Matthew 25:44 – Page 8 – immigrationcourtside.com

😎🗽👍🏼 HOW MAINE HELPS ASYLUM SEEKERS HELP THEMSELVES & HUMANITY — It’s A “Win-Win” That Can Be Replicated!

uhttps://www.pressherald.com/2021/11/14/we-bring-our-dreams-with-us-all-of-us/

Eric Russell in the Portland (ME) Press Herald:

. . . .

Jobs are more plentiful and increasingly well-paying, but asylum seekers can’t work for at least six months, sometimes longer – a willing and able workforce sidelined. They also can’t qualify right away for federal assistance programs like food stamps.

Every so often, staff members hear rumblings from someone in the community who suggests that asylum seekers are being helped at the expense of others, which isn’t true.

“There isn’t anything offered to them that isn’t offered to anyone else who walks through our door,” Guthrie said. “If someone presents, we try to help them.”

. . . .

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

With chronic labor shortages, Maine has benefitted greatly from doing the right thing, setting a great, positive example that could and should be a model for other states. Helping everyone to realize their ambitions and reach their full human potential is the way forward!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-16-21

☹️👎🏽BUMBLING BIA BADLY BUNGLES BASICS, AGAIN! — Applies Wrong Standard In Seeking To Reverse Valid CAT Grant — Obviously Frustrated 3rd Cir. Reinstates IJ Decision Following BIA’s Inept Attempt @ Appellate Review! — Arreaga Bravo v. A.G.

Woman Tortured — The BIA’s blunders in trying to help out their “partners” @ DHS Enforcement can sometimes seem almost comical. But, they are no laughing matter to those facing persecution or torture as a result! Why is Garland indifferent to life-threatening injustice in his courts?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203300p.pdf

Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

Given the strength and rigor of the IJ’s underlying opinion, along with the BIA having exceeded its proper scope of review, we will vacate the BIA’s final order of removal and remand with instructions to reinstate the IJ’s opinion.

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

There is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurdly horrible. This latest BIA travesty falls in the latter category.

Not surprisingly, the Circuit opinion quotes liberally from the BIA’s insipid, mealy-mouthed “bureaucratic double-speak” language! To paraphrase my BIA colleague the late Judge Fred Vacca, thank goodness the 3rd Circuit finally put an end to this “pathetic attempt at appellate adjudication.”

Interesting that rather than remanding to give the BIA a chance to deny again on some newly invented specious basis, the court just reinstated the IJ opinion. There should be a message here! But, Garland and his lieutenants aren’t “getting it!”

This case illustrates deep systemic and personnel problems that Garland has failed to address. Instead of summarily dismissing the DHS’s frivolous appeal with a strong warning condemning it, these types of bad BIA decisions contribute to the unnecessary backlog and both encourage and reward frivolous actions by the DHS.

Additionally, reversing, for specious reasons, a well-done and clearly correct IJ decision granting relief, just to carry out the wishes of DHS Enforcement and political bosses, is intended to discourage respondents and their attorneys while unethically steering Immigration Judges toward a “norm of denial.”

Abused women of color from the Northern Triangle have been particular targets of the EOIR’s seriously skewed anti-immigrant adjudications. This makes the Garland DOJ’s claims to be a “champion of racial justice” ring all the more hollow and disingenuous in every context. There will be no racial justice in America without radical EOIR reform!

What ever happened to our first ever woman of color Veep? Hypothesize that one of the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges responsible for this mess had come before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation. Wouldn’t you have had some questions about judicial qualifications? So, why is it OK to continue to employ them in untenured Executive Branch quasi-judicial positions where they exercise life or death power over many of the most vulnerable among us, overwhelmingly persons of color, many women, lots of them unrepresented! Kamala Harris, where are you?

It’s all part of an improper “culture of denial” at EOIR, led and “enforced” by the BIA. Garland has disgracefully failed to come to grips with the “anti-due process” that he fosters every day that the “Miller Lite Holdover BIA” remains in their appellate positions.

For heavens sake, with unnecessary “TV Adjudication Centers” coming out EOIR’s ears, reassign these purveyors of bad law and appellate injustice to those lower “courts” where they can do less cosmic damage and real, better qualified appellate judges can “keep on eye” on them!

I keep thinking (or perhaps hoping) that eventually Circuits will tire of continually redoing the BIA’s sloppy work product and then having the cases come back again, sometimes years later, denied on yet another bogus ground!

On the flip side, Judge Garland seems to have infinite “patience” with well-documented substandard performance and painfully obvious anti-immigrant, pro-DHS bias on the part of his BIA.

Wrongful denial of CAT costs lives and can improperly condemn individuals to gruesome and painful death! This is no way to run a court system! I guess it’s easier to “tolerate” lousy judicial performance when you aren’t the one being unfairly and illegally condemned to torture!

Past time for a “line change” in Falls Church!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-29-21

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️HAITI IS NOT “SAFE,” & THE PERVASIVE GANG VIOLENCE APPEARS TO BE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED! — “They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs. . . . It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption!” — So, Why Are Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, & Garland Illegally Returning Refugees There Without Hearing Their Asylum Claims? 👎🏽🤮

Catherine Porter
Toronto Bureau Chief
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times website

Natalie Kitroeff
Foreign Correspondent
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/world/americas/haiti-gangs-kidnapping.html?referringSource=articleShare

By Catherine Porter and Natalie Kitroeff

They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs.The gruesome massacre three years ago, considered the worst in Haiti in decades, was more than the work of rival gangs fighting over territory. It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department announced last year.

Since then, Haiti’s gang members have grown so strong that they rule swaths of the country. The most notorious of them, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, fashions himself as a political leader, holding news conferences, leading marches and, this week, even parading around as a replacement for the prime minister in the violent capital.

. . . .

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Read the rest of this gruesome, yet telling, report at the link.

Over 21 years on the Immigration Bench as both a trial and appellate judge, I adjudicated thousands of asylum claims. The circumstances described on this article undoubtedly would give rise to many potentially valid asylum and withholding claims, based on actual or implied political opinion and/or family or gender-based “particular social groups” and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) grants based on torture with government acquiescence or actual connivance!

So, how do Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland, who to my knowledge have never represented an asylum applicant or adjudicated an individual asylum case among them, “get away” with simply suspending the rule of law, under false pretenses, for those entitled to seek asylum?

Stephen Miller must be on “Cloud Nine” as Biden & Co. carry out his White Nationalist plans to eradicate asylum, particularly when it protects women and people of color! This is even as Miller and his neo-Nazi cohorts (a/k/a “America First Legal”) are gearing up to sue the Biden Administration to block every measure that might aid immigrants, particularly those of color.

He’s delighted with Biden’s abuse of asylum seekers of color! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

By contrast with Miller’s delight, human rights NGOs have “had it” with the Biden Administration’s grotesque anti-asylum agenda! See, e.g.,https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/18/2058777/–We-refuse-to-be-complicit-Advocates-leave-Biden-admin-meeting-in-protest-of-Remain-in-Mexico-plan?detail=emaildkre

Haiti Corpses — NGOs don’t share the Biden Administration’s vision of what a “safe” Haiti looks like. Neither do kidnapped American missionaries!
PHOTO: Marcelo Casal, Jr., Creative Commons License

Angering and alienating your potential allies and supporters to aid the far-right program of your enemies who are determined to do whatever it takes to undermine, discredit, and destroy your Presidency! Obviously, I’m no political expert. But, sure sounds like an incredibly stupid, “designed to fail” strategy to me!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

1-23-21

☠️👎🏽GARLAND EOIR’S DISTURBINGLY BAD ANALYSIS IN YET ANOTHER ASYLUM CASE “OUTED” BY FIRST CIRCUIT! — Lopez Troche v. Garland

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/20-1718P-01A.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-on-credibility-lopez-troche-v-garland#

“Mario Rene Lopez Troche (“Lopez Troche”), a native and citizen of Honduras, petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) that affirms the denial of his application for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We vacate and remand. … [T]he record does not reveal the claimed inconsistency between the testimony and the reasonable fear interview as to Lopez Troche’s reporting to police that the BIA identified. The BIA cited to three portions of Lopez Troche’s testimony in support of its determination that the IJ did not clearly err in finding an inconsistency between what Lopez Troche told the asylum officer during his reasonable fear interview and how he testified as to the reporting of past abuse. But, none of those passages supports the BIA’s determination. … Nor is it possible to read either the BIA or the IJ to have inferred from Lopez Troche’s failure to report to the police the specific incidents that he discussed in his testimony that he was asserting in that testimony that did not report any incidents of abuse ever. Neither the IJ’s opinion nor the BIA’s expressly purports to premise its ruling as to adverse credibility on the basis of such inferential reasoning, see Chenery, 318 U.S. at 95, and we do not see what basis there would be for drawing that inference on this record, given that, in his reasonable fear interview, declaration, and testimony, Lopez Troche discussed a series of traumatic physical and sexual assaults that he had experienced that appears to have stretched back to a time when he was eight years old and that thus encompassed many more incidents than those addressed specifically in the portions of his testimony on which the BIA focused. As a result, we must vacate and remand the BIA’s order affirming the denial of Lopez Troche’s request for withholding of removal.”

[Hats way off to PAIR Project Legal Director Elena Noureddine and Staff Attorney Irene Freidel!]

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

Law students and attorneys of the NDPA are out there helping refugees every day. Meanwhile, over at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR, Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Immigration Judges strain to improperly “diddle the record” to deny relief to asylum seekers! Then, OIL defends them!

Essentially, in this case, the BIA “made it up and misrepresented the record” in an effort to deny asylum for specious reasons! Then, OIL tried to “blow it by” the Circuit!

“[T]he record does not reveal the claimed inconsistency between the testimony and the reasonable fear interview as to Lopez Troche’s reporting to police that the BIA identified.” That’s “judgespeak” for: The BIA invented non-existent “inconsistencies” to unfairly deny asylum. Then, OIL defended that fabrication and denial of due process! What does this say about Garland’s leadership at DOJ?

Whatever happened to legal and judicial ethics? Clearly they were “deep sixed” under Sessions and Barr. But, why is Garland continuing to operate DOJ as an “ethics and quality free zone?”

This is a bad system with the wrong folks in too many judicial and leadership positions and presenting an overwhelming need for robust, bold change in how decisions are made and defended in Circuit Court. So far, Garland has not made the fundamental personnel changes and “quality upgrades” necessary to bring due process and some semblance of expertise and order back to his broken Immigration Courts! Why not?

Why are the kind of individuals who should be Immigration Judges and EOIR judicial leaders, talented lawyers like Elena and Irene, still “on the outside” rather than being actively recruited and brought in to replace those unable to perform judicial, administrative, and litigation duties in a fair, expert manner, that enhances due process? Why is EOIR still operating with a “judiciary” the majority of whom were installed by the Trump regime at Justice to “dehumanize, deport, and deter” without regard for due process? Why is OIL continuing to “defend the indefensible?” Why isn’t Congress asking Garland these questions?

Government lacking in expertise, intellectual honesty, professional ethics, and accountability is “bad government.” That’s true no matter which party holds power!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-21-21

HISTORY & THE PRESENT: We Owe Haiti A Debt — Mayorkas & Garland Have Repaid It With Cruelty, Lies, Illegal, & Immoral,Treatment Of Haitian Asylum Seekers — “[Haitians’] success in freeing themselves in the face of the stoutest European hostility imaginable ironically made Haiti the first nation to fulfill the most fundamental values of the Enlightenment: freedom from bondage and racial equality for all.”

A portrait of Toussaint Louverture, 1813
Oil on Canvas, 65.1 x 54.3 cm. (25.6 x 21.4 in.)
Alexandre François Girardin
Public domain

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-10/the-west-owes-a-centuries-old-debt-to-haiti

Howard W. French in the LA Times:

The treatment of Haitian refugees at the U.S. border last month — some chased by horseback agents, others huddled by the thousands under a bridge — is tragic. For reasons that are less obvious, it is also ironic. Although Americans’ centuries-long debt to the Haitian people is untaught in our schools and unacknowledged in our public discourse, the indomitable spirit of the Haitian people created the United States we know today.

Even the capsule version of Haiti’s successful fight to end slavery and for independence at the turn of the 19th century is riveting. C.L.R. James, the late Trinidadian political leader and historian of the Caribbean, wrote six decades ago:

“In August 1791, after two years of the French Revolution and its repercussions in [Hispaniola], the slaves revolted. The struggle lasted for 12 years. The slaves defeated in turn the local whites and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British expedition of some 60,000 men, and a French expedition of similar size under Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. The defeat of Bonaparte’s expedition in 1803 resulted in the establishment of the Negro state of Haiti which has lasted to this day.”

It’s one of the most remarkable stories of liberation that we have as a species: the largest revolt of enslaved people in human history, and the only one known to have produced a free state. But even this sweeping account understated the extraordinary role that Haiti’s rebellious enslaved played in world history.

Their success in freeing themselves in the face of the stoutest European hostility imaginable ironically made Haiti the first nation to fulfill the most fundamental values of the Enlightenment: freedom from bondage and racial equality for all. These principles were enshrined in Haiti’s first constitution, in 1804, decades before they were embraced by the United States.

And that was just the beginning.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

How have we repaid the debt? By illegally deporting Haitian asylum seekers to the “kidnapping center of the world” and then disingenuously claiming that it is a “safe” country for returns!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/09/haiti-kidnapping/

From WashPost:

By Widlore Mérancourt and Anthony Faiola

October 9 at 2:49 PM ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Four days after the August earthquake that devastated the south of Haiti, Walkens Alexandre, a physician, was traveling to treat victims at a hospital when a motorcycle blocked his white Ford Ranger. Two men hopped off, pulled guns, commandeered his truck and hauled him to the outskirts of the capital.

He was held for three days while the kidnappers negotiated by phone with his family. He’d be set free for 30 times his monthly salary. Loved ones pleaded with relatives and friends to contribute to the ransom.

“Now I’m traumatized, fearful of people, and reminded of this every time someone slams a door, or I hear a motorcycle,” said Alexandre, 43. “We don’t feel safe in Haiti. There is always panic, always fear.”

The most troubled nation in the hemisphere is now being held hostage by a surge in kidnappings.

With victims spanning all social classes and ransoms ranging from as little as $100 to six figures, Haiti now holds the tragic title of highest per capita kidnapping rate on Earth. Recorded kidnappings so far this year have spiked sixfold over the same period last year, as criminals nab doctors on their way to work, preachers delivering sermons, entire busloads of people in transit — even police on patrol. So great is the surge that this year, Port-au-Prince is posting more kidnappings in absolute terms than vastly larger Bogotá, Mexico City and São Paulo combined, according to the consulting firm Control Risks.

[Haitian migrants thought Biden would welcome them. Now deported to Haiti, they have one mission: Leave again.]

Locals and foreigners alike are living in fear. The heads of several foreign companies told The Washington Post that the kidnapping wave led them to reassign staffers to remote work in other Caribbean countries, Europe or the United States. Other firms are leaving Haiti altogether.

“Every time you leave your door in Port-au-Prince, it’s like a game of Russian roulette,” said one European executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security. “You don’t know if you’ll be kidnapped that day.”

Maarten Boute, chairman of cellular phone provider Digicel Haiti, said his firm has resorted to moving staff only in armored cars with drivers trained for kidnapping scenarios. Because of the escalating risk, he said, he abandoned his Port-au-Prince home this year to move into a fortified hotel compound.

“Most people who can afford it and have visas have sent their family away, or moved outside the country,” he said. “We are using armed security, armored cars and have patrols that [scout] roads. But we still avoid certain areas, or moving around, as much as we can.”

Saddled with endemic poverty and violence, Haiti is no stranger to kidnapping waves. The country suffered a brutal surge from 2005 until the 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people but had the effect of moderating kidnappings. Numbers have climbed steadily in recent years as violent gangs, unchecked by the government, have seized control over key portions of the country.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the report at the link!

This is a “safe country” for removal? “Rounding them up and moving them out” without meaningful inquiry into individual circumstances is “American justice?” Come on, man!

Mayorkas and Garland have obviously spent far too much time at the “Miller Lite Happy Hour” 🤮☠️ and far too little time restoring the rule of law for vulnerable asylum seekers who deserve our protection!👎🏽

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-11-21

HISTORY: THE IMMIGRATION ACT THAT MADE AMERICA WHAT WE ARE TODAY🇺🇸🗽

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/opinion/asian-americans-1965-immigration-act.html

OPINION

JAY CASPIAN KANG

The Enduring Importance of the 1965 Immigration Act

Oct. 7, 2021

Credit…

Alberto Miranda

By Jay Caspian Kang

Opinion Writer

What follows is an excerpt from my book which will be published on Oct. 12. (I also published an excerpt this week in the Times magazine.) The book is a meditation on the 1965 Immigration Act, which I argue is the starting point of the multiethnic society we live in today.

***

On Oct. 3, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stood in front of the Statue of Liberty and said something that would be proved wrong: “This bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.” He was referring to the Hart-Celler Immigration Act, a landmark piece of legislation that lifted restrictive quotas on immigration from Asia, Africa and southern and Eastern Europe.

Its opponents at the time it was finally passed described apocalyptic scenarios in which the United States and its white population would be overrun by a horde of foreigners. Johnson, for his part, assured the public that the easing of restrictions would have only a mild effect on the demographics of the country. Most people, he believed, would stay in their home countries.

Over the next five decades, the Hart-Celler Act would bring tens of millions of immigrants from Asia, southern and Eastern Europe, and Africa. No single piece of legislation has shaped the demographic and economic history of this country in quite the same way.

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

“Just say no” to nativism and White Nationalism!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-08-21

👍🏼PROGRESSIVE LEGAL ICON HAROLD KOH RIPS BIDEN’S BOGUS “STEPHEN MILLER LITE” XENOPHOBIC POLICIES, RESIGNS DOS POST, AMID A CRESENDO OF ADMINISTRATION LIES! — “I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti.”

Harold H. Koh — Harold H,. Koh
American Legal Scholar
PHOTO: Wikipedia

Here’s a report from Politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/04/top-state-adviser-leaves-post-title-42-515029

Here’s a key quote from Koh’s memo:

. . . .

I have spent much of my legal career, inside and outside the government, seeking to ensure that the United States abides by its non-refoulement obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”), and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Protocol”), which modifies and incorporates the terms of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”). Article 3 of the CAT categorically prohibits State Parties from expelling, returning, or extraditing any person, without exception, to any State where there are “substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Article 33 of the Refugee Convention, subject to certain narrow exceptions, flatly prohibits State Parties from expelling or returning (‘refouler’) refugees in any manner whatsoever to “the frontiers of territories” where their life or freedom would be threatened on one of [the designated grounds].

I write first, because I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti. Second, my concerns have only been heightened by recent tragic events in Haiti, which had led this Administration wisely to extend temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians already in the United States. Third, lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist, and there are approaching opportunities in the near future to substitute those alternatives in place of the current, badly flawed policy.

. . . .

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First, let me assure you that the DOS’s ridiculous claim that Koh’s departure was “long planned,” and its equally ludicrous suggestion that he would continue to play a meaningful role as a fake “consultant” is pure, unadulterated BS!💩 Indeed, I’d encourage the DOS Inspector General to investigate and report on just what are Koh’s new “consulting duties,” his compensation arrangements, and exactly what he produces after today!

You don’t hire high level Administration officials with “a long planned expectation” that they will depart in fewer than nine months. Come on, man, how dumb do you think we are?

Losing someone of Koh’s reputation and abilities is a huge, yet well deserved, “black eye” for an Administration that has ditched the progressive human right experts who helped them get into the dance in the first place!

And, for what? It’s not that so-called “moderates,” fickle “independents,” and GOP nativists have been lining up to congratulate Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland on their continuation of bogus, racially charged restrictionist policies at the border. Abandoning your stated values, dissing campaign promises, pissing off your allies, while still earning slings and arrows from your opponents has to be the world’s dumbest policy!

Second, what’s also pure unadulterated BS 💩 is the Administration’s assertion, unethically defended by Garland’s DOJ, that misuse and gross abuse of Title 42 in a cowardly attempt to thwart asylum seekers of color has anything whatsoever to do with science or public health.

The truth is is stark as it is ugly:

There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus. “That was a Stephen Miller special. He was all over that,” a former Pence aide told the AP.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/10/02/%f0%9f%a4%%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8fgarlnd-doj-polishes-otherwise-lackluster-litigation-record-with-big-win-for-stephen-miller-his-neo-nazi-anti-asylum-policy/

Of course there wasn’t! Even Stephen Miller didn’t pretend very hard that there was.

He just counted on a complicit Supremes and enough right wing toady judges afraid to do their jobs to get away with it. He was dead wrong about District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

But, in the end, that didn’t make any difference. Although he probably hadn’t predicted it, Miller found a key ally in “what me worry, not my family, only some non-white asylum seekers” AG Merrick Garland.

Alfred E. Neumann — Merrick Garland’s ancestors were saved! Why should he worry about the people of color he condemns without due process in his dysfunctional and biased Immigration “Courts” and by defending Stephen Miller’s neo-Nazi anti-asylum, White Nationalist border policies?
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

Garland inexplicably and despicably took up Miller’s unethical, illegal, and immoral cause and found some bad judges on the DC Circuit willing to help trash Black Haitians and other migrants of color. This was certainly not one of American law’s better episodes, as history will eventually document.

There is no sugar coating it! When it comes to treatment of asylum seekers of color at our Southern Border, the Biden Administration is carrying out the “Miller Lite” version of neo-Nazi Stephen Miller’s deadly White Nationalism. Shame!🤮 We’re no closer to a coherent, practical, moral, legal asylum policy at our Southern Border today than we were on Jan. 20!

As Koh points out, there have been better alternatives on asylum seekers and the border since day one of the Administration! They have just refused to take them!

Also, a complicit AG Garland who has consistently failed to stand up for the human and legal rights of migrants of color and to “just say no” to Stephen Miller’s illegal policies and contrived, clearly pretextual justifications, has been a major cause of this ongoing political, moral, legal, and humanitarian disaster.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-04-21

WHY BIDEN’S CRUEL, ILLEGAL, IGNORANT BORDER NON-POLICY OF DETERRENCE WILL CONTINUE TO BE A “KILLER ☠️FAILURE” 🤮 — Telling Folks “Doomed In Place” ⚰️ What They Already Know, That The Potential Life-Saving Trip Is “Dangerous” ⚠️ & That White America Would Rather See Them Die, 💀 Out Of Sight & Out Of Mind, Is As Insulting As It Is Stupid & Ineffective!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/filmmaker-darien-gap-black-migrant/2021/10/02/b0bbb85a-230b-11ec-8200-5e3fd4c49f5e_story.html

Theresa Vargas reports for WashPost:

. . . .

“I believe when I go to do this work, I need to integrate myself into the lives of the people I’m covering,” he says. “I don’t want them to see me as above them. We’re on the same level; we’re human.”

That context is needed to understand why Dennison entered the Darién Gap several weeks ago and why, unlike other photographers and videographers, he didn’t take any security guards with him.

That decision would end up giving him a different experience from that of others who have gone there to document the harrowing passage. They have left that jungle and come home with photos that show the horrific struggles of others. He almost didn’t leave the jungle, and he came home with only a fraction of the photos he took and with his own horrific story.

“What he’s been through is horrible and really disturbing,” says Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer who is the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado, an advocacy and legal aid organization that serves migrants, refugees and deportees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The organization has been working with Dennison to create a film that captures the experiences of U.S.-bound Black migrants.

“The only way to understand it is to see it, and that’s what he’s providing,” Pinheiro says. “It’s really important that people understand what’s happening, and that it’s not over in Del Rio.”

The Biden administration recently cleared out a border camp in Del Rio, Tex., where an estimated 15,000 migrants, most of them Haitian nationals seeking asylum, had gathered. The clearing out of the camp came after viral images and video footage showed Border Patrol agents on horseback grabbing migrants and charging at them. In one video, a young girl in a mint-green dress scrambles to get out of the way of a horse heading toward her.

President Biden decried the agents’ actions, and the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into the incident.

But what happened in Del Rio captures only part of what many Haitians experience to get to the United States. Many pass through the Darién Gap, some with children in tow and infants strapped to their backs or chests. Officials in Panama have said that a record 70,000 people traveled the 66 miles through the terrain this year.

Before going, Dennison did extensive research on what to expect: spiders with bites that can cause death within six hours, criminals who routinely rob travelers, and polluted water that if not filtered can sicken you. But nothing, he says, could have prepared him for what he experienced.

“When you’re in the jungle, you’re no longer a filmmaker,” he says. “You’re no longer a humanitarian. It becomes about survival.”

. . . .

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Read the full story at the link.

Sad as truth is, it’s not rocket science:

Desperate people do (and will continue to do) desperate things;
For forced migrants, the dangers of staying will always exceed those of leaving;
“Die in place” isn’t a “policy;”
“Deterrence only” can’t work in the long run;
While institutionalized racism has a long history in U.S. immigration policy, it’s never been a good policy for America, nor will it ever be!

Honestly, where does the Biden Administration get these folks who don’t “get the obvious,” lie about it, and then expect good results?

Right now, after nearly eight months, the Biden Administration still appears to be in no better position to process the next border influx than they were on January 20, despite numerous warnings and eight months of graphic practical and humanitarian failures. Racially charged rhetoric and more cruel, wasteful, dishonest enforcement and removals won’t do it!

We need reopened legal border ports of entry staffed with more and better Asylum Officers overseen by a pragmatic progressive corps of expert Immigration Judges and a BIA composed of progressive asylum experts with the guts to knock heads and get our broken border legal system back to functionality. To state the obvious, that would promote consistency, transparency, and take some of the pressure off of the Article III Courts!

Because neither Mayorkas nor Garland is committed to taking the bold actions necessary to change the dynamics at the border, America, the Biden Administration, and vulnerable legal asylum seekers appear headed for another four years of avoidable failure with all of its unhappy human and political consequences!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-03-21

🤮🏴‍☠️GARLAND DOJ “POLISHES” OTHERWISE LACKLUSTER LITIGATION RECORD WITH BIG WIN FOR STEPHEN MILLER & HIS NEO-NAZI ANTI-ASYLUM POLICY! — “ There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus.”

“Floaters” — Unlike Miller, the “losers” under Garland’s unconscionable policies often aren’t in a position to complain — at least in this world! EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2021/10/1/2055491/-Appeals-court-allows-Biden-admin-to-keep-deporting-families-under-Stephen-Miller-Title-42-policy

Gabe Ortiz reports for The Daily Kos:

On Thursday, a federal appeals court allowed the continued use of the Title 42 policy, pushed initially through the previous administration by Stephen Miller, that’s used the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers, including thousands of Haitians who have arrived at the southern border in search of help.

The Biden administration was set to be blocked from using the policy against families, following a federal judge’s order earlier this month. That lower court order was set to go into effect Thursday. But the policy was saved by the Biden administration, which had shockingly appealed the lower court’s decision. To be clear, the administration could have let the lower court decision stand. But it decided to protect this scientifically unsound order for continued use.

“It’s troubling to see the court grant the government’s motion to reinstate Title 42 just days after the district court ruled that its policy violates U.S. law,” Oxfam America global policy lead Noah Gottschalk told NBC News. The group is among the organizations that have led lawsuits against the policy. “We all saw the horrific images of the abuse faced by Haitian asylum-seekers subjected to Title 42, and we cannot allow people to face further harm because of this xenophobic policy.”

Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has claimed it is continuing Title 42 “out of a public health need.” Meanwhile, White House Press Sec. Jen Psaki has defended the policy as “a public health requirement.” That’s complete bullshit. “Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus,” The Associated Press (AP) reported last October.

The previous administration got its way by twisting arms. There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus. “That was a Stephen Miller special. He was all over that,” a former Pence aide told the AP.

And, as vaccines have become readily available, the supposed rationale to keep Title 42 in place has only gotten more flimsy. If this is truly all about public health, why not rescind the policy and offer families the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine? “Let me also remind the Biden administration that over 300,000 people cross the border from Mexico every day through ports of entry,” American Immigration Council Policy Counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted in July. “None are given COVID tests, unlike migrants who all get tested and nearly all get vaccinated.”

. . . .

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

Read more about this legal, moral, and political travesty perpetrated by the Biden Administration with Garland’s support at the link.

When it comes to things like defending ending the reprehensible “killer-program” known as “Remain in Mexico” or protecting the DACA program, Garland’s litigation team has fared poorly.

They also have drawn raised eyebrows, even if not yet any ethical complaints, from Article III Judges for their questionable representations and disingenuous defense of wrongfully issued BIA final orders of removal.

Perhaps, part the problem is that after four years of “anything goes” often misleading, sometimes downright dishonest, defense of the Trump/Miller White Nationalist xenophobic, often misogynistic, dehumanizing agenda, their hearts aren’t in it. The other glaring problem is the obvious lack of commitment to progressive humanitarian values, due process for all, and “cleaning house” at a broken and dysfunctional DOJ that has been shown by Garland.

Obviously, Garland’s DOJ lawyers are more at home and more successful when when arguing for intellectually dishonest and unconstitutional dehumanization (or “Dred Scottification”) of “the other,” primarily individuals of color who are the most vulnerable among us.

What a totally disgraceful legacy for a guy that was once just “one Moscow Mitch” away from the Supremes! On the other hand, it now appears that the GOP right wingers wouldn’t have had much to fear from a guy who won’t stand up for liberal American democratic values or even simple human decency! I doubt that he would have presented much threat to the far-right, anti-American agenda!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-02-21

🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO: “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”

Carrie’s guest blog in ImmigrationProf Blog should be be read and taken to heart by everyone who believes in a better, racially equal, America:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/10/guest-post-by-carrie-rosenbaum-the-slippery-slope-of-systemic-racism-in-immigration-law-del-rio.html

Friday, October 1, 2021

Guest Post by Carrie Rosenbaum: The Slippery Slope of Systemic Racism in Immigration Law – Del Rio

By Immigration Prof

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The Slippery Slope of Systemic Racism in Immigration Law – Del Rio by Carrie Rosenbaum

When Senator Maxine Waters proclaimed that what we witnessed in Del Rio, Texas last week, Customs and Border Protection officers on horseback whipping black men, harkened back to slavery, she drew an age-old, but still relevant connection between slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-immigrant racism. In a press briefing, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated, “[w]e know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation’s ongoing battle against systemic racism.” Yet, if both are right, where are our equality, anti-racism principles and why haven’t they been enough to dismantle systemic racism? Should U.S. anti-discrimination law inhibit anti-black and anti-immigrant racism, in the U.S. and at the border? Does it? Is there a slippery slope, such that undeterred discrimination against immigrants at the border seeps beyond the immediate individuals at the border?

Senator Waters was right to blur the boundaries of citizenship and rights in her speech. Racism begets racism, and racism towards black Haitians at the border translates to anti-black racism within the United States, just as anti-Mexican racism does not confine itself to noncitizens, and never has. Examples abound including obvious examples, like Latinx lynching of the late 1840s through 1920s (which coincided with lynching of Blacks), mass expulsion or “repatriation” of persons of Mexican descent that included U.S. citizens in the early 1920s and 1930s again via “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s and more subtle ones like exploitation and expropriation of Mexican and Central American farm workers and laborers, whether authorized or not, and colorblind or race neutral policies that fall most heavily, even if not completely, on persons from Mexico and Central America, like border jails.

While the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. constitution does not limit itself to citizens, it falls vastly short in protecting racialized people of color, especially immigrants. The U.S. treatment of Haitians in Del Rio implicates the problem of anti-black and anti-immigrant racism, and is indicative of the express and implicit bias that continues to evade remedy. It runs much deeper than the disturbing images of CBP agents on horseback, and its impacts have ripple effects.

At the same time that DHS Secretary Mayorkas decried systemic racism, he spelled out the government’s potential argument that the exclusion of Haitians, and Central Americans, and Mexicans that accompanies such brutal treatment was not discriminatory pursuant to the current state of immigration equal protection. He stated, “if we are able to expel them under Title 42 … we will do so” and announced that its application was “irrespective of the country of origin, irrespective of the race of the individual, irrespective of other criteria that don’t belong in our adjudicative process and we do not permit in our adjudicative process.”

Yet this is precisely how systemic racism flourishes. The reality is, this provision has been used to exclude the same racialized immigrants who have been subject to the worst treatment under immigration law. However, because the law is colorblind, Mayorkas can suggest that there was no discrimination. Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 1977 Arlington Heights decision, discriminatory impact has to be accompanied by proof of discriminatory intent. Just by saying that wasn’t his (or implying it was not Congress’) intent, he can erase what too many know to be real. A new immigration priorities memo by the Agency released today stated that ““We must ensure that enforcement actions are not discriminatory and do not lead to inequitable outcomes.” It is a step in the right rhetorical direction, but does little to meaningfully address the colorblind racism that plagues enforcement.

What is the solution? Aside from a more expansive interpretation of the Equal Protection doctrine in line with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in the Trump era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals case, and modest progress at the district court level in the crimmigration context, Congress could take steps to stop racial harm inflicted via immigration law and policy. By creating a path to legal status for those who not only have been here, but who have suffered the greatest harms of systemic racism, Haitian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, and others, Congress could start to undo the damage. It could also stop the relatively new practice of detaining or imprisoning migrants at the southern border, who happen to be almost entirely from Mexico and Central America, or abolish immigration prisons entirely. The policies that result in the imprisonment of Mexicans and Central Americans at the southern border now started with expulsion and imprisonment of Haitians in the 1980 and 1990s. Instead of expulsions and rumored potential imprisonment at the notorious Guantanamo Bay as was done in response to Haitians fleeing violence after the U.S. supported overthrow of democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the U.S. could re-evaluate both its involvement in foreign affairs, and treatment of those who flee here after our interventions cause disruption and civil strife. The largest number of Black migrants come from Haiti and their mistreatment is rooted in anti-Black racism. Racializing anti-immigrant demonization does not confine itself to noncitizens, nor should the remedies. Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.

—–

Carrie Rosenbaum

Law Offices of Carrie L. Rosenbaum

Lecturer & Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley

Access my law review articles and scholarship on SSRN

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

Very eloquently said, Carrie!

Compare this with the racist blather and White Nationalist nonsense of nativist pols like Abbott, DeSantis, Cruz, Cotton, and others who glorify Jim Crow and seek to force a sanitized, whitewashed version of American history down the throats of the public!

Also, compare this with the intellectually dishonest actions by Biden Administration officials. They disingenuously claim to be champions of racial equality and racial justice.

But, in reality, they operate “star chamber courts,” “New American Gulags,” and implement discredited, outmoded, and ineffective “Stephen Miller Lite” border enforcement policies that basically dehumanize people of color and deny them the due process and equal protection to which they are entitled under law. Also, think about the many Federal Judges who spinelessly enable that which most first year law students could tell you is illegal and unconstitutional, not to mention totally immoral!

What exactly does Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke do every day at the Civil Rights Division if unraveling the White Nationalist, racially tone deaf policies of her own Department, the DHS, and the “star chambers for people of color” being operated by her “boss” aren’t first and foremost on her “to do” list?

“Floaters”

“Floaters” — The ugly reality of Biden’s “Miller Lite border strategy.” It’s mostly people of color floating face-down in the river, being illegally returned to danger zones, rotting in the “New American Gulag,” and being railroaded through Garland’s biased and dysfunctional “star chamber courts.” Right now, Garland and and the rest of of the Biden Administration have “zero (0) credibility” on racial justice and voting rights!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

The biggest failure of the Biden Administration to date is their willful blindness to the obvious connection between lack of overall racial justice in America and running star chambers, gulags, and border enforcement policies that are unconstitutional, dehumanizing, and racially demeaning to individuals of color. Sadly, and tragically we seem to have gone from “zero tolerance” under Trump to “zero credibility” under Biden! “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-02-21

🗽⚖️🇺🇸 JOIN MY FRIEND & NDPA SUPERHERO 🦸🏻 HEIDI ALTMAN OF NIJC IN OPPOSING INHUMANE HAITIAN DEPORTATIONS!

Haiti has been in turmoil for many years and the recent assassination of the Haitian president, political and economic insecurity, devastating storms, and an earthquake have further destabilized the nation.

Yet, Haitians seeking protection in the United States face treacherous journeys, racial abuse, violence from border patrol agents, detention, and deportation and expulsion back to the life-threatening situation they fled in Haiti.

All people—including Haitian migrants and asylum seekers—need freedom, shelter, dignity, and compassionate welcomes.

Take action now –> Sign the petition to demand that the Biden administration HALT all deportations to Haiti.

In the past couple of weeks, the Biden administration has expelled more than 4,600 people to Haiti. And they continue to deport and expel even more people.

The Biden administration has the authority to grant humanitarian parole and stop the deportations to Haiti. We at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) are teaming up with other organizations to urge them to do just that.

Join us in demanding that the Biden administration HALT all deportations to Haiti.

SIGN THE PETITION!

Thank you for taking a stand against cruelty and injustice.

-Heidi Altman
Director of Policy, National Immigrant Justice Center

Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your web browser

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

Thanks, Heidi, my friend, for all you do for American Justice, due process, and racial justice!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-01-21

🤮👎🏽FACT-CHECKING MAYOYKAS: 1) Haiti Is NOT Safe; 2) Asylum Seekers Are NOT A “Health Threat!”

Jacob Soboroff @ NBC News With Truth About Deplorable, Unsafe, Conditions Facing Those Deported To Haiti:

https://www.today.com/video/migrants-return-to-haiti-following-deportations-from-us-mexico-border-122368581881

Thousands of Haitian migrants removed from a makeshift camp near Texas have been sent back to Haiti. Now we’re getting our first up-close look at what they are facing upon their arrival. NBC’s Jacob Soboroff reports for TODAY from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Sept. 30, 2021

Eleanor Acer
Senior Director for Refugee Protection, Human Rights First

Human Rights First debunks myth that seekers present a COVID health threat:

ASYLUM DOES NOT THREATEN PUBLIC HEALTH

The last week saw more of the Biden administration’s despicable deportation of Haitians and use Title 42 to deny their right to seek asylum. The administration perpetuates the false claim that their use of Title 42 is not an immigration policy, but a public health one, despite the vehement disagreement of public health experts.

Courtesy Washington Times

Migrants, many from Haiti, wade across the Rio Grande

river to leave Del Rio, Texas to avoid possible deportation.

Human Rights First also responded to the administration’s plans to use Guantanamo Bay as a migrant detention facility.

“Sending people who are seeking protection to a place that is notorious for being treated as a rights-free zone is the last thing that the Biden administration should do,” Eleanor Acer, Senior Director of Refugee Protection at Human Rights First told NPR. “It is nothing more than a blatant attempt to evade oversight, due process, human rights protections and the refugee laws of the United States.”

Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

Even in rolling out otherwise more reasonable enforcement priorities for ICE, Mayorkas insisted on making the bogus claim that recent border arrivals present a “national security threat,” as reported by the WashPost’s Maria Sacchetti:

Mayorkas said in his memo Thursday that migrants who cross the border illegally, particularly those who arrived unlawfully over the past year or so, remain a “threat to border security” and a priority for removal. But the ACLU has argued in its lawsuit that migrants have a legal right to seek asylum.

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

“Courtside’s” rating of Mayorkas’s claims: 🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥

Who would have thought that more than eight months into the Biden Administration, we’d still be arguing about basics like “migrants have a legal right to seek asylum in the US?” See, INA section 208.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-01-21

🗽🇺🇸WASHPOST: Our Need To Absorb Current Undocumented Residents & Expand Legal Immigration Remains As Clear As Ever — All We Lack Is The Political Will & Courage To Do The Obvious!

From the WashPost Editorial Board:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/26/immigration-reform-is-back-square-one-way-forward-is-clear/

. . . .

There are enormous downsides to border disorder, to immigration policy paralysis and to leaving the fates of more than 11 million current immigrants without any path to a secure future — even beyond the reinforcement it provides to the United States’ growing international reputation for dysfunction. No one gains by the chaos except smugglers who soak desperate migrants financially on their way north in hopes of a better life. The losers include not only the “dreamers” brought to this country as children, who must live in perpetual anxiety, but also the country as a whole, which loses the value of immigrants, skilled and otherwise, who would turbocharge entrepreneurship, create jobs and help the economy grow.

There are available solutions if Congress could overcome its horror of bipartisan compromise. The goal should be to establish a realistic annual quota of immigrant visas for Central Americans, Haitians and others desperate to reach this country who otherwise will cross the border illegally — a number that recognizes the U.S. labor market’s demand for such employees. That must be supplemented by a muscular guest worker program that enables legal border crossing for migrants who want to support families remaining in their home countries.

. . . .

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

Read the complete editorial at the link.

It’s worth adding that the current “border disorder” is largely the result of White Nationalist, legally defective, anti-immigrant policies of the Trump regime compounded by the failure of Mayorkas and Garland to take the obvious, available, common sense steps necessary to reopen legal border ports of entry, to make the long overdue necessary reforms to establish a fair, efficient, and generous legal asylum system at the USCIS Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts, and to insist on the creation of a robust, functional refugee program for Latin America and the Caribbean.

None of the this is “rocket science!” 🚀 Plenty of great blueprints for administrative reforms and the potential expert leadership to implement them were “out there for the taking” at the beginning of the Biden Administration. By dawdling, tapping the wrong leaders, and continuing enforcement policies and bad judicial practices that were proven failures, the Administration predictably put itself “behind the eight-ball” in establishing order and implementing the rule of law at our borders!

Until the Biden Administration ends its disgraceful, cowardly, illegal, cruel, ineffective, and inhumane reliance on bogus “Title 42” restrictions to suspend orderly legal processing at the border, they will continue to bobble the next predictable “border crisis.” The GOP will continue to spout nativist nonsense. Desperate people will continue to do desperate things. Only a tone-deaf Administration would continue to ignore this reality!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-27-21

🏴‍☠️MAYORKAS DOUBLES DOWN ON USE OF TRUMP’S BOGUS TITLE 42 RATIONALE TO DEPORT HAITIANS — ABSURDLY & DISINGENUOUSLY CLAIMS HAITI IS “SAFE” FOR RETURNS!

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/26/haiti-deportations-covid-biden-homeland-secretary-mayorkas?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.

White House criticizes border agents who rounded up migrants on horseback

Mayorkas told NBC’s Meet the Press the removals were justified because of the coronavirus pandemic, a point disputed by advocates and public health experts.

“The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention, or CDC] has a Title 42 authority that we exercise to protect the migrants themselves, to protect the local communities, our personnel and the American public,” Mayorkas said.

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“The pandemic is not behind us. Title 42 is a public health policy, not an immigration policy.”

Since Donald Trump’s administration implemented Title 42 in March 2020, advocates and dozens of public health experts have called for its end.

Under Title 42, people who attempt to cross the border are returned to Mexico or deported to their home countries without an opportunity to test asylum claims.

In January, Joe Biden stopped the rule from applying to children. Despite that, at least 22 babies and children were deported to Haiti in February.

More than 30 public health experts wrote to Mayorkas and the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, earlier this month, saying Title 42 was “scientifically baseless and politically motivated”.

This coalition has repeatedly said the policy violates the right to seek asylum and ignores how basic public health measures can reduce the spread of Covid-19.

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“Title 42 runs counter to the government’s own commitment to address Covid-19 globally,” the coalition said. “The absence of effective Covid-19 mitigation services at the border and the expulsion of people to situations in which they may be exposed to Covid-19 and unable to practice prevention are contrary to the US government commitment to address Covid-19 globally.”

On Sunday, Mayorkas told CNN about 4,000 Haitians who arrived in the past two weeks have been expelled, 13,000 others had been allowed to enter the US to pursue their immigration cases in court and 8,000 had voluntarily chosen to return to Mexico.

NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd questioned Mayorkas about why thousands were being sent to Haiti even though they had traveled to the US from South America.

“These are Haitian nationals,” Mayorkas said. “Some of them don’t have documents from the countries from which they just left. So they are subject to removal.”

. . . .

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

Of course, Haiti clearly is not a safe place to return migrants:

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/26/they-treated-us-like-animals-haitians-angry-and-in-despair-at-being-deported-from-us?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

Haitian deportees arriving from Texas say they were ‘rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals’

Joe Parkin Daniels in Port-au-Prince

Published:

05:00 Sunday, 26 September 2021

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When Evens Delva waded across the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he had dreams of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family stepped on to the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, the sweltering and chaotic capital of Haiti, with nothing except traumatic memories and a feeling of bubbling anger.

Delva, along with nearly 2,000 other Haitians, was deported from southern Texas this week to Haiti, despite having lived in Chile for the past six years and having few remaining connections to his home country. His younger daughter, who is four, does not hold Haitian citizenship, having been born in Chile, and speaks more Spanish than Haitian Creole.

“I don’t know what we’ll do, we don’t have anywhere to stay or anyone to call,” the 40-year-old said, moments after getting off the plane in the blistering midday Caribbean heat. “All I know is that this is the last place I want to be.”

Evens Delva and his wife at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti on Friday after being deported from Texas. Photograph: Joe Parkin Daniels/The Guardian

It is not hard to understand why. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, is mired in overlapping crises. Gasoline shortages and blackouts are a daily reality, while warring gangs routinely kidnap for ransom and wage battle on the streets.

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The grim situation only worsened when the president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home on 7 July, triggering a political power struggle and further instability and street violence. On 14 August, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s poor southern peninsula, killing more than 2,200 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

US envoy to Haiti resigns over ‘inhumane’ decision to deport migrants

The Biden administration’s decision to deport thousands of Haitians under such circumstances drew opprobrium around the world, and prompted the US envoy to Haiti to resign in protest. Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life”, he wrote in his resignation letter. “Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery.”

Last week, the world was shocked by images of police officers on horseback charging at desperate Haitian migrants near a camp of 12,000, set up under the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge. Delva was on his way to buy food and water for his family when the cavalry charge sent him and dozens of his compatriots running in a frenzy.

“We were rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals,” he said, having spent the six-hour flight from San Antonio with his hands and legs tied.

“They treated us like animals,” added Maria, his wife.. “We’ll never forget how that felt.”

. . . .

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

David Shipler does a great job of exposing the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Mayorkas and other Biden Administration immigration officials.

America’s Callous Border

By David K. Shipler

Several years ago, a gray-haired passport control official at Heathrow Airport in London, noting “writer” under “occupation” on my landing card, asked me what I wrote. I was finishing a book on civil liberties, I told him, with a chapter on immigration. That caught his interest. He leaned forward, glanced around, lowered his voice and said, “I loathe borders.”

Funny line of work you’re in, I said. We shared a chuckle, he stamped my passport, and I crossed the border that he loathed.

We have nation states, and so we have borders. Dictatorships need them to keep people in, lest their countries be drained of the talented and the aspiring. Democracies need them to keep people out—often those with talent and aspiration who are fleeing to safety and opportunity. So far, the United States is lucky enough to be the latter. So far.

When desperate fathers and mothers are drawn with admiring naïveté to the beacon of America, when they carry their children through months of torment by mountain jungles and predatory gangs, when their courage and towering fortitude set them apart from the masses, shouldn’t they be embraced when they reach the final border of a nation of fellow immigrants that touts its compassion and humanity?

Cut through the crazy tangle of immigration laws, regulations, and inconsistent enforcement to the essential ethic, and the answer is an obvious yes. But the obvious is not obvious in the White House or in the Department of Homeland Security or in the ranks of the beleaguered Border Patrol, whose horsemen scramble, as if herding cattle, to intercept frantic Haitians wading from the Rio Grande onto the banks of freedom and promise.

Instead, a new torment is found: Haitians with enough grit to leave their country a decade or so ago and build lives on the margins in Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere are taken from their first steps onto U.S. soil and summarily—summarily, without due process—deported. And where to? To Haiti, a failed state where many have long since lost family or work or even places of shelter. To Haiti, which has collapsed into such violence and disarray that the State Department warns Americans on its website: “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and COVID-19.”

What is wrong with the air in the White House? Is there not enough oxygen? What accounts for the impaired thinking that seems to transcend administrations, from Republican to Democratic. Where is the regard for human dignity? Why is it so often absent in the calculations that create policy?

Donald Trump wore callousness on his sleeve and was proud of it. His base hooted its applause at his vilification of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. By contrast, Joe Biden wears a badge of empathy. His mantra is compassion. “Horrible” and “outrageous” were the words he found to describe the photographed attacks on Haitians from horseback. He halted the use of horses and vowed that agents responsible “will pay.” He also said, “It’s simply not who we are.”

But it is who we are. The images have been compared to old photos of white overseers on horseback commanding enslaved Blacks in the fields. The Border Patrol in cowboy hats have been compared to Texas Rangers “who were celebrated for their excellent ‘tracking skills’ that were put to use to hunt and capture enslaved people,” said historian Monica Martinez of the University of Texas.

These are compelling analogies with painful resonance. They are also flawed as parallels, for the Black migrants at the border are not slaves. They are clamoring to be here, crossing illegally, seeing the border as a threshold. They were not brought here in chains against their will. Some are being removed in chains against their will.

Nevertheless, in a sense they are enslaved by their blackness. If white Canadians tried this up north, does anybody truly believe that they would be treated as the Black Haitians are? Animating America’s conscience should not require reaching back to the sin of slavery. The present ought to be enough.

Our borders always put our split personality on display: We are cruel and welcoming, hateful and helpful, defined by doors closed at times to entire ethnic groups and then opened to invigorate the nation with willing hands and vital contributions.

In fact, if the country is not sufficiently moved by simple morality, then it might consider self-interest. The U.S. population growth rate has been falling steadily since 2008, dropping to a mere 0.58 percent from 2020 to 2021. Many regions lack skilled workers, as homeowners and small business owners and even hospitals can testify from trying to hire carpenters, plumbers, electricians, welders, mechanics, and nurses. We should have winced when one Haitian deportee was quoted as describing himself as a welder and carpenter.

Using abuse to manipulate determined people did not work under Trump—a lesson that Biden and his advisers might have learned. Trump’s administration separated children from their parents at the border, his aides reasoning that families heading north would get the message and—what?–abandon their fortitude and survival instincts, turn around, and head back to life-threatening misery?

So, too Biden officials are reportedly figuring that tossing Haitian expatriates into Haiti’s maelstrom will dissuade others from coming. In other words, don’t be humane, and folks will give up. But they won’t give up. They will still roll the dice, because there’s always a chance, especially since some are being allowed to stay, at least for a while, pending proper examination of their asylum claims as the law requires. When your ship has sunk, you don’t stop clinging to a piece of flotsam just because some shipmates have slipped off into the sea.

What the Biden White House needs is somebody in an influential position who has made this journey, who has shepherded family and children through jungles and ganglands to reach this supposedly promised land. That official might bring to the Oval Office a glimmer of understanding and respect for the force of personality and perseverance that drive a person toward our callous border.

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

Something about the DHS Secretary job seem to require checking honesty, common sense, historical perspective, and humanity at the door, not to mention the true “rule of law.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-26-21

🤮☠️ARMED GUYS ON HORSES ROUNDING UP AND WHIPPING BLACKS ACCURATELY REPRESENTS AMERICA’S UGLY RACIAL HISTORY & BIDEN’S ASYLUM POLICIES! — That’s Why The Administration Is So Eager To Disingenuously Disown The Actions They Have Encouraged & Enabled! — Blacks & Hispanics Saved Biden’s Candidacy — THIS Is Their “Reward?” — U.S. Envoy To Haiti Quits In Protest Of Biden’s Human Rights Policies, As “Strange Departures” Continue To Roil Biden’s Bumbling, Failing Immigration Bureaucracy!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/23/men-on-horses-chasing-black-asylum-seekers-sadly-america-has-seen-it-before?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The Biden administration has condemned abuses at the border – while maintaining the policies underlying these abuses. That’s beyond cynical

Published:

06:22 Thursday, 23 September 2021

Follow Moustafa Bayoumi

You’ve probably seen a photograph haunting the internet this week: a white-presenting man on horseback – uniformed, armed and sneering – is grabbing a shoeless Black man by the neck of his T-shirt. The Black man’s face bears an unmistakable look of horror. He struggles to remain upright while clinging dearly to some bags of food in his hands. Between the men, a long rein from the horse’s bridle arches menacingly in the air like a whip. The photograph was taken just a few days ago in Texas, but the tableau looks like something out of antebellum America.

The image is profoundly upsetting, not just for what it portrays but for the history it evokes. What’s happening at the border right now puts two of our founding national myths – that we’re a land of liberty and a nation of immigrants – under scrutiny. To put it plainly, we don’t fare well under inspection.

US border patrol agents on horseback search for migrants trying to enter the United States along the US-Mexico border. Photograph: José Luis González/Reuters

. . . .

Without review, it’s impossible to know who is facing real threats of persecution when returned to Haiti. The United Nations human rights spokesperson, Marta Hurtado, said that the UN “is seriously concerned by the fact that it appears there have not been any individual assessments of the cases”. Why does the Biden administration not share her concern?

One has to wonder if the same policies expelling Haitians from the US today would be in effect if those arriving at the border were Europeans or even Cubans. If history is any guide – for decades, the US privileged Cubans over Haitians and other Caribbean peoples in immigration matters – the answer is no.

It’s one thing for the Biden administration to condemn abuses conducted by its own government that recall the worst parts of our national history. But it’s quite another to do so while maintaining the policies that enable those abuses. That’s not just cynical. It’s despicable.

Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-special-envoy-to-haiti-resigns-over-migrant-expulsions_n_614c7f70e4b00164119101a3

Foote’s sudden departure leaves a void in U.S. policy toward Haiti and adds another prominent, critical voice to the administration’s response to Haitians.

AP By Joshua Goodman and Matthew Lee, September 21, 2021

The Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti has resigned, protesting “inhumane” large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants to their homeland wracked by civil strife and natural disaster, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Daniel Foote was appointed to the position only in July, following the assassination of Haiti’s president. Even before the migrant expulsions from the small Texas border town of Del Rio, the career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti.

Foote wrote Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he was stepping down immediately “with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes.”

“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life,” he wrote. “Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”

Two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed the resignation on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

One official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Foote had consistently sought greater oversight of Haiti policy and that the administration did not believe his requests were appropriate.

Foote’s sudden departure leaves a void in U.S. policy toward Haiti and adds another prominent, critical voice to the administration’s response to Haitians camped on the Texas border. The camp has shrunk considerably since surpassing more than 14,000 people on Saturday – many of them expelled and many released in the U.S. with notices to report to immigration authorities.

The White House is facing sharp bipartisan condemnation. Democrats and many pro-immigration groups say efforts to expel thousands of Haitians without a chance to seek asylum violates American principles and their anger has been fueled by images that went viral this week of Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics against the migrants.

. . . .

___

Goodman reported from Miami, Lee from New York on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly meetings.

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

Read the complete article at the above link.

And, there are more “strange happenings” within the flailing Biden immigration/human rights bureaucracy.

Over at ICE, “Immigration pro” John Trasviña is out at OPLA after only a few months in office:

https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2021/09/22/biden-chooses-local-ice-critic-to-be-the-agencys-top-prosecutor

By Sarah Betancourt

September 22, 2021

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The Biden administration has appointed seasoned Boston immigration attorney Kerry Doyle to become its immigration enforcement agency’s top prosecutor.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed to GBH that Doyle, previously of Graves & Doyle, will be its principal legal advisor. The office she will lead is the largest legal program within the Department of Homeland Security, with over 1,250 attorneys and 290 support personnel.

The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor sends its prosecutors to litigate deportation cases before the Executive Office for immigration Review, the body that oversees the nation’s immigration courts.

Doyle has been an outspoken critic of the agency and has led many lawsuits against it.

She is a graduate of the American University Washington School of Law, and George Washington University. She started her career as a legislative assistant to former U.S. Rep. Bob Wise (D-W.Va.), and became an attorney for Legal Services for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers in 1993. She was managing attorney for the International Institute of Boston from 1998 to 2001, before founding Graves & Doyle with partner William E. Graves Jr.

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The Boston-based firm handled a breadth of immigration issues, from citizenship, to business and family immigration, federal litigation, asylum, and deportation cases.

Doyle took the case of Iranian student Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, who was enrolled at Northeastern University and deported because it was assumed by Logan Airport border patrol agents that he would remain in the U.S. beyond the time frame of his student visa. She co-authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe about Abadi’s case, entitled “Customs and Border Protection gone rogue.”

Doyle has also been particularly outspoken against ICE on Beacon Hill, including one appearance in January 2020, where she called ICE “out of control” during a hearing over the Safe Communities Act, which would limit how state and local municipalities interact with federal immigration enforcement.

Doyle declined to comment on her appointment, asking GBH to speak with ICE’s media office, which did not return requests for comment.

Susan Church of Demissie & Church has known and worked with Doyle for over two decades.

“She actually taught me much of what I know about immigration law,” said Church. “I can’t imagine a better, more knowledgeable attorney to run that agency because she knows the immigration system in and out.”

Church and Doyle co-filed a 2017 federal lawsuit against former President Donald Trump with the American Civil Liberties Union after he banned entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor has control over whether immigrants are released from detention, what financial amounts — or bonds — are set for them to be released, or whether a lawsuit gets postponed.

“There will be a tremendous opportunity to craft policy procedures, rules and the like to make sure that immigrants receive a fair day in court and a fair hearing and have a fair shot at getting a life in the United States,” said Church.

Biden’s Department of Homeland Security has been criticized for continuing to keep immigrants detained with high bond amounts, but Church thinks Doyle’s appointment shows there may be a shift.

“I think it’s clear that the Biden administration is following the path of the progressive district attorney and installing somebody in charge who cares about safety issues, but also cares deeply about the rights and the protections for immigrants,” she said, referring to the recent nomination of Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins to be the U.S. attorney.

Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, also applauded the pick. “We hope Kerry Doyle’s outstanding track record of fighting for immigrants’ rights continues in her new position at ICE,” Rose said. But, she added, “the ACLU remains committed to holding this and other government agencies accountable.”

The former principal legal advisor John D. Trasviña announced his retirement at the beginning of September.

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

On one hand, Kerry Doyle is well qualified and presumably will work to restore professionalism, common sense, and humanity to what had been a misdirected, counterproductive, and totally out of control agency under Trump and his toadies.

But, there has to be more to Trasviña’s “retirement” than meets the eye. One does not normally accept a senior level policy position in a new Administration while planning to “retire” within a few months.

So, something else is going on here. Many of us had applauded the appointment of Trasviña, a high profile, nationally respected, experienced expert in immigration, civil rights, human rights, and racial justice, at OPLA. During his short tenure, he issued helpful memos and guidance expanding the use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) at ICE. More aggressive and sensible use of PD is critical to controlling and eventually eliminating the largely Government-created 1.4 million case Immigration Court backlog.

Best wishes to Kerry in her new position!

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

Immigration and human rights are a mess because Biden and his advisors ignored expert advice to move quickly and aggressively to restore robust refugee and asylum systems and to institute long overdue progressive reforms and personnel changes at EOIR. Right now, there appears to be neither an overall plan nor the dynamic progressive leadership and better Immigration Judiciary to carry it out.

It’s going to take more than a few intellectually dishonest expressions of “outrage” from Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki and a bogus “investigation” of Border Patrol Agents who were only carrying out the cruel, inhumane, and racist policies developed and approved at the highest levels of the Biden Administration, to wipe out the images of the abuse of asylum applicants at our border and the deep-seated racial prejudices and biases it represents. 🏴‍☠️It’s all about dehumanization and continuing “Dred Scottification” of the “other”🤮☠️ — predominantly courageous, yet vulnerable, people of color!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-24-21

Eric Russell in the Portland (ME) Press Herald:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Howard W. French in the LA Times:

From WashPost:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Here’s a report from Politico:

Here’s a key quote from Koh’s memo:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Theresa Vargas reports for WashPost:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Gabe Ortiz reports for The Daily Kos:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Carrie’s guest blog in ImmigrationProf Blog should be be read and taken to heart by everyone who believes in a better, racially equal, America:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Jacob Soboroff @ NBC News With Truth About Deplorable, Unsafe, Conditions Facing Those Deported To Haiti:

Human Rights First debunks myth that seekers present a COVID health threat:

Even in rolling out otherwise more reasonable enforcement priorities for ICE, Mayorkas insisted on making the bogus claim that recent border arrivals present a “national security threat,” as reported by the WashPost’s Maria Sacchetti:

“Courtside’s” rating of Mayorkas’s claims: 🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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From the WashPost Editorial Board:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

Of course, Haiti clearly is not a safe place to return migrants:

David Shipler does a great job of exposing the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Mayorkas and other Biden Administration immigration officials.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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