"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Biden’s “Shadow Attorney General” speaks through the likeness of Merrick Garland! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.comCNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla Alvarez Politics Reporter, CNN
“Today we heard the same unconvincing arguments from the Biden administration that we’ve been hearing for the last year about this xenophobic and baseless policy, arguments that have already been rejected in federal court. Title 42 unjustly and unnecessarily inflicts harm on families seeking asylum at our border, and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that this policy ends once and for all,” said Diana Kearney, senior legal adviser with Oxfam America, in a statement.
In a recently released report, Human Rights First found nearly 9,000 reports of kidnappings and other violent attacks against people who had been expelled to Mexico or blocked from seeking protection in the US.
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Read Priscilla’s full story on the bottomless depths to which Garland has taken American “justice” and the Department of “Justice” at the link.
I can always count on Garland to illustrate and punctuate my points about his unfitness for the job of achieving racial equality, re-establishing the rule of law, and promoting human rights in America, not to mention his total unsuitability and inability to run a fair, impartial, due-process-oriented court system! He probably would have been right at home with the “GOP Six” on the Supremes.
But these are, mostly, obscure policy changes or unrealized proposals. When Miller et al. condemn Biden’s “immigration record,” they zero in on his decisions at the Southern border.
Which is, frankly, odd. You’d never know it from the right-wing hysteria about Biden’s supposedly “open borders,” or Biden’s own campaign promise to “end Trump’s detrimental asylum policies.” But Biden has continued Trump’s most restrictionist, inhumane and possibly illegal border policies.
In some cases Biden has even expanded them.
As evidence of Biden’s supposedly lax border policies, Republicans sometimes cite his attempt, on Day One of his presidency, to end the program informally known as “Remain in Mexico.” This Trump-created program forced asylum seekers to wait in dangerous camps in Mexico while their U.S. cases were processed; there, vulnerable immigrants have been frequent targets for rape, kidnappings, torture and murder.
If Biden had terminated the program, that would have been a good thing, from a human rights perspective (not a Republican priority, apparently). But Biden did not succeed. After a legal challenge, a federal judge ordered the program to be resurrected — and the Biden administration not only obeyed but also expanded the program’s scope to cover even more categories of immigrants.
[Catherine Rampell: Joe Biden is president. Why is he maintaining Trump’s immigration agenda?]
Worse, Biden has maintained Trump’s Title 42 order. This likely illegal order involves automatically expelling hundreds of thousands of people encountered at the border without ever allowing them to apply for asylum, in contravention of rights guaranteed under both U.S. and international law. Both Trump and Biden have cited a little-used public health provision as pretext for this policy, even though legions of public health experts have argued that it doesn’t protect public health.
Perversely, continuing this Trump policy has also given ammunition to the hard-right nativists, because it has the unintended consequence of inflating the count of U.S. border crossings. Many of those expelled immediately turn around and attempt another crossing; in fiscal 2021, 27 percent of individuals were apprehended multiple times by Border Patrol, nearly quadruple the share in 2019.
The disconnect between GOP claims about “open borders” and Biden’s actually-quite-Trumpy border policies, is enormous. Two of Biden’s own political appointees who resigned last fall lambasted his actions as “inhumane” on their way out the door; six other high-level immigration officials have recently announced they were leaving the administration, without much public explanation.
It’s unclear why Biden has maintained his predecessor’s policies. One possibility is politics — that these choices were intended to stave off right-wing attacks about lax enforcement. If that was the motivation, though, it failed. Instead, Biden has delivered the worst of all worlds: inhumane, immoral, potentially illegal policy — and bad-faith political blowback about “open borders” all the same.
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Yup! It’s what “Courtside” has been saying all along!Read her complete article at the link!
Catherine sees much more clearly than any member of the Biden Administration the ridiculous failings of their so-called “immigration policies” (actually a series of disjointed, often self-contradictory, knee-jerk responses that sometimes undermine each other and reflect a total lack of thoughtful, morally courageous, informed leadership).
And, Catherine doesn’t even highlight the single biggest failure — one that cuts across every failure she mentions and also goes to the heart of our legal system!
That’s, of course, the abject failure of Biden AG Merrick Garland to bring due process reforms and better judges to his totally dysfunctional, grotesquely unfair, wholly-owned U.S. Immigration Courts. These “courts” — that function more like 21st Century Star Chambers than anyone’s concept of a “real court” — were “weaponized” by Garland’s Trumpy predecessors, Sessions and Barr.
They filled the courts at all levels with less than well qualified judges, many with no immigration experience or prosecutorial experience only, who were intended to help carry out the White Nationalist, anti-asylum, anti-immigrant policies developed by Gauleiter Stephen Miller. Garland has not replaced these unqualified judges with better talent, selected in a open, transparent, merit-based process with “outside input.” He has failed to make the substantive and procedural reforms necessary to bring order and some semblance of efficiency to his hopelessly backlogged “courts.”
He has declined to remove poor leaders appointed by his predecessors; nor has he tapped the large supply of progressive, expert human rights/immigration talent who could begin the process of restoring due process. He has continued to promote enforcement “gimmicks” — like “Dedicated Dockets” and the illegal use of Title 42 — that accelerate “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and have led to even higher backlogs.
His refusal to bring common sense, achievable reforms, and better judges to the Immigration Courts has demoralized lawyers and made pro bono representation even more difficult.
He has ignored the pressing need for better judicial training implemented by qualified outside experts. He hasn’t bothered to engage with those like the VIISTA Villanova program turning out exceptionally well-trained potential “accredited representatives” who could help reduce the staggering representation gap in his courts. Worse yet, he has allowed EOIR bureaucrats to create entirely new backlogs in the agency process for recognizing pro bono organizations and accrediting their representatives.
Garland’s horrible failure to energize and attract the progressive leadership and judicial talent who know how to begin solving these problems (rather than aggravating them) might eventually go down as one of the biggest “blown opportunities” for due process reforms in modern American legal history! This is the “low hanging fruit” that Garland and the Biden Administration has allowed to “rot on the tree.” What a (needless and deadly) tragedy!
These findings raise serious questions about whether the Biden administration’s Dedicated Docket is achieving its stated goals or, more seriously, why this program was created in the first place given that it doesn’t appear to actually be benefitting anyone involved. These are my takeaways and not necessarily the views of TRAC as an organization.
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Read Austin’s findings at the link.
The idea was idiotic, the execution amateurish, the human impact catastrophic, and the failure both inevitable and totally predictable! Totally predictable, that is, to anyone who actually understands how broken our Immigration Courts are. That, obviously, doesn’t include Garland or anyone on his senior management team.
Gotta hope that the upcoming “Lofgren hearings” will highlight and document the ridiculous nonsense that’s going on under Garland and crank up the pressure on him to take the human lives at stake here seriously and to do better.
So, what’s the “dollar value” of brown-skinned human lives to Biden, Harris, & Garland? We’re about to find out! EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
When the Trump administration wrenched migrant babies, toddlers and tweens from their parents as a means of frightening away prospective asylum seekers, it was guilty of emotionally torturing innocent children. Americans of every political leaning expressed revulsion toward the policy implemented in 2018, especially when it became clear that the government had kept no clear records linking parents with their children — in other words, no ready means to reunite the families.
President Biden, as a candidate and also once in office, made clear his own disgust at the so-called zero-tolerance policy, calling it “criminal.” He said, correctly, that it “violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”
Now the president, having explicitly endorsed government compensation that would address the suffering of separated migrant family members, has apparently had a change of heart — or political calculation. In mid-December, the Justice Department abruptly broke off negotiations aimed at a financial settlement with hundreds of affected families. Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.
The government has no means of alleviating the trauma inflicted by the previous president’s egregious treatment of those families. That is particularly true as regards the children, whose torment has been described and documented by medical professionals, advocates and journalists. The babies and toddlers who didn’t recognize their own mothers when they were finally reunited; the depression; the fear of further separations, even brief ones — the human aftershocks of Donald Trump’s heartlessness will linger for years, and for lifetimes in some cases.
The administration compounds the hurt by breaking off negotiations on compensating victims. The government must be held accountable; compensation is the most potent and credible vehicle for achieving that.
Granted, there may be a political price to pay. Republicans had a field day blasting the White House after media reports this fall suggested the government might pay $450,000 to separated family members — a settlement that could amount to $1 billion if applied to the several thousand affected migrants. Mr. Biden, apparently unaware of the status of negotiations at that time, said the reports, first published in the Wall Street Journal, were “garbage.” He later backed away from that remark, saying he did not know how much money would be suitable but that some amount was certainly due.
Now, it seems, all bets are off. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, the government would enter into what would likely be years of costly litigation, in which Mr. Biden’s Justice Department would be in the awkward position of defending a policy that Mr. Biden himself — and most Americans — have condemned as evil. There is no predicting how individual judges or juries might react to documented accounts of harm done to children. No one should be surprised if some were to award enormous damages — conceivably in amounts that exceed the $450,000 contemplated in the now-stalled negotiations.
By walking away from the bargaining table, Mr. Biden has broken an explicit, repeated promise. Whatever the political calculus behind that decision, it is morally indefensible.
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Garland fails to stand up for the rights of families of color — again. At the same time, he ties up resources on a frivolous DOJ defense of the indefensible!
“Replacement theory,” White Nationalism, and racism always have been and remain at the core of the GOP’s anti-democracy insurrection. It’s no coincidence that Trump’s plans to de-stabilize American democracy began with cowardly attacks on vulnerable migrants (enabled by a failed Supremes) and culminated in open insurrection.
The dots aren’t that hard to connect. But, Garland doesn’t seem to be able to do it!
If Garland can’t handle the “low hanging fruit” — like settling these cases and creating a progressive judiciary at EOIR who will stand upfor the rights of all persons while using expertise and “practical scholarship” to replace dysfunction with efficiency, his pledge to hold the January insurrectionists and their leaders accountable rings hollow!
For those who read the LA Times, there was a “spot on” letter to the editors today accurately characterizing Garland as the “Attorney General for different era.”
As I’ve noted before, this is NOT Ed Levi’s, Griffin Bell’s, or Ben Civiletti’s DOJ. It isn’t even Janet Reno’s DOJ. (I ought to know, as I worked under each of the foregoing.)
It’s an organization that has become increasingly politicized over the last two decades (as it was during Watergate), and that allowed itself to be weaponized by Trump’s White Nationalist regime. EOIR, Executive Orders, and immigration litigation were perhaps the most obvious, but by no means the only, examples.
NPR: President Biden had an ambitious agenda to overhaul the nation’s border policies. But as the end of the year approaches, many of those proposals have been blocked, reversed or simply abandoned.
Reuters: The Biden administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court whether it needed to continue to implement a Trump-era policy that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases. See also ‘Remain In Mexico’ Renewal May Bring More Solo Migrant Kids
AP: Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week. See also Months later, Afghan evacuees abroad and at US bases still wait to be resettled.
KQED: Advocates say the current system has more safeguards for migrant families and isn’t placing them in detention facilities, but the accelerated pace still makes it tough for asylum seekers like López to find legal representation.
Law360: Federal courts in 2022 will grapple with immigration law questions ranging from the extent of the president’s authority to set immigration enforcement priorities to federal courts’ ability to review immigration decisions made by the executive branch. Here, Law360 breaks down the cases to watch.
ImmProf: The petition, which asks to review a decision of the Fifth Circuit court of appeals, addresses issues relating to the Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” program.
CA2: In light of the recent surge in Covid-19 infections, beginning January 4, 2022 oral arguments will be conducted remotely, by Zoom or teleconference.
LexisNexis: Lima-Gonzalez v. Garland “Lima-Gonzalez’s NTA did not contain the information required to trigger the stop-time rule. See Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct. at 1478-79, 1485; see also § 1229(a)(1)(A)–(G). Neither did any of the subsequent notices of hearing. As a result, the Government has not furnished Lima-Gonzalez with the “single compliant document” required by statute. Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct…
WaPo: Three Illinois counties with such federal agreements faced a Jan. 1 deadline to end contracts. While one in downstate Illinois complied last year, two others are involved in a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The case was dismissed last month, but a federal judge on Thursday granted an extension while an appeal is considered. Authorities in McHenry and Kankakee counties now have until Jan. 13.
AILA: DOS proposed rule which would raise several nonimmigrant visa application processing fees, the fee for the Border Crossing Card for Mexican citizens age 15 and over, and the waiver of the two-year residency requirement fee. Comments are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 74018, 12/29/21)
AILA: USCIS and EOIR interim final rule further delaying until 12/31/22 the effective date of the final rule “Security Bars and Processing” (85 FR 84160, 12/23/20). Comments on the extension of the effective date as well as the possibility of a further extension are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 73615, 12/28/21)
AILA: Effective December 31, 2021, 12:01 am (ET), Presidential Proclamation 10315 was revoked, thus rescinding travel restrictions on Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Vaccine requirements remain in effect.
AILA: USCIS stated that healthcare workers with a pending EAD renewal application, Form I-765, and whose EAD expires in 30 days or less or has already expired, can request expedited processing of their EAD applications. Proof of employment will be required.
Somalia: Situation of ‘Westernised’ Returnees (AFR2021-16)
Mexico: Persecution by and local/national presence of Cartel Jalisco and Familia Michoacana (AME2021-17)
Afghanistan: Treatment of Family Members of Human Rights Activists and Former Government Supporters after the Taliban Take-over (ASI2021-13)
Afghanistan: Availability of Psychiatric Treatment for Returnees with Mental Health Conditions and Treatment of Returnees with Mental Health Conditions by the Taliban (ASI2021-12)
Egypt: Opposing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Social Impact, and Availability of State Protection (MEN2021-18)
Egypt: Christians in Egypt & Obtention of Citizenship (MEN2021-17)
EOIR: Appearance Requirements at the New York – Varick Immigration Court (attached)
The problem with “ADR” @ EOIR is chronic! It’s one that Garland seems determined to repeat, despite ample advice to the contrary.
Also, he’s ignored the availability of many “practical experts” on the outside who, if appointed to key EOIR positions, could have helped him solve this without stomping on due process (although, I admit the solution would have been easier in March 2021, when Garland was sworn in as AG, than it is after 9 months of his making it worse — not to mention that his “defiant tone-deafness” has probably “turned off” some of the top-flight talent he needed to “reach out” to). As the KQED article points out:
“But there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I don’t know if the people that are being named to supervise this actually know what’s happening in the trenches.”
Duh! That’s what all of us have been saying. Truth is, they aren’t the right people, and they don’t know what’s happening. Not by a long shot!
I also understand why Torres, who’s trying to maintain a relationship with Garland’s “Clueless Crew” is trying to be charitable.
But, as someone not currently “out there in the trenches,” I don’t have to be so reticent. So, I’ll say what she can’t. This is a totally unacceptable and inexcusable performance from Garland!
Another reason why this program is a massive failure is that, like their ADR-promoting, backlog-building predecessors, Garland & Mayorkas started this misguided and mishandled program without seeking the advice, counsel, and support of the pro bono lawyers who have to staff it to make it work!
Think of the total absurdity of what Garland is doing here! While a pro bono (or low bono) lawyer is having already prepared cases “orbited” years out on the docket (a process that usually requires re-preparation of the entire case), the phone is ringing off the hook with desperate, perspective new clients given unrealistically expedited hearing dates that should have been used for the cases “orbited” to the end of the docket.
Also, having not practiced privately for many years, Garland appears to have forgotten the Code of Ethics.
Attorneys are obligated not to take on work (even pro bono work) that they can’t professionally and timely handle.
Yet, Garland is pushing them to do exactly that! The choice is let folks try to prepare their own cases (literally tantamount to a “death sentence” in many cases); or
Take on work you can’t handle (a clear ethical violation that could have the same unfavorable result for the client).
There actually are ways of working with outside experts to increase pro bono representation. One of the most promising is the the amazing VIISTA Program created and run by Professor Michele Pistone at Villanova Law to train non-attorney “Accredited Representatives” to handle pro bono asylum cases.
I have no knowledge that Garland or anyone at EOJ/EOIR has ever reached out to Professor Pistone, despite recommendations that Garland do so.
Worse yet, Garland has allowed his “EOIR Clown Show” to also create a “new backlog” in the approval process for Accredited Representatives! Talk about clueless, counterproductive mismanagement!
Garland’s mis-handling of EOIR and his new round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” raises serious issues about his own performance.
Whatever happened to Democratic oversight of EOIR in Congress? Why is Garland getting a “free pass” on mismanagement of EOIR, his furtherundermining of Due Process in Immigration Court, and his disrespectful treatment of the immigration pro bono and low bono bar?
🎅🏻🎁🧸🎄😇“Happy Holidays from the U.S. Government! Don’t these folks know they could avoid this fate if they only would take our advice and ‘due in place’ — out of sight, out of mind.” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Arelis R. Hernandez Southern Border Reporter Washington Post
EL PASO — Chaos, confusion and disillusionment marked the experience of many of the first asylum seekers to be enrolled in the Biden administration’s revised “Remain in Mexico” program, saying they understood little about what was happening or why they were selected.
The Trump-era program — formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — returns border-crossers to Mexico to await the outcomes of their asylum claims and resumed earlier this month under court order. Although the Biden administration said it has made changes to the program that make it more humane, several of the first enrollees interviewed by The Washington Post said they did not understand documents they were asked to sign, did not have access to lawyers and were puzzled about why they were not released along with some of their compatriots.
Three men — two from Nicaragua and one from Venezuela — who were among the more than 160 migrants enrolled so far, said they had been robbed or extorted before crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The men, who were fleeing political persecution, said they hoped for relief in the United States, but instead felt as if they had won a raffle they never entered.
“I told the asylum officer I’d rather be in a U.S. detention center than be sent back to Mexico,” said Pedro, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Nicaragua. “It’s dangerous for us.”
(The Washington Post is identifying the men only by their first names because they fear they might jeopardize their cases by speaking publicly.)
Biden’s Department of Homeland Security is still trying to terminate MPP, even though it was ordered to reimplement it by a federal judge. The administration lost an appeal of the ruling this week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Louisiana upheld the lower court decision. The circuit court order said the Biden administration erred when it issued a memo earlier this year terminating the program, “affecting billions of dollars and countless people.” The program, which is in effect in one border community and accepting only men, will soon expand to six more communities and could soon include families.
[‘Remain in Mexico’ program begins in El Paso amid skepticism from advocates]
Advocates say that MPP subjects migrants to a policy as hazardous to their lives as the reasons that prompted them to flee to the United States for protection. They say the revised version of the program is as flawed as it was under the Trump administration, when the New York-based nonprofit Human Rights First tracked more than 1,500 “violent attacks” against migrants.
“The Biden administration’s revamped ‘Remain in Mexico’ is already presenting security and due process concerns we saw under the Trump administration,” said Julia Neusner, who interviewed 16 MPP enrollees for Human Rights First. “I anticipate this process will deny people their due process rights and accessing counsel. This policy is inherently dangerous and I expect it to cause tremendous suffering as the rollout expands.”
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Read the full article at the link.
”Let ‘Em Die In Mexico!” What a thoughtful way for the world’s richest and most powerful nation to recognize and honor the birth of Christ. Doubt that Jesus would approve, though! He’d more likely be found among the “floaters” than with the arrogant, privileged, inhumane politicos and judges who came up with this idea and then enabled it!
Completely unnecessary! The incoming Biden Administration had the blueprints to reestablish due process and the rule of law at the border and to start robust, realistic, expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries. The practical human rights/immigration experts who could have pulled it off were out there.
The Administration could have “hit the ground running” with bold innovative actions, practical expert leadership, and a show of competence and humanity. But, they didn’t!
Instead, Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland dissed the progressive experts, ignored their recommendations, and froze them out of key judicial and leadership positions, preferring instead to use modified versions of “proven to fail deterrence-only programs” administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers. (There is an important legal doctrine of “mixed motive” that politicos, bureaucrats, and bad judges often choose to ignore when it suits them.)
Not surprisingly, this ridiculous, muddled “Miller Lite” approach has been spectacularly unsuccessful! Predictably, flows of desperate refugees, generated largely by circumstances outside our immediate control (contrary to restrictionist myths reinforced by some enforcement aficionados and mindlessly repeated by some mainstream media) have continued. Humans have continued to needlessly suffer and die. Backlogs have grown without credible plans to address them. The rule of law and the U.S. justice system (led by failed Immigration Courts, but also including poorly functioning and too often “brain dead” jurists at all levels of the Federal Judiciary) has continued to flounder and lose credibly. The “die in place and never darken our doors” message delivered by Gauleiter Miller and his acolytes, cluelessly repeated by VP Harris, hasn’t convinced anyone. Would YOU basically accept an invitation to “commit slow suicide by persecution rather than taking a chance on survival.”
And, also predictably, nobody is pleased or supportive of the Biden Administration’s inept and disingenuous approach. From hard core racist nativists to liberal asylum advocates, nobody, but nobody, outside the Administration’s party line flackies, supports this approach! Indeed, nobody in the Administration can even explain what they are doing on any particular day in a coherent manner.
Humanity, moral courage, common sense, and the rule of law might be taking a holiday. But death and despair don’t.
For “respondents” (non-citizens in removal proceedings) and their lawyers, Individual Hearings in Immigration Court are a big deal. Evidence must be gathered. Affidavits have to be prepared, checked, and re-checked. Witnesses must be identified, convinced to attend the hearing, and prepared for trial. Respondents practice their testimony. In most cases, the noncitizen has been waiting for many months or years for the trial date. The result of the trial determines whether the applicant can remain in the United States or must leave. When a respondent receives asylum, he is permitted to stay in the U.S. If he loses, he may be deported to a country where he faces danger. In many cases, respondents have family members here or overseas who are counting on them, and the outcome of the case affects the family members as well as the respondent. All of this provokes anxiety and anticipation. In short, Individual Hearings are life-changing events that profoundly effect respondents and their families.
So what happens when the Individual Hearing is canceled?
“Sorry boys and girls, the ‘nice’ list is too long. We’ll reschedule Christmas for next year… or maybe the year after that.”
The first thing to know is that cancellations are common. Cases are canceled weeks, days or even minutes before the scheduled time. Indeed, we often cannot be sure that a case will actually go forward until the hearing begins.
Why does this happen?
There are many reasons, some more legitimate than others. The most common reason these days is the pandemic. Sometimes, courts close due to potential exposures. That is understandable, but as far as I can tell, these represent a small minority of Covid cancellations. I have had 50% or more of my Individual Hearings canceled over the last year and a half, and none of those was caused by a Covid exposure. I suspect that the large majority of these cancellations are due to reduced capacity to hear cases–since judges and staff are often working from home. Indeed, most pandemic cancellations seem to occur a week or two before the Individual Hearing. By that time, we’ve already completed and submitted the evidence, witness list, and legal brief, and have usually started prepping the client for trial. The client is also psychologically gearing up for the big event.
And then we check the online system and find that the case is off the docket.
What’s so frustrating about these cancellations is that we’ve been living with the pandemic since early 2020. The Immigration Courts should have adjusted by now. If cases need to be canceled, why not do that several months in advance? At least that way, applicants would not build up hope, only to have that dashed when the case is cancelled at the last minute. Also, it wastes attorney time–since we will have to submit updated country condition evidence (and perhaps other evidence) later, re-prep witnesses, and potentially prepare new legal briefs, if the law changes (which is more common than you’d like to think). For attorneys who charge hourly, this additional work will involve additional costs to the applicants. So all around, last minute cancellations are harmful, and it’s hard to understand why they are still so frequent.
“I’m double booked today, so let’s put off your heart surgery until 2023.”
Besides the pandemic, court cases are cancelled for a host of other reasons: Immigration Judges (“IJs”) are out sick, hearings get bumped to accommodate “priority” cases or sometimes cases are “double booked,” meaning that they are scheduled for the same time slot with the same IJ, and so only one can go forward. To me, all these are weak excuses for canceling individual hearings. Most courts have several judges, and so if one judge is out sick, or if a priority case must be scheduled at the last minute, another judge should be able to help out (in all but the most complicated cases, judges need little time to prepare for a hearing, and so should be able to adjudicate a case on short notice). Also, there is no excuse for double-booking cases. IJs should have a sense of their schedules and simply not overbook. In addition, all courts are overseen by Assistant Chief Immigration Judges (“ACIJs”), who should be available to hear cases if need be. Finally, given the ubiquity of video conferencing equipment and electronic records, judges can adjudicate cases remotely, and so there should almost always be a judge available to fill in where needed.
Of course, there are times when case cancellations are unavoidable, due to inclement weather, for example. But in an ideal world, these should be rare.
“Oy vey! I have to give priority to a better-looking couple. Let’s reschedule this wedding for later. Are you free in 2024?”
If the delay caused by case cancellations was measured in weeks or even months, the problem would not be so severe. But in many cases, hearings are postponed for one or two years–or even longer! This is obviously distressing for the applicant, as the long-anticipated end date is pushed back to who-knows-when. It is particularly devastating for applicants who are separated from family members. The long postponements are also a problem for the case itself, as evidence becomes stale and must be replaced with more up-to-date information, and laws change, which can require a new legal brief. In short, these delays often force the applicant (and the applicant’s lawyer) to do significant extra work on the case, and this can add additional costs in terms of legal fees.
It seems obvious to me that courts do not fully appreciate the damage caused by last minute cancellations. If judges and staff (and management) knew more about the harm these cancellations cause, perhaps they would make a greater effort to ensure that hearings go forward, and that any delayed hearings are rescheduled as quickly as possible.
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Readers of “Courtside” are familiar with the “toxic culture” of EOIR — actively encouraged by some Attorneys General, enabled and abetted by others.
The real problem here is that Immigration Courts are “led” by “managers” beholden to political agendas rather than the public they should serve. Also, since far too many EOIR “managers” and Immigration Judges have never represented individuals in Immigration Court, they are basically clueless as to the human and practical effects of their actions on individuals as well as on the dedicated, often pro bono or “low bono” lawyers who must guide their desperate and often re-traumatized clients through this morass.
At a time when the need for pro bono assistance has never been greater, the disgraceful dysfunction, mismanagement, and “studied user unfriendliness” of EOIR under Garland is actually discouraging attorneys from donating their time and endangering their emotional well-being! Could there be any worse public policy?
With so many extraordinarily talented, creative, courageous, independent legal minds out there in the private/NGO/academic sector of human rights/immigration/racial justice/due process this “intentional mediocrity (or worse)” is inexcusable. Yet, this massive failure of the U.S. justice system at the most basic level gets scant attention outside of Courtside, LexisNexis, ImmigrationProf Blog, Jeffrey S. Chase Blog, The Asylumist, and a few other specialized websites.
This “leading disintegrator of American justice and cosmic threat to our entire democracy” is largely “shoved under the carpet” by “mainstream media,” leaders of the legal profession (outside of immigration/human rights), politicians, policy makers, and the general public. Will they only “wake up” when it is too late and their own rights and futures have been diminished, dehumanized, and de-personified as if they were “mere migrants, not humans?”
In other words, who in America will always be immune from the “Dred Scottification of the other” now practiced, tolerated, and often even encouraged at the highest levels of our government? Don’t think it couldn’t happen to you! If immigrants, asylum seekers, and migrants in the U.S. are not “persons” under the Fifth Amendment, what makes YOU think that YOUR “personhood” will be honored by the powers that be!
In defense of today’s IJs, they actually have remarkably little control over their own dockets which are incompetently “micromanaged” from on high or by non-judicial “administrators.” Sound like a formula for an incredible, largely self-created, 1.5 million case backlog?
Cutting to the chase, the Immigration Courts are controlled by the Attorney General, a political official and a chief prosecutor to boot. Beyond that, no Attorney General has actually had to experience practice before the totally dysfunctional and intentionally user unfriendly “courts” he or she runs.
Foreign Service Officers must initially serve as consuls — the basic operating level of an embassy. Hotel managers usually start by working the front desk, where the “rubber meets the road” in the industry.
But, we enthrone those who are supposed to be the best, wisest, and fairest in the legal profession as Attorneys General and Article III Judges without requiring that they have had experience representing individuals at the “retail level” of our legal system — the U.S. Immigration Courts.
It doesn’t make sense! But, what does figure is that a system run by those without expertise and relevant experience, haphazardly “supervised” by Article III Judges who almost invariably exhibit the same blind spots, indifference to injustice, and lack of practical knowledge and expertise as those they are “judicially reviewing” has devolved into the worst court system in America. It’s an oppressive catastrophe where “liberty and justice are not for all” and survival is often more about the mood, mindset, or personal philosophy of the judge, or the “whim of the day” of DOJ politicos, than it is about the facts of the case or the most fair and reasonable applications of the law by experts! Is this really the way we should be determining who lives and who dies, who thrives and who will struggle just to survive?
These “courts” are not fair and impartial courts at all. They are places where service to the public comes last, poor leadership and mismanagement are tolerated and even rewarded, backlogs are out of control, due process, fundamental fairness, scholarship, and best practices scorned, and precious lives and human dignity routinely are ground to dust and scattered to the wind.
We deserve better from our legal system!
Once, there was a court system with a dream of a better future for all in America — a noble, if ambitious, vision, if you will: “through teamwork and innovation, become the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”😎
Now, sadly, that enlightened vision has disintegrated into a nightmare of dedicated dockets, biased precedents, endless backlogs, sloppy work, due process denying gimmicks, bogus statistics, mediocre judicial selections, secrecy, customer unfriendliness, dishonest blame shifting, and ridiculous Aimless Docket Reshuffling.☠️
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “limited vision” for EOIR is a continuing nightmare for those sentenced to appear and practice before his stunningly dysfunctional and “highly user unfriendly” Immigration “Courts.” Isn’t it high time to insist that those given responsibility for stewardship over America’s largest — and probably most consequential — Federal “Court” system actually have represented humans before those “courts?” PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Where there once was the promise of “light at the end of the tunnel,” now there is only “Darkness on The Edge of Town:”
Well lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town
In the darkness on the edge of town
“Hey ladies, not every woman in Guatemala is hanging up there with you (yet), so what’s the problem,” says Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz of the 3rd. Cir.“ “She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Chavez-Chilel v. Atty. Gen., 3rd Cir., 12-09-21, published
PANEL: SHWARTZ, PORTER, and FISHER, Circuit Judges.
OPINION: Judge Patty Shwartz
KEY QUOTE:
Chavez-Chilel’s proposed PSG lacks particularity. “[N]ot every immutable characteristic is sufficiently precise to define a [PSG],” id. at 552, and courts have concluded that a proposed PSG of all women in a particular country “is overbroad[] because no factfinder could reasonably conclude that all [of a country’s] women had a well-founded fear of persecution based solely on their gender,” Safaie v. INS, 25 F.3d 636, 640 (8th Cir. 1994) (addressing Iranian women).8 Reasons to depart from this general rule are not present here. For example, in Hassan v. Gonzales, 484 F.3d 513 (8th Cir. 2007), the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recognized the PSG of all Somali women because “all Somali females have a well-founded fear of persecution based solely on gender given the prevalence of” female genital mutilation. Id. at 518; see also Mohammed v. Gonzales, 400 F.3d 785, 797–98 (9th Cir. 2005) (same); In re Kasinga, 21 I. & N. Dec. 357, 365–66 (B.I.A. 1996) (recognizing PSG of “young women” in a particular tribe in Togo due to pervasive practice of female
8 In Perdomo v. Holder, 611 F.3d 662, 668–69 (9th Cir. 2010), the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed with the BIA’s conclusion that “all women in Guatemala” was too broad a group to qualify as a PSG and remanded for further analysis. That case rested on the Ninth Circuit’s two-part definition of a PSG, which recognized any group “united by a voluntary association, including a former association, or by an innate characteristic that is so fundamental to the identities or consciences of its members that members either cannot or should not be required to change it.” Id. at 666 (quotation marks and emphasis omitted). This definition is not consistent with our Court’s three requirements for a PSG, see S.E.R.L., 894 F.3d at 540, so we decline to follow the reasoning in Perdomo.
14
genital mutilation). Here, by contrast, there is no record evidence that all Guatemalan women share a unifying characteristic that results in them being targeted for any form of persecution based solely on their gender. Cf. A.R. 170–73, 182 (Chavez-Chilel’s testimony that she knew of no other women who suffered sexual or domestic violence); A.R. 232 (report explaining that one-third more Guatemalan women experience sexual or domestic violence against them than women in Paraguay). Accordingly, while the size of the group standing alone would not disqualify a group from being a PSG, Cece v. Holder, 733 F.3d 662, 674–75 (7th Cir. 2013), Chavez- Chilel has failed to demonstrate that her proposed PSG is sufficiently particularized. Thus, her alleged fear of persecution based upon membership in such a group does not provide a basis for asylum. Because Chavez-Chilel cannot prove her asylum claim, she cannot meet the higher standard to obtain withholding of removal. See Blanco v. Att’y Gen., 967 F.3d 304, 315 (3d Cir. 2020). As a result, the IJ and BIA correctly denied her request for asylum and withholding of removal.9
This is a seriously flawed analysis. The court conflates psg “particularity” with nexus. Obviously, not every woman in Guatemala need fear persecution for some to be persecuted on that basis!
Suppose a few Jews escaped Nazi persecution. Does that mean Jews weren’t a PSG? Suppose only 10% of Poles were killed by the Nazis because of their ethnicity. Does that mean Poles were not a PSG? Suppose only 40% of Roma in a particular country are exterminated? Does that make Roma not a PSG? What if every Catholic in a particular country doesn’t have the exact same fear of persecution? Does that mean that Catholics don’t have a “well-founded fear”of persecution? Does that mean that Catholicism isn’t “one central reason” for persecution? Of course not, except in the uninformed minds of Judge Shwartz and her panel colleagues!
Obviously “women in Guatemala” is 1) fundamental to identity; 2) particularized (it clearly excludes non-women); and 3) distinct in Guatemalan society (and every other country in the world). Indeed, like family “women” and “men” are among the oldest, most fundamental, readily recognizable “particular social groups” in human existence!
I’m not the only critic of this outrageous misconstruction of asylum law!
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“Sir Jeffrey” Chase of the Round Table 🛡⚔️ says:
The court completely misconstrued the standard for determining particularity:
Here, by contrast, there is no record evidence that all Guatemalan women share a unifying characteristic that results in them being targeted for any form of persecution based solely on their gender.
Particularity of course is a clear marker for group inclusion, and does not require evidence that everyone in the group is being targeted for persecution – compare, e.g. family or land owners.
Professor Geoffrey Hoffman Immigraton Clinic Director University of Houston Law Center
Our friend and “practical scholar” colleague, Professor Geoffrey Hoffman of the University of Houston Law Center, adds:
Appears also to ignore the “once central reason” asylum rule in that the court is erroneously say gender must be “sole” reason (page 15, use of word “solely”)
So court got it wrong on 2 counts – not “all” women in Guatemala must be persecuted to form a valid PSG and gender need not be “sole reason” for the persecution.
Another colleague who practices in the 3rd Circuit sums it up succinctly and bluntly: “Awful!”
Dan Kowalski Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)
In addition to being legally wrong on a number of points, as pointed out by Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community, the court’s decision is horrible policy:
Note that the IJ DID grant CAT relief, and the government did NOT appeal that grant.
The “good news” is that the CAT grant prevents Ms. Chavez-Calel from being returned to torture and persecution in Guatemala. However, by misapplying asylum law, the court basically places her in an indefinite “limbo status.”
She therefore is deprived of the right to fully integrate into our society by getting a green card and becoming a citizen. The court also strips her of any realistic path to exercising political rights! What sense does manipulating the law to intentionally create disenfranchised subclasses in American society make when better alternatives are available?
To add insult to injury, in this decision the Third Circuit joined other Circuits and the BIA in giving DHS and EOIR a “pass” on their intentional decision not to comply with the INA requirements for issuing a Notice to Appear (“NTA”) to commence removal proceedings.
Obviously, these “ivory towerists” have never experienced the actual mess that occurs when overworked, understaffed Immigration Court clerks manually mail out subsequent notices, by regular U.S. Mail, using addresses haphazardly entered by DHS personnel in the chaos that often exists at the border and upon release from DHS detention.
Perhaps, in their exalted positions, these Article IIIs no longer have to rely on the ever-deteriorating service of the U.S. Postal service. This morning, I delivered a “mini-stack” of mis-delivered U.S. Mail to my next door neighbor. We seem to get mis-delivered mail on a weekly basis. And, I live in a reasonably “upscale” neighborhood, if I do say so myself — one where folks know all the neighbors and take the time to “re-route” misdirected mail. Think there are places America where that doesn’t happen?
What do these judges think “delivery accuracy” is in the communities and situations where most Immigration Court respondents live? Maybe, there was a good reason why Congress required the NTA, which, unlike subsequent EOIR notices, is often served personally, to contain accurate information on the time and place of their hearing.
Maybe, we need Federal Judges who live in the “real world” rather than abstract one they have constructed where the lives of migrants are at issue! Maybe, we need more Federal Judges who have seen and experienced the consequences of “poor and uninformed judging” on immigrant and ethnic communities in the U.S.!
At a time when the Supremes’ righty majority appears to be intent on dismantling half a century of established women’s rights, the Third Circuit’s wrong-headed decision is a further “body blow” to both the humanity and human rights of women throughout the world!
Judge Schwartz is an Obama appointee. Her panel colleagues are GOP appointees. We deserve better from our life-tenured Federal Judiciary! Much, much better!
They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs.The gruesome massacre three years ago, considered the worst in Haiti in decades, was more than the work of rival gangs fighting over territory. It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department announced last year.
Since then, Haiti’s gang members have grown so strong that they rule swaths of the country. The most notorious of them, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, fashions himself as a political leader, holding news conferences, leading marches and, this week, even parading around as a replacement for the prime minister in the violent capital.
. . . .
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Read the rest of this gruesome, yet telling, report at the link.
Over 21 years on the Immigration Bench as both a trial and appellate judge, I adjudicated thousands of asylum claims. The circumstances described on this article undoubtedly would give rise to many potentially valid asylum and withholding claims, based on actual or implied political opinion and/or family or gender-based “particular social groups” and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) grants based on torture with government acquiescence or actual connivance!
So, how do Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland, who to my knowledge have never represented an asylum applicant or adjudicated an individual asylum case among them, “get away” with simply suspending the rule of law, under false pretenses, for those entitled to seek asylum?
Stephen Miller must be on “Cloud Nine” as Biden & Co. carry out his White Nationalist plans to eradicate asylum, particularly when it protects women and people of color! This is even as Miller and his neo-Nazi cohorts (a/k/a “America First Legal”) are gearing up to sue the Biden Administration to block every measure that might aid immigrants, particularly those of color.
He’s delighted with Biden’s abuse of asylum seekers of color! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
NGOs don’t share the Biden Administration’s vision of what a “safe” Haiti looks like. Neither do kidnapped American missionaries! PHOTO: Marcelo Casal, Jr., Creative Commons License
Angering and alienating your potential allies and supporters to aid the far-right program of your enemies who are determined to do whatever it takes to undermine, discredit, and destroy your Presidency! Obviously, I’m no political expert. But, sure sounds like an incredibly stupid, “designed to fail” strategy to me!
USCIS: Effective Oct. 1, 2021, applicants subject to the immigration medical examination must complete the COVID-19 vaccine series and provide documentation of vaccination to the civil surgeon in person before the civil surgeon can complete an immigration medical examination and sign Form I-693, Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record. This guidance applies prospectively to Form I-693 signed by civil surgeons on or after Oct. 1, 2021.
WaPo: Up until Oct. 1, the Postal Service said it should take no more than three days for a piece of first-class mail to be delivered anywhere in the country. After Oct. 1, it will take between two and five days. From Oct. 3 to Dec. 26, the Postal Service is raising prices on some products through a holiday season surcharge. The price hikes are modest for some products (30 cents more for first-class package service), a bit more for others ($1 more for parcel-return service, deliveries from consumers back to retailers), and heftier still for others ($5 more for priority mail, priority express mail, parcel select and retail ground services for items weighing between 21 and 70 pounds).
NBC26: Organized by Voces de la Frontera, this action aims to increase economic and political pressure on President Biden, Vice President Harris and Congressional Democrats to deliver on their promise to pass a path to citizenship in the Build Back Better reconciliation budget bill this year.
Teen Vogue: This excerpt from “Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants’” explains how Italian immigrants used Christopher Columbus to assimilate to American culture and whiteness. For decades, Native Americans and their allies have demanded the end of celebrating Columbus, rightly characterizing him as a mercenary of the Spanish monarchy, an actor in and symbol of the onset of European genocidal colonization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
WaPo: A U.S.-based economist won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for pioneering research that transformed widely held ideas about the labor force, showing how an increase in the minimum wage doesn’t hinder hiring and immigrants do not lower pay for native-born workers.
NYGov: Threats to report a person’s immigration status can currently be treated as a crime in cases of labor trafficking and sex trafficking, but were not previously treated as potential extortion or coercion offenses.
Documented: The courts have been pushing individual hearings forward often too soon for immigrants and attorneys to properly prepare. Individual hearings, particularly for asylum cases, require rigorous preparation both from immigrants, who must recount traumatic details of their lives for a successful case, and attorneys, who must submit dozens of pages of paperwork and work alongside their clients to equip them for the court date.
WaPo: The NBPC does not encourage members to get vaccinated and has said it would like to file a legal challenge to Biden’s mandate that all federal employees be immunized by Nov. 22, but it has not yet found lawyers willing to take the case.
AP: A federal appeals court on Tuesday tossed out California’s ban on privately owned immigration detention facilities, keeping intact a key piece of the world’s largest detention system for immigrants.
Business Insider: During his appearance on Fox News, Trump repeatedly claimed that Haitians trying to enter the US are infected with AIDS… Contrary to his assertions, the prevalence of HIV among Haitian adults aged 15 to 49 is around 1.9%, according to data from the United Nations. While that’s higher than the global rate of 0.7%, reports say Haiti’s HIV prevalence rate has declined significantly in recent decades.
Law360: A U.S. Air Force veteran has another chance to fight his deportation to Trinidad after the Third Circuit found that an immigration appeals board used the wrong legal standard to bar evidence that he may be tortured if deported.
AILA: The court held that, given petitioner’s status as a pro se litigant, her Notice of Appeal was sufficiently specific to inform the BIA of the issues challenged on appeal, and thus the BIA violated her right to due process by summarily dismissing her appeal. (Nolasco-Amaya v. Garland, 9/28/21)
Law360: The Ninth Circuit confirmed that a conviction under a state assault law criminalizing HIV transmission amounts to a federal “crime of violence” for the purposes of deporting a Salvadoran man who shot his friend, saying the key common ingredient is intent.
Law360: A California law banning private immigration detention facilities and other private prisons doesn’t pass legal muster because it would impede the federal government’s immigration enforcement, a split Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday, undoing a lower court’s decision to keep most of the law in place as litigation proceeds.
AILA: The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, holding that DOS’s interpretation of several Presidential Proclamations to prevent U.S. consulates and embassies in those countries from adjudicating visas was unlawful. (Kinsley, et al. v. Blinken, et al., 10/5/21)
AILA: The parties reached a settlement to resolve the plaintiffs’ Motion for Award of Attorneys’ Fees and Costs under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), in which the government agreed to pay $1,150,000 in attorneys’ fees and litigation costs. (Flores, et al. v. Garland, et al., 9/30/21)
CGRS: The Lowenstein Project at Yale Law School submitted today an emergency request for precautionary measures against the United States on behalf of asylum seekers who face grave dangers because the Biden administration continues to illegally block and expel them. The request was submitted under Article 25 of the Rules of Procedure to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Law360: Texas and Louisiana called on the full Fifth Circuit to reinstate a block on the Biden administration’s policy curbing immigration enforcement operations, saying Thursday that the federal government was ducking its obligation to arrest noncitizens convicted of serious crimes.
Law360: A Libyan man formerly employed as a government worker under the Gaddafi regime and his wife have filed suit in Michigan federal court against the federal government and the Chicago asylum processing center, saying five years is too long to wait for an asylum interview.
Law360: An Afghan man who worked with the U.S. government in the Central Asian country told a California federal court that the U.S. Department of State failed to protect his children from the Taliban while their visa applications are processed.
Law360: A bipartisan group of senators announced new legislation this week that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching Americans’ digital devices at the border.
Law360: The Biden administration asked the Fifth Circuit to shelve its appeal of a lower court order blocking the federal government from approving new applications to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while it firms up the details of a replacement rule.
AILA: Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) announcement of an inflationary increase to the Refugee Cash Assistance program’s monthly payment ceilings, effective October 1, 2021. (86 FR 54466, 10/1/21)
Call for Examples: The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS) is collecting the following information regarding the treatment of asylum and withholding of removal cases following Attorney General Garland’s vacatur of Matter of A-B- I/II, Matter of L-E-A- II, and Matter of A-C-A-A-. To report an outcome in your case and share any sample case documents, please follow the instructions here. To share information regarding OIL’s position in your case, please email the following to CGRS-ABTracking@uchastings.edu. To share information regarding ICE OCC’s position in your case, please complete this survey for each individual case.
Shifting cases around without working with the parties in advance to insure that the new dates are achievable is totally insane! No experienced practitioner or expert would “run the railroad” this way! But, Garland does!
To state the obvious, many attorneys practice in multiple jurisdictions and are already fully or heavily booked. Additionally, my experience was that “move ups” without consultation with both parties, including ICE ACC, often resulted in missing ICE files, unavailable witnesses, unavailable interpreters, or incomplete fingerprint reports which caused additional unnecessary continuances and yet more “ADR.”
“Motions to continue” are not the answer. The system is already backlogged. In an obvious denial of due process, it actually discourages Immigration Judges from granting reasonable continuances in a number of ways, including bogus “case completion quotas” and onerous requirements for justifications for granting continuances. It’s ADR on steroids!
An obvious solution, ignored by Garland and his subordinates:
Return “docket control” to the local Immigration Judges where it has always belonged;
Have Immigration Judges and Court Administrators work cooperatively with the local bar, the ICE OCC, and NGOs, in advance, to come up with rational scheduling procedures that meet everyone’s legitimate needs;
Encourage ICE and the local bar to work cooperatively to identify cases that can potentially be moved up for “short hearings.” Let the parties, who have a strong joint interest in rational dockets, propose the solutions, rather than having politicos impose them from above through clueless agency bureaucrats who are unqualified to “micromanage” dockets!
The real fundamental problem here: Garland is improperly trying to “run” his huge, dysfunctional court system with bureaucrats and politicos who have no recent “real life” experience representing individuals in Immigration Court.
Garland’s inexplicable determination to eschew appointing “progressive practical experts’ with the skills and courage to fix this system has become a (totally unnecessary) national disgrace!
Judge Garland’s gross mismanagement of EOIR is “ratcheting up the pressure” on practitioners in NYC and across the nation!
I have spent much of my legal career, inside and outside the government, seeking to ensure that the United States abides by its non-refoulement obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“CAT”), and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Protocol”), which modifies and incorporates the terms of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”). Article 3 of the CAT categorically prohibits State Parties from expelling, returning, or extraditing any person, without exception, to any State where there are “substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Article 33 of the Refugee Convention, subject to certain narrow exceptions, flatly prohibits State Parties from expelling or returning (‘refouler’) refugees in any manner whatsoever to “the frontiers of territories” where their life or freedom would be threatened on one of [the designated grounds].
I write first, because I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti. Second, my concerns have only been heightened by recent tragic events in Haiti, which had led this Administration wisely to extend temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians already in the United States. Third, lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist, and there are approaching opportunities in the near future to substitute those alternatives in place of the current, badly flawed policy.
. . . .
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First, let me assure you that the DOS’s ridiculous claim that Koh’s departure was “long planned,” and its equally ludicrous suggestion that he would continue to play a meaningful role as a fake “consultant” is pure, unadulterated BS!💩 Indeed, I’d encourage the DOS Inspector General to investigate and report on just what are Koh’s new “consulting duties,” his compensation arrangements, and exactly what he produces after today!
You don’t hire high level Administration officials with “a long planned expectation” that they will depart in fewer than nine months. Come on, man, how dumb do you think we are?
Losing someone of Koh’s reputation and abilities is a huge, yet well deserved, “black eye” for an Administration that has ditched the progressive human right experts who helped them get into the dance in the first place!
And, for what? It’s not that so-called “moderates,” fickle “independents,” and GOP nativists have been lining up to congratulate Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland on their continuation of bogus, racially charged restrictionist policies at the border. Abandoning your stated values, dissing campaign promises, pissing off your allies, while still earning slings and arrows from your opponents has to be the world’s dumbest policy!
Second, what’s also pure unadulterated BS 💩 is the Administration’s assertion, unethically defended by Garland’s DOJ, that misuse and gross abuse of Title 42 in a cowardly attempt to thwart asylum seekers of color has anything whatsoever to do with science or public health.
The truth is is stark as it is ugly:
There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus. “That was a Stephen Miller special. He was all over that,” a former Pence aide told the AP.
Of course there wasn’t! Even Stephen Miller didn’t pretend very hard that there was.
He just counted on a complicit Supremes and enough right wing toady judges afraid to do their jobs to get away with it. He was dead wrong about District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.
But, in the end, that didn’t make any difference. Although he probably hadn’t predicted it, Miller found a key ally in “what me worry, not my family, only some non-white asylum seekers” AG Merrick Garland.
Merrick Garland’s ancestors were saved! Why should he worry about the people of color he condemns without due process in his dysfunctional and biased Immigration “Courts” and by defending Stephen Miller’s neo-Nazi anti-asylum, White Nationalist border policies? PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
Garland inexplicably and despicably took up Miller’s unethical, illegal, and immoral cause and found some bad judges on the DC Circuit willing to help trash Black Haitians and other migrants of color. This was certainly not one of American law’s better episodes, as history will eventually document.
There is no sugar coating it! When it comes to treatment of asylum seekers of color at our Southern Border, the Biden Administration is carrying out the “Miller Lite” version of neo-Nazi Stephen Miller’s deadly White Nationalism. Shame!🤮 We’re no closer to a coherent, practical, moral, legal asylum policy at our Southern Border today than we were on Jan. 20!
As Koh points out, there have been better alternatives on asylum seekers and the border since day one of the Administration! They have just refused to take them!
Also, a complicit AG Garland who has consistently failed to stand up for the human and legal rights of migrants of color and to“just say no” to Stephen Miller’s illegal policies and contrived, clearly pretextual justifications, has been a major cause of this ongoing political, moral, legal, and humanitarian disaster.
“I believe when I go to do this work, I need to integrate myself into the lives of the people I’m covering,” he says. “I don’t want them to see me as above them. We’re on the same level; we’re human.”
That context is needed to understand why Dennison entered the Darién Gap several weeks ago and why, unlike other photographers and videographers, he didn’t take any security guards with him.
That decision would end up giving him a different experience from that of others who have gone there to document the harrowing passage. They have left that jungle and come home with photos that show the horrific struggles of others. He almost didn’t leave the jungle, and he came home with only a fraction of the photos he took and with his own horrific story.
“What he’s been through is horrible and really disturbing,” says Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer who is the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado, an advocacy and legal aid organization that serves migrants, refugees and deportees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The organization has been working with Dennison to create a film that captures the experiences of U.S.-bound Black migrants.
“The only way to understand it is to see it, and that’s what he’s providing,” Pinheiro says. “It’s really important that people understand what’s happening, and that it’s not over in Del Rio.”
The Biden administration recently cleared out a border camp in Del Rio, Tex., where an estimated 15,000 migrants, most of them Haitian nationals seeking asylum, had gathered. The clearing out of the camp came after viral images and video footage showed Border Patrol agents on horseback grabbing migrants and charging at them. In one video, a young girl in a mint-green dress scrambles to get out of the way of a horse heading toward her.
President Biden decried the agents’ actions, and the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into the incident.
But what happened in Del Rio captures only part of what many Haitians experience to get to the United States. Many pass through the Darién Gap, some with children in tow and infants strapped to their backs or chests. Officials in Panama have said that a record 70,000 people traveled the 66 miles through the terrain this year.
Before going, Dennison did extensive research on what to expect: spiders with bites that can cause death within six hours, criminals who routinely rob travelers, and polluted water that if not filtered can sicken you. But nothing, he says, could have prepared him for what he experienced.
“When you’re in the jungle, you’re no longer a filmmaker,” he says. “You’re no longer a humanitarian. It becomes about survival.”
. . . .
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Read the full story at the link.
Sad as truth is, it’s not rocket science:
Desperate people do (and will continue to do) desperate things;
For forced migrants, the dangers of staying will always exceed those of leaving;
“Die in place” isn’t a “policy;”
“Deterrence only” can’t work in the long run;
While institutionalized racism has a long history in U.S. immigration policy, it’s never been a good policy for America, nor will it ever be!
Honestly, where does the Biden Administration get these folks who don’t “get the obvious,” lie about it, and then expect good results?
Right now, after nearly eight months, the Biden Administration still appearsto be in no better position to process the next border influx than they were on January 20, despite numerous warnings and eight months of graphic practical and humanitarian failures. Racially charged rhetoric and more cruel, wasteful, dishonest enforcement and removals won’t do it!
We need reopened legal border ports of entry staffed with more and better Asylum Officers overseen by a pragmatic progressive corps of expert Immigration Judges and a BIA composed of progressive asylum experts with the guts to knock heads and get our broken border legal system back to functionality. To state the obvious, that would promote consistency, transparency, and take some of the pressure off of the Article III Courts!
Because neither Mayorkas nor Garland is committed to taking the bold actions necessary to change the dynamics at the border, America, the Biden Administration, and vulnerable legal asylum seekers appear headed for another four years of avoidable failure with all of its unhappy human and political consequences!
If you’re a person who believes it’s literally no one’s business who gets an abortion other than that of the pregnant individual undergoing the procedure, you’ve likely been incandescent with rage since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decided to allow Texas to proceed with an insane law that prohibits terminating pregnancies after six weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest. That anger likely stems from not just the law itself but having to listen to the chorus of dumbass voices who’ve come out backing Texas for effectively banning people from obtaining an abortion, from Tucker Carlson, who opined that the law shows “democracy does still exist,” to California gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner, who ironically commented that she supports Texas’s right to choose its own laws.
Of course, another one of those voices is the Lone Star state governor Greg Abbott, who signed the bill into law in May, saying at the time, “Our creator endowed us with the right to life and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion,” and that the Texas Legislature “worked together on a bipartisan basis to pass a bill that…ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion.” (That both sides of the aisle supported the bill would be news to Texas Democrats, as just a single one of them voted for it.)
Asked on Tuesday why his state felt the need to “force a rape or incest victim to carry a pregnancy to term,” Abbott responded like only a person who really, really hates women can, claiming, “It doesn’t require that at all.” He added: “Because obviously it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion, so for one it doesn’t [require] that. That said, however, let’s make something very clear. Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with the fact that Abbott is claiming that because the law allows for abortion up to six weeks, it’s not forcing anyone to do anything. As doctors, people who’ve been pregnant before, and people who’ve bothered to read a book on the subject before crafting legislation on it have noted, by the time a person misses her first period, she’s already roughly four weeks pregnant. That means that under Texas law, someone would have no more than two weeks, not six, to determine she’s pregnant and decide whether or not to get an abortion. Even in the case of people who are actively trying to get pregnant, that window can narrow even further for numerous reasons including if they have irregular cycles. Usually, then, one would make an appointment with a doctor to confirm the pregnancy, and as Abbott may or may not know, healthcare in America is not the greatest, so she may not be able to be seen for several weeks. And that hugely generous two weeks is not only a joke for many people actively trying to have a child, but for the majority of people who are not. “It is extremely possible and very common for people to get to the six-week mark and not know they are pregnant,” Jennifer Villavicencio, M.D., lead for equity transformation at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told The New York Times. In other words, Abbott should fuck all the way off with his “obviously it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”
Then there’s the hilarious remark that he’s going to eliminate rape in Texas, so not allowing individuals to terminate pregnancies that result from heinous crimes is a moot point. Really, Abbott is going to make Texas rape-free? If he had that power, why didn’t he do it prior to enacting this law? The victims of the 14,824 reported rapes in his state in 2019, when he was four years into his first term, would probably love to know! (For those of you keeping up at home, that figure made Texas the No. 1 state for rape that year.)
Of course, Abbott is far from the first politician to say something ridiculously idiotic about abortion and rape. In fact, he joins a long line of assholes who’ve smugly offered their moronic two cents on the matter, an illustrious group that includes:
The Ohio state legislature, which introduced a bill in 2019 requiring doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into the uterus, or face charges of “abortion murder,” despite the fact that such a procedure is medically impossible;
Former Texas state representative Jodie Laubenberg, who claimed while in office that rape victims don’t need access to legal abortion, because they can get “cleaned out” with rape kits, which obviously is not at all how rape kits work;
Representative Michael Burgess, who somehow obtained a medical degree in 1977, and declared that male fetuses masturbate in utero—naturally, there is no evidence of this—, so abortions shouldn’t be allowed;
Former North Carolina state representative Henry Aldridge, who once said, “The facts show that people who are raped—who are truly raped—the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work, and they don’t get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever.” (Medical authorities do not agree with this);
Former congressman Todd Akin, who boldly declared on the campaign trail: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Welcome to the club, Greg! Can’t wait to hear you parse the nuances of putting $10,000 bounties on the heads of individuals trying to help people escape your barbaric law.
In other Abbott news…
When he’s not signing and defending disgraceful abortion bills, he’s disenfranchising millions of his constituents. Per Bloomberg:
Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed one of the nation’s most aggressive laws curbing access to the ballot, joining a wave of such restrictions enacted after former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. The legislature passed the measure last month after an exodus from the state by Democratic lawmakers during the first of two special sessions. After the walkout sputtered, Republican lawmakers passed the bill without delay.
Republicans have spent months raising doubts about the 2020 election, which experts say was one of the nation’s most secure. Now, supporters of new state laws say too many voters have lost faith in voting systems, and must be reassured.
“We must have trust and confidence in our elections,” Abbott said at a signing ceremony in Tyler, Texas. “The bill that I’m about to sign helps to achieve that goal. It ensures that every eligible voter will have the opportunity to vote.” Of course, that’s an interesting way to describe a law that makes it harder to vote, by, among other things, ending drive-thru voting, limiting mail-in voting, and endowing partisan poll watchers with more power. In a tweet, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote “This law is unconstitutional and anti-democratic. Texas—we’ll see you in court. Again.” Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic U.S. representative from El Paso, wrote in a statement: “Governor Abbott is restricting the freedom to vote for millions of Texans. Instead of working on issues that actually matter, like protecting school kids from Covid or fixing our failing electrical grid, Abbott is focused on rigging our elections and implementing extreme, right-wing policies.”
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You can check out the rest of the always lively and entertaining “Levin Report” at the above link. Like their lost idol, Abbott & DeSantis are plumbing the absolute bottom of American politics and actually killing and irreparably harming their “constituents” as they do it. Undoubtedly, that will make them “heroes” in today’s existentially dangerous “anti-heroic, anti-democracy” GOP!
Garland’s “right hand man” on EOIR matters is eerily familiar, in a Himmleresque way! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com“Miller’s Mob” is still alive and well at Garland’s EOIR. Legal asylum seekers — not so well, not so alive! https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons LicenseBIA Asylum Panel In Action — At Garland’s BIA, a “Miller-trained and inspired” Asylum Panel can, and does, kill dozens of unarmed asylum seekers in a single day to “make quota.” Despite being thoroughly discredited for judicial use, Garland has inexplicably continued due-process-denying, corner-cutting, quality-killing “production quotas” for his assembly line worker/judges in Immigration Courts! Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:
“Ms. Munyuh’s case concerns us. From our reading of the record, the IJ seemed determined to pick every nit she could find. Besides erring procedurally, the IJ discounted probative evidence on flimsy grounds and displayed a dubious understanding of how rape survivors ought to act. Although we give great deference to the IJ as factfinder, substantial-evidence review does not require us to credit the credibility finding of an IJ who cherry-picks from—or misconstrues—the record to reach it. The IJ must consider the “totality of the circumstances, and all relevant factors.” 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii) (emphasis added). At the very least, the two legal errors we have identified warrant remand. The IJ erred by failing to give specific, cogent reasons for rejecting Ms. Munyuh’s reasonable, plausible explanations for the discrepancies tied to her declaration that the police truck broke down after only four or five kilometers. And she further erred by discounting the supporting documentation without giving Ms. Munyuh adequate notice and opportunity to provide corroborative evidence. We therefore vacate the removal order and remand the case to the Board for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. PETITION GRANTED; VACATED and REMANDED.”
Congrats to Attorney Ronald D. Richey, who appeared before me many times at the Arlington Immigration Court.
Ronald D. Richey, Esquire Rockville, MD
Here’s a quote from the opinion by Senior Circuit Judge Danny Boggs, a Reagan appointee “on loan” from the 6th Cir., that shows the appallingly unprofessional performance of the Immigration Judge and the BIA in this “life or death” case:
On this point, the IJ made findings with which no reasonable factfinder could agree. She found Ms. Munyuh’s testimony that “the truck had traveled over two hours” to conflict with her earlier estimate that it had traveled “over an hour.” And she found Ms. Munyuh’s redirect testimony that “the truck [had] traveled approximately four to five hours before breaking down” to be “clearly in conflict with each of [Ms. Munyuh]’s prior estimations.”
But these time estimates are all consistent with each other. Indeed, assuming the truck really had traveled for four to five hours, Ms. Munyuh had no other choice but to give those answers. The IJ asked her if the truck had traveled more or less than an hour, to which Ms. Munyuh said more than an hour. Then the IJ asked whether the truck had traveled at least two hours, to which Ms. Munyuh answered in the affirmative.
No reasonable factfinder could find those two statements to conflict with Ms. Munyuh’s later testimony that the truck traveled for four to five hours. The IJ’s contrary finding is therefore unsupported by substantial evidence.
Wow! Is this what constituted “acceptable performance” when Judge Garland was on the D.C. Circuit? And, don’t forget, OIL actually defended this garbage product in May 2021, well after Garland took office and after experts had advised him to “clean house.”
The bad judges at EOIR whose lack of competence and/or bias unfairly condemn asylum seekers to persecution, torture and death, or all three, do NOT have life tenure and should NOT be on the Immigration Bench. Period! It’s not rocket science!
“No reasonable fact finder.” Isn’t that a problem in life or death cases? So-called “judges” who time after time stretch and misinterpret facts, ignore due process, and misapply basic asylum law to unfairly sentence asylum seekers to death! Why isn’t this grounds for removal from the bench? Or at least removing them from all asylum cases!
While Judge Boggs and his colleagues are rightfully “concerned” with EOIR’s performance in this case, Garland doesn’t appear to share those concerns. This is “business as usual” at Garland’s EOIR, just as it was when Stephen Miller was calling the shots! Obviously, Garland isn’t taking the human lives at stake here with even a modicum of seriousness. That’s totally unacceptable! Maybe Judge Boggs needs to pick up pen ✒️ and paper 📜 and express his outrage in writing to his former Circuit Court colleague, attaching an annotated copy of the garbage being turned out by his EOIR Star Chambers!
Just look the other way, it’s the Garland way! “Justice” Star Chamber Style
Also, don’t think that cases like this are an “aberration.” No, they aren’t! The only “aberration” is that this is one of a tiny sliver of injustices that was actually caught and corrected by the Article IIIs. How many unrepresented or under-represented individuals do you think that this judge and this BIA panel “railroad” in a week?
🏴☠️⚰️THEATER OF THE ABSURD: Incredibly, Garland & Mayorkas are now proposing to put this “Miller-Lite” EOIR infested with many incompetent, poorly trained, asylum-denying “judges,” with no credible leadership, totally lacking in professionalism and quality control, “in charge” of establishing precedents, insuring, and enforcing due process in their proposed “streamlined” asylum system! In other words, the solution for those who have repeatedly demonstrated an outrageous inability to conduct fair hearings and whose ignorance of asylum law and best practices is often stunning is to put them in charge of doing “paper reviews” of applications denied by Asylum Officers!
Good luck with that! Could there be a more insane proposal under current conditions? Making Stephen Miller the new “Asylum Czar” at EOIR? Perhaps, don’t be surprised!
Of course, in the nutsos world of Garland and Mayorkas, their fatally flawed proposal arguably would be a better than the current illegal and immoral use of Miller’s bogus Title 42 scheme to return legal asylum seekers to torture or death WITHOUT ANY PROCESS WHATSOEVER.
It’s simple. A complete “housecleaning” at EOIR, starting with the BIA, new progressive leadership and professional expert training at EOIR and the Asylum Office, new progressive asylum precedents and guidance, and an operating program for universal representation of asylum seekers are ABSOLUTE PREREQUISITES for fair and efficient regulatory reform of the asylum system! In the meantime, allow Asylum Officers to grant asylum to those who pass credible fear, but continue to give full Immigration Court hearings to any who can’t be granted. Get rid of Title 42 and start processing legal asylum seekers in an orderly fashion through ports of entry!
More than seven months into the Administration, Garland and Mayorkas could, and should, have had these needed progressive personnel, leadership, and structural changes in place, producing due process, and most important, actually saving lives! Instead, they have wasted time and squandered goodwill by continuing to run Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist system with Miller’s personnel in place! Simply incredible!
And, the bumbling, highly predictable weakness of the team of DOJ lawyers trying to defend the Administration’s few humanitarian immigration initiatives has become patently obvious. How can you expect lawyers who have spent the last four years misrepresenting asylum seekers as less than human and a threat to society suddenly start setting the record straight and effectively advocating for their human and legal rights? Obviously, they can’t! While EOIR is clearly the most glaringly dysfunctional part of DOJ, it’s obviously not the only problem and the only place Team Garland needed to (but didn’t) “clean house.”
I “get” that this isn’t Judge Bell’s, Ben Civiletti’s, or Janet Reno’s DOJ any more! But, remarkably, and tragically for the poor souls and their lawyers involved, Garland doesn’t!
Heather Cox Richardson Historian Professor, Boston College
Heather Cox Richardson — Letters From An American — 08-08-21
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Republican-led states have been hit the hardest. Last week, Florida and Texas alone made up one out of every three new cases, and now Florida is the center of the pandemic. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 23,903 new cases in Florida that day alone. Hospitals are filling up as unvaccinated Americans need medical care; Austin, Texas, activated an emergency alert this weekend as its hospitals were overwhelmed.
But Republican lawmakers stand against the mask requirements and vaccines that would help stop the spread. Texas governor Greg Abbott has banned mask and vaccine mandates across the state, as has Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (who has since said the law was an “error”). South Carolina and Arizona have banned mask mandates in schools.
Today, in just the latest example, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said, “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us…. No one should follow the CDC.” He claimed that masking and remote learning was physically and emotionally damaging for children, and there was no reason they should not return to school full time, without masks. He said he would work to defund any school or government agency or school that did not simply resume its pre-pandemic operations.
Instead of trying to stop the spread of the virus, Republicans are blaming Biden for it. They claim that it is sparked by his handling of immigration on our southern border and that infected immigrants are responsible for the spike in the deadly disease.
When Biden asked Republican governors on August 3 to help or get out of the way, Florida governor Ron DeSantis responded: “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies,” and claimed: “He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border.”
DeSantis is not an outlier. Trump has pushed this line, Fox News Channelpersonality Sean Hannity hammers on it, and right-wing publications from the Daily Wire to National Review to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page all insist that immigrants are to blame for the spread of the virus. Rand Paul has gone so far as to claim that administration officials are deliberately sending infected immigrant children around the country to spread the variant. Yesterday, Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis called for Biden’s impeachment over the issue.
In fact, the administration continues to reject or expel border crossers under a public health order known as Title 42. It does permit the entry of unaccompanied minors and some vulnerable families. Migrants who cross the border are immediately required to wear masks. They are not tested at Customs and Border Patrol unless they show symptoms, but all are tested if they move into the system, and those who test positive for coronavirus are quarantined. Those slated for deportation are quarantined before they are deported. While infection rates are climbing, because of both the Delta variant and the crowding at Border Patrol, immigrants test positive at a lower rate than the rate of non-immigrants around them.
And yet, Republicans are using the deadly new coronavirus variant to stoke anti-immigrant fires.
It is cynical, it is deadly… and it takes us one more step toward authoritarianism.
As the pandemic revives and spreads, primarily as a result of GOP anti-vaccers and anti-maskers, new infections of children not eligible for the vaccine set records, and schools are about to reopen in the face of incredibly idiotic “mask bans” by magamoron, irresponsible GOP Govs like DeSantis and Abbott, you decide who the real threat is to America’s health, welfare, safety, and future!
