"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
As many as 1,000 parents separated from their children are getting a second chance to stay in the US
In a huge reversal, the Trump administration is giving families another chance to claim asylum — and even some parents who’ve already been deported might be eligible.
A Honduran father and his 6-year-old son worship during Sunday mass on September 9, 2018, in Oakland, California. They fled their country seeking asylum in the US.Mario Tama/Getty Images
The Trump administration has just agreed to give parents who were separated from their children at the US-Mexico border earlier this year a second chance to make asylum claims in the US.
The Department of Justice has negotiated an agreement that covers three lawsuits filed against the government over the family-separation policy. Parents in the US who’d been ordered deported would get another chance to pass an interview demonstrating a “credible fear” of persecution — the first step in the asylum process.
If either the parent or the child passes the screening interview, families will be allowed to apply for asylum together. Some parents who don’t pass will be allowed to remain with their children in the US while the children’s cases are adjudicated.
And in some cases, the government is even willing to consider reopening cases for parents who were already deported from the US.
The agreement covers three lawsuits: Ms. L v. ICE, which forced the government to reunite separated families this summer; M- M- M- v. ICE, brought on behalf of children separated from parents; and Dora v. Sessions, a lawsuit from parents who had failed their initial asylum screenings because they were distraught after weeks of separation from their children.
If the agreement is approved by the federal judges overseeing the three lawsuits, it will result in a second chance for hundreds of parents. Muslim Advocates and the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represented the plaintiffs in Dora v. Sessions, believe it could give “well over 1,000” parents another chance at an asylum claim. And for many families, it will eliminate (or at least defer) the impossible choice between giving up a child’s legal case, and separating the family again by keeping the child in the US while the parent is deported.
Separating families made it much harder for parents to seek asylum
Under the Trump administration’s family separation policy, a parent who wanted to seek asylum in the US had one chance: to pass a “credible fear” screening interview with an asylum office.
If a parent passed the credible fear screening, he or she was given a chance to seek asylum before an immigration judge; if the parent failed, he or she could appeal the decision to an immigration judge, with much worse odds. Losing the appeal, or agreeing to drop the case, led to an order of deportation.
Generally, most asylum seekers pass their credible fear screenings. But evidence suggests that parents who were separated from their children often failed their interviews. Parents were often so consumed by grief over their separation from their children that they weren’t able to answer asylum officers’ questions fully and effectively, according to the lawsuit filed in Dora v. Sessions.
“Explaining the basis for an asylum claim is very difficult under the best of circumstances,” said one source familiar with the interview process but not professionally authorized to speak on the record. “When someone is a) detained, b) almost certainly unrepresented, and c) beside herself with fear and desperation because of having had her child taken from her,” the source continued, “it is almost impossible.”
By the time nearly 2,000 parents and children were reunited in July (thanks to Judge Dana Sabraw’s rulings in the Ms. L case ordering family reunification), the overwhelming majority of parents had already lost their cases and been ordered deported. But their children — who’d been placed on a separate legal track as “unaccompanied alien children” after being separated from their parents — often still had ongoing cases and a real chance of winning some form of legal status in the US.
So upon being reunited, hundreds of families were faced with the choice between returning to their home country together (and facing possible peril or persecution), and keeping the child in the US in hopes of winning asylum or another form of legal status — and separating the family anew. (Some parents alleged they weren’t even given this chance, and were coerced into withdrawing their children’s legal claims — and forcibly reseparated without warning if they refused to comply.)
None of this would have happened if families hadn’t been separated to begin with. Under normal circumstances, if either a parent or a child passed an asylum interview, the government would allow them both to file asylum claims. And obviously, parents who weren’t traumatized by family separation might have had a better chance with their interviews. But simply reuniting the family didn’t solve the problem.
The government is agreeing to give reunited families the same chance they’d had if they’d never been separated
Here is what the agreement proposed by the government would actually do, if approved:
Parents who passed their initial “credible fear” interviews for asylum will be allowed to continue; this agreement doesn’t change those cases.
Parents who had lost their cases and been ordered deported will be given a full review to reassess whether or not they have a credible fear of persecution. This review will include a second interview for “additional fact-gathering” — during which a lawyer can be present (or can dial in by phone). Parents will be allowed to do this even if they didn’t ask for a credible fear interview when they were first arrested.
Parents who fail their credible fear screenings will be allowed to remain in the US and apply for asylum if their child passes his or her credible fear screening. The reverse is also true: If a child fails her asylum screening but the parent passes his, both parent and child will be allowed to apply for asylum. This is the way things normally work when families are apprehended together; by instituting it now, the government is essentially wiping away the legal side effects of family separation.
Parents who aren’t eligible for a credible fear interview because they had been deported before and were returning will still be allowed to avoid deportation if they meet a higher standard (“reasonable fear”) and qualify for something called “withholding of removal.” Even if they fail that standard, they will be allowed to stay in the US while their children are going through their asylum cases.
Parents who have already been deported will not have their cases automatically reviewed by the government. However, the plaintiffs in these lawsuits will have 30 days to present evidence to the government that particular parents should be allowed to return, and the government will consider those requests. (The agreement doesn’t make it clear whether deported parents will have their own cases reopened, or whether they will solely be allowed to return to stay with their children while the children’s legal cases are ongoing.)
If the agreement is approved, it will officially send the legal fight over family separation into its endgame phase. While hundreds of parents and children remain separated, the legal fight over reunification is largely about who’s responsible for carrying out various parts of the government’s reunification plan; the new agreement would set a similar plan up for the legal due process of parents and children making claims to stay in the US.
It would almost certainly run into similar implementation obstacles to the reunification plan, but it would set expectations that the government would provide this process by default, rather than moving forward with deportation.
The Trump administration is never going to wholly be able to erase the consequences of its decision to separate families as a matter of course. But it is now agreeing to give up the legal advantages that it accrued by separating parents’ and children’s cases — and forcing parents to go through interviews with life-or-death stakes without knowing when or whether they’d ever see their children again.
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I’ve been saying it over and over again. Why not just do it right, provide full Due Process, and follow the law?
Not only are the policies being promoted by Sessions, Trump, and the rest of the GOP White Nationalists unconstitutional, illegal, vile, and immoral, they are totally wasteful of limited Government resources (particularly in a time of GOP-fueled budget deficits) and unnecessarily tie up the Federal Courts. Contrary to Jeff Sessions’s false narratives, no court system anywhere has unlimited time for all the nonsense that the Government could potentially pursue. When common sense and sane prosecutorial discretion lose out, they whole system suffers.
Think what might have happened if, instead of wasting time and money on illegal family separation, unnecessary criminal prosecutions, and bending protection law out of shape, the Government had done the right thing and spent the money:
Working with NGOs and legal aid groups to release folks in locations where they could get legal assistance, virtually guaranteeing their appearance in Immigration Court;
Agreeing to grant the many domestic violence and other types of gang-related cases that could have been granted after proper preparation and documentation under a proper application of the law (before Sessions messed it up);
Taking all of the cases of long-term law-abiding residents off overloaded Immigration Court dockets so that the real contested asylum cases could be given priority without denying anyone Due Process or moving everything else back through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”).
Any “bad guys,” or “true economic migrants” could have been given full hearings, denied, and removed. But, totally contrary to Sessions’s racist blather, most of the folks arriving are actually legitimate refugees. They could have been granted status and allowed to go out and work and study to make America better. I’ve found few individuals (including many native-born US citizens) more grateful and willing to work hard and contribute than those granted asylum.
The money spent on wasteful litigation and needless, cruel and inhuman, detention could instead have been used;
to establish a viable overseas refugee screening program in the Northern Triangle;
working with other countries to share resettlement responsibilities;
and trying to correct the situations in the Northern Triangle which gave rise to the refugee flows in the first place.
Sadly, this is hardly the first, and probably by no means the last, time that the US Government has been forced to reprocess large numbers of asylum seekers because of a failure to follow Due Process and do the right thing in the first place. Just check out the history of the ABC v. Thornburgh litigation and settlement (a case I was involved in during my time in the “Legacy INS” General Counsel’s Office).
Indeed, the Trump scofflaws are “doubling down” on every failed policy fo the past. They actually are at it again with their bone-headed proposal to thumb their collective noses at Judge Dolly Gee and withdraw from the Flores settlement and set up a “Kiddie Gulag” by regulation. Good luck with that. The Trump Scofflaws are already wasting your taxpayer money on more “tent cities in the Kiddie Gulag” that they almost certainly will be enjoined from using at some point. Then, cooler heads will prevail and we’ll undoubtedly have a “Flores II” settlement.
Also, compare the real role of immigration lawyers in enforcing the law and holding Goverment scofflaws like Sessions and Nielsen accountable with the totally bogus picture painted by Sessions in his false, unethical, and highly inappropriate speech to US Immigration Judges this week. Truth is exactly the opposite of nearly everything that Jeff Sessions says.
Our country can’t afford the scofflaw conduct, inhumanity, immorality, and wastefulness of Trump, Sessions, Miller and their racist White Nationalist cabal. Vote for regime change this Fall!
Sophia Genovese, Sept. 10, 2018 – “US asylum law is nuanced, at times contradictory, and ever-changing. As brief background, in order to be granted asylum, applicants must show that they have suffered past persecution or have a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and that they are unable or unwilling to return to, or avail themselves of the protection of, their country of origin owing to such persecution. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1) & (2). Attorneys constantly grapple with the ins and outs of asylum law, especially in light of recent, dramatic changes to asylum adjudication.
Even with legal representation, the chances of being granted asylum are slim. In FY 2017, only 45% asylum-seekers who had an attorney were ultimately granted asylum. Imagine, then, an asylum-seeker fleeing persecution, suffering from severe trauma, and arriving in a foreign land where he or she suddenly has to become a legal expert in order to avoid being sent back to certain death. For most, this is nearly impossible, where in FY 2017, only 10% of those unrepresented successfully obtained asylum.
It is important to remember that while asylum-seekers have a right to obtain counsel at their own expense, they are not entitled to government-appointed counsel. INA § 240(b)(4)(A). Access to legal representation is critical for asylum-seekers. However, most asylum-seekers, especially those in detention, go largely unrepresented in their asylum proceedings, where only 15% of all detained immigrants have access to an attorney. For those detained in remote areas, that percentage is even lower.
Given this inequity, I felt compelled to travel to a remote detention facility in Folkston, GA and provide pro bono legal assistance to detained asylum-seekers in their bond and parole proceedings. I travelled along with former supervisors turned mentors, Jessica Greenberg and Deirdre Stradone, Staff Attorneys at African Services Committee(ASC)/Immigrant Community Law Center (ICLC), along with Lucia della Paolera, a volunteer interpreter. Our program was organized and led by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI). SIFI currently only represents detained asylum-seekers in their bond and parole proceedings in order to assist as many folks as possible in obtaining release. Their rationale is that since bond and parole representation take up substantially less time than asylum representation, that they can have a far greater impact in successfully obtaining release for several hundred asylum-seekers, who can hopefully thereafter obtain counsel to represent them in their asylum proceedings.
Folkston is extremely remote. It is about 50 miles northwest of Jacksonville, FL, and nearly 300 miles from Atlanta, GA, where the cases from the Folkston ICE Processing Center are heard. Instead of transporting detained asylum-seekers and migrants to their hearings at the Atlanta Immigration Court, Immigration Judges (IJs) appear via teleconference. These proceedings lack any semblance to due process. Rather, through assembly-line adjudication, IJs hear several dozens of cases within the span of a few hours. On court days, I witnessed about twenty men get shuffled into a small conference room to speak with the IJ in front of a small camera. The IJ only spends a few minutes on each case, and then the next twenty men get shuffled into the same room. While IJs may spend a bit more time with detainees during their bond or merits hearings, the time spent is often inadequate, frequently leading to unjust results.
Even with the tireless efforts of the Staff Attorneys and volunteers at SIFI, there are simply too few attorneys to help every detainee at the Folkston ICE Processing Center, which houses almost 900 immigrants at any given time, leaving hundreds stranded to navigate the confusing waters of immigration court alone.
During initial screenings, I encountered numerous individuals who filled out their asylum applications on their own. These folks try their best using the internet in the library to translate the application into their native language, translate their answers into English, and then hand in their I-589s to the IJ. But as any practitioner will tell you, so much more goes into an asylum application than the Form I-589. While these asylum seekers are smart and resourceful, it is nearly impossible for one to successfully pursue one’s own asylum claim. To make matters worse, if these asylum-seekers do not obtain release from detention ahead of their merits hearing where an IJ will adjudicate their asylum claim, they will be left to argue their claims in the Atlanta Immigration Court, where 95%-98% of all asylum claims are denied. For those detained and/or unrepresented, that number is nearly 100%.
Despite the Attorney General’s most recent comments that lawyers are not following the letter of the law when advocating on behalf of asylum-seekers, it is clear that it is the IJs, [tasked with fairly applying the law, and DHS officials, tasked with enforcing the law,] who are the ones seeking to circumvent the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Throughout the Trump era, immigration attorneys have faithfully upheld asylum law and have had to hold the government accountable in its failure to apply the law fairly. Good lawyers, using all of their talents and skill, work every day to vindicate the rights of their clients pursuant to the INA, contrary to Sessions’ assertions.
But more importantly, asylum-seekers have suffered from serious human rights abuses and merit protection under our laws. Their cases are not denied because they are not bona fide. Their cases are not denied because they do not qualify as refugees under the INA. Indeed, most of these asylum-seekers were found to possess a credible fear of return upon their initial apprehension. Through a combination of lack of access to counsel, unfair and uneven adjudication by IJs, and impermissible interference by the Attorney General, credible and bona fide cases are frequently denied.
We’ve previously blogged about the due process concerns in immigration courts under Sessions’ tenure. Instead, I want to highlight the stories of some of the asylum-seekers I met in Folkston. If these individuals do not obtain counsel for the bond or parole proceedings, and/or if they are denied release, they will be forced to adjudicate their claims in the Atlanta Immigration Court where they will almost certainly be ordered removed. It is important that we understand who it is that we’re actually deporting. Through sharing their stories, I want to demonstrate to others just how unfair our asylum system is. Asylum was meant to protect these people. Instead, we treat them as criminals by detaining them, do not provide them with adequate access to legal representation, and summarily remove them from the United States. Below are their stories:
Twenty-Five Year Old From Honduras Who Had Been Sexually Assaulted on Account of His Sexual Orientation
At the end of my first day in Folkston, I was asked to inform an individual, Mr. J-, that SIFI would be representing him in his bond proceedings. He’s been in detention since March 2018 and cried when I told him that we were going to try and get him out on bond.
Mr. J- looks like he’s about sixteen, and maybe weighs about 100 pounds. Back home in Honduras, he was frequently ridiculed because of his sexual orientation. Because he is rather small, this ridicule often turned into physical assault by other members of his community, including the police. One day when Mr. J- was returning from the store, he was stopped by five men from his neighborhood who started berating him on account of his sexual orientation. These men proceeded to sexually assault him, one by one, until he passed out. These men warned Mr. J- not to go to the police, or else they would find him and kill him. Mr. J- knew that the police would not help him even if he did report the incident. These men later tracked down Mr. J-’s cellphone number, and continued to harass and threaten him. Fearing for his life, Mr. J- fled to the United States.
Mr. J-’s asylum claim is textbook and ought to be readily granted. However, given Sessions’ recent unilateral change in asylum law based on private acts of violence, Mr. J- will have to fight an uphill battle to ultimately prevail. See Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018). If released on bond, Mr. J- plans to move in with his uncle, a US citizen, who resides in Florida. Mr. J-’s case will then be transferred to the immigration court in Miami. Although the Immigration Court in Miami similarly has high denial rates, where nearly 90% of all asylum claims are ultimately denied, Mr. J- will at least have a better chance of prevailing there than he would in Atlanta.
Indigenous Mayan from Guatemala Who Was Targeted on Account of His Success as a Businessman
During my second day, I met with an indigenous Mayan from Guatemala, Mr. S-. He holds a Master’s degree in Education, owned a restaurant back home, and was the minister at his local church. He had previously worked in agriculture pursuant to an H-2B visa in Iowa, and then returned to Guatemala when the visa expired to open his business.
He fled Guatemala earlier this year on account of his membership in a particular social group. One night after closing his restaurant, he was thrown off his motorcycle by several men who believes were part of a local gang. They beat him and threatened to kill him and his family if he did not give them a large sum of money. They specifically targeted Mr. S- because he was a successful businessman. They warned him not to go to the police or else they would find out and kill him. The client knew that the police would not protect him from this harm on account of his ethnic background as an indigenous Mayan. The day of the extortionists’ deadline to pay, Mr. S- didn’t have the money to pay them off, and was forced to flee or face a certain death.
Mr. S- has been in immigration detention since March. The day I met with him at the end of August was the first time he had been able to speak to an attorney.
Mr. S-’s prospects for success are uncertain. Even prior to the recent decision in Matter of A-B-, asylum claims based on the particular social group of “wealthy businessmen” were seldom granted. See, e.g., Lopez v. Sessions, 859 F.3d 464 (7th Cir. 2017); Dominguez-Pulido v. Lynch, 821 F.3d 837, 845 (7th Cir. 2016) (“wealth, standing alone, is not an immutable characteristic of a cognizable social group”); but see, Tapiero de Orejuela v. Gonzales, 423 F.3d 666 (7th Cir. 2005) (confirming that although wealth standing alone is not an immutable characteristic, the Respondent’s combined attributes of wealth, education status, and cattle rancher, satisfied the particular social group requirements). However, if Mr. S- can show that he was also targeted on account of his indigenous Mayan ancestry, he can perhaps also raise an asylum claim based on his ethnicity. The combination of his particular social group and ethnicity may be enough to entitle him to relief. See, e.g., Ordonez-Quino v. Holder, 760 F.3d 80, 90 (1st Cir. 2014) (Respondent demonstrated that his “Mayan Quiché identity was ‘at least one central reason’ why he” was persecuted).
As business immigration attorneys may also point out, if Mr. S- can somehow locate an employer in the US to sponsor him, he may be eligible for employment-based relief based on his Master’s degree, prior experience working in agriculture, and/or his business acumen on account of his successful restaurant management. Especially if Mr. S- is not released on bond and forced to adjudicate his claims in the Atlanta Immigration Court where asylum denial rates are high, his future attorney may also want to explore these unorthodox strategies.
Indigenous Mam-Speaking Guatemalan Persecuted on Account of His Race, Religion, and Particular Social Group
My third day, I met with Mr. G-, an indigenous Mam from Guatemala. Mr. G- is an incredibly devout Evangelical Christian and one of the purest souls I have ever met. He has resisted recruitment by rival gangs in his town and has been severely beaten because of his resistance. He says his belief in God and being a good person is why he has resisted recruitment. He did not want to be responsible for others’ suffering. The local gangs constantly assaulted Mr. G- due to his Mam heritage, his religion, and his resistance of them. He fled to the US to escape this persecution.
Mr. G- only speaks Mam, an ancient Mayan dialect. He does not speak Spanish. Because of this, he was unable to communicate with immigration officials about his credible fear of return to his country upon his initial arrival in November 2017. Fortunately, the USCIS asylum officer deferred Mr. G-’s credible fear interview until they could locate a Mam translator. However, one was never located, and he has been in immigration detention ever since.
August 29, 2018, nine months into his detention, was the first time he was able to speak to an attorney through an interpreter that spoke his language. Mr. G- was so out of the loop with what was going on, that he did not even know what the word “asylum” meant. For nine months, Mr. G- had to wait to find out what was going on and why he was in detention. My colleague, Jessica, and I, spoke with him for almost three hours. We could not provide him with satisfactory answers about whether SIFI would be able to take his case, and when or if he would be let out of detention. Given recent changes in the law, we couldn’t tell him if his asylum claim would ultimately prevail.
Mr. G- firmly stated that he will be killed if he was forced to go back to Guatemala. He said that if his asylum claim is denied, he will have to put his faith in God to protect him from what is a certain death. He said God is all he has.
Even without answers, this client thanked us until he was blue in the face. He said he did not have any money to pay us but wanted us to know how grateful he was for our help and that he would pray for us. Despite the fact that his life was hanging in the balance, he was more concerned about our time and expense helping him. He went on and on for several minutes about his gratitude. It was difficult for us to hold back tears.
Mr. G- is the reason asylum exists, but under our current framework, he will almost certainly be deported, especially if he cannot locate an attorney. Mr. G- has an arguable claim under Ordonez-Quino v. Holder, on account of his Mam heritage, and an arguable claim on account of his Evangelical Christianity, given that Mr. G-’s persecution was compounded by his visible Mam ethnicity and vocal Evangelical beliefs. His resistance to gang participation will be difficult to overcome, though, as the case law on the subject is primarily negative. See, e.g., Bueso-Avila v. Holder, 663 F.3d 934 (7th Cir. 2011) (finding insufficient evidence that MS-13 targeted Petitioner on account of his Christian beliefs, finding instead that the evidence supported the conclusion that the threats were based on his refusal to join the gang, which is not a protected ground). Mr. G-’s low prospects of success are particularly heart-wrenching. When we as a country fail to protect those seeking refuge from persecution, especially those fleeing religious persecution, we destroy the very ideals upon which this country was founded.
Twenty-Year Old Political Activist From Honduras, Assaulted by Military Police on Account of His Political Opinion
I also assisted in the drafting of a bond motion for a 20 year-old political activist from Honduras, Mr. O-, who had been severely beaten by the military police on account of his political opinion and activism.
Mr. O- was a prominent and vocal member of an opposition political group in Honduras. During the November 2017 Honduran presidential elections, Mr. O- assisted members of his community to travel to the polling stations. When election officials closed the polls too early, Mr. O- reached out to military police patrolling the area to demand that they re-open the polling stations so Hondurans could rightfully cast their votes. The military police became angry with Mr. O-’s insistence and began to beat him by stomping and kicking him, leaving him severely wounded. Mr. O- reported the incident to the police, but was told there was nothing they could do.
A few weeks later, Mr. O- was specifically targeted again by the military police when he was on his way home from a political meeting. The police pulled him from his car and began to beat him, accusing him of being a rioter. He was told to leave the country or else he would be killed. He was also warned that if he went to the national police, that he would be killed. Fearing for his life, Mr. O- fled to the US in April 2018 and has been in detention ever since.
SIFI was able to take on his bond case in August, and by the end of my trip, the SIFI team had submitted his request for bond. Since Mr. O-’s asylum claim is particularly strong, and because he has family in the US, it is highly likely that his bond will be granted. From there, we can only hope that he encounters an IJ that appropriately follows the law and will grant him asylum.”
(The author thanks Jessica Greenberg and Deirdre Stradone for their constant mentorship as well as providing the author the opportunity to go to Folkston. The author also thanks Lucia della Paolera for her advocacy, passion, and critical interpretation assistance. Finally, the author expresses the utmost gratitude to the team at SIFI, who work day in and day out to provide excellent representation to the detained migrants and asylum-seekers detained at Folkston ICE Processing Center.)
Photos from my trip to Folkston, GA:
The Folkston ICE Processing Center.
Downtown Folkston, GA.
Volunteers from Left to Right: Sophia Genovese (author), Deirdre Stradone (Staff Attorney at African Services Committee), Jessica Greenberg (Staff Attorney at ASC/ICLC), and Lucia della Paolera (volunteer interpreter).
Many thanks to the incomparable Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis for forwarding this terrific and timely piece! These are the kinds of individuals that Jeff Sessions would like Immigration Judges to sentence to death or serious harm without Due Process and contrary to asylum and protection law.
As Sophia cogently points out, since the beginning of this Administration it has been private lawyers, most serving pro bono or “low bono,” who have been courageously fighting to uphold our Constitution and the rule of law from the cowardly scofflaw White Nationalist attacks by Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and the rest of the outlaws. In a significant number of cases, the Article III Federal Courts have agreed and held the scofflaws at least legally (if not yet personally) accountable.
Like any bully, Sessions resents having to follow the law and having higher authorities tell him what to do. He has repeatedly made contemptuous, disingenuous legal arguments and presented factual misrepresentations in support of his lawless behavior and only grudgingly complied with court orders. He has disrespectfully and condescendingly lectured the courts about his authority and their limited role in assuring that the Constitution and the law are upheld. That’s why he loves lording it over the US Immigration Courts where he is simultaneously legislator, investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, appellate court, and executioner in violation of common sense and all rules of legal ethics.
But, Sessions will be long gone before most of you new US Immigration Judges will be. He and his “go along to get along enablers” certainly will be condemned by history as the “21st Century Jim Crows.” Is that how you want to be remembered — as part of a White Nationalist movement that essentially is committed to intentional cruelty, undermining our Constitution, and disrespecting the legal and human rights and monumental contributions to our country of people of color and other vulnerable groups?
Every US Immigration Judge has a chance to stand up and be part of the solution rather than the problem. Do you have the courage to follow the law and the Constitution and to treat asylum applicants and other migrants fairly and impartially, giving asylum applicants the benefit of the doubt as intended by the framers of the Convention? Will you take the necessary time to carefully consider, research, deliberate, and explain each decision to get it right (whether or not it meets Sessions’s bogus “quota system”)? Will you properly factor in all of the difficulties and roadblocks intentionally thrown up by this Administration to disadvantage and improperly deter asylum seekers? Will you treat all individuals coming before you with dignity, kindness, patience, and respect regardless of the ultimate disposition of their cases. This is the “real stuff of genuine judging,” not just being an “employee.”
Or will you, as Sessions urges, treat migrants as “fish in a barrel” or “easy numbers,” unfairly denying their claims for refuge without ever giving them a real chance. Will you prejudge their claims and make false imputations of fraud, with no evidence, as he has? Will you give fair hearings and the granting of relief under our laws the same urgency that Sessions touts for churning out more removal orders. Will you resist Sessions’s disingenuous attempt to shift the blame for the existing mess in the Immigration Courts from himself, his predecessors, the DHS, and Congress, where it belongs, to the individuals and their attorneys coming before you in search of justice (and also, of course, to you for not working hard enough to deny more continuances, cut more corners, and churn out more rote removal orders)?
How will history judge you and your actions, humanity, compassion, understanding, scholarship, attention to detail, willingness to stand up for the rights of the unpopular, and values, in a time of existential crisis for our nation and our world?
Your choice. Choose wisely. Good luck. Do great things!
Sessions to immigration judges: Immigrants’ attorneys like ‘water seeping’ around law
By Tal Kopan, CNN
Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a new group of immigration judges Monday that it is their job to “restore the rule of law” to the immigration system over the contrary efforts of the lawyers who represent immigrants.
The remarks at the training of the largest-ever class of new immigration judges implied that the judges were on the same team as the Trump administration, and that immigrants and their attorneys were trying to undermine their efforts.
“Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests,” Sessions said, adding the same happens in criminal courts. “And we understand that. Their duty, however, is not uphold the integrity of the act. That’s our duty.”
Sessions noted that “of course” the system “must always respect the rights of aliens” in the courts. But he also warned the judges of “fake claims.”
“Just as we defend immigrant legal rights, we reject unjustified and sometimes fake claims,” Sessions said. “The law is never serviced when deceit is rewarded so that the fundamental principles of the law are defeated.”
The comments came in the context of Sessions’ repeated moves to exert his unique authority over the immigration courts, a separate legal system for immigrants that is entirely run by the Justice Department.
Sessions approves every judge hired and can instruct them on how to interpret law, and thus decide cases, as well as how to manage cases. He has used that authority multiple times in the past year, including issuing a sweeping ruling that will substantially narrow the types of cases that qualify for asylum protections in the US. Those decisions overrode the evolution of years of immigration judges’ and the immigration appellate board’s decisions.
Sessions reminded the new judges of that authority and those decisions in his remarks, saying he believes they are “correct” and “prudent” interpretations of the law that “restores” them to the original intent.
Another totally inappropriate and unethical effort by Sessions to insure that migrants, particularly asylum seekers, receive neither fair consideration nor Due Process from U.S. Immigration Judges in connection with their, in many instances, very compelling cases for protection.
Let’s shine a little light of truth on the Sessions’s dark myth-spinning:
As recently as 2012, the majority of asylum applicants who received decisions on the merits of their claims in Immigration Court were granted protection;
Conditions in most “sending countries” — particularly those in the Northern Triangle — have gotten worse rather than better;
There is no reasonable explanation for the large drop in approvals in recent years other than bias against asylum seekers;
Even after Sessions took over, 30% of those who get merits determinations won their cases;
The success rate is higher for those released from detention and given fair access to counsel;
Most detained migrants, particularly those intentionally detained in substandard conditions in obscure locations, do not have reasonable access to counsel;
Most attorneys representing detained asylum seekers serve pro bono or for minimal compensation (particularly in relation to the amount of time and effort required to prepare and present an asylum case in detention);
Detention of asylum seekers simply to deter them from coming is illegal;
Separation of families is a deterrent is also illegal;
Neither detention nor “zero tolerance” prosecutions have been shown to have a material impact on the flow of refugees to our Southern Border;
Sessions has provided no evidence of any widespread fraud in asylum applications by refugees from the Northern Triangle;
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”), the leading interpreter of refugee and asylum protections, has consistently criticized the US’s overly restrictive approach to asylum adjudication;
Article III U.S. Courts continue to be critical of both the unlawful policies being promoted by Sessions and the fundamental errors still being made by the BIA and some Immigration Judges in analyzing asylum cases and claims under the Convention Against Torture;
According to the US Supreme Court, a chance of harm as low as 10% can satisfy the generous legal standard for asylum;
According to the UNHCR, asylum applicants should be given the “benefit of the doubt;”
Most of those who fail to get asylum, like the abused woman denied protection by Sessions in Matter of A-B-, face life threatening situations in their home countries — we have merely made a conscious choice not to offer them asylum or some alternative form of life-saving protection.
As Sessions sees that his time as Attorney General will likely come to an end before the end of this year, he is doubling down on his White Nationalist, xenophobic, racist, restrictionist, lawless agenda. He wants to inflict as much damage on migrants, refugees, women, and people of color as he can before being relegated to his former role as a rightist wing-nut. He also seeks to convince the Immigration Judges that they are not independent juridical officials but mere highly paid enforcement agents with an obligation to deport as many folks as possible in support of the President’s agenda.
I do agree with Sessions, however, that the newly-minted Immigration Judges have a tremendously difficult job. If they adopt his philosophy, they are likely to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution and laws of the US and to wrongly return individuals to death-threatening situations. On the other hand, if they carefully and fairly follow the law and give full consideration to the facts, they will be compelled to grant protection in many cases, thus potentially putting them on EOIR’s “hit list.” (Basically, new US Immigration Judges, even those with many years of civil service, can be “fired at will” by EOIR during their first two years of “probation” as judges.)
The only solution is an independent Article I Immigration Court that will guarantee that someone as totally unqualified as Sessions can never again impose his personal will and bigoted, anti-Due-Process views on what is supposed to be a fair and impartial court system.
New Government Study Attempts to Undermine Legal Orientation Program for Detained Immigrants
Sept. 7, 2018 –
The Department of Justice (DOJ) released “Phase I” of its review of the federally-funded Legal Orientation Program (LOP) this week. The review came after Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempted to end the program in April but was forced to reverse that decision after receiving significant bipartisan pushback from Congress.
The LOP, which is managed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) within the Justice Department, offers legal education as well as referrals for free and low-cost legal counsel to noncitizens in immigration detention. The LOP was started in 2003 under President George W. Bush after a pilot study found that the LOP “helped DOJ ensure that all respondents had a clear understanding of their procedural rights, led to cases being completed more quickly, and increased availability of representation [to detainees] with potential meritorious claims to relief.”
While it is not a substitute for legal counsel, the LOP does provide important information to individuals in detention about their rights and the removal process. There have been multiple studies conducted on the LOP by the federal government, nonprofit organizations, and outside third parties that reaffirm its usefulness. Every study has shown the LOP decreases the average length of time a person is in immigration detention, saving the government up to millions of dollars annually.
The study is the first phase of a three-phase review to be completed by the end of October 2018. Among other findings, it alleges that LOP participants spend more time in detention, costing the government more money; that LOP participants are less likely to get attorneys; and that their cases take longer to resolve.
The report presents these findings and overall numbers to show its methodology but unfortunately does not make their underlying data available for analysis.
The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera), the nonprofit organization who contracts with EOIR to run the LOP program, says this new study has “insurmountable methodological flaws in EOIR’s analysis.”
At DOJ’s request, Vera has completed and will submit its own study next week. Vera reports that it has “starkly different findings that prove the efficiencies” of the program—which would be in line with all studies of the LOP conducted over the last 16 years.
Given the Attorney General’s earlier attempts to unilaterally end the LOP, one could assume that the ultimate goal of these government studies is to justify ending the program. When evaluating the program, it will be important for Congress to take a critical look at these new DOJ studies and review them alongside the totality of evidence in support of the program. Without government-provided counsel, LOP is a critical resource for detained immigrants to receive due process in a complex immigration court system.
America’s Immigration Courts (run by EOIR in the Department of Justice) are failing: disappearing Due Process, horrible morale, incredible backlogs, little automation, and constant legal errors highlighted by the Article III Federal Courts. The highly acclaimed Legal Orientation Program (“LOP”), which helps detained migrants understand their rights and obtain self-help materials, is one of the few bright spots among the carnage. The LOP actually has strong bipartisan support.
So, why would a failing agency “mess with success?” In April 2018, the Center for Immigration Studies (“CIS”) a radical right-wing restrictionist group with strong ties to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, raised questions about the value of the LOP. In the process, CIS made the absurd suggestion that overwhelmed and stressed out Immigration Judges could better perform the LOP’s functions. I certainly found this untrue.
Not surprisingly, shortly after the CIS article appeared, Sessions pressured EOIR into “suspending” the LOP pending a cost-benefit analysis. Only the bipartisan outrage in Congress forced Sessions to back down and “temporarily reinstate” the program. Obviously, the pre-ordained decision by Sessions to can the program because it helped migrants and supported Due Process needed some more work.
Now, the EOIR apparatchiks have obliged Sessions by presenting a skewed analysis that conflicts with every other analysis of the LOP. The study also equates shorter hearings and faster deportations of detained individuals, therefore supposedly saving the Government millions of detention dollars, with better results. But, Due Process is supposed to be about fair process, not just results the Government favors.
To give the obvious analogy, I’m sure that the vast majority of criminal defendants are ultimately convicted of something. But, that doesn’t mean that investing in the process of conducting fair trials, rather than racing everyone through the system without a fair chance to put in a defense, is constitutionally permitted.
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. As of July 31, 2018, pending cases in Immigration Court nationwide reached nearly three-quarters of a million (746,049 cases). This is a 38 percent increase compared to the 542,411 cases pending at the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office.
All states are witnessing an increase in Immigration Court backlogs. However, ten states account for the vast majority of the backlog. Four out of five pending cases in the country are before immigration judges in these ten states. The state of Maryland leads the pack with the highest rate of increase in pending cases since the beginning of FY 2017. Pending caseloads in Maryland have increased by 96 percent, roughly double its caseload at the beginning of FY 2017. Of the top ten states, courts based in Texas experienced the least amount of growth at 20 percent. See Figure 1.
In absolute terms, California has the largest Immigration Court backlog – 140,676 cases waiting decision, a number that has increased by 48 percent from its FY 2017 pending caseload level.
Courts based in three other states experienced even higher growth rates than in California. Massachusetts’ court backlog grew by 76 percent. The backlog in Georgia grew by 67 percent, while pending cases in Florida grew by 57 percent.
To view further details on each of the top ten states go to:
In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through July 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:
TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
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As many of us had predicted, by twisting the law against asylum seekers, rather than letting it develop in a manner that would have correctly resulted in more asylum grants in shorter hearings, Sessions has contributed mightily to the increasing backlog. Also, in his conflicted role as the “de facto head of DHS,” Sessions has all but eliminated prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) at ICE. His actions have also put many properly closed cases that should have remained off docket or with USCIS back on the Immigration Courts’ docket while stripping Immigration Judges of the tools necessary to manage their dockets.
Sessions effectively has taken a sinking ship and punched holes below the waterline to make it sink even faster. And, he has proved that without some type of rational, Due Process reforms leading to an independent Article I Immigration Court, there is no way of getting a handle on the Immigration Courts’ problems while complying with the Constitution.
A system that essentially is being abused and run into the ground by the Government party appearing before it in every single case is doomed to failure. The first step to any successful court system is creating a fair, impartial, and efficient process, including a transparent merit selection system for the judges, that can then be replicated and improved over time under the direction of judges with input from all parties. That first step will never be taken as long as Sessions and the DOJ remain in change.
But, no system will be able to eliminate overnight a backlog resulting from more than a decade of political manipulation and mismanagement by the DOJ under Administrations of both parties. Even though anti-Constitutionalists like Sessions, Trump, and co. want to admit it, the Supreme Court has told us the simple truth that Due Process takes time. There is no “silver bullet” or “one size fits all” formula for achieving it.
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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. The push to prioritize prosecuting illegal border crossers has begun to impact the capacity of federal prosecutors to enforce other federal laws. In March 2018, immigration prosecutions dominated so that in the five federal districts along the southwest border only one in seven prosecutions (14%) were for any non-immigration crimes. But by June 2018, this ratio had shrunk so just one in seventeen prosecutions (6%) were for anything other than immigration offenses.
Federal prosecutors are responsible for enforcing a wide range of important federal laws – designed to combat narcotics trafficking and weapons offenses, battle those polluting air and water, counter corporate and other schemes to defraud the public, and much more. There is a combined population in these five southwest border districts of close to 30 million people. However, the number of prosecutions for committing any non-immigration crimes dwindled from a total of 1,093 in March 2018 to just 703 prosecutions in June 2018.
Meanwhile, immigration prosecutions continue to climb. The latest available case-by-case records for June 2018 reveal a total of 11,086 new federal prosecutions were brought as a result of referrals from Customs and Border Protection in the five federal judicial districts along the southwest border. June numbers were up 20.3 percent from the 9,216 such prosecutions recorded during May, and up 74.1 percent over March figures. Despite this increase, only 46 percent of all Border Patrol arrests of adults in June were criminally prosecuted.
The number of families arrested by the Border Patrol showed little indication of materially dropping. Numbers have remained quite similar during April, May and June. This meant that Border Patrol officials still had to pick and choose which adults to refer to federal prosecutors, and which adults not to criminally prosecute.
To read the full report, including additional details by district, go to:
In addition to these most recent overall figures, TRAC continues to offer free monthly reports on selected government agencies such as the FBI, ATF, DHS and the IRS. TRAC’s reports also monitor program categories such as official corruption, drugs, weapons, white collar crime and terrorism. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through June 2018, go to:
Even more detailed criminal enforcement information for the period from FY 1986 through June 2018 is available to TRACFed subscribers via the Express and Going Deeper tools. Go to http://tracfed.syr.edu for more information. Customized reports for a specific agency, district, program, lead charge or judge are available via the TRAC Data Interpreter, either as part of a TRACFed subscription or on a per-report basis. Go to http://trac.syr.edu/interpreter to start.
If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:
TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563 trac@syr.edu http://trac.syr.edu
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The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to http://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.
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No real surprises here.
All the adverse effects of Sessions’s White Nationalist fixation on helpless migrants, most of whom desire only to apply for refuge under our law, as they are legally entitled to do, are hard to quantify. It’s clear that there are no positives and that he has wasted taxpayer money, endangered lives, weakened law enforcement, abused children, damaged future generations, and violated both our Constitution and international human rights laws.
Yet, he goes on with his racist program with impunity — without being held truly accountable by either the Congress or the Courts. Indeed, his intended victims are most often blamed, and civil servants are stuck trying to mitigate or undo some of the worst effects. Pretty disgusting.
We need regime change while there is still some Government left to salvage.
Here’s the disheartening reality about the Trump administration’s policies toward those arriving at the borders seeking asylum: Many more people with legitimate claims are likely being sent home to perilous conditions despite federal and international laws recognizing the right of the persecuted to seek sanctuary in other countries. That is unconscionable.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University reports that immigration judges — who work for the Justice Department, not the federal courts — are granting asylum seekers’ appeals half as often as they did a year ago. Through June, courts revived less than 15% of the asylum claims that had been rejected by immigration agents, who make the initial determination whether an asylum seeker had a credible fear of persecution if returned home.
What changed from the first half of 2017? The reduction of successful appeals coincided with Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions’ comments that the asylum system “is being gamed” (there’s little evidence of that), his demands that immigration courts handle appeals more quickly, and the roll-out of performance quotas to force immigration judges to clear cases faster. That’s what changed.
The TRAC analysis further found that rate of successful appeals varies wildly by geographic region and even among judges within the same regional court — a systemic inconsistency that predates the Trump administration. That justice is so fickle is neither fair nor meets our moral and legal obligations to those fleeing persecution.
We can rail against the Justice Department’s failings, but the responsibility rests with Congress. It granted the department wide latitude in handling asylum requests from people facing persecution based on race, religion, race, political beliefs, nationality or membership in a social group.
That last, ill-defined category gave the government flexibility as times and needs warranted, but it also has led to uncertainty and politicization. Sessions, for instance, recently overturned an Obama-era immigration court definition that made asylum available to women who faced domestic violence in countries where police failed to protect them. So a political change in the attorney general’s office can weigh more heavily than precedents set by immigration judges.
This is fixable if we ever get a Congress willing to compromise and craft comprehensive immigration reforms framed within a humanitarian context and informed by the nation’s best interests — in terms of diversity and economic growth — and not one that panders to the current mood in the capital of nationalistic antipathy for the foreign-born. In the meantime, we must insist that people who are deserving of sanctuary receive it, and not get turned away to satisfy the current political whims.
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What’s happening to our U.S. Immigration Courts and to our asylum system is indeed a national outrage that requires Congressional action. That corrective action, at a minimum, must 1) establish an independent, Article I Immigration Court outside the Executive Branch; and 2) specify that persecution based upon gender constitutes persecution on account of a “particular social group.”
Not going to happen under this Congress! That’s why regime change is so critical. And, getting out the vote this November and thereafter is key to the majority no longer being subject to the whims of a toxic minority Government that has abandoned our Constitution, human rights, human decency, common sense, and the common good.
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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. Immigration Court outcomes in credible fear reviews (CFR) have recently undergone a dramatic change. Starting in January 2018, court findings of credible fear began to plummet. By June 2018, only 14.7 percent of the CFR court decisions found the asylum seeker had a “credible fear.” This was just half the level that had prevailed during the last six months of 2017.
These very recent data from the Immigration Court provide an early look at how the landscape for gaining asylum may be shifting under the current administration. Unless asylum seekers, including parents with children, arriving at the southwest border pass this initial CFR review, they are not even allowed to apply for asylum. As a consequence, individuals who don’t pass these reviews face being quickly deported back to their home countries.
The latest available case-by-case court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University document that depending upon the particular Immigration Court undertaking the credible fear review, the proportion of asylum seekers passing this screening step varied from as little as 1 percent all the way up to 60 percent – a sixty-fold difference. Since October 2015, for example, at least half passed their credible fear reviews when these were conducted by the Immigration Courts in Arlington, Virginia (60% passed), Chicago, Illinois (52% passed), Pearsall, Texas (51% passed), and Baltimore, Maryland (50% passed). In contrast, few were found to have credible fear when their review took place in Immigration Courts based in Lumpkin, Georgia (only 1% passed) and Atlanta, Georgia (only 2% passed).
Which judge is assigned to undertake this review can also have a dramatic impact. Judges on the Pearsall, Texas and San Antonio, Texas Immigration Courts found as few as 4 percent demonstrated credible fear, while others on the same two courts found 94 percent with such fear.
Previous reports by TRAC and others have long documented wide judge-to-judge disparities in asylum decisions. This report breaks new ground in showing that similar differences also exist earlier in the asylum process in the determination of who is allowed to apply for asylum.
To read the full report, including specifics for each Immigration Court, go to:
In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through June 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:
TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
To state the obvious, if we believe in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we simply can’t tolerate a “court” run, improperly influenced, and manipulated by a xenophobic, White Nationalist, racist enforcement zealot like Jeff Session.
Time for “regime change” that includes an independent U.S. Immigration Court dedicated to insuring Due Process! Get out the vote this fall!
The Trump administration’s first year of immigration policy has relied on claims that immigrants bring crime into America. President Trump’s latest target is sanctuary cities.
“Every day, sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants, drug dealers, traffickers, gang members back into our communities,” he said last week. “They’re safe havens for just some terrible people.”
As of 2017, according to Gallup polls, almost half of Americans agreed that immigrants make crime worse. But is it true that immigration drives crime? Many studies have shown that it does not.
Immigrant populations in the United States have been growing fast for decades now. Crime in the same period, however, has moved in the opposite direction, with the national rate of violent crime today well below what it was in 1980.
In a large-scale collaboration by four universities, led by Robert Adelman, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, researchers compared immigration rates with crime rates for 200 metropolitan areas over the last several decades. The selected areas included huge urban hubs like New York and smaller manufacturing centers less than a hundredth that size, like Muncie, Ind., and were dispersed geographically across the country.
+5,000+10,000+15,000+20,000 immigrantsper 100,000 peopleCHANGE SINCE 1980per 100,000 people+500 violent crimes–500–1000–1500MiamiNew York↑ More crime↓ Less crime← FewerMore immigrants →
According to data from the study, a large majority of the areas have many more immigrants today than they did in 1980 and fewer violent crimes. The Marshall Project extended the study’s data up to 2016, showing that crime fell more often than it rose even as immigrant populations grew almost across the board.
In 136 metro areas, almost 70 percent of those studied, the immigrant population increased between 1980 and 2016 while crime stayed stable or fell. The number of areas where crime and immigration both increased was much lower — 54 areas, slightly more than a quarter of the total. The 10 places with the largest increases in immigrants all had lower levels of crime in 2016 than in 1980.
And yet the argument that immigrants bring crime into America has driven many of the policies enacted or proposed by the administration so far: restrictions to entry, travel and visas; heightened border enforcement; plans for a wall along the border with Mexico. This month, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against California in response to the state’s restrictions on local police to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants charged with crimes. On Tuesday, California’s Orange County signed on in support of that suit. But while the immigrant population in the county has more than doubled since 1980, overall violent crime has decreased by more than 50 percent.
There’s a similar pattern in two other places where Mr. Trump has recently feuded with local leaders: Oakland, Calif., and Lawrence, Mass. He described both cities as breeding grounds for drugs and crime brought by immigrants. But Oakland, like Orange County, has had increasing immigration and falling crime. In Lawrence, though murder and robbery rates grew, overall violent crime rates still fell by 10 percent.
In general, the study’s data suggests either that immigration has the effect of reducing average crime, or that there is simply no relationship between the two, and that the 54 areas in the study where both grew were instances of coincidence, not cause and effect. This was a consistent pattern in each decade from 1980 to 2016, with immigrant populations and crime failing to grow together.
Immigrant population +109% since 1980
in typical metro area
19802016
Violent crime rate -23% since 1980
19802016
In a majority of areas, the number of immigrants increased at least 57 percent and as much as 183 percent, with the greatest increases occurring in the 1990s and early 2000s. Violent crime rates in most areas ranged between a 43 percent decline and a 6 percent rise, often trending downward by the 2000s. Places with a sharp rise in the immigrant population experienced increases in crime rates no more frequently than those with modest or no growth in immigration. On average, the immigrant population grew by 137 percent between 1980 and 2016, with average crime falling 12 percent over the same period.
Because the F.B.I. changed how rape was defined in its crime figures, that category could not be included in this analysis. Focusing on the other components of the violent crime rate — assaults, robberies and murders — still fails to reveal a relationship with immigration rates.
Immigrant population
+109%
19802016
Assaults
-13%
19802016
Robberies
-42%
19802016
Murders
-40%
19802016
Most areas experienced decreases in all types of violent crime. The change in assault rates ranged from a 34 percent decline to a 29 percent rise, while robbery rates declined in the range of 12 percent to 57 percent, and murder rates declined in the range of 15 percent to 54 percent.
This analysis is one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies of the local immigrant-crime relationship. It spans decades of metropolitan area data, incorporating places with widely differing social, cultural and economic backgrounds, and a broad range of types of violent crime.
Areas were chosen to reflect a range of immigrant composition, from Wheeling, W.Va., where one in 100 people was born outside the United States, to Miami, where every second person was. Some areas were home to newly formed immigrant communities; other immigrant pockets went back generations. Controlling for population characteristics, unemployment rates and other socioeconomic conditions, the researchers still found that, on average, as immigration increases in American metropolises, crime decreases.
The foreign-born data, which is collected through the census, most likely undercounts the numbers of undocumented immigrants, many of whom might wish to avoid the risk of identifying themselves. They are, however, at least partly represented in the overall foreign-born population counts.
This is not the only study showing that immigration does not increase crime. A broad survey released in January examined years of research on the immigrant-crime connection, concluding that an overwhelming majority of studies found either no relationship between the two or a beneficial one, in which immigrant communities bring economic and cultural revitalization to the neighborhoods they join.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for its newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. Anna Flagg is an interactive reporter for The Marshall Project.
In the recent study, Mr. Adelman and his team collected crime and foreign-born population data for 200 metropolitan statistical areas for the years 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010. The Marshall Project extended the data set to include 2016, obtaining foreign-born numbers from the American Community Survey one-year estimates and crime figures from the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Reporting Program metropolitan area data sets. When either foreign-born or crime information was unavailable for 2016, the corresponding 2015 data was substituted.
Some metropolitan areas changed over time, growing to include additional regions, or splitting into separate ones. The Marshall Project consulted with the study researchers to determine when a larger area was still an appropriate match to the original described in the study. When an area split into components, raw data from each was added to calculate rates approximating the original region. When no reasonable approximation to the original area could be found, it was marked as missing for 2016.
When an area was missing information for a certain year, that year’s data was interpolated using figures from the closest year available. For example, crime numbers were unavailable for Chicago for 2000 and 2010. Data for those years was linearly interpolated using the 1990 and 2016 figures. Charlotte, N.C., was not included in either the 2016 or 2015 U.C.R. metropolitan area data sets, so data from 2010, the most recent year with available data for this area, was used as an estimate.
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Hit the above link to get all of the charts and graphics.
It’s a pretty disgusting situation when our Government lies and misrepresents in an attempt to “gin up racial bias” against vulnerable groups that have contributed, and continue to contribute, so many good things to our society. Indeed, but for immigrants, of all kinds, we would have no country and no society at all.
The number of migrants attempting to cross illegally into the United States remained high last month, according to administration officials and Border Patrol agents, an early indication that “zero tolerance” measures separating parents from their children and President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops have not had an immediate deterrent effect.
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to publish its closely watched monthly arrest totals in coming days, and Trump administration officials are bracing for a new eruption from the president. He has treated the statistics as a gauge for the success of his hard-line immigration policies, and when border arrests fell to historic lows in the months after his inauguration last year, Trump touted the decrease as a personal triumph.
Since then, migration trends have reversed. In March and again in April, border arrests exceeded 50,000, the highest monthly totals of Trump’s presidency, sending him into fits of rage, aides say. Trump unloaded on DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a Cabinet meeting May 9, scorching her for nearly 30 minutes over the spike in illegal crossings, while demanding she “close” the border.
The Trump administration is preparing to renew its push for an $18 billion border wall plan that would also tighten asylum procedures and overhaul other laws Trump officials say are encouraging illegal behavior. Trump has threatened to shut down the government this fall if Democrats don’t provide the funds.
But with midterm elections approaching and the president preparing to campaign on his border crackdown, Nielsen and other Homeland Security officials do not appear to be satisfying his strict enforcement targets. May’s arrest totals are expected to be at least as high as the previous two months, administration officials and Border Patrol agents said.
Large groups of Central American migrants have been taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in recent weeks, according to Border Patrol agents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss operations. During one 24-hour span last month, 434 migrants were processed at the Border Patrol station in McAllen, agents said.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and President Trump have had a contentious relationship as illegal border crossings increase.(Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)
“The numbers have been very high,” said one agent assigned to the Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal migration. “It’s to the point that we have had to bring in buses to come out and load these folks up, or send four of five vans at a time.”
Another agent said so many migrants were apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley last month that many were diverted to other sections of the border for processing. The Justice Department has reassigned additional prosecutors to the border region to increase the number of migrants it charges with federal crimes, but one veteran border agent said it was “too early to tell” if the tougher enforcement measures were giving pause to migrants thinking of making the journey from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
“It’s going to take longer for the message to get back to those countries,” the agent said.
On Friday, Homeland Security officials would not say whether the tougher enforcement measures were meeting their goals. They said the May border arrest totals were not ready for publication, and they would not confirm whether the figures have been sent to the White House.
“The bottom line is Congress needs to act and close loopholes that serve as a tremendous pull factor for illegal immigration,” said Tyler Houlton, a DHS spokesman. “The Trump administration is restoring the rule of law by increasing prosecutions of illegal border crossers.”
According to a Trump adviser, the president was warned this spring that illegal border crossings were likely to increase. Trump said at the time he would not be satisfied with any such surge and everything needed to be done to block it. That led to the decision to deploy the National Guard.
The number of illegal border crossings “is going to go higher and higher yet,” said the adviser. “You’re going to see a line that goes up all summer long.”
Trump has not been briefed on the May arrest numbers yet, two advisers said.
In a statement late Friday, Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller blamed Democrats for blocking the president’s immigration overhaul.
“The illegal migrant crisis is the exclusive product of Democrats’ shameless refusal to close catch-and-release loopholes that cartels exploit to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States at great cost in taxpayer dollars, jobs and, too often, lives,” Miller said.
Weak border enforcement remains the biggest incentive to illegal migration, according to Miller. “We must end catch-and-release by reforming our asylum laws, and establishing expedited removal, to stop the smuggling and defend the nation,” he said.
As in recent years, many of those taken into custody last month were teenagers or parents traveling with children, and the administration has triggered broad condemnation for separating more families with its push to prosecute anyone who crosses illegally.
More than 10,800 migrant children were in federal custody as of May 31, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, up 21 percent since the end of April. The agency’s shelters are 95 percent full, and HHS officials say they are preparing to add thousands of additional beds to cope with the increase.
A Border Patrol agent in South Texas said the family separation measures were not being applied as broadly as assumed. Some parents who face federal charges are apart from their children for only several hours, then released and assigned a court date, the agent said.
“To us, that’s still ‘catch-and-
release,’ ” the agent said. “People are going to continue to come.”
Arrests along the Mexican border peaked at more than 1.6 million in 2000, then fell sharply during the Obama administration. During the government’s past fiscal year that ended in September, U.S. agents made 303,916 arrests, the lowest total since 1971.
Trump’s fixation is driven, in part, by a view that border security is paramount to his most fervent supporters and that immigration is a winning issue for Republican candidates in November’s congressional elections.
“I’m very proud to say that we’re way down in the people coming across the border,” Trump said in January. “We have fewer people trying to come across, because they know it’s not going to happen.”
The arrest numbers began shooting upward soon after that, from 36,682 in February to 50,296 in March. The yearly total for 2018 is on pace to approach or exceed 400,000, a level more consistent with migration patterns of the past five years, DHS statistics show.
During a visit Thursday to the Nogales border crossing in southern Arizona, Nielsen called the increase in illegal migration a crisis and said Homeland Security officials were working to “end this lawlessness.”
The country’s borders are being violated “by criminals, by smugglers and by thousands of people who have absolutely no respect for our laws,” she said.
“This is changing, it will change, and we will do all that we can to change this,” Nielsen added, emphasizing that the “zero-tolerance” approach announced in April will be applied as aggressively as possible.
“If you come here illegally, whether you’re single, whether you have a family, whether you’re a smuggler or whether you’re a trafficker, you’ve broken the law, so we’re prosecuting,” she said.
On Friday, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Nielsen and Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding information on the administration’s enforcement efforts, including the number of children who have been separated from their parents and whether there are formal procedures to reunite them.
Border arrests typically rise during spring months, when seasonal labor demands increase. Farms across the Midwest are becoming desperate for workers, with the U.S. unemployment rate at the lowest level since 2000. Lawmakers from both parties have told Nielsen that worker shortages are squeezing an array of industries in their states, and the DHS said last week that it will issue 15,000 seasonal guest-worker visas.
But border agents said much of the increase this spring seems to be driven by the same groups — families and teenagers traveling alone — who have been straining Homeland Security capacity since the 2014 crisis that left Border Patrol stations overflowing.
Photos of recent mass arrests provided by one agent show migrants of all ages walking through willow groves along the Rio Grande or lined up in federal custody along the river levees, waiting to board government buses.
Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.
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No surprises here. “Toldja so” back when Trump unwisely declared “Victory at Sea” after a few months of reduced border apprehensions. Since Trump is proudly ignorant of history, he apparently didn’t study what happened to Bushie II after he declared “Victory in Iraq” or his “Heck of Job, Brownie” moment. Nor does he have any idea of the actual dynamics driving human migration. That’s the problem with policies driven by racism, bias, xenophobia, and White Nationalism.
Also, trying to rewrite the Constitution and international protection law, as Trump, Sessions, Miller, Cotton, and the rest of the White Nationalist Gang would dearly like to do, to deny established legal rights won’t work either. In fact, it would make things 10X worse.
The laws aren’t the problem! The problem is the people charged with implementing them.
We can diminish ourselves as a nation, (and in fact, we are diminishing under Trump) but it won’t stop human migration!
The issue is compounded, Rosenstein said, by the fact that these migrant children must eventually be released from detention, and many never show up for their immigration proceedings before a judge. Rosenstein, quoting statistics from the Department of Homeland Security, said less than 4 percent of unaccompanied minors are ultimately removed from the United States.
“We’re letting people in who are creating problems. We’re letting people in who are gang members. We’re also letting people in who are vulnerable,” Rosenstein said. Because many of the migrant children lack families or a similar support system, they become “vulnerable to [gang] recruitment,” the deputy attorney general said,
Thomas Homan, the departing deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said about 300 arrests related to the MS-13 gang were made on Long Island last year. Of those arrested, more than 40 percent entered the United States as unaccompanied minors, he said.
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“So it is a problem,” Homan said. “There is a connection.”
Other federal statistics paint a somewhat different tale. From October 2011 until June of last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials arrested about 5,000 individuals with confirmed or suspected gang ties, according to congressional testimony from the agency’s acting chief, Carla Provost, in June.
Of the 5,000 figure, 159 were unaccompanied minors, Provost testified, and 56 were suspected or confirmed to have ties with MS-13. In that overall time frame, CBP apprehended about 250,000 unaccompanied minors, according to Provost.
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Read the full article at the link.
The Trump claims are, as usual, totally bogus. The percentage of gang members who come in as “unaccompanied minors” is infinitesimally small. The vast majority of these kids are gang victims entitled to asylum or relief under the Convention Against Torture if the law were fairly applied (which it isn’t).
Contrary to the suggestion by Rosenstein, when given access to legal representation, approximately 95% of the unaccompanied children show up for their hearings. And the “vulnerability” mentioned by Rosenstein is largely the result of the Trump Administration’s “reign of terror” against migrant communities which has made nearly all migrant children, along with other community members, “easy pickings” for gangs, with no realistic recourse to law enforcement. There are actually strategies for combatting gangs. But the Trumpsters have no interest in them.
Indeed, gangs have recognized that folks like Trump, Sessions, Homan, Neilsen, and now Rosenstein are their best recruiters and enablers. How dumb can we be as a country to put these biased, spineless, and clueless dudes in charge of “law enforcement.”
Interesting that in an obvious attempt to kiss up to Trump, Sessions, & Co and save his job, Rosenstein pathetically has decided that being a sycophant and sucking up to the bosses is his best defense. Particularly when it’s at the expense of kids and other vulnerable migrants seeking protection. Pretty disgusting! And, I doubt that it will eventually save him from Trump. Just tank his reputation and his future like others who have been “slimed for life” by their association with Trump.
Join the New Due Process Army and stand up for kids against the “child abuse” being practiced by the Trump Administration and its corrupt and incompetent officials.
Border crossings steady in April after March spike
By: Tal Kopan, CN
Illegal border crossings stabilized in April after jumping substantially in March, a sign that a surge at the southern border may not be imminent, according to newly released statistics from the Trump administration.
In April, there were 38,234 apprehensions at the southern border and 12,690 people deemed “inadmissible,” or who came to a port of entry without papers that authorized them to enter the US, virtually unchanged from the month before. The number of family units and children in both categories also held roughly steady from the previous month.
The news comes as the administration has claimed a “crisis” on the southern border, a narrative largely driven by the jump in March and the comparison to the numbers last spring, when crossings were at abnormally low levels.
Administration officials have also been decrying a so-called caravan of migrants — an annual pilgrimage of mostly women and children who say they are fleeing violence and abuse in their home countries — that has arrived at the border with Mexico. More than half of the roughly 150 migrants in that group have been processed by Customs and Border Protection for their claims of asylum. Those who meet the legal threshold will be allowed to pursue their claims in court cases that could take months or years. Those that don’t will be turned away from the US.
In the midst of the caravan’s trek and the release of the March statistics, President Donald Trump has ordered the National Guard to deploy troops to the border, with roughly 1,000 having been sent so far, and with the Justice Department announcing it will send more immigration judges and prosecutors to border districts, as well.
April’s figures indicate that although there was a sharp spike in March, border crossings remain in line with historic seasonal trends. Numbers are still consistent with Obama administration years — slightly below fiscal years 2013 and 2014 but slightly above 2015 and 2016.
The crossings in April of this year were more than triple April 2017, but that comparison is distorted, as crossings last April were at levels unseen in modern history, before they started to pick up and stabilize more in line with recent years.
Crossings have been trending downward for decades and are at historic lows, prompting Homeland Security to declare last fall that the border is the most secure it has ever been.
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Lies and false narratives are a key part of the White Nationalist agenda. Kind of like the modern version of the infamous “Reichstag Fire” that Hitler used to rally nationalist sentiment and seize power. Nice folks!
7 states sue to end DACA, potentially jumbling its legal future
By: Tal Kopan, CNN
The future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program got murkier Tuesday when the Texas attorney general made good on a threat to challenge it in court.
The lawsuit throws a wrench in an already-complicated legal morass for the DACA program, which protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children and which President Donald Trump has been blocked from ending, for the time being, by other federal courts.
The lawsuit has the potential to create a headache for the Justice Department and courts as it could potentially conflict with rulings from judges in three separate judicial regions of the country who have blocked the end of DACA and could force the government to take an awkward position in the case.
It may also potentially seal the issue’s path to the Supreme Court.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and six other states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit challenging the lawfulness of DACA, arguing that former President Barack Obama’s initial creation of DACA in 2012 violated the Constitution and federal law.
The move follows through on a threat from Paxton and what was originally nine other states to challenge DACA in court as part of a lawsuit regarding a similar but broader program that expanded upon DACA to include parents. Paxton issued an ultimatum to Trump: End DACA himself or defend it in court and face the prospect it is overturned by a judge that had already rejected the program’s expansion in that other lawsuit.
The DACA kids aren’t going anywhere. It’s just a question of how much unnecessary pain and suffering can be inflicted on America’s future leaders and how much enmity from the growing Hispanic electorate Paxton and his White Nationalist cronies will create for the GOP. It figures to be lots.
Hopefully, enough to eventually lead to the GOP’s demise as a viable political force in US politics and the rise of a non-racist Conservative opposition party to take its place.
No, it’s not going to happen in my lifetime! But, hopefully in my kids or grandchildren’s. That’s really what the “New Due Process Army” is all about!
On the “bonus coverage,” it’s a shame that the false narratives about immigration and crime pushed by DHS and encouraged by the Trump Administration are eclipsing truth and understanding.
I’ll testify from my work representing and training Border Patrol Agents at the “Legacy INS” that it’s a difficult, dangerous, important, and thankless job. The vast majority of Border Patrol Agents perform it with courage, dedication, and professionalism. I had friends in the Patrol. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of the Schmidt attic among the remains of my Government career is a box of Border Patrol mementos and memorabilia.
Immigration law enforcement is also being hurt by the bogus White Nationalist “scare stories,” false crime narratives, and constant overt and covert messages of racism being delivered by Trump, Sessions, and their cronies. In the end their dishonest and distorted picture of immigrant communities, the asylum system, their denial of the contributions of all migrants, and their constant over hyping of the dangers of undocumented immigration (it’s been a net gain for the US, and would be an even greater net gain had we enacted a more rational and realistic legal immigration system) hurt everybody in the US, including law enforcement.
In this, as in most situations, a Government dedicated to truth rather than lies and exaggerations designed to divide our country and “fire up” a voter base would better serve the national interest and the interests of everyone concerned.
The Border Patrol’s mission can and should stand on its own merits. It doesn’t need inflated statistics and false narratives.
Eli Hager of The Marshall Project in the NY Times:
On April 4, the White House posted a fact sheet on its website warning that legal “loopholes” were allowing tens of thousands of immigrant children who entered the country on their own to remain in the United States.
The next day, another post went up: “Loopholes in Child Trafficking Laws Put Victims — and American Citizens — At Risk.”
And the same week, the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services not normally known for its politics, announced that it “joins the President in calling for Congress to close dangerous loopholes.”
Over the past month, the Trump administration has taken aim at a set of child protection laws created to protect young people who cross into the United States without a parent or guardian, perhaps aided by smugglers. The administration now sees some of these same youths as a threat, and is portraying the laws as “loopholes” that are preventing the quick deportation of teenagers involved in gangs.
The campaign is aimed at Capitol Hill, but the Trump administration is not waiting for legislation: In a series of at least a dozen moves across multiple federal agencies, it has begun to curtail legal protections for unaccompanied children who cross the border. Many of these safeguards were created by a 2008 law that provided protections for children who might otherwise be forced into labor or prostitution.
The young people affected by the administration’s measures have been fleeing deadly gang violence in Central America since 2014, when civil strife erupted in the region. They are a less politically shielded group of young people than the so-called “Dreamers,” most of whom came to this country as toddlers with their parents.
The new directives appear aimed at detaining more of these youths after their arrival and speeding deportation back to their home countries — where they may face violent reprisals from gangs or other forms of abuse.
“It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children,” said Eve Stotland, director of legal services for The Door, a youth advocacy organization in New York. “No longer.”
Endangered Central American Children
Among the many new directives, the State Department in November gave just 24 hours’ notice to endangered children in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador before canceling a program through which they could apply for asylum in the United States before getting to the border. About 2,700 of them who had already been approved and were awaiting travel arrangements were forced to stay behind in the troubled region.
The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has sharply cut back on granting a special legal status for immigrant juveniles who have been abused, neglected or abandoned; the program dropped from a 78 percent approval rate in 2016 to 54 percent last year, according to statistics compiled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In New York, Texas and elsewhere, the agency in recent months has also begun revoking this protection for children who had already won it, according to legal aid organizations in the states.
The Justice Department has also issued legal clarification for courts and prosecutors about revoking “unaccompanied child” status, which allows minors to have their cases heard in a non-adversarial setting rather than in immigration court with a prosecutor contesting them. (The White House has said that it intends to remove this protection altogether, but has not yet done so.)
And the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which provides social services to vulnerable immigrant youth, is now placing all children with any gang-related history in secure detention instead of foster care, whether or not they have ever been arrested or charged with a crime, according to an August memo to the President’s Domestic Policy Council.
“It’s law enforcement mission creep, and our office is ill-prepared for it,” said Robert Carey, who was director of the refugee agency under President Barack Obama.
A Focus on Gangs
The Trump administration has said that its actions are necessary to stem the tide of violent crime. It has focused on teenagers belonging to or associated with the Salvadoran-American street gang MS-13, which has been linked by the police since 2016 to at least 25 homicides on Long Island — a testing ground for many of the president’s new policies.
About 99 of the more than 475 people arrested in the New York City area during ICE raids for gang members had come to the U.S. as unaccompanied children, a representative for the agency said.
To fortify the “loophole” narrative, official announcements of these ICE actions often point out that a number of those arrested were in the process of applying for various forms of child protection.
Yet 30 of 35 teenagers rounded up during these ICE raids last year and who later filed a class-action lawsuit have subsequently been released because the gang allegations against them were thin, according to the ACLU. And the Sacramento Bee reported that a juvenile detention center in California recently cut back its contract with the federal government and complained that too many immigrant teens were being sent there with no evidence of gang affiliation.
The refugee agency acknowledged in its August memo to the White House that only 1.6 percent of all children in its care have any gang history.
“The arguments they’re making are just really challenging to basic logic,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas who teaches a clinic for immigrant families.
“The arguments they’re making are just really challenging to basic logic,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas who teaches a clinic for immigrant families.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Yes, folks, it’s way past time to use the correct term for the Trump Administration’s outrageous, and in many cases illegal, policies directed against primarily Hispanic migrant children: “Child Abuse!”
I met many of these kids and families coming through my court over the years. While there were a tiny number of “bad actors” (which the DHS did a good job of discovering) the vast, vast majority were nothing like what Trump, Sessions and others are describing. They actually much better represented “true American values,” courage, and the “American work ethic” than do Trump and his valueless cronies.
That’s right folks! OUR U.S. Government is using racist-inspired lies to conduct a war against Hispanic children and to illegally return many of them to deadly and life threatening situations! Bad things happen to nations that let bullies and cowards bully, demean, and harm children!
The Trump Administration’s abuse of migrant children and their legal and Constitutional rights could be taken right out of a State Department Country Report on human rights abuses in a Third World Dictatorship. Is this they way YOU want to be remembered by history?
No, Constitutional and statutory protections for children are NOT “loopholes.” What kind of human beings speak such trash? The Trump Administration’s response to the “rule of law” when, as is often the case, it doesn’t fit their White Nationalist agenda is always to tell lies, rail against it, and look for ways around it.
Stand up against the lawless behavior and immoral actions of Trump, Sessions, and the rest of their “hate crew!” Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight against the Trump Administration’s erosion of our national values, morality, and the true “rule of law” (which is there to protect migrants and the rest of us from abuse at the hands of our Government).
Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. The latest available data from the Immigration Court reveals a sharp uptick in the proportion of cases involving immigrants who have been living in the U.S. for years. During March 2018, for example, court records show that only 10 percent of immigrants in new cases brought by the Department of Homeland Security had just arrived in this country, while 43 percent had arrived two or more years ago. Fully twenty percent of cases filed last month involved immigrants who had been in the country for 5 years or more.
In contrast, the proportion of individuals who had just arrived in new filings during the last full month of the Obama Administration (December 2016) made up 72 percent, and only 6 percent had been here at least two years.
Over time, immigration enforcement priorities have varied, as have the ebb and flow of illegal entrants, visa over-stayers, and asylum seekers. Using the court’s records on the date of entry of each individual, the report examines how long these immigrants typically had resided in the U.S. before their cases were initiated.
To read the full report covering the period from October 2000 through March 2018 go to:
In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through March 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:
TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
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The insanity, cruelty, lack of judgment, bias, dishonesty, and failure to respect the Constitution continues in “Gonzoland.” Unless Congress gets some backbone fast, our justice system will be in shambles!
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