DESIGNED & STAFFED BY THE GRIM REAPER! ☠️⚰️— Star Chambers 🤮⚰️ Masquerading As “Courts” Are A Hotbed Of Institutionalized Racism, Cruelty, Bias, Bad Law, Worst Practices & A Refuge For Maliciously Incompetent Administrators 🤡 & Patently Unqualified “Judges”🤮  — All The Talent Has Been Exiled, Buried In The Field, Or Driven Out! — The Biden-Harris Presidency & The Future Of America As A Nation Of Laws  Depend On An Immediate Fix To This Grotesque Affront To Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, Human Dignity & Good Government Called “EOIR 🏴‍☠️!”

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Grim Reaper
Recent Barr Appointee Prepares to Take Bench
Fangusu, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style
Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.justsecurity.org/73337/the-urgent-need-to-restore-independence-to-americas-politicized-immigration-courts/?utm_source%3DRecent%2520Postings%2520Alert%26utm_medium%3DEmail%26utm_campaign%3DRP%2520Daily&source=gmail-imap&ust=1605992548000000&usg=AOvVaw2Lv6qMLlyAHGvI3TEwjt62

Gregory Chen @ Just Security lays bare the unrelenting nightmare @ EOIR:

The Trump administration has subjected America’s courts to extreme politicization and relentless assaults in the past four years. At the highest level, the deeply partisan battle over the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett transfixed the nation. But an even more radical transformation has been occurring in America’s immigration courts that has gone almost entirely unnoticed yet impacts hundreds of thousands of lives each year.

In a single term, Trump has filled the immigration courts with judges that hew to his anti-immigrant agenda and has implemented policies that severely compromise the integrity of the courts. Strained to the breaking point under a massive backlog of cases and a systemic inability to render consistent, fair decisions, the immigration courts require the urgent attention of the incoming Biden administration.

Most people apprehended by immigration enforcement authorities are removed from the United States without ever seeing a judge. The fortunate few who come before a judge are those seeking asylum or who need humanitarian relief that only an immigration judge can grant. Despite this critical role, these courts have suffered for years from underfunding, understaffing, and deep structural problems such as the fact that, unlike other courts, they operate under the jurisdiction of a prosecutorial agency, the Department of Justice, whose aims and political interests often conflict with the fundamental mission of delivering impartial and fair decisions. In recent years, the Justice Department has exercised its power to the maximal extent, stripping judges of fundamental authorities and rapidly appointing judges, to bend the courts toward political ends.

The intense public debates that accompany the Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees stand in sharp contrast to the lack of any public or congressional oversight into the appointments of immigration judges. During his time in office, President Donald Trump has appointed at least 283 out of a total of 520 immigration judges with no more fanfare than a public notice on the court’s website.

The Trump administration has not only chosen the majority of immigration judges but has also stacked the courts with appointees who are biased toward enforcement, have histories of poor judicial conduct, hold anti-immigrant views, or are affiliated with organizations espousing such views. Human Rights First found, for example, that 88 percent of immigration judges appointed in 2018 were former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees or attorneys representing the department.

Especially egregious are the appointments of the Chief Immigration Judge, who was previously the chief prosecutor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and lacked any bench experience; the Chief Appellate Judge, who was a Trump advisor on immigration policy and a former prosecutor; and an immigration judge who worked for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a known hate group. With the pace of appointments accelerating, it’s likely that even more judges conforming to that mold will be appointed before the administration’s term ends. In each of the most recent fiscal years, the administration has hired progressively more judges: 81 in 2018; 92 in 2019; and 100 in 2020.

Packing the Board of Immigration Appeals

The idea of packing the Supreme Court was heavily debated in the run-up to the election, but court-packing has already occurred on the Board of Immigration Appeals — the immigration appellate body — with the Trump administration’s addition of six new positions that raised the total size of the board from 17 to 23. The two regulations expanding the board were promulgated in rapid succession, each on an expedited basis that afforded no opportunity for public comment.

The expansion of the Board was another brazenly transparent move to fill the bench with judges unsympathetic to those appearing before them. Data from 2019 reveal that six immigration judges whom Attorney General William Barr elevated to serve as Board members had abysmal asylum grant rates — an average of 2.4 percent — that were far below the norm of 29 percent. Two of those judges denied every asylum case that year. In a manner of speaking, these judges never met an asylum seeker they liked.

The next year, Justice Department leadership tried to cull the nine appellate judges appointed by previous administrations by offering them buyout packages if they resigned or retired early. None took the deal, and thereafter, changes were made to their positions to make them more vulnerable to pressure from above and further intimidate them into leaving.

A judicial system that is buffeted so wildly by political waves cannot retain the public’s trust that it will deliver fair decisions. A similar attempt made at the end of the George W. Bush administration resulted in a hiring scandal that rocked the Justice Department. An oversight investigation found its leadership had violated federal law by considering immigration judge candidates’ political and ideological affiliations. Monica Goodling, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s White House Liaison, and other department staff had improperly screened candidates based on their political opinions by examining voter registration records and political contributions and asking about political affiliations during interviews. Now, at the request of eleven democratic senators, including Senator and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris, the Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s politicization of the immigration courts.

Political interference with the immigration courts rises to the very top of the Department of Justice. Both Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Barr vigorously exercised an unusual authority that enables them to overturn and rewrite the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decisions. In a series of opinions, Sessions divested judges of the powers they need to control their dockets, such as the authority to administratively close, continue, or terminate cases that are not suitable or ready for hearing. (Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018); Matter of L-A-B-R-, et al., 27 I&N Dec. 405 (A.G. 2018); Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 462 (A.G. 2018).)

. . . .

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

Read Gregory’s complete article at the link.

Have any doubt that EOIR is a deadly “hack haven?” Here’s an article about a Barr “judicial” appointee with no immigration experience. What’s his “claim to fame?” He’s a controversial state criminal judge from Illinois who “retired” several years after being rated “unqualified” for further judicial service by the Chicago Council of Lawyers (although other groups recommended him.)

According to a recent complaint filed with EOIR by an coalition of an astounding 17 legal services and immigration groups in the San Francisco area:  “In unusually aggressive language, the coalition accused Ford of ‘terrorizing the San Francisco immigrant community,’ alleging that he dispensed ‘racist, ableist and hostile treatment of immigrants, attorneys and witnesses.’”

Read about it from the Bay City News here: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/compliant-filed-against-sf-immigration-judge-accused-of-hostile-treatment/2399398/

With tons of exceptionally well qualified legal talent out there in the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) who are experts in immigration and asylum laws and who have demonstrated an unswerving career commitment to scholarship, due process, fundamental fairness, equal justice, professionalism, and treating all humans decently, there is no, that is NO, excuse for tolerating clowns like Ford in perhaps the most important judicial positions in the Federal System. Judges at the “retail level” of our system who decide hundreds of thousands of cases annually and exercise life or death authority over large segments of our population and set the tone and are the foundation for our entire justice system!

Enough of the malicious incompetence, institutionalized racism, ignorance, intentional rudeness, wanton cruelty, worst practices, disdain for scholarship, dehumanization, destruction of the rule of law, hack hiring, and systemic trampling of human decency and human dignity! EOIR is an ongoing  “crime against humanity” perpetrated by the Trump regime under the noses of Congress and the Article III Courts who have undermined their own legitimacy by letting this stunningly unconstitutional travesty continue.

The Biden-Harris Administration must fix EOIR immediately! It’s not rocket science! The talent to do so is ready, willing, and able in the NDPA! 

There is no “middle ground” here, and the status quo is legally and morally unacceptable! If they don’t fix it, the incoming Administration will rapidly become a co-conspirator in one of the darkest and most disgraceful episodes in American legal history. One that literally poses an existential threat to the continuation of our nation!

This isn’t a “back burner” issue or a project for “focus groups.” It’s war! And, we’re on the front lines of the monumental battle to save the heart, soul, and future of America and our judicial system! Failure and fiddling around (see, Obama Administration) aren’t options!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-15-20

FROM THE HEIGHTS OF KASINGA TO THE DEPTHS OF AMERICA’S DEADLY STAR CHAMBERS: Will The Biden Administration Tap The New Due Process Army To Fix EOIR & Save Our Nation? 

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

FROM THE HEIGHTS OF KASINGA TO THE DEPTHS OF AMERICA’S DEADLY STAR CHAMBERS: Will The Biden Administration Tap The New Due Process Army To Fix EOIR & Save Our Nation?

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Retired U.S. Immigration Judge

Courtside Exclusive

Nov. 12, 2020

I.  INTRODUCTION — ABROGATION OF ASYLUM LAWS IN THE FACE OF EXECUTIVE LAWLESSNESS & RACIAL BIAS IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE

In Matter of Kasinga, I applied the generous well-founded fear standard for asylum established by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca to reach a favorable result for a female asylum applicant. It was based on a particular social group of women of the tribe who feared persecution in the form of female genital mutilation, or “FGM.” I sometimes think of this as the “high water mark” of asylum law at the BIA.

Since then, proper, generous application of asylum laws to serve their intended purpose of flexibly, fairly, and consistently extending protection to those facing persecution has been steadily declining. The Trump Administration essentially overruled Cardoza-Fonseca and abolished asylum law without legislative change.

Both Congress and the Court have failed to stand up to this egregious abuse of the law, constitutional due process, and simple human decency that presents a “clear and present danger” to our nation’s continued existence.

Indeed, the performance of the Court in the face of the Administration’s overt assault on asylum has been so woeful as to lead me to wonder whether any of the Justices, other than Justice Sonia Sotomayor, have actually read the Cardoza-Fonseca decision. Certainly, most of them have failed to consistently and courageously carry forth its spirit and to grapple with their legal and moral responsibility for letting a lawless Executive trample the constitutional and human rights, as well as the human dignity, of the most vulnerable among us.

How did we get to this utterly deplorable state of affairs and what can the Biden Administration do to save us? Will they act boldly and courageously or continue the tradition of ignoring abuses directed against asylum seekers and the deleterious effect it has on our society and the rule of law?

I guarantee that racial justice and harmony will continue to elude us as a nation unless and until we come to grips with the ongoing abuses in the Immigration Courts — “courts” that no longer function as such in any manner except the misleading name!

II.   BACKGROUND

To understand what has happened since Kasinga, here’s some background. In U.S. asylum law, there generally has been an “inverse relationship” between geography and success. The further your home country is from the U.S., the more generous the treatment is likely to be.

Thus, folks like Kasinga from Togo, or those from Tibet, Ethiopia, China, or Eritrea, with relatively difficult access to our borders, tend to do relatively well. On the other hand, those from Mexico, Haiti, Central America, and South America, who have easier access to our borders, tend to be treated more restrictively.

This reaction has been driven by a hypothesis with limited empirical support, but which has been accepted in some form or another by all Administrations, regardless of party, since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980. That is, the belief that human migration patterns are driven primarily by the policies and legal regimes in prosperous so-called “receiving countries” like the U.S.

Thus, generous and humane asylum policies will encourage unwanted flows of asylum seekers across international borders. And, of course, we all know that nothing threatens the national security of the world’s greatest nuclear superpower more than a caravan or flotilla of desperate, unarmed asylum seekers and their families trying to turn themselves in at the border or to the Border Patrol shortly after arrival.

Conversely, restrictive policies including rapid, unfair rejection, border turn-backs, mass detentions, criminal sanctions, family separation, denials of fair hearings, walls, border militarization, and hostile, often racially and religiously charged rhetoric, will cause asylum seekers to “stay put” thus deterring them and reducing the number of applications threatening our national security. In other words, encourage legitimate asylum seekers to “perish in place.” Often, these harsh policies are disingenuously characterized as being, at least partially, “for the benefit of asylum seekers” by discouraging them from undertaking dangerous journeys and paying human smugglers only to be summarily rejected upon arrival.

This “popular hypothesis” largely ignores the effect of conditions in refugee sending countries, including both geopolitical and environmental factors. For example, the current migration flow is affected by the practical difficulties of travel in the time of pandemic and by economic failures and cultural and political changes resulting from unabated climate change, not just by the legal restrictions that might be in place in the U.S. and other far-away countries.

It also factors out the “business narratives” of human smugglers designed to manipulate asylum seekers in ways that maximize profits under a variety of scenarios and to take maximum advantage of mindlessly predictable government “enforcement only” strategies.

Indeed, there is plenty of reason to believe that such policies serve largely to maximize smugglers’ profits, extort more money from desperate asylum seekers, but with little long-term effect on migration patterns. The short-term reduction in traffic, often hastily mischaracterized as “success” by the government, probably reflects in part “market adjustments” as smugglers raise their rates to cover the increased risks and revised planning caused by more of a particular kind of enforcement. That “prices some would-be migrants out of the market,” at least temporarily, and forces others to wait while they accumulate more money to pay smugglers.

It also likely increases the number of asylum seekers who die while attempting the journey. But, there is no real evidence that four decades of various “get tough” and “deterrence policies” — right up until the present — have had or will have a determinative long term effect on extralegal migration to the U.S. It may well, however, encourage more migrants to proceed to the interior of the country and take “do it yourself” refuge in the population, rather than turning themselves in at or near the border to a legal system that has been intentionally rigged against them.

Regardless of its empirically questionable basis, “deterrence theory” has become the primary driving force behind government asylum policies. Thus, the fear of large-scale, out of control “Southern border incursions” by asylum seekers has driven all U.S. Administrations to adopt relatively restrictive interpretations and applications of asylum law with respect to asylum seekers from Central America.

Starting with a so-called “Southern border crisis” in the summer of 2014, the Obama Administration took a number of steps intended to discourage Central American asylum seekers. These included: use of so-called “family detention;” denial of bond; accelerated processing of recently arrived children and adults with children; selecting Immigration Judges largely from the ranks of DHS prosecutors and other Government employees; keeping asylum experts off the BIA; taking outlandish court positions on detention and the right to counsel for unrepresented toddlers in Immigration Court; and dire public warnings as to the dangers of journeying to the U.S. and the likelihood of rejection upon arrival.

These efforts did little to stem the flow of asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle. However, they did result in a wave of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) at the Immigration Courts that accelerated the growth of backlogs and the deterioration of morale at EOIR. (Later, Sessions & Barr would “perfect the art of ADR” thereby astronomically increasing backlogs, even with many more judges on the bench, to something approaching 1.5 million known cases, with probably hundreds of thousands more buried in the “maliciously incompetently managed” EOIR (non)system).

Success for Central American asylum applicants thus remained problematic, with more than two of every three applications being rejected. Nevertheless, by 2016, largely through the heroic efforts of pro bono litigation groups, applicants from the so-called “Northern Triangle” – El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala – had achieved a respectable approval rate ranging from approximately 20% to 30%.

Many of these successful claims were based on “particular social groups” composed of battered women and/or children or family groups targeted by violent husbands or boyfriends, gangs, cartels, and other so-called “non-governmental actors” that the Northern Triangle governments clearly were “unwilling or unable to control.”

III.   CROSSHAIRS

Upon the ascension of the Trump Administration in 2017, refugee and asylum policies became driven not only by “deterrence theory,” but also by racially, religiously, and politically motivated “institutionalized xenophobia.” The initial target was Muslims who were “zapped” by Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban.” Although initially properly blocked as unconstitutional by lower Federal Courts, the Supreme Court eventually “greenlighted” a slightly watered-down version of the “Muslim ban.”

Next on the hit list were refugees and asylees of color. This put Central American asylum seekers, particularly women and children, directly in the crosshairs.

In something akin to “preliminary bombing,” then Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched a series of false and misleading narratives against asylum seekers and their lawyers directed at an audience consisting of Immigration Judges and BIA Members who worked at EOIR and thus were his subordinates.

Without evidence, Sessions characterized most asylum seekers as fraudulent or mala fide and blamed them as a primary cause for the population of 11 million or so undocumented individuals estimated to be residing in the U.S. He also accused “dirty immigration lawyers” of having “gamed” the asylum system, while charging “his” Immigration Judges with the responsibility of “assisting their partners” at DHS enforcement in stopping asylum fraud and discouraging asylum applications.

IV.    THE ATTACK

While not directly tampering with the “well-founded fear” standard for asylum, with Sessions leading the way, the Administration launched a three-pronged attack on asylum seekers.

First, using his power to review BIA precedents, Sessions reversed the prior precedent that had facilitated asylum grants for applicants who had suffered persecution in the form of domestic abuse. In doing so, he characterized them as “mere victims of crime” who should not be recognized as a “particular social group.” While not part of the holding, he also commented to Immigration Judges in his opinion that very few claimants should succeed in establishing asylum eligibility based on domestic violence.

He further imposed bogus “production quotas” on judges with an eye toward speeding up the “deportation railroad.” In other words, Immigration Judges who valued their jobs should start cranking out mass denials of such cases without wasting time on legal analysis or the actual facts.

Later, Sessions’s successor, Attorney General Bill Barr, overruled the BIA precedent recognizing “family” as a particular social group for asylum. He found that the vast majority of family units lacked the required “social distinction” to qualify.

For example, a few prominent families like the Rockefellers, Clintons, or Kardashians might be generally recognized by society. However, ordinary families like the Schmidts would be largely unknown beyond their own limited social circles. Therefore, we would lack the necessary “social distinction” within the larger society to be recognized as a particular social group.

Second, Sessions and Barr attacked the “nexus” requirement that persecution be “on account of” a particular social group or other protected ground. They found that most alleged acts of domestic violence or harm inflicted by abusive spouses, gangs and cartels were “mere criminal acts” or acts of “random violence” not motivated by the victim’s membership in any “particular social group” or any of the other so-called “protected grounds” for asylum. They signaled that Immigration Judges who found “no nexus” would find friendly BIA appellate judges anxious to uphold those findings and thereby retain their jobs.

Third, they launched an attack on the long-established “nongovernmental actor” doctrine. They found that normally, qualifying acts of persecution would have to be carried out by the government or its agents. For non-governmental actions to be attributed to that government, that government would basically have to be helpless to respond.

They found that the Northern Triangle governments officially opposed the criminal acts of gangs, cartels, and abusers and made at least some effort to control them. They deemed the fact that those governments are notoriously corrupt and ineffective in controlling violence to be largely beside the point. After all, they observed, no government including ours offers “perfect protection” to its citizens.

Any effort by the government to control the actor, no matter how predictably or intentionally ineffective or nominal, should be considered sufficient to show that the government was willing and able to protect against the harm. In other words, even the most minimal or nominal opposition should be considered “good enough for government work.”

V.   THE UGLY RESULTS

Remarkably, notwithstanding this concerted effort to “zero out” asylum grants, some individuals, even from the Northern Triangle, still succeed. They usually are assisted by experienced pro bono counsel from major human rights NGOs or large law firms — essentially the “New Due Process Army” in action. These are the folks who have saved what is left of American justice and democracy. Often, they must seek review in the independent, Article III Federal Courts to ultimately prevail.

Some Article IIIs are up to the job; many aren’t, lacking both the expertise and the philosophical inclination to actually enforce the constitutional and statutory rights of asylum seekers — “the other,” often people of color. After all, wrongfully deported to death means “out of sight, out of mind.”

However, the Administration’s efforts have had a major impact. Systemwide, the number of asylum cases decided by the Immigration Courts has approximately tripled since 2016 – from approximately 20,000 to over 60,000, multiplying backlogs as other, often older, “ready to try” cases are shuffled off to the end of the dockets, often with little or no notice to the parties.

At the same time, asylum grant rates for the Northern Triangle have fallen to their lowest rate in many years 10% to 15%. Taken together, that means many more asylum denials for Northern Triangle applicants, a major erosion of the generous “well-founded fear” standard for asylum, and a severe deterioration of due process protections in American law. Basically, it’s a collapse of our legal system and an affront to human dignity. The kinds of things you might expect in a “Banana Republic.”

VI.  WILL BIDEN FIX EOIR OR REPEAT THE MISTAKES OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION?

The intentional destruction of U.S. asylum law and the weaponization of EOIR in support of the White Nationalist agenda have undermined the entire U.S. justice system. It actively encourages both dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) and institutionalized racism all the way up to a Supreme Court which has improperly enabled large portions of the unlawful and unconstitutional anti-migrant agenda.

The Biden Administration can reverse the festering due process and human rights disaster at EOIR. Unlike improving and reforming the Article III Judiciary, it doesn’t need Mitch McConnell’s input to do so.

Biden can appoint an Attorney General who will recognize the importance of putting immigration/human rights/due process experts in charge of EOIR. He can replace the current BIA with real appellate judges whose qualifications reflect an unswerving commitment to due process, expert application of asylum laws in the generous manner once envisioned by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca, implementing “best” practices, judicial efficiency, and judicial independence.

Biden can return human dignity to an improperly weaponized system designed to “Dred Scottify” the other. He can appoint better qualified Immigration Judges through a merit-based system that would encourage and give fair consideration to the many outstanding candidates who have devoted their professional lives to fighting for due process, fundamental fairness, and immigrants’ rights, courageously, throughout America’s darkest times!

That, in turn, will create the necessary conditions to institutionalize the EOIR reforms through the legislative creation of an independent, Article I Immigration Court that will be the “gemstone” of American justice rather than a national disgrace! One that will eventually fulfill the noble, now abandoned, “EOIR Vision” of “through teamwork and innovation being the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

The Obama Administration shortsightedly choose to “freeze out” the true experts in the private advocacy, NGO, academic, clinical teaching, and pro bono communities. The results have been beyond disastrous.

In addition to killing, maiming, and otherwise harming humans entitled to our legal protection, EOIR’s unseemly demise over the past three Administrations has undermined the credibility of every aspect of our justice system all the way to the Supreme Court as well as destroying our international leadership role as a shining example and beacon of hope for others.

The talent in the private sector is out there! They are ready, willing, and very able to turn EOIR from a disaster zone to a model of due process, innovation, best practices, fair, efficient, and practical judging, and creative judicial administration. One that other parts of the U.S. judicial system could emulate.

Will the Biden Administration heed the call, act boldly, and put the “right team” in place to save EOIR? Or will they continue past Democratic Administrations’ short-sighted undervaluation of the importance of providing constitutionally required due process, equal justice, and fundamental fairness to all persons in the U.S. including asylum applicants and other migrants.

I’ve read a number of papers and proposals on how to “fix” immigration and refugee policies. None of them appears to recognize the overriding importance of making EOIR reform “job one.”

For once, why can’t Democrats “think like Republicans?” When John Ashcroft and Kris Kobach and later Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller set out to kneecap, politicize, and weaponize the U.S. justice system, what was their “starting point?” EOIR, of course!

The Obama Administration’s abject failure to effectively address and reverse the glaring mess at EOIR left by the “Ashcroft reforms” basically set the table for Sessions’s even more invidious plan to weaponize EOIR into a tool for xenophobia and White Nationalist nativism. The problems engendered by allowing the politicization and weaponization of EOIR have crippled the U.S. justice system far beyond immigration and asylum law.

Without a better EOIR, fully empowered to lead the way legally and insure and enforce compliance, all reforms, from DACA, to detention reform, to restoration of refugee and asylum systems will be less effective, more difficult, and less enduring than they should be. Equal justice for all and an end to institutionalized racism cannot be achieved without bold EOIR reform!

It would also take some of the pressure off the Article III Courts. Time and again they are called upon, with disturbingly varying degrees of both willingness and competence in the results, to correct the endless stream of basic legal errors, abuses of due process, and inane, obviously biased and counterproductive policies regularly flowing from EOIR and DOJ. Indeed, unnecessary litigation and frivolous, ethically questionable, often factually inaccurate or intentionally misleading positions advanced by the DOJ in immigration matters now clog virtually all levels of the Article III Federal Courts right up to the docket of the Supreme Court!

So far, what I haven’t seen is a recognition by anyone on the “Biden Team” that the experts in the private bar who have been the primary fighters in the trenches, almost singlehandedly responsible for preserving American justice and saving our democracy from the Trump onslaught, must be placed where they belong: in charge of the effort to rebuild EOIR and those who will be chosen to staff it!

Continue to ignore the New Due Process Army and their ability to right the listing American ship of state at peril! It’s long past time to unleash the “problem solvers” on government and give them the resources and support necessary to use practical scholarship, technology, best practices, and “Con Law/Human Rights 101” to solve the problems!

No “magic list,” stakeholders committees, or consensus-building groups can take the place of putting expert, empowered, practical problem solvers in charge of the machinery. We can’t win the game with the best, most talented, most knowledgeable, most courageous players forever sitting on the bench!

The future of our republic might well depend on whether the Biden-Harris Administration can get beyond the past and take the courageous, far-sighted actions necessary to let EOIR lead the way to a better future of all Americans! We can only hope that they finally see the light. Before it’s too late for all of us!

Due Process Forever! Complicity & Complacency, Never!

 

 

 

 

AILA SUIT SEEKS SKINNY ON STAR CHAMBER SCANDAL — Secret “Remote Adjudication Centers” (“The Racks”) 🤮☠️⚰️ Subvert Justice, Abuse Asylum Seekers!

Under watchful eye of regime officials, “Remote Adjudicators” hone skills in using “rack” to deter asylum seekers from seeking justice:

Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

FYI – Link to Press Release.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 30, 2020
Contact: Maria Frausto, mfrausto@immcouncil.org

Lawsuit Seeks to Uncover Secretive Expansion of Judicial Black Sites for Immigration Cases

 

WASHINGTON, DC — Immigration groups filed a lawsuit today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—which oversees immigration courts—and the General Services Administration (GSA) requesting information on the expansion and creation of immigration adjudication centers, which were established as part of EOIR’s Strategic Caseload Reduction plan designed to accelerate removal proceedings at the expense of due process.

 

The lawsuit—filed by the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Chicago AILA Chapter, and the National Immigrant Justice Center— seeks the disclosure of records on the obscure procedural rules for immigration adjudication centers. The centers are a new initiative created under the Trump administration where immigration judges adjudicate immigration cases from around the country in remote-only settings that are closed to the public.

 

Immigration adjudication centers appear to have been created to address immigration court backlogs, but attorneys and immigrants facing deportation have little instruction on the procedures for appearing before these centers. Immigration lawyers and advocates have expressed concerns after public reports indicate the potential expansion of immigration adjudication centers across the country.

 

The lawsuit challenges EOIR’s failure to disclose information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in March 2020. EOIR and GSA have failed to disclose critical information about what immigration courts presently exist, immigration court expansion, and contracts governing this expansion.

 

“Immigration lawyers and advocates have an interest in pressing for more transparency in the immigration courts, helping ensure the due process rights of all who appear in court, and providing guidance to the lawyers representing people before these courts,” said Claudia Valenzuela, FOIA senior attorney at the American Immigration Council.

 

“Transparency is essential to a fair day in court. Unfortunately, the secretive creation and expansion of immigration adjudication centers where immigration judges conduct remote-only proceedings in facilities closed to the public demonstrate how opaque an already complex immigration court system has become at the hands of this administration. While the Department of Justice regulations require immigration hearings to generally be open to the public, this administration has imposed significant new barriers to the public’s ability to observe these proceedings and has led to some hearings being conducted in secret, calling into question whether the fundamental elements of due process are being met. We are proud to stand alongside our partners in this effort,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

 

“Everyone deserves a fair day in court. The lack of transparency in EOIR operations compromises the integrity of our immigration system and undermines public confidence in this system,” said Nell Barker, chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Chicago Chapter. “The secretive expansion of immigration courts is a blow to due process and adds a layer of unnecessary unpredictability to a system that struggles to inform stakeholders about changing procedures. We are concerned about the increasing inaccessibility of immigration courtrooms to lawyers, clients, and the public.”

 

“The secretive and inaccessible immigration adjudication centers, where judges determine whether noncitizens will be deported to persecution and torture or permanent family separation, are a disturbing example of the manner in which this administration has developed and expanded numerous policies and procedures intended to expedite the deportation of noncitizens without due process,” said Sarah Thompson, senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “EOIR must make public its plan for future adjudication centers and the procedures under which these centers operate.”

 

A copy of the complaint is here.

###

For more information, contact the American Immigration Council:

Maria Frausto at mfrausto@immcouncil.org or 202-507-7526.

 

The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. Follow the latest Council news and information on ImmigrationImpact.com and Twitter @immcouncil.

 

The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members. Follow AILA on Twitter @AILANational.

 

The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is a nongovernmental organization dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers through a unique combination of direct services, policy reform, impact litigation and public education. Visit immigrantjustice.org and follow @NIJC.

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

The current system is specifically designed to “break” asylum seekers and their representatives in body and mind.

Will a lawless regime get another four years to finish the job of destroying American democracy and eradicating justice? Or, will there be hope on the horizon for a better future for all Americans!

Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out!

PWS

11-01-20

PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

Professor Ingrid Eagly
Professor Ingrid Eagly
UCLA Law
Blogger, ImmigrationProf Blog
Picture from ImmmigrationProf Blog

First, from ImmmigrationProf Blog:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/10/op-ed-when-trump-says-immigrants-dont-show-up-for-court-hearings-he-couldnt-be-more-wrong.html 

ImmigrationProf blogger Ingrid Eagly and Steven Shafer in an op/ed in the Los Angeles Times take on President Trump who “[l]ast week, during the final presidential campaign debate, President Trump renewed a claim he has often made: Migrants with pending court dates rarely show up for their hearings. In response to the charge by his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, that the administration’s treatment of would-be immigrants was inhumane, Trump told debate watchers that the number who`come back’ to immigration court is `less than 1%.’

 

The government’s data, however, tell a far different story.”

 

Check out the op/ed and the take down of President.

 

[Dean] K[evin] J[ohnson]

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

Also from ImmigrationProf Blog:

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/10/new-fact-sheet-from-vera-institute-of-justice-on-immigration-court-appearance-rates.html

A new fact sheet by Nina Siulc and Noelle Smart of the Vera Institute of Justice summarizes new evidence showing that most immigrants appear for their immigration court hearings. The report includes data from Vera’s Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Initiative that provides free representation through a universal access model of representation. Vera researchers found that 98 percent of SAFE clients released from custody have continued to appear for their court hearings. Read the full report for additional information on related research, including Vera’s ongoing evaluation of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP).

I[ngrid] E[agly]

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

Thanks, Ingrid and Steven! Our “Round Table” has used your scholarship in amicus briefs to educate Federal Courts at all levels about the realities of Immigration Court. 

It’s particularly critical in an era where the politicized and “ethically challenged” DOJ often puts forth largely fictionalization versions of their self-manufactured “immigration emergency” that is actually little more than the outcome of studied ignorance, White Nationalism, “gonzo” enforcement, and maliciously incompetent administration of the Federal immigration bureaucracy. 

And, as I pointed out yesterday, “Gruppenfuhrer Miller” and his gang of neo-Nazi thugs have every intention of “doubling down” on their crimes against humanity and anti-democracy agenda if they retain power after the upcoming election. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/10/30/%f0%9f%91%b9%f0%9f%8e%83halloween-horror-%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%ae%e2%9a%b0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%8e%f0%9f%8f%bbreichsreport-gruppenfuhrer-miller-reveals/

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

If we kick out the kakistocracy next week, we could put qualified “practical scholars” like Ingrid and others like her in charge and remake both DHS and the Immigration Courts to actually operate as required by Due Process while also fulfilling legitimate law-enforcement objectives. To state the obvious, neither of these objectives is being realized at present. It’s bad for America and for humanity.

For far too long, the wrong individuals, lacking the necessary expertise in immigration and human rights, and also lacking a firm commitment to equal justice under law, have been “in charge” of the Government’s immigration policy and legal apparatus and appointed to the Federal Courts, at all levels. That’s particularly true at the Supremes where only Justices Sotomayor and (some days) Kagan appear “up to the job.”  

We will never end institutionalized racism, achieve equal justice for all, and realize the true human and economic potential of America until we bring our broken immigration and refugee systems and our failing Federal Judicial System into line with our Constitutional and national values. That process must start, but certainly will not end, with this election!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-31-20

  

 

👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!

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

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-adviser-stephen-miller-reveals-aggressive-second-term-immigration-agenda-n1245407

Sahil Kapur reports for NBC News:

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump‘s senior adviser Stephen Miller has fleshed out plans to rev up Trump’s restrictive immigration agenda if he wins re-election next week, offering a stark contrast to the platform of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

In a 30-minute phone interview Thursday with NBC News, Miller outlined four major priorities: limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities, expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas.

The objective, he said, is “raising and enhancing the standard for entry” to the United States.

Some of the plans would require legislation. Others could be achieved through executive action, which the Trump administration has relied on heavily in the absence of a major immigration bill.

Examining Trump’s immigration campaign promises four years later

AUG. 25, 202005:51Some of the plans would require legislation. Others could be achieved through executive action, which the Trump administration has relied on heavily in the absence of a major immigration bill.

“In many cases, fixing these problems and restoring some semblance of sanity to our immigration programs does involve regulatory reform,” Miller said. “Congress has delegated a lot of authority. … And that underscores the depth of the choice facing the American people.”

Miller, who serves in a dual role as an adviser in the White House and to Trump’s re-election campaign, stressed that he was speaking about second-term priorities only in his capacity as campaign adviser.

Immigration has been overshadowed by surging coronavirus case numbers and an economy shattered by a nearly yearlong pandemic, but it was central to Trump’s rise to power in the Republican Party, and Miller has been a driving force for the administration’s often controversial policies to crack down on illegal migration and erect hurdles for aspiring legal immigrants.

Miller has spearheaded an immigration policy that critics describe as cruel, racist and antithetical to American values as a nation of immigrants. He scoffs at those claims, insisting that his only priority is to protect the safety and wages of Americans.

And he said he intends to stay on to see the agenda through in a second term if Trump is re-elected.

In the near term, Miller wouldn’t commit to lifting the freeze on new green cards and visas that’s set to expire at the end of the year, saying it would be “entirely contingent” on governmental analysis that factors in the state of the job market.

Asked whether he would support reinstating the controversial “zero tolerance” policy that led to families’ being separated, Miller said the Trump administration is “100 percent committed to a policy of family unity,” but he described the policy as one that would keep families together in immigration detention by changing what is known as the Flores settlement agreement.

Over the past year, the administration has sought to amend the Flores agreement, which says children can’t be held over 20 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. If it succeeds, immigrant families could be detained indefinitely as they await their day in immigration court.

Keep asylum down

On Trump’s watch, asylum grants have plummeted. Miller wants to keep it that way. He said a second-term Trump administration would seek to expand “burden-sharing” deals with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that cut off pathways to the U.S. for asylum-seekers.

“The president would like to expand that to include the rest of the world,” Miller said. “And so if you create safe third partners in other continents and other countries and regions, then you have the ability to share the burden of asylum-seekers on a global basis.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete report at the link.

Kids in cages, refugees returned to torture and death, ethnic communities terrorized, lives destroyed, an economy and a society (make no mistake about it, immigrants will be essential to America’s recovery, future prosperity, and competitiveness) in tatters, tens of millions wasted on unnecessary and counterproductive Gulags, walls, and cruel enforcement while the Gruppenfuherer and his fellow human rights criminals remain at large and and an existential threat to our nation and our world!

To state the obvious, this has little or nothing to do with protecting American workers. Trump has shown that he couldn’t care less about the health, safety, and welfare of American workers (or frankly anybody except himself) except at election time. Immigration and immigrants create jobs and economic prosperity for America.

Also, even Miller couldn’t possibly believe that the Democratic House will pass any part of this racist manifesto. Truth is, Trump failed to pass any meaningful immigration legislation in four years, even when the GOP controlled all the political branches! In fact, Miller’s nativist legislative game-plan “poisoned the well” and was soundly defeated in both Houses of Congress! So, he intends to use Executive misrule, bureaucratic corruption, and a fascism-enabling, racially tone-deaf GOP Supremes’ majority to rule without Congress (as has been the case for the last four years.)

But make no mistake: the real “Reichsplan” here is directed at further institutionalizing racism, spreading hate, and targeting Americans of color. That’s what the regime’s “Dred Scottification” is really about. Reducing or eliminating YOUR Constitutional rights! Immigrants are the “usual suspects.” But, by no means will they be the only victims of Gruppenfuhrer Miller’s White Nationalist, racist, hate extravaganza.

As reported at the link above, The Biden-Harris campaign immediately and forcefully condemned the Gruppenfuhrer’s plans for “ethnic cleansing:”

“We are going to win this election so that people like Stephen Miller don’t get the chance to write more xenophobic policies that dishonor our American values,” Molina said. “Unlike Trump, Vice President Biden knows that immigrants make America stronger and helped build this country.”

America is immigration! It’s our past, present, and future! When we deny those truths, we deny ourselves and betray our own humanity!

Get out the vote for Joe, Kamala, and the Dems! Top to bottom of the ballot! Our lives and the future of American Democracy depend on it! Don’t let Gruppenfuhrer Miller and his neo-Nazi agenda, the GOP’s dark vision of the future, destroy our democracy! Vote the party of corruption, hate, and neo-fascism out!

Don’t let the Monster win!👹

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-30-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻THE TRUMP REGIME & A CORRUPT SOLICITOR GENERAL HAVE CONDUCTED A WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST AMERICAN LAWYERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY — John Roberts & His GOP Buddies On The Supremes Have Aided, Abetted, & Encouraged It! — Constant Improper & Ethically Questionable Interference With Thoughtful, Legally Correct Lower Court Rulings Holding The Regime Accountable Have Demoralized The Profession’s Best & Bravest! — The Answer Is Better Judges For A Better America!

Marcia Brown
Marcia Brown
Writing Fellow
American Prospect
Photo source: American Prospect

https://prospect.org/justice/loneliness-of-the-immigration-lawyer/

Marcia Brown Reports in American Prospect: 

Susan Church, an immigration attorney in Boston, ended the first week of the Trump administration arm in arm with protesters at Logan Airport, resisting an executive order banning travel from several predominantly Muslim countries. But what happened the next day, away from the public chants of “Let them stay!” was more typical of what the life of the former chair of the New England chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) was to become under the Trump administration.

Church and an associate filed an emergency lawsuit to secure the release of immigrants from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. “I got a federal judge on the phone, you know, on a Saturday night at eight o’clock.” The judge told Church to go to court immediately. An hour later, the attorneys were in court defending their clients.

“For me, that was the canary in the coal mine about what the rest of my four years under the Trump administration was going to be like,” Church said. “It’s just a nonstop series of emergency litigation filed to try to rescue one or 10 or 100 or 1,000 people, depending on which issue it is.” Eventually, the speed of the work, and the physical and mental exhaustion it triggered, landed Church in the hospital. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” she said.

More from Marcia Brown

Church stayed with the fight to reunite parents with their children. She described the process of taking affidavits from clients, which require she learn every harrowing detail of a client’s trauma. In one instance, CBP ripped away one woman’s eight-year-old daughter at the border. “She had to comb her daughter’s hair and change her daughter’s clothes and put her on a bus and say goodbye to her,” Church said through tears. The two were separated for nearly two months, even after the mother was released from detention.

Church was able to reunite her client with her child, but the episode—like many, many other cases—weighs heavy on her shoulders. “I don’t think I’ll ever be quite the same person that I was beforehand,” she said.

Four years into this migration crisis, there’s a parallel migration under way—of immigration lawyers out of the profession. Survey data and interviews the Prospect conducted with more than a dozen lawyers around the country reveal the physical, mental, and financial toll endured by members of the bar. Given the extreme violence, trauma, and inhumanity their clients often endure, immigration attorneys don’t like to talk about how it affects them. But secondary trauma also leaves a mark, making it impossible to continue for some attorneys. Although numerical data is limited, there is evidence that some attorneys are cutting back on some types of cases, such as deportation defense work, or even leaving immigration law altogether. Removal defense casework is one of the most time-intensive, emotional, and exigent parts of lawyers’ loads. It’s also where the administration has aimed much of its cruelest policymaking, severely limiting lawyers’ efficacy.

Under the Trump administration, immigration law has changed not only profoundly, but also so rapidly that it’s hard for immigration attorneys to keep up. Susan Church—and several other attorneys interviewed for this article—described combating Trump’s policies as a game of whack-a-mole.

. . . .

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

Read Marcia’s full article at the link.

Forget all the right wing BS and the “originalist hoax!” This is about “democracy (or the destruction thereof) in action.” 

Remember, all of these cosmic “immigration law changes” have taken place without a single piece of major legislation enacted by Congress! Indeed, the Trump regime’s ham-handed attempt to force it’s nativist agenda down the throats of the Congress as part of the “Dreamer fiasco” fell flat on its face in both Houses!  But, the Supremes have both encouraged and enabled Trump (actually notorious white supremacist Stephen Miller) to rewrite the law through. “Executive fiat.” Totally inappropriate, not to mention glaringly unconstitutional.

The Supremes’ majority has time and again improperly sided with the unethical, immoral, and Constitutionally bankrupt “Dred Scottification” of migrants, particularly asylum seekers. It’s not much different from what has happened to African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities following the Civil War. But, this is supposed to be the 21st Century where we have put “Jim Crow” behind us. Obviously, we haven’t!

Failing to protect “officers of the court” (lawyers) and their clients from a scheme of abuses heaped upon them by a corrupt, biased, out of control, overtly racist Executive and his sycophants is a gross dereliction of duty by the Supremes. It’s basically like allowing, and even encouraging, the badgering of a witness during trial! 

It’s painfully obvious that we have many of the wrong folks on the bench — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes. Indeed, the nation and the world would be much better served if many more of those courageous lawyers who serve the immigrant community and human rights experts were on the Federal Bench at all levels. 

Trump, Roberts, and the GOP judicial misfits have also shown us first-hand the profiles of individuals who should not be serving in judicial positions. Let them litigate their “originalist,” “unitary Executive,” and other “far out” righty philosophies as lawyers appearing before real judges —“practical scholars” who live in the 21st Century and are committed to problem solving rather than problem creating. As Joe Biden has noted, the entire judicial selection system and particularly the Supremes need a thoughtful re-examination and reform. 

Never again should we have Justices like Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas performing highly inappropriate and unethical televised “campaign stunts” for an incumbent President during an ongoing election. Geez! What kind of “impartial jurists” are they? 

Most first year law students could tell you that’s a “no-go!” Why have we “normalized” and “accepted” such obvious bias, misbehavior, and lack of sound judgment at the highest levels of our (not Trump’s or Mitch’s personal) Judiciary?

It’s not “Rocket Science!” The fundamental building blocks of our society are immigration, human rights, and equal justice! Any lawyer who who doesn’t embody those virtues and doesn’t publicly embrace them should not in the future be given a lifetime appointment as a Federal Judge — at any level!

We need better judges for a better America! We will never achieve constitutionally-required “equal justice for all” for African Americans, Latinos, or anyone else, nor can we reach our diverse nation’s full potential, if we don’t start “pushing back” against Roberts and the GOP’s right wing judicial oligarchy, their obtuse legal gibberish, and their anti-democratic “jurisprudence.”

It starts with voting to take back our country from the far right. But, that’s just the beginning of the changes needed if equal justice for all is to become a reality, rather than an ever unfulfilled promise, limited to certain privileged (predominantly White) groups within our society!

And, all of society owes a debt of gratitude to Ms. Church and other brave lawyers like her who represent the best our country has to offer and have actually suffered for standing up for the rule of law and the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable among us. In other words, standing up for all of our rights against a tyranny! 

Compare that with the utterly dismal composition of the “Trump kakistocracy” and its “Dred Scottification” of “the other.” 

Due Process Forever!

PWS

1–29-20

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻: Victims Of Trump, Miller, Sessions Child Abuse May Suffer Lifelong Damage Similar To That Of Holocaust Survivors! — “My mom and I have learned along the way that nothing seems to make it go away. Not her prayers. Not my ‘American Dream’ success. Not any logical explanation of how governments work or don’t work. My mother’s touch will always feel foreign to me.” — PLUS: BREAKING UPDATE: Just Released House Report Documents Regime’s Massive Human Rights Criminal Conspiracy Against CHILDREN!

Sheltering in Cages by John Darkow
“Sheltering in Cages” by John Darkow
Reproduced under license
Rebecca Onion
Rebecca Onion
Staff Writer
Slate
Photo Source: RebeccaOnion.com

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/10/family-separation-effects-holocaust-children-trump.html

Rebecca Onion reports for Slate:

“They are so well taken care of. … They’re in facilities that were so clean,” President Donald Trump said during last week’s presidential debate, of the children his administration ordered separated from their parents at the southern border. As my colleague Jeremy Stahl points out, this isn’t the first time that an administration official has argued that because the separated children—over 500 of whom are still being kept from their parents—have (supposedly!) been physically taken care of, they should be “just fine.” But if the life histories of children forced to be parted from parents for years of their childhoods are any indication, these periods of separation will have long-lasting, devastating, and unpredictable effects.

I’ve been reading historian Rebecca Clifford’s new book, Survivors: Children’s Lives After the Holocaust, which is a painful history of Jewish kids who somehow made it through World War II when they were very small, and had to figure out how to forge a life afterward. Combining analysis of survivors’ testimonies recorded over the years, documents from the archives of organizations that came into contact with these children, and oral histories Clifford herself collected, the book shows how many of these survivors struggled with the act of making sense of their lives—even the lucky ones, who didn’t witness violence, and whose material needs were well met during the period of conflict and persecution. Clifford calls the work “fundamentally a book about the history of living after, and living with, a childhood marked by chaos.”

Survivors is, of course, about a group of children whose lives were marked by the Nazi regime, not about children fleeing violence in Central America, who were then separated from their families by Border Patrol agents. But it’s also fundamentally concerned with the human consequences of children’s separations from parents. In the group of survivors in Clifford’s history, there are kids who were sent to live with host families, who hid them until the war was over; kids incarcerated in different labor camps from their parents; kids who wandered the forests alone, tended only by older siblings.

Asking the historical record, and the grown-up survivors she interviewed, how this period of separation had affected the children’s lives in the long term, Clifford found things that she described as “not only unexpected, but shocking.” One such finding was the fact that for many of the kids, the war years were fine; it was liberation that was traumatic. “Children are adept at treating the exceptional as normal, and because they had no other life to compare it with, the years of persecution did not necessarily feel dangerous, fraught, or chaotic to young survivors,” Clifford writes. But after liberation, as well-meaning adults did everything they could to bring the kids back together with their surviving family members, or to find them places in Jewish homes, many of the separated survivors were profoundly destabilized. “My war began in 1945, not in 1940,” one such survivor said.

The German Jewish parents of Felice Z., who was born in October 1939, put their 1½-year-old daughter in the hands of aid workers in early 1941, and the girl spent the war years hidden by farmers in France. Felice Z. remembered in later interviews that she loved her host parents, and in particular her host mother, Madame Patoux: “All they were interested in was taking care of me. She basically saved my life. She was always ready to run. … I took it for granted that she was my mother, I called her meme (nana) and it was really the first close relationship that I had with another human being. I became very attached to them. Very.” At the end of the war, Felice got no joy out of being reunited with her sister, who had become a stranger. Soon after that reunion, she was removed from the family where she had grown up; as she remembered it, nobody bothered to explain why.

“Family reunions could be among the most difficult and distressing experiences that children went through after the war,” Clifford writes. “The youngest children might have no memory of their parents or relatives at all, and were effectively returned to strangers. … Not one child in this study who was returned to his or her family found this process easy or joyful.” The reunions brought up feelings of anger and terror—even if, as Clifford points out, the kids could rationally understand the reasons their parents had put them in safer places for the duration of the war. They had spent years suppressing childish impulses—“they had had to be obedient, quiet, and good to stay safe during the war, whether they were in hiding, in ghettos or in camps”—and often became explosive and “difficult to manage” after the separation was over.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Rebecca’s article at the link.

So much wanton cruelty; such gross illegality; so little accountability; such glaring lack of integrity in our justice system! What has our country become? How is this “normal” or within the proper scope of “Executive authority.” What is impeachment for if not for “crimes against humanity?”

Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out! Then start re-examining the failed and continuously failing institutions that couldn’t or wouldn’t effectively stand up to Trump, Miller, Sessions, Barr, Wolf, and the rest of their gang of thugs and scofflaws!

That starts, but by no means ends, with the highly politicized Supremes and their systemic failure to uphold our Constitution, the rule of law, and human dignity against an onslaught of White Nationalist, racist-inspired abuses by Trump, Miller, and their GOP cronies. This is a Court that disgracefully has been more interested in carrying out GOP shenanigans overtly intended to suppress votes, remove minority voting rights guaranteed by statute and Constitution, and throw the election to Trump than it has been in enforcing the Constitution and the rule of law to save the lives of refugees and asylum seekers, including women and children!

Better, more courageous, more humane judges for a better America!

PWS

10-29-20

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

UPDATE: HOUSE REPORT LAYS BARE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY REGIME OFFICIALS!

Here’s the just-released Report (courtesy of Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis):

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/the_trump_administration_family_separation_policy_trauma_destruction_and_chaos.pdf&source=gmail-imap&ust=1604588017000000&usg=AOvVaw3BTURhXxyazE-2XBhECcwR

Here’s what you really need to know:

VI. Conclusion
While we may never know the full extent of the damage inflicted by the Trump Administration’s family separation policy, it is evident—as a result of this investigation and public reporting—that it was driven by an Administration that was willfully blind to its cruelty and determined to go to unthinkable extremes to deliver on political promises and stop migrants fleeingviolencefromseekingprotectionintheUnitedStates. Asillustratedinthisreport:
• Within weeks of President Trump’s inauguration, the Administration began formulating a plan to separate parents from their children as a means to deter migration.
• Before a formal policy had even been developed, the Administration was accelerating familyseparations. ByMarch2017,thenumberofseparatedchildrentransferredtoORR custody had increased by nearly 900 percent, as compared to November 2016.
• In July 2017, without warning, the Administration implemented a family separation pilot programintheElPasoBorderPatrolSector. Thepilotprogramlastedfivemonthsand resulted in hundreds of additional children being taken from their parents and placed in ORR custody.
• During the pilot program, the Administration discovered that it was unable to track separated family members in a way that would facilitate eventual reunification.
• Knowing this, and without doing anything to address the tracking systems employed by deferral agencies, the Administration chose to expand the policy nationwide in May 2018.
• To make matters worse, the Administration failed to provide advance notice of the policy to front line agents and officers, which caused unnecessary chaos and inconsistent implementation of the policy across border sectors.
121 Dan Diamond, HHS Reviews Refugee Operations as Trump Calls for Border Crackdown, POLITICO (Oct. 23, 2018), https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/23/trump-caravan-border-hhs-873152.
122 Email from Scott Lloyd to Evelyn Stauffer, Press Secretary, Dep’t of Health and Human Services (Nov. 19, 2018), at Appendix AY.
21

• When judicial intervention and political pressure eventually resulted in the end of the policy, the lack of interagency cooperation and preparedness was laid bare by the inability of the Administration to quickly reunite separated parents and children.
As a result of this dark chapter in our nation’s history, hundreds of migrant children may never be reunited with their parents.
Despite considerable stonewalling by Administration officials, Judiciary Committee Members and staff have pushed relentlessly to obtain data and conduct much needed oversight of the agencies responsible for the family separation policy. This report details the Committee’s findings thus far. We remain committed to holding the Trump Administration accountable and continuing to shed light on this dark moment in our country’s history.

 

As my friend, “Immigration Guru” Ira J. Kurzban would say: “Folks, this is NOT NORMAL!”

As we both say: “This is unacceptable conduct for which there must be accountability if we are to remain a nation under law.”

PWS

10-29-20

🦘🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️⚖️👎🏻🤮“KANGAROO KOURTS” MUST GO: NY City Bar Blasts Billy The Bigot Barr’s Deadly Immigration Court Farce, Calls For Article I! — “This step is now more crucial than ever, as ‘the many steps that the current administration has taken to politicize the court…have frayed the bare threads of justice that existed before to the point of a complete rupture, leaving not even the appearance of justice or due process of law.’”

Kangaroos
Kangaroos
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License
EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

City Bar Report Highlights Threats to Independence of Immigration Court System — Calls for Creation of Independent Article I Court

October 21, 2020

The New York City Bar Association has released a report on recent immigration policy changes “to highlight its concerns about their impact on the independence of the immigration court system as well as the due process rights of those who pass through the immigration system.”

The “Report on the Independence of the Immigration Courts” responds to an “inherent conflict of interest” in housing a judicial adjudicatory body such as the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice, “a federal agency primarily charged with law enforcement,” which the City Bar says has been exacerbated by various actions that DOJ has taken that “prioritize the administration’s political agenda over fairness in the immigration court system.”

According to the report, the DOJ “has taken several steps to reorganize immigration courts and the [Board of Immigration Appeals] in a way that aligns them more closely with the [current] administration’s goals of enforcing harsher and more restrictive immigration policies.” These steps include hiring practices that place judges “with records of much higher than average asylum denial rates” on the BIA; implementation of restrictive performance metrics for immigration judges, made in the name of efficiency but that in actuality “ignores the underlying reasons for the backlog;” a practice of reassigning cases “on a large scale in a manner that undermines judicial independence;” and a campaign to stifle immigration judges who speak up, including “efforts to decertify the union of IJs in a manner that further undermines the independence of the immigration courts.”

The report describes how Attorneys General in recent years have made use of “a previously rarely-used procedural tool, self-certification…to rewrite immigration court policies through changes in substantive case law, rather than following more traditional pathways of issuing regulations and legislative recommendations, both of which, notably, are more lengthy and transparent processes.” Moreover, the report details the ways in which “basic procedural mechanisms and immigration court scheduling functions are being limited or curtailed in a manner that promotes political objectives over due process,” by pushing judges to rush decisions or by restricting access to the courts and to appellate review with administrative barriers.

As detailed in the report, these legal and structural changes in the immigration judicial system have “turn[ed] its corridors into a maze. Without transparency and accountability, due process is inevitably eroded. The lack of transparency also impedes meaningful attempts at reform.” New policies have restricted public access to information, forced asylum seekers to mount their applications from outside the U.S., and prevented meaningful oversight from independent observers. All of these measures, according to the report, “tip the scales towards more and faster deportations, at the expense of due process.”

The report concludes that “moving the immigration court system out of the DOJ and making it into an independent Article I court would safeguard immigration law from being rewritten by each administration, and would thus ensure due process for the immigrants appearing before the courts.” This step is now more crucial than ever, as “the many steps that the current administration has taken to politicize the court…have frayed the bare threads of justice that existed before to the point of a complete rupture, leaving not even the appearance of justice or due process of law.”

The report can be read here: https://bit.ly/31tFEpm

 

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

Many thanks to my friend and NDPA stalwart Elizabeth Gibson of the NY Legal Assistance Group for distributing this.

“[N]ot even the appearance of justice or due process of law.” Yup! “Courtside” has been saying it for a long time!

There is a dual problem here. The failure of the Immigration Courts is a national disgrace. But, an even bigger disgrace is the failure of the GOP Senate and the Article III Judiciary to end this farce that kills people and is destroying the integrity of the entire U.S. Justice system while promoting racism and unequal justice. 

Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out. We need to get a start on saving democracy and getting better judges for a better America — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes!

PWS

1-22-20

SUPREMES TO REVIEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S ILLEGAL RACIST/WHITE NATIONALIST POLICIES THAT THEY ALREADY HAVE ENABLED!  

 

Adam Liptak
Adam Liptak
Journalist
NY Times
Slowking4, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
Creative Commons License

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/us/supreme-court-trump-wall-asylum.html

By Adam Liptak

  • Oct. 19, 2020
    Updated 12:02 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review two major Trump administration immigration initiatives: a program that has forced at least 60,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their requests are heard and the diversion of $2.5 billion in Pentagon money to build a barrier on the southwestern border.

Lower courts blocked both measures.  But the Supreme Court, in earlier orders, allowed them to remain in effect while appeals moved forward.  

The arguments in the two cases will not be heard until after the November election. Should President Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., win, his administration could take steps to make the cases moot.

In the case on asylum seekers, an appeals court in February blocked the program, known as Remain in Mexico, saying it was at odds with both federal law and international treaties and was causing “extreme and irreversible harm.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

The losers in these cases have already been determined: the innocent human lives destroyed, the rule of law, the Constitution, human decency, and the Supremes’ reputation. If the Supremes’ majority hadn’t already “pre-judged” these cases in the regime’s favor, then their unwarranted and ethically questionable “early intervention” in the process to allow the abuses of humanity, Congressional authority, and the public fisc to continue would be even more unconscionable.

Indeed, both of these cases are examples of a democracy in danger, a judicial system in decay, and a  Supremes who have established themselves as part of the problem, not the solution.

Better Federal Judges for a Better America! It starts at the polls!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-19-20

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🆘NY TIMES WITH THE TRUTH: A VOTE FOR TRUMP IS A VOTE AGAINST AMERICA! — The Worst President In History, Not To Mention That Beyond Being Totally Incompetent & Unqualified, A Truly Horrible Human Being With NO Redeeming Values!

Trump Clown
Donald J. Trump
Famous American Clown
(Officially titled “Ass Clown”)
Artist: Scott Scheidly
Orlando, FL
Reproduced by permission
Darth Vader
D. Vader
Minister of Justice
Banana Republic of Trump
Trump Regime Emoji
Trump Regime

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the editorial here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/16/opinion/donald-trump-worst-president.html

Amen! Take back our country! 🇺🇸 We can’t survive another four years of the maliciously incompetent, racist kakistocracy🏴‍☠️!

PWS

10-17-20

 

UNADULTERATED BS — CONEY BARRETT’S CLAIM OF “IMPARTIAL JUSTICE” FLUNKS “STRAIGHT FACE TEST” — “Amy Coney Barrett’s originalism does not work as a method of safeguarding democracy against an activist, ideologically motivated judiciary. It does, however, function quite well as a means of obscuring a far-right movement’s efforts to impose its unpopular agenda by judicial fiat.”

Judge Amy Coney Barrett
Supreme Court Nominee by Bob Englehart, PoliticalCartoons.com
Published under license
Eric Levitz
Eric Levitz
Associate Editor
Intelligencer
New York Magazine
Photo source: Twitter

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-confirmation-hearing-originalism.html

Eric Levitz reports for NY Magazine:

. . . .

Even Republicans don’t have the stomach to outsource judgment on all modern constitutional questions to the slaveholding elite of a preindustrial, post-colonial backwater. As Dean of Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky has observed, a ruthless adherence to text and history would require forfeiting judicial protection of “liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to custody of one’s children, the right to keep the family together, the right of parents to control the upbringing of their children, the right to purchase and use contraceptives, the right to abortion, [and] the right to refuse medical care,” none of which are guaranteed by the Constitution.

Amy Coney Barrett herself has acknowledged the undesirability of applying originalism indiscriminately, noting in 2016, “Adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education,” and other institutions that “no serious person would propose to undo,” even if they lack constitutional grounding. Barrett’s proposed solution to this conundrum is for courts to simply avoid ruling on cases where originalism would dictate socially unthinkable overturnings of precedent; she wrote in 2017 that “discretionary jurisdiction generally permits [the Court] to choose which questions it wants to answer.”

But this expedient degrades originalism’s claim to neutrality. If an originalist Supreme Court can apply its doctrine opportunistically — taking only those cases in which its “neutral” juridical method will yield outcomes acceptable to a “serious” person (as they define that adjective) — then originalism isn’t much of a binding restriction on judicial discretion.

What’s more, Barrett’s concession tacitly betrays awareness of a critical fact that originalists love to elide when speaking for a lay audience: Amending the Constitution has become so phenomenally difficult it’s not at all clear that the American people could promptly replace an overturned Brown v. Board of Education with an amendment forbidding school segregation, despite overwhelming popular support for that Supreme Court decision. Originalists like to portray their judicial approach as highly democratic, since they purport to defer to the letter of a democratically enacted Constitution. But once one stipulates that the demos is manifestly no longer capable of passing constitutional amendments with regularity, it becomes clear that the originalist practice of striking down democratically elected laws in deference to the letter of a centuries-old document is profoundly anti-democratic.

Of course, in real life, “originalist” Supreme Court justices haven’t just applied their method opportunistically by selecting cases in which originalism will produce a favored outcome; they’ve also simply declined to abide by their method when they feel like it. On Monday, Barrett named Antonin Scalia as her guiding light on judicial philosophy. But as Georgia State University Law professor Eric J. Segall notes, Scalia voted “for broad rules limiting congressional power to enact campaign finance reform, to commandeer state legislatures and executives to help implement federal law, and to allow lawsuits against the states for money damages by citizens of other states” without “justifying these broad rules from a textual or historical perspective,” presumably because they have no textual or historical basis.

In sum: Amy Coney Barrett’s originalism does not work as a method of safeguarding democracy against an activist, ideologically motivated judiciary. It does, however, function quite well as a means of obscuring a far-right movement’s efforts to impose its unpopular agenda by judicial fiat.

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

Read Eric’s complete article, which is an outstanding debunking of  “originalism” — a totally bogus invention of the reactionary right — intended to pervert the law and promote far-right attacks on humanity — at the link. 

Just think about it: Supposedly a bunch of guys who risked everything on a never-before-realized long shot of defeating the British King and setting up a republic actually  intended that 230 years after the fact the governors of that republic would be so backwards, unimaginative, and intellectually limited that they would still be attempting to divine the “true meaning” of various two-centuries out of date words and concepts that nobody agreed upon in the first place! Preposterous! Not to mention totally intellectually dishonest!

Obviously, if the GOP Senators actually believed that Coney Barrett would be an unbiased judge with an open mind to progressive, liberal, humane, common sense interpretations of law and committed to implementing the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process under the law for all persons, they would be apoplectic. They would be outraged at Trump for foisting such an unreliable and unpredictable jurist on them! 

I’m not necessarily saying that Coney Barrett couldn’t educate herself and “get smarter” on the bench — abandoning her false dogma and actually showing some empathy, courage, independence, and commitment to equal justice for all. She wouldn’t be the first GOP-appointed Judge or Justice to move left on the bench. After all, spending a lifetime mired on the wrong side of history screwing up the lives of your fellow humans can get old, even for well-trained right-wing ideologues.

Also, she will have the benefit of the only current Justice who actually appears up to the job and consistently understands the proper role of a High Court in a democratic republic — Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor actually “gets it right” in an amazing number of cases and usually explains her reasoning in coherent, non-legalistic terms that most folks can understand. 

But, sadly, I find relatively little in Coney Barrett’s career to predict that type of self-awareness, intellectual honesty, moral courage, and capacity for human growth. Her family situation shows some capacity for empathy and human understanding. 

But, sadly, to date, she evidently has been unable to “connect the dots” between her kids’ lives and futures and the future of humanity. To understand that but for the grace of God, the refugee she is expelling based on BS non-defects could be someone she actually loves or regards as human. That the benefits that neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is unethically and illegally stripping from deserving immigrants could be the lifeline that, but for life’s quirks, would allow her, her family, or other loved ones to survive and achieve their full human potential. The capacity to function as a real jurist certainly is there, but the will and perspective seem to be largely lacking.

In a way, Coney Barrett’s squandered potential to achieve good is her own human tragedy. But, one for which those “other than Coney Barrett” are likely to pay the ultimate price.

PWS

10-14-20

👩‍⚖️⚖️ONE MEAN☠️🤮⚰️ MOTHER: Soon-To-Be Justice Barrett’s Immigration Jurisprudence Shows Cruelty, Legal Ignorance, Lack Of Empathy For The Vulnerable Humans Whose Lives Are At Stake In An Unconstitutional System Rigged Against Them!

Judge Amy Coney Barrett
Supreme Court Nominee by Bob Englehart, PoliticalCartoons.com
Published under license

 

Dahlia Lithwick
Dahlia Lithwick
Supreme Court Reporter
Slate
Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/democrats-amy-coney-barrett-confirmation-supreme-court-chat.html

Dahlia Lithwick & Mark Joseph Stern in Slate:

. . . .

Dahlia: I wonder what you thought of Barrett’s statement, about how she reads each of her opinions through the eyes of the losing party. As you have written, the losing party tends to be the prisoners, the Black worker, the teen seeking abortion, the asylum seeker. It reminded me of Justice Samuel Alito testifying at his hearings about his great solicitude for immigrants.

Mark: Barrett’s opening statement made me think about one of her worst decisions (so far), in which she approved the deportation of an asylum seeker because there were small, trivial variations in his account of persecution. Over a dissent, Barrett said, yep, this asylum seeker must be sent home to be tortured and murdered because tiny details in his story changed over time. Would a judge who views the case through the eyes of the asylum seeker really dismiss his claims so cavalierly? I doubt it.

. . . .

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

Read the complete dialogue at the link.

So much for intellectual honesty! It also shows Barrett’s fundamental lack of experience and legal understanding of what Immigration “Courts” really are and how they have been politicized and weaponized against asylum seekers by “judges” who report to overtly biased and xenophobic politicos in the Executive Branch. Just how would this “naked farce” satisfy any rudimentary concept of Due Process? Clearly it doesn’t. And just as clearly, intentionally tone-deaf judges like Barrett don’t care!  They lack the guts, relevant experience representing migrants, and the intellectual presence to stand up for the Constitutional and human rights of “the other.” 

How would YOU like to be sentenced to torture and/or death based on trivial inconsistencies found by an Immigration “Judge” working directly for the Attorney General and his regime in a badly flawed assembly line process designed to achieve political policy objectives, not justice?

Also, did anyone else pick up the facial absurdity of Barrett’s disingenuous claim to be “apolitical” while pledging allegiance to GOP “superhero” the late Justice Antonin Scalia, probably the most overtly “political Justice” of modern times?

Bottom Line: Once you’re out of the womb, this is one mother you don’t want on your case!🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️

Better Judges For A Better America! Judge/Justice Barrett is part of the problem, not the solution! The best way to insure that she is among the last, far-right, anti-democracy, inhumane judges given life tenure on the Supremes or anywhere else, vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out! Then, we’ll discover the “true meaning” of Barrett’s “I’m not there to make policy nonsense!” (Indeed, I would submit that the sole reason for her appointment was the GOP’s belief and expectation that she will reliably elevate disingenuous right-wing policies, biases, and prejudices over the Constitutional, individual, and human rights of individuals and that she will be a steadfast opponent of Constitutionally-required equal justice under law.)

Justice for the George Floyds, Breonna Taylors, dehumanized dead asylum seekers, and wrongfully imprisoned migrant kids of the world (e.g., the end of unconstitutional “Baby Jails”) will require a different type of “Justice” than Amy Coney Barrett in the future! Far from being truly “independent” and “apolitical,” Barrett is likely to be the perfect representative of the warped man who appointed her and his anti-democracy party. And, that’s likely to cause problems for all Americans of good will far into the future!

PWS

10-13-20

NDPA SUPERSTAR ⭐️ PROFESSOR ERIN BARBATO 🦸‍♀️ ORGANIZES EVENT, SPEAKS OUT IN MADISON CAP TIMES ON ICE ABUSES IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” (“NAG”) — “We must rebuild the system from the ground up and work toward a future in which immigrants are treated with respect and dignity. Our shared humanity demands it.”

 

Professor Erin Barbato
Professor Erin Barbato
Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic
UW Law
Photo source: UW Law

https://madison.com/ct/opinion/column/erin-m-barbato-immigrant-detention-today-relies-on-systemic-racism-and-life-threatening-policies-it/article_0b8a6c14-99bf-5aa4-bd81-30b7923d9c54.html

Last month, a nurse at a federal immigration detention center in Irwin, Georgia, filed a whistleblower complaint detailing the abhorrent treatment of people detained there. She charged that women in detention were subjected to hysterectomies and invasive gynecological exams without their knowledge or consent, and often without assistance from interpreters.

The complaint is heartbreaking, but far from surprising. These atrocities are consistent with practices employed at U.S. detention centers for decades, and they are sadly consistent with our tragic history of forced sterilization of minority women. The implications of the complaint are perfectly clear: we must end the civil detention of immigrants, so fraught with systemic racism that undervalues the lives of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. There is no other option.

With over 200 detention centers, the United States has the largest immigration detention system in the world. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has over the past two years detained an average of 40,000 daily, an astonishing number that surpasses the population of Wisconsin cities like Brookfield and Wausau. Yet the detention of immigrants is just a microcosm of the inhumanity that characterizes our immigration system today. Many immigrants come to the U.S. to seek refuge and a better life for themselves and for their families. But when they arrive in this country, they are forced into conditions that violate human rights principles under both international and domestic standards, and that, frankly, violate our moral obligations to each other as human beings.

ICE has the authority to release most people from detention through monetary bonds or parole, and ICE policy requires that people seeking asylum are released from detention when they can establish their identity and demonstrate they are neither a danger nor a or flight risk. Instead of using these tools, though, ICE almost always chooses detention, ostensibly to deter others from coming into the country. But far from showing detention to be an effective deterrent, statistics reveal the opposite: harsher penalties have not reduced the numbers of undocumented migrants crossing U.S. borders. What the data does show is how immigrant detention has become a big business, with taxpayer dollars helping to subsidize a billion-dollar private prison industry that profits from human trauma.

Often located in remote places, immigrant detention facilities are ripe for the abuse of detained migrants. There is no community oversight and little — often no — access to legal representation. People in detention will only have an attorney if they can afford one or are lucky enough to find pro bono representation.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Erin’s article at the link! Erin reinforces points that I make often here on Courtside: the real objectives of unnecessary and highly cost-ineffective “civil detention” are to deprive migrants of access to counsel, coerce them into abandoning potentially successful claims, punish them for exercising legal rights, and deter others from asserting legal rights.

All of these are clear violations of  Constitutional due process and equal protection!  The conditions under which these non-criminals are held to “punish” them for their audacity to assert their legal rights also violate the Eighth Amendment, as some lower Federal Court Judges have found.

Unfortunately, too many Article III Judges have abdicated their oaths to uphold the Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable persons among us in the face of improper political pressure and a regime overtly out to undo American democracy and institute a far-right reactionary, white nationalist kakistocracy.

And, here’s info on a great “virtual event” that Erin helped organize to raise awareness of the existence and devastating effects of “Baby Jails” in the U.S. Allowing  such cruel and inhuman abominations to flourish in our nation is beyond disgraceful! (See also the recent book Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America, by my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag).

https://law.wisc.edu/calendar/event.php?iEventID=32578180

The Flores Exhibit: Stories of Children Held in Immigrant Detention Facilities

WHEN

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

7:30 pm to 8:30 pm

WHERE

Virtual 

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Artists, lawyers, advocates and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of young people under the age of 18, who were held in two detention facilities near the U.S./Mexico border in June 2019. Followed by a discussion with panelists. 

Organized by the Immigrant Justice Clinic, Latinx Law Student Association, and American Constitution Society at UW Law School. 

Zoom link will be sent to via email to those who register.

Registration

INTENDED AUDIENCE

Faculty, Students, Staff

EVENT CATEGORY

Speaker/Discussion

Email this event

Download for import into your calendar

« Back to the Calendar

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

I proudly note that my good friend Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase and other distinguished members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges are “readers” in “The Flores Exhibit.”

I am also inspired by all that Erin has accomplished and the lives she and her students have saved through the Immigrant Justice Clinic at my alma mater, UW Law!

Erin and others like her are exactly the type of progressive, practical, scholar-problem solvers that we need as Federal Judges and in key Government policy-making positions. We need to replace the reactionary kakistocracy with a progressive, equal justice oriented, practical, problem-solving humanitarian meritocracy. 

“Equal Justice For All” isn’t just a “throwaway slogan.” It’s a vision of a better, more efficient, more effective, more tolerant, more inclusive, more diverse, more representative Government that will work with people of good faith everywhere to maximize opportunities for all and promote a brighter future for everyone in America! It’s in our power to make it happen,and the necessary change starts this Fall.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-12-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️INSIDE ICE’S NEW AMERICAN GULAG (“NAG”) WITH MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS! – As COVID Rages, “Civil” Detainees Jailed By ICE In Deadly Conditions For Longer Periods!

 

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

In our most recent story on ICE detention and the coronavirus, we looked at ICE data going back to 2010 and found immigrants are being held now for longer on average than at any time in a decade in the middle of a pandemic, which has now infected more than 6,400 detainees nationwide. We spoke to 20 detainees from Africa and Latin America who have been detained for more than six months. Some were asylum seekers held for long periods as they seek relief in immigration court, others were DACA recipients who have served criminal sentences but are still fighting their deportation orders.

Detainees are locked up for much longer, even as the overall detention population dropped dramatically this year. Part of the reason for that decline: around 150,000 expulsions at the US-Mexico border under new health rules put in place by the Trump administration in March.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-detention-insight/amid-pandemic-sharply-increased-u-s-detention-times-put-migrants-at-risk-idUSKBN26U15Y

 

This follows on our earlier reporting about how ICE transfers of detainees have exacerbated the spread of the virus in some cases and how detainees have died of COVID-19. As well as how the families of detainees are being affected because of their frontline work.

 

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me report these stories and please do keep in touch with future tips. Beyond detention, we are also following the swift pace of immigration policy changes across the board.

 

All the best,

Mica

 

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

Thanks Mica and crew for continuing to expose these outrageous violations our Constitution, our international obligations, morality, common sense, and our obligations to our fellow humans by the Trump regime’s white nationalist kakistocracy!

 

Vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out, on every level! Return our nation to the rule of law, common sense, competency, and simple human decency.

 

PWS

10-11-20

🇺🇸🗽EIGHT DECADES AGO, “THE GREATEST GENERATION” FOUGHT A WAR AGAINST FASCISM, RACISM, HATE & AUTHORITARIANISM  — Now The Succeeding Generations Are Fighting At The Ballot Box To Remove A Fascist Government From Control Of Our Country!

 

Kitanya Harrison
Kitanya Harrison
Writer
Photo from Twitter

https://gen.medium.com/should-you-wish-a-fascist-well-1aa0b9a22d03

By Kitanya Harrison @ Medium:

. . . .

A plague was the check and balance, not the rule of law, not civility. Trump and Republicans showed hubris in the face of a force of nature that cannot be gaslit, bullied, or emotionally manipulated. A virus demands you engage with it truthfully. You can’t bluster your way out of infection. Trump’s lies and arrogance regarding Covid-19 have cost 210,000 Americans their lives. Those lies and arrogance have finally caught up with him, and he may pay a heavy price. Some people think that’s poetic justice. They are being rebuked by those who think you should never be that callous, not even to a fascist.

Fascists know how to weaponize the norms governing civility to gain and maintain control over others. They know how to exploit sympathy. They know if they pretend to play nice sometimes, people believe they’ll begin to adhere to these norms and stop their harm. It’s a con. It works, though. That’s why four years into the Trump regime, reporters and pundits are still, embarrassingly, talking about his change of tone and his becoming more “presidential” any time he displays the barest modicum of decorum. This dynamic lowers the bar all the way down to Hell. Playing along is always the wrong move.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Excellent summary of how fascism works and how the “mainstream” keeps giving it a “pass” and normalizing severely abnormal, anti-social, illegal behavior by Trump and his toadies. 

Just look at yesterday’s Courtside posting — kids and legal refugees continue to suffer while Sessions collects his pension, Hamilton continues to plan criminal enterprises on our dollar, and Rosenstein racks up the big bucks pretending like his venture into child abuse and crimes against humanity were just “normal activities of a senior Government official at the DOJ.” Not normal! Not acceptable!

History tells us what happens to those who “play along to get along.” The U.S. Olympic Committee turning an intentionally blind eye to Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism so that the U.S. could participate in “Hitler’s Big Show” — the 1936 Olympics. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain selling out the Czechs, babbling about “peace in our time” on the eve of the bloodiest war in world history, and pretending that Hitler was “just another German politician” with “traditional” nationalist aspirations.

This Fall, vote Trump and the GOP out at all levels of Government. It might be the last chance to save our democracy from fascism and to save more lives from the malfeasance, ignorance, hate, and evil of Trump and his GOP enablers.

 

PWS

10-08-20