Category: Bible

16 STATES SUE TRUMP ON BOGUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY — Nolan Says Trump Ultimately Likely To Prevail — “Slate 3” Appear To Agree!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/coalition-of-states-sues-trump-over-national-emergency-to-build-border-wall/2019/02/18/9da8019c-33a8-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html

Amy Goldstein reports for WashPost:

A coalition of 16 states filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block President Trump’s plan to build a border wall without permission from Congress, arguing that the president’s decision to declare a national emergency is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, brought by states with Democratic governors — except one, Maryland — seeks a preliminary injunction that would prevent the president from acting on his emergency declaration while the case plays out in the courts.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a San Francisco-based court whose judges have ruled against an array of other Trump administration policies, including on immigration and the environment.

Accusing the president of “an unconstitutional and unlawful scheme,” the suit says the states are trying “to protect their residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution.”

. . . .

Read the rest of Amy’s article at the above link.

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But, over at The Hill, Nolan Rappaport predicts that Trump ultimately will prevail:

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer claim that President Donald Trump’s Southern Border National Emergency Proclamation is an unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist, and that it steals from urgently needed defense funds — that it is a power grab by a disappointed president who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve through the constitutional legislative process.
In fact, this isn’t about the Constitution or the bounds of the law, and — in fact — there is a very real crisis at the border, though not necessarily what Trump often describes. It helps to understand a bit of the history of “national emergencies.”
As of 1973, congress had passed more than 470 statutes granting national emergency powers to the president. National emergency declarations under those statutes were rarely challenged in court.
n Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which was decided in 1952, the Supreme Court overturned President Harry S. Truman’s proclamation seizing privately owned steel mills to preempt a national steelworker strike during the Korean War. But Truman didn’t have congressional authority to declare a national emergency. He relied on inherent powers which were not spelled out in the Constitution.
Trump, however, is using specific statutory authority that congress created for the president.
In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA), which permits the president to declare a national emergency when he considers it appropriate to do so. The NEA does not provide any specific emergency authorities. It relies on emergency authorities provided in other statutes. The declaration must specifically identify the authorities that it is activating.
Published originally on The HIl.
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While many of us hope Nolan is wrong, his prediction finds support from perhaps an odd source: these three articles from Slate:

Nancy Pelosi Put Her Faith in the Courts to Stop Trump’s Emergency Wall

Big mistake.

By Daniel Hemel
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Trump Is Trying to Hollow Out the Constitutional System of Checks and Balances

The other two branches might let him.

By PETER M. SHANE

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JURISPRUDENCE

Trump Isn’t Just Defying the Constitution. He’s Undermining SCOTUS.

The president defended his national emergency by boasting that he’ll win at the Supreme Court because it’s full of his judges.

By DAHLIA LITHWICK

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We’ll see what happens.  While the arguments made by Trump in support of his “Bogus National Emergency” were  totally frivolous (and, perhaps, intentionally so), the points made by Rappaport, Hemel, Shane, and Lithwick aren’t. That could spell big trouble for our country’s future!
Trump doesn’t have a “sure fire legal winner” here; he might or might not have the majority of the Supremes “in his pocket” as he often arrogantly and disrespectfully claims. Nevertheless, there may be a better legal defense for the national emergency than his opponents had counted on.
Certainly, Trump is likely to benefit from having a “real lawyer,” AG Bill Barr, advancing his White Nationalist agenda at the “Justice” Department rather than the transparently biased and incompetent Sessions. While Barr might be “Sessions at heart,” unlike Sessions he certainly had the high-level professional legal skills, respect, and the “human face” necessary to prosper in the Big Law/Corporate world for decades.
Big Law/Corporate America isn’t necessarily the most diverse place, even today. Nevertheless, during my 7-year tenure there decades ago I saw that overt racism and xenophobia generally were frowned upon as being “bad for business.” That’s particularly true if the “business” included representing some of the largest multinational corporations in the world.
Who knows, Barr might even choose to advance the Trump agenda without explicitly ordering the DOJ to use the demeaning, and dehumanizing term “illegals” to refer to fellow human beings, many of them actually here with Government permission, seeking to attain legal status, and often to save their own lives and those of family members, through our legal system.
Many of them perform relatively thankless, yet essential, jobs that are key to our national economic success. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that like the Trump Family and recently exposed former U.N Ambassador nominee Heather Nauert, almost all of us privileged and lucky enough to be U.S. citizens who have prospered from an expanding economy have been doing so on the backs of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Additionally, migrants are some of the dwindling number of individuals in our country who actually believe in and trust the system to be fair and “do the right thing.”
But, a change in tone, even if welcome, should never be confused with a change in policy or actually respecting the due process rights of others and the rule of law as applied to those seeking legally available benefits in our immigration system. That’s just not part of the White Nationalist agenda that Barr so eagerly signed up to defend and advance
It’s likely to a long time, if ever, before “justice” reasserts itself in the mission of the Department of Justice.
PWS
02-19-19

NOTE: An earlier version of this post contained the wrong article from Dahlia Lithwick.  Sorry for any confusion.

Related posts:

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

IEVA JUSIONYTE @ LA TIMES: Border Walls, Fences, & Barriers Are, At Best, Marginal To Real Law Enforcement – But, They Are Absolutely Guaranteed To Cause Fractures, Trauma, & Amputations For Refugees Fleeing Persecution & Other Desperate People Just Looking For A Better Life!

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jusionyte-border-emergency-responders-20190217-story.html

Jusionyte writes in the LA Times:

We found her in a ditch a few steps away from the rusted border fence on the east side of Nogales, Ariz., an inch-and-a-half laceration on her swollen forehead. She came from Guerrero, one of the most violent states in Mexico, and could not remember how she landed on the rugged surface after her grip on the top of the barrier failed and she fell.

Six firefighters carried her to the ambulance, which took her to a helicopter bound for the regional trauma center in Tucson. Captain Lopez recorded the incident in the logbook when we returned to the firehouse: “1107 Medic 2, Engine 2: Dead End Freeport — Jumper/Head Injury.” This was two lines below an entry logged earlier that morning, for a teenage boy who had come down with a 102-degree fever while locked in a cell at the Border Patrol station after agents apprehended him in the desert: “0951 Medic 2: 1500 West La Quinta Rd — High Fever.”

Emergency responders are the first on the scene in any life-threatening situation: car accidents, drug overdoses, heart attacks, shootings. In the southern United States, the list of routine trauma scenarios includes border-related injuries.

For more than a year, while I was volunteering as an EMT and paramedic in Arizona, I witnessed ambulances pick up wounded border crossers so frequently that some of my peers were casually referring to the cement ledge abutting the fence as “the ankle alley.”

Such reinforcements don’t contribute to national security. Instead, they erode the foundations of public safety in communities on both sides of the border.

From EMTs to emergency room doctors, medical professionals see firsthand how, as the design of the barrier changes, so do the patterns of injury: While the previous, shorter fence, built in the 1990s and made of sharp corrugated sheet metal, amputated the fingers of those who tried to scale it, the current 20-foot-tall bollard barrier causes orthopedic fractures and multi-system trauma.

Emergency responders also see that, no matter its design, the fence does not deter unauthorized migrants. Even more often than ambulances are dispatched to “the ankle alley,” they are sent to help those choosing the dangerous journey across what the Border Patrol calls “hostile terrain,” where enforcement is outsourced to the extreme environment.

Migrants rescued in the desert are often severely dehydrated and face a life with permanent kidney damage. Lucky ones, nevertheless: In the last two decades, more than 7,000 people have died crossing the increasingly militarized Southwest border region, some of them from head trauma suffered when they fell off the fence in Nogales.

The border fence, now enhanced by spools of concertina wire, is a key component of “tactical infrastructure,” a term Customs and Border Protection uses to refer to the assemblage of materials and technologies that regulate movement in the name of national security. CBP doesn’t have metrics to assess whether fencing contributes to their border enforcement operations, as the Government Accountability Office noted in a report released last year.

The ineffectiveness of current fences has nothing to do with their size or their length. Barriers along the border have doubled in height since the 1990s and now cover nearly 700 miles, or about one-third of the length­ of the U.S. Southwest border. But they have failed to stop unauthorized migrants or illegal drugs.

Still, as we can see from the ongoing debate on border security among lawmakers, there are no plans to abandon this brutal and ineffective enforcement strategy.

The stubborn focus on barriers is shortsighted, and it obscures how the deployment of tactical infrastructure harms and threatens the safety of communities that straddle the international boundary, such as Nogales. The same emergency responders who splint broken legs and give IV fluids to wounded border crossers depend on partnerships with fire departments in Mexico. Wildfires and flash floods, air pollution and toxic spills spread from one country to another without regard for borders. Walls don’t stop them.

Arizona is downhill, downwind and downstream from the Mexican state of Sonora. Towns on both sides have their public utilities and transportation systems intermeshed. In Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora — together known as Ambos Nogales — an arroyo and a sewage pipeline cross the border through a drainage tunnel underneath the port of entry, where residents line up for passport control steps away from railcars carrying sulphuric acid. Aware of this intertwining, emergency managers and first responders have developed binational partnerships.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute »

The U.S. Forest Service and Mexico’s National Forestry Commission jointly fight wildfires within 10 miles of the border. Sister cities have mutual aid agreements, which allow them to share resources in cases of emergency on either side. While Americans push fire hoses through the gaps in the fence, supplying their peers in Mexico with water, Mexican volunteers come to the U.S. side to provide manpower in large structure fires and search-and-rescue operations. Such cooperation is more than a century old. It precedes the fence that divides the communities.

Building barriers undermines these achievements and imperils border residents. To speed up the construction of the wall after Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was authorized to waive more than 30 environmental and other federal laws, including regulations preserving clean air and clean water. Tactical infrastructure, deployed at any human, social or ecological cost, exacerbates the potentially disastrous consequences of natural phenomena.

We saw it happen a decade ago, when the CBP installed a 5-foot concrete barrier inside the drainage tunnel under Nogales. The barrier formed a bottleneck. With heavy rain, water pressure kept rising, until about 1,000 feet of the tunnel collapsed and inundated the city. Mexican authorities declared the area a disaster zone, citing damage to hundreds of homes, while the CBP recovered two bodies, suspecting the drowned were unauthorized migrants. Despite calls for investigations and reparations, the U.S. government’s only concession was an offer to lower the barrier by a foot and a half.

Such reinforcements don’t contribute to national security. Instead, they erode the foundations of public safety in communities on both sides of the border. As U.S. soldiers added more concertina wire to the fence in Nogales earlier this month, an EMT told me he dreads the day he may be called to help someone entangled in its razor-sharp coils.

Ieva Jusionyte is an assistant professor of anthropology and social studies at Harvard University and the author of “Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border.” She has volunteered as an emergency medical technician, paramedic and firefighter in Florida, Arizona and Massachusetts.

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On the “real border,” Trump’s lies and White Nationalist nonsense don’t just waste money and create artificial barrier to international cooperation; they actually harm folks on both sides every day. And, they most certainly bring us no closer to the rational solutions needed to manage a shared border and reasonably control and channel human migration.

PWS

02-18-19

 

Related posts:

  1. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  2. [BUREAU] ‘CRATS CONTINUE TO FLEE SINKING DHS SHIP AS ABUSES, LIES, COVER-UPS MOUNT — John Sanders Latest To Exit — Trump Taps Mark Morgan, Eager Architect Of Administration’s Temporarily Aborted “Community Reign of Terror” (A/K/A/ “Operation Wetback ‘19”) Program As Next Acting CBP Chief — Expect More Mindless Cruelty, Lies, False Narratives, White Nationalist Racism, Violations Of Law & Human Rights!
  3. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

“LIES, DAMN LIES, & (BOGUS) STATISTICS” — That Sums Up Trump’s White Nationalist Immigration Agenda — America Needs To Stand Up Against This Would-Be Fascist Tyrant Who Threatens Our Country, Our Constitution, & Our Precious Democratic Institutions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-be-fooled-by-trumps-make-believe-crisis/2019/02/15/b66adc60-3158-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html

From the Washington Post Editorial Board:

IT IS hard to single out any single event in Donald Trump’s presidency as the most untethered from truth and reality. Still, Friday’s news conference, in which Mr. Trump tried to defend his end run around Congress based on a make-believe emergency at the southern border, was, to use the president’s own words, a “big con game.”

Mr. Trump’s technique is to spin fiction as fact, secure in the knowledge that minds will reel as fact-checkers labor to deconstruct his ziggurat of falsehoods. So let’s stick to one big, basic truth: There is no crisis at the southern border.

There is no crisis, and there is no justification to specifically and surgically contravene the will of Congress, which just weighed and dismissed Mr. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to build a border wall, opting instead to grant him $1.375 billion.

Fact: Illegal crossings between ports of entry, as measured by Border Patrol arrests along the Mexican border, have plummeted since the turn of the century, falling to just below 400,000 in the most recent fiscal year, from more than 1.6 million in 2000. That nose-dive in illegal crossings coincides with better economic conditions in Mexico and a major increase in Border Patrol agents, technology and infrastructure along the southwest frontier.

Fact: Most illegal drugs that enter the country from Mexico are discovered by authorities at legal crossing points, not in remote areas where a wall would serve as a deterrent. That was the case, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for 90 percent of the heroin seized along the border. It’s not a Democratic talking point. Vice President Pence, in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today, noted that most seizures of illegal narcotics are “primarily at points of entry.”President Trump declares a national emergency at the U.S.- Mexico border during remarks about border security in the Rose Garden of the White House on Feb. 15. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

Fact: The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has been falling for more than a decade, and two-thirds of those who remain have been here for more than a decade. An estimated 10.7 million unauthorized migrants were in the country in 2016, about 1.5 million fewer than in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.

Fact: Mr. Trump, having conjured a nonexistent crisis, simply could not countenance his failure to persuade Congress to pay for his border wall. The source for this assertion is the president himself, who acknowledged in his news conference Friday that “I didn’t need to do this” and “I just want to do it faster.”

The emergency for Mr. Trump is purely political, impelled by expectations inflated by his campaign promises to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay. Having conflated a political crisis with a national one, Mr. Trump chooses to dodge, dissemble and lie. A self-respecting Congress would not let stand this manufactured emergency.

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We shouldn’t think that just because 1) the courts  likely will stop Trump; and 2) even if they don’t, he’s too incompetent to build much wall anyway, no matter how long his regime lasts, everything “will be OK.”

The real tragedy and shameful disgrace is that with the time, money, and resources being squandered on “Trump’s fraud on America,” a competent “real” Administration could actually solve the problem in less time using current legal procedures.

A “real government” with those resources could:

  • Hire more Asylum Officers to do “credible fear” interviews;
  • Hire more U.S. Immigration Judges and Court staff to hear asylum cases in accordance with Due Process;
  • Provide lawyers for all asylum applicants; and
  • Hire more CBP Inspectors for Ports of Entry.

It’s not “rocket science;” it’s just using common sense to solve problems in accordance with the law, the (not alternative) facts, and without racist bias.

With competent apolitical professional management, which is undoubtedly available but unsought by this Administration, it could happen in the foreseeable future. And, unlike the “wall hoax,” a solution consistent with the law and due process actually would be as “durable” as anything can be in the 21st Century!

The 2020 elections will be a critical opportunity to use our existing democratic institutions to stop the perverted regime of this pathetic, yet dangerous, self-styled “Knockoff American Mussolini” and to end the “minority rule” that has allowed him and his party to assume power against the will and in disregard for the best interests of the majority of Americans. For the sake of our nation’s future and that of our world, we can’t afford to blow it!

PWS

02-16-19

Related posts:

  1. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

“’DUH’ ARTICLE OF DA DAY” – Former FBI Acting Director McCabe Says “then–Attorney General Sessions [was] a Trump-like idiot and racist” – Gee, Seems Like That Was What Liz, Corey, & The Black Caucus Told Us – But McConnell Silenced The Truth & He & His GOP Cronies Subjected America To Perhaps The Worst & Least Qualified Attorney General In U.S. History!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-book-jeff-sessions-irishmen.html

Molly Olmstead reports for Slate:

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book, which details his frustrations with President’s Trump administration, has made it clear that his “disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for [Jeff] Sessions,” according to an assessment from Washington Post reporter Greg Miller.

According to Miller’s review of the book, McCabe saw then–Attorney General Sessions as a Trump-like idiot and racist who had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues,” failed to read intelligence reports, and jumbled classified material with publicly reported news.

The strangest detail from the book, though, had to do with Sessions’ thoughts on the FBI’s hiring practices. According to the Post:

The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”

According to a Wall Street Journal review of the book, McCabe wrote in his book that Sessions was only interested in immigration issues. He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion, according to the Post. When presented with a counterterrorism case, he would first ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness,” Miller concluded from McCabe’s book.

McCabe’s assessment is surprising in only that it comes so bluntly from a man who once was acting head of the FBI but now seems intent on speaking out against the men who made his professional and personal life so difficult for 10 months (before he was fired just hours before his planned retirement, blocking him from receiving his full pension benefits). Sessions has a long, long history of making racist and anti-immigrant comments, while also implementing racist and anti-immigrant policies. A non-exhaustive list includes: allegedly warning a black lawyer to “be careful how you talk to white folks”; calling the NAACP “un-American”; reportedly joking that he used to think the KKK was “OK” until he discovered some smoked marijuana; praising an 1924 immigration act promoted by Nazi-style eugenics; denigrating a judge in Hawaii as “sitting on an island in the Pacific”; fondly remembered George Wallace, America’s most famous segregationist politician, as “one of the most formidable third-party candidates in this century; and lauding “the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”

As for actions, in Alabama, Sessions punished black activists, defended voter suppression tactics, and kept black judges off the federal bench. He opposed sentencing reform over the crack-cocaine disparity. He has opposed hate crime protections and defended the official display of the Confederate flag. He has regularly attended events hosted by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, which he maintains a close relationship with. He touted falsehoods about DACA and immigrants in general. And of course, he pushed, relentlessly, for deportations and prosecutions of undocumented immigrants and even refugees fleeing domestic and gang violence.

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Sessions is a living example of how someone can spend a lifetime “on the dole” as a so-called “public servant” without providing any meaningful positive service or contributions to the public good.

Compare this “life not so well lived” with the “real world” contributions of the many decent, hard-working, honest, and dedicated civil servants who were screwed over by Trump’s shutdown. Or, compare Sessions’s squandered, anti-social life with the significant “real life” contributions of many of the immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who came before me in Immigration Court over 13 years.

I’m not sure even the worst of the aggravated felons that I ordered deported did as much lasting damage to our nation and its future as did Sessions! He was a child abuser on a grand scale, and someone who used knowingly false narratives to send deserving refugees, particularly abused women, back to torture or even death in the countries from which they had fled. He was the architect of both family separation and the unbridled expansion of the “New American Gulag.”

He promoted hate, intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, bias, and intolerance of all kinds, and was an avowed enemy of kindness and human compassion. He even had the absolute audacity to cite the Christian Bible, the compassionate, merciful, inclusive, and forgiving teachings of one of the world’s greatest “outcasts,” in support of his own perverted, bias-driven, and totally un-Christian world view.

Oh yeah, and he had no management qualifications going into the job and proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. Seldom in modern times has there been a more demoralized, mission-less, and dysfunctional mess than today’s Department of Justice. Even Watergate didn’t do as much institutional damage.

Sessions’s only real contribution to justice, due process, and the public good was the day he walked out of the U.S. Department of Justice for the last time. But, it will take years, if not generations, to repair the damage he has inflicted on the rule of law, our Constitution, honest government, and humane values.

Truly, Liz was right! This was one supremely unqualified dude!

PWS

02-16-19

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. “KILLER ON THE ROAD” – EMBOLDENED BY THE COMPLICITY OF THE “ROBERTS’ COURT,” GOP ABDICATION OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT, & BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES, REGIME APPARENTLY PLANNING EXTRALEGAL MOVE TO KILL MORE OF THE MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES – Refugee Women, Children, LGBTQ Community, Victims Of Government-Enabled Gangs Said To Among Targets of Miller/Trump White Nationalist “American Death Squads!”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

JUDICIAL BRAIN DRAIN: As Outlaw Administration Attacks Due Process & Attempts To Institutionalize Xenophobic Bias, Experienced, Conscientious U.S. Immigration Judges Head For The Exits – Abandonment Of Scholarship, Fairness, Commitment To Due Process Threatens Entire U.S. Justice System!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-policy-judge-resign-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Being An Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter

Map of San Francisco, California

Reporting From

San Francisco, California

Posted on February 13, 2019, at 6:15 p.m. ET

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

SAN FRANCISCO — Rebecca Jamil was sitting in a nondescript hotel ballroom in suburban Virginia when she realized that her dream job — being an immigration judge — was no longer tenable. It was June 11, 2018, and then–attorney general Jeff Sessions, her boss, was speaking to a room packed with immigration judges, running through his list of usual complaints over what was, in his estimation, a broken asylum system.

Toward the end of the speech, Sessions let slip some big news: He had decided whether domestic abuse and gang victims could be granted asylum in the US. Advocates, attorneys, and judges had been waiting months to see what Sessions, who in his role as attorney general had the power to review cases, would do. After all, it would determine the fate of thousands of asylum-seekers, many fleeing dangerous situations in Central America.

Sessions didn’t reveal to the room the details of his ruling but Jamil, based in San Francisco since she was appointed in 2016, learned later that day that the attorney general had decided to dramatically restrict asylum protections for domestic abuse victims.

“I’d seen the faces of these families,” the 43-year-old judge said. “They weren’t abstractions to me.”

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Eric Risberg / AP

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Jamil, a mother of two young daughters, had been shaken by the images and sounds that came as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to separate families at the border. As a judge who oversaw primarily cases of women and children fleeing abuse and dangers abroad, this was the last straw.

Soon after, she stepped down from the court.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told friends. “I felt that I couldn’t be ‘Rebecca Jamil, representative of the attorney general’ while these things were going on.”

In many ways, her resignation underscores the tenuous position of immigration judges, who are overseen by the attorney general and susceptible to the shifting winds of each administration. To avoid potential conflicts, the union that represents the judges has long called for its court to be an independent body, separate from the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration has undertaken a monumental overhaul of the way immigration judges, which total around 400 across the country, work: placing quotas on the number of cases they should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.

In the meantime, the case backlog has jumped to more than 800,000 under the administration and wait times have continued to skyrocket to hundreds of days.

The quotas in particular have made judges feel as if they were cogs in a deportation machine, as opposed to neutral arbiters given time to thoughtfully analyze the merits of each case.

“The job has become exceedingly more difficult as the court has veered even farther away from being administered as a court rather than a law enforcement bureaucracy,” said Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing around 350 judges.

And it’s not just Jamil who has departed because of the massive changes to the court undertaken by the Trump administration, according to observers within the Department of Justice and those on the outside. While some, like Jamil, have resigned, others have retired early in large part because of the policies instituted under Trump, they said.

For those remaining at the immigration court, the mood is bleak.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge who declined to be named. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Another Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told BuzzFeed News, “It is exhausting when you feel undervalued by the people at the top of your organization, especially when they are motivated by partisanship and have not spent their careers doing the job that you do.”

Tabaddor, the head of the union, said that her group has noticed a higher rate of retirements and resignations than in the past because of the way judges have been treated under Trump.

Some have been bold in their timing. John Richardson, a former immigration judge in Phoenix, stepped down on Sep. 30, 2018 — the day before the administration instituted a quota for the number of cases to be completed by judges.

“The timing of my retirement was a direct result of the draconian policies of the Administration, the relegation of [judges] to the status of ‘action officers’ who deport as many people as possible as soon as possible with only token due process, and blaming [judges] for the immigration crisis caused by decades of neglect and under funding of the Immigration Courts,” he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Another judge who resigned from the bench in September told staff members in a goodbye email, “I know things are getting difficult for you at [the Executive Office for Immigration Review], but I believe all you will ‘ride through the storm’ and ‘come out with a smile.’”

There have long been work challenges for immigration judges, including heavy caseloads and assignments, leading to comparatively high burnout rates. Justice Department officials told BuzzFeed News that concerns over retirements were nothing new.

According to the agency, from the beginning of fiscal year 2014 through Feb. 12, 2019, 94 immigration judges have retired, separated, or died. More than a third of those judges, 32, have left since Oct. 1, 2017. The agency does not track why judges leave their positions.

To those within the court and others who have recently retired, the situation has worsened to an unprecedented level. Richardson, the former judge in Phoenix, said he would have continued presiding over immigration cases if the status quo had remained.

“Yes, I was 75 years old with over 50 years of honorable federal service with the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, but had no plans for retirement as long as I was treated with respect, appreciated, and provided adequate support,” he said. “I had 28 years as an IJ and very much enjoyed my job, even with the poor funding and lack of support by Congress and the White House during that 28 years.”

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge who stepped down years ago and who speaks regularly with others who’ve left the bench, was blunt in his characterization.

“The fastest growth industry is former immigration judges,” Chase said. Those still on the bench have told him, “It’s horrible. Whatever you think it is, it is much, much worse.”

In the meantime, the Trump administration has hired more than 100 judges to not only fill the vacancies of those who’ve retired but to add numbers to the bench. It’s a rehauling of the courts that could “have a drastic impact,” according to Chase.

Many of the judges retiring in recent months are experienced jurists, hired by the Clinton administration in the mid to late ’90s, he said. These judges, Chase said, were more willing to push back on claims made in court by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to allow immigrants extended time to make their cases in what could otherwise be a rushed procedure.

In their place, Chase said, are judges hired by the new administration with case completion quotas, a two-year probation period, and a mandate to avoid showing sympathy for the people appearing before them.

“Even if it doesn’t show up on the sheet, just the level of humanity, that makes a huge difference — that’s what this administration is trying to remove from the immigration judge corps,” he said.

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

For her part, Jamil wanted to become an immigration judge from the earliest moments of her legal career. After working as a staff attorney at the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, she joined the government as a prosecutor with ICE in 2011, where she was able to use discretion to focus deportation efforts on those with serious criminal backgrounds. Under the Trump administration, ICE attorneys have been told that nearly all undocumented immigrants are priorities for deportation.

In 2014, Jamil took a chance to fulfill her dream: She applied to become an immigration judge. It was a 17-month process, full of drawn-out interviews in Washington, DC, but finally, in 2015 she received a phone call informing her that she got the job.

“I thought, and I must have told most people I know, that this is the last job that I would ever have. It’s all I wanted to do,” she said.

Jamil dedicated herself to the exhausting career. She oversaw a docket made up primarily of families and regularly heard cases in which women and children applied for asylum based on abuse that they had experienced by partners and family members abroad.

Day in and day out, Jamil heard intense testimony of physical and sexual violence against women and children.

“You’re sitting in a windowless room and people tell you the very worst parts of their life and you have to decide if it is enough to stay in the US,” she said. “That is very tiring day after day to be the person who makes that decision.”

Then, under the Trump administration, things started to change. In 2018, Sessions instituted a new policy, severely limiting when judges could suspend certain cases. Suddenly, her docket expanded and she wasn’t allowed to decide which cases deserved to remain in court and which didn’t.

Jamil and fellow immigration judges were in attendance at the Virginia conference where Sessions spoke for annual trainings on courtroom procedure. The year before, jurists heard substantive legal updates and trainings on bias in the courtroom.

This version of the training, however, felt different.

“The entire conference was profoundly disturbing. Do things as fast as possible. There was an overarching theme of disbelieving aliens and their claims and how to remove people faster,” Jamil said. “That is not what I saw my job as an immigration judge to be. I was not trained to do that.”

Soon after she returned home, Jamil put in her resignation. Her colleagues fretted, probing her about whether she had considered the type of judge that could fill her spot on the bench and the impact that could have.

She didn’t have an answer, but she knew that she couldn’t do it any longer.

“Family separations; Sessions making his own case law on asylum; when we could continue cases — I could no longer sit below the seal of the Department of Justice and represent the Department of Justice at that point,” Jamil said. “They just chipped away at our authority on a daily basis. It felt like we weren’t really judges. It was frustrating and demoralizing.”

A former colleague, Laura Ramirez, worked for years as an immigration judge in San Francisco. In December, she retired at the earliest date possible, five days after she turned 60.

The changes put in place by the Trump administration, especially the case quotas, and the politicization of her job, became too much to handle.

The loss of judges like Jamil and others could be immeasurable to both immigrants and Department of Homeland Security attorneys, Ramirez said.

“For the system of justice, there’s these highly qualified, fair, thoughtful people who are being squeezed out of the system for political reasons, basically,” she said. “If people like her are squeezed out, it’s a loss to people who appear before her. The system can’t be fair if good people like her are pushed out.”

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Forcing the “best, brightest, and fairest” out. Reinforcing “worst practices.” Enabling judges with well-established records of anti-asylum, nationality-based, and misogynistic bias. Attacking those private attorneys who steadfastly defended legal and Constitutional rights that were being systematically undermined by the Administration. Blaming others for his own incompetence and lack of scholarship. That’s what the “Sessions program” was all about.

The only good news: folks like Judge Jamil, Judge Ramirez, Judge Richardson, and Judge Chase are now part of the ever-growing “Our Gang” of retired Immigraton Judges helping others to fight the injustices and destruction of Due Process being pushed by the Trump Administration and a DOJ that has abandoned its mission in favor of a White Nationalist political agenda. Our voices are being heard in support of the efforts of the “New Due Process Army.”

And, while I doubt that anyone outside of Trump and Miller can match the viscous lies, racism, and knowingly false narratives of Sessions, I wouldn’t expect much improvement under Barr. Barr thought Sessions was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” That, more than the Mueller investigation, should have caused all Democrats to vote against his confirmation. He’ll just “lose” some of the overtly racist and inflammatory lingo of the White Nationalist restrictionists and attack immigrants on the basis of bogus “strict enforcement” platitudes.

Every American who believes in our Constitution and thinks that America is different from the “Banana Republics” we often criticize will be threatened by this development. Malicious harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all; and the collapse of one of the “building blocks” at the “retail level” of the American justice system will adversely affect everybody’s ability to get justice with fairness and impartiality.

Many of us don’t think we will need fair, independent, and impartial courts until we do. Once the Trump Administration destroys them, they won’t easily be rebuilt.

Who will defend your rights when the time comes if you stand by and watch the rights of others being trampled?

PWS

02-14-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: RECENT ARTICLES SHOW HOW SESSIONS’S SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS TO NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES VIOLATED EOIR CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS, SHOWED DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW, AND VIOLATED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF GOOD IMMIGRATION JUDGING BY DIRECTING JUDGES NOT TO BE SYMPATHETIC TO REFUGEES! – TURNING REFUGEE LAW AND HISTORY ON ITS HEAD!
  3. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

GREG SARGENT @ WASHPOST: “Good Guys” Apparently Gaining Legislative Traction Against The Trump-Miller White Nationalist Cabal!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/12/with-new-border-deal-republicans-are-trying-negotiate-trumps-surrender/

Sargent writes:

At President Trump’s big rally in El Paso on Monday night, you could see signs everywhere that proclaimed: “Finish the wall.”

That’s some amusingly dishonest sleight of hand — it’s meant to create the impression that the wall is already being built, which is a lie Trump tells regularly. Thus, it substitutes an imaginary Trump win for a real one, since apparently support for Trump among his voters on such an important symbolic matter is too delicate to withstand the unbearable prospect of him losing without withering or shattering.

Now that negotiators have reached an agreement in principle for six months of spendingon the border, however, it’s once again clear that Trump’s win on the wall will remain firmly in the category of the imaginary.

It includes only $1.375 billion for new bollard fencing in targeted areas. That’s nothing like Trump’s wall — it’slimitedto the kind of fencing that has already been built for years— and it’s substantially short of the $5.7 billion Trump wants. It’s nothing remotely close to the wall that haunts the imagination of the president and his rally crowds. The $1.375 billion is slightly lessthan what Democrats had previously offered him. It can’t even be credibly sold as a down paymenton the wall.

 Trump’s political and media allies are already in a rageover this point. And Trump may not accept the deal, or perhaps he’ll agree to it and try to find the wall money through executive action.

The compromise, to be clear, is a mixed bag for progressives. But on balance, based on what we are learning now, it’s plainly more of a victory than not.

 The deal will include ‘substantial’ humanitarian spending

A House Democratic aide tells me that negotiators also agreed that the deal would include “substantial” expenditures to address the humanitarian plight of migrants arriving at the border.

Such money would go toward “medical care, more efficient transportation, food and other consumables,” to “upgrade conditions and services for migrants,” as the original Democratic proposalat the start of conference committee talks put it.Democrats had called for $500 millionfor this purpose. It’s not yet clear how much the final deal will include, as negotiations are ongoing, but it is likely to be in the hundreds of millions.

The details on this spending will matter greatly. But if structured well, it could be significant. The goal would be to upgrade current facilities where migrants are held before entering the system, which were not designed to cope with a new type of immigration: the arrival of asylum-seeking families and children, which has spikedeven as adults looking to sneak across illegally — the type Trump mostly rages about — is at historic lows.

Such an upgrade could address some terrible things we’ve seen: migrant families herded into tight conditions, and migrant children stacked up on concrete floorsand at medical riskdue to a lack of transportation out of remote areas, or proper screening and treatment.

Here’s the bad news

Unfortunately, Democrats backed down on a core demand: a cap on Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds. Democrats hoped this would force ICE to focusresources on dangerous undocumented immigrants, thus picking up fewer longtime noncriminal residents.

But Democrats instead agreed to fund 45,000 detention beds. To understand this, note that ICE is currently overspending against last year’s budget, by funding around 49,000 beds. So relative to that, Democrats are cutting the number of beds. But as Heidi Altman notes, what Democrats agreed to is higher than the actual number of beds legitimatelyfunded last year. So that’s a hike. And if there is no hard statutory cap on beds, ICE can find money elsewhere to fund extra beds, detaining more people than funding levels suggest. As one advocate told me, the deal “contains no new controls on ICE overspending.”

 That’s a very serious problem. But overall, if the humanitarian money turns out to be real, the emerging agreement could prove to be a far-from-perfect but nonetheless decent one.

Some of Trump’s worst designs are getting frustrated

The larger context here is that Trump and top adviser Stephen Miller have pushed on many fronts to make our immigration system as cruel as possible. They’d hoped to use the first government shutdown to force Democrats to agree to changes in the law that would make it harder for migrant children to apply for asylum, and easier to deport migrant children and to detain migrant families indefinitely.

The overriding goal behind such changes is to reduce the numbers of immigrants in the United States — not just through deportations, but also through deterring people from trying to migrate and/or apply for asylum. That was the goal of Trump’s family separations, and after those were halted last year, he renewed the push for those other changes.

 Trump’s first surrender three weeks ago temporarily conceded that he would not be able to make those things happen. Now the new compromise suggests Republicans want him to agree to reopen the government for far longer, without getting those legal changes orthe wall.

“We have yet to see the details in writing, but based on news reports, I’d say this deal is a huge loss for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the pro-immigrant America’s Voice, told me.

“This deal has no money for his concrete wall and less money for barriers than was on offer last December,” Sharry added. “Trump tried to use a shutdown to force through radical policy changes, and at this point, Republicans are saying, ‘Let’s keep the government open and move on.’”

Sharry conceded that the failure to get detention bed caps is a “real setback.” But he also noted that in six months, Democrats can renew the battle for caps, now that “a lot of lawmakers understand that ICE is detaining many more people than Congress funds. We live to fight another day.”

Trump and Republicans suffered an electoral wipeout in an election that Trump turned into a referendum on his xenophobic nativist nationalism. He then used a shutdown to try to force the new Democratic House to accept both his wall and radical legal changes that would have made our immigration system far more inhumane. He isn’t getting his wall or those changes, and it looks as though a lot of humanitarian money will be channeled to the border to address the actual crisis there.

 

In other words, the fake crisis that Trump invented — and with it, his broader immigration vision — is getting repudiated. The only question is whether Trump will agree to the surrender Republicans are trying to negotiate for him.

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Update:I’ve rewritten the section on detention beds to make it more accurate.

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Bad news for Trump on immigration is great news for America!

And, don’t forget how Trump’s devotion to himself, first, foremost, and always, as opposed to our country or even his White Nationalist restrictionist supporters played out at the DOJ. Trump’s concern for his own skin caused him to unceremoniously dump loyal White Nationalist acolyte former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, the “role model” for Stephen Miller.

In fewer than two years on the job, Sessions managed to push for the White Nationalist restrictionist immigration agenda in every possible way. In a sea of ethically questionable behavior during his tenure at the DOJ, the “original sin,” in Trump’s eyes, was Sessions’s following DOJ ethical advice to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. Ethics is a dirty word in the Trump world.

 A “shout out” to my friend Heidi Altman over at the Heartland Alliance who apparently helped thwart a DHS sleight of hand on detention statistics.

 PWS

 02-13-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  2. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  3. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-beto-border-rallies-20190211-story.html

Eli Stokols & Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times:

President Trump falsely told a raucous rally in El Paso on Monday night that he is already building a wall on the adjacent border with Mexico, as a potential Democratic challenger assailed him at a large protest nearby and, in Washington, congressional negotiators announced a tentative funding deal without the billions he demanded for a wall.

Beneath banners reading “Finish the Wall,” Trump hailed what he called a “big, beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande,” though no such construction is known to be underway. When supporters launched into a chant of “Build the wall!” — standard at his rallies for years — Trump corrected them: “You mean finish the wall.”

The president alluded to lawmakers’ announcement of a deal, which came moments before he took the stage, but did not give it his blessing. Nor did he disparage it though one of his foremost confidants, Fox News host Sean Hannity, came on the air midway through the president’s rally and condemned the reported agreement as “this garbage compromise.”

Without the president and Congress agreeing to a border security funding bill by midnight Friday, the government could be partially shuttered again, just three weeks after a shutdown that at 35 days was the longest ever. The “agreement in principle” called for $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new barrier on the 2,000-mile border — less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded.

He told the crowd that he hadn’t bothered to find out the particulars of the agreement because he was eager to take the stage. “I could have stayed in there and listened, or I could have come out to the people of El Paso, Texas,” he said. “I chose you.”

Outside the El Paso County Coliseum, thousands of protesters, bundled against the evening chill, marched along the Rio Grande to a nearby park. There, El Paso’s former congressman and a possible Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, joined other locals who spoke of El Paso and neighboring Juarez, Mexico, as one community and expressed indignation over Trump’s false characterization of their city as a violent one in last week’s State of the Union address.

“With the eyes of the entire country upon us, all of us together are going to make our stand. Here in one of the safest cities in the United States of America — safe, not because of walls but in spite of walls,” O’Rourke said, in the sort of rousing speech that brought nationwide attention to his Senate race last year, though he lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Let’s own this moment and the future and show this country there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border,” O’Rourke said to cheers. “Let’s make sure our laws, our leaders and our language reflect our values.”

Late Monday, the House-Senate committee bargaining over border security funding and trying to avert another shutdown reached an “agreement in principle,” according to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Talks had stalled on the weekend, Republicans said, over Democrats’ demands to limit the detention of undocumented immigrants, many of them seeking asylum.

Should Congress pass a compromise, the onus would be on the president to accept it, or risk taking blame again for a partial federal shutdown. Before arriving in El Paso, Trump sought to preemptively shift blame to Democrats should the legislative effort ultimately fail. After the recent shutdown, polls showed the public put the blame squarely on him, and his approval rating slid.

With both his rally and the protest featuring O’Rourke receiving national coverage, the split-screen moment promised something of an audition of a hypothetical 2020 matchup, effectively creating a live debate between the president and a charismatic potential challenger on the issue that most animated Trump’s followers in 2016 and probably will again in his reelection bid.

Before leaving the White House, the president signaled that he too saw the dueling rallies as an early competition, with his familiar emphasis on crowd sizes. “We have a line that’s very long already,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to people waiting to enter his El Paso venue. He added, “I understand our competitor’s got a line too, but it’s a tiny little line.”

At his rally, Trump bragged that 10,000 supporters were inside the arena and 25,000 more were standing outside. According to the El Paso Fire Department, 6,500 people — the building’s capacity — were allowed inside, while at least 10,000 attended the protest rally. Organizers, however, had a slightly lower estimate.

“We have 35,000 people tonight and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump said. “Not too good. That may be the end of his presidential bid.”

While the border visit was intended as an opportunity for Trump to promote his signature issue, he wandered widely in his remarks — attacking Democrats repeatedly, including on abortion and on a so-called Green New Deal environmental platform that some are advocating, and mocking Virginia Democrats for controversies that have roiled the state’s government.

Trump’s drumbeat on immigration has yet to pay political dividends beyond his own supporters, and it has further galvanized his opponents. His fear-mongering during campaign rallies last fall over caravans of immigrants failed to prevent a Democratic wave that cost Republicans a net 40 seats and their majority in the House.

And during his State of the Union address, his incorrect portrayal of El Paso — he said it had “extremely high rates of violent crime” and was “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until the government built a “powerful barrier” there — touched a nerve among civic leaders and citizens.

The El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday approved a resolution assailing the president and his administration for misinformation and lies about a “crisis situation” on the U.S.-Mexico border, and noting that the federal government said “no crisis exists” and that “fiscal year 2017 was the lowest year of illegal cross-border migration on record.”

Yet Trump, at the rally, denounced his critics and media fact-checkers who disputed his claims that existing border fencing had slashed crime rates in El Paso. “They’re full of crap when they say it doesn’t make a difference,” he said, suggesting that local officials tried to “pull the wool over everybody’s eyes” by reporting low crime rates.

Lyda Ness-Garcia, a lawyer and founder of the Women’s March of El Paso, said organizers of Monday night’s protest were motivated to counteract Trump’s “lies” about their city.

“There was a deep sense of anger in our community, from the left and the right. It’s the demonization of our border. It’s the misrepresentation that the wall made us safe when we were safe long before,” she said.

Referring to the Mexican city just over the border, Garcia added: “We’re connected to Juarez. People forget. We’re not separate. We’re one culture.”

In truth, violent crime dropped in El Paso after a peak in 1993. It was at historic lows before Congress authorized a fence along the Rio Grande in 2006. Crime began to rise again over the next four years, after the fencing went up.

The city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo, admonished Trump after the State of the Union speech, saying during an appearance on CNN that the president’s depiction of El Paso is “not factually correct.”

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said organizers intended the march as a community celebration rather than an anti-Trump or pro-O’Rourke political event. “The administration, they didn’t believe our community would react, that people would get upset about the lies,” he said. “Our community spoke in numbers.”

Garcia noted that residents had seen the fallout from the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies firsthand, both in family separations and in asylum-seekers being turned away from border bridges and required to remain in Mexico while they await hearings.

In December, two Guatemalan migrant children died in Border Patrol custody in the El Paso area after seeking asylum.

“Trump has created policies and strategies that have created deep wounds in our region,” Garcia said. “We are not a violent city. We are not criminals. We are part of America and we deserve respect from this president.”

Although the protest event brought together roughly 50 local groups, O’Rourke’s political star power generated significant media coverage.

“If you’re Beto, there couldn’t be a better, more visual contrast,” said Jen Psaki, a former communications director to President Obama. “By leading a march, he gets back to his grass-roots origins and it allows him to stand toe to toe with the president of the United States and to echo a message that even local Republicans agree with. It gives him a platform and a megaphone at a beneficial time.”

Not willing to cede the moment completely to O’Rourke, Julian Castro — a former mayor of San Antonio, an Obama Cabinet member and already a declared presidential candidate — went Monday to the border checkpoint where his grandmother entered the United States as a young girl. He filmed a video denouncing the president and calling Trump’s visit to El Paso an effort “to create a circus of fear and paranoia” and “to tell lies about the border and about immigration.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Castro added, “Don’t take the bait.”

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Eli Stokols

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Eli Stokols is a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. He is a veteran of Politico and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the 2016 presidential campaign and then the Trump White House. A native of Irvine, Stokols grew up in a Times household and is thrilled to report for what is still his family’s hometown paper. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske

CONTACT

Molly Hennessy-Fiske has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times since 2006. She won a 2018 APME International Perspective Award;2015 Overseas Press Club award; 2014 Dart award from ColumbiaUniversity; and was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Casey Medal. She completed a Thomson Reuters fellowship in Lebanon in 2006 and a Pew fellowship in Mexico in 2004. Hennessy-Fiske grew up in Upstate New York and graduated from Harvard College. She spent last year as Middle East bureau chief before returning to cover foreign/national news as Houston bureau chief.

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The racist lies about immigration just keep spewing forth from Trump and his White Nationalist support groups, including the “right wingnut” media.

We’re not being invaded by foreign criminals. Actually, we’re experiencing a quite predictable and potentially manageable influx of refugees seeking to exercise their legal rights to lawfully apply for asylum in the US. Not surprising, given that we have no viable refugee program in or near the Northern Triangle and have undoubtedly contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law and society in those “failed states.” 

The idea that real criminals, terrorists, drug smugglers, or human traffickers will be stopped or even materially deterred by a Wall is beyond absurd. Walls generally “reroute migration” and kill more innocent people. Real threats to our security are laughing at Trump and his base while they view the diversion, wasted time and money, and the failure to beef up intelligence, undercover, and anti-smuggling operations as a free gift.

And, I’m sure they cheer the focus on “rounding up” and detaining asylum applicants who turn themselves in to apply for asylum (because Trump has intentionally disabled reasonable processing through legal ports of entry) instead of doing the real law enforcement work of breaking up criminal enterprises. 

“Numbers” aren’t everything, particularly when the majority of the apprehensions have little to do with criminals or other “bad guys. But, it’s easier to “chalk up big numbers” and support a bogus White Nationalist narrative about “loss of border security” by apprehending asylum applicants who are in search of ever more elusive justice in the U.S.

Unfortunately, outright fibs and bogus racist narratives seem to work for our “Lier-in-Chief!” Here is an article from today’s NY Times by native Texan Richard Parker actually suggesting that Trump succeeds because Texans are as addicted to “Tall Tales” as Trump is to “Big Lies!” In other words, a “match made in Heaven.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/el-paso-trump-beto.html

Rather an unhappy commentary, if true. Who am I as a “mere Badger” to say, but I would suspect that these tall tales of fake invasions and bogus fear mongering directed mostly at the growing Latino community appeal more to some Texans than to others.

Just shows the importance of the work of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) in defending our laws and Constitution!  Also illustrates the importance of committing ourselves to “regime change” in 2020. The immigration nonsense from Trump and his supporters and the intentional divisiveness, chaos, and anarchy that flow from it is an existential threat to our national existence —  much greater than his mostly fake “border emergency.” 

PWS

02-12-19

Related posts:

  1. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  2. MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

HON JEFFREY S. CHASE: Trump’s Disingenuously Named “Migrant Protection Protocols” Are Anti-American – “As the late Arthur Helton wrote more than 25 years ago, ‘A basic measure of a civilized society is the way it treats strangers.’”

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/2/10/wait-in-mexico-policy-access-to-counsel-amp-crime

Feb 10 Wait in Mexico Policy, Access to Counsel, & Crime

A February 1, 2019 article in the L.A. Timesreported that two American attorneys who work for the immigrant rights organization Al Otro Lado, which has sent attorneys to Tijuana to offer advice to Central American refugees seeking to apply for asylum in the U.S., were stopped by Mexican immigration officials while attempting to enter that country.  The attorneys were detained and questioned, and eventually denied entry because their passports had been “flagged.” One of the lawyers was actually traveling to Mexico on a family vacation, and was separated from her husband and 7-year-old daughter at the airport and taken to a separate room where she was interrogated.  Her crying daughter was eventually allowed to join her; the two were held for 9 hours and forced to sleep on a cold floor without food or water before being sent back to the U.S. Two journalists who had been covering the issue of refugees seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border suffered the same experience. The Mexican government denied responsibility for the “flagging;” one of the journalists was told “the Americans” were responsible.

One of my first reactionsto the remain in Mexico policy was the impact it would have on access to counsel.  I have heard disturbing first-hand reports from individuals who have traveled to Tijuana to provide legal assistance to refugees there.  When crossing back to the U.S., American citizens identified by Customs and Border Patrol officers as “activists” have been harassed by being sent to secondary inspection, where they have been questioned and, remarkably, have had the contents of their electronic devices accessed by DHS agents.  A means of avoiding such treatment was to fly directly to Mexico. However, the reported policy of flagging the passports of attorneys engaged in such work has undermined that route as well. Thus, attorneys are being treated like criminals for the “crime” of doing their job of providing legal assistance to asylum seekers.

While DHS focuses on such imaginary “crime,” it willfully ignores the actual crime to which those asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico are exposed.  In a letterto DHS Secretary Kirsjen M. Nielsen, the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Catholic Legal Immigration Network reported that 90.3% of asylum seekers surveyed said that do not feel safe in Mexico; 46% stated that either themself or their child had suffered harm in Mexico, and 38.1% reported mistreatment at the hands of the Mexican police.  Female asylum seekers accompanied by their minor children reported suffering crimes in Mexico including rape, sexual assault, kidnaping, extortion, and death threats.

Keep in mind that the Administration has shamelessly named its wait-in-Mexico policy the “Migrant Protection Protocols.”  Instead, the policy exposes asylum seekers (including vulnerable unaccompanied children and families) to crime and police harassment, while restricting their access to counsel.

Access to counsel is increasingly critical to Central American asylum seekers, many of whose claims require proving that their fear is on account of their membership in a particular social group.  Where fear is of non-governmental persecutors, applicants must further establish that the government is unable or unwilling to control such actors, and that internal relocation to another part of the country was not reasonable.  Meeting these criteria requires an applicant to offer complex legal theories, and to support such claims with affidavits, reports, and articles from one or more experts. Without legal assistance, this is a daunting task for refugees (some of whom are families or children) living under difficult conditions (including the above-mentioned exposure to crime and government harassment) on the Mexico side of the border.  Under present BIA precedent, an asylum seeker who is just a little off in formulating their particular social group (even if they included one word too many or too few) is stuck with such formulation, and may not amend it should they be fortunate enough to obtain counsel to assist them with their appeal. See Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 189 (BIA 2018).

The Trump Administration’s policies towards Central American asylum seekers has consistently run counter to our country’s international treaty obligations.  The Administration has tried to argue that those fleeing to our country are not truly refugees, falsely painting them (in the words of a Human Rights First release) as “frauds, security threats, and dangerous criminals.”

By undertaking efforts on so many fronts to make it increasingly more difficult for such claimants to succeed in their asylum applications, the Administration seeks to paint the resulting drop in grant rates as “proof” that such claims are “fraudulent.”  In criminally prosecuting those who eventually try to cross the border when they are no longer to endure the conditions under which refugees are forced to wait in Mexico, the Administration cites such convictions as “proof” that the refugees are “criminals.”  The Administration seems to view the flight to the U.S. as a choice, and believes that its deterrence policies might convince refugees to simply return to their home countries.

Such view is at odds with reality.  This December articleby Prof. Karen Musalo in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminismadds further corroboration to the many reports detailing the horrible violence Central American refugees are fleeing.   And the World Migration Project at the Columbia Univ. School of Journalism continues to track those who have suffered harm (including death) following their deportation from the U.S.; its findings also counter the Administration’s position that those fleeing are not truly refugees, and that repatriation is a viable option.

As the late Arthur Helton wrote more than 25 years ago, “A basic measure of a civilized society is the way it treats strangers.”  Similarly, Jorge Ramosrecently wrote in Timemagazine that “countries are judged by the way they treat the most vulnerable, not the rich and powerful.”  Our government’s policies towards asylum seekers (including its most recent efforts to interfere with that population’s ability to retain counsel), and its willingness to expose such a vulnerable population to harm (including murder and rape) shames us all.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

 

JEFF CHASE

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First.  He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

 

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Feb 10 All The World’s A Stage (including the 2d Cir.!)

 

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As Jeffrey and I have pointed out a number of times before, a “bona fide Administration” could resolve the “self-created non-crisis” at the Southern Border simply by:

  • Following existing asylum laws;
  • Generously granting asylum in accordance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, the BIA’s precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the Handbook;
  • Working with NGOs, pro bono groups, bar associations, “Big Law,” the religious community, and affected states and localities to provide easy access to counsel and achieve universal representation of asylum seekers, which, in turn:
    • has a proven strong correlation to court appearances;
    • makes most detention unnecessary, and most important,
    • safeguards Due Process and the rule of law.

Clearly, these measures could be accomplished more quickly and for far less than the $5.7 billion that Trump so desperately wants to waste on his Wall. And, other than perhaps a few “tweaks” to allow some U.S. Government funding of pro bono and “low bono” representation projects, they would not require a major rewrite of current statues.

By sharply reducing unnecessary and wasteful “civil immigration detention” (a/k/a the “New American Gulag” or “NAG”) and the many legal challenges it generates, the  money and litigation time, on both sides, could be redirected at actually solving the problems, rather than making them worse.

 

PWS

 

02-11-19

 

 

 

 

 

J

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. “SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

DENNIS ROMERO @ NBC NEWS WITH A MORE NUANCED LOOK AT A BORDER WALL — It’s Highly Effective At “Re-Routing” Migrants, But Causes More Deaths, Enriches Smugglers, & Is Ineffective Against Drug Smuggling — Bottom Line: “[E]ffective at deterring crowds of migrants that will ultimately be undeterred.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-says-san-diego-s-border-barrier-works-it-pushes-n965681

Dennis Romero reports for NBC News from San Diego:

When President Trump argues that the United States needs a wall along the southern border, he likes to point to San Diego’s success.

There, double and triple barriers fortify the westernmost stretch of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border as U.S. Border Patrol agents drive SUVs along frontage roads and hover overhead in helicopters.

The militarized border touching the communities of Imperial Beach, San Ysidro and Otay Mesa contributed to a 75 percent decline in crossings in the years immediately after fencing was installed in the 1990s, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

The decline mirrors a border-wide decrease.Apprehensions of those suspected of illegally crossing the entire Southwest border experienced an uptick in 2018 over 2017 to nearly 467,000 but remained at less than half their peak in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Border Patrol racked up 1 to 1.6 million apprehensions.

President Donald Trump, who’s in a protracted battle to secure congressional funding for his campaign promise to build a wall along the entire length of the Southern border, on Thursday pointed to San Diego’s Mexican neighbor, Tijuana, as an example of what can happen with and without a barrier.

Trump’s proposed wall, based on one of eight prototypes in San Diego, is yet to be authorized by Congress.

“If you go to Tijuana and you take down that wall, you will have so many people coming into our country that Nancy Pelosi will be begging for a wall,” he said from the Oval Office. “She will be begging for a wall. She will say, ‘Mr. President, please, please give us a wall.'”

While it seems unlikely the House speaker would ever beg for a wall, the president has a valid point about fencing’s impact on the border region. Although San Diego’s barrier may stem illegal crossings, its impact is more complicated than Trump’s statement that “walls work” suggests.

From the 1980s to the early 1990s the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector was overrun with people illegally crossing the border. Hundreds of migrants would gather on a Tijuana River levee known as “El Bordo” and, much like the climactic border crossing scene in 1987’s “Born in East L.A.,” rush the few Border Patrol agents brave enough to try to stop them.

In the 1980s, about 40 percent of the Southwest’s illegal border crossings took place at San Diego, said Victor Clark-Alfaro of San Diego State University’s Center for Latin American Studies. The peak year for border apprehensions in the San Diego sector was 1986, when 628,000 migrants were nabbed.

“Tijuana was like a fiesta,” Clark-Alfaro said. “On a single day on a weekend at El Bordo you could find about 1,000 migrants ready to cross to the U.S. side. There was liquor, marijuana, human smugglers, street vendors.”

The defunct bureaucracy known as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, since replaced by three agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, built fencing along the border at San Diego in 1990, but it was no match for desperate Mexicans.

The migrants created a huge wave of south-of-the-border crossings into the U.S. that was addressed by Republican Pete Wilson, a onetime San Diego mayor who won re-election as California governor in 1994 based on a Trump-like platform of deterring illegal immigration.

“Bill Clinton had to respond,” said David Shirk, director of the University of San Diego’s master’s program in international relations.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton initiated Operation Gatekeeper, a crackdown at the border, and Congress followed up two years later with 14 miles of “triple-layered fence,” according to congressional records. Some of those first fences were made from Vietnam War-era landing mats intended for makeshift helicopter airstrips.

In 2006, Congress authorized “double-layered fencing” along at least 700 miles of border. The full length has yet to be covered with fencing because of delays in acquiring private property, often through court battles. But the San Diego sector received fresh fencing in the mid-1990s and again in the late-2000s.

Experts, many critical of Trump’s overall stand on border security, acknowledge the San Diego barriers, now made of steel bollards and surplus military landing mats, have more or less done their job. The sector went from being the top location for border crossings to a relative ghost town with 26,086 apprehensions in fiscal year 2017, according to the Border Patrol.

Image: San Diego Border
A migrant from Honduras passes a child to her father after he jumped the border fence to get into the U.S. side to San Diego, Calif., from Tijuana, Mexico on Jan. 3, 2019.Daniel Ochoa de Olza / AP file

The hardened border, however, pushed migrants to remote areas that have few man-made impediments and are often just World War II-style vehicle barriers known as Normandy fencing, Clark-Alfaro said. Arizona has become a hotbed of crossings, but migrants often die of dehydration. The mountains east of San Diego have also become a crossing zone, where migrants have died from hypothermia.

Some migrants head for the cold Pacific and end up dead or arrested.

“Our beach was invaded by people on pangas, boogie boards,” said Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, adding that the fortified fencing “didn’t stop the tunnels” used by cartels to ship drugs into California and beyond.

The San Diego-area border security measures have also enticed cartels to dive deeper into smuggling because the barriers drive up prices for guides or coyotes, experts say. Prices have gone from as little as $75 in the 1990s to as much as $7,000 today, said San Diego State’s Clark-Alfaro.

“We’ve made it more profitable for human traffickers along the border,” added Shirk, of the University of San Diego.

However, narcotics continue to make it across the Southwest border, with seizures of heroin in the San Diego sector increasing 59 percentfrom 2016 to 2017, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The San Diego sector was the top target along the southwest border for heroin smuggling outside points of entry, the DEA said. Eighty-five percent of the synthetic opioid fentanyl that crossed in 2017 entered through the San Diego area, according to DEA data.

Experts argue that one of the biggest influences on border crossings has been the Mexican economy, which has improved enough that many workers would rather just stay home. In Tijuana, home to a booming appliance and TV manufacturing sector, thousands of jobs are up for grabs.

And many of the immigrants from that huge wave in the 1980s and 1990s settled in the United States rather than crossing back and forth for seasonal work, experts say. In effect, they were walled in by the increased border security and are now staying put.

The boosted federal presence along the border also includes an exponential increase in the number of Border Patrol agents since 1990 to more than 20,000 today. At least 85 percent are stationed along the border, according to Shirk’s research.

Much of that increase in personnel came in the years following 9/11, when the Department of Homeland Security was created and crossing the border legitimately became much less casual, Shirk said. Passports are now required for travel in both directions.

The new border-crossing population comes mostly from Central America, where migrants have formed caravans to travel north. People fleeing murderous gangs — some, like MS-13, were born in the U.S. — have mostly sought asylum in the United States legally, although the Border Patrol U.S. Customs and Border Protection says groups of Central Americans have recently tried to rush into the country illegally.

The bottom line on San Diego’s beefed up border, some of which is slated for replacement, is a mixed bag effective at deterring crowds of migrants that will ultimately be undeterred.

“It’s effective at re-routing people,” said John Fanestil, a Methodist minister who has offered communion on the United States side of the fence. “We made it harder to cross the border illegally — more deadly, more costly. But when circumstances are as extreme as they are in Central America, people will demonstrate great determination to cross the border.”

Dennis Romero

Dennis Romero writes for NBC News and is based in Los Angeles.

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

As we used to say at the Arlington Immigration Court, “Desperate people do desperate things.” Or, as I have said on “Courtside,” “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration.”

What would actually help:

  • Technology, intelligence, undercover resources to combat drug smuggling;
  • More appropriate and generous application of our existing refugee and asylum laws at the border and in or near the Northern Triangle;
  • More resources for processing asylum applications at the Ports of Entry;
  • Expanded legal immigration opportunities, particularly for needed workers, that would more accurately reflect market forces driving today’s “extralegal immigration system;”
  • Working more closely with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to solve the humanitarian problems driving refugee flows.

Why not “get smart” instead of continuing to “play dumb” on migration issues?

PWS

02-02-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: “More than two-thirds of migrants fleeing Central American region had family taken or killed!” — “We’re speaking of human beings, not numbers!”– As Evidence Mounts Of Regime’s “Crimes Against Humanity,” DHS Trump Toady & Unapologetic “Dehumanizer” Mark Morgan Proudly Touts “Success” Of “Extermination As Deterrence” Policies!
  3. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  4. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/31/never-mind-wall-theres-more-important-question-we-need-answer/

Waldman writes:

As immigration policy hangs over the ongoing conflict over whether the government is going to remain open, there’s something missing from this discussion, something so fundamental that it’s quite remarkable that we all seem to have forgotten to even ask about it. The president is demanding his border wall, Democrats are fighting against him, and occasionally we bring up issues like the fate of the Dreamers and those here under Temporary Protected Status.

But what nobody asks is this: What kind of immigration system do we actually want?

Not what might happen in the next negotiation or what each side would be willing to give up, but what does each side see as the ultimate goal they’re working toward? If they could look forward ten or twenty years and say “This is where we should get to,” what would that look like?

It’s a vital question, because whatever we’re doing at the moment should be guided by our long-term goals. Once we understand what those goals are, we can think more clearly about where we should go after we get this whole shutdown ridiculousness behind us. And we all ought to be able to agree that there is some future we’re trying to arrive at, a point at which we have a system that works to our satisfaction and immigration isn’t something we’re constantly at each other’s throats about.

That may not be possible, but I’ll start with what liberals would like to see. There are certainly disagreements not just on the left generally but among immigration advocates as well, but there is a basic vision one can identify.

The first thing they want, of course, is to take the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are in the country now and give them a path to citizenship. That’s something even some Republicans agree with, and if you put requirements like learning English and paying back taxes on it, support becomes nearly universal.

Second, liberals would like to see an expansion of the legal immigration system, which is a consistent source of frustration and a driver of illegal immigration. When it can take decades to get approved to move to the United States, of course many people are going to opt for the illegal route, even if it can be dangerous and uncertain. If the legal immigration works, people will go through it and not around it.

And if you have a well-functioning legal system, you can make illegal immigration less attractive, with things like an E-Verify process that makes it harder to find work if you’re undocumented. There may always be some kind of black market for workers, but if you’re simultaneously offering people a legal path — both toward permanent residency and with temporary work visas for people who are looking only to make some money and then return to their home countries — it will be much smaller problem.

So in the liberal vision, we might end up with about the same number of immigrants coming into the country as we have now, it’s just that the overwhelming majority would be coming legally. We’d have security at the border, but we wouldn’t need ICE breaking down doors and tearing parents from their children’s arms. We’d have a robust system to evaluate asylum claims so we wouldn’t have to be throwing people in cages. We certainly wouldn’t pretend that one day there will be no more demand in the labor market for immigrant workers.

There are many Republicans who could be okay with that future, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. But the conservative vision is complicated. For years, we heard Republican politicians say, “I’m for legal immigration. I’m against illegal immigration.” They may not usually have been advocating significant increases in legal immigration, but it’s important to remember that the current venomous hostility toward immigrants was not always the standard Republican position. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both far friendlier toward immigrants than Donald Trump is.

Conservatives might disagree with this characterization, but as I see it, their ultimate goal is a system in which coming into the country illegally is utterly impossible, but levels of legal immigration don’t change much. In other words, we still have immigration, but the flow slows to a trickle. And the Trump administration is making attempts to drastically reduce legal immigration. With the president’s enthusiastic support, domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is driving a nationalist agenda that seeks to drastically reduce the inflow of immigrants to the country and even looks for every possible means to deport both legal and undocumented immigrants, even if they’ve been living here for years or decades.

That’s a somewhat extreme position even within the Republican Party, but it does reflect a discomfort with immigration that is common on the right. It’s the cultural problem, the fact that many people just don’t like having contact with people who don’t look like them or don’t speak the same language they do or eat the same foods they do. Trump very skillfully played to that discomfort by essentially telling voters he could wind back the clock to the time when they were young, before all this disconcerting change happened. His targets were the people who say “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” and when he said he would make America great again, “great again” meant “like things were when you were young.”

That’s a demand that can never be satisfied, even if it’s only a portion of the Republican electorate that really dreams of an America where there are almost no new immigrants and most of those who are already here just disappear. Unfortunately, that portion currently not only controls the White House but exercises a veto over any attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, because the rest of the GOP is so terrified of them.

Which is why it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.

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

Right on, Paul!  You “nailed” it!  Pretty much what I’ve been saying on “Courtside” all along!

However, the unlikelihood of achieving “comprehensive immigration reform” in the “Age of Trump” shouldn’t prevent the parties from working together in a bipartisan manner on “smaller fixes” such as that relating to child marriage suggested by Nolan Rappaport, posted earlier this week. See https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3Hu

Progress is progress, even by “small steps.”

PWS

02-01-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  4. WASHINGTON POST: GONZO’S IMMIGRATION COURT “REFORMS” WILL CREATE “KANGAROO COURTS!” —Recent “moves to evaluate judges based on the speed with which they handle dockets that typically exceed 2,000 cases, rather than on fair adjudication, is a recipe for assembly-line injustice.”

INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

http://time.com/longform/migrants/

Haley Sweetland Edwards writes in Time Magazine:

But they were willing to do whatever it took. Going back to Guatemala was simply not an option, they said. Monterroso explained that in October, their family was forced to flee after a gang threatened to murder the children if they didn’t pay an exorbitant bribe, five months’ worth of profits from their tiny juice stall. The family hid for a day and a half in their house and then sneaked away before dawn. “There is nobody that can protect us there,” Monterroso said. “We have seen in the other cases, they kill the people and kill their children.” Her voice caught. “The first thing is to have security for them,” she said of her kids, “that nothing bad happens to them.”

All told, more than 159,000 migrants filed for asylum in the U.S. in fiscal year 2018, a 274% increase over 2008. Meanwhile, the total number of apprehensions along the southern border has decreased substantially—nearly 70% since fiscal year 2000. President Donald Trump has labeled the southern border a national crisis. He refused to sign any bill funding the federal government that did not include money for construction of a wall along the frontier, triggering the longest shutdown in American history, and when Democrats refused to budge, he threatened to formally invoke emergency powers. The President says the barrier, which was the centerpiece of his election campaign, is needed to thwart a dangerous “invasion” of undocumented foreigners.

But the situation on the southern border, however the political battle in Washington plays out, will continue to frustrate this U.S. President, and likely his successors too, and not just because of continuing caravans making their way to the desert southwest. Months of reporting by TIME correspondents around the world reveal a stubborn reality: we are living today in a global society increasingly roiled by challenges that can be neither defined nor contained by physical barriers. That goes for climate change, terrorism, pandemics, nascent technologies and cyber-attacks. It also applies to one of the most significant global developments of the past quarter-century: the unprecedented explosion of global migration.

. . . .

They abandoned their homes for different reasons: tens of millions went in search of better jobs or better education or medical care, and tens of millions more had no choice. More than 5.6 million fled the war in Syria, and a million more were Rohingya, chased from their villages in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands fled their neighborhoods in Central America and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by poverty and violence. Others were displaced by catastrophic weather linked to climate change.

Taken one at a time, each is an individual, a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, hope and despair. But collectively, they represent something greater than the sum of their parts. The forces that pushed them from their homes have combined with a series of global factors that pulled them abroad: the long peace that followed the Cold War in the developed world, the accompanying expansion of international travel, liberalized policies for refugees and the relative wealth of developed countries, especially in Europe and the U.S., the No. 1 destination for migrants. The force is tidal and has not been reversed by walls, by separating children from their parents or by deploying troops. Were the world’s total population of international migrants in 2018 gathered from the places where they have sought new lives and placed under one flag, they would be its fifth largest country.

The mass movement of people has changed the world both for better and for worse. Migrants tend to be productive. Though worldwide they make up about 3% of the population, in 2015 they generated about 9% of global GDP, according to the U.N. Much of that money is wired home—$480 billion in 2017, also according to the U.N.—where the cash has immense impact. Some will pay for the passage of the next migrant, and the smartphone he or she will keep close at hand. The technology not only makes the journey more efficient and safer—smugglers identify their clients by photos on instant-messaging—but, upon arrival, allows those who left to keep in constant contact with those who remain behind, across oceans and time zones.

Yet attention of late is mostly focused on the impact on host countries. There, national leaders have grappled with a powerful irony: the ways in which they react to new migrants—tactically, politically, culturally—shape them as much as the migrants themselves do. In some countries, migrants have been welcomed by crowds at train stations. In others, images of migrants moving in miles-long caravans through Central America or spilling out of boats on Mediterranean shores were wielded to persuade native-born citizens to lock down borders, narrow social safety nets and jettison long-standing humanitarian commitments to those in need.

. . . .

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

. . . .

But protocols and treaties can, at best, hope to respond to the human emotions and hard realities that drive migration. No wall, sheriff or headscarf law would have prevented Monterroso and Calderón, or Yaquelin and Albertina Contreras, or Sami Baladi and Mirey Darwich from leaving their homes. Migrants will continue to flee bombs, look for better-paying jobs and accept extraordinary risks as the price of providing a better life for their children.

The question now is whether the world can come to define the enormous population of international migrants as an opportunity. No matter when that happens, Eman Albadawi, a teacher from Syria who arrived in Anröchte, Germany, in 2015, will continue to make a habit of reading German-language children’s books to her three Syrian-born kids at night. Their German is better than hers, and they make fun of her pronunciation, but she doesn’t mind. She is proud of them. At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise, she tells them, “We must be brave, but we must also be successful and strong.” —With reporting by Aryn Baker/Anröchte, Germany; Melissa Chan, Julia Lull, Gina Martinez, Thea Traff/New York; Ioan Grillo/Tijuana; Abby Vesoulis/Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Vivienne Walt/Paris •

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

I strongly encourage everyone to read Haley’s outstanding article at the link.  It is one of the best and most easily understandable explanations of a complex phenomenon that I have seen recently. As I always say, “lots of moving parts.” But Haley and her colleagues have distilled the fundamental truths concealed by this complexity. Congrats and appreciation to Haley and everyone who worked on this masterpiece!

Haley debunks and eviscerates the restrictionist, racist “fear and loathing” baloney that Trump and his White Nationalist gang peddle. The simple truth always has been and continues to be that America needs more immigration.

The only real question is whether we are going to be smart and funnel it into expanded legal and humanitarian channels or dumb like Trump and push the inevitable migration into an extra-legal system. The latter best serves neither our country nor the humans pushed into an underground existence where they can be exploited and are artificially prevented from achieving their full potential for themselves and for us. Right now, we have a mix skewed toward forcing far, far too many good folks to use the extra-legal system.

We’ll only be able to improve the situation by pushing the mix toward the legal and the humanitarian, rather than the extra-legal. That’s why it’s virtually impossible to have a rational immigration debate with folks like Trump who start with the racist-inspired fiction that migrants are a “threat” who can be deterred, punished, and diminished.

Contrary to Trump and the White Nationalists, the real immigration problems facing America are 1) how can we best integrate the millions of law-abiding and productive undocumented individuals already residing here into our society, and 2) how can we most fairly and efficiently insure that in the future individuals like them can be properly screened and come to our country through expanded humanitarian and legal channels. Until we resolve these, American will continue to founder with immigration and fail to maximize its many benefits. That’s bad for us, for migrants, and for the future of our nation.

As a reminder, in the context of Congressional negotiations on border security, I recently put together a list of “practical fixes” to the immigration system which would address border security, humanitarian relief, and improved compliance with Constitutional Due process without major legislative changes — mostly “tweaks” and other common sense amendments that would make outsized improvements and certainly would be an improvement on squandering $5.7 billion and getting nothing but a largely symbolic “instant white elephant” border wall in return.  So, here it is again in all its hypothetical glory:  “THE SMARTS ACT OF 2019:

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3E3

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

  • Federal Employees
    • Restart the Government
    • Retroactive pay raise

 

  • Enhanced Border Security
    • Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”
    • Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers
    • Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff
    • Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors
    • Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs
    • Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS
    • Anything else that both parties agree upon

 

  • Humanitarian Assistance
    • Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers
    • Prohibit family separation
    • Funding for alternatives to detention
    • Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues
    • Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

 

  • Asylum Process
    • Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

 

  • Immigration Court Improvements
    • Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants
    • Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs
    • Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications
    • Vacate Matter of Castro-Tum and reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases
    • Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”
    • Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances
    • Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts
    • Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings
    • Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal
    • Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days
    • Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members
    • Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction
    • Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year
    • Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”
    • Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied
    • Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

 

  • International Cooperation
    • Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.
    • Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

 

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

No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

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

PWS

01-27-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

FALSE EQUIVALENCY: No, “Trump’s Shutdown” Is Not A “Failure Of Both Parties” Or “Washington’s Fault” – It’s 100% On Trump & The GOP & Proves Beyond A Reasonable Doubt That They Are Incapable Of Governing In A Responsible & Reasonably Competent Manner!

FALSE EQUIVALENCY:  No, “Trump’s Shutdown” Is Not A “Failure Of Both Parties” Or “Washington’s Fault” – It’s 100% On Trump & The GOP & Proves Beyond A Reasonable Doubt That They Are Incapable Of Governing In A Responsible & Reasonably Competent Manner!

 

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

I’m tired of hearing all the “fake news” about “shared responsibility” for the “Trump shutdown:” The totally insane and unnecessary shutdown that he promised to inflict and that Mitch McConnell and the GOP enablers delivered against the American people.

The shutdown is 100% a GOP responsibility, just as Trump originally threatened. The wall is at best an ineffective and overpriced method of addressing border security, particularly standing alone. And, it has absolutely nothing to do with current border security because it would take years, if not decades, to build. There is no way that it justifies shutting down the Government.

Trump’s latest offer clearly was made in bad faith. While he and Pence disingenuously presented a distortedly simple version to the public, the actual 1,000-page screed was filled with White Nationalist attacks on asylum, kids, and migrants drafted by neo-Nazi Stephen Miller as a “sharp stick in the eye” to Dems, Hispanics, refugees, and all Americans who believe in our Constitution and humane values. In other words, typical Trump/Miller/McConnell nonsense. Trump is actually offering “Dreamers” less than the Supremes have effectively guaranteed them. So, how is that a reasonable proposal or a good faith “starting point” for negotiations?

The GOP can and should join Dems in reopening Government now, no strings attached and with a much-needed pay raise for Feds, by a “veto-proof” margin. Forget Trump, his anti-American rants and schemes, and his diminishing White Nationalist “fan club.”

Then, the “Non-Bakuninist Branch” of the GOP needs to join the Dems in governing America, which Trump has proved beyond a reasonable doubt he has neither the ability nor the desire to do. Immigration should be part of that discussion; but, not the White Nationalist agenda on immigration that Trump and Miller keep pushing.

We need a realistic discussion that would strengthen protections for asylum seekers, use more smart technology, improved intelligence, Immigration Inspectors, Anti-Smuggling Officers, undercover agents, Asylum Officers, and Immigration Judges to deal with the border situation, and significantly expand legal immigration. The latter is a long overdue common-sense move to serve our country’s future needs (most reliable studies show that we need more, not less immigration), diminish the size and allure of the “extra-legal” system that arises when the law is out of whack with market realities (as ours is now), and allow DHS enforcement to focus on the “real bad guys” rather than artificially combining “bad guys” with folks coming to help us out (and help themselves and their families in the process).

Reform of the U.S. Immigration Courts which Trump and Sessions have utterly and cynically destroyed should also be on the agenda. There is only one answer: get those courts out of the politicized and incompetent U.S. Department of Justice and into an independent judicial structure where apolitical judges and professional court administrators can start fixing the absolutely disgraceful and dysfunctional mess that Sessions and his predecessors have made out of what could have been an effective and efficient provider of Due Process. Too late now! Just stop the hemorrhaging and start building something of which America can actually be proud rather than the current national embarrassment, which serves neither the individuals whose rights it was intended to protect nor legitimate DHS enforcement objectives. That’s the very definition of failure.

The Post and other mainstream media keep pushing a “false equivalency” in blaming “both sides” for the shutdown. That’s not true; the shutdown was engineered solely by Trump and the GOP BEFORE the Dems even took over the House, just as Trump had publicly and petulantly threatened.

While the Dems should look for ways to be part of the solution, the problem is Trump, the GOP, and those enablers who continue to support a fundamentally anti-American agenda that attacks our own governing institutions and the dedicated public servants who keep them running for all of us.

Every day must be a great day for Vladimir Putin with Trump and the GOP destroying America! It’s time for Dems and whatever responsible GOP legislators might remain to take the reins and save America from Trump and his Putin-serving policies before it’s too late! “Time’s a wasting” while Trump and the GOP are fiddling with our country’s security and future well-being. Unacceptable!

PWS

01-23-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories

TRUMP’S “OFFER” MIGHT WELL BE A STUNT – BUT, IT’S ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE DEMS TO STEP UP, SAVE LIVES, AND GOVERN RESPONSIBLY – They Should Make A Counterproposal – Here’s The “SMARTS Act Of 2019!”

There are opposing “schools of thought” on Trump’s latest immigration statement. For example, the LA Times says it another “Trump stunt to shift blame” that the Dems should resist.  https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-trump-shutdown-daca-20190119-story.html

Makes sense.

 

On the other hand, the Washington Post says that notwithstanding Trump’s annoying tactics, it’s an opportunity to reopen the Government and save the Dreamers that the Dems should pursue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/make-a-deal-to-help-the-real-people-behind-the-rhetoric/2019/01/19/f5b18866-1c17-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.5b08d589dfa9

Also makes sense.

 

I understand the Dems reluctance to enable Trump’s “hostage taking” strategy. But, I doubt they can solve that with Trump and the GOP controlling two of the three political arms of Government.

 

Indeed, a better idea would be for Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader McConnell to get together “when the smoke clears” and see what they can do jointly to take back and fix the bipartisan Congressional budget process and protect it from overreach by Executives of both parties.  For two of the major legislative “gurus” of our age in the twilight of their careers, that would be a great “bipartisan legacy.”

 

But, for the time being, folks are suffering, and lives are in danger: Government employees, those that depend on Government, asylum applicants, Dreamers, TPSers, those in Immigration Court, and the families of all of the foregoing. So, I think the Dems should make a “robust” counterproposal that gives Trump at least part of his “Wall,” but also includes other important reforms and improvements that will diminish the impact of border migration issues in the future. Most important, almost everything in this proposal would save or improve some human lives and benefit America in the short and long run.

 

So, here’s my outline of the “SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019”

 

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

 

  • Federal Employees
    • Restart the Government
    • Retroactive pay raise

 

  • Enhanced Border Security
    • Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”
    • Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers
    • Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff
    • Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors
    • Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs
    • Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS
    • Anything else in the Senate Bill that both parties agree upon

 

  • Humanitarian Assistance
    • Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers
    • Prohibit family separation
    • Funding for alternatives to detention
    • Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues
    • Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

 

  • Asylum Process
    • Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

 

  • Immigration Court Improvements
    • Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants
    • Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs
    • Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications
    • Vacate Matter of Castro-Tumand reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases
    • Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”
    • Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances
    • Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts
    • Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings
    • Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal
    • Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days
    • Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members
    • Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction
    • Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year
    • Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”
    • Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied
    • Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

 

  • International Cooperation
    • Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.
    • Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

 

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

No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

 

PWS

01-20-19

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

GEORGE WILL @ WASHPOST: AMERICA’S “CLOWN PRINCE” 🤡

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-a-misery-it-must-be-to-be-donald-trump/2019/01/18/d0e05eea-1a82-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html

George Will writes:

Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which is even worse.

If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that is, the United States is nothing but an economy — then the state of the union is good. Except that after two years of unified government under the party that formerly claimed to care about fiscal facts and rectitude, the nation faces a $1 trillion deficit during brisk growth and full employment. Unless the president has forever banished business cycles — if he has, his modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it — the next recession will begin with gargantuan deficits, which will be instructive.

The president has kept his promise not to address the unsustainable trajectory of the entitlement state (about the coming unpleasant reckoning, he said: “Yeah, but I won’t be here”), and his party’s congressional caucuses have elevated subservience to him into a political philosophy. The Republican-controlled Senate — the world’s most overrated deliberative body — will not deliberate about, much less pass, legislation the president does not favor. The evident theory is that it would be lèse-majesté for the Senate to express independent judgments.

And that senatorial dignity is too brittle to survive the disapproval of a president not famous for familiarity with actual policies. Congressional Republicans have their ears to the ground — never mind Winston Churchill’s observation that it is difficult to look up to anyone in that position.

The president’s most consequential exercise of power has been the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opening the way for China to fill the void of U.S. involvement. His protectionism — government telling Americans what they can consume, in what quantities and at what prices — completes his extinguishing of the limited-government pretenses of the GOP, which needs an entirely new vocabulary. Pending that, the party is resorting to crybaby conservatism: We are being victimized by “elites,” markets, Wall Street, foreigners, etc.

After 30 years of U.S. diplomatic futility regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the artist of the deal spent a few hours in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, then tweeted: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” What price will the president pay — easing sanctions? ending joint military exercises with South Korea? — in attempts to make his tweet seem less dotty?

Opinion | Trump owns the Republican Party, and there’s no going back

President Trump has irreversibly changed the Republican Party. The upheaval might seem unusual, but political transformations crop up throughout U.S. history. (Adriana Usero, Danielle Kunitz, Robert Gebelhoff/The Washington Post)

By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper, always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front of them.

Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.

Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive as his indifference to expanding their numbers.

Either the electorate, bored with a menu of faintly variant servings of boorishness, or the 22nd Amendment will end this, our shabbiest but not our first shabby presidency. As Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Dean Howells stepped outside together one morning, a downpour began and Howells asked, “Do you think it will stop?” Twain replied, “It always has.”

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

Stripped of its detracting “jabs at the opposition” and the “obligatory swat” at the essential safety net that actually keeps America functioning, even in tough political times like these, Will largely has Trump “pegged.” As others and I have said, the Trump Administration is “Kakistocracy in action.”

But, what took you so long, George, to “get religion?” For years, the GOP has been pushing a “soulless,” intentionally divisive, program of “beggar thy neighbor” and promoting the “worst in America.”

It’s not like equally sad and unfit GOP politicos such as Steve King, Tom Trancedo, Roy Moore, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach, Corey Stewart, and Stephen Miller just “hatched” during the Trump regime. Trump is the logical outcome of a “valueless conservatism” that has embraced some of the vilest individuals and ideas in modern American political history in a (somewhat successful) minority attempt to seize power from the majority of Americans and to govern against the overall public interest.

No surprise that a party bankrupt of both constructive conservative ideas and morality should end up installing a sad an unqualified character like Trump as its “Supreme Leader.” Trumpism is deeply rooted in modern American conservatism, not the “compassionate” kind of Bush I (which unfortunately was “DOA” within the party) but the vile brand that glosses over its racial and class overtones and its erroneous conception that the rich have every right to loot America and leave the crumbs to everyone else.

Yes, I think that America needs and deserves a credible “conservative movement” to engage in an honest governing dialogue with the Democrats. What might that conservative movement look like:

  • Constructive concern about runaway deficits and borrowing from the PRC;
  • Recognition of the threat that Russia and the PRC are to America’s future;
  • Commitment to secular governing principles (perhaps embodying, but not improperly favoring, some religious values) and support of  the rights of all covered by our Constitution regardless of status;
  • Encouraging and enabling all qualified Americans to vote;
  • Congress retaking the authority to declare war and pass budgets and restricting Executive overreach (by both parties) in these areas;
  • Prudence in entering into future “foreign military adventures;”
  • A robust, effective, and efficient national defense that is held accountable for expenditures, strategies, and results;
  • Maintenance, funding, improvements, and accountability mechanisms for adequate safety net programs including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare;
  • An end to unnecessary tax breaks for the rich that strip the U.S. Treasury of necessary revenues without advancing any national agenda;
  • An end to “Government shutdown” forever and a pledge to respect the contributions of “America’s Crown Jewel:” our nonpartisan, professional, honest Civil Service;
  • Return of some authority to states, not as a device for “bogus” budget savings and to screw the poor and minorities, but to recognize and take advantage of areas where states are committed to actually funding and carrying out programs that produce better (not just cheaper) results than the Feds can;
  • Much more robust legal immigration and refugee acceptance programs;
  • A sharp reduction in wasteful funding for Federal detention of all kinds (including immigration detention) and the mandated use of alternatives that will work and benefit society;
  • Encouraging educational and economic development initiatives by the private sector in economically depressed areas (such as the Midwest and Appalachia) ;
  • Encouraging a robust trade agenda that provides mutual benefits to both the U.S. and our trading partners.

That would involve not only ditching Trump, but also abandoning the racially charged, fiscally wasteful, White Nationalist agendas that drive both him and his base and committing to governing in the public interest — in and of itself a key conservative principle.

We need an end to the “Clown Kakistocracy.”  And, that will require some honest conservative support by a “new conservative” movement. I doubt that it can be headed by Trump sycophant, xenophobic enabler, and far right religious bigot Veep Mike Pence. Perhaps, however, folks like George have a constructive role to play in fashioning, inspiring, and leading it!

PWS

01-21-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  3. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

COLBERT I. KING @ WASHPOST: NATION IN REGRESSION: Trump & His White Nationalist Flunkies Are An Insult To All That Rev. Martin Luther King & His Supporters, Of All Races & Religions Stood For! — From the promise of guaranteed rights to a return to the insecurity of injustice. A pluralistic America is being cynically drawn along racial lines by a president who is as far from the civility of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama as the charter of the Confederacy was from the Constitution.” — But, The New Due Process Army Continues MLK’s Legacy!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/martin-luther-king-jr-would-be-outraged/2019/01/18/e4a7b4c6-1a75-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html

Colby King writes:

. . . .

The greatest contrast between the time King led the struggle for America’s legal and social transformation and now is a White House occupied by Donald Trump.

There is a long list of ways in which backtracking on civil and human rights has occurred since the election of a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. It ranges from discriminatory travel bans against Muslims to turning a federal blind eye to intentionally racially discriminatory state voter-suppression schemes, to opposing protections for transgender people, to inhumanely separating children from families seeking to enter the country.

Sadly, that’s not all that stands out.

Once the federal locus of the nation’s quest for racial reconciliation, today’s White House is a source of racial divisiveness and a beacon to the prejudice-warped fringes of American society. It’s no surprise that the FBI found hate crimes in America rose 17 percent in 2017, the third consecutive year that such crimes increased. In King’s day, racially loaded, hateful rhetoric could be heard across the length and breadth of the Deep South. Now, mean, disgusting and inflammatory words come out of the mouth of the president of the United States.

From the promise of guaranteed rights to a return to the insecurity of injustice. A pluralistic America is being cynically drawn along racial lines by a president who is as far from the civility of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama as the charter of the Confederacy was from the Constitution.

King, and the movement he led, would be outraged. The rest of us should be, too.

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

Read the full op-ed at the above link.

Very powerful! King speaks truth, reason, and humanity — in the spirit of Dr. King. Contrast that with the vile slurs, bogus race-baiting narratives, and non-policies spewing from the mouth of our racist (and incompetent) Liar/Grifter-in-Chief!

Two of my favorite MLK quotes (from the Letter from the Birmingham Jail — with acknowledgment to the Legal Aid and Justice Center from their poster hanging in my “office”)):

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Thanks to those many courageous and dedicated individuals tirelessly serving America in the New Due Process Army by resisting Trump’s illegal and anti-American policies! You, indeed, are the 21st Century continuation of Dr. King’s legacy to our country and the world! Dr. King would be proud of you! Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-21-19

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: HIS HIGHLY DISINGENUOUS “TRIBUTE” TO DR. KING WHILE ACTIVELY UNDERMINING MLK’S VISION OF RACIAL EQUALITY IN AMERICA OUTRAGES CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATES! — Hollow Words From An Empty Man!
  3. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!