"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=39idVpFF7NQ
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One of the most depressing things I’ve seen recently is folks from Alabama — some of them so-called “Christians” — defending “Ayatollah Roy” and indicating an intent to vote for this truly horrible individual whose candidacy mocks Christian values, American ideals, and the very foundations of our democracy.
PWS
11-12-17
Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post:
“President Trump’s authoritarianism, narcissism and racism threaten our democracy, but his gullibility threatens our national security. A man so uneducated and incurious about the world is willing, like his followers, to buy any crackpot conspiracy theory that makes its way to him via the Infowars-“Fox & Friends” pipeline. On the world stage, that makes him a sitting duck for slick manipulators and experienced flatterers.
All that was much in evidence on Saturday. CNN reports:
“He said he didn’t meddle. He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from Da Nang to Hanoi in Vietnam. Trump spoke to Putin three times on the sidelines of summit here, where the Russia meddling issue arose. “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’” Trump said. “And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.” “I think he is very insulted by it,” Trump added.
Could Trump actually believe that the ex-KGB operative is insulted by the accusation he pulled off a masterful plot, at very little cost, to tip the scales in an American presidential election and get the candidate of his choice? Certainly, Trump is not only gullible but also running scared as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III breathes down his neck.
. . . .
Trump and his followers are willing to believe anything because they want to believe anything that confirms their counterfactual world. Anyone who sides with their alternative universe (Sebastian Gorka, Vladimir Putin, Bill O’Reilly, Roy Moore) is a hero and a victim of those pro-immigrant, globalist, anti-Christian elites. Anyone who presents cold, hard facts (the mainstream media, scientists, allied governments, Democrats, #NeverTrumpers) that explode their dearly held myths is an enemy of the people.Yes, that’s the mental universe in which Trump and his ilk reside. It renders Trump susceptible — eager, even — to believe our enemies, even — especially! — at the expense of American values, security and interests. He’s putty in the hands of wily autocrats. He’s therefore the type of target that counterintelligence operatives dream of — an arrogant fool. Clinton Watts, a former FBI special agent on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, earlier this year explained:
Russian influence of Trump most likely falls into the category of what Madeleine Albright called a “Useful Idiot” – a “useful fool” – an enthusiast for Putin supportive of any issue or stance that feeds his ego and brings victory. Russian intelligence for decades identified and promoted key individuals around the world ripe for manipulation and serving their interests. Trump, similar to emerging alternative right European politicians, spouts populist themes of xenophobia, anti-immigration, and white nationalist pride that naturally bring about a retrenchment of U.S. global influence. By spotting this early, Russia could encourage Trump’s ascension and shape his views via three parallel tracks. First, Russia led a never before seen hacking and influence campaign to degrade support for Hilary Clinton and promote Trump among a disenfranchised American populace. As a “useful idiot,” Trump not only benefited from this influence effort, but he urged Russia to find Hilary Clinton’s missing emails – a public call a “Manchurian Candidate” would not likely make. Trump even fell for false Russian news stories citing a bogus Sputnik news story at a presidential rally – a glaring and open mistake that would reveal a true “Manchurian Candidate.”
What’s more, the Kremlin now has useful idiots in the persons of Fox News hosts, right-wing American bloggers, talk show hosts and Stephen K. Bannon (who is out recruiting like-minded Senate candidates) to buck up their pet U.S. president. Most of all, the Kremlin can count on the Republican tribalists in Congress who will explain away evidence and savage the president’s accusers to protect the GOP tribe and its leader — who just so happens to be an easy mark for our most formidable international foe.“
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Read the full op-ed at the link.
Pretty scary stuff. Putin must be walking on air. First, dumb US electorate votes for its own demise. Trump stokes racial and political divisions while trashing the environment, destroying government, offending allies, undermining health care, damaging the Constitution, shrugging his shoulders at random gun violence, and carrying on with plans to loot US Treasury for benefit of the rich and leave everyone else holding the bag. Then, Trump sets off for Asia where he cedes economic and moral leadership to China while enunciating a totally selfish “Third World, Me First” philosophy and absurdly defends his “puppetmaster” Putin.
All these years the “Legacy Soviets” thought they could only defeat America by a military buildup. Now, they discover they can do it without firing a shot or invading anyone just by using our own stupidity and the Alt-Right against us.
PWS
11-12-17
Jasmine Ulloa reports for the LA Times:
“Despite the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to frame illegal immigration as a threat to public safety, the poll also found an overwhelming majority believe that people without legal residency help revitalize cities as opposed to increasing crime.
The survey results, poll analysts and policy experts said, reflect ongoing trends in California, where through the decades the public has tended to support immigrants in the country illegally, even when federal or state political leaders have stoked anti-immigrant sentiment to rally their bases.
“We have seen this in California forever,” said Jill Darling, the survey director for the Center for Economic and Social Research at USC. “People, including Republicans, have been more supportive of immigrants and reform, even to the point of supporting a path to citizenship, more so than Republican leadership.”
Most poll participants also expressed positive perceptions of people without legal residency in the country.
Nearly 63% of people surveyed said they believed immigrants without legal status strengthened the economy, as opposed to roughly 38% who said they took away jobs. Sixty-six percent said immigrants in the country illegally helped revitalize cities, and about 34% — including more than 72% of Republicans — believed they increased crime.
Policy experts said the poll results reflect the explosive growth of Latinos, Asians and other minority communities that tend to lean Democratic. California’s families are so diverse, they said, that nearly everyone knows someone who came to the country as an immigrant — legally or illegally.
It also reflects a shift away from the “us-versus-them” rhetoric that damaged the Republican brand in the 1990s, political consultants and immigration policy experts said. During that time, Gov. Pete Wilson was criticized for using footage of people running across the border to dramatize the problem of illegal immigration, and voters passed propositions to bar immigrants in the country illegally from public benefits, outlaw affirmative action programs and teach only English in schools.
That “no longer reflects our reality,” said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project. “In a state like California, immigrants are us.”
Andrew Medina, state policy manager for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said he wasn’t surprised by the results of the poll — or by the approval among California residents for the sanctuary state law. A study released in February by the Public Policy Institute of California found that a solid majority of Californians believe the state and local governments should make their own policies and take action to protect the rights of immigrants who are here illegally.
The final language of the sanctuary state law was the result of months of tough negotiations among Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate leader and bill author Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), and law enforcement officials.
It will largely prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies from holding or sharing information about people with federal immigration agents unless those individuals have been convicted of one or more offenses from a list of 800 crimes outlined in a 2013 state law.
Federal immigration authorities still will be able to work with state corrections officials — a key concession Brown had demanded — and will be able to enter county jails to question immigrants. But the state attorney general’s office will be required to publish guidelines and training recommendations to limit immigration agents’ access to personal information.
“It is positive that these polls show that there is support for immigrant communities, and it is especially positive in this era,” Medina said.
Still, Romero advised caution.
“Discrimination against immigrants is very real and a danger,” she said, pointing to anti-immigrant rhetoric at the national level. “I think we can’t rest on a changing landscape in California and just assume that things will continue to be more receptive and open.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
The Trump-Sessions-Miller-Bannon bogus White Nationalist program of portraying bigotry and racism as “law enforcement” ultimately will fail. Truth will win out. But, that doesn’t mean that lots of damage won’t be inflicted along the way by restrictionists on vulnerable individuals, their defenders, our society, our economy, and our international leadership and reputation.
Resist the false messages with truth! Support truth with action!
PWS
11-12-17
Dahlia Lithwick and Jeremy Stahl Report for Slate:
“At the end of last month, the Trump administration quietly rolled out new restrictions on certain groups of refugees, ostensibly aimed at “protect[ing] people from terrorist attacks and other public-safety threats.” This latest form of “extreme vetting” reportedly targeted citizens of 11 purportedly high “risk” countries, along with the children and spouses of refugees already in the United States.
These high “risk” refugees would be temporarily barred from entering the country and kept from resettlement, so yet another layer of reviews could be added to the already years-long process. Here is the list of affected countries: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Nine of these countries are Muslim-majority nations. The list was not made public in the executive order itself. Instead, the State Department released an accompanying memo saying that the refugee freeze would affect 11 unnamed countries for which additional security screening had been previously required for males age 16–50.
The new policy expands the additional scrutiny for people from those 11 nations to include all refugees, and not just males of a certain age, while attempting to hide which 11 countries are affected. It also “temporarily prioritizes” applications of refugees from countries not on the list. The list of countries has never been made public outside of media reports, but was included in a December 2016 State Department memo seen by Slate. The new executive order was the Trump administration’s latest attempt to secretly sanitize and repurpose President Trump’s long-proffered and repeatedly bungled Muslim ban.
To put it more simply: This is another Muslim ban.
In addition to the new vetting and resettlement restrictions for a certain type of refugee, the “follow-to-join” program for close relatives of refugees who are already in the U.S. was paused indefinitely until further review. That means that refugees already lawfully admitted will be prevented from reuniting with their spouses and minor children. Department of Homeland Security data shows that about 2,000 follow-to-join family members came to the U.S. in 2015. Just as a reminder, one of the first plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Trump’s first “travel ban,” Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was an Iraqi who had qualified for a Follow to Join Visa. Alshawi’s wife and 7-year-old son, whom he had not seen for three years, were lawful permanent residents living in Houston. He was detained at JFK Airport in transit to the U.S. when the first travel ban was signed in January, before ultimately being allowed to reunite with his family.Seen together, the new restrictions will not only disproportionately affect Muslim refugees: They will also extend an already cumbersome process that at present features extensive vetting that can average between 18–24 months.”
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Readthe full article at the link.
More anti-Muslim religious discrimination and anti-refugee discrimination masquerading as as “national security.”
PWS
11-11-17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/dana-milbank
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:
“So President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and fellow Republicans think Roy Moore, the GOP Senate nominee from Alabama, should quit his Senate run only “if these allegations are true.”
If true? Four women, on the record in The Post, say Moore, when he was in his 30s, tried to date them as teens, and one of the women says he had sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he was 32. Perhaps Republicans expect video and DNA evidence from 1979 magically to emerge, or a confession by Moore? (He denies the allegations.) More likely they are just dodging so that they can stick with Moore and keep the seat Republican — even if it means having an alleged pedophile join their caucus.
By comparison, there was more integrity in the defense of Moore offered by Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler, who told the Washington Examiner that, even if true, “there’s just nothing immoral or illegal here.” Indeed there’s biblical precedent for Moore’s alleged behavior.
“Take Joseph and Mary,” Zeigler said. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”
Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!
Let us take seriously Zeigler’s justification, which is consistent with Moore’s view that “God’s laws are always superior to man’s laws,” and the Bible stands above the Constitution and other piddling laws of man. It is true that the Bible does not say “thou shalt not strip to thine tighty whities and kiss a 14-year-old and touch her through her bra and underpants.” The Bible also does not specifically prohibit colluding with the Russians, accepting emoluments, money laundering or conspiracy against the United States. So Moore, and for that matter President Trump and his administration, has nothing to worry about.
But if we are to accept the Bible literally as the legal standard (and not, say, age-of-consent laws), we will also have to accept as legal certain other activities in 21st-century America, including:
Sacrificing as a burnt offering your young son (Genesis 22:2) or your daughter, if she comes out of the doors of your house to meet you (Judges 11:30-1, 34-5).
Having rebellious children stoned to death by all the men of the city (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).
Purchasing slaves (Leviticus 25:44-46), selling your daughter as a slave (Exodus 21:7-8) and making sure they submit to their masters, even cruel ones (1 Peter 2:18).
Executing pagan priests on their own altars and burning their bones (2 Kings 23:20-25).
Cutting off the hand of a woman if she grabs the penis of a man who is fighting with her husband (Deuteronomy 25:11-12).
. . . .
There’s no allegation of sexual intercourse, he said, and “Roy Moore fell in love with one of the younger women.” That would be his wife, Kayla, who Zeigler says is 14 years his junior and whom he was dating around that time.
You don’t need a judge and jury, Republicans, to determine that there was something icky going on or that there is something dangerous in having as a senator a man who places God’s law over man’s — and then interprets God’s laws to suit himself.“
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Read the full op-ed at the above link.
Let’s see, “Ayatollah Roy” by his own proud statements is a:
He’d love to strip everyone who disagrees with him of their rights while denying their humanity and full citizenship.
In plain terms, “Ayatollah Roy” is total perversion of everything it truly means to be an American living under our Constitution. So, does it really make much difference if he’s also a sexual pervert? Perversion seems to make no difference to the so-called voters in the “GOP Caliphite of Alabama.” Their truly despicable past is prologue. So, there is little reason to believe that the latest Moore disgrace will make any difference to such out of touch and tone deaf folks.
PWS
11-10-17
Robinson writes:
“By now it should be clear that racism is a feature of the Trump administration, not a bug.
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly’s hideous rewriting of Civil War history is merely the latest evidence. Can anyone really believe “the lack of an ability to compromise” caused that bloody war? Is it possible to become a four-star Marine general without knowing that the Constitution itself was structured around a compromise on slavery? Or that the first half of the 19th century saw a series of equally immoral compromises that let slavery continue?
How can a man whose son died in service of his country believe that “men . . . of good faith” is an acceptable description of military officers who committed treason and took up arms against the United States, as did Robert E. Lee and the rest of the Confederate generals? Do people of good faith hold others in cruel bondage, buy and sell them like chattel and forcibly compel their unpaid labor?
Kelly buys into the racist, revisionist, dripping-with-Spanish-moss version of history that white Southerners concocted as they were imposing the system of Jim Crow repression. Anyone ignorant enough to believe the war was about anything other than slavery should read the declarations issued by the Confederate states upon secession. Here is a quote from Mississippi’s proclamation, which is vile but at least forthright:
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
Those who profited handsomely from slavery — including the growing financial markets of Wall Street and the bustling textile mills of New England — knew full well that it was wrong. They just didn’t want to give it up.
Kelly’s “good faith” historical claptrap would be bad enough in a vacuum. But it alarmingly echoes President Trump’s “many sides” analysis of the Charlottesville incident — and continues a tone that Trump set at the outset of his campaign, when he vilified Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists.
. . . .
When Trump miscalibrates and strays into explicit racism, as he did in the case of Charlottesville, there are expressions of shock and horror from fellow Republicans and even members of his Cabinet. But nobody renounces him, except senators who are about to retire. Nobody quits his administration on principle. Trump’s enablers meekly go back to the all-important business of cutting rich people’s taxes.
Making whites feel embattled and aggrieved is central to the Trump presidency. It is what makes him different from all other recent presidents, perhaps going back as far as Woodrow Wilson, who imposed Jim Crow segregation on the federal workforce. It is what makes Trump so corrosive to the national fabric.
There is one master practitioner of identity politics in the United States today. Shamefully, he lives in the White House.”
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Read Robinson’s entire op-ed at the link.
Yup! Hard to add much to this analysis! Kelly’s perverted account of the Civil War (although depressing) is not particularly surprising when you remember that this is a guy who bought into the Trump-Gonzo-Miller-Bannon racist and bogus “overrun by the immigrant hordes and Muslim terrorists” fear-mongering hook, line, and sinker, with no apparent reflection on its demonstrable falsity or stupidity.
PWS
11-05-17
Three Editorials in today’s Washington Post emphasize the extremely counterproductive nature of Trump’s response to the NY terrorist attack.
First, on his inappropriate attempt to blame immigrants for the incident:
“IN LOWER MANHATTAN on Tuesday, not far from the memorial to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, eight people were killed and 12 injured when a man espousing fidelity to the Islamic State drove a rented pickup down a busy bike path along the Hudson River. “It was gruesome. It was grisly. It was surreal,” one witness said of bicyclists and pedestrians being mowed down. The attack on innocent people enjoying a fine autumn day was a chilling reminder of the persistent threat posed to the United States by Islamist extremists — and their ingenuity in finding ways to commit murder.
Some small comfort can be taken in the fact that in the 16 years since the fall of the twin towers, improvements in protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism abroad have lessened the terrorists’ strength to strike and improved our ability to respond. The quick actions of police and other first responders during Tuesday’s tragedy should be applauded. So must the resilience and strength of the people of New York City, who made clear they will not be cowed by fear.
Far less inspiring — indeed, downright dispiriting — was the reaction of President Trump. In a series of tweets that apparently were informed (a word we use loosely) by his viewing of “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump went on a harangue about immigration and attacked Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). On Wednesday, Mr. Trump signaled he might upend the judicial process by declaring the suspected attacker an enemy combatant to be shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay prison; federal terrorism charges filed against him later in the day likely would foreclose that from happening. Note that the White House wouldn’t discuss gun control after last month’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, on the grounds that it would politicize a tragedy, but it had no problem launching partisan attacks following a terrorist strike that ought to unify all Americans. Note also, as The Post’s Philip Bump pointed out, that Mr. Trump is quick to jump to conclusions when there are incidents involving immigrants but is far more circumspect when nonimmigrants are involved.
What’s really needed from the Trump administration is not blame-shifting but a serious attempt to investigate and learn from this latest attack. Were others involved or aware of the alleged plans dating back a year that went into the attack? Are authorities right in their initial assessment that the suspect became “radicalized domestically” while living in the United States? Were signals missed when he appeared on the radar of law enforcement in connection with the investigations of other suspects? The 29-year-old, authorities said, allegedly “followed almost exactly to a T” instructions that the Islamic State has put out on its social-media channels on how to carry out attacks. So what can be done to detect and deter other would-be followers?
Among those killed Tuesday were five Argentines who were part of a group of school friends who traveled to New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation. It was their dream trip to a city known for being open and generous and diverse. Those are the traits that make America great; to undermine them in response to Tuesday’s attack only plays into the hands of terrorists.”
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Second, the Editorial Board responds to Trump’s attempt to blame Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for the attack:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-trump-new-yorks-tragedy-means-a-new-attack-on-immigration/2017/11/01/8ffa0940-bf38-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.ead2a22ecd7d
“PRESIDENT TRUMP, ever prone to seek out scapegoats, fastened on a new target in the wake of the terrorist attack in New York: the state’s senior Democratic senator, along with a 27-year-old visa program that offers applicants from dozens of countries a shot at immigrating to the United States.
Mr. Trump singled out Sen. Charles E. Schumer, who, in 1990, sponsored the diversity visa program, through which the alleged attacker in New York, Sayfullo Saipov, is reported to have immigrated to the United States from his native Uzbekistan. In a tweet, the president derided the program as “a Chuck Schumer beauty.”
Never mind that Mr. Schumer’s legislation establishing the program attracted bipartisan support; or that it was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican; or even that Mr. Schumer himself unsuccessfully bargained to end the program, in 2013, in return for a bill granting legal residence to millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States. Neither the facts nor the normal political imperative to avoid partisanship in the wake of a terrorist attack appeared to move Mr. Trump.
His tweet made it appear that his overriding interest in an assault allegedly backed by the Islamic State is to use it to assail immigration — in this instance, a legal program whose beneficiaries represent a speck in the overall number of immigrants. Managed by the State Department since 1995, the program now grants up to 50,000 visas annually, via a random lottery, to citizens of dozens of countries who would otherwise be mostly overlooked in the annual influx of green-card recipients. In recent years, many of the winners have been from Africa and Eastern Europe.
Having reaped political advantage as a candidate in vilifying illegal immigrants, Mr. Trump has set his sights in office on legal migrants, including refugees, from a handful of mostly Muslim countries, whom he’d like Americans to see as an undifferentiated mass of potentially violent interlopers. Gradually, he is chipping away at what was once a national consensus that immigrants are a critical source of vitality, invention and international appeal.
Like almost any immigration program, the diversity visa lottery is imperfect and susceptible to abuse. The fortunate winners, who represent less than 1 percent of those who have applied annually in recent years, are not uniformly equipped to thrive in this country; many lack an education beyond high school. As Mr. Saipov may turn out to prove, even the extensive vetting required of all who immigrate through the program does not provide an ironclad guarantee that it is impervious to applicants who might seek to harm the United States.
The lottery program might be improved. Still, the fact that more than 11 million people applied for it in fiscal 2016 reflects the magnetic appeal the United States continues to exert around the world. Satisfying a small fraction of that demand, through the lottery or some other legal means, is a powerful tool of public diplomacy in countries whose citizens might otherwise have no hope of coming here.”
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Third, Jennifer Rubin (“JRUBE”) comments on Trump’s “mindless,” totally inappropriate, attack on our justice system (in other words, on our Constitution):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/11/02/trumps-mindless-insult-to-the-american-judicial-system/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6be7fbcdabb0
“Asked about the suspect Wednesday, President Trump called him an “animal.” Prompted to say whether he thought Saipov should be sent to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Trump said, sure, he’d consider it. Later, at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said flatly that the White House considered the suspect an “enemy combatant.”
The president also said yesterday that the American justice system (presumably including his own Justice Department) is a “joke” and a “laughingstock.” He further opined, “We also have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now,” Trump said. (Terrorists are subject to the death penalty, so it’s unclear what he had in mind.) “They’ll go through court for years … We need quick justice, and we need strong justice,” he said.
Thankfully, the Justice Department, like the Pentagon, has learned when to ignore Trump. On Wednesday, Saipov was charged in federal court. By Thursday morning, Trump was backing off his support for sending Saipov to Guantanamo. Once again, the ignorant president shot from the hip and had to creep back to reality.
Just how harmful were Trump’s statements? It is reprehensible for the president to defame our justice system, which is not a “joke” nor a “laughingstock” but the envy of the world. Moreover, in the terrorist context, it has proved remarkably efficient in trying and convicting terrorists, and then handing out maximum punishments. The surviving Boston Marathon bombing defendant was convicted in just this way and sentenced to death.
. . . .
Based on today’s tweet, we were right to assume that neither Trump nor Sanders had any idea what he/she was talking about (always a good assumption). We will watch with pride as American justice takes its course — and with horror as Trump continues to wreck havoc from the Oval Office.”
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Having spent a professional lifetime working on immigration and refugee issues, I can confirm that Trump and his GOP “restrictionist cronies” like Sessions, Miller, and Bannon have managed to transform what used to be “a national consensus that immigrants [and particularly refugees] are a critical source of vitality, invention and international appeal” into a highly partisan and racially-charged attack on the national origins and futures of some of our most productive citizens and residents — those who far more than Trump or his cronies are likely to help us in building a better, safer future for all Americans.
Having worked on all sides of our U.S. Justice System, served as an administrative judge on the trial and appellate levels for more than 21 years, listened to and/or read thousands of accounts of what made people leave their “home countries,” and studied in detail the reasons why some failing countries are “senders” of talented migrants and others, like the U.S., are fortunate enough to be on the “receiving” end, I can say unequivocally that the fairness of our justice system and the overall honsety and integrity of civil servants in the U.S. Government are the primary differences between the “sending” and “receiving” countries, like ours.
NINA MARTYRIS Reports for NPR:
“On this day 500 years ago, an obscure Saxon monk launched a protest movement against the Catholic Church that would transform Europe. Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation changed not just the way Europeans lived, fought, worshipped, worked and created art but also how they ate and drank. For among the things it impacted was a drink beloved throughout the world and especially in Luther’s native Germany: beer.
The change in beer production was wrought by the pale green conical flower of a wildly prolific plant — hops.
Every hip craft brewery today peddling expensive hoppy beers owes a debt of gratitude to Luther and his followers for promoting the use of hops as an act of rebellion against the Catholic Church. But why did Protestants decide to embrace this pretty flower, and what did it have to do with religious rebellion?
Therein foams a bitter pint of history.
In the 16th century, the Catholic Church had a stranglehold on beer production, since it held the monopoly on gruit — the mixture of herbs and botanicals (sweet gale, mug wort, yarrow, ground ivy, heather, rosemary, juniper berries, ginger, cinnamon) used to flavor and preserve beer. Hops, however, were not taxed. Considered undesirable weeds, they grew plentifully and vigorously — their invasive nature captured by their melodic Latin name, Humulus lupulus (which the music-loving Luther would have loved), which means “climbing wolf.”
“The church didn’t like hops,” says William Bostwick, the beer critic for The Wall Street Journal and author of The Brewer’s Tale: A History of the World According to Beer. “One reason was that the 12th century German mystic and abbess Hildegard had pronounced that hops were not very good for you, because they ‘make the soul of a man sad and weigh down his inner organs.’ So, if you were a Protestant brewer and wanted to thumb your nose at Catholicism, you used hops instead of herbs.”
Even before the Reformation, German princes had been moving toward hops — in 1516, for instance, a Bavarian law mandated that beer could be made only with hops, water and barley. But Luther’s revolt gave the weed a significant boost. The fact that hops were tax-free constituted only part of the draw. Hops had other qualities that appealed to the new movement; chiefly, their excellent preservative qualities. “All herbs and spices have preservative qualities, but with hops, beer could travel really well, so it became a unit of international trade that symbolized the growing business class, which was tangentially connected with the Protestant work ethic and capitalism,” says Bostwick.
. . . .
For all his protestations, Luther’s beer stein was always full. He loved local beer, boasted of his wife’s brewing skills, and launched a movement that helped promote hops. Does that make him a patron saint of the craft brewery?
“Luther might blanch a bit as a good Protestant at being called a saint,” points out Bostwick, “and there’s already a brewery saint called St. Arnold, who saved his congregation from the plague by making them drink beer. In the interests of Protestantism, I wouldn’t call him a saint, but he was certainly a beer enthusiast, and many a beer bar and brewery today has a picture of Martin Luther on their wall. So let’s say that while we certainly don’t genuflect to him, he’s known and appreciated.”
Hoppy Quincentennial, Martin Luther!“
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Read the full story at the link.
Not surprisingly, many German Lutherans who immigrated to America settled in Wisconsin, where their steins remained full of well-hopped brew!
Prost!🍺🍻🍺🍻🍺🍻🍺
PWS
10-31-17
Lindsay writes:
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered remarks to the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) on Oct. 12, arguing that the U.S. asylum system is overburdened with fraud and abuse. Sessions misrepresented the system, relying on virtually no data to reach his, frankly, ignorant conclusions.
. . . .
Fifth, Sessions suggests that because some individuals who pass credible fear interviews fail to apply for asylum, they are fraudulently seeking asylum. This fails to recognize that individuals who pass a credible fear interview have been released with very little orientation as to what to expect next.
For example, asylum law requires that an official application be filed in immigration court within one year of the asylum seeker’s last entry into the United States. U.S. officials, however, fail to tell individuals who pass a credible fear interview about this deadline.
Having just articulated in detail, to a U.S. official, why they are afraid to return to their home country, many asylum seekers believe they have “applied” for asylum, and some even believe they have been granted upon release.
Several groups filed suit against DHS last June based on the lack of notice of the one year filing deadline given to asylum seekers and also the impossibility of filing because the immigration courts are so backlogged that an applicant often cannot file in open court within a year.
Sessions also neglects to mention that asylum seekers face a crisis in legal representation. According to a national study of cases from 2007-2012, only 37 percent of immigrants were represented in immigration court. Representation can make all the difference. Without representation, asylum seekers lack an understanding of what is happening in their case and may be too fearful to appear without an attorney. Their number one priority, remember, is to avoid being sent back to a place where they face persecution and/or torture or death.
Finally, the asylum process itself is complicated and the I-589 form to apply is only available in English. This is overwhelming for a pro se applicant who lacks the ability to read and write in English.
Attorney General Sessions’ remarks should not be surprising, certainly not to any who are familiar with his anti-immigrant track record. It remains disappointing, however, that the nation’s top law enforcement official should politicize and attempt to skew our vision of the asylum-seeking process. As a nation founded by immigrants fleeing religious persecution, it is profoundly disturbing that the current Attorney General sees fit to an attack on asylum seekers and to undermine America’s history of compassionate protection of refugees.
Professor Lindsay M. Harris is co-director of the Immigration & Human Rights Clinic at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law.”
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Go on over to The Hill at the above link and read the rest of Lindsay’s article (containing her points 1-4, which I omitted in this excerpt).
I can confirm that those who have passed the “credible fear” process often mistakenly believe that they “applied for asylum” before the Asylum Office. I also found that few unrepresented respondents understood the difference between required reporting to the DHS Detention Office and reporting to Immigration Court.
Moreover, given the “haste makes waste” procedures applied to recent border arrivals, the addresses reported to EOIR by DHS or entered into the EOIR system were often inaccurate. Sometimes, I could tell they were inaccurate just from my own knowledge of the spelling and location of various streets and jurisdictions in Northern Virginia. Another time, one of the Arlington Immigration court’s “eagle eyed” Court Clerks spotted that a number of supposed “in absentias” charged to Arlington were really located in the state of “PA” rather than “VA” which had incorrectly been entered into our system. No wonder these were coming back as “undeliverable!”
Therefore, I would consider Sessions’s claim of a high “no show” rate to be largely bogus until proven otherwise. My experience was that recently arrived women, children, and families from the Northern Triangle appeared well over 90% of the time if they 1) actually understood the reporting requirements, and 2) actually got the Notice of Hearing. Those who were able to obtain lawyers appeared nearly 100% of the time.
This strongly suggests to me that if Sessions really wanted to address problems in Immigration Court he would ditch the knowingly false anti-asylum narratives and instead concentrate on: 1) insuring that everyone who “clears” the credible fear process has his or her Immigration Court hearing scheduled in a location and a manner that gives them the maximum possible access to pro bono legal representation; 2) insuring that appropriate explanations and warnings regarding failure to appear are given in English and Spanish, and 3) a “quality control initiative” with respect to entering addresses at both DHS and EOIR and serving Notices to Appear.
Jeff Sessions also acted totally inappropriately in delivering this highly biased, enforcement-oriented, political address to the EOIR. Although housed within the DOJ, EOIR’s only functions are quasi-judicial — fairly adjudicating cases. In the words of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent case the function of the Immigration Judiciary is “preserving the rule of law, safeguarding the impartiality of our adjudicatory processes, and ensuring that fairness and objectivity are not usurped by emotion, regardless of the nature of the allegations.” Alimbaev v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., 872 F.3d 188, 190 (3rd Cir. 2017).
Consequently, the only appropriate remarks for an Attorney General to make to EOIR and the Immigration Judiciary would be to acknowledge the difficulty of their judicial jobs; thank them for their service; encourage them to continue to render fair, impartial, objective, scholarly, and timely decisions; and explain how he plans to support them by providing more resources for them to do their important jobs. That’s it!!
What is totally inappropriate and probably unethical is for the Attorney General to deliver a “pep talk” to judges spouting the “party line” of one of the parties in interest (the DHS), setting forth inaccurate and unsupported statements of the law, and demeaning the other party to the judicial proceedings — the immigrant respondents and their attorneys.
Although I personally question their ultimate constitutionality under the Due Process Clause, the Attorney General does have two established channels for conveying his views on the law to the EOIR: 1) by incorporating them in regulations issued by the DOJ after public notice and comment; and 2) by “certifying” BIA decisions to himself and thereby establishing his own case precedents which the BIA and Immigration Judges must follow.
Troublesome as these two procedures might be, they do have some glaring differences from “AG speeches and memos.” First, public parties have a right to participate in both the regulatory and the precedent adjudication process, thus insuring that views opposed to those being advanced by the DHS and the Attorney General must be considered and addressed. Second, in both cases, private parties may challenge the results in the independent Article III Courts if they are dissatisfied with the Attorney General’s interpretations. By contrast, the “opposing views” to Session’s anti-asylum screed did not receive “equal time and access” to the judicial audience.
Sessions’s recent disingenuous speech to EOIR was a highly inappropriate effort to improperly influence and bias supposedly impartial quasi-judicial officials by setting forth a “party line” and not very subtilely implying that those who might disagree with him could soon find themselves “out of favor.” That is particularly true when the speech was combined with outrageous discussions of how “performance evaluations” for judges could be revised to contain numerical performance quotes which have little or nothing to do with fairness and due process.
Jeff Sessions quite obviously does not see the U.S. Immigration Courts as an independent judiciary charged with delivering fair and impartial justice to immigrants consistent with the Due Process clause of our Constitution. Rather, he sees Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges as “adjuncts” to DHS enforcement — there primarily to insure that those apprehended by DHS agents or who turn themselves in to the DHS to apply for statutory relief are quickly and unceremoniously removed from the U.S. with the mere veneer, but not the substance, of Due Process.
Due process will not be realized in the U.S. Immigration Courts until they are removed from the DOJ and established as a truly independent Article I court.
PWS
10-31-17
HuffPost reports:
“Trump’s reasons for the controversial ban “do not appear to be supported by any facts,” the judge found.
A federal judge blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender men and women serving in the U.S. armed forces on Monday.
“I am directing the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the U.S. Coast Guard, to return to the longstanding policy and practice on military service by transgender individuals that was in place prior to June 2016,” United Stated District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her order.
Trump’s memorandum on the ban, which he released in August after first announcing the policy change in a series of tweets in July, has faced legal challenges from current and aspiring transgender service members who “fear that the directives of the Presidential Memorandum will have devastating impacts on their careers and their families,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
The reasons the Trump administration gave for enacting the ban, she continued, “do not appear to be supported by any facts.” While Trump defended the policy change as a cost-saving measure, analyses of the military budget found that spending on health care for transgender service members would be miniscule.
Read the full court order here.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.”
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Fact-free, biased, and prejudice-based policies are a specialty of the Trump Administration.
PWS
10-30-17
Washington Post editorial:
“PRESIDENT TRUMP has already slashed refugee admissions for the next hyear to a decades-long low. Now, in yet another blow to America’s legacy as a beacon of hope to beleaguered people around the world, his administration plans to make entry into the United States even more difficult for those refugees who are lucky enough not to be banned from the country entirely.
Mr. Trump’s first two travel bans suspended all refugee admissions into the United States for 120 days. On Tuesday, that aspect of the ban expired — and the administration has replaced it with a mean-spirited policy not defensible on any conceivable grounds of national security.
Notwithstanding the president’s promises to implement “extreme vetting,” refugees seeking entry into the United States already are subject to a gantlet of security checks and interviews. Under this new policy, the process will become even more arduous. Refugees will need to hand over more detailed biographical data and contact information for family members. The government will scale up efforts to spot possible fraud. Meanwhile, a program allowing swifter entry for refugees seeking to join family members who have already reached the United States has been put on hold.
The policy is harshest toward refugees from 11 countries, which Reuters reports as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. For 90 days, citizens and stateless residents of these countries will be blocked from the United States unless their admission is determined not to pose a security threat and to be in the national interest of the United States. That loophole is particularly small because the State Department plans to prioritize refugees from other countries. Essentially, the administration has extended the refugee ban another month and a half for these 11 nations. (They produced more than 40 percent of refugees admitted to the United States in fiscal 2017.) That makes for a drastic cut in refugee admissions.”
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Read the complete editorial at the link.
Trump is diminishing America, one cowardly and xenophobic action at a time.
PWS
10-28-17
From a Washington Post editorial:
”IMMIGRATION OFFICIALS outdid themselves this week when they took into custody a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who had just undergone emergency surgery. Is this what President Trump had in mind when he promised that federal enforcement resources would be focused on the “bad hombres”?
Rosa Maria Hernandez, whose developmental delays put her on a mental par with a 4- or 5-year-old, faces deportation in a case that calls into question the judgment — not to mention humanity — of federal agents. It also should prompt reassessment of the change in policy from that of the Obama administration, which focused enforcement on recent arrivals and those with serious criminal records, to one in which anyone — anywhere — apparently is fair game.
. . . .
It’s unusual for federal agents to detain a child already living in the United States. Who could have possibly imagined that a 10-year-old with disabilities being rushed to a hospital would be the target of federal enforcement? The harm done extends beyond Rosa Maria and her family to other parents who now will have to think about the risk of detention and deportation in deciding whether to seek medical treatment for their children.
Is this really the image the Border Patrol wants for itself? Is this the image we Americans want for ourselves?”
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Read the complete editorial at the link.
Incidents like this one show that DHS has too many agents, with too few real law enforcement duties, and far too little common sense and direction from above.
Far from heeding the preposterous call by Trump and “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions for an unneeded “Internal Security Police Force” of an additional 10,000 agents, Congress should require an accounting for the activities, hiring practices, training, supervision, priorities, and control of the current DHS agent workforce.
Apparently, there presently is insufficient real law enforcement work (e.g., that actually makes sense and benefits us as a country) to occupy the existing DHS workforce. No additional resources are warranted without a sensible, realistic plan and strategy of the type that virtually every other law enforcement agency in America must provide to merit additional funding and resources.
Little wonder that many local law enforcement agencies across the country want little or no part of the Trump Administration’s “Gonzo” immigration enforcement!
PWS
10-28-17
http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/10/23/immigrants-united-states-population/
writes (in an article original published in “Demographics, Economics, Immigration 101, Integration :”
The United States has been created by successive waves of immigration over the course of centuries. Each wave of immigrants from different parts of the world has helped to build the U.S. economy and enrich U.S. society. And each wave of immigrants has provoked a chorus of dire warnings from nativists worried that the presence of too many immigrants will somehow dilute the American sense of identity.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is one of the groups that routinely issue such warnings. One of the more subtle ways in which they do this is to present immigration statistics in as dramatic a way as possible, with the implication being that native-born Americans are in danger of being over-run by foreigners. In a recent report, for instance, CIS takes advantage of newly released Census data to sound the alarm over the size of the immigrant population in the United States.
Of course, CIS offers no context for this data; no discussion of the historical, economic, political, and social environment within which immigration occurs. Just panicked pronouncements that the immigrant population hit a “record” 43.7 million in 2016—or one out of every eight people in the country.
In fact, immigrants now make up 13.5 percent of the U.S. population, which is less than the 14.7 percent share in 1910. For good measure, CIS also throws in an estimate of how large the foreign-born population might be by 2060 (at which point 78 million immigrants may account for 18.8 percent of the population).
However, the real story is not the number of immigrants; it’s what immigrants do once they’re here. Specifically, the contributions they make to the U.S. economy and the degree to which they integrate into U.S. society.
For instance, based on data from 2015 and 2014, we know that nearly half of all immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens and that seven out of ten speak English reasonably well. More than one-quarter have a college degree.
There are more than 27 million immigrant workers in the country who make outsized contributions to occupations both low-tech and high-tech. Immigrant households pay hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes each year and wield hundreds of billions in consumer spending power.
And immigrant business owners generate tens of billions of dollars in business income.
This is the kind of context that CIS fails to offer in its run-down of Census numbers. The not-so-subtle implication of the CIS report is that native-born Americans are drowning is a sea of foreigners.
But when you actually start to enumerate the many ways that immigrants (and their children) add value to the U.S. economy as workers, entrepreneurs, consumers, and taxpayers—and integrate into U.S. society while enriching U.S. culture—the numbers represent good news.
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You can bet that the CIS false narrative about the “Alien Invasion” and the threat to our culture and our society will be picked up in speeches by Trump, Sessions, Miller, Bannon, and other restrictionists to justify cuts in legal immigration, reducing family immigration, removing undocumented Latino and African workers, cutting rights of asylum seekers (particularly those from Central America and predominantly Muslim countries), and “shutting out” so-called “unskilled immigrants” in favor of guys with college degrees who show up speaking English.
The whole “Immigration Is A Threat To America” that therefore must be reduced, artificially limited, and punished is bogus! It stands in the way of serious discussions of how to reform and re-design our legal immigration system to channel more of the historical flow of needed workers and refugees into legal channels, prevent exploitation of immigrant workers by unscrupulous employers, and thereby reduce the incentives and the flow of “extralegal” migration to levels that can be controlled by non-draconian immigration enforcement working with market forces rather than in opposition to them.
PWS
10-24-17
Edsall writes:
“Will President Trump’s assault on the norms underpinning constitutional democracy permanently alter American political life?
On a daily basis, Trump tests the willingness of the public to accept a president who lies as a matter of routine. So far, Trump has persuaded a large swath of America to swallow what he feeds them.
. . . .
As Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the author of “Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy,” warns in The New York Review of Books:
Liberal democracies are better equipped than authoritarian states to grapple with the inevitable conflicts that arise in diverse societies, including the threat of terrorist violence. But they also contain the seeds of their own destruction: if they fail to deal with these challenges and allow xenophobic populists to hijack the public debate, then the votes of frustrated and disaffected citizens will increasingly go to the anti-immigrant right, societies will become less open, nativist parties will grow more powerful, and racist rhetoric that promotes a narrow and exclusionary sense of national identity will be legitimized.
The threat to democracy posed by the current outbreak of populist nationalism has become a matter of concern for both scholars and ordinary citizens. The central topic at a conference at Yale earlier this month was “How Do Democracies Fall Apart,” and the subject will be taken up again in November at a Stanford conference called “Global Populisms: A Threat to Democracy?”
I contacted several of the participants at the Yale gathering and was struck by their anxiety over the future prospects of democratic governance.
One of the most insightful was Adam Przeworski, a political scientist at N.Y.U., who has written, but not yet published, his own analysis of current events under the title “What’s Happening.”
First and foremost, Przeworski stresses,
there is nothing “undemocratic” about the electoral victory of Donald Trump or the rise of anti-establishment parties in Europe.
These parties and candidates, he points out:
Do not advocate replacing elections by some other way of selecting rulers. They are ugly — most people view racism and xenophobia as ugly — but these parties do campaign under the slogan of returning to ‘the people’ the power usurped by elites, which they see as strengthening democracy. In the words of a Trump advertisement, “Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people.”
In support of Przeworski’s argument, it is clear that the success of the Trump campaign in winning the Republican nomination was the result of a classic democratic insurgency: the Republican electorate’s rejection of its party’s establishment.
The danger in the United States, in Przeworski’s view, is the possibility that the Trump administration will use the power of the presidency to undermine the procedures and institutions essential to the operation of democracy:
That the incumbent administration would intimidate hostile media and create a propaganda machine of its own, that it would politicize the security agencies, that it would harass political opponents, that it would use state power to reward sympathetic private firms, that it would selectively enforce laws, that it would provoke foreign conflicts to monger fear, that it would rig elections.
Przeworski believes that
such a scenario would not be unprecedented. The United States has a long history of waves of political repression: the “Red Scare” of 1917-20, the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, the McCarthy period, the Nixon presidency.
Along similar lines, Anna Grzymala-Busse, a political scientist at Stanford, replied by email to my inquiry:
My big worry is not simply that formal institutions have been eroded, but that the informal norms that underpin them are even more important and even more fragile. Norms of transparency, conflict of interest, civil discourse, respect for the opposition and freedom of the press, and equal treatment of citizens are all consistently undermined, and without these the formal institutions become brittle.
Trump, in Grzymala-Busse’s assessment, “articulates a classic populist message that we see in Europe: the elite establishment is a collusive cartel uninterested in the problems of ‘the people,’” and, she continued, he has begun to follow the path of European populist leaders:
Much of Trump’s language and actions are also familiar: there is a standard authoritarian populist template, developed in Hungary and faithfully followed in Poland and in Turkey: first, go after the courts, then the media, then the civil society, churches, universities.
The attacks on the courts, media and universities
are not simply the ravings of a lunatic, but an established strategy for undermining democratic oversight and discrediting the opposition.
. . . .
Paul Waldman, writing in The Washington Post on Oct, 17, summed up Trump’s approach to veracity and to reality itself:
Trump takes his own particular combination of ignorance, bluster and malice, and sets it off like a nuclear bomb of misinformation. The fallout spreads throughout the country, and no volume of corrections and fact checks can stop it. It wasn’t even part of a thought-out strategy, just a loathsome impulse that found its way out of the president’s mouth to spread far and wide.
Trump’s recklessness is disturbing enough on its own. But what makes it especially threatening is that much of the public — well beyond the 40 percent of the electorate that has shown itself to be unshakable in its devotion to the president — seems to be slowly accommodating itself to its daily dose of the Trump reality show, accepting the rhetorical violence that Trump inflicts on basic standards of truth as the new normal.”
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Read Edsall’s full, much longer, article at the link.
An immigration policy based on xenophobia, racism, and White Nationalism, rather than on any rational, generally accepted socio-economic analysis, is at the heart of the Trump–Bannon-Sessions-Miller attack on America’s democratic institutions. As I said earlier today, “The Trump Administration, and its ‘fellow travelers’ among GOP politicos and voters, is the biggest threat to our national security and the future of American Democracy.”
PWS
10-22-17
DOJ PRESS RELEASE:
~
Remarks as prepared for delivery
Thank you for that kind introduction Richard. You’ve been a crime fighter here in this office for over three decades. Thank you for your dedicated service.
I would also like to thank and recognize our selfless and dedicated law enforcement here who put their lives on the line every and who run toward danger for the benefit of us all.
On behalf of President Trump, it is an honor to be here with you all – with the selfless and courageous men and women of law enforcement. President Trump and this Department of Justice understand your mission. The President has directed us to support that mission and support you. And we are committed to doing that.
Donald Trump ran for office as a law-and-order candidate and now he is governing as a law-and-order President. Under his strong leadership, we are finally getting serious about crime and the rule of law. And we are finally getting serious about illegal immigration.
We have the most generous immigration laws in the world. And for decades we have always pulled back from effective enforcement.
But earlier this month, the President released his principles for fixing our immigration system. Let me just say: they are a breath of fresh air. For decades, the American people have been begging and pleading with our elected officials for an immigration system that is lawful and that serves our national interest. Now we have a President who leads.
The principles he laid out deal with every aspect of our immigration problems—everything from border security to interior enforcement to closing loopholes in our asylum program. It’s the kind of bold agenda that the American people have been waiting for. It is reasonable and it will work. And this is a critical point: this is not hopeless; it can be done!
First of all, the President is determined to finally build a wall at our Southern border. This will make it harder for illegal aliens to break into this country. For many, they will decide not to come illegally. But more importantly, the wall will send a message to the world that we enforce our laws. It sends a message: finally we mean it.
And to better do that, President Trump has proposed hiring more than 10,000 new ICE officers, 1,000 new ICE attorneys, 300 new prosecutors, and nearly 400 new immigration judges. He has proposed switching to a more merit-based system of immigration like they have in Canada. That means welcoming the best and the brightest but turning away gang members, fraudsters, drunk drivers, and child abusers. This merit-based system would better serve our national interest because it would benefit the American people. That’s what this agenda is all about. We can’t accept everybody—only people who will flourish.
And that’s why the President supports mandating the use of the E-verify system, which is an internet based system that allows employers to verify that those they hire are authorized to work in the United States.
Under the President’s plan, it would be illegal to discriminate against American workers in favor of foreign workers.
We need this agenda. And Texans know that better than just about anybody.
I’m sure everyone in this room remembers Houston police officer Kevin Will. An illegal alien who had been deported twice drove drunk and hit Officer Will at about 90 miles per hour. Officer Will’s last words were telling someone to get out of the way of the car. He died protecting innocent people. And when he died, his wife was pregnant with their first child.
The open-borders lobby talks a lot about kids—those who are here unlawfully. But open-borders policies aren’t even in their interest either. After the previous administration announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—or DACA—policy in 2012, the number of unaccompanied children coming here nearly doubled in one year. The next year, it doubled again.
I doubt that was a coincidence. DACA encouraged potentially tens of thousands of vulnerable children to make the dangerous journey North. That had terrible humanitarian consequences—and Texans know that firsthand.
Earlier this month, Border Patrol arrested two young men who had benefitted from DACA, for allegedly attempting to smuggle illegal aliens into Laredo.
Just a few days later, another beneficiary of DACA was charged with the murder of an 18-year old girl. In total, 2,000 DACA recipients have had their status withdrawn.
The President wants to stop the incentives for vulnerable children to come here illegally. He began to do that last month when he ended the DACA policy.
The President has also laid out a plan to close loopholes that are being exploited in our asylum program.
Under the previous Administration, the federal government began releasing illegal aliens who claimed to be too afraid to return home. Unsurprisingly, the number of these claims skyrocketed nearly 20-fold in eight years from 5,000 in 2009 to 94,000 now. And after their release, many of these people simply disappeared.
It’s too easy to defraud our system right now—and President Trump is going to fix that. The President’s plan to close the loopholes will stop the incentive for false asylum claims.
President Trump is also confronting the state and local jurisdictions that have undertaken to undo our immigration laws through so-called “sanctuary policies.”
Such policies undermine the moral authority of law and undermine the safety of the jurisdictions that adopt them. Police are forced to release criminal aliens back into the community—no matter what their crimes. Think about that: Police may be forced to release pedophiles, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and arsonists back into the communities where they had no right to be in the first place. They should—according to law and common sense—be processed and deported.
These policies hinder the work of federal law enforcement; they’re contrary to the rule of law, and they have serious consequences for the law-abiding Texans.
Earlier this month, an illegal alien in Kansas pled guilty to reckless driving that killed a law enforcement officer conducting a traffic stop. He tested for a blood alcohol content twice the legal limit. The officer who was killed—Deputy Brandon Collins—had two young daughters.
The illegal alien who killed Deputy Collins had already been arrested twice for driving-related offenses—including a previous drunk driving conviction. Clearly, he had been in police custody, but no one turned him over to ICE.
The politicians behind “sanctuary” policies say that forcing police officers to release criminal aliens back onto the streets will somehow increase community trust.
But that does not make sense to me. Would releasing someone who had been arrested numerous times into your community give you more confidence in law enforcement?
Would learning that a local district attorney actually charges illegal aliens with less serious crimes than Americans to evade federal deportation make you believe they are trying to make your neighborhood safer? Would forcing federal officers to track down criminal aliens on your street instead of safely in the jails make you believe we value your community?
We all know law enforcement is not the problem. You risk your lives each day in service of the law and the people you protect. Cooperation, mutual respect is critical. Disrespecting our law enforcement officers in their lawful duties in unacceptable.
The problem is the policies that tie your hands.
Yet, rather than reconsider their policies, sanctuary jurisdictions feign outrage when they lose federal funds as a direct result of actions designed to nullify plain federal law. Some have even decided to go to court so that they can keep receiving taxpayer-funded grants while continuing to impede federal immigration enforcement. We intent to fight this resolutely.
We cannot continue giving federal grants to cities that actively undermine the safety of federal law officers and intentionally frustrate efforts to reduce crime in their own cities.
These jurisdictions that knowingly, willfully, and purposefully release criminal aliens back into their communities are sacrificing the lives and safety of American citizens in the pursuit of an extreme open borders policy. It’s extreme and open borders because if a jurisdiction won’t deport someone who enters illegally and then commits another crime then who will they deport.
This isn’t just a bad policy. It’s a direct challenge to the laws of the United States. It places the lives of our fine law enforcement officers at risk and I cannot and will not accept this increased risk because certain politicians want to make a statement.
Our duty is to protect public safety and protect taxpayer dollars and I plan to fulfill those duties.
The vast majority of Americans oppose “sanctuary” policies. According to one poll, 80 percent of Americans believe that cities should turn over criminal aliens to immigration officials.
The American people are not asking too much, and neither is the Department of Justice. Federal law enforcement wants to work with our partners at the state and local level. We want to keep our citizens safe.
Fortunately, in President Trump, we have strong leadership that is making a difference.
Since he took office, border crossings have plummeted by nearly a quarter—even as our economy has been booming. This past fiscal year, Border Patrol conducted half of the number of arrests as the previous one, and one-fifth of the number of arrests they made a decade ago.
Now, someone might say, that decline is because they’re just not catching people. But that’s just not true.
Border Patrol’s tactics and their technology have been refined and are only getting better. The Department of Homeland Security believes that they are catching a greater share of illegal aliens than ever—more than four out of five.
So the data show clearly: President Trump’s leadership is making a difference. Would-be lawbreakers know that we are restoring the rule of law and enforcing our immigration laws again.
And under President Trump’s immigration principles, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security will stop rewarding sanctuary cities with taxpayer dollars.
If these cities want to receive law enforcement grants, then they should stop impeding federal law enforcement.
In Texas, you have taken a leadership role on this issue.
I want to commend the state legislature for passing Senate Bill Four with strong majorities in both chambers, and thank Governor Abbott for signing it into law.
I am well aware that this law has its critics. And I am more than familiar with their line of criticism. But the facts of the case are clearly on Texas’ side.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in this case. We believe that the outcome is important not just to the state of Texas, but to the national interest. The integrity of our immigration laws is not a local issue—it is a national issue.
I am confident that Texas will prevail in court. But I would urge every so-called “sanctuary” jurisdiction to reconsider their policies. So-called “sanctuary” policies risk the safety of good law enforcement officers and the safety of the neighborhoods that need their protection the most. There are lives and livelihoods at stake.
If we work together, we can make our country safer for all our residents—native born and lawful immigrant alike. Working together requires ending “sanctuary” policies.
The Department of Justice is determined to reduce crime. We will not concede a single block or street corner in the United States to lawlessness. Nor will we tolerate the loss of innocent life because a handful of jurisdictions believe they are above the law.
And so to all the law enforcement here—federal, state, and local—thank you for all that you do. President Trump is grateful; I am grateful, and the entire Department of Justice is grateful for your service. We have your back and you have our thanks.
Thank you, and God bless you.”
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Sessions is proposing to make the U.S. Immigration Court the largest, and certainly most “out of control” Federal Judiciary. And he also wants 10,000 more agents for the Internal Security Police (a/k/a/ DHS) that also runs the American Gulag. Sure sounds like a prescription for turning America into something like “Putinia.” That’s the White Nationalist blueprint and why they are so cozy with repressive, non-democratic rulers like Putin.
I’m exhausted for the week. Going to let someone else come up with all the numbers and studies showing how bogus Sessions’s “Alien Crime Wave” and attempt to falsely link DACA to an increase in kids fleeing gang violence to save their lives.
REALITY CHECK: At some point this grandiose plan for endless personnel and resources devoted largely to keeping needed workers and legitimate refugees out of the U.S. will have to be approved by Congress. And, it promises to be a “Budget Buster.”
PWS
10-20-17
