Statistics – Page 5 – immigrationcourtside.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the best,

Mica

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

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

PWS

10-11-20

CRIME WATCH: NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: Trump Regime Illegally Orbits Nearly 9,000 Kids To Potential Doom Without Due Process!

Second Wave
Artist: John Darrow
Reproduced under license

https://apple.news/AA4Yv2KHFSS6YVKxlnKiD0A

Catherine E. Shoichet, reports for CNN:

A court declaration Friday from US Border Patrol Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz revealed the number, which previously hadn’t been released to the public.

Since the Trump administration invoked a public health law to implement new restrictions at the border on March 20, the agency has expelled more than 159,000 people, according to Ortiz. That figure, Ortiz says, included 8,800 children who were traveling alone and 7,600 family members.

The Border Patrol official’s filing, first reported by CBS News, reveals new details about who has been kicked out of the US under the sweeping public health restrictions, which largely bar migrants from entering the country.

The declaration was filed as part of the government’s appeal of a recent court ruling over a controversial aspect of the coronavirus restrictions: the increasing use of hotels to detain migrant kids rather than licensed and monitored facilities.

Immigrant and civil rights advocates have warned that the secretive system is putting kids in danger. They have criticized the administration for using public health claims as a pretext to impose harsh immigration restrictions.

Last week, US District Judge Dolly M. Gee ruled that detaining migrant children in hotels wasn’t safe and did not “adequately account for the vulnerability of unaccompanied minors in detention.” She has ordered the government to stop the practice by September 15.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Catherine’s report at the link.

The cowardly and dishonest performance of the U.S. legal system, failure to live up to our Constitutional responsibilities, and welching on our international agreements will haunt us for generations. Eventually, history will document the full extent of the legal and human rights abuses carried out by the Trump regime while the political and judicial branches of Government stood by and watched.

History has not been kind to the Dred Scott decision, Jim Crow politicians, and the many citizens who empowered Jim Crow and institutionalized racism. Likewise, the modern day Jim Crows of the GOP, their supporters, and Federal Judges who help carry out “Dred Scottification” of the other, child abuse, and tormenting the most vulnerable among us in their hour of greatest need will also face an historical reckoning. Their smug, arrogant, immoral, and fundamentally cowardly abandonment of justice and human decency for those seeking legal protection will “live in infamy.”

This Fall, vote like your life and the future of humanity depend on it. Because they do!

PWS

09-15-20

EXPOSING THE KAKISTOCRACY 🏴‍☠️ — LATEST TRAC “DATA DIVE” SHOWS WHY THERE ARE LIES, DAMN LIES, & EOIR’S “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” ☠️🤮👎 – The Round Table & Other Immigration Experts, As Well As Some Article III Judges, Have Been Saying It Ever Since “Gonzo” Sessions’s Unethical & Dishonest Opinion In Castro-Tum: “TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. [T]he EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule.”

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

The Life and Death of Administrative Closure

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In August 2020, the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) proposed a new rule that would effectively eliminate administrative closure as a docket management tool for Immigration Judges. The EOIR justified this proposed rule by claiming that administrative closure has “exacerbated both the extent of the existing backlog of immigration court cases and the difficulty in addressing that backlog in a fair and timely manner.” TRAC analyzed the EOIR’s claims as well as the historical data on administrative closure from 1986, and has just published its findings in a detailed report. The link to the report is below.

TRAC’s detailed analysis of the court records on administrative closure yields four key findings. First, administrative closure has been routinely used by Immigration Judges to manage their growing caseloads as well as manage the unresolved overlapping of jurisdictions between the EOIR and other immigration agencies. From FY 1986 to 2020, 6.1 percent (or 376,439) deportation and removal cases had been administratively closed during their lifespan. Each year, between 1 percent and 30 percent of cases are administratively closed, with high percentages of administrative closures during the Reagan and Bush Administrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s and during the Obama Administration between 2012 and 2016.

Second, TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. If the 292,042 cases that are currently administratively closed and not yet recalendared were brought back onto the Court’s active docket, this would suddenly increase the Court’s active workload from its current backlog at the end of July 2020 of 1,233,307 cases to 1,525,349 cases. This would produce a 24 percent jump in the court’s already clogged hearing schedules, pushing the resolution of other backlogged cases off for many additional months if not years.

Third, data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status. When cases were administratively closed, recalendared, and decided, most immigrants met the legal standard to remain in the country lawfully. For example, for those cases in which the government was seeking removal orders, six out of ten (60.1%) immigrants met the high legal threshold of remaining in the country. The largest proportion of these had their cases terminated since the Court ultimately found there were no longer valid grounds to deport them. Just three out of ten (30.3%) immigrants were ultimately ordered removed.

Fourth, the EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule. Specifically, the agency claims to show low numbers of case completions during the Obama Administration and high numbers of case completions during the Trump Administration. In reality, the data behind this argument artificially eliminates cases that were administratively closed. Its argument also fails to recognize that average annual case completions per Immigration Judge have actually declined from 737 closures per judge to 657 per judge during the past four years, not increased, perhaps due to the changes introduced by the current Administration.

Read the full report at:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/623/

TRAC’s free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through July 2020. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

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:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

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
https://trac.syr.edu

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://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 https://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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“Significantly misrepresented” — That’s a euphamism for “blatantly lied.” Of course, that’s what the head of the regime does on life or death matters. So, I suppose we wouldn’t expect anything else from the “toadies on parade” filling out the kakistocracy.

Look, you don’t “jack” the backlog to at least twice its “pre-regime” level with twice the number of Immigration Judges without some pretty grotesque mismanagement, cover-ups, falsification of data, dishonesty, and denial of rights to migrants.

Moreover, TRAC specifically shows the “false narrative” peddled by the racists in the Trump regime that administrative closing is some type of “evasion” that is not in the public interest. As Judge Richard Leon would say “poppycock.” It’s exactly the opposite! TRAC finds that “data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status.”

Administrative closure is a sane, reasonable, well-established, entirely legal, and absolutely necessary procedure. Gee whiz, one of the original proponents of administrative closure and its aggressive use as a docket management tool was the late first Chief Immigration Judge William R. Robie. Chief Judge Robie was a Republican appointee during the Reagan Administration. He also was a devotee of fundamental fairness and judicial efficiency. He had led a number of professional organizations and was known and respected in the DC Legal Community as a “guru of timeliness and efficient legal administration.”

What’s abusive are the illegal tactics, lies, and mismanagement at both DOJ and DHS that have been concocted to justify racist, White Nationalist policies that do not serve the public interest!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-10-20

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Here’s an Addendum from Margaret Stock:

From: Margaret Stock [mailto:MStock@CASCADIALAWALASKA.COM]
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 10:17 AM
To: Benson, Lenni B.
Cc: Immprof (immprof@lists.ucla.edu)
Subject: Re: [immprof] FW: The Life and Death of Administrative Closure

The Administration is most definitely putting out misleading information (as usual). Example: one often overlooked “administrative closure” group has been members of the US military who got tossed into removal proceedings for one reason or another (usually because of a referred asylum case or failure to file an I751 or denial of an I751 by USCIS). They almost always naturalize after being put into proceedings, then reopen and terminate. Lately, they’ve had to hire a lawyer to keep showing up at master calendar hearings, usually for a couple of years. The judges can’t hear the case because they’ve got naturalization applications pending. But the judges have to keep wasting docket time on them because there’s no such thing as admin closure anymore. It’s foolish and costly for the service members.

Sent from my iPhone

SENATORS DEMAND IG INVESTIGATE BIAS, CORRUPTION, GROSS MISMANAGEMENT @ EOIR!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Laura Lynch @ AILA reports:

FYI – On Friday, August 21st, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the GAO requesting an investigation into the politicization of the immigration courts and EOIR’s mismanagement of the immigration courts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

From: Davidson, Richard (Whitehouse) <Richard_Davidson@whitehouse.senate.gov>
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2020 3:24 PM
To: Davidson, Richard (Whitehouse) <Richard_Davidson@whitehouse.senate.gov>
Subject: Senators Call for GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 21, 2020
Contact: Rich Davidson

(202) 228-6291 (press office)

Senators Call for GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages

Trump attacks on immigration system raise serious concerns about safety during pandemic

More than 1,000 people in immigration detention have tested positive for COVID-19, and five have died

Washington, DC – Today, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) led a Senate request to the top congressional watchdog to investigate the practices of the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) under President Trump, including its management of immigration courts during the current COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the senators raise concerns first voiced to the Justice Department in February about mismanagement of the EOIR under Attorney General William Barr, as well as the Trump administration’s regulatory and procedural changes at the Justice Department that have curtailed the independence of immigration courts. The administration’s mismanagement of and meddling with the immigration courts – done in the name of “efficiency” – are particularly troubling during the COVID-19 pandemic, when an overburdened system can lead to unsafe practices that place individuals at grave risk and jeopardize due process, the senators write to the GAO.

“While the Trump administration has justified its incursions into the independence of immigration courts as efficiency measures, legal service providers have explained that EOIR’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the agency can use seemingly neutral measures to tip the scales of justice against noncitizens,” the senators write. “In order to defend themselves in immigration court, noncitizens must file motions and other papers in person at physical court locations; obtain counsel; meet with their attorneys; present testimony from family members, employers, and/or expert witnesses; and provide medical records, tax records, and other supporting documents. Yet COVID-19 makes these actions potentially dangerous.”

Joining Whitehouse, Durbin, and Hirono in the request to the GAO are Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris (D-CA).

The senators continue in their letter to GAO, “Immigration courts are now reopening around the country, including in areas that are seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases. Because EOIR does not have consistent policies for when attorneys, let alone translators or witnesses, may appear telephonically or by video, participants often must appear in person or not at all. Immigration courts have continued to issue in absentia orders of removal for noncitizens who do not appear, even when the likely cause is COVID-19. Nor has EOIR uniformly extended deadlines or continued cases, despite the difficulty noncitizens face in finding and consulting with counsel, obtaining and filing necessary documents and evidence, or securing the appearance of witnesses. These difficulties are particularly acute for detained clients, who have limited access to phone calls and attorney visits. As a result, noncitizens cannot obtain counsel or litigate their cases, and attorneys cannot effectively represent their clients.”

The Trump administration’s management of the immigration system has come under close scrutiny during the COVID-19 crisis. Reports suggest immigrants face a range of unsafe conditions and practices as a result of Trump administration management decisions, including the detention of children using unaccountable private contractors. More than 1,000 people in immigration detention have tested positive for COVID-19, and five people have died.

Full text of the senators’ request is below. A PDF copy is available here.

August 21, 2020

The Honorable Gene Dodaro

Comptroller General of the United States

United States Government Accountability Office

441 G Street, NW

Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Dodaro:

We are writing to request that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyze and audit the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s (EOIR) practices with respect to the hiring, training, and evaluation of immigration judges and staffing of immigration courts, as well as their management of these courts during the current COVID-19 pandemic. GAO’s insight will help Congress determine if additional legislation is necessary to address these issues, as well as inform appropriations decisions.

In February, we wrote to Attorney General William Barr to express our concern that the Trump administration is undermining the independence of immigration courts. As outlined in that letter, attached, we are concerned about the mismanagement of EOIR and troubled by regulatory and procedural changes within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that have curtailed the independence of immigration courts. Although more than six months have passed, we have not received a response from DOJ or EOIR. Instead, in that time, EOIR has continued to use its administrative powers to put its thumb on the scale of justice. Most recently, EOIR attempted to buy out all nine career Board of Immigration Appeals judges who had been hired in prior administrations.[1] When the judges refused, they were reassigned to new roles.[2]

While the Trump administration has justified its incursions into the independence of immigration courts as efficiency measures,[3] legal service providers have explained that EOIR’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the agency can use seemingly neutral measures to tip the scales of justice against noncitizens. In order to defend themselves in immigration court, noncitizens must file motions and other papers in person at physical court locations; obtain counsel; meet with their attorneys; present testimony from family members, employers, and/or expert witnesses; and provide medical records, tax records, and other supporting documents. Yet COVID-19 makes these actions potentially dangerous. While EOIR initially postponed all hearings for non-detained individuals, proceedings for detained noncitizens continued to move forward unabated.[4] Immigration courts are now reopening around the country,[5] including in areas that are seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases. Because EOIR does not have consistent policies for when attorneys, let alone translators or witnesses, may appear telephonically or by video,[6] participants often must appear in person or not at all.[7] Immigration courts have continued to issue in absentia orders of removal for noncitizens who do not appear, even when the likely cause is COVID-19.[8] Nor has EOIR uniformly extended deadlines or continued cases, despite the difficulty noncitizens face in finding and consulting with counsel, obtaining and filing necessary documents and evidence, or securing the appearance of witnesses. These difficulties are particularly acute for detained clients, who have limited access to phone calls and attorney visits.[9] As a result, noncitizens cannot obtain counsel or litigate their cases, and attorneys cannot effectively represent their clients.[10]

EOIR’s facially-neutral policies during the COVID-19 pandemic have raised systemic due process concerns.[11] Immigration judges, staff, and litigators have also expressed concerns about the health risks to them and the litigants who appear in immigration courts.[12] Given GAO’s prior work on immigration courts,[13] it is uniquely suited to conduct an audit and analysis of EOIR. We ask GAO to look into the following questions:

What criteria does EOIR use to hire immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges? What criteria does EOIR use to determine the number of deputy chief and other management positions for judges, and what criteria does EOIR use to hire for these positions? To what extent does EOIR assess its immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals judge hiring efforts? What, if any, challenges has EOIR encountered in recruiting and retaining immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges? How, if at all, has it addressed them?

How does EOIR determine targets for immigration court and Board of Immigration Appeals case completion time frames and caseloads?

To what extent has EOIR assessed its immigration court and Board of Immigration Appeals staffing needs? What have any such assessments shown? How do current immigration court staffing levels compare to staffing needs EOIR has identified?

How does EOIR assess immigration and Board of Immigration Appeals judge performance?

To what extent has EOIR assessed immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals judge training needs? What have any such assessments shown?

How has EOIR’s use of video teleconferencing changed since GAO last reported on it in 2017? What, if any, data is EOIR collecting on hearings using video teleconferencing and the effects of that technology on hearing outcomes?

How do EOIR’s practices compare to other administrative courts?

How, if at all, is EOIR addressing the backlog of cases that were postponed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

How, if at all, has EOIR’s response to COVID-19 affected noncitizens’ ability to locate and meet with counsel, obtain and present evidence in their cases, and appear in court? To what extent have the challenges of COVID-19 impacted the number of in absentia orders issued by immigration courts?

Please keep our offices apprised of your review. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

###

[1] Tanvi Misra, DOJ ‘reassigned’ career members of Board of Immigration Appeals, CQ Roll Call, June 9, 2020, available at https://www.rollcall.com/2020/06/09/doj-reassigned-career-members-of-board-of-immigration-appeals/.

[2] Id.

[3] Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Remarks to the Executive Office for Immigration Review Legal Training Program (Jun. 11, 2018), available at https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-remarks-executive-office-immigration-review-legal.

[4] Executive Office for Immigration Review, EOIR Operational Status During Coronavirus Pandemic, https://www.justice.gov/eoir/eoir-operational-status-during-coronavirus-pandemic (last updated Aug. 19, 2020); American Immigration Lawyers Association, “AILA Tracks EOIR’s Historical Operational Status During Coronavirus Pandemic,” https://www.aila.org/eoir-operational-status (last visited Aug. 19, 2020).

[5] American Immigration Lawyers Association, supra note 4.

[6] Id.

[7] Emergency Mot. for a Temporary Restraining Order, Nat’l Imm. Project of the Nat’l Lawyers Guild v. Exec. Office of Imm. Review, No. 1:20-cv-00852-CJN, at 12-18 (D.D.C. Apr. 8, 2020), available at https://www.aila.org/advo-media/press-releases/2020/temporary-restraining-order-requested-to-stop.

[8] Id. at 15-16.

[9] Monique O. Madan, Despite national shortage, immigration lawyers required to bring their own medical gear, Miami Herald, Mar. 22, 2020, https://miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/artcile241414486.html.

[10] Id. 12-15, 25-26.

[11] Betsy Woodruff Swan, Union: DOJ deportation appeals workers fear overcrowding, Politico, Apr. 23, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/doj-union-immigration-deportation-coronavirus-202075 (“That is the feeling the [EOIR] employees have, that [EOIR’s COVID response is] definitely connected to this administration and their desperation to be able to boast about how great they’re doing on their deportation numbers.”).

[12] Nat’l Assoc. of Immigration Judges, Am. Assoc. of Immigration Lawyers, & Am. Fed. Of Gov’t Employees Local 511, Position on the Health and Safety of Immigration Courts During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Mar. 15, 2020, available at https://naij-usa.org/images/uploads/newsroom/2020.03.15.00.pdf.

[13] See, e.g., Gov’t Accountability Office, Immigration Courts: Actions Needed to Reduce Case Backlog and Address Long-Standing Management and Operational Challenges (June 2017).

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Basically, confirms what AILA, NAIJ, our Round Table, NGOs, and much of the media have been saying for a long time now! Obviously, the Dems lack the power in the Senate to take effective action to eliminate EOIR and replace it with an independent Article I Court, at present. Hopefully, that will be remedied in November.

In the meantime, what’s the excuse of the Article IIIs for continuing to allow this mockery of our Constitution and parody of justice to continue to daily inflict abuse on their fellow humans?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-25-20

🏴‍☠️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: Billy The Bigot Appoints Another “Death Squad”☠️⚰️ To BIA!🤮👎

EOIR Announces Three New Appellate Immigration Judges

FALLS CHURCH, VA – The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced the appointment of Michael P. Baird, Sunita B. Mahtabfar, and Sirce E. Owen as appellate immigration judges in EOIR’s Board of Immigration Appeals.

Biographical information follows:

Michael P. Baird, Appellate Immigration Judge

Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Michael P. Baird as an appellate immigration judge in August 2020. Judge Baird received a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1989 from Clayton State University and a Juris Doctorate in 1992 from Georgia State University College of Law. From 2009 to 2020, he served as an immigration judge first in Dallas, Texas and then later transferred to the Atlanta Immigration Court. From 2006 to 2009, he served as a senior assistant district attorney in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit, in Georgia. From 2004 to 2006, he served as a judge in the Municipal Court of Jonesboro, Georgia. From 1997 to 2004, he served as chief judge for the Magistrate Court of Clayton County, Georgia. From 1995 to 1996, he was in private practice. From 1993 to 1995, he served as senior assistant solicitor general at the Clayton County Solicitor’s Office. From 1992 to 1993, he was in private practice. From 1986 to 1990, he was a police officer. Judge Baird has taught as adjunct faculty at the Georgia State University College of Law, Clayton State University and the University of West Georgia. Judge Baird is a member of the State Bar of Georgia.

Sunita B. Mahtabfar, Appellate Immigration Judge

Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Sunita B. Mahtabfar as an appellate immigration judge in August 2020. Judge Mahtabfar earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1994 from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctorate in 1998 from Thurgood Marshall School of Law. From 2013 to 2020, she served as an immigration judge in the El Paso Immigration Court. From 2006 to 2013, she served as an attorney in the Office of the Assistant Chief Counsel, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in El Paso, Texas. From 2003 to 2006, she served as an asylum officer, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, DHS, in Houston. Judge Mahtabfar is a member of the State Bar of Texas.

Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

August 7, 2020

Page 2

Sirce E. Owen, Appellate Immigration Judge

Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Sirce E. Owen as an appellate immigration judge in August 2020. Judge Owen earned a Bachelor of Science in 1996 from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Business Administration in 2002 from Georgia State University, and a Juris Doctor in 2005 from Georgia State University. From 2018 to 2020, she served as an assistant chief immigration judge, based in Atlanta. From June 2019 to January 2020, she served as acting deputy director of EOIR. From 2016 to 2018, she served as deputy chief counsel, Office of Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in Atlanta. From 2008 to 2016, she served as assistant chief counsel, ICE, DHS, in Atlanta. From 2005 to 2008, she was an associate attorney with Mozley, Finlayson & Loggins LLP, in Atlanta. Judge Owen is a member of the State Bar of Georgia.

— EOIR —

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Here’s what you really need to know about these so-called “judges.”

Baird – Asylum denial rate 91.4% (74^th highest of 456 ranked)

Mahtabfar – Asylum denial rate 98.7 (8^th highest of 456 ranked – but remember the 7 worse “judges” are probably already on the BIA)

Owen – Didn’t deny enough asylum to make the TRAC charts. Served mostly as a prosecutor and “management judge” (A/K/A “JINO” or “Judge In Name Only”). But rest assured – she hails from the Atlanta Immigration “Court” – deemed an “Asylum Free Zone” in “a petition filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).” https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/these-jurisdictions-have-become-asylum-free-zones/

As my Round Table colleague Judge Jeffrey S. Chase summed it up: “Under [EOIR Director James] McHenry, a “liberal” is defined as one whose asylum denial rate is lower than their body temperature.”

Due Process Forever! The EOIR kakistocracy, never!

PWS

08-11-20

🛡⚔️🗽👍🏼🇺🇸ROUND TABLE SLAMS LATEST BOGUS “KILL ASYLUM” PROPOSED REGS IN COMMENTS TO REGIME!

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

Comments – Security Bar (COVID) Asylum Reg (PDF)

The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges is composed of 46 former Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges of the Board of Immigration Appeals. We were appointed and served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. We have centuries of combined experience adjudicating asylum applications and appeals. Our members include nationally- respected experts on asylum law; many regularly lecture at law schools and conferences and author articles on the topic.

We view the proposed rule as an improper attempt to legislate through rule making. The proposed rule is inconsistent with Congressional intent and with our nation’s obligations under international law. The rule is also overly broad, and as worded, could be applied to virtually anyone. It requires determinations to be made based on pure speculation by officials lacking any required expertise in the subject. And the rule fails to consider much lesser, more humane approaches to address the issue.

. . . .

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

Read our complete comment at the above link.

Gimmicks, cruelty, illegally, gimmicks, cruelty, illegality. Over and over the regime targets asylum seekers with “crimes against humanity.”

Although all DHS statistics should be regarded as suspect, the recent assertions that the regime”s killer tactics are protecting America against COVID appear particularly bogus — especially given the Trump regime’s gross failure to protect Americans from the pandemic and the frequent myths and false claims blabbered by Trump in a pathetic attempt to downplay the disaster caused by his stupidity and malicious incompetence.

The net result of all these “Miller-hatched” cruel gimmicks to eliminate legal immigration (without legislative authority) appears to be steadily increasing levels of extralegal immigration. And that’s just the folks who get caught. Who knows how many get through and simply get lost in the interior? So, instead of a rational legal immigration and refugee system that encourages screening, testing where necessary, taxpaying, and data collection, thanks to the stupidity and cruelty of Trump and Miller, the fecklessness of Congress, and the complicity of the Supremes, we have created a larger than ever extralegal immigration system.

Diminishing ourselves as a nation,🤮 won’t stop human migration🗽!

PWS

08|10-20

🛡⚔️👍🗽⚖️👩🏻‍⚖️FIGHTING THE STAR CHAMBER! — US District Judge Holds That Constitutional Challenge To Weaponized Immigration “Courts” Can Proceed! — “Both policies change the way immigration judges run their dockets and their courtrooms. Accordingly, Plaintiffs have at least sufficiently alleged that such docket management has practical consequence for parties or their attorneys.”

Melissa Crow
Senior Supervising Attorney
Southern Poverty Law Center

Tess Hellgren, Staff Attorney and Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 3, 2020

Contact:

Marion Steinfels, marionsteinfels@gmail.com / 202-557-0430
Ramon Valdez, ramon@innovationlawlab.org / 971-238-1804

Federal Court Denies Government’s Motion to Dismiss in Immigration Court Case
Advocates’ challenge to immigration courts as “deportation machines”
moves forward; constitutionality of immigration court system at issue

PORTLAND, OR – Immigrant rights advocates challenging the weaponization of the U.S. immigration courts applaud Friday’s late-afternoon ruling by the U.S. District Court of Oregon that their lawsuit, Las Americas v Trump, will move forward. The legal services providers, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Innovation Law Lab, and Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP), working with Perkins Coie LLP for pro bono support, allege that the Administration has failed to establish an impartial immigration court as required under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution – weaponizing them into deportation machines against asylum seekers and other noncitizens – and asks the court to end the unlawful use of the courts to effectuate mass deportations instead of fair decisions.

In Friday’s order, the Honorable Karin Immergut denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case. The district court rejected the government’s arguments, holding that all of the organizations’ claims could proceed, including their claim that the Attorney General has grossly mismanaged the immigration court system and weaponized the system against asylum seekers.

“This is a clear victory for everyone who has sought a fair hearing in immigration court, only to face a system plagued by rampant dysfunction and policies designed to subvert justice,” said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. “For asylum seekers and those who represent them, the current process is like playing Russian roulette. Despite the life-or-death stakes in these cases, there is little rhyme or reason to the court’s workings apart from prioritizing deportation at all costs.”

“Friday’s decision is an important milestone in our fight for a truly fair, transparent, and independent immigration court,” said Tess Hellgren, staff attorney with Innovation Law Lab. “Whether an asylum seeker wins or loses should not depend on the political whims of the President or Attorney General. ”

Not only does the Court’s decision confirm that the gross mismanagement of the immigration court system is subject to judicial review, it also recognizes that there may be important constitutional checks and balances on the power of presidential administrations to manipulate the immigration courts to achieve mass deportation.

“This win is incredibly validating. We often operate under the guise that the work we are doing is impossible,” said Linda Corchado, Managing Attorney of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “We feel uplifted as we can take the giant step forward to tackle the system now, with everything we’ve got.”

“ASAP works with families across the United States and at the border who fled persecution and now face countless obstacles to seeking asylum in the U.S. immigration court system,” said Conchita Cruz, Co-Executive Director of ASAP. “This decision gets us one step closer to showing that the injustices of the U.S. immigration court system are not only wrong, but illegal. We stand with asylum seekers and immigrants’ rights advocates in bringing these abuses to light and demanding better from our government.”

The lawsuit, which was filed in December 2019, alleges President Trump, Attorney General Barr, and other members of the executive branch have failed to establish a fair immigration court system in which the plaintiff organizations can provide meaningful legal assistance to their asylum-seeking clients. The complaint outlines pervasive dysfunction and bias within the immigration court system, including:

The Enforcement Metrics Policy, , which requires immigration judges to decide cases quickly, at the expense of a fair process, in exchange for favorable performance reviews.

The “family unit” court docket, which stigmatizes the cases of recently arrived families and rushes their court dates, often giving families inadequate time to find an attorney and prepare for their hearings.

Areas that have become known as “asylum-free zones,” where virtually no asylum claims have been granted for the past several years.

The nationwide backlog of pending immigration cases, which has now surpassed 1 million — meaning that thousands of asylum seekers must wait three or four years for a court date.

In June 2019, Innovation Law Lab and SPLC also released a report, based on over two years of research and focus group interviews with attorneys and former immigration judges from around the country, documenting the failure of the immigration court system to fulfill the constitutional and statutory promise of fair and impartial case-by-case adjudication. The report can be accessed here: The Attorney General’s Judges: How the U.S. Immigration Courts Became a Deportation Tool.

The court’s opinion is HERE.

###

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org and follow us on social media: Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook and @splcenter on Twitter.

Innovation Law Lab, based in Portland, Oregon with projects around the country and in Mexico, is a nonprofit organization that harnesses technology, lawyers, and activists to advance immigrant justice. For more information, visit www.innovationlawlab.org.

The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP) provides community support and emergency legal aid to asylum seekers, regardless of where they are located. ASAP’s model has three components: online community support, emergency legal aid, and nationwide systemic reform. For more information, see www.asylumadvocacy.org and follow us on social media at @asylumadvocacy on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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So, finally, the clear unconstitutionality of “Star Chambers” run by a biased prosecutor who basically views himself as the personal lawyer for a racist xenophobic President is going to get some scrutiny, along with the beyond grotesque mismanagement of EOIR that has created a “backlog” that in all likelihood now exceeds 2 million cases. But, of course we don’t know, and may never know, the exact extent of the backlog because of 1) the notoriously defective record keeping at EOIR; and 2) the manipulation of and sometimes outright misrepresentation of data by the Trump Administration.

Thanks to SPLC and Innovation Law Lab for undertaking this long-overdue effort. And, special appreciation to my friends and New Due Process Army superstars Melissa and Tess.

Due Process Forever!🗽⚖️👩🏻‍⚖️

PWS

08-03-20

🏴‍☠️🤡KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: Experienced Immigration Judges Flee America’s Star Chambers At Record Numbers As Trump Regime’s Malicious Incompetence Triples Backlog With Twice The Number Of Judges On Bench, According To Latest TRAC Report!

🏴‍☠️🤡KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: Experienced Immigration Judges Flee America’s Star Chambers At Record Numbers As Trump Regime’s Malicious Incompetence Triples Backlog With Twice The Number Of Judges On Bench, According To Latest TRAC Report!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

More Immigration Judges Leaving the Bench

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The latest judge-by-judge data from the Immigration Courts indicate that more judges are resigning and retiring. Turnover is the highest since records began in FY 1997 over two decades ago. These results are based on detailed records obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) which administers the Courts.

During FY 2019 a record number of 35 judges left the bench. This is up from the previous record set in FY 2017 when 20 judges left the bench, and 27 judges left in FY 2018.

With elevated hiring plus the record number of judges leaving the bench more cases are being heard by judges with quite limited experience as immigration judges.

Currently one of every three (32%) judges have only held their position since FY 2019. Half (48%) of the judges serving today were appointed in the last two and a half years. And nearly two-thirds (64%) were appointed since FY 2017.

While the Court is losing many of its most experienced judges, the backlog of cases continues to balloon. It is now almost three times the level when President Trump assumed office.

Update on Disappearing Immigration Court Records

Records continue to disappear in the latest data release for updated court records through the end of June 2020. The report provides the latest statement from EOIR Chief Management Officer Kate Sheehey about this matter.

To read the full report on Immigration Judges leaving the bench as well as the Sheehey statement, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/617/

TRAC’s free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through June 2020. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

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:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

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
https://trac.syr.edu

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://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 https://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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Look folks, I’m not disputing that Susan B. Long and David Burnham of TRAC are smart people. I’m even willing to speculate that they are smarter than most of the folks still in so-called public service (that largely isn’t any more) in all three branches of our failing Government.

But, are they really that much smarter than Supreme Court Justices, Article III Federal Judges, and Legislators who have let this grotesquely unconstitutional, dysfunctional, and deadly Star Chamber masquerading as a “court system” right here on American soil unfold and continue its daily abuses right under their complicit noses? Or, do we have too many individuals in public office lacking both the human decency and moral courage to stand up against institutionalized racism, unnecessarily cruelty, corruption, and pure stupidity, all of which very clearly are prohibited by both the due process and equal protection clauses of our Constitution, not to mention the 13th and 15th Amendments. It’s not rocket science!

Enough with the Congressional and Court-enabled “Dred Scottification” of the other! That’s how we ended up with things like the “Chinese Exclusion Act” and “Jim Crow” and why we have an institutionalized racism problem now.

Instead of standing up for equal justice for all under the Constitution, the Supremes and Congress often have willingly been part of the problem — using the law knowingly and intentionally to undermine constitutionally required equal justice for all and an end to racism. And, we can see those same attitudes today, specifically in the Supremes’ ridiculously wrong, intellectually dishonest, and cowardly decisions “greenlighting” various parts of White Nationalist Stephen Miller’s bogus program of dehumanizing asylum seekers and immigrants of color. This is not acceptable performance from Justices of our highest Court!

We need better, more courageous, and more intellectually honest public officers in all three branches who are willing to stand up for individual rights, human lives, and the common good over bogus right wing legal doctrines and inhumanity cloaked in legal gobbledygook. It won’t happen overnight. But, a better America starts with throwing a totally corrupt, cruel, and maliciously incompetent President and his GOP enablers out of every public office at every level of government this November.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-14-20

🏴‍☠️THE PLAGUE STATES OF AMERICA: Where ☠️ Plague, Stupidity, & Inhumanity Rule, & Your U.S. Passport Is Largely Worthless (Except, If You Are A Person of Color To, Perhaps, Protect You From “Expedited Removal” By ICE & Trump’s Complicit Supremes)! — Welcome To The “Trump Hotel California!”🤮

Last thing I remember

I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

“Relax”, said the night man

“We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave”

—— From “Hotel California” by The Eagles

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Glenn Lewis Frey / Don Felder / Donald Hugh Henley

Hotel California lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management

Full Lyrics & Music here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjZqsKZpcXqAhU0oXIEHaegAiQQwqsBMAp6BAgLEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvcmjDPDOk7c&usg=AOvVaw3ay3l2d6R_UlBVOg1k6Fnz

https://medium.com/@indica/the-plague-states-of-america-53b20678a80e?source=email-dafc55faa6fd-1594452458433-digest.reader——0-50——————1f52bfff_711d_4def_918f_7e9b8eddea74-1-1b0c1765_594d_4c73_8665_f93e3a786b9f—-&sectionName=top

American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map)

Oh the places you can’t go

Indi Samarajiva

Follow

America is not united anymore and it’s barely a state. They have crashed right through failed state into a plague state, unwelcome across the world. This has been predicted, including here. Now it has come to pass. Just look at the map.

Americans have gone from having access to most of the world to being banned from most of it. Today, Americans are only allowed in a few Caribbean islands and the Balkans. An American passport is now worthless. Worse than worthless, it’s a plague.

In the absence of a humane government, America is now ruled by COVID-19. Welcome to the Plague States of America.

It’s too late

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/6800/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png” width=”3400″ height=”2400″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

Only America has self-inflicted a second wave

I think it is difficult for Americans to understand that they are, to use an epidemiological term, completely fucked. COVID-19 could have been managed in January, or February, or even now, but not a full year later, in January 2021. Given than you need a functioning government to manage this pandemic, that’s the soonest Americans can get one.

It’s far too late.

The most reliable projections are saying 200,000 dead and 50 million infected by election day in November. Even these projections struggle to account for completely irrational federal actions like denigrating masks, pushing to reopen early, and pushing students back into schools. This is not the absence of public health, this is its opposite.

It is, in effect, governance by COVID-19. Not a failed state. A plague state.

Even after election day, Donald Trump will still be in power for nearly 3 months, until January 20th. Besides impeaching a dead-duck President, there’s nothing America can do but wait, while COVID-19 grows ever stronger. Grows completely out of control. In a pandemic, days matter, hours matter. A year is entirely too late.

America will be lucky to exit this pandemic with less than a million dead and 100 million infected. The living will be lucky to exit their country within the next five years.

The worthless passport

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg” width=”1600″ height=”1137″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

Welcome to the club. Post-colonial bullshit and racism have made my Sri Lankan passport worthless for years. Now the American passport is worse. America has crashed straight through the third world into the fourth.

Here is a list, in total, of all the places Americans can go. Most of them are small Caribbean islands.

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png” width=”1600″ height=”1022″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

ALL THE PLACES YOU CAN GO

1. Albania | 15. Lebanon

2. Antigua and Barbuda | 16. Maldives

3. Aruba | 17. Mexico

4. The Bahamas | 18. North Macedonia

5. Barbados | 19. St. Lucia

6. Belize | 20. St. Maarten

7. Bermuda | 21. St. Vincent &

8. Croatia | 22. Serbia

9. Dominican Republic | 23. Tanzania

10. Ecuador* | 24. Turkey

11. French Polynesia | 25. Turks &

12. Ireland* | 26. Ukraine

13. Jamaica | 27. UAE*

14. Kosovo | 28. UK*

*14 day quarantine required, not included in map.

American now have access to exactly two dozen states, four more (*) if they want to endure a 14-day quarantine on the end. Americans have gone from world power to getting the side-eye from Ecuador in a matter of months. Right now Americans are only really welcome on remote islands or at corralled resorts in Mexico, where they can be isolated from everyone else.

It’s not that other nations don’t want to welcome Americans, they just can’t. The point of a passport is that a sovereign power vouches for its bearer, but America can’t vouch for the health of their citizens at all. America’s public health regime is far less trustworthy than Liberia’s (which is actually quite good). Its sovereign is mad.

At the same time, you can’t trust Americans. Americans have poor hygiene (low masking rate) and at least 40% of the population can’t be trusted to even believe that COVID-19 exists, let alone to take it seriously. They’re likely to refuse testing, not report symptoms, break quarantine, and generally follow rules. Americans have a toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance that makes them unwelcome travelers.

They have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. Some of them, I assume, are good people, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a plague passport. Return to sender.

The Plague States

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/4000/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png” width=”2000″ height=”1149″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

That’s the near future of the United States. An epidemic that spreads largely unchecked until next year. A population to unprotected and ignorant to be allowed anywhere else. A world that largely suppresses the virus — from Mongolia to Ghana to Trinidad & Tobago — but which has to keep America in isolation.

In the end, Trump did what he said. He built a wall around America and made the world pay for it. He just never told Americans that they’d be stuck inside. Welcome to the Plague States of America. You can check out, but you can never leave.

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

Check out the map accompanying the original article at the above link.

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-11-20

POLITICS/SOCIAL JUSTICE⚖️: Trump Is Building His “Substance Free” Re-election Campaign Around Racism, 👎🏻 Xenophobia, ☠️ & Crimes Against Humanity ⚰️— Fortunately, As Usual, He’s Out Of Step With The Majority Of Americans Who Like Immigrants & Who Oppose Decreases In Immigration!🗽👍🏼 — Results Of New Gallop Poll

https://apple.news/AmpXyT2h5QxqSUamzvfmcPQ

For first time, more want increased immigration instead of decrease: Gallup

By Marty Johnson – 07/01/20 08:13 AM EDT

A record number of Americans want more immigration instead of less, according to a new Gallup poll.

This is the first time in the pollster’s decades of tracking the country’s thoughts on immigration that more people would favor more immigration compared to those who want to see less.

Of those surveyed, 34 percent said that they want to see the U.S.’s level of immigration increase, while 28 percent said they want to see it decreased. Thirty-six percent said that the country’s immigration rate should remain the same.

Conducted May 28-June 4, the survey was completed before the Trump administration stopped the issuing of any new H-1B and other visas through the end of the year. It also came before the Supreme Court ruled that the administration’s rollback of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act was illegal.

. . . .

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

Read Marty’s full article at the link.

Interestingly, I’ve been saying on Courtside that Dems should make robust, sensible, humane, practical, immigration, refugee, and human rights policies that recognize the reality of human migration, pay attention to market forces, boost the economy, and promote Constitutional due process, equal justice, and human dignity for all in America a centerpiece of the Biden campaign.

Social justice isn’t just “aspirational” — it’s a Constitutional and a human right!

We need leaders who not only “talk the talk, but walk the walk.”

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-02-20

EYORE’S KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: EOIR Director Shoots Messenger, But Fails To Address Serious Systemic Inaccuracies in Statistics & Record Keeping!

EOIR Director McHenry Replies To TRAC’s Letters But Ignores Agency’s Data Troubles

Despite TRAC’s appeals to the EOIR, Immigration Court records continue to disappear each month. This is unfortunately still the case with EOIR’s latest data release. Yesterday, June 15, we finally received a letter from EOIR Director James McHenry in response. But instead of addressing the obvious serious data management problems at EOIR, Director McHenry denied there were any problems and attacked TRAC’s motives for spreading what he claims are falsehoods about the agency.

Background

TRAC initially reported 1,507 missing applications for relief in our October 2019 report, which grew to 3,799 missing applications the following month. We wrote EOIR Director James McHenry providing a copy of the 1,507 missing applications asking for answers on why these records were missing from their files. We wrote again when the number of missing applications more than doubled the following month. Not only did we provide substantive evidence of the issues, we also repeatedly reassured the administration that we stood ready to work with them to fully resolve the underlying issues. These letters were met with silence. Not only have these particular cases disappeared entirely, they have not been restored in any subsequent data releases including the latest data TRAC received last week.

Alarmingly, the data from EOIR for April 2020 on asylum and other applications for relief to the Immigration Courts was missing an even larger

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/614/ Page 1 of 4

EOIR Director McHenry Replies To TRAC’s Letters But Ignores Agency Data Troubles 6/16/20, 4:29 PM

number of records—so large, in fact, that TRAC ceased publishing this information on our website and recommended the public be cautious in relying on EOIR asylum statistics until these problems were corrected. TRAC published those findings on June 3, 2020.

The Good and The Bad: EOIR’s Latest Data Release

Late on Friday, June 5, after normal business hours, EOIR sent a brief email acknowledging that data the agency had provided TRAC was, as TRAC had reported two days earlier, not usable. The problem was attributed to a “scripting error”—that is, problems made in the computer code that the EOIR’s Office of Information Technology had developed. A “corrected” version of the data was posted, shortly followed by EOIR’s regular monthly release with updated data through May 2020.

The good news is that TRAC has confirmed that the large number of asylum and other applications that had disappeared from the April shipment were now included in the May release. The bad news is that EOIR did not fix the underlying problem. Yet again, thousands of records that had been present in the April shipment were now missing. And the disappearing records from prior months, including the 1,507 missing asylum and other application for relief that TRAC first wrote about back last fall, continued to be missing from this latest release.

Even setting aside the issue of missing records, the persisting problem of computer processing malfunctions remains very troubling. Fixing one computer processing glitch after another does not address this larger systemic problem. Why do basic programming errors that lead to countless additional data errors keep reoccurring month after month in data and reports the agency publishes? Why aren’t these caught earlier and corrected before any data and statistics are released? The agency has yet

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/614/ Page 2 of 4

EOIR Director McHenry Replies To TRAC’s Letters But Ignores Agency Data Troubles 6/16/20, 4:29 PM

to address these questions.

EOIR Director McHenry Responds

At the same time we published our June 3 report, we wrote a third letter to EOIR Director McHenry expressing our concern and seeking a commitment from him to take the steps needed to address these problems. We assured Director McHenry again that we would be more than happy to work cooperatively with the agency to help them better ensure that going forward the public is provided with more accurate and reliable data about the Immigration Court’s operations.

This Monday we received a response from Director McHenry. His response is available here. Rather than addressing the real issues concerning the agency’s continuing data management problems, Director McHenry attacked our motives for alleging that the agency had any problems and further claimed that TRAC knew our statements to be untrue but had made them anyway.

Director McHenry also falsely alleged that TRAC wanted “to obtain all sensitive, identifying information” in EOIR data about particular immigrants in court proceedings. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Our requests have been limited to anonymized data. Indeed, EOIR publicly posts the monthly data TRAC receives on its own website.

In fact, due to the agency’s computer management problems, in March 2020 the agency posted data online which the agency itself intended to withhold. It was TRAC—not the EOIR—who uncovered this mistake and alerted agency officials.

Why did the EOIR post data online that it intended to withhold? Again it was the same underlying problem: deficiencies in EOIR data management

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/614/ Page 3 of 4

EOIR Director McHenry Replies To TRAC’s Letters But Ignores Agency Data Troubles 6/16/20, 4:29 PM

processes mistakenly allowed the public posting of information on tens of thousands of immigrants the agency had sought to redact. Once again basic checks were not in place to verify that their programs had functioned properly so no one at the agency had caught these mistakes before the data was distributed.

What Comes Next?

TRAC has been asked to refer any future issues to EOIR Chief Management Officer Kate Sheehey. TRAC’s co-director had an initial phone conversation with her last Friday, June 12. TRAC asked Director Sheehey to find out why month after month more records keep permanently disappearing from EOIR’s data. She has promised to look into this and provide answers. TRAC will continue to keep the public informed on any future developments.

*********

Director

Susan B. Long

Co-Director, TRAC and

Associate Professor

Martin J. Whitman School of Management Syracuse University

721 University Avenue

Syracuse, New York 13244

David Burnham

Co-Director, TRAC and

Associate Research Professor

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications Syracuse University

215 University Place

Syracuse, New York 13244

Dear Professors Long and Burnham:

U.S. Department of Justice

Executive Office for Immigration Review

Office of Director

5107 Leesburg Pike, Suite 2600 Falls Church, Virginia 22041

June 12, 2020

This letter responds to your letter dated June 3, 2020, and to your previous letters dated November 4, 2019, and December 18, 2019, respectively.

As you are aware, EOIR has committed to an unprecedented data transparency initiative over the past two years, including the monthly posting of data from its Case Access System for EOIR (CASE) database pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). As you are also aware, EOIR does not delete data from CASE in the sense that you have repeatedly alleged. As EOIR has explained to you previously, data that you allege has been “deleted” actually reflects either real-time updates to information in CASE, technological errors in the extraction and posting of the data which have been corrected, or data that was appropriately withheld from disclosure pursuant to FOIA.

Because you know that EOIR does not delete data, I can only speculate as to your motives for continuing to publicly accuse EOIR’s hardworking and conscientious career personnel in the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge (OCIJ), the Office of Information Technology (OIT), and the FOIA Unit of malfeasance. Moreover, your apparent desire to obtain all sensitive, identifying information in CASE related to specific cases of aliens in immigration proceedings—including aliens with particular types of

Letter to Professors Susan B. Long and David Burnham Page 2

claims subject to protection from disclosure under FOIA—is perplexing. Nevertheless, regardless of your motivation, your inflammatory and inaccurate accusations do nothing to advance our mutual goals of improving the availability of reliable data to inform decision-making in the immigration sphere.

In light of your continued disparagement of the employees within OCIJ, OIT, and the FOIA Unit, I have asked Chief Management Officer Kate Sheehey to address any future issues that you raise with the monthly data release under FOIA. Please direct any future comments or inquiries to her.

cc: Kate Sheehey, Chief Management Officer

Sincerely,

JAMES MCHENRY

Digitally signed by JAMES MCHENRY

Date: 2020.06.12 16:43:24 -04’00’

James R. McHenry III Director

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

While nobody is infallible, TRAC is a well-respected independent source of statistics and nonpartisan analysis.

EOIR, on the other hand, is a highly partisan mismanaged charade of a court system dedicated to carrying out the DOJ’s anti-asylum, anti-immigrant agenda.

Recently, the DOJ’s own independent watchdog exposed the incompetent handling of the funding for court interpreters that directly diminished due process for those appearing before EOIR. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/06/10/%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%a1%f0%9f%a5%b5kakistocracy-korner-w-eyore-tal-kopan-sf-chron-tanvi-misra-roll-call-report-on-our-anti-heros-latest-adventures-in-fraud-waste-abuse-a/

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/06/10/naij-speaks-out-on-fraud-waste-abuse-eoir-the-mismanagement-uncovered-by-oig-in-yesterdays-report-is-only-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-of-persistent-systemic-and-structural-failures/

Additionally, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has written to McHenry expressing grave concerns about EOIR’s data management practices (or lack thereof). https://chc.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressional-hispanic-caucus-demands-trump-administration-explain

Who ya gonna believe? No contest!

This also provides insights into why, after two decades of failed efforts and squandered taxpayer funds, EOIR failed to deliver on a functional nationwide e-filing system. It also helps explain how the already overwhelming docket backlog has more than doubled even with nearly twice as many judges under the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump DOJ.

But, this “gang that can’t shoot straight” had time to develop ridiculously unneeded and counterproductive “Immigration Judge Dashboards” that nobody except politicos wanted, to keep the pressure on judges to deny due process and deny asylum. They also had time to set up a totally unneeded “Office of Policy” under the Director and to disembowel the Office of Legal Assistance Programs, one of the few functional parts of EOIR “management” whose projects once long ago actually helped to reduce backlogs while promoting due process. The Office of Policy duplicates functions that formerly were adequately performed by the Office of General Counsel.

EOIR has always had a problem of too many positions and too much funding devoted to Headquarters in Falls Church rather than to the courts in the field. But, under the Trump kakistocracy the problem has become an epidemic. EOIR management has been used to exert improper political control over the quasi-judicial process and to interfere in independent decision making and due process. But, it’s been totally “MIA” in providing the basic apolitical professional administrative services needed by the judges and the public they are supposed to be serving (but aren’t right now under an Administration that has open contempt for due process, service to the public, and the immigrant community).

An independent Article I Court is the only solution! Competent administrative services dedicated to promoting full due process with efficiency and top notch public service is a prerequisite for any type of meaningful backlog reduction. As long as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and mismanagement rule, the backlog will continue to grow by leaps and bounds. But, because of chronically unreliable EOIR statistics and record keeping, we might never know the true extent of the court backlog. You can bet, however, that’s it’s now considerably more than the previously reported 1.4 million “on docket plus waiting to be recalendared” mess.

Maybe, rather than “shooting the messengers,” EOIR should enlist the assistance of true experts and statisticians to help fix the current broken system!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-17-20

🏴‍☠️“BIZARRO COURTS” — THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES TO ALL PERSONS IN THE U.S., YET ICE & THEIR “PARTNERS” AT EOIR HAVE ESTABLISHED A CONSTITUTION-FREE “COURT SYSTEM” THAT OPERATES BEYOND THE LAW & MORALITY IN A LEGAL NEVER-NEVER LAND 🧚‍♂️ — How Do They Get Away With It Under The Noses Of Congress & Article III Courts? — An Outrageous Story of Gross 🤮 Institutional & Personal Failures & Ethical Lapses Across All Three Branches of Our Federal Government ☠️👎🏻!

Paul Moses and Tim Healy report for The Daily Beast:

‘The Bizarro-World’ Immigration Courts Where the Constitution Isn’t Applied Detainees can be held for weeks or months before seeing a judge. The Justice Department gave “the word of the agency under penalty of perjury” that it would fix that—but only in NY

·         ICE officials acknowledged that they couldn’t handle the volume of arrests their own agents made; the major clog was in getting a legal review from the agency’s understaffed legal unit.

·         In 11 of the 55 venues that heard more than 500 cases last year, detainees spent six weeks or more in jail before an initial hearing. Such long waits would be unconstitutional in criminal cases; the right to due process requires authorities to not only get a case filed but also to provide an arraignment promptly, generally in no more than 48 hours.

·         Among the 55 venues that handled 500 or more detainee cases last year, the longest waits from arrest to initial hearing were in hearing locations at privately run lockups under contract with ICE: Winn Correctional Center in Winnifield, Louisiana, a median of 140 days; T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, 72 days; Richwood Correctional Center in Richwood, Louisiana, 64 days…

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

Ironically, by his own overt corruption and open disdain for our Constitution and the rule of law, Trump has exposed the deep flaws, grotesque derelictions of duty, and unethical complicity throughout our Constitutional institutions that are supposed to protect all of us, particularly the most vulnerable among us like civil immigration detainees and asylum seekers, from abuses by would-be authoritarian tyrants like Trump!

Here’s a gem:

“The larger question behind this mass of numbers is why DHS is detaining so many people when both its legal office and the court lack the staffing—not only judges but support staff as well—to handle them.

‘I would just say, they are the prosecuting agency and in this context, they have complete control over the timeline,’ said Aaron Hall, an immigration lawyer who practices at the court in Aurora, Colorado, which has had substantial delays. ‘If the charging document isn’t ready to go, why are they arresting them?’”

Good question! But don’t expect a straight answer from the “malicious incompetents” at DHS. Nor will today get anything except misleading nonsense from their “partners” at EOIR (“ICE Jr.”).

DOJ was forewarned of this disaster by an independent consultant back in 2017. But, rather than solving the problem, then AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions intentionally made things even worse at EOIR. You might remember “Gonzo” as the “mastermind” behind the regime’s unconstitutional child separation policy. His victims were returned to abuse, scarred for life, or imprisoned for the “crime” of asserting their Constitutional and legal rights to fair treatment.

All of this is wrong, plain and simple! It’s part of “Dred Scotiffication” — now playing out across our nation in many ways. Finally, the systematic “dehumanization of the other” as aided, abetted, and actually encouraged by a majority of the Supremes, is getting some much-needed and long overdue “pushback.”

But the abuses of our Constitution and our values, and the unaccountability of corrupt public officials, present and former, of the Trump immigration kakistocracy, won’t cease until we get “regime change.” That requires substantial personnel and attitude changes across all three branches of our reeling Federal Government! And that definitely includes accountability for those who have failed to insure “equal justice for all” and instead permitted and sometimes aided and abetted the existence of “Constitution-Free Zones” right under their noses!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Officials & Institutions, Never!

PWS

6-04-20

KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: FRAUD, WASTE, & ABUSE UNDER THE EOIR BIG TOP 🤡🎪🤹‍♂️ — TRAC DECLARES EOIR’S BOGUS STATISTICS TO BE NATIONAL DISASTER! ☠️— “The EOIR’s apparent reckless deletion of potentially irretrievable court records raises urgent concerns that without immediate intervention the agency’s sloppy data management practices could undermine its ability to manage itself, thwart external efforts at oversight, and leave the public in the dark about essential government activities.”🤮 — WHERE’S THE OVERSIGHT? WHERE’S THE ACCOUNTABILITY?

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/611/

EOIR’s Data Release on Asylum So Deficient Public Should Not Rely on Accuracy of Court Records

TRAC has concluded that the data updated through April 2020 it has just received on asylum and other applications for relief to the Immigration Courts are too unreliable to be meaningful or to warrant publication. We are therefore discontinuing updating our popular Immigration Court Asylum Decisions app, and will take other steps to highlight this problem[1]. We also wish to alert the public that any statistics EOIR has recently published on this topic may be equally suspect, as will be any future reports the agency publishes until these major data deficiencies are explained and rectified[2].

The EOIR’s apparent reckless deletion of potentially irretrievable court records raises urgent concerns that without immediate intervention the agency’s sloppy data management practices could undermine its ability to manage itself, thwart external efforts at oversight, and leave the public in the dark about essential government activities. Left unaddressed, the number of deleted records will compound each month and could trigger an expensive data crisis at the agency. And here the missing records are the actual applications for asylum, and how the court is handling them. This is a subject on which there is widespread public interest and concern.

EOIR Data Irregularities Approaching Point of No Return

Despite TRAC’s appeals to the EOIR, Immigration Court records continue to disappear each month. TRAC initially reported 1,507 missing applications for relief in our October 2019 report, which grew to 3,799 missing applications the following month. We wrote EOIR Director James McHenry providing a copy of the 1,507 missing applications asking for answers on why these records were missing from their files. We wrote again when the number of missing applications more than doubled the following month. These letters were met with silence. Not only have these cases disappeared entirely, they have not been restored in any subsequent data releases and the number of missing relief applications continue to grow. (See the final section for a short explanation of TRAC’s methodology.)

Alarmingly, the number of relief applications that were present in the March 2020 data release but were missing in the April release jumped to 68,282. This is just the number of records that disappeared over a single month. It does not include the ever growing number of applications that had previously disappeared month-by-month. As was true in past months, roughly four out of five of the records in the March 2020 release that disappeared from April’s release concerned applications on which the court had rendered its decision, including many cases in which the immigration judge had granted asylum as well as other forms of relief.

To put that into perspective, the number of missing cases just last month is more than the 63,734 asylum applications received by the Immigration Courts during all of FY 2015. If these applications are missing because they have been deleted from the Court’s own master files, the magnitude of the task of restoring just this single month’s destruction—assuming this is even possible—is enormous. To go back and restore the cumulative number of relief applications that went missing during previous months will obviously be even greater.

In fact, so many asylum decisions were dropped from EOIR’s April release that the cumulative number of asylum decisions went down, not up, despite asylum decisions continuing to be made. The volume of disappearing records has reached a scale that little faith can be placed in the factual accuracy of reports published by the EOIR based on its data.

The EOIR’s escalating data problems should raise dire concerns for Congress, policymakers and the public who routinely put their faith in federal agencies to provide complete and accurate information about their work. Indeed, the management of the court system itself, including the quota system recently imposed on immigration judges, presupposes the accuracy of the court’s own records. It is deeply worrisome that the EOIR and the Department of Justice appear unconcerned with ensuring that their own records are accurate and uncommitted to providing the public with accurate and reliable data about the Court’s operations.

TRAC Urges EOIR to Take Immediate Action

To date, the EOIR has not responded to TRAC’s requests for an explanation of these disappearances, nor has the EOIR responded to TRAC’s FOIA requests for records that would shed light on this matter.

Therefore, TRAC has written a third letter to Director McHenry reporting our findings of 68,282 new disappearances and we are again seeking a commitment from him to take the steps needed to address the problem. More urgently, we are asking that the EOIR immediately preserve—rather than destroy—all back-up tapes or other media in the hopes that records apparently improperly deleted from the Court’s master files might be restored. We assured Director McHenry that we would be more than happy to work cooperatively with the agency to help them better ensure that going forward the public is provided with more accurate and reliable data about the Immigration Court’s operations.

How EOIR’s Data Mismanagement Impacts TRAC’s Immigration Court Tools

TRAC’s mission is to provide the public with accurate, reliable, unbiased, and timely data on the operations of the federal government, and to ensure that the public is informed about changes that impact our data.

The EOIR’s disappearing records fall under the data related to applications for relief. The record on the existence of the court case itself is present, but for a growing number of these cases there now is no record that the immigrant ever applied for relief, or the court’s decision on that application. One of the key moments in the life of the case—including applications for asylum—is missing entirely. As a direct consequence TRAC does not have the information needed to provide reliable or meaningful updates on the court’s handling of applications for asylum and must therefore discontinue updating its asylum decision app.

While each of the other files in EOIR’s monthly data releases also have the same problem of records disappearing, the magnitude of these disappearances has not reached the levels seen with applications for relief. While still worrisome, these levels have not yet climbed to where we believe we can no longer use the information we receive. Thus, we are continuing to update the rest of our other Immigration Court apps. We continue to closely monitor the situation, while we urge EOIR to explain why records keep disappearing. We further continue to ask the agency to take the steps needed to rectify the situation.

TRAC will continue to retain all previous and future EOIR data shipments for research purposes.

How did TRAC Identify the EOIR’s Data Irregularities?

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) oversees the nationwide Immigration Court system, including more than 60 physical Immigration Court locations (as well as many more remote hearing locations including teleconference sites and ad hoc “tent” courts), hundreds of Immigration Judges, and millions of immigration cases that pass through the court system. The EOIR records information on each case and tracks various proceedings, filings, hearings and other aspects of each case in a large database. This database is central to the Court’s ability to manage its workload, prepare and publish reports for the public, and respond to queries from Congress about its operations. It is also used in implementing new practices, including the recent decision to impose new evaluation criteria for Immigration Judges.

As a result of TRAC’s ongoing FOIA requests, the EOIR releases a large batch of anonymized Immigration Court data each month that provides a snapshot of a great deal of the information recorded in this database on the handling of each case. In short, TRAC does not create data on the EOIR; rather, TRAC’s uses the EOIR’s own data. This data is the foundation for TRAC’s Immigration Court data tools which help ensure transparency and accountability for the American public.

TRAC used this data to precisely identify deleted records. While the information TRAC receives does not identify individuals, EOIR’s computer system assigns a unique computer sequence number to each case that identifies it. Because TRAC receives comprehensive data shipments from the EOIR each month that include these unique computer-assigned tracking numbers, TRAC can match each record received in the previous month with the same corresponding record in the following month’s release. Each release is also cumulative. That means it should include every record from the previous month plus every new record that has been added to the database over the course of the current month. As a rule, records should therefore never disappear[3].

When a record that was present is not included in the next month’s release, TRAC refers to these as missing or disappearing records. Because humans maintain most databases including EOIR’s, mistakes will occur. Therefore no database is ever perfect. So a few disappearing records might be expected. However, as is the situation here, concern is warranted whenever significant numbers of records disappear. Indeed, alarm bells should ring as the number of disappearing records grow. This situation means the data can no longer be trusted to reliably track the court’s proceedings.

Footnotes

[1] EOIR monthly releases consist of a series of tables covering different aspects of its workload. While each of these tables continue to have disappearing records each month, the magnitude of these missing records varies by table. For example, in the table that tracks each case before the court there were 228 cases present in March that disappeared from the April release, compared with 41,233 new cases that were added. While the problem of disappearing case records remains very troubling for the case table along with each of the other EOIR tables, TRAC believes that their magnitudes do not rise to the same level as the problem for applications for relief where the data now are so unreliable and misleading that they do not warrant the public placing any trust in them. At this time, we therefore are continuing to update our other Immigration Court apps while alerting the public to this continuing serious problem that affects the reliability of EOIR data releases more generally.

[2] For an example of a recent EOIR publication that may contain significant data errors, see the graph and table reporting total asylum applications through March 2020, which was generated using data from April 2020: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1106366/download.

[3] Even when a data entry error is made, the database has special codes to indicate that a record should be disregarded because it was a data entry error so that rarely is it necessary to actually delete records.

TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of TRAC’s report at the link.

EOIR isn’t willing and able to do its only function: provide fair, impartial, and timely adjudications to asylum seekers and other migrants while following best judicial practices.

But they do have time to waste taxpayers’ money on nonsense like the chart at this link: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/file/1217001/download. This was obviously designed to further the Trump regime’s false narrative regarding the merits of asylum claims. While the chart is largely incomprehensible, misleading nonsense, what stands out is this:

At the end of an abusive process during which the law has been illegally skewed against asylum seekers and “judges,” most of whom are not experts in asylum law and who have never even represented an asylum seeker, are encouraged to deny meritorious claims for protection, against the odds, over 25% (12 of 47) of those who actually get through this biased dysfunctional mess still get asylum!

It’s reasonable to believe that under a fair system, with impartial decision makers who have expertise in asylum law, and without the interference of biased, overtly anti-asylum politicos like Sessions and Barr, asylum seekers would succeed the majority of the time, as they did before efforts by both the Obama and Trump Administrations to “ratchet down” asylum grants so that the EOIR system would serve DHS Enforcement as a “deterrent” to those seeking protection.

Obviously, the DOJ is afraid that under a fair, independent judicial system that actually employed judges who were experts in asylum law and who had real life experience representing asylum applicants, the majority of claims would be granted, thereby exposing the fraud, dishonesty, and misconduct involved in the present anti-asylum system.

It’s a national disgrace that is actually harming and sometimes killing those deserving of protection under our law.

Due Process Forever! Dishonest, Unethical, Incompetent, and Intentionally Biased “Courts” Never!

PWS

06-04-20

DUE PROCESS FARCE CONTINUES @ BIA 🤡 — Billy Barr Appoints More Anti-Asylum Enforcement Zealots To Appellate Division Of Crown’s Star Chambers!☠️☹️

Laura Lynch of AILA reports:

Hi all-

DOJ EOIR announced today that it hired 3 new appellate IJs- https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1272731/download.

Philip Montante- Batavia NY

TRAC Analysis – FY2014-2019 – Judge Montante denied 96.3% asylum cases and granted (including conditional grants) 3.7%.

Kevin Riley – Los Angeles – N. Los Angeles St. Immigration Court

TRAC Analysis – FY2014- 2019 – Judge Riley denied 88.1% asylum cases and granted (including conditional grants) 11.9%

Aaron R. Petty, Former OIL, National Security Counsel. Previously worked on Operation Janus cases.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

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

The trashing of Due Process and fundamental fairness, as well as abuse of the merit selection system continues unabated under the Trump regime.

How long will this parody of justice continue? How many lives will be unnecessarily lost?

Due Process Forever! Star Chambers, Never!
P

PWS

05-02-20

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE DEAD? ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ — Certainly, Not Jared! ☠️☠️☠️ — As U.S COVID-19 Death Toll, Already By Far The World’s Highest, Exceeds 60,000, Jared Declares “Success!” — Bess Levin @ Vanity Fair Says “Not So Much!”

Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

https://link.vanityfair.com/view/5bd67c363f92a41245df49ebc0e54.tmz/4e6714c1

Bess writes in The HIIVE for Vanity Fair:

Earlier this week a devastating statistic emerged from the coronavirus crisis: in a matter of months, more Americans have died from the virus than in the Vietnam War. While the Trump administration certainly did not cause the pandemic, it is fairly widely accepted—outside of the West Wing—that its shambolic response to COVID-19—from ignoring the early, dire warnings, to declaring them fake news, to putting a dog breeder in charge of the Health and Human Services task force, to listening to literally anything the first son-in-law had to say on the matter— allowed the deadly disease to gain a foothold in the United States, where, to date, more than one million people have tested positive and more than 58,000 have died.

Most people, regardless of their political allegiance, would probably agree that almost 60,000 dead Americans constitutes a lot. Particularly in light of the fact that in February, Donald Trump claimed that no more than 15 Americans would even test positive for the disease. And then you have Jared Kushner.

Appearing on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, the Boy Prince of New Jersey was asked about “two questions [that kept] coming up over the weekend on the Sunday shows,” the first one being, “Where’s the national strategy?” and the second, “Why did you guys collapse the pandemic office when you guys took over?” Claiming that the pandemic office “was an NSC situation,” and anyway, “there’s a lot of different parts of the government that are responsible for that and all those have been functioning”—fact check: not so much—the sentient jar of cold cream then boldly proclaimed: “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this and I think that we’ve achieved all of the different milestones that are needed, so the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s what really needs to be told.”

Aaron Rupar

✔

@atrupar

· Apr 29, 2020

Replying to @atrupar

“We’ve done more tests than any other country in the world, so we’ve gotta be doing a lot of things right” — Jared Kushner (the ability to test people when the virus was silently spreading across the country in February and March would’ve been nice … )

Aaron Rupar

✔

@atrupar

Jared Kushner, as the US coronavirus death toll surpasses the Vietnam War and approaches 60,000: “This is a great success story, and I think that’s really what needs to be told.”

893

11:32 AM – Apr 29, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

740 people are talking about this

To be fair to Kushner, who reportedly maintained as of mid-March that the coronavirus situation was “more about public psychology than a health reality,” after a lifetime of failing upward one might actually think this was true! If you had only ever fucked up at every job you ever held, only to be rewarded with more responsibility, you, too, might observe a five-figure body count and say to yourself, “Not bad, J-man, not bad at all.” Of course, it’s actually very bad and Jared, his equally unhelpful wife, and his criminally negligent father-in-law should all be run out of town for it, but you can see where he might’ve gotten that idea that he really nailed this one.

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

Get more from Bess & “The HIVE” @ Vanity Fair @ the above link.

Let’s see, we’re the 3rd most populous country in the world; but we’re the the “league leader” in deaths. And, the two countries ahead of us in population, China and India, are ahead by multiples: 4x. Yet, China and India between them have reported fewer than 10,000 deaths.

Yes, there’s good reason to be skeptical of both China’s and India’s reporting. That’s also true to some extent of the U.S. But, even if we doubled the numbers from India & China, while accepting the U.S. statistics as accurate, we still would have approximately 400% more deaths than both of those countries combined.

Of course Trump, Kushner, and their cronies have made a career out of falsifying and fabricating numbers and misconstruing statistics to claim endless successes and “business genius.” But, this time, there’s no getting around the numbers. And with states being encouraged to “open up” right and left despite universal non-compliance with even “step 1” of the Administration’s own “guidance,” (a 14-consecutive-day decrease in new cases) we’re nowhere near the end of the dying. ☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️

Obviously, Trump, Jared, Pence, Moscow Mitch, and a bunch of other science-denying right wingnuts think it’s a good and noble thing for YOU (not them) to join poor meat industry workers, first responders, and nursing home residents in laying down their lives so that they can keep on grifting, grafting, and running the country off a cliff.

Just hope you’re not the next to go “under the bus.” ⚰️🚌

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

04-30-20

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

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