashPost:

On Jan. 5, the Biden administration announced that it planned to issue a regulation “to provide that individuals who circumvent available, established pathways to lawful migration, and also fail to seek protection in a country through which they traveled on their way to the United States, will be subject to a rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility in the United States.”

These two reasons to bar people from seeking asylum — for transiting through other countries and for crossing the U.S. border without authorization — have different rationales and historical origins. But both have been marshaled against Central Americans since the late 1980s — severely undermining access to asylum. Doing so endangers people’s lives and breaks U.S. and international law. History reveals the purpose and perils of such bars.

No such bars stopped earlier waves of refugees seeking protection in the United States, especially those coming from Europe. When people who fled the Bolshevik Revolution applied to be considered “bona fide refugees” under a 1934 U.S. law, it did not matter that they had spent several years during the previous decade in Germany, France, China, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico or Canada and then crossed a land border without getting inspected by a U.S. official — as many did — beginning in the mid-1920s. They told immigration officials that conditions in those countries made it hard for them to live and it would be years before they could qualify for an immigration visa to the United States. So, they made their way to the United States on their own — and their mode of entry, and even their use of fraudulent travel documents, did not preclude them from adjusting to permanent status.

. . . .

The Biden administration insists its regulation will be different because it has opened up new legal pathways from transit countries and it will give asylum seekers a chance to prove why they didn’t use one of the legal pathways available to them. But migrants from Guatemala and Honduras lack parole programs that are newly available only to Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians who have passports and sponsors in the United States. Further, parole, discretionary temporary permission to enter and stay in the United States with no path to citizenship, is a far cry from permanent refugee status. Fifteen thousand refugee resettlement slots this year are for all of the Caribbean and Latin America, where over 7 million Venezuelans are displaced. It is hard not to see this rule as an effort to limit access to asylum in the United States specifically for people from northern Central America and to treat today’s forcibly displaced people from the Americas unlike people seeking refuge from elsewhere in the past.

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

Read Yael’s complete article at the link.

Many of us had believed that the Biden Administration would get beyond the biases, manipulations of law, and implicit or explicit racism of the past to achieve the orderly, legal, timely admission of refugees, including those from Latin America, from abroad and at the border. Unfortunately and outrageously, they haven’t even tried!

Instead, they have turned human rights and border policies into an unholy, largely incomprehensible and arbitrary, mishmash of many of the worst, most ineffective, and invidiously biased policies of the past. 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-25-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽LEADING EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO’S BLUNT MESSAGE TO BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: “Enough with the political games. Migrants have a right to asylum!” — LA Times

Karen Musalo
Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law

https://www-latimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-01-06/biden-border-immigration-asylum-title-42?_amp=true

President Biden’s seemingly chaotic policy toward asylum seekers at the U.S. border is no accident. It’s carefully crafted to minimize political fallout. The administration should keep it simple instead, by following the law and doing the right thing — admitting those who arrive at our borders seeking asylum.

Give voters a chance, Mr. President. The American people value decency. They don’t respect craven and calculated inconsistency.

This week, the Biden administration announced an expansion of a Trump-era policy to turn away individuals fleeing persecution who reach our borders. This began with a pretext of limiting the spread of COVID-19, using a public health law known as Title 42. Now it’s just a sop to people who oppose immigration.

Until the Trump administration used Title 42 in this way, the nation had honored its obligation to asylum seekers for 40 years, under the 1980 Refugee Act. It grants the right to seek protection. Abrogating that right has resulted in the untold suffering, the return of refugees to persecution and death, and chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In April 2022, the Biden administration stated its intent to end Title 42. Litigation delayed the termination, but in mid-November, a federal judge ruled the policy unlawful, and ordered it to end by Dec. 21. The Supreme Court has stayed that order until it hears arguments next month.

Now, in a head-spinning turn of events, Biden has announced the expansion of Title 42 to Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans — nationalities that had not previously been subject to summary expulsion at the border.

If this were not enough of a contradiction, the administration also plans to resurrect another Trump-era policy which Biden had previously denounced, the “transit ban.” This rule bars from asylum any migrants who do not apply for and receive a denial of asylum from the countries they pass through on their way to the U.S.

This “outsourcing” of our refugee obligations to countries of transit, which a federal court found unlawful when implemented by the Trump administration, is ludicrous on its face. The asylum seekers who arrive at our border pass through countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, with human rights conditions as dire as in the migrants’ nations of origin.

To date, the only country with which we legally have such an arrangement is Canada — which makes sense because it has a robust refugee protection system and an admirable human rights record. And even if there are other countries of transit, such as Costa Rica, that have a well-developed framework for the protection of refugees, and solid records on human rights, they are already taking in numbers of asylum seekers that far exceed their capacity.

. . . .

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

Read Karen’s full op-ed at the above link.

It’s simply appalling, not to mention disingenuous, for Biden to ignore the advice of experts like Karen, the founder and moving force behind the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at U.C. Hastings Law. (Karen also argued the landmark Kasinga case before the BIA when I was Chair). Instead, disgracefully, he has turned human rights and immigration policies over to a bunch of spineless, scofflaw politicos and “go along to get along” bureaucrats. 

He has multiplied the problem by following and adopting their highly politicized program of “carefully crafted chaos” — which both ignores the law and inflicts irreparable harm, including death, on legal asylum seekers! The “crime” of these victims of Biden’s tone-deafness? Seeking to exercise their legal rights under U.S. and international law to apply for asylum!

Biden and some Dems seem to have forgotten the nationwide, grass roots wave of support for admission of refugees in response to Trump’s despicable “Muslim ban!” As Karen points out, rather than “running from” immigration, refugees, and asylum as issues, Biden and other Dems should be embracing them as part of our heritage as a nation of immigrants and a source of strength and shared prosperity for our future! Refugees and asylees are a key component of our legal immigration system. 

Making the necessary progressive, due process and fundamental fairness oriented, reforms to enable our nation to welcome those qualified in a timely, humane, and fair manner should be a top priority! As Karen cogently notes, “doing the right thing,” and doing it really well, “is good politics!”

Biden’s latest immigration nonsense will be attacked by litigators on both sides. Both the ACLU and Stephen Miller’s nativist legal group “America First Legal” have pledged to resist various parts of the new policies in court. The irony here is that Biden’s latest anti-asylum efforts incorporate much of the “Miller White Nationalist agenda” that Biden and other Dems campaigned (and fund-raised) against during the 2020 election!

Miller Lite
Biden and his immigration advisors apparently have been overindulging in this stuff lately! It shows in their disturbingly poor performance on asylum, human rights, an “order at the border!”

Karen’s message is the same as mine. “It’s not rocket science!🚀 Migrants have a right to asylum.”🗽 Start with that straightforward truth and everything else falls into place!

Thanks for speaking out so forcefully, articulately, and truthfully, Karen, my friend!

🇺🇸   Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-22

🤯👎🏼 EXPERTS’ CONDEMNATION OF BIDEN’S LATEST ANTI-ASYLUM BORDER GIMMICKS SWIFT, BRUTAL, TRUE!

Eleanor Acer
Eleanor Acer
Senior Director for Refugee Protection, Human Rights First. She called Biden’s latest border farce “a humanitarian disgrace.” Other experts agree!

From Eleanor Acer @ Human Rights First:

The president described the new approach as one intended to expand opportunities for migrants. But immigration advocates denounced the changes, saying that they included vast new restrictions on the right to claim asylum for people who need to escape their countries.

Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First, called the new policies “a humanitarian disgrace” and said the president should not be adding restrictions on people who seek refuge in the United States.

“The Biden administration should be taking steps to restore asylum law at ports of entry,” she said, “not doubling down on cruel and counterproductive policies from the Trump playbook.”

https://lnkd.in/eJeDidzY

 

Biden Announces Major Crackdown on Illegal Border Crossings

nytimes.com • 2 min read

*******

From Amy Fischer @ Amnesty International USA:

“Amnesty International USA condemns the Biden Administration’s attack on the human right to seek asylum. Today, the Biden Administration fully reversed course on its stated commitment to human rights and racial justice by once again expanding the use  of Title 42, announcing rulemaking on an asylum transit ban, expanding the use of  expedited removal, and implementing a new system to require appointments through a mobile app for those desperately seeking safety. While we welcome the expanded humanitarian parole program to provide a pathway for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to apply for protection without having to make the dangerous journey to the border, that must not come at the expense of the human right to seek asylum. These new policies will undoubtedly have a disparate impact on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people seeking safety. In fact, Amnesty International previously found that the cruel treatment of Haitians under Title 42 subjected Haitian asylum seekers to arbitrary detention and discriminatory and humiliating ill-treatment that amounts to race-based torture.  The United States has both a legal and moral obligation to uphold the right to seek asylum, and over the holidays, we once again saw communities mobilize to welcome asylum seekers with dignity. The Biden Administration must reverse course and stop these policies of exclusion, and instead uphold the right to seek asylum and invest in the communities that are stepping up to welcome.”

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2023/01/biden-administration-continues-to-attack-asylum.html

*******

From Mary Miller Flowers @ Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights:

“President Biden’s announcement today is a far cry from the commitments he made on day one to fight for racial justice, immigrant rights, and family protection,” Mary Miller Flowers, the senior policy analyst at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, said in a statement.

“The right to asylum should not hinge on your manner of flight from danger or your financial means,” Flowers continued. “Seeking safety is treated as a privilege for a select few, and the Biden Administration’s cherry-picking of who can and cannot access protection proves this.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-border-policy-cubans-haitians-nicaraguans_n_63b72754e4b0ae9de1bcb181

*******

From Kate Jastrom @ Center for Gender & Refugee Studies @ Hastings Law:

“Today President Biden proudly touted his commitment to providing legal pathways for asylum seekers and improving conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border. These were empty words,” said Kate Jastram, CGRS Director of Policy & Advocacy. “By expanding its deadly Title 42 policy to Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans, the Biden administration is going far beyond what any court has required it to do. This expansion will put vulnerable refugees in harm’s way and exacerbate violence and chaos in border communities.”

“People fleeing persecution have a legal right to seek asylum at our border under both U.S. and international law, no matter how they get here, no matter who they know, and no matter what documents they hold,” Jastram continued. “Many are forced to escape their homes under threat of death at a moment’s notice, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Their rights should never be supplanted by limited and discriminatory parole programs that offer relief only to a lucky few. We are also deeply disturbed that the administration has announced plans to revive and repackage the Trump-era asylum transit ban. President Biden cannot pledge to hold the ‘torch of liberty’ aloft, then turn around and embrace the most inhumane, anti-refugee policies of his predecessor.”

https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/news/biden-doubles-down-trump-era-cruelty-border

 

From Maria Daniella Prieshoff @ Tahirih Justice Center:

“This is truly a stain on the record of any administration seeking to uphold the U.S. asylum law and its responsibilities under international law. We must work together to ensure that for #JusticeForImmigrants is truly equal.”

**********

From Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.):

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who along with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pushed the Biden administration for months to end Title 42, criticized the administration’s plan, saying it goes too far in restricting migrants’ access to the border.

“The Biden Administration’s decision to expand Title 42, a disastrous and inhumane relic of the Trump Administration’s racist immigration agenda, is an affront to restoring rule of law at the border,” Menendez said in a statement. “Ultimately, this use of the parole authority is merely an attempt to replace our asylum laws, and thousands of asylum seekers waiting to present their cases will be hurt as a result.”

 

From Jonathan Blazer @ ACLU:

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has led the legal battle to stop the expulsions since the Trump administration, criticized Biden for continuing to rely on Title 42, saying expelling migrants will send them into dangerous border cities where some have been kidnapped or killed. “This knee-jerk expansion of Title 42 will put more lives in grave danger,” Jonathan Blazer, the ACLU’s director of border strategies, said in a statement.

Border Death
This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
In order to comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

From Margaret Cargioli @ Immigrant Defenders Law Center:

Margaret Cargioli, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said the program was effectively screening out migrants who lack U.S. connections or money to buy airplane tickets. She said Title 42 was “put in place by a racist and xenophobic administration” bent on stopping immigration, not protecting public health.

“It really does go against the nature of … ‘My life is in danger. I need to get out,’” she said at a Dec. 29 news conference. “And that is what the essence of an asylum seeker is.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/05/biden-border-security-immigration/

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

Alas, no surprise to “Courtside” readers! The question is what can and will human rights supporters, progressives, and racial justice advocates DO about the consistent betrayal of humanitarian values values and the rule of law by Dems; not to mention Dems trashing their own campaign promises!

Trump’s nativist racism and Biden’s incompetence have actually moved our nation’s approach to legal refugee and asylum status BACK more than four decades! In place of the international framework put in place by Congress in the Refugee Act of 1980, we now have a hodgepodge of arbitrary, ad hoc, actions by the Biden Administration, relying to an unacceptable (and prima facie illegal) extent on the use of “emergency parole” authority as a partial substitute for legal refugee and asylee admissions!

This favors some non-refugees with “sponsors” over those who meet the accepted international definition of “refugee.” It promotes Executive and political favoritism over the needs of legal refugees. It stands on its head the normal refugee definition requiring an individual to be OUTSIDE their country of nationality to apply.

Congress did give the President extraordinary authority to admit those who otherwise meet the “refugee” definition directly from their native countries in conflict. However, rather than using this legal authority, Biden has chosen to misuse parole to EVADE it.

Even for those Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans fortunate enough to be chosen for parole, the first three groups will be left in limbo with no clear way of obtaining permanent immigration status after the expiration of their two-year “parole.” This obviously converts them into “political footballs” — particularly if the GOP were to regain the Presidency in 2024!

Paroled Cubans, on the other hand, might qualify for green cards under the “Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966” after one year. This creates yet another arbitrary inconsistency among those similarly situated, based solely on nationality.

The Refugee Act of 1980 creates a screening and adjustment process for those admitted as refugees thereunder, similar to the Cuban Adjustment Act. It also creates a similar process for those refugees granted asylum at the border or in the interior.

But, Biden’s choice NOT to use the existing legal provisions established by the Refugee Act of 1980, recreates exactly the type of disorder, arbitrariness, and uncertainty that the Refugee Act of 1980 was intended to end! And, they did in fact more or less end for nearly four decades, prior to the Trump-initiated fiascos that began in 2017 and which Biden, despite pledges to the contrary, has lacked the competence, expertise, and will to end and restore the rule of law!

If properly staffed with human rights experts and dynamic, visionary “practical scholars” as leaders, our legal refugee and asylum systems could not only be restored, but could also be dramatically improved and made fairer! That’s basically what Biden promised during the 2020 campaign.

Outrageously, once in office those promises have been trashed and, predictably, chaos and incompetence reigns. That’s a deadly combination for asylum seekers patiently waiting for our nation to honor its laws and international obligations!

It shouldn’t be like “waiting for Godot!” But, it is!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-06-22

 

⚖️ TWO MORE CAT REMANDS FROM 2D CIR. 

Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca2-on-cat-honduras-garcia-aranda-v-garland#

CA2 on CAT, Honduras: Garcia-Aranda v. Garland

Garcia-Aranda v. Garland

“Karla Iveth Garcia-Aranda petitions for review of two decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). Garcia-Aranda, a native and citizen of Honduras, testified before an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) that she and her family had been threatened, kidnapped, and beaten by members of the Mara 18 gang while a local Honduran police officer was present. Garcia-Aranda sought asylum and withholding of removal, arguing that the gang had persecuted her because she was a member of the Valerio family, which ran its own drug trafficking ring in Garcia-Aranda’s hometown. She also sought protection under CAT based on an asserted likelihood of future torture at the hands of the gang with the participation or acquiescence of the local Honduran police. Having reviewed both the IJ’s and the BIA’s opinions, we hold that the agency did not err in finding that Garcia-Aranda failed to satisfy her burden of proof for asylum and withholding of removal, but that the agency applied incorrect standards when adjudicating Garcia-Aranda’s CAT claim. Accordingly, the petition for review is DENIED IN PART and GRANTED IN PART, the decisions of the BIA are VACATED IN PART to the extent they denied Garcia-Aranda’s claim for CAT protection, and the case is REMANDED to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this decision. … Because of these legal errors, we grant the petition as to Garcia-Aranda’s claim for protection under CAT and vacate the BIA’s decisions regarding CAT protection. See Rafiq v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 165, 166–67 (2d Cir. 2006) (remanding a CAT claim for proper application of Khouzam). On remand, we direct the agency to consider, in light of all testimony and documentary evidence, whether Garcia-Aranda will more likely than not be tortured by, or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, any public official (or other person) acting under color of law. As more fully described above, that means considering questions such as whether it is more likely than not that the gang will torture Garcia-Aranda, including meeting all the harm requirements for torture under section 1208.18(a), and whether it is more likely than not that local police acting under color of law will themselves participate in those likely gang actions or acquiesce in those likely gang actions. The BIA is also instructed to remand to the IJ for any additional factfinding that is necessary for the BIA to make its determination.”

[NOTE: This PFR was filed in 2018!  Hats off to Heather Axford and team!]

Heather Axford
Heather Axford
Senior Staff Attorney
Central American Legal Assistance
Brooklyn, NY

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

https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/460814d0-f0ab-44e7-aa08-3e5c9842322a/3/doc/19-228_so.pdf

Lopez De Velasquez v. Garland

“Petition for review of a December 26, 2018 decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) vacating a July 27, 2017 decision of an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) granting Petitioners’ application for asylum and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the petition for review is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. Accordingly, the decision of the BIA is VACATED in part, and the case is REMANDED for proceedings consistent with this summary order. … Remand is required in this case because the BIA did not give consideration to all relevant evidence and principles of law, as those have been detailed by this Court’s recent decision in Scarlett v. Barr, 957 F.3d 316, 332–36 (2d Cir. 2020). … Because Mejia did not fear torture at the hands of the Guatemalan authorities, the relevant inquiry is whether government officials have acquiesced in likely third-party torture. To make this determination, the Court considers whether there is evidence that authorities knew of the torture or turned a blind eye to it, and “thereafter” breached their “responsibility to prevent” the possible torture. Scarlett, 957 F.3d at 334 (quoting Khouzam v. Ashcroft, 361 F.3d 161, 171 (2d Cir. 2004)); see 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(7). … Here, record evidence raises questions as to the Guatemalan government’s inability to protect Mejia, insofar as it indicates that Mejia sought assistance from Guatemalan police and was told that they could not protect her and she should simply hide in her home. … Insofar as the BIA ruled without the benefit of Scarlett, a remand is warranted before this Court conducts any review. We therefore remand for the sole purpose of allowing the BIA to decide, after reasoned consideration of the record, whether the Guatemalan police’s inability to protect Mejia constituted acquiescence.”

[Hats off to Mike Usher!]

Mikhail Usher, Esq. Senior Partner
Mikhail Usher, Esq.
Senior Partner
The Usher Law Group PLLC
My & New Jersey
PHOTO: Usher Law Group


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

Congrats to NDPA superstars Heather and Mike!

Here’s commentary from my Round Table colleague Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase on Heather’s performance on Garcia-Aranda v. Garland:

“Heather is a remarkable litigator who did a remarkable job on this case – it was a tough panel that had basically ruled out asylum from the start; it was most impressive to hear Heather persuade the judges over the course of oral arguments as to the CAT standard (during which one of the judges repeatedly referenced proposed Trump regs that had never taken effect, but were nevertheless listed on the government’s eCFR as if it had).

Best, Jeff“

And, here’s my response:

“Heather is truly an NDPA superstar. And, I’m proud that she got her start appearing at the Arlington Immigration Court!

DPF

P”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-27-22

☠️⚰️💀GARLAND’S STAR CHAMBERS — “SLOW VIOLENCE” ON PEOPLE OF COLOR!🥵— Bias, Bad Law, Bungling Bureaucracy! — “Where Due Process Goes To Die!” 🤮 — Upcoming Book Will Expose Garland’s Lawless, Cruel, Inhumane “Court” System!

 

Slow Injustice @ EOIR
Garland’s approach to immigrant justice in his courts harkens back to “the bad old days.” Yet he remains impervious — and unaccountable!
The Wasp 1882-01-06 cover Slow but sure.jpg
Slow, but Sure. Cartoon depicts Lady Justice riding a tortoise, about to hang a man.
George Frederick Keller
Public domain

Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog previews upcoming book by Professor Maya Pagni Barack:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2022/10/from-the-bookshelves-the-slow-violence-of-immigration-court-procedural-justice-on-trial-by-maya-pagn.html

Friday, October 21, 2022

From the Bookshelves: The Slow Violence of Immigration Court Procedural Justice on Trial by Maya Pagni Barak

By Immigration Prof

The Slow Violence of Immigration Court Procedural Justice on Trial by Maya Pagni Barak (forthcominng March 2023, NYU Press)

The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:

“Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take years and most migrants will eventually be ordered deported. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court sheds light on the experiences of migrants from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as they navigate legal processes, deportation proceedings, immigration court, and the immigration system writ large.

Grounded in the illuminating stories of people facing deportation, the family members who support them, and the attorneys who defend them, The Slow Violence of Immigration Court invites readers to question matters of fairness and justice and the fear of living with the threat of deportation. Although the spectacle of violence created by family separation and deportation is perceived as extreme and unprecedented, these long legal proceedings are masked in the mundane and are often overlooked, ignored, and excused. In an urgent call to action, Maya Pagni Barak deftly demonstrates that deportation and family separation are not abhorrent anomalies, but are a routine, slow form of violence at the heart of the U.S. immigration system.”

KJ

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

The ongoing national disgrace called “EOIR” continues to mete out injustice and inane bureaucratic nonsense under a DEMOCRATIC Administration that pledged to return the rule of law and humanity to our broken Immigration Court system! 

That system is “headed and controlled” by a DEMOCRATIC AG, Merrick Garland. He is a former Federal Appellate Judge who certainly knows that what passes for “justice” in his broken “court” system is nothing of the sort! Also this ongoing debacle doesn’t say much good about Garland’s “lieutenants:” Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

They have all “looked the other way,” defended, or failed to condemn this travesty undermining our entire justice system, unfolding under their collective noses at EOIR every day! At some point in the future, all these guys will be “making the rounds” of major law firms, NGOs, universities, mainstream media, and corporations — seeking to “cash in” on their DOJ “experience.” Then, folks should remember how they ACTUALLY PERFORMED (or didn’t) when they had a chance to fix “America’s worst courts” — hotbeds of racial and ethnic injustice, purveyors of bad law, and a haven for ridiculously dysfunctional procedures!

Perhaps a suitable future for these willfully blind “public servants” would be to require them to spend the balance of their careers practicing on a pro bono basis before the “star chambers” they inflicted on others! See how they like being “scheduled,” with no or inadequate notice, to do 15 or 20 asylum cases per month; appearing before too many ill-qualified “judges” who have already decided to deny regardless of the law and facts; appealing to a captive “appellate court” dominated by individuals, working for the Executive, whose main “judicial qualification” was that they denied close to 100% of the asylum claims that came before them in Immigration Court and were known for their rude and dismissive treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers! See, e.g., “Confronting The American Star Chamber . . .,” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-4Vm.,

Here’s Professor Barak’s bio from the U of Michigan-Dearborn website:

Maya Barak, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies

Maya P. Barak
Maya P. Barak, PhD
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies
U. of Michigan -Dearborn
PHOTO: UM-D Websitew

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College-Wide Programs

mbarak@umich.edu

1070 Social Sciences Building | 4901 Evergreen Road | Dearborn, MI 48128

Personal Website

Teaching Areas: Arab American Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice Studies, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Women’s & Gender Studies

Research Areas: Capital Punishment, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Gangs, Immigrants / Crimmigration, Legal Sociology, Procedural Justice, State-Corporate Crime

Biography and Education

I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I hold a PhD in Justice, Law and Criminology from American University (2016), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Eastern Michigan University (2011), and a BA in Social Anthropology and Peace and Social Justice from the University of Michigan (2009). My research brings together the areas of law, deviance, immigration, and power, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches that span the fields of criminology, law and society, and anthropology.

Education

Ph.D. in Justice, Law and Criminology

Teaching and Research

Courses Taught

Selected Publications

Books

Gould, Jon B. and Maya Barak. 2019. Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers. New York: NYU Press.

Selected Articles

Barak, Maya. 2021. “Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court.” Journal on Migration and Human Security (https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024211034740).

Barak, Maya. 2021. “A Hollow Hope? The Empty Promise of Rights in the U.S. Immigration System”/ “¿Una promesa vacía? La ilusión de “los derechos” en el sistema migratorio de los Estados Unidos.” Las Cadenas Que Amamos: Una panorámica sobre el retroceso de Occidente a todos los niveles.

Barak, Maya. 2021. “Family Separation as State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime Vol. 2(2), 2021, pp. 109-121 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631309X20982299). (2021 Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award, Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, American Society of Criminology)

Barak, Maya, Leon, K., and Maguire, Edward. 2020. “Conceptual and Empirical Obstacles in Defining MS-13: Law-Enforcement Perspectives.” Criminology and Public Policy (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12493).

Barak, Maya. 2017. “Motherhood and Immigration Policy: How Immigration Law Shapes Central Americans’ Experience of Family.” In Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field, edited by Tanya Golash-Boza. New York: Oxford University Press.

Advocates and all Americans committed to racial justice and equal justice under law need to keep raising hell — and supporting progressive candidates — until this horrible system is replaced by a real court system, with subject matter expert judges, totally focused on delivering due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices to all!

What’s happening to individuals (fellow humans, “persons” under our Constitution) and their lawyers at EOIR is NOT OK, nor is it acceptable from a DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION!

Yeah, “there’s trouble, right here in River City!” And, it begins with “E,” ends with “R,” and rhymes with “EYORE!”

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-22-22

🏴‍☠️🤮 HALLS OF INJUSTICE: Allegations Of Racism, Misogyny, Islamophobia, & Other Bias Have Been Swirling Around Garland’s Dysfunctional EOIR — Now, The Ohio Immigrant Alliance Is Seeking & Assembling Examples To Force Long Overdue Action!

Garland’s “vision of justice” for asylum seekers and other migrants at EOIR leaves something to be desired:

Four Horsemen
Folks with wrong-headed “take no prisoners” views on asylum law were “rewarded” with “ judgeships” at both the trial and appellate levels of EOIR under the Trump Administration. Many continue to serve and discriminate against legitimate asylum seekers under Garland. Just check out the number of “sitting IJ’s” with outrageously high “asylum denial rates” near or in excess of 90%, according to TRAC Immigration. Why haven’t these important, non-life-tenured positions been “merit re-competed” to place the “best, brightest, and most qualified” on the Immigration Bench?
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Woman Tortured
Jaundiced attitudes about women (particularly those of color) and gender-based asylum claims among EOIR judges have neither been “rooted out” nor effectively addressed by Garland. As we can see, de-humanization of women and stripping them of dignity under asylum laws carries over into other legal arenas! Targeted, endemic. societal persecution of women is often intentionally minimized and mis-characterized as “random violence,” “personal disputes,” “mere jealousy,” or “not that serious” in Immigration Court! “Fictionalized accounts” of the ability of abused women to seek protection from authorities in countries where femicide and rape are rampant   are sometimes employed to deny legitimate asylum claims in Garland’s broken courts.
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Star Chamber Justice
Wrong , “unduly restrictive,” asylum precedents and discredited methods (“Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — on steroids under Garland — is a key example) continue to harm asylum seekers in Garland’s dysfunctional “courts.” — Public Realm

 

https://ohioimmigrant.org/2022/09/08/wanted-examples-of-racism-and-other-bias-in-us-immigration-court/

WANTED: Examples Of Racism And Other Bias In US Immigration Court

September 8, 2022tramontelaComments Off

on WANTED: Examples of racism and other bias in US immigration court

. . . .

The nation’s Immigration Courts have—thus far—flown under the public’s radar screen. Yet these are the places where life-or-death decisions are made, often for subjective and even racist reasons. That is why the Ohio Immigrant Alliance is collecting examples of racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, and other biased statements and decisions made by Immigration Judges from across the country. We are working with a research team to analyze the cases and produce a report in early 2023.  Here are a few examples.

Contact Lauren Hamlett (hamlett.15 AT buckeyemail.osu.edu) for more information or to share examples. This can be in the form of court documents and judges’ decisions or an interview with an immigrant or attorney. We will adhere to all privacy requirements requested by the immigrant and not publish anything without their consent.

The report, to be published in 2023, will shine a light on how racism shows up in Immigration Court using real-life examples. These findings will enrage anyone who believes the U.S. should work toward becoming a nation that guarantees “justice for all.”

See this testimony for more information, and contact Lauren to share your experiences.

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

I was struck by the undeniable truth — scandalously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and Biden Administration policy officials — contained in the January 20, 2022 statement by Lynn Tramonte, Ohio Immigrant Alliance, to the House Judiciary Committee considering the need for an independent, professionally-administered, merit-based Immigration Court. 

The U.S. Is Deporting People Who Qualify for Asylum

The current U.S. immigration system is not designed to function fairly, but to fail. There are many examples of this, but today I will focus on examples from the U.S. Immigration Court.

Lynn’s full statement is available at the “this testimony” link above. I’ve made this point over and over!

Because the current system is purposely biased against asylum seekers, particularly those of color arriving at our Southern border, the “statistics” purportedly showing that few will qualify for asylum are totally bogus! Then, they are inexcusably cited by so-called “mainstream media” who haven’t done their homework! This perpetuates the “nativist myth” of the “illegitimate asylum seeker” which is then used to dehumanize refugees and deny them their legal and human rights!

Fact is, because we don’t have a legitimate, expert asylum adjudication system, we don’t really know how many qualified refugees are being illegally turned away or denied. But, it’s a safe bet that a fair, expert, professionally administered asylum system would grant legal protection to many more — probably a majority — of those who pass credible fear! 

The problem is NOT, as Sessions and other nativists claimed, that too many individuals pass “credible fear.” It’s that a biased, anti-asylum, mal-administered, and constitutionally flawed system wrongfully denies far, far, far too many legitimate claims! And, Garland’s incredibly dysfunctional EOIR is at the heart of this problem!

Fixing EOIR is an essential first step in “re-legitimizing” our entire floundering justice system. But, Garland isn’t up to the job!

Asylum is an important form of legal immigration and an opportunity for America to put its best foot forward by properly, fairly, and timely screening and admitting those who can qualify for refuge and will be key contributors to our nation’s future. The babble of GOP nativists like DeSantis, Cruz, Abbott, and others about “illegals” is total BS! 

Asylum seekers have every right to be here and pursue fair, timely, and professional adjudication of their claims — something that’s elusive — highly unlikely to happen — under today’s “designed to fail” system! That includes the “new, designed to fail, improperly staffed and mindlessly operated asylum regulations.” See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/10/03/%f0%9f%98%b0asylum-programmed-for-failure-refugee-roulette-three-rr3-confirm-what-many-of-us-said-right-off-the-bat-about-biden-admin/

It’s an ongoing national disgrace that Garland has failed to reform his Immigration Courts, eliminate bias and invidious discrimination from his judiciary, install quality, expertise, and professionalism, and insist that the Biden Administration abandon “Miller Lite,” nativist policies and mis-interpretations of the law that are diminishing our nation and endangering our future; that he also has ridiculously chosen to “go to war” with experts, NGOs, attorneys, and others seeking to change and improve his disgraceful mess at EOIR!

What’s the purpose and function of an Attorney General who operates broken and biased “courts,” defends the indefensible, and refuses to stand up for the fair application of the law to some of the most vulnerable among us?

In the meantime, submit your “real life” examples of what really happens to vulnerable humans in “America’s worst courts” to Ohio Immigrant Alliance at the above link.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-07-22

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 10-03-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Biden’s Asylum Reform Dud! — After 4 Months, Badly Flawed Program Has Protected Only 24 Refugees, As Bias, Lack of Vision, & Anti-Asylum Culture Continue To Plague Biden Administration’s Human Rights “Non-Policies!”

 


Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

PRACTICAL UPDATES

 

EOIR Updates FOIA Request Process

 

USCIS Extends Green Card Validity Extension to 24 Months for Green Card Renewals

 

Extension of Temporary Waiver of 60-Day Rule for Civil Surgeon Signatures on Form I-693

 

NEWS

 

Migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high, in part due to drownings

NPR: This has been the deadliest year ever for migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 800 migrants have died border-wide in the fiscal year that ends this week, according to internal government figures shared by a senior Border Patrol official.

 

Biden Is Hoping Small Changes Go a Long Way on Immigration

NYT: For now, the changes are tiny; only 99 people since the end of May have completed what are called asylum merits interviews with an asylum officer and been fully evaluated under the new rules. Of those, 24 have been granted asylum, while most of the rest have had their cases sent back to the immigration court system for an appeal.

 

Biden Maintains Current Cap on Refugee Entries

NYT: The decision to leave the cap at 125,000 was a contrast with the Trump administration, which severely restricted entry, but advocacy groups said migrants were still processed too slowly.

 

ICE Increases Use of Ankle Monitors and Smartphones to Monitor Immigrants

TRAC: The number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternative to Detention (ATD) program has officially crossed 300,000 people for the first time, reaching 316,700 according to data released this week. See also The App ICE Forces You To Download; 70-hour weeks, taking selfies for Ice: life as a migrant trucker in California.

 

White House hosts meeting of 19 Western Hemisphere nations to begin coordinated efforts on migrants

CNN: National security adviser Jake Sullivan and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, among other White House officials, met with the representatives of 19 countries at the White House to iron out the implementation of that declaration and appoint a special coordinator for each country, according to the senior administration official.

 

Texas Jail Warden Charged With Killing Migrant Was Previously Accused Of Serious Abuses

Intercept: The Warden of what was once one of the nation’s most notorious immigration detention facilities was arrested this week after allegedly killing one migrant and wounding another in the desert of rural West Texas.

 

Immigrants Provide Huge Benefits To U.S. Taxpayers

Forbes: Compelling new research finds immigrants, including those with less than a high school degree, provide enormous fiscal benefits and a significant subsidy to U.S. taxpayers.

 

Border-crossing asylum-seekers hit six-year high in Canada

Reuters: In the first eight months of 2022, Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted 23,358 asylum-seekers crossing into the country at unofficial entry points, 13% more than all of 2017, when an influx of border-crossers at Roxham Road, near the Quebec-New York border, made international headlines.

 

‘Real People That We Care About Are Being Exploited’

Politico: Because cannabis remains illegal at a federal level, all employers — even those licensed at the state level — lack access to E-Verify, a government service that helps businesses verify immigration status. They also cannot use visa programs like H-2A and H-2B, which facilitate legal immigration of farmworkers in other industries… The Oregon legislature in the last 12 months set aside more than $31 million for law enforcement and advocacy groups working to combat illicit cannabis cultivation and help undocumented workers in the industry.

 

Come along as we connect the dots between climate, migration and the far-right

NPR: What is the connection between climate change, the movement of people around the globe, and the rise of xenophobic politicians? That’s the overarching question we’re hoping to answer with this reporting trip.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

Justices To Review If 5th Circ. Fairly Rebuffed Removal Case

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review whether the Fifth Circuit was right to reject a Guatemalan woman’s deportation case on the grounds that she hadn’t gone through a final round of administrative appeals.

 

3rd Circ. Upholds Toss Of Illegal Immigrant’s Firearm Appeal

Law360: The Third Circuit has affirmed an Eastern District of Pennsylvania federal judge’s rejection of a Dominican Republic citizen’s appeal of his conviction on firearm and immigration law offenses — albeit for different reasons than the lower court.

 

DC Judge Won’t Force Consular Interviews For Visa Winners

Law360: The State Department will not have to schedule visa interviews for 12 winners of the 2022 Diversity Visa Lottery, after a D.C. federal judge found that the selectees didn’t show a high likelihood of proving that the Biden administration unlawfully delayed their interviews.

 

Judge Faults BIA For Nixing Visa Petition Over Prior Marriage

Law360: An Ohio federal judge on Wednesday said the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals wrongly tossed a woman’s visa petition for her Ghanian husband over a previous “sham marriage,” saying whether the prior marriage was actually fake was open to dispute.

 

ACLU Says Feds Ignored FOIA For ICE Detainee Counsel Info

Law360: The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday hit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in D.C. federal court, accusing the agency of improperly withholding access to records regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees’ access to counsel.

 

Feds want psychological tests for parents of separated kids

AP: The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders around the world. Settlement talks with attorneys and the government broke down late last year.

 

Groups: Retaliation after migrants report detention center

AP: A companion complaint Wednesday to the office of civil rights at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security documents retaliation, including restrictions on access to legal representation and a falsified accusation of misconduct against an immigrant under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

 

U.S. whistleblowers aiding migrant children feared retaliation, watchdog report says

Reuters: Two U.S. government employees said they experienced retaliation after they sounded alarms about the conditions at Fort Bliss, which has been used for emergency housing since March 2021, according to the report issued by the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general’s office.

 

Secretary Mayorkas Extends and Redesignates Temporary Protected Status for Burma

USCIS: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced an extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Burma for an additional 18 months, from Nov. 26, 2022, through May 25, 2024, due to extraordinary and temporary conditions in Burma that prevent individuals from safely returning.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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Launch Dud
Despite disingenuous claims otherwise, the overhyped “launch” of asylum “reform” has been a “dud” — producing little for the Administration but even less for legitimate refugees and due process advocates caught up in the mind-boggling dysfunction of the failed Mayorkas/Garland asylum system.
PHOTO: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Public Realm

As border deaths continue to soar, nativist GOP Governors use humans as political pawns, and conditions in refugee sending countries deteriorate, the Biden Administration’s failed human rights/racial justice bureaucracy has no answers!

By attempting to replicate, remarkably even touting, the unrealistically high denial rates produced by the previous system — too often the result of badly flawed adjudications, poorly trained officers and judges, lack of effective representation, chronic systemic anti-asylum bias, and overly restrictive, anti-asylum precedents produced by a BIA loaded with anti-asylum zealots by the Trump Administration — Mayorkas and Garland have basically guaranteed continuing human rights abuses and defective adjudication of claims.

Truth is, even during the height of the overt anti-asylum program of the Trump Administration, approximately 70% of those whose claims were “referred” by the Asylum Office were eventually granted protection in Immigration Court. 

According to Human Rights First (“HRF”), an international human rights organization, in Fiscal Year 2021, 68% of asylum cases referred to immigration court by the AO were subsequently granted protection.[1] With nearly 70% of claims being granted in FY2021, this represents a clear and apparent waste of judicial resources.

https://www.immigrationissues.com/asylum-cases-referred-to-immigration-court-too-often/

And, this was with a legal system with overly restrictive precedents that clearly and improperly manipulated generous asylum laws AGAINST refugees, often hindered effective representation, and was “overseen” by many Immigration Judges who were hand-selected or retained by the Trump DOJ because they were “programmed to deny” asylum at outrageous rates. By granting only a pathetic 24 of 99 cases that actually were decided over four months, and “referring” the rest to Garland’s beyond dysfunctional “courts” (currently fighting an indescribably stupid all-out “war” with NGOs and pro bono attorneys), Mayorkas hasn’t come anywhere close to “leveraging” the system to locate, prioritize, timely grant many more legitimate cases, and drastically reduce the huge number of  unnecessary referrals to EOIR.

Rather than “cleaning house” at USCIS and EOIR, bringing in dynamic, qualified leaders, expert adjudicators and judges who can timely recognize the many legitimate claims, working with NGOs and pro bono groups to get all asylum seekers represented, and utilizing the expert training resources that currently exist outside Government, Mayorkas and Garland are perpetrating the same anti-asylum myths spewed out by Miller, Trump, and company! Essentially, instead of fixing the fatal flaws in the current system, the Biden Administration has chosen to institutionalize and expedite them! That’s insane!

The Biden Administration’s failure to do the butt-kicking, bold, thoughtful work necessary to establish robust, timely, efficient, refugee and asylum systems is dragging down our legal system, promoting racial injustice, perpetrating xenophobic myths, advancing “worst practices,” harming, sometimes killing, legitimate refugees fleeing repressive regimes, and denying American communities legal residents who could be using their skills to help build a stronger economy and a better future for America.

With thousands of asylum seekers from countries where persecution is well-documented being “orbited” by nativist GOP Governors, the Biden Administration was presented with a golden opportunity to work with NGOs, states, and local governments to coordinate resettlement, get them competently represented, and grant asylum in a fair and timely manner, thus demonstrating how an improved asylum system could work with proper staffing, attitudes, and legal guidance. Instead, the Administration has chosen to waste time on a “thudding dud” of a pilot that shows a stunning lack of leadership, courage, imagination, initiative, humanity, and respect for the rule of law!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-05-22