🦸🏻‍♂️ HISTORY: CAPTAIN FRANCIS “FRANK” FOLEY WASN’T A “GO ALONG TO GET ALONG BUREAUCRAT” — He Saved 10,000 Lives! 😇

 

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William Samuel de Spretter

William Samuel is an accomplished citizen writer publishing with a specific focus on current affairs and military history.

De Spretter writes on Linkedin:

When asked in 1922 what his priorities would be if elected chancellor of Germany, then up-and-coming National Socialist leader, Adolf Hitler, answered candidly: 

“Once I’m really in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”

Proclaiming with vitriolic zeal, they’d be “hanged indiscriminately… until all of Germany has been completely cleansed of Jewry”, German Jews, understandably, had no desire to remain when he assumed the chancellorship in 1933…

In desperate hopes of securing safe passage to their ancestral homeland – Eretz Israel – tens of thousands flocked to the British embassy; only to be told on arrival there, “strict limits” had been imposed on the quota of Jews who’d be granted entry. 

Although, sadly, the fate of most was thus sealed, countless more would have suffered the same had it not been for the defiant courage of Britain’s Vice-Consul, then-Captain Francis “Frank” Foley. 

As a man who, in reality, was using his position as a cover for his long-serving role as an MI6 spymaster, Frank’s intelligence gathering had long confirmed that Hitler’s threats against the Jewish people were far from “empty rhetoric”.

For that reason, Frank was “quite unwilling to toe the line with London…”

Instead, he didn’t just “tear up the rulebook” that dictated whom he could issue lifesaving visas to but, when the “Kristallnacht” pogrom of 1938 was unleashed, he even transformed his place of residence into a safe haven for Jewish families.  

From the “Night of Broken Glass” onwards, the number of Jews filing for immigration visas increased dramatically; but still, Frank’s superiors refused to ease the stringent requirements that prevented him from granting them. 

Once again, therefore, he not only decided to “bend the rules” by easing them himself but, when he then received an official reprimand for his brave “contravention”, Frank doubled down on his rescue efforts by forging passports for Germany’s beleaguered Jewish citizens. 

Despite being fully aware that no level of diplomatic immunity would protect him if the Gestapo had uncovered his clandestine activities, Frank persevered regardless, with no fear or concern for his personal safety. 

In so doing, he enabled no fewer than 10,000 Jews to flee Hitler’s Reich; and yet, humble man that he was, Frank never spoke of his selfless deeds during his lifetime…

Incredibly, it was only after his passing, in May 1958, that his heroic exploits were revealed by his beloved wife, Katherine; and, it wasn’t until over four decades later, on this day in 1999, that he was deservedly recognized for having saved so many Jewish lives. 

Honored as a posthumous Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, the latter paid tribute to Frank – “the British Schindler” –  by describing him as “a man of great faith and conviction…”

Indeed, “as a deeply devout Christian, Frank did nothing more than act upon his sense of justice and compassion.”

#WeRemember

Captain Francis “Frank” FoleySOURCE: Linkedin
Captain Francis “Frank” Foley
SOURCE: Linkedin

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Inspiring and timely piece of history. Thanks to Samuel for posting this on LinkedIn!

What if 600 bureaucrats had each made it their business to save 10,000 lives? The course of history would have been changed.

This is worth keeping in mind as our leaders of both parties and the immigration bureaucracy make “bullying the most vulnerable” and dehumanizing asylum seekers their daily mission. And, they brag about their cruelty and intention to violate laws in even more deadly ways! What if the same amount of effort were devoted to addressing humanitarian crises and saving lives?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-27-24

☠️🤮🤯 ‼️🆘 WARNING: TRUMP GOES “FULL HITLER” IN HATEFUL, UNHINGED VETERANS’ DAY RANT! — Why Aren’t The “Mainstream Media” & U.S. Voters Takng This Assault On Humanity, Decency & Democracy Seriously! 🤯

Hitler
How soon we forget the horrors of 1939, at our own peril!
Public Realm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/

By Marianne LeVine

November 12, 2023 at 5:45 p.m. ET

Former president Donald Trump denigrated his domestic opponents and critics during a Veterans Day speech Saturday, calling those on the other side of the aisle “vermin” and suggesting that they pose a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China or North Korea. That language is drawing rebuke from historians, who compared it to that of authoritarian leaders.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

Trump went on further to state: “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us.”

The former president’s speech in Claremont, N.H., echoed his message of vengeance and grievance, as he called himself a “very proud election denier” and decried his legal entanglements, once again attacking the judge in a New York civil trial and re-upping his attacks on special counsel Jack Smith. In the speech, Trump once again portrayed himself as a victim of a political system that is out to get him and his supporters.

Yet Trump’s use of the word “vermin” both in his speech and in a Truth Social post on Saturday drew particular backlash.

“The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

“Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians ‘communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left’ to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom,” Ben-Ghiat said. “Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”

. . . .

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Doubt the comparison? Check this out:

Nazi propaganda and “vermin”

In 1942, Adolf Hitler described Jews living in Germany as an “inferior race that multiplies like vermin.”

“The Nazis dehumanized the Jews. Nazi propaganda is replete with references to Jews as vermin, rats or parasites,” according to Harriet Over, a researcher in psychology at the University of York.

We are still creating [monsters]. We see it in … Russian attitudes toward Ukrainians, in Hindu Islamophobia, and in American racism against Black people,” psychologist David Livingstone, a professor at the University of New England in Maine, told EL PAÍS.

It wasn’t just Germany.

In 1909, a U.S. satirical magazine, Puck, published a cartoon that showed Uncle Sam as a pied piper leading a group of immigrants from Europe. The immigrants were rats. Sending them off: smiling, well-dressed White men.

. . . .

https://themoderatevoice.com/trump-channels-hate-and-hitler-in-veterans-day-speech-tells-supporters-those-others-are-vermin/

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I appreciate that Marianne LeVine of WashPost was one of the few “mainstream journalists” with the guts to make the painfully obvious connection and comparison between Trump’s insane threats and Hitler, Mussolini, and other horrible dictators!

Marianne LeVine
Marianne LeVine
Political Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: WashPost

Even so, it was only “page 2” news in today’s Post, apparently being of far less concern to her editors than the plans of Middle Eastern countries to “upend global sports!” Harkens back to 1936, when participating in Hitler’s “Aryan Showcase Olympics” was more important to the U.S. and other Western Democracies than protesting and condemning Hitler’s ongoing persecution of Jews!

There was a time in the not too distant past when use of racist, neo-Nazi language like Trump’s would have earned an immediate forceful condemnation from politicians across the political spectrum, from the media, and would have ended a candidacy. Now, it’s “just another day at the office.” Hate, lies, racism, and threats by a powerful national politician, a former President no less, cause barely a ripple in our national political dialogue. Not even front page news! Not covered at all by most “legitimate” news outlets! Yet the threat to our nation is real! Very real!

And, in case anyone still doubts the existential threat to American democracy and civilization itself posed by Trump and his anti-American followers, his “plans” include politicization of government, economic chaos, increasing global warming, and destabilization of the U.S. and world economies. See, e.g., http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=019284ab-7357-40c1-91c7-112654eb687a.

Deranged, false claims of being a “victim,” turning vengeance into a “holy quest,” dehumanizing enemies, uber race-based nationalism, presenting personal grievances as national priorities, and complete disregard for the common good were staples of Hitler’s National Socialism as they are of Trumpism! The question remains whether the U.S. will be able to stand up for democracy, reject Trumpism, and prevent a return to the horrific time of 1939! See alsohttps://immigrationcourtside.com/just-say-no-to-1939-how-judges-can-save-lives-uphold-the-convention-and-maintain-integrity-in-the-age-of-overt-governmental-bias-toward-refugees-and-asylum-seekers/.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-13-23

🏴‍☠️☠️ THE RIGHT IS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICA! — TRUMP, HENCHMEN, PLANNING “NAZIFACATION” INCLUDING CONCENTRATION CAMPS, MASS DEPORTATIONS, SUSPENSION OF CONSTITUTION, STRIPPING CITIZENSHIP! – Immigrants & Muslims Will Be First Targets, But Not Last!

Concentration Camp
Gate at Dachau
Creative Commons
Trump and his White Nationalist supporters have a grim, dark vision of America’s future! Will this be the end of our democracy?

Steve Schmidt on Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/steveschmidt/p/when-fascism-comes-to-america-it?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Christian nationalism is a grave threat to the United States and the American republic. There should be no ambiguity or dullness when it comes to understanding what it is — no matter how benign it may present itself. It is what lurks beyond the veneer that is terrifying. There, the evil is revealed and manifested.

The dogma is a perversion of Christ’s teachings that is antithetical to Christianity. More importantly, Christian nationalism is utterly opposed to democracy. Theocrats despise the United States. God‘s laws are beyond the reach of the American state, and Christianity is but one religion in the beautiful mosaic of American faith.  It should always be noted that 600 generations of humans worshipped freely on the North American continent before the first European Christians came and killed them.

The US Constitution is the law of the land in the United States. Within it are the protections that safeguard our liberty. The freedoms of speech, dissent, conscience, worship and expression shall stand untroubled for as long as the great republic endures. We are within one calendar year of its possible end. We have arrived at a moment of grave crisis that cannot be ignored. The abyss that looked distant seven years ago is at hand.

Christian nationalism is incompatible with American democracy and pluralism. When political extremists take power in the name of God there is always death. Always.

I was pleased to participate in “American Theocracy: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” a documentary released in January 2023. Please watch this clip below. I have shared it before, but the fire keeps building.

The separation of church and state and religious freedom are profoundly important foundational achievements of the American republic. The extremists who seek power in God’s name are not benign men and women. They won’t be deterred by setbacks in Ohio and other places. They are on the march, and they are demanding power whether it is handed to them or not.

I want you to read these words from yesterday’s The New York Times that make clear Donald Trump’s plans:

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.

Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

Let’s call these giant detention and deportation camps what they are intended to be. These are concentration camps. Specifically, they are to be American concentration camps. Dachau was the Nazis’ first camp in Germany.

What will the first American camp look like? There will no doubt be a first, and it will likely be the first to house the political prisoners rounded up under Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act. He has promised to invoke it at the instant he returns to power.

Please understand this: Trump is announcing his intentions. He means it. He is surrounded by scores of “little Eichmanns” ready to help him achieve his aims. He should be taken literally and seriously at all times.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is second in line to the presidency. He rejects the greatest American idea in history, which is the separation of church and state. The greatest American invention — the peaceful transition of power — is utterly dependent on the separation of church and state in this country.

Johnson denied the 2020 election results, lied about the election results, created the conditions for the insurrection of January 6th, voted to disenfranchise millions of Black votes after the insurrection and continues to insist Trump won the election, despite the claim being a combination of fraud, malice and weapons-grade nuttery. The hostility to democracy is deeply rooted within his religious fanaticism, which is unique amongst the various strains of fanatical faith that have always found a home in America because of our nation’s unique faith protections.

We have churches where people pick up rattlesnakes and kiss them to prove they are protected by God. Proof of sin is a bite to the face and a painful death. Bo and Peep of Heaven’s Gate convinced their followers that they were headed to the Hale-Bopp comet, and Jim Jones took his flock to doom in Guyana. There are cults and fundamentalists all over America, but there is only one strain that wants to control your life by controlling the powers of the state to administer God’s law. They are the American Taliban.

Mike Johnson has invented his own distorted version of history as if the events of the late 1780s-90s occurred 6,000 years ago.

The American Constitution is clear about the founders’ intentions and their descendants’ actions to preserve and expand those intentions. There is no room for theocracy in the American system. It was rejected at hour one. The desire to impose it on all of us by a man who believes people and dinosaurs co-existed at the beginning of time 6,000 years ago is never going to happen…or is it?

The most important thing to understand about theocrats is that they view political power as being mandated by God. In fact, many fanatics across America believe Donald Trump has been sent by him, and his opponents are demonically-inspired.

. . . .

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We can’t ignore the very real threat that Trump and his GOP followers present to our democracy. Now is NOT the time for Democrats and independents to “go soft” on human rights and immigrants’ rights!

While not highlighted by Steve Schmidt (no relation) the NYT quote above, one of Trump’s initiatives will be to instruct Administration officials to violate the 14th Amendment by denying citizenship to those born in the U.S. based on their parents’ status! USG officials must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but apparently Trump just plans to summarily fire any public servant who will not submit to his unconstitutional plan!

Those considering abandoning Biden because of his support for Israel should recognize the alternative — a rabidly anti-Muslim authoritarian bigot (who, ironically, has also been soft on those expressing anti-semitism and other purveyors of hate) who would happily try to punish them just for existing! See e.g., https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-gaza-israel-policy-trump-contrast_n_654eb574e4b0c9f246602f16.

Those who think that immigrants will be the only victims of Trump’s “Christian White Nationalism” should be clear about what the future would hold for almost all groups of “others” under his promised neo-fascist regime. See, e.g., https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trans-kids-flee-united-states-safety_n_654c44c7e4b088d9a74d2028.

It’s worth remembering that one of the first actions of Hitler’s Third Reich was to strip Jews of their German citizenship, a move that the complicit German judiciary approved and enthusiastically implemented! Who would have thought that nearly 90 years later, we would have a major American political party in thrall to a self-proclaimed fascist demagogue!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-12-23

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️ GOP WHITE NATIONALIST THEOCRACY THREATENS AMERICA, STARTING @ BORDER! — “Worthy of Goebbels!” — “[N]othing new. . . . It’s called fascism.” — “America’s Orbans” Undermine Liberal Democracy, Promote Illiberalism!”

Melissa Del Bosque
Melissa Del Bosque
Border Reporter
PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.com

https://substack.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.Rwn0xJ7gMZxpR5nks4NIo58FlfZsCsJm972lF9tcKws?

Melissa Del Bosque writes in the Border Chronicle:

. . . .

While this might seem uniquely cruel, Abbott is closely following the authoritarian playbook of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, and current European thought leader for MAGA Republicans. Donald Trump calls Orbán a friend, and White supremacist Tucker Carlson spent a week covering him for his former show on Fox, later making a “documentary” about Hungary called Hungary vs. Soros: Fight for Civilization. For the last two years, the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference, founded in the U.S., has held a “Woke Free Zone” conference in Budapest.

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By studying Orbán’s crackdown on asylum seekers and its progression over the last several years, you can see exactly where Abbott’s Texas is headed (and DeSantis’s Florida, for that matter).

In a speech in July 2022, Orbán argued that European and non-European people should not mix. Europeans “do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” he said. After the speech, one of Orbán’s longtime advisers quit in protest. “I don’t know how you didn’t notice that you were presenting a pure Nazi text worthy of Goebbels,” his adviser wrote in her public resignation letter. Orbán’s speech was widely condemned in Europe, and it further alienated him from other Western leaders.

But in Texas, just days after his speech “worthy of Goebbels,” Orbán was welcomed with a standing ovation at the CPAC conference in Dallas, where he touted his “zero migration” and Judeo-Christian nationalism. “The globalists can all go to hell,” he boasted. “I have come to Texas.”

On the same CPAC stage that day, Abbott followed with similar xenophobic talking points. He bragged about Operation Lone Star and encouraged conference-goers to donate to a state-run website to pay for bussing migrants out of Texas. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick echoed Orbán’s White Christian nationalism: “The framers did not write the Constitution,” he said. “God wrote the Constitution. We are a Christian nation.”

. . . .

Unsurprisingly, Orbán’s cruel tactics against asylum seekers, which have included kidnappings and beatings, do not deter people from coming. They are fleeing wars, after all. But Orbán has used his poisonous populism to solidify his power, just as Abbott and DeSantis are trying to do. It began with asylum seekers in 2015, but now in Hungary there is no independent media or judiciary, and the LGBTQ community and immigrants have become targets for persecution as the prime minister has consolidated his control over the government. Antisemitism is also on the rise.

This is the playbook that MAGA Republicans are following in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere. We already know how it ends. Orbán’s “illiberal democracy,” which is being lionized by Trump, Abbott, and others, is nothing new. In fact, it’s very old. It’s called fascism.

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Read Melissa’s complete article at the link. Nearly 80 years after the fall of the Nazi regime, Hitler’s hateful, racist, virulently anti-Semitic views are alive and well in today’s GOP. Even in Texas, a Federal Judge had no time for Abbott’s racist/absurdist claim of “invasion.” https://linkst.dallasnews.com/click/32480676.167870/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFsbGFzbmV3cy5jb20vbmV3cy9wb2xpdGljcy8yMDIzLzA4LzIyL2ZlZGVyYWwtanVkZ2UtcmVqZWN0cy10ZXhhcy1taWdyYW50LWludmFzaW9uLWRlZmVuc2UtaW4tZG9qLWxhd3N1aXQtb3Zlci1ib3JkZXItYnVveXMvP3NhaWx0aHJ1X2lkPTYyNjgxMjQyNGY3NTdmNjRiYWUyYWEzMg/626812424f757f64bae2aa32C5a2af025.

This is NOT a “normal” American political party!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever, White Nationalism, Never!

PWS

08-23-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽 THE 14TH AMENDMENT IS A GENIUS 🧠 PROVISION THAT IS AT THE  HEART OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY — That’s Why White Nativist Racists Like Trump, DeSantis, & Their GOP Supporters Are Baselessly Attacking It! 🏴‍☠️🤮 — Jamelle Bouie in The NY Times! — “If birthright citizenship is the constitutional provision that makes a multiracial democracy of equals possible, then it is no wonder that it now lies in the cross hairs of men who lead a movement devoted to unraveling that particular vision of the American republic.”

Ron DeSantis Dave Grandlund PoliticalCartoons.com Republished under license Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago!
Ron DeSantis
Dave Grandlund
PoliticalCartoons.com
Republished under license
Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago!
Jamelle Bouie
Jamelle Bouie
Columnist
NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/opinion/birthright-citizenship-trump-desantis.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Jamelle concludes:

. . . .

The birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, based on similar language found in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, was a direct response to and a rebuke of [chief Justice] Taney’s reasoning [in Dred Scott]. Having won the argument on the battlefield, the United States would amend its Constitution to establish an inclusive and, in theory, egalitarian national citizenship.

The authors of the 14th Amendment knew exactly what they were doing. In a country that had already seen successive waves of mass immigration, they knew that birthright citizenship would extend beyond Black and white Americans to people of other hues and backgrounds. That was the point.

Asked by an opponent if the clause would “have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country,” Senator Lyman Trumbull, who helped draft the language of birthright citizenship in the Civil Rights Act, replied “Undoubtedly.” Senator John Conness of California said outright that he was “ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.”

In 1867, around the time Congress was debating and formulating the 14th Amendment, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech in Boston where he outlined his vision of a “composite nationality,” an America that stood as a beacon for all peoples, built on the foundation of an egalitarian republic. “I want a home here not only for the Negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours,” Douglass said. “The outspread wings of the American Eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.”

If birthright citizenship is the constitutional provision that makes a multiracial democracy of equals possible, then it is no wonder that it now lies in the cross hairs of men who lead a movement devoted to unraveling that particular vision of the American republic.

Embedded in birthright citizenship, in other words, is the potential for a freer, more equal America. For Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, that appears to be the problem.

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Read the rest of Jamelle’s outstanding article and get the real story about the 14th Amendment. It has nothing to do with the racist lies and distortions spewed forth by Trump, DeSantis, and their fellow GOP white supremacists!

As we know, Congress has failed to address the realities of immigration since the enactment of IRCA in 1986. That has inevitably led to a large, disenfranchised population of undocumented residents — essential members of our society, yet deprived of political power and the ability to reach their full potential by their “status.” Consequently, they are  subject to exploitation.

Nevertheless, this phenomenon would be much more serious without the “genius of the 14th Amendment.” Notwithstanding the failure of the political branches to address immigration in a realistic manner, the overwhelming number of the “next generation” of that underground population are now full U.S. citizens with the ability to participate in our political system and otherwise assert their full rights in our society.

Thus, because of the 14th Amendment we have avoided the highly problematic phenomenon of generations of disenfranchised Americans, essentially “stateless individuals,” forced into an underground existence. It’s not that these individuals born in the U.S., who have known no other country, would be going anywhere else, by force or voluntarily. Nor would it be in our best interests to degrade, dehumanize, and exclude generations of our younger fellow citizens as Trump, DeSantis, and the GOP far right extremist crazies advocate.

Additionally, in contradiction of traditional GOP dogma about limited government, the Trump/DeSantis charade would spawn a huge new and powerful “citizenship determining bureaucracy” that almost certainly would work against the poor, vulnerable, and individuals of color in deciding who “belongs” and who doesn’t and what documentation suffices. How many adult American citizens today who have deceased parents could readily produce definitive documentation of their parents’ citizenship?

So, notwithstanding GOP intransigence, their vile and baseless attacks on the 14th Amendment, and the lack of political will to solve and harness the realities and power of human immigration, the 14th Amendment is at work daily, solving much of the problem for us and making us a better nation, sometimes in spite of our Government’s actions or inactions. And, it performs this essential service in a manner that is relatively transparent and minimally bureaucratic for most. 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-01-23

😇🙏🏽SANCTUARY, A TIME-HONORED ANTIDOTE TO CRUELTY & STUPIDITY, PUTS AMERICA’S 🇺🇸🗽BEST FOOT FORWARD 👏: “It means treating [migrants] like humans in need rather than pawns.”

MATTHEW 25
Holy card ( 1899 ) showing an illustration to the Gospel of Matthew 25, 34-36 – rear side of an obituary.
Wolfgang Sauber
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-21/la-ed-sanctuary-cities

From the L.A. Times Editorial Board:

Editorial: Sanctuary cities are working just fine, thank you

When Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida bused and flew migrants to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other so-called “sanctuary cities,” they might have envisioned they were exporting the same chaos as border states have experienced as they grapple with a historic number of migrants. They wanted leaders in these cities to admit they were wrong about their immigrant-friendly policies.

Earlier this month, Abbott sent migrants on a bus to Los Angeles. And DeSantis has admitted he dispatched migrants on two chartered flights to Sacramento a few days earlier, luring them with false promises of housing, shelter and legal help.

But Abbott and DeSantis are mistaken if they think they are teaching cities with sanctuary polices any lessons with their inhumane political stunts or causing their leaders to rethink their commitment to not treating migrants as criminals.

Those governors and their political allies also seem to be confused about what it means when cities have sanctuary policies. Though policies vary, providing sanctuary means not turning migrants over to federal immigration authorities simply for being in the country illegally. It means treating them like humans in need rather than pawns.

OPINION

Editorial: Migrants flown to Sacramento are human beings, not political pawns

June 5, 2023

That’s what leaders in Los Angeles, Sacramento and other “sanctuary cities” did as buses and planes dumped dozens of tired and often confused migrants on their doorsteps in recent months. They rallied attention and resources, while religious and other nonprofit organizations stepped up to welcome the migrants with shelter, food and clothes. In some instances, these migrants have even found temporary jobs, illustrating the need for their labor.

Abbott and DeSantis may also not realize that sanctuary policies were designed to help law enforcement keep communities safe. Sanctuary policies were developed because police in many cities such as Los Angeles were frustrated because undocumented immigrants were not reporting crimes or stepping forward as witnesses for fear of deportation.

Critics say these sanctuary cities have laws and policies that shield criminals and obstruct federal immigration policies. But cities with sanctuary policies have lower than average crime rates, higher household incomes and lower poverty rates, according to various studies.

Local authorities did not refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, as critics claim. They simply limited the role of local law enforcement in immigration cases, for example, by not using local police to do immigration checks or by not holding an undocumented immigrant in custody for a few extra days to serve federal authorities’ schedules.

OPINION

Editorial: There’s a crisis at the border all right, but one created by political posturing

Sept. 20, 2022

Los Angeles is in the midst of transitioning from a “city of sanctuary” to “sanctuary city.” The difference is more than just semantics. The former designation is little more than a statement by city leaders in 2017 that they opposed then-President Trump’s dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies, which included separating young children from their parents. Some of those children have yet to be reunited with their parents years later. Earlier this month, the City Council voted to strengthen the policy by banning city personnel or resources from being used for immigration enforcement.

It’s true that the transports of migrants by the Texas and Florida governors have been inconvenient to cities such as Washington and New York, which have had to scramble to find housing and other resources. But they haven’t done a thing to undermine the foundation on which sanctuary policies were built.

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The money wasted by these GOP nativist neo-fascists could much better be spent on coordinated efforts to help asylum seekers to help themselves and our nation in the process. Obviously, GOP states like Florida and Texas have money to  burn. 

Also, to the extent that cities “targeted” by these GOP White Nationalist Governors have persevered in the face of  attempts to sow chaos, it has been largely without the coordination, guidance, and leadership of the Biden Administration. Seems like that should be “low hanging fruit” for progressive Democrats to change!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!  

PWS

06-25-23

😎⚖️🗽 REAL LEADERSHIP SPEAKS: “[T]he promises that nations made after World War II to respect the dignity and rights of those who are fleeing have been eroded and now, on a practical level, forgotten,” says Anna M. Gallagher, Executive Director of Catholic Legal Immigraton Network (“CLINIC”)!

Anna Marie Gallagher, Esquire
Anna Marie Gallagher, Esquire
Executive Director
CLINIC
PHOTO: CLINIC website

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Executive Director Opening Plenary Remarks CLINIC Convening 2023
May 17, 2023

Good afternoon, dear friends. My name is Anna Gallagher and I have the honor of leading CLINIC as executive director. It is such a pleasure to be here with you all as we officially begin our first in-person Convening since 2019.

Looking out at the sea of faces in front of me, I am filled with gratitude to finally be able to come together to engage with one another, to listen, learn and gather strength for the work ahead in support of our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Even just being in your presence I feel a sense of renewed hope and energy. I am so looking forward to the next few days, and I am certain that you will be reignited to take on the important work ahead.

In a moment I will welcome our wonderful panel of Affiliate experts, but right now I want to take a moment to recognize this moment we’re facing and my hopes for this year’s CLINIC Convening.

You all, of all people, know that immigrant communities are facing truly unprecedented challenges – and I do not use that word, unprecedented, lightly.

With the lifting of Title 42, and the camps of men, women and children along the border desperate to find welcome on the other side; the proposed USCIS fee increases which threaten to put immigration benefits out of reach for many; the newly announced delays for foreign-born religious workers and special immigrant juveniles; and, perhaps above all, our warming planet and the outbreaks of violence which force many more people to migrate around the world – these are extremely challenging times for migrants in our country and around the world.

Several months ago, the New York Times featured an op-ed that has stuck with me, entitled, “The Rich World Has a Shockingly High Tolerance for Cruelty.”

It was about how rich nations are more willing than ever to let migrants languish at their borders in sub-human conditions rather than create safe pathways for migration or address the conditions causing people to flee.

It was about how the promises that nations made after World War II to respect the dignity and rights of those who are fleeing have been eroded and now, on a practical level, forgotten.

When I read this article, in my mind I was transported back to the time I spent in North Africa several years ago, working with migrants as a representative of Jesuit Refugee Services.

1

I interviewed migrants who had traveled for 18 months or more to try and find safety in these countries bordering Europe. I got to know some of the migrants, who called me “grandma” – a term of endearment, as my hair was grey.

While I was talking to some of them, they showed me their hands, which were scarred with wounds. When I asked them what happened, they said their hands were repeatedly pierced while climbing barbed wire to get through to safety.

Hearing this, my heart broke – as it has many times over the years.

The idea that we are using barbed wire to keep out our fellow human beings is inconceivable, yet true. Our immigrant brothers and sisters stand at our gates, begging for our aid, and we build barbed wire fences that pierce their hands.

Many wealthy nations are founded on a concept of all human beings being equal in dignity, but we do not act like it.

As we gather in Arizona, I know we are all mindful that these kinds of camps that the op-ed author is speaking of are just several hours away on the border. We also know that immigrant communities’ dignity is denied not only in these camps, but all over the country in the various places we’ve come from.

We must be clear, this is not an “other side of the world problem,” it is our problem. It affects all of us, in our integrity as people of faith and conscience, and as a reflection of our society.

And yet today, as I recall that New York Times op-ed, and the sense of frustration and despair I felt while reading it, I feel a surge of hope.

I want you to look around the room. Look at your neighbor to your left and right. YOU are the hope that fills my heart, and YOU are the hope that reignites me in our work.

As we gather here today, I am in a room full of people who DO act like all human beings are equal. Those who spend their precious time – often too much of their time, working long hours – trying to advance the truth that every person is precious, valuable, and deserving of a safe and dignified life.

That’s why being in your presence gives me such hope. I am reminded that the CLINIC network is full of holy people.

That is why our gathering here together, and throughout this week, is so powerful: we are, to borrow the words of Bishop Seitz of El Paso, working to be a “creative counterexample” to the culture of fear and hostility, to be a network that is slowly creating a new culture of solidarity and hospitality.

At CLINIC, we also are bolstered by our faith that we do not do this hard work alone. The spirit of God is inspiring us and pushing us forward, giving us strength and magnifying our efforts, especially when we are overwhelmed by the need in front of us.

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Our faith also acts as a mirror for us, forcing us to keep evaluating whether we are truly reflecting the gospel truth of God’s concern for all people.

To maintain this faith, and to maintain the energy to be this creative counterexample, we need one another. Our network is sustained through the support, advice, and solidarity we demonstrate to one another.

Throughout the next few days, we will take the time to step back, to reflect on our work and learn and share new strategies, information, and tips for the very practical day-to-day work of supporting immigrant clients and communities.

We know that this practical work – the forms, the bureaucracy, the nitty-gritty details – changes and saves lives. So how well we can do it matters, which is why we gather to learn and grow.

We also gather to enjoy one another – to laugh, share stories, and reconnect with beloved colleagues and friends.

So I also hope that over the next few days you will have some fun!

Thank you for coming here to CLINIC Convening and for your dedication to this work. I am so honored to be alongside all of you this week, and all days.

Now, I am pleased to introduce our panelists for our opening plenary, Preparing for the Lifting of Title 42: Key Insights from our Network. When we decided on “reunited and reignited” for our theme this year, we knew we wanted to do something different for our opening conversation.

This “Network Fireside Chat” will be an opportunity to highlight the work done by our network throughout the United States. During this conversation, you’ll hear how Affiliates in three distinct geographical regions are rising to meet the needs of our immigrant and refugee brothers and sisters – especially during this increased time of uncertainty.

From the Border region, Joel Enriquez-Cazarez will share about the work of Jewish Family Service of San Diego.

As a transit city, Carolina Rivera will share how Catholic Charities of Dallas assists our immigrant brothers and sisters.

And Yer Vang from Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Dubuque will give an interior city perspective of welcome.

Now please join me in welcoming our keynote panelists to the stage…

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Thanks, my friend, for a lifetime of service to due process, fundamental fairness, and social justice, and for speaking out as the “powers that be” and the “powers that wannabe” go into cowardly retreat and hide in fear from the needs and rights of humanity! 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-24-23

 

🏴‍☠️☠️ AMERICAN FASCISTS: DeSANTIS & GOP KILLING KIDS, AS FLORIDA TEACHERS VOTE WITH THEIR FEET! — “What the GOP’s vendetta against the LGBTQ community really is, is a classic authoritarian tactic to vilify already marginalized people,” Says Robert Reich!

Nazi Book Burning
Except, perhaps, in Florida and other GOP-controlled “mini-reichs” where hate, censorship, and persecution of vulnerable populations have become official policy! Is this REALLY the way the next generations of Americans want to live and be remembered by history?
PHOTO: Public Realm

How DeSantis and other GOP lawmakers are killing LGBTQ young people

And why they’re doing it

ROBERT REICH
MAY 23

Friends,

Last Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — who is expected to announce his campaign for the presidency as soon as tomorrow — signed a gaggle of bills targeting LGBTQ youth.

In addition to those he had already signed into law — including a “Don’t Say Gay” measure barring teachers from mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity and another prohibiting gender-affirming care — his latest laws expand the state’s prohibition on classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, require that students use bathrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth, prohibit adults from taking children to see drag shows, and bar teachers from asking students about their preferred pronouns.

Another of the bills DeSantis just signed into law allows the state of Florida to take transgender minors away from parents who help them obtain gender-affirming care.

In raging against gender-affirming care, DeSantis lied that “they’re literally chopping off the private parts of young kids.” In fact, genital surgery is rarely, if ever, done under the age of 18. It’s not even all that common for adults. DeSantis is lying about it to scare people.

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Meanwhile, the Republican presidential frontrunner has made it clear that trans people have no place in his vision of America:

“I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concepts of sex and gender transitions at any age. I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

***

My friends, these scare tactics are dangerous. Recent analysis found a 70% increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ Americans between 2020 and 2021, as the surge of these anti-LGBTQ bills began. And that’s only counting hate crimes that get reported. The years 2020 and 2021 each set a new record for the number of trans people murdered in America.

**

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The cruelest irony is that these Republican bills pretending to protect children are putting our most vulnerable children at greater risk.

LGBTQ kids are more than four times likelier than non-LGBTQ kids to attempt suicide, especially transgender young people.

Gender-affirming care reduces that risk. That is why it is life-saving.

“Don’t Say Gay” laws also strip away potentially life-saving support. A teacher who positively and respectfully discusses sexual orientation and gender identity won’t turn a straight kid gay. But such a discussion will make an LGBTQ student 23% less likely to attempt suicide

The tragic truth is that “Don’t Say Gay” laws and bans on gender-affirming care are causing more young lives to be needlessly lost.

Laws that threaten to take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care will cause these young people even more trauma.

If Republicans really cared about protecting kids, they’d focus on gun violence, now the leading cause of death for American children.

If they were really worried about children undergoing life-altering medical procedures, they wouldn’t pass abortion bans that force teens to give birth or risk back-alley procedures.

What the GOP’s vendetta against the LGBTQ community really is, is a classic authoritarian tactic to vilify already marginalized people.

This is how fascism takes root.

We need to see DeSantis’s bills and similar bills signed by Republican governors across the land for what they are — attempts to use bigotry and hate to elevate their political standing.

And we need to see this Republican attack on LGBTQ Americans for what it is: a threat to all of our human rights.

[My thanks to Allan Piper for work on a version of today’s letter.]

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Meanwhile, as Caleb Ecarma reports for Vanity Fair, Florida teachers have had enough:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/florida-education-brain-drain-hitting-schools-hard

. . . .

“For the first time, I’ve actually started talking to my investment guy about retirement,” Michael Woods, a teacher who has spent decades working in exceptional-student education for public schools in South Florida, tells me. “I’m a 30-year veteran who showed up every day, hardly calls in sick, but now I don’t want to be a teacher in Florida.” Most troubling to Woods—a gay man who teaches science and biology courses—is the ballooning list of laws that police classroom material, discriminate against LGBTQ+ educators and students, and restrict sex education. “They’re all so vague,” he says of DeSantis’s new laws. “Even things that used to be easy like human reproduction [for ninth graders], I now have to check with my co-teacher and ask, ‘Is this okay? Are we still allowed to teach this?’”

On Wednesday, the governor rubber-stamped a batch of four bills restricting LGBTQ+ rights and expanding the Parental Rights in Education Act—or, as critics have dubbed it, the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The new measures, which will be enforced at public and charter schools, ban educators from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in pre-K through eighth grade, and place new, vague restrictions on sex education, including that such instructions “be age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

This latest salvo was a bridge too far for many teachers, according to Rebecca Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the US. “I just talked to one teacher yesterday who is leaving and she said, ‘I can’t teach like this,’” Pringle tells me. “‘I can’t teach while worrying that they’re coming after my license, or I’m committing a felony.’ They’re leaving in protest.” Pringle says she has tried to convince teachers to stay in Florida, given the dearth of teachers in the state. But that discussion has been difficult to have, she says, with teachers who are facing death threats or harassment.

Case in point: One fifth-grade teacher in West Florida said this month that she was placed under investigation by the Florida Department of Education for showing her class Disney’s Strange World, a children’s movie that features an openly gay character. Jenna Barbee, the teacher at hand, said she played the film to give students a post-exam “brain break.” But when a local school board member learned of the showing, Barbee said, she was reported to state officials. Barbee told CNN that she had already submitted her resignation before the incident, in protest of the “politics and the fear of not being able to be who you are” in Florida public schools.

It appears that no educator has yet been prosecuted or charged under Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law or its legislation restricting books in schools. But as fears mount over their future implementation, parents are already witnessing the effects of shorthanded schools and overcrowded classrooms. “Last year, I saw several teachers leave, and we had substitutes for three, four months of the year,” says Reagan Miller, a parent in West Florida whose two children attend public school. “We had a teacher who taught advanced math at our middle school for years and years—he just left to go be a 911 operator,” she tells me, “which blows my mind, that becoming a 911 operator would be less stressful than being a teacher.”

. . . .

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My experience on the bench was that almost all the transgender individuals coming before me had attempted suicide on one or more occasions or expressed suicidal thoughts. To a person, they just wanted to be accepted, protected, and to live their own lives without harassment, interference, or fear. These are all things that today’s cowardly GOP “Brown Shirt Pols” would deny them. 

The next generation is going to have to decide whether they want to live in a Nazi-inspired police “hate state” where individual freedoms are meaningless and cruelty, bullying, suppression, and betrayal are the norms. If not, then they had better get busy removing every GOP politico from every office — from local school boards and city councils to the Presidency.

How soon we forget the lessons of 1939! Perhaps that’s part of the GOP’s war on truth, education, and history!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-23-23

📡📻 LISTEN TO MY INTERVIEW ON “TOP OF MIND WITH JULIE ROSE” NOW STREAMING ON SXM 143 & OTHER PLATFORMS: “S3 E5 Does the U.S. Have a Moral Obligation to Asylum Seekers?” — Link Here!

Julie Rose
Julie Rose
Host, Top of Mind
BYU Radio
PHOTO: BYU Radio

http://www.byuradio.org/topofmind

People all around the world look to the United States as a land of opportunity and safety. Every month, tens of thousands of people arrive at US border checkpoints and ask to be granted asylum. Over the last decade, the number of people showing up at the southern U.S. border seeking protection has increased five-fold to more than 200,000 every month. That huge increase has so overwhelmed the system that getting a final answer often takes years. There is bipartisan agreement that the asylum system is broken. How we fix the backlog, though, depends a lot on how we answer the question at the heart of today’s podcast episode: what is our obligation to asylum seekers? Are we responsible for taking these individuals in? We’ll be hearing from two previous asylum seekers about the challenges of seeking asylum in the United States, a writer who had an eye-opening experience learning how America’s asylum process differs from other countries, and two former immigration judges with differing perspectives on how we should implement asylum law in the United States. As we hear each of these perspectives, we’ll consider this question: what do we owe people who are no longer safe or able to prosper in the countries where they happen to have been born?

Podcast Guests: Razak Iyal, sought asylum in the U.S. in 2013, granted asylum in Canada in 2017 Joe Meno, Author of “Between Everything and Nothing: The Journey of Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal and the Quest for Asylum” Makaya Revell, CEO of Peace Promise Consulting, granted U.S. asylum in 2022 Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, former immigration judge 2006-2014 (York, Pennsylvania) Paul Wickham Schmidt, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, former immigration judge 2003-2016 (Arlington, Virginia) **This episode is part of Season 3 on Top of Mind: Finding Fairness. From health and immigration to prisons and pot, how can we get more peace and prosperity for all?

Related Links

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-17-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽ATTN NDPA: LAW YOU CAN USE: Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase’s “Practical Scholarship” Outs Garland BIA’s Disingenuous Approach To “Nexus” — Use These Arguments To Litigate Garland’s Dysfunctional “Denial Factory” To A Standstill!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/12/21/the-proper-test-for-nexus1

The Proper Test for Nexus

On November 4, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued its precedent decision in Matter of M-F-O-.1,2  At first glance, the decision seems to be a correction regarding  when the accrual of continuous presence for voluntary departure ends, necessitated by a Supreme Court decision rejecting  the Board’s prior take on the question.  The headnote summarizing the decision mentions only this issue.

However, reading further into the decision reveals an additional motive.  It turns out that the respondent in M-F-O- sought asylum; it was the denial of that protection that brought voluntary departure into play.  The respondent stated that he feared being persecuted by a violent  gang on account of his membership in a particular social group consisting of “indigenous Guatemalan youths who have abstained from joining the street gangs.”

The BIA uncharacteristically assumed the above group to be a valid one for asylum purposes.  In doing so, the Board was aware of proposed regulations being drafted by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which are likely to create a more inclusive standard for particular social group determinations than that currently employed by the Board.

But in M-F-O-, the Board sought to make the point that even where such groups are legally recognized, no asylum will be forthcoming unless a nexus is found between the group membership and the harm.  And the Board in upholding the asylum denial in M-F-O- aimed to bolster a standard it has employed in recent years to make it remarkably easy to deny the existence of such a nexus.

Our asylum laws state that a nexus exists when persecution is “on account of” one of the five statutorily-protected grounds.3  Whether or not a nexus is found depends on what is meant by those three words.  Let’s therefore take a deeper dive into the meaning of that term.

The Traditional Standard 4

“On account of” is by no means a phrase specific to immigration law; it long predates the Refugee Act of 1980.  The Fifteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, states in part that  “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”  The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, similarly prohibits denying or abridging one’s right to vote “on account of sex.”

As to how that term should be interpreted, the Supreme Court recently addressed the question outside of the asylum context in Bostock v. Clayton County,5  a case involving employment discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  The Court explained that the statutory term in question, “because of,” carries the same legal meaning as “on account of.”6

The Court continued that the standard requires a court to apply the “simple” and “traditional” “but-for” test.  As the Court explained, “a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.”7

The Court recognized that the “but-for” standard is a “sweeping” one, acknowledging that “[o]ften, events have multiple but-for causes.”8  The Court further observed that “[w]hen it comes to Title VII, the adoption of the traditional but-for causation standard means a defendant cannot avoid liability just by citing some other factor that contributed to its challenged employment decision.”9

According to the Court:

It doesn’t matter if other factors besides the plaintiff’s sex contributed to the decision. And it doesn’t matter if the employer treated women as a group the same when compared to men as a group. If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee—put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer—a statutory violation has occurred.10

The Court also provided a hypothetical:

Consider an employer with a policy of firing any woman he discovers to be a Yankees fan. Carrying out that rule because an employee is a woman and a fan of the Yankees is a firing “because of sex” if the employer would have tolerated the same allegiance in a male employee.11

So under the Court’s hypothetical, any argument that the “real” or “primary” reason for terminating the employment was being a Yankees fan, and that the gender of the employee was merely “incidental” because women who aren’t Yankees fans aren’t fired, and in fact are treated equally as a group to men, is rejected because removing the gender of the Yankees fan from the equation brings about a different result.  Note that under this test, the question is not the general treatment of women, but rather the impact of being a woman on the treatment of the specific employee.  Also, the test does not require a test to determine the dominant reason for the unequal treatment; in the hypothetical, there was no concern over whether being a Yankees fan or a woman was the stronger motivation for the termination. This is in fact a clear standard that is easy to both understand and apply in practice.

The Asylum “One Central Reason” Standard

Let’s turn back to the asylum context.   In 2005, Congress included language in the REAL ID Act requiring a statutorily-protected ground to be “at least one central reason” for the persecution in order to meet the “on account of” requirement.  Did this added language create a different standard for asylum cases than that described in Bostock?

One leading authority points out that an earlier version of the 2005 legislation would have required the protected ground to be “the central motive” behind the persecution.  However, in the final version, “the” was changed to “at least one,” meaning that a protected ground need be only one of multiple causes behind the harm.12

Also, note the replacing of “motive” with “reason.”  The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “reason” as “the cause of an event or situation or something that provides an excuse or explanation,” providing the example: “the reason for the disaster was engine failure, not human error.”  “Reason” would thus seem to cover more territory than “motive,” as an engine has no motive to fail.

The change from “motive” to “reason” lends itself to what scholars of international refugee law have termed the “predicament approach,” in which a causal connection between the persecution and a protected ground satisfies the nexus requirement irregardless of evidence of a specific persecutorial intent.13  The concept is illustrated through the example of a conscientious objector who is imprisoned for evading mandatory military service.  While the conscription law applies equally to all, the real cause may be a protected ground where noncompliance with the law was because of a religious or political belief.14

It is for this reason that one leading scholar viewed the choice of word as an indication “of increased conformity with international standards” in line with the fact that the Refugee Act was enacted to bring U.S. law into conformity with international treaty obligations under the 1967 Protocol.15

The BIA’s Initial Take on “One Central Reason”

The BIA initially interpreted “one central reason” as a reason that is not “incidental, tangential, superficial, or subordinate to another reason for harm.”16   In doing so, the BIA  explicitly rejected the view that “one central reason” must be “dominant.”  As the Board explained, “[t]he problem in classifying one motive as “dominant” or “central” is that it renders all other motives, regardless of their significance to the case, secondary and therefore ultimately irrelevant.”17  (It is worth noting the Board’s use of the word “motive” rather than “reason.”).

However, the Board’s inclusion of the word “subordinate” in its definition was rebuffed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which found it to be the “mirror image of the rejected ‘dominance’ test: the requirement that a protected ground, even if a ‘central’ reason for persecution, not be subordinate to any other reason.”18  In other words, the court found no difference between requiring a reason to be dominant (which the Board correctly found it could not do) and prohibiting a reason from being subordinate (which the Board then did instead).  The Board has since dropped the word “subordinate” when describing the standard.

So in summary, the “at least one central reason” standard allows a cause for persecution to be one of many, and does not require the protected ground to be dominant in comparison with the others.  It only prevents the reason from being incidental, tangential, or superficial.  And again, the word is “reason” and not “motive;” surely, Congress saw a difference between those words or it wouldn’t have changed the latter to the former in the final version.

In its recognition that there may be multiple causes for persecution, in its substitution of “reason” for motive, and in its rejection of a dominance test, the “one central reason” test is indistinguishable from the standard described in Bostock.

Circuit Courts Have Applied the Bostock “But-For” Test in Asylum Cases

The Fourth Circuit has addressed the “one central reason” standard in a number of decisions in which it has consistently applied the “but-for” test.19  In one, a woman from El Salvador sought asylum after members of Mara 18 threatened to kill her for blocking them from recruiting her son.  The BIA upheld the Immigration Judge’s finding of no nexus, on the grounds “that gang recruitment was the central motivation for these threats;” while claiming that “the fact that the person blocking the gang members’ recruitment effort was their membership target’s mother was merely incidental to the recruitment aim.”20

Note the Board’s citing of a completely incorrect standard: “the central motivation,” referencing the wording that Congress rejected in place of the language it ultimately adopted.  As a practical matter, the Board viewed the recruitment aim as ending its nexus inquiry, whereas I would argue that it should have served as the starting point.  Once we know that the gang sought to recruit the son, we gain a perspective that allows us to better understand how the particular social group membership might put the asylum seeker in harm’s way.

Properly applying the “but-for” test described in Bostock to the above fact pattern required removing the family relationship from the equation to see if the threat of harm would remain.  Of course, it would not; it was the specific fact that the asylum-seeker was the intended recruit’s mother that put her between the gang and her son, blocking the recruitment.  And it was because she stood between the gang and her son that the former sought to kill her.  The maternal relationship wasn’t tangential or incidental to the recruitment; it was precisely the reason that the asylum-seeker was an obstacle that needed to be eliminated.

That is why the Fourth Circuit concluded that the family relationship was “at least one central reason” for the threatened harm: because the petitioner’s “relationship to her son is why she, and not another person, was threatened with death if she did not allow him to join Mara 18.  The court added “The BIA’s conclusion that these threats were directed at her not because she is his mother but because she exercises control over her son’s activities draws a meaningless distinction under these facts.”21

The Eleventh Circuit also applied the traditional “but-for” test in a 2019 decision in which the Board had found no nexus because a cartel  had a financial motive in targeting the Petitioner in order to extort money owed to the cartel by his uncle.22  The Eleventh Circuit found that “it is impossible to disentangle [the Petitioner’s] relationship to his father-in-law from the Gulf Cartel’s pecuniary motives: they are two sides of the same coin.”  The court continued that absent the familial relationship with the uncle, the cartel never would have hunted the Petitioner down or persecuted him.  The court thus rejected the Board’s view that the family relationship was merely incidental; to the court, it was “abundantly clear to us that the family relationship was one central reason, if not the central reason, for the harm visited upon Mr. Perez-Sanchez.”23

The Ninth Circuit has also held the “but-for” cause to be the correct  standard for determining nexus in asylum cases, citing the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of the term as “[t]he cause without which the event could not have occurred.”24

The Description of the Standard By the BIA (and an Acting Attorney General)

The BIA’s application of the “one central reason” standard is best summarized in a recent decision of the Third Circuit: “although the BIA correctly recited the ‘one central reason’ test, it applied something altogether different.”25

In 2011, the BIA recognized the “one central reason” standard as requiring the asylum seeker to “demonstrate that the persecutor would not have harmed the applicant if the protected trait did not exist.”26  What the BIA described is the traditional “but for” test.  And in 2017, in its decision in Matter of L-E-A-, the Board described  the test as “[i]f the persecutor would have treated the applicant the same if the protected characteristic of the family did not exist, then the applicant has not established a claim on this ground.”27

Interestingly, less than a week before the end of the Trump Administration, a  briefly serving Acting Attorney General issued a second decision in Matter of A-B- recognizing that to establish a nexus for asylum purposes, “the protected ground: (1) must be a but-for cause of the wrongdoer’s act; and (2) must play more than a minor role—in other words, it cannot be incidental or tangential to another reason for the act.”28

The Acting Attorney General listed the “but-for” test and the fact that the ground not be incidental or tangential as if they were two separate requirements, even though a ground that serves as a “but-for” cause for persecution cannot be incidental or tangential.  Also curious is the Acting A.G.’s statement that  the ground could not be incidental or tangential to another reason for the act. Was this meant to be a return to  the dominance test that was rejected by the Third Circuit and the BIA?   Or might this have simply been the result of sloppy drafting, in which the Board’s language from Matter of J-B-N- & S-M- was modified by removing the word “subordinate” that the Third Circuit had rejected, while neglecting to also remove the “to any other reason” language that followed?  The question was rendered moot when the decision was vacated in June by Attorney General Garland.29

The Board Has Applied an Incorrect Standard for Nexus

Descriptions aside, as noted by the Third Circuit, the standard actually applied by the BIA has been something entirely different.  In many of the Board’s decisions, asylum has been denied for lack of nexus simply because the adjudicator deemed a non-protected reason to be the persecutor’s primary motive, without regard to the impact of the protected ground on outcome. This approach is not only inconsistent with the test applied in the above-mentioned circuit court cases (and in Bostock), but is inconsistent with the standard described by the Board itself which rejected a test for dominance.

The Second Circuit made this point in 2014, reversing a decision in which the IJ applied a “the central reason” test, as opposed to “at least one central reason.” The court emphasized that this was not harmless error; rather, it “set up an ‘illogical’ rubric for analyzing motivation that presupposed that multiple motives for persecution must be analyzed in competition with one another, rather than in concert.”30  The court further pointed out that this was not an isolated error by the agency, citing three other decisions dating back to 2007 in which the Board had done precisely the same thing.31

And the Fourth Circuit this year identified an oft-repeated error of the Board in determining nexus on account of family “by incorrectly focusing on why the gang targeted Petitioner’s family, rather than on why they targeted Petitioner herself.”32  In another recent decision, the Fourth Circuit stated that “‘once the right question is asked’ — that is, why was Petitioner being targeted — the conclusion is quite clear: ‘whatever [the gang]’s motives for targeting [her] family, [Petitioner herself] was targeted because of [her] membership in that family.'”33

Returning to the Supreme Court’s Yankees fan hypothetical in Bostock, the Board has been doing the equivalent of looking to how women were generally treated as a group (which, in the Court’s hypothetical, was equivalent to men) to conclude that gender was only incidental to being a Yankees fan, rather than deeming gender to be “at least one central reason” for the particular employee being fired due to its impact on outcome, as male Yankees fans were not terminated.  Of course, the Supreme Court in Bostock directly refuted this approach.  Similarly, in the asylum context, as the Fourth Circuit made clear, it doesn’t matter what view (if any) the gang has of the asylum-seeker’s family.  It only matters that the individual asylum seeker was targeted by the gang because of the family membership.  If so, there is a nexus to a protected ground.

In Matter of M-F-O-, the Board specifically referenced its 2017 decision in Matter of L-E-A- (i.e. L-E-A- I”), noting that its nexus analysis in that case “remains good law.”34  Let’s take a closer look at that decision.  We will first see what standard the Board purported to apply to the facts of the case.  Next, we’ll apply the traditional “but-for” test described in Bostock to those facts.  And lastly, we’ll examine the standard actually applied by the Board.

Matter of L-E-A-: The Board’s Statement of the Law

In Matter of L-E-A-, a criminal cartel sought to kidnap the respondent in his native Mexico.  The respondent’s father owned a store from which the cartel wished to sell drugs.  When the father refused the cartel’s request for access, it targeted the respondent as a means of coercing the father.  The Immigration Judge denied asylum, finding that the cartel’s motive was to sell drugs, not to harm members of the respondent’s family.  The Immigration Judge continued that the cartel’s focus was the store, stating that if the store were to be sold, the cartel would then target the new owner.

On appeal the Board recognized in a footnote the Fourth Circuit’s case law on the matter.  Instead of being instructed by it, the Board simply stated that “[w]hile it is not clear how the Fourth Circuit would apply that precedent to the facts here, this case does not arise in the Fourth Circuit.”35  With those words, the Board dismissed the standard traditionally employed in such matters.  And with what did the Board replace it?

The Board started down the same road as both Bostock and the Fourth Circuit.  It said that nexus is not established “if the persecutor would have treated the applicant the same if the protected characteristic did not exist,” a correct description of Bostock’s “but for” test.  In then citing its own prior take on “one central reason,” the Board omitted the word “subordinate,” stating instead that the protected characteristic “cannot be incidental [or] tangential…”  It continued by noting that both direct and circumstantial evidence of motive should be considered, and that sometimes “a more nuanced evaluation” will be warranted.36

The Traditional “But For” Standard Applied to the Facts of L-E-A-

As the Supreme Court stated in Bostock,  “a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.”37

The traditional “but for” standard would thus remove the respondent’s familial relationship to his father from the equation.  We know that the cartel’s aim is to compel the respondent’s father into allowing them to sell drugs in his store.  The cartel would have no reason to kidnap the respondent as a means of coercing his father if not for the familial relationship; the leverage over the father derives entirely from his fear for the safety of his child.  The protected characteristic of family is thus not merely incidental or tangential.  It is one central reason for the persecution.

As noted above, under this standard, it doesn’t matter that the goal of selling drugs is the persecutor’s dominant motive; the hierarchy of reasons is irrelevant.  As we have seen, the Board itself conceded this point in Matter of J-B-N- & S-M-.  Nor does it  matter that when the gang isn’t focused on selling drugs in the father’s store, it treats the members of the family the same as everyone else.  Think of Bostock’s Yankees fan example, in which the fact that women as a group are treated equally to men by the employer until their offending Yankees loyalty is discovered, at which point only women who root for the Yankees are fired.  The fact that both the employer’s hatred of the Yankees in the Bostock example and the gang’s desire to sell drugs in the father’s store in L-E-A- are central reasons doesn’t preclude other “but for” causes.

The Board Applied a “The Central Motive” Test in L-E-A-

However, the traditional standard was not what the Board actually applied to the facts of the case. Instead, it first claimed that “nexus would be established based on family membership where a persecutor is seeking to harm the family members because of an animus against the family itself.”38  In that example, the persecution is caused by the hatred of the family itself, without a need for any further reason.  But that is an example of the family membership serving as “the central motive” for the harm.

The Board then went on in L-E-A- to address instances lacking such animus towards the family itself.  But in doing so, the Board never mentioned the “but for” test described above.  Instead, it made general statements from which it is difficult to discern a coherent test.  In finally denying the claim on the ground that the cartel’s motive was financial, the Board continued to apply an incorrect “the central motive” standard.

Importantly, the Board in L-E-A- never undertook the required exercise of removing the protected ground to see if it would cause a different result.  Instead, it concluded that because the motive was financial, the claim failed.  In summary, the Board again recounted one standard, but then applied something entirely different.  What the Board in fact applied was a “the central motive” test, in which the dominance of the financial motive eliminated all other reasons from consideration.

Conclusion

In spite of the clarity of the correct standard, the universality of its application, and the criticism from numerous circuit courts over the years for its failure to apply it correctly, the BIA has made no effort to correct its course in its application of the “on account of” standard.  The Board remains consistent in its citing of something close to the correct standard, but then applying an entirely incorrect test.  Whatever it claims to be doing, the Board’s test is for “the central motive,” in which nexus is denied whenever a dominant purpose may be identified that is not a statutorily protected ground for asylum.  Congress specifically rejected this standard in favor of the more generous “at least one central reason” test.  Furthermore, the “predicament approach” has never been mentioned, much less applied, by the Board, which has continued to focus on the persecutor’s motive as if Congress had not changed that word to “reason.”

There are many within the Department of Justice who must  be aware of this practice.  I would hope that Attorney General Garland, a longtime circuit court judge, is among them.  In light of the BIA’s refusal to self-correct, it is incumbent on the Department to impose a correction from above.  Otherwise, any forthcoming regulations relating to particular social group formulation will fail to have their desired impact on the outcomes of asylum claims.

Copyright Jeffrey S. Chase 2021.  All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. Thanks to Dr. Alicia Triche for providing invaluable insight that was incorporated into the final version of this article.
  2. 28 I&N Dec. 408 (BIA 2021).
  3. 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A).
  4. My use of the term “Traditional” is based on the Supreme Court’s reference in Bostock cited below to the “traditional” “but-for” test in cases with a “because of” or “on account of” requirement.
  5. 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020).
  6. Id. at 1739.  Although no further explanation regarding the equivalency of the terms was provided in Bostock, in a prior decision, the Court had stated: “The words ‘because of’ mean ‘by reason of: on account of.’ 1 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 194 (1966); see also 1 Oxford English Dictionary 746 (1933) (defining ‘because of’ to mean ‘By reason of, on account of ‘ (italics in original)); The Random House Dictionary of the English Language 132 (1966) (defining ‘because’ to mean ‘by reason; on account’).”  Gross v. FBL Fin. Servs., Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2343, 2350 (2009).
  7. Id. The Court has applied this same test in other cases, including FBL Fin. Servs., Inc., supra, in which it also referenced the description of the test found in W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 265 (5th ed. 1984) (“An act or omission is not regarded as a cause of an event if the particular event would have occurred without it”).
  8. Id.
  9. Id.
  10. Id. at 1741.
  11. Id. at 1742.
  12.  Deborah E. Anker, Law of Asylum in the United States (2021-2022 Ed.) (Thomson Reuters) at 409.
  13. See James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status (2nd Ed.) (Cambridge) at 376.
  14. Id. at 276-77.
  15. Anker, supra at 390.
  16. Matter of J-B-N- & S-M-, 24 I&N Dec. 208, 214 (BIA 2007).
  17. Id. at 212, n.6.
  18. Ndayshimiye v. Attorney General of U.S., 557 F.3d 124, 129-30 (3rd Cir., 2009).
  19. See, e.g., Perez Vasquez v. Garland, 4 F.4th 213, 222 (4th Cir. 2021); Portillo Flores v. Garland, 3 F.4th 615, 630-31 (4th Cir. 2021) (en banc); Arita-Deras v. Wilkinson, 990 F.3d 350, 361 (4th Cir. 2021); Hernandez-Cartagena v. Barr, 977 F.3d 316, 322 (4th Cir. 2020);  Zavaleta-Policiano v. Sessions, 873 F.3d 241, 249-50 (4th Cir. 2017); Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944 (4th Cir. 2015).
  20. Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, supra at 949 (emphasis added).
  21. Id. at 950.
  22. Perez-Sanchez v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 935 F.3d 1148 (11th Cir. 2019).
  23. Id. at 1158-59.
  24. Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland, 993 F.3d 743, 751 (9th Cir. 2021).
  25. Ghanem v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., No. 19-1475 (3rd Cir. Sept. 22, 2021).
  26. Matter of N-M-, 25 I&N Dec. 526, 531 (BIA 2011) (citing  Parussimova v. Mukasey, 555 F.3d 734, 741 (9th Cir. 2009)).
  27. Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 40, 43-44 (BIA 2017) (“L-E-A- I”).
  28. Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 199, 208 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- II”).
  29. See Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 307 (A.G. 2021) (vacating both prior A.G. decisions in Matter of A-B-).
  30. Acharya v. Holder, 761 F.3d 289, 298 (2d Cir. 2014).
  31. The three earlier decisions cited in Acharya in which the BIA had committed the same error in applying a “the central reason” standard  were Castro v. Holder, 597 F.3d 93 (2d Cir. 2010); Aliyev v. Mukasey, 549 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. 2008); and Uwais v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 478 F.3d 513 (2d Cir. 2007).
  32. Perez Vasquez v. Garland, supra at 222.
  33. Hernandez-Cartagena v. Barr, supra at 322 (citing Salgado-Sosa v. Sessions, 882 F.3d 451, 459 (4th Cir. 2018).
  34. Matter of M-F-O-, supra at 412, n.6.
  35. Matter of L-E-A-, supra at 46, n.3.
  36. Id. at 43-44.
  37. Bostock v. Clayton Country, supra at 1739.
  38. Id. at 44.

DECEMBER 21, 2021

Reprinted by permission.

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

I’d describe the BIA’s approach to nexus this way: 

  • Find any possible “non-protected” motivation (no matter how attenuated);
  • Characterize any “protected ground” as “tangential,” “marginal,” or “too attenuated” (even if, as in L-E-A-, it’s the direct or proximate cause of the harm or fear under conventional causation analysis — as Jeffrey points out, in L-E-A– not only was “family relationship” “at least one central reason” driving the gang’s interest, it was the only apparent reason for the gang’s interest in the respondent);
  • Deny asylum;
  • Hope that the refugee doesn’t seek judicial review or draws a circuit panel whose knowledge of asylum and commitment to humanity are as shallow as their own.

Let’s apply “BIA-think” to the infamous Krystal Nacht in Nazi Germany. It was “mere vandalism and crimes against against property,” albeit on a widespread basis. Sure, a few synagogues got burned to the ground. But, that was just an “unfortunate consequence” of their being in neighborhoods that were being randomly vandalized by hooligans.

Moreover, “arson” is a crime, not a “protected ground.” There were laws on the books in Germany punishing vandalism, so no “unwillingness or inability” to protect.

Of course it was hard tracing down the “alleged perps” because of the widespread nature of the crimes. The alleged perps were “non-government actors” not carrying out official policies. And police or other officials involved were merely “rogue officers” acting in violation of German law. Most significantly, the “alleged victims” never filed police reports. So how could the German Government be expected to act? Nothing to see here, really!

Moreover, if we grant one case, all the Jews in Nazi Germany might qualify for asylum. That would “open the floodgates.” Certainly not what Congress intended!

Krystal Nacht
“Widespread vandalism” but no persecution o/a/o any “protected ground” here!
Krystal Nacht
SOURCE: Holocaust Museum

Let’s face it, if the vessel St. Louis arrived at our shores today the Biden Administration wouldn’t even need to shove it back out to sea! They would use Title 42 to send the refugees back to death without any process at all, just as “Gauleiter Miller” told them to do!

The St.Louis
“No room at the inn! Go back and die in place, you ‘illegals.’”
The St Louis (1939)
Faces of the doomed
SOURCE: History.com

Jeffrey hits the nail on the head when he suggests that the BIA’s renewed vigor in “pushing” bogus nexus denials is prompted by the slow erosion of their Sessions/Barr inspired effort to define PSG out of existence as well as the Circuits’ increasingly critical treatment of the BIA’s often-specious adverse credibility findings (frequently improperly substituting their view for the IJ’s when necessary to sustain a DHS appeal) and their highly sanitized, “fantasyland” view of country conditions in the Northern Triangle and other major “refugee sending” countries. The latter probably reflects the many superior, authoritative tools for proving country conditions now available to advocates which highlight the “double speak, dumbing down, and overt polarization” of State Department Country Reports.

Manipulation and encouragement of wrongful nexus denials by IJs might be the “last line of defense” for the BIA against giving many more asylum seekers the protection they need and deserve under a fair and proper interpretation and application of asylum law!

Perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprised by Garland’s disinterest in making the progressive reforms necessary to restore some semblance of justice, order, and intellectual integrity to his disgracefully dysfunctional courts. While the GOP has been fixated on weaponizing Immigration Courts against migrants over the past two decades, Dems have shown little or no interest in fixing these glaring problems.

Poor policies and inattention to progressive judicial appointments @ EOIR during the Obama Administration started the exponential growth in backlog!

Now, in the words of one of my esteemed colleagues: “At this point, it just seems like a giant snowball careening down the mountain.”

Snowball
“Look out below, asylum seekers! Garland’s BIA is aiming for YOU!”
Public Realm

Litigating this mess to a standstill appears to be the only option Garland is leaving for those who believe that equal justice in America is for “all persons!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-21-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️NDPA VIRTUAL OPPORTUNITY: Meet Rising Superstar 🌟  & Social Justice Advocate Denea Joseph, Current Ousley Social Justice Resident @ Beloit College — Friday, Sept. 17 @ 7:00 PM CDT — FREE Virtual Link Here!

Of interest? You can join virtually.

———- Forwarded message ———

From: Atiera Lauren Coleman <colemana@beloit.edu>

Date: Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 3:10 PM

Subject: [EVENT] Ousley Residency: All Black Lives Matter: Black Immigrants and the Immigrants’ Rights Movement

To: <facstaff@lists.beloit.edu>

Ousley Residency Keynote Speaker

Denea Joseph

Friday, September 17, 7:00 PM – In-person & Virtual – (Add to Google Calendar)

BTYB – Student Success, Equity, and Community and the Weissberg Program in Human Rights & Social Justice

The Office of Student Success, Equity & Community Ousley Scholar In Residency honors the legacy of Grace Ousley, the first black woman to graduate from Beloit College. It is a junior scholar/activist/organizer/intellectual committed to the theory and practice of social justice. They should embody the “academic hustler” who fights for “social justice” in all aspects of their work. Support for the residency comes from the Weissberg Program in Human Rights and Social Justice and the Office of Student Success. Equity & Community.

pastedGraphic.png

Event Details

Date: Friday, September 17, 2021

Time: 7:00 PM -8:30 PM

How to attend

In-person – Weissberg Auditorium – Powerhouse

Virtual – Join Zoom Meeting  https://beloit.zoom.us/j/81172664933

 

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

This promises to be a great program! And, the Ousley Residence Program is a fantastic contribution to educating and inspiring new generations of Americans about the many challenges still facing us in achieving social justice in our nation.

The abrogation of due process and dehumanization of people of color has, outrageously, become part of the dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Court System. The last Administration specifically encouraged and promoted this ugly, anti-democracy, phenomenon and then used it to spearhead an all-out assault on racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, religious tolerance, economic progress, voter rights, and humane progressive values throughout American society.

Unfortunately, many progressives have been slow to “connect the dots” and insist that meaningful social justice change start with fixing the racial and gender bias problems in our Immigration Courts, tribunals that are under the complete control of the Biden Administration!

For example, current Attorney General Merrick Garland rather incredibly claims to be standing up for women’s rights in Texas and defending voting rights for minorities while continuing to run misogynistic, regressive “Star Chambers” at EOIR, staffed with many judges hand-selected by Jeff Sessions and Billy Barr, and tossing vulnerable women refugees of color back across our Southern Border into harm’s way without any “process” at all, let alone “Due Process of Law.” Garland also continues to enable human rights abuses in the “New American Gulag” of DHS civil detention! We can see this process of dehumanization of the “other” before the law, called “Dred Scottification” by many of us, spreading throughout our legal system and being endorsed and “normalized” all the way up to the Supremes.

From the summary in the announcement above, it appears that Denea, based on her own inspiring life and achievements as a “Dreamer,” will help us to “connect the dots” between racial justice, immigrant justice, and equal justice for all. Immigrants’ Rights = Human Rights = Everyone’s Rights!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-09-21

⚖️🗽🇺🇸😇SISTER NORMA SPEAKS OUT AGAINST “LET ‘EM DIE MEXICO” ⚰️ & THE FALSE DOCTRINE OF “DETERRENCE THROUGH CRUELTY & IMMORALITY!” ☠️🤮 — “It is immoral and abhorrent to deter people who are legally and peacefully seeking safety in the United States by deliberately exposing them to the very perils that they are hoping to escape.”

 

Why is the Biden Administration listening to him:

Stephen Miller Monster
Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

Rather than her:

Sister Norma Pimentel
Sister Norma Pimentel, Executive Director, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/06/norma-pimentel-mpp-biden-help-migrants/

Opinion by Sister Norma Pimentel

September 6 at 5:34 PM ET

Norma Pimentel, a sister of the Missionaries of Jesus, is executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

Dear Mr. President:

I write today to appeal to your sense of morality, human dignity and as a fellow Catholic. While the Supreme Court has blocked your efforts to rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, while litigation against it proceeds through the court system, I urge you to act. These legal complications, and our backlogged immigration courts system, cannot become an excuse to strand thousands of people in dire conditions, especially when other options are available.

I know from firsthand experience just how desperate the situation is. MPP was implemented in my community in early 2019. Its effect was to force thousands of people into a makeshift “tent city” along the Mexican side of the Rio Grande river as they awaited rulings on whether they would be granted asylum.

I would visit the camp almost every single day. It was a blessing that hundreds of compassionate Americans crossed the border between Brownsville, Tex., and Matamoros, Mexico, several times a day to bring tents, food, clothing, and to tend to these families’ medical needs and legal issues. While supported by the good nature and assistance that staff and others provided, I often worried about how the women, men and children at the camp could survive in such conditions. How could they stand the scorching heat of our region’s hot sun or the occasional torrential downpours that turned their encampment into a mud pit?

The lack of care for humanity and the sounds of human misery accompanied me daily as I moved through the camp. I know that reports of these conditions have reached your ears, too: I met your wife, Jill Biden, here in 2019 as she donned rubber boots to wade through the mud and see for herself the misery in which asylum seekers, including many women and children, lived for as long as two years.

So, I rejoiced when you declared an end to this immoral policy on your first days in office, and despaired when the Supreme Court required your administration to implement it once again.

I pray for the Supreme Court justices as I do for all leaders. But in my heart, I know that surely, we can do better than return to the conditions and suffering I witnessed in 2019.

. . . . .

I invite you to come and see for yourself, as your wife did in 2019, what is happening on the border. There are many layers to the immigration realities behind the strident political rhetoric that dominates and obscures the issue today. But we must find ways to counter what Pope Francis calls a “globalization of indifference.”

Mr. President, please demonstrate to the world that the words of Jesus — whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me — are the foundation of not only our faith, but of the moral structure of our country.

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

Read the rest of Sister Norma’s letter at the above link.

She’s right: “We cannot allow a lack of creativity and fortitude to become an excuse to abandon the principle of compassion.” But, sadly, that’s exactly what the Biden Administration is doing by listening to the wrong advice from those wedded to the failed, illegal, and cruel concept of misusing the law and perverting process as a “deterrent.”

The experts, “practical scholars,” NGOs, intellectual leaders, and courageous progressive judicial talent who can solve this problem, folks like Sister Norma, Karen Musalo, Marielena Hincappie, Kevin Johnson, Michelle Mendez, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Lenni Benson, Michele Pistone, Geoffrey Hoffman, Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow, and Judge Ilyce Shugall, are all “on the outside looking in.” Moreover, rather than working with them to fix the asylum system at the border and bring essential progressive reforms to our dysfunctional Immigration Courts, the Administration has actively alienated and disrespected their views in favor of recycling “guaranteed to fail, Miller-Lite” deterrence only policies of the past. 

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — Beyond bad GOP judges, corrupt and evil GOP State AGs, “Miller Lite” bureaucratic retreads, and feckless and timid Biden policy wonks, this is the harsh reality of our continuing, failed, “border deterrence” policies and our abrogation of asylum laws and human morality.
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

The solutions are out there! Too bad the Administration has become “part of the problem,” rather than having the guts and creativity to solve the problem while saving lives! No courage, no convictions, no solutions! It’s a formula for disaster☠️ and death!⚰️

As Sister Norma says, using the words of Jesus, in her powerful conclusion: “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me — are the foundation of not only our faith, but of the moral structure of our country.”  Right now, He couldn’t be very pleased with the conduct of the GOP nativists, the Supremes, righty Federal Judges, horrible GOP AGs, and the feckless bureaucrats and timid policy officials of the Biden Administration!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-07-21

🇺🇸👍🏼😇HISTORY: LABOR DAY TRIBUTE: FRANCES PERKINS, GODMOTHER OF AMERICA’S SAFETY NET! 🥇❤️ — By Professor Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson
Historian
Professor, Boston College
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins (1880-1965)
U.S. Secretary of Labor (1933-45)
PHOTO: Public realm

pastedGraphic.pngFrom “Letters From An American:”

pastedGraphic.png

September 5, 2021

By Heather Cox Richardson

On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and people screaming. They rushed out to the street to see what the trouble was. A fire had broken out in a garment factory on the upper floors of a building on Washington Square, and the blaze ripped through the lint in the air. The only way out was down the elevator, which had been abandoned at the base of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof. But the factory owner had locked the roof exit that day because, he later testified, he was worried some of his workers might steal some of the blouses they were making.

“The people had just begun to jump when we got there,” Perkins later recalled. “They had been holding until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this thing that the firemen carry with them, a net to catch people if they do jump, the[y] were trying to get that out and they couldn’t wait any longer. They began to jump. The… weight of the bodies was so great, at the speed at which they were traveling that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.”

By the time the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was out, 147 young people were dead, either from their fall from the factory windows or from smoke inhalation.

Perkins had few illusions about industrial America: she had worked in a settlement house in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in Chicago and was the head of the New York office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers to use their buying power to demand better conditions and wages for workers. But even she was shocked by the scene she witnessed on March 25.

By the next day, New Yorkers were gathering to talk about what had happened on their watch. “I can’t begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere,” Perkins said. “It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn’t have been. We were sorry…. We didn’t want it that way. We hadn’t intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a factory. It was a terrible thing for the people of the City of New York and the State of New York to face.”

The Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, Al Smith—who would a few years later go on to four terms as New York governor and become the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928—went to visit the families of the dead to express his sympathy and his grief. “It was a human, decent, natural thing to do,” Perkins said, “and it was a sight he never forgot. It burned it into his mind. He also got to the morgue, I remember, at just the time when the survivors were being allowed to sort out the dead and see who was theirs and who could be recognized. He went along with a number of others to the morgue to support and help, you know, the old father or the sorrowing sister, do her terrible picking out.”

“This was the kind of shock that we all had,” Perkins remembered.

The next Sunday, concerned New Yorkers met at the Metropolitan Opera House with the conviction that “something must be done. We’ve got to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action….” One man contributed $25,000 to fund citizens’ action to “make sure that this kind of thing can never happen again.”

The gathering appointed a committee, which asked the legislature to create a bipartisan commission to figure out how to improve fire safety in factories. For four years, Frances Perkins was their chief investigator.

She later explained that although their mission was to stop factory fires, “we went on and kept expanding the function of the commission ’till it came to be the report on sanitary conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions and then to report all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees, including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these subjects.”

And they did. Al Smith was the speaker of the house when they published their report, and soon would become governor. Much of what the commission recommended became law.

Perkins later mused that perhaps the new legislation to protect workers had in some way paid the debt society owed to the young people, dead at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. “The extent to which this legislation in New York marked a change in American political attitudes and policies toward social responsibility can scarcely be overrated,” she said. “It was, I am convinced, a turning point.”

But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state’s labor department as the Depression worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending, Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the opposite and said his “misleading statements” were “cruel and irresponsible.” She began to work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote employment by working together.

In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover’s plan to let the Depression burn itself out, President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance; health insurance; old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.

In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.

Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire into the heart of our nation’s basic social safety net.

“There is always a large horizon…. There is much to be done,” Perkins said. “It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.”

Happy Labor Day, everyone.

—-

Notes:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1933-02-19/ed-1/seq-23/

https://francesperkinscenter.org/life-new/

https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/lectures/

https://www.ssa.gov/history/perkins5.html

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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
Aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (1911)
ILGWU Archives
Public Realm

Get more from HCR at the above link!

Perkins is one of the most important and under-recognized heroes of modern American history. Perkins believed that Government was there to promote the public good.

But, it wasn’t just a hollow slogan like those spouted by many of today’s politicos. She actually “walked the walk,” using her powerful intellect, energy, talent, advocacy skills, persistence, and influence with FDR to make America a much better place.

Just think of it: “unemployment insurance; health insurance; old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; and abolition of child labor.” An amazing list of accomplishments for which she has received far, far too little credit from historians. Today, most Americans probably think of Perkins, if at all, as the “first female Cabinet Secretary.” But she was more than that. Much more!

Perkins also used her position as Labor Secretary (prior to WW II the cabinet officer with responsibility for immigration) creatively in an attempt to save Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Although she won a major legal battle on the positive use of “charge bonds” to assist refugees, the actual effects of her humanitarian efforts appear to have been unfortunately limited. 

In the xenophobic, anti-Semitic, isolationist America of the 1930s, she also became a target of the far right for her strong commitment to human rights. In 1939, Congressional xenophobes initiated an unsuccessful impeachment attempt.

In 1940, FDR transferred responsibility for immigration from the Labor Department to the Department of Justice. That spelled not only the end of Perkins’s efforts to help Jewish refugees, but also was a death sentence for many who might have been saved. 

The DOJ threw up a powerful combination of restrictive requirements and bureaucracy to guarantee the death of more European Jews in the Holocaust. Indeed, the DOJ went one better by putting Japanese-American U.S. citizens in concentration camps based on “national security” claims that have since been shown to be both bogus and racially motivated. Sound familiar?

You can read all about this disgraceful chapter in American history and Perkins’s largely fruitless attempts to “swim against the tide” here, in this article by Rebecca Brenner Graham in Contingent Magazine: https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/08/23/no-refuge/.

Rebecca Brenner Grahjam
Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham
Teacher, Author, Historian
PHOTO: Rebeccabrennergraham.com

I really enjoyed Rebecca’s very lively, accessible historical writing that brings to life one of the ugliest episodes in modern American history, now largely swept under the carpet by today’s nativist revisionists. It’s also covered in the a Holocaust museum, an exhibit that contains much of  the same bogus “America is full” xenophobic rhetoric spouted by too many of today’s GOP nativists. 

This really horrible response by Western democracies to lives in peril was what gave rise to the Geneva Refugee Convention, the basis for the Refugee Act of 1980 and our current refugee and asylum system! How quickly we forget! The Trump Administration, with help from the Supremes, basically abrogated the legal system for refugees and asylees, without legislation. Despite promises to restore the rule of law, the Biden Administration has basically allowed most of Trump’s illegal and immoral policies to continue damaging humanity and diminishing us as a nation.

What would Frances Perkins have done? Certainly more than Garland and Mayorkas! At any rate, I enjoyed Rebecca’s historical writing and look forward to more!

A few years ago, Cathy and I had the pleasure of touring the Perkins Family Homestead, near Damariscotta, Maine, now owned by the Frances Perkins Center, with our dear, now departed Boothbay Harbor neighbor Sue Bazinet. It certainly opened my eyes to what true progressive values, lived and acted upon, were and still are!

Perkins Homestead
Frances Perkins Homestead
Damariscotta, ME
PHOTO: Francis Perkins Center

We could use more leaders like Perkins today! Many thanks to the always-fabulous HCR for highlighting this great American!

🇺🇸Happy Labor Day, ⚒ and Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-06-21

☠️⚰️ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN DIGNITY, & DUE PROCESS DON’T MATTER —Trumpist USDJ Shafts Asylum Seekers Of Color By Reinstating “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” (a/k/a MPP) Directed Against Asylum Seekers Of Color!

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — Some Life-tenured Federal Judges abuse  their privileged positions to insure that this is what “due process” will look like for asylum seekers of color!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

 

Here’s the decision from U.S. District Judge MATTHEW J. KACSMARYK in Texas v. Biden: 

remain in Mexico decision

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Judge Kacsmaryk was appointed to the bench by Trump & McConnell in 2019. He is a former Federal prosecutor, deputy general counsel of a right wing religious group, and member of the Federalist Society. His nomination was (obviously unsuccessfully) opposed by more than 200 prominent civil rights, religious tolerance, and human rights groups.

Here’s an excerpt from their letter in opposition addressed to the Senate:

On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Hum­­­­an Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations committed to promoting and protecting the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States, I write in strong opposition to the confirmation of Matthew Kacsmaryk to be a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas.

Nominees to the federal courts must be committed to respecting the law, Constitution, and core American values of justice, fairness, and inclusivity.  Mr. Kacsmaryk does not meet this standard.  He is an anti-LGBT activist and culture warrior who does not respect the equal dignity of all people.  His record reveals a hostility to LGBT equality and to women’s health, and he would not be able to rule fairly and impartially in cases involving those issues.

https://civilrights.org/resource/oppose-confirmation-matthew-kacsmaryk-u-s-district-court-northern-district-texas/

Interestingly, the letter was signed by none other than Vanita S. Gupta, then President & CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and currently the Associate Attorney General of the U.S. 

Gupta and her colleagues had Judge K “pegged” as an unqualified righty bigot then! But, with the lineup currently in place at the 5th and the Supremes, it remains to be seen whether there is any effective short-term remedy for his grotesque abuses of power and human rights.

Judicial appointments are important! Maybe it’s time for Gupta and others at DOJ to treat Immigration Judge and BIA appointments as such!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Better Federal Judges for a better America!

PWS

03-14-21

⚖️☹️A GOOD MAN IN THE WRONG JOB — The Last Two GOP Administrations Cut Through The “Levi-Civiletti” Post-Watergate Institutional Reforms @ Justice Like A Hot Knife Through Soft Butter — Garland’s “Old School” Approach Is Likely Doomed To Failure, & Might Take American Democracy With It!  — The “St. Louis Gets Pushed Back Put To Sea” Every Day @ Garland’s Broken & Dysfunctional DOJ!☠️⚰️

Judge Merrick Garland
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — His poignant recollection of the inability of his great aunts to find refuge in the U.S., and their resulting deaths in the Holocaust, haven’t stopped him from daily “pushing the St. Louis back out to sea” and denying legal protections and full due process to asylum seekers at our Southern Border and at EOIR — his “wholly owned court system” that functions more like a branch of DHS enforcement than a court of law!
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/07/19/merrick-garland-justice-department-catharsis/

David Montgomery writes in the WashPost:

. . . .

“Garland believes that a thorough de-Trumpification of the Justice Department would … be called partisanship and would call into question the institution of the Justice Department, but the institution has already been called into question,” says Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Sessions and Barr came in with a goal of assaulting and undermining the institution of the Justice Department, and it’s just weird to presume that they failed. We presume that they succeeded. They were in the building. They hired their minions. They assessed people. They politicized everything. Garland presuming that the previous Department of Justice was behaving in good faith requires the same suspension of disbelief as believing dragons are real in a fantasy novel.”

. . . .

And so, we’ll also be judging Garland by another standard: how well his approach fortifies the institution against a future administration that once again disrespects norms and politicizes the rule of law.

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These quotes go to the heart of the problem with Garland’s stewardship and his naive, ivory tower, ineffectively timid approach to restoring the rule of law at Justice. “By the book” is NOT an effective strategy against opponents who seek to burn the book, bury the ashes, and lie about it! It’s basically no “strategy” all!

I’d be shocked, as would most knowledgeable observers, if the next GOP Administration doesn’t “disrespect the norms and politicize the rule of law.” Not only have the past two GOP Administrations done exactly that, in spades, but that’s basically what today’s GOP stands for: neo-fascist, anti-democracy  rule based on big lies and a cult of personality. 

To the extent the modern GOP believes in anything, it’s the exercise of power without restraint of law or morality. “Why? Because we can, and you can’t stop us. We’re in power, and you aren’t,” was largely the Trump McConnell mantra, particularly when it came to judges. How did the dying plea of RBG and the appeals of Dems for fairness and consistency in Supremes’ appointments work out? It was a classic “heads I win, tails you lose” that once again left the Dems grasping at thin air.

So, these folks are going to respect long-gone “norms” from the 1970s? “Norms” that couldn’t and didn’t stop Ashcroft, Gonzalez (“Gonzo I”), Mukasey, Sessions, or Barr? You have to be kidding? I don’t know what universe Garland has been living in for the past four plus years, but it doesn’t appear to be this one.

Contrary to Garland’s approach, there is absolutely nothing wrong with:

  • Coming clean on recent abuses at DOJ;
  • Replacing lawless immoral intentional misconstructions of law with better progressive ones that adhere to and further both the rule of law and “good government;” and
  • Replacing political hacks who furthered the White Nationalist agenda or other personnel who “went along to get along” with abuses, to keep their jobs, with progressive experts committed to due process and best practices who’ll get the job of restoring the rule of law, respect, and human dignity done.

Not only is there nothing wrong with the foregoing, but they are moral and practical imperatives if lives are to be saved and our democracy preserved! For Pete’s sake, these are actually the things that Biden and Harris campaigned upon and won! Why is Garland reticent to act upon truth? 

This isn’t an “academic exercise!” It’s an actual life or death moment for migrants and for our democracy! And, the opponents are not folks who intend to honor norms established by Garland or any other Dem. 

Indeed, they will characterize all of his actions as “radical socialism,” as they already have, regardless of the truth. In many ways, Garland’s incremental, largely passive, approach to “de-Trumpifying justice @ Justice” has been a huge gift to GOP anti-democracy insurrectionists and restrictionists. But, if I were him, I wouldn’t wait for the “thank you note.”  

To shrink from the bold decisive actions necessary to clean up the disgraceful mess at the DOJ and its most grotesque manifestations at EOIR shows not only a lack awareness, but a lack of belief  in the progressive, democratic, humane values that got Biden and Harris elected in the first place and got Garland his job.  

And, it’s not as if the problem with the values and institutional integrity at DOJ started only in the Trump regime. Under Bush II, Ashcroft and his advisor, notorious White Nationalist xenophobe Kris Kobach, had their plan to dismantle due process and fundamental fairness in the Immigration Courts, through compromising the BIA, in action before they even set foot in the building 10th & Pa. Ave.  Those changes have actually cost some migrants their lives, and some DOJ attorneys their jobs (for the “crime” of standing up for due process for migrants) even before the Trump kakistocracy arrived.

And, al la Garland, the Obama Administration’s failure to either acknowledge the historical truth or take the obvious and necessary corrective actions sent our Immigration Courts and justice for migrants into a steep decline that became a “death spiral” under Sessions (“Gonzo Apocalypto”) and Barr and continues its accelerated downward trajectory under Garland. It’s a contributing factor in the largely self-created 1.3 million case Immigration Court backlog generated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR. 

Indeed, the lack of quality, intellectual honesty, practical guidance, humane values, common sense, expertise, and legitimacy at EOIR has spread to and adversely affected other areas of our beleaguered justice system and now threatens to take down everything in a messy heap. Why a former Article III Appellate Judge can’t grasp that reality and act accordingly is beyond me. 

Maybe its because he didn’t personally experience enough of EOIR’s deadly, failed, corner-cutting “work product” at the D.C. Circuit because DC has no “resident Immigration Court.” Maybe it’s because he can’t “connect the dots” between his relatives who died in the Holocaust and having no legal asylum system for those arriving at our Southern border and denying asylum seekers full due process every day @ EOIR.

For the reasons set forth in the article, it seems that Judge Garland is philosophically and by personality incapable of leading and implementing long overdue, critical progressive changes at this point in his otherwise distinguished career. The only hope would be that one of his advisors could light a fire and get him out of his inept centrist institutionalist funk. 

But, the two best hopes to do that, Associate Attorney Vanita Gupta and Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who should be personally familiar with the practical and racial justice disaster at EOIR and its overall adverse effects on justice in America, have failed to make a visible impact.

Garland needs a practical expert like Dean Kevin Johnson at U.C. Davis Law, Professor Karen Musalo at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings Law, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean at Temple Law, Judy Rabinowitz at ACLU, Marielena Hincappie at the National Immigration Justice Center, or someone of equal expertise and stature in civil and human rights to advise him and lead the reform effort at EOIR. Sadly, he does not appear interested in surrounding himself with such capable, talented individuals who could “save him from himself” while saving the lives of those like his great aunts who perished in the Holocaust for want of a viable refugee and asylum system.

Like Garland, I was at the DOJ during the Levi-Civiletti post-Watergate reform era. I once knew him and certainly helped out his “boss” Ben Civiletti on several occasions. 

Somewhere in the “archives,” I have a handwritten note from Ben Civiletti expressing his gratitude that he never had to use the “administrative subpoena” and “designation as an “immigration officer” that I had drafted for him in the midst of one of a number of “immigration emergencies” involving a plane on the tarmac. 

Somewhere along the line, Merrick seems to have forgotten that even Civiletti was willing to take bold actions when necessary to advance the cause of immigration justice! There was no “precedent” for the Attorney General personally serving an INS subpoena. But, Civiletti was on the verge of doing it, until “Plan A” prevailed, and the crisis was resolved without resorting to “Plan B” or even “Plan C.” 

I was also there and directly affected when the likes of Ashcroft, “Gonzo I”, Kobach, and Mukasey cut through those post-Watergate reforms at EOIR as though they never existed, with little resistance except for a few of us “survivors” who adapted and continued to fight for due process and individual justice in a deteriorating system. 

I watched in disgust and disbelief as the Obama Administration (“change?” — not so much in immigration) completely “blew” the opportunity to make life and democracy saving corrections at EOIR. I then saw from the outside as “Gonzo Apocalypto” and Barr aggressively and systematically dismantled American justice, starting with the Immigration Courts. Their job was made infinitely easier by the indolence of the Obama Administration in failing to systematically bring progressive reforms and appoint more progressive judges at EOIR.

But, those of us “on the outside” were not just “passively outraged” by the due process and human rights abuses flowing from DOJ, we took action! Among many groups forming the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”), our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, some of whom had resigned or retired as an act of conscience, helped lead the charge against the Trump regime’s inhumane, scofflaw policies and bogus legal interpretations. 

We filed over 100 amicus briefs in tribunals from the Supremes to the BIA, many of them successful in helping to correct and reverse the regime’s anti-due process, anti-immigrant, racially driven policies. We also wrote, educated, did media interviews, organized, inspired others to join the resistance, and voted for change!

Even assuming, as I do, that any future GOP Administration would move to undo progressive reforms and replace progressive judges, their job would be made much more difficult if Garland creates the progressive judiciary that he should at EOIR. Moreover, even if exiled, “true  progressive practical scholars” will form the expert backbone of the resistance to neo-fascism in the “next generation” of the Round Table and the NDPA. 

Some “graduates” of a progressive Immigration Judiciary could be elevated to the Article III Judiciary where they will have continuing beneficial influence beyond the ability of the next GOP Administration to change. Others could use their knowledge of the system to fight the forces of nativism, restrictionism, White Nationalist myths, and mindless cruelty. Others will run for office and improve our moribund legislative branch! Who knows, we could even get Article I during the Biden Administration, giving a progressive immigration judiciary yet another degree of protection from right-wing political shenanigans!

Garland’s “stuck in the irretrievable past” approach to EOIR and the DOJ generally is blowing a golden, perhaps never-to-come again, chance to finally create an effective progressive judiciary at EOIR and, perhaps most important, to save lives and stop “pushing the St. Louis” back out to sea! It’s something that Biden can’t fully achieve in the Article IIIs. It’s painful to watch him squander the opportunity.

Merrick Garland might well have been a great Supreme Court Justice had Mitch McConnell and the GOP had a serious interest in institutional integrity and preserving norms. They didn’t (which should have been “signal” that got Garland’s attention)! Garland might also have been great Attorney General in a bygone era. 

Sadly for both Garland and America, he’s not the “right fit” for the job under today’s realities. Not only will that forever tarnish his reputation, but it could well cost the rest of us our democracy. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Timidity and false “restraint” in delivering equal justice for all, never! 

The meek might well inherit the earth in the next world. But, they won’t restore the rule of law to the Department of Justice in this one!☠️ 

Come on, Judge Garland, take off the blinders and show that you are smart, flexible, and capable enough to get beyond the limitations of your past experiences and take the bold, aggressive, courageous, potentially controversial, yet absolutely necessary and long overdue, actions necessary to restore the rule of law at Justice in the 21st year of the 21st Century. And, that starts with progressive due process reforms and major personnel changes at EOIR!

PWS

07-26-21 

 

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HISTORICAL ADDENDUM FROM HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE:

I actually had Civiletti’s desk at the BIA (I was told that Tony Moscato had brought it with him from Main Justice).

PWS

07-27-21