Chief Justice John Roberts – Page 7 – immigrationcourtside.com

CHILD ABUSE BY COWARDLY REGIME OFFICIALS RAMPS UP AS COURTS TANK IN FACE OF LATEST ASSAULT ON RULE OF LAW & HUMANITY ☠️ — “This incredibly callous treatment of young migrants as well as their families is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to erase any vestige of due process at the border with Mexico.“

https://apple.news/AfPeFLsDGQTyTuvEeyuQsIg

Esther Wang writes in Jezebel:

Another day, another extreme cruelty: according to a report in the New York Times, the Trump administration has deported almost 1,000 migrant children and teens during the past two months of the covid-19 pandemic, sending them out of the United States alone and at times putting them on a flight without even telling their family members. Stephen Miller, who is unfortunately still alive, must be thrilled.

Trump’s latest tactic in the service of slashing immigration is, as the New York Times points out, a complete 180 from past policy:

The deportations represent an extraordinary shift in policy that has been unfolding in recent weeks on the southwestern border, under which safeguards that have for decades been granted to migrant children by both Democratic and Republican administrations appear to have been abandoned.

Historically, young migrants who showed up at the border without adult guardians were provided with shelter, education, medical care and a lengthy administrative process that allowed them to make a case for staying in the United States. Those who were eventually deported were sent home only after arrangements had been made to assure they had a safe place to return to.

But now, not even children who are already in the United States with pending asylum cases are safe from deportation. As the Times reported, in addition to the more than 900 children and teens who were deported in March and April shortly after arriving at the border, 60 young people who were already being held in government shelters were also abruptly sent out of the United States, at times “rousted from their beds in the middle of the night.”

According to the Times, even young children have been put on flights by themselves. Take the case of Sandra Rodríguez and her 10-year-old son Gerson, whom she sent across the southern border with the expectation that once Gerson arrived in the United States, he would be able to eventually live with Rodríguez’s brother in Houston. But instead, shortly after entering the U.S., Gerson was sent to Honduras alone.

This incredibly callous treatment of young migrants as well as their families is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to erase any vestige of due process at the border with Mexico. Citing the pandemic, immigration officials have used provisions in the 1944 Public Health Act as justification to essentially close the United States to all asylum seekers who cross the border. The impact has been severe: In an almost two-month period from mid-March to May, only two people seeking protection on humanitarian grounds at the border were allowed to stay within the United States.

“What is happening at the border right now is a tragedy. We are abandoning our legal commitment to provide asylum to people whose lives are in danger in other countries,” Kari Hong, an immigration attorney and Boston College law school professor, told the Washington Post. “By invoking these emergency orders, the Trump administration is simply doing what it’s wanted to do all along, which is to end asylum law in its entirety,” she said.

While Trump administration officials have justified their likely illegal use of emergency orders in the name of public health, the fact that officials have also deported children and teens who were already in the care of the federal government sure indicates that something else is going on here. I wonder what that could be.

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

Who would have thought that America would become a nation of child abusers and that Federal Courts would be so feckless and complicit in the face of such clear abuses? Three years of concerted failure, led by John Roberts and the Supremes, to give meaning to Due Process and Equal Protection in the face of the “New Jim Crow” have emboldened the regime’s White Nationalist, anti-American abusers while kneecapping democratic and constitutional institutions.

Then, there’s the extreme, wanton cruelty and dehumanization inflicted on the mostly vulnerable among us that has come to symbolize our nation in the Age of Trump. Like all the other abuses by the regime, it’s been “normalized” by feckless legislators and judges: “Another day, another extreme cruelty!” ☠️⚰️🤮🏴‍☠️

Somewhere down there in the fires of the underworld, Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the infamous “Dred Scott Decision” must be feeling totally vindicated by Roberts and his gang!

Is this really how we want to be remembered by future generations? If not, vote ‘em out this November!

PWS

05-21-20

SURPRISE: CHAD WOLF LIES! — Planned Child Abuse Has Always Been About White Nationalist, Anti-Hispanic Agenda, Not “Public Health” or Any Other “Emergency Pretext” Encouraged & Enabled By Roberts & Co.

Julia Ainsley — Julia Edwards Ainsley
Investigative Reporter, NBC News

https://apple.news/AGD3GSaiJTAK50Gkwhyyuyw

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports for NBC News:

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has expedited the deportation of child migrants during the coronavirus pandemic, citing public health, but documents obtained by NBC News show that as far back as 2017, now–DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf sought to expedite child deportations in order to discourage Central American asylum seekers.

Recent reports from immigration lawyers, DHS officials and congressional staff have indicated a rise in the number of rapid deportations of unaccompanied migrant children. Previously, children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian were given protections under anti-trafficking laws, which included the right to claim asylum and to be placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services until they could be placed with a guardian.

The New York Times recently reported that more than 900 children have been deported under a new policy that sends children back to their home countries before they have had a chance to coordinate plans with a guardian at home or claim asylum in the U.S.. Many of those children, according to the Times, were in the U.S. and living in HHS custody or with family members before the pandemic began.

DHS has said the deportations are justified under Title 42, which allows restrictions on immigration to slow the spread of disease.

But a 2017 policy proposal by Wolf shows that the agency has long sought the ability to deport children more quickly, long before the threat of a virus gave it cover to do so.

The documents were first obtained by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D.-Ore., and then shared with NBC News.

Wolf, who was then chief of staff to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, sent a collection of policy ideas to the Justice Department, which included plans to reclassify unaccompanied migrant children as accompanied once they had been placed in the care of a parent or sponsor.

. . . .

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

Read Julia’s complete article at the link.

As I keep saying, ever since “tanking” on the so-called “Travel Ban Cases,” John Roberts and his GOP buddies on the Supremes have been avoiding their duty to critically examine the clearly invidious motives of the Trump regime. They have encouraged legal and intellectual fraud by inviting the regime to present a plethora of demonstrably bogus pretexts to thinly cloak their unlawful intent.

Undoubtedly, we’re just seeing the “tip of the iceberg” here. Future historians will unearth overwhelming evidence of the racism and other improper drivers of the regime’s cowardly attack on vulnerable children and asylum seekers. They will expose fully the disgraceful role of Roberts and his gang in encouraging and covering up what future generations will almost universally view as grotesque abuses of human rights and the rule of law. Which they are!

This November, we have a chance to change course and start writing an end to this disgraceful chapter of American history. Don’t blow it!

PWS

05-20-20

🏴‍☠️AMERICA THE CHILD ABUSER: Trump Regime ☠️ Uses Pandemic As Pretext To Violate Migrant Children’s Legal & Human Rights As Feckless Congress & Complicit Federal Courts Fail To Act! — Disintegration Of Nation’s Values & Humanity 🦹🏿‍♂️ Continues Unabated!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-migrant-children-unaccompanied-minors.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200520&instance_id=18629&nl=the-morning&regi_id=119096355&segment_id=28532&te=1&user_id=70724c8ee3c2ebb50a6ef32ab050a46b

Caitlin Dickerson reports for The NY Times:

The last time Sandra Rodríguez saw her son Gerson, she bent down to look him in the eye. “Be good,” she said, instructing him to behave when he encountered Border Patrol agents on the other side of the river in the United States, and when he was reunited with his uncle in Houston.

The 10-year-old nodded, giving his mother one last squinty smile. Tears caught in his dimples, she recalled, as he climbed into a raft and pushed out across the Rio Grande toward Texas from Mexico, guided by a stranger who was also trying to reach the United States.

Ms. Rodríguez expected that Gerson would be held by the Border Patrol for a few days and then transferred to a government shelter for migrant children, from which her brother in Houston would eventually be able to claim him. But Gerson seemed to disappear on the other side of the river. For six frantic days, she heard nothing about her son — no word that he had been taken into custody, no contact with the uncle in Houston.

Finally, she received a panicked phone call from a cousin in Honduras who said that Gerson was with her. The little boy was crying and disoriented, his relatives said; he seemed confused about how he had ended up back in the dangerous place he had fled.

Hundreds of migrant children and teenagers have been swiftly deported by American authorities amid the coronavirus pandemic without the opportunity to speak to a social worker or plea for asylum from the violence in their home countries — a reversal of years of established practice for dealing with young foreigners who arrive in the United States.

The deportations represent an extraordinary shift in policy that has been unfolding in recent weeks on the southwestern border, under which safeguards that have for decades been granted to migrant children by both Democratic and Republican administrations appear to have been abandoned.

Historically, young migrants who showed up at the border without adult guardians were provided with shelter, education, medical care and a lengthy administrative process that allowed them to make a case for staying in the United States. Those who were eventually deported were sent home only after arrangements had been made to assure they had a safe place to return to.

That process appears to have been abruptly thrown out under President Trump’s latest border decrees. Some young migrants have been deported within hours of setting foot on American soil. Others have been rousted from their beds in the middle of the night in U.S. government shelters and put on planes out of the country without any notification to their families.

The Trump administration is justifying the new practices under a 1944 law that grants the president broad power to block foreigners from entering the country in order to prevent the “serious threat” of a dangerous disease. But immigration officials in recent weeks have also been abruptly expelling migrant children and teenagers who were already in the United States when the pandemic-related order came down in late March.

Since the decree was put in effect, hundreds of young migrants have been deported, including some who had asylum appeals pending in the court system.

Some of the young people have been flown back to Central America, while others have been pushed back into Mexico, where thousands of migrants are living in filthy tent camps and overrun shelters.

In March and April, the most recent period for which data was available, 915 young migrants were expelled shortly after reaching the American border, and 60 were shipped home from the interior of the country.

During the same period, at least 166 young migrants were allowed into the United States and afforded the safeguards that were once customary. But in another unusual departure, Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose how the government was determining which legal standards to apply to which children.

“We just can’t put it out there,” said Matthew Dyman, a public affairs specialist with the agency, citing concerns that human smugglers would exploit the information to traffic more people into the country if they knew how the laws were being applied.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration extended the stepped-up border security that allows for young migrants to be expelled at the border, saying the policy would remain in place indefinitely and be reviewed every 30 days.

Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the policy had been “one of the most critical tools the department has used to prevent the further spread of the virus and to protect the American people, D.H.S. front-line officers and those in their care and custody from Covid-19.”

An agency spokesman said its policies for deporting children from within the interior of the country had not changed.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Caitlin’s article at the above link.

Thanks to my friend, the amazing “Due Process Warrior Queen,” 👸🏼 👑 ⚔️🛡Deb Sanders for bringing Caitlin’s article to my attention.

Kids suffer, the law is ignored, corrupt bureaucrats like Chad Wolf continue to wander around spreading lies. There is no evidence that any of those kids “rocketed” out of the country in violation of laws and human rights had coronavirus.

And if they did, returning them to a poorer nation with even fewer resources to fight the pandemic without taking proper precautions and safeguards would be totally irresponsible, inhumane, and ultimately counterproductive. What goes around, comes around!

This has absolutely nothing to do with “protecting” the U.S. from coronavirus (something that Trump otherwise largely eschews) and everything to do with advancing a racist, xenophobic, White Nationalist political agenda designed to appeal to a relatively narrow slice of Trump voters. So, how does this pass “legal muster?” Clearly, “It doesn’t!”

How do folks like Trump, Miller, Wolf, and their accomplices get away with it? Easy when GOP legislators and life-tenured Federal Judges look the other way rather than forcing the regime to comply with the rule of law and simple human decency.

Congressional letters, particularly to a lawless regime, are useless unless accompanied by veto-proof legislation. Courts that fail to take a unified “Just Say No” approach to Trump’s systemic abuses, all the way up to the Supremes, and which rule without holding the officials and lawyers masterminding these abuses legally accountable are basically feckless!

These are not difficult questions from either a legal or moral standpoint. What the Administration is doing is wrong! Period! Those who say otherwise are wrong! Period!

The Trump regime disguises their vicious attacks on human dignity and the rule of law as bogus “legal issues.” And, the Federal Courts encourage them by going along with the charade. This is no “normal Executive.” It’s a “rogue regime” and must be treated as such!

The failure to end these disgraceful practices and hold those who are abusing their authority accountable says much about the current state of our democratic institutions, justice system, civil servants, and the inadequacy and moral complacency of many of our current GOP legislators and Federal Judges.

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

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts, Never!

PWS

05-20-20

🏴‍☠️BILLY BARR ERADICATES AMERICAN JUSTICE👎– So Far, He’s On A Roll: Weaponized Immigration Courts, Protecting a Corrupt President by Undermining Prosecutors, Mischaracterizing The Mueller Report, “Stonewalling” Congress (The Dems, Anyway), Investigating “Enemies,” Misleading Representations to Courts, Treating the Supremes Like Trump’s Toadies, It’s All a “Walk In The Park” For Arguably The Worst & Most Dangerous ☠️ AG In Modern U.S. History! — “I’ve lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese,” Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. “Those guys were choir boys 😇 next to Barr.”

https://apple.news/A1-289cR1QfWt1o8ao_UTaQ

David Rohde writes in The New Yorker:

Three years ago, President Donald Trump appeared to be politically wounded and legally encircled. On May 17, 2017, eight days after Trump had fired James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel, to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Memos written by Comey stated that Trump had asked him to “let go” of the F.B.I. investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s national-security adviser, who had been fired after he lied to Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials about the nature of a phone call that he’d had with the Russian Ambassador. As 2017 came to a close, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents about the call and agreed to serve as a coöperating witness for Mueller’s investigation. Trump’s effort to flout post-Watergate reforms, which were designed to prevent a President from pressuring the F.B.I. into halting a politically embarrassing investigation, appeared to have failed.

Yet now, six months before he faces reëlection, Trump, with the help of Attorney General William Barr, is successfully rewriting that history. Last Thursday, Barr dismissed the charges against Flynn, declaring him the victim of an F.B.I. plot. (The federal judge who oversaw Flynn’s case said that he would appoint a retired judge to review Barr’s action, and whether Flynn should now be charged with perjury.) At Barr’s direction, the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Comey, the F.B.I. officials who investigated the Trump campaign, and the C.I.A. officials who concluded that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Barr is flatly rejecting the findings of Mueller and the Justice Department’s inspector general: that the F.B.I was justified in investigating the highly unusual contacts between the Trump campaign and a hostile foreign government—which did, in fact, intervene in the race on Trump’s behalf—and that Trump and his aides had welcomed that aid and repeatedly lied about their own actions.

Instead, Barr, in an extraordinary act by an Attorney General, declared, last month, that the F.B.I. investigation of the Trump campaign was “without any basis,” an attempt to “sabotage the Presidency,” and “one of the greatest travesties in American history.” He added, in reference to his department’s new investigation—but without citing any specifics—that “the evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness” but that “there was something far more troubling here.” Those statements violated a long-standing Justice Department practice of not commenting on investigations before they have been completed. In a subsequent interview, Barr hinted that he might release the results of the ongoing probe, led by a federal prosecutor, John Durham, before the election. Barr said that a Justice Department policy prohibiting prosecutors from filing criminal charges or taking investigative steps to impact elections did not apply. “The idea is you don’t go after candidates,” Barr said. “But, you know, as I say, I don’t think any of the people whose actions are under review by Durham fall into that category.”

On Wednesday, the acting director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, gave Republican senators records he had declassified that listed the names of three dozen Obama Administration officials, including Joe Biden, who requested to know the identity of an American citizen who had had a series of phone calls with foreign officials after Trump won the election. The citizen was Flynn. On Wednesday, those senators released the names of the officials and accused the former Vice-President of participating in a plot to entrap Flynn. Former national-security officials said that it is routine to request, or “unmask,” the names of Americans whose conversations with foreign officials contain intelligence, and noted that the practice has increased by seventy-five per cent under Trump. Ben Rhodes, a former top Obama adviser, tweeted, “The unconfirmed, acting DNI using his position to criminalize routine intelligence work to help re-elect the president and obscure Russian intervention in our democracy would normally be the scandal here.” Grenell replied in a tweet, “Transparency is not political. But I will give you that it isn’t popular in Washington DC.”

Next Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to approve the nomination of John Ratcliffe, a pro-Trump Republican congressman from Texas, to replace Grenell as the director of National Intelligence. Ratcliffe caught Trump’s eye when he assailed Mueller on national television during the former special counsel’s testimony before Congress. An individual involved in Ratcliffe’s confirmation effort said that “the fact that the President trusts Congressman Ratcliffe—not because they are friends but because he’s observed his good judgment and the way he handles himself—that affords a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the President and the intelligence community.”

Former Justice Department and intelligence officials have expressed alarm at Trump’s success at appointing partisan loyalists who they say echo the Presidents political messaging. David Laufman, a former head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, who worked on the Trump-Russia investigation, told me, “I think we need to be careful not to be too lackadaisical in recognizing the significance of what is happening throughout our government, not just in law enforcement and intelligence but the attempted politicization of our public health system,” citing attacks by Trump supporters on Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the government’s top infectious-disease experts. “It’s everywhere, and it matters in ways that are increasingly important to the well-being of people in our country.”

The transformation has been most striking at the Justice Department, an institution that, after Watergate, both Republicans and Democrats agreed should strive to remain politically neutral. Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, said that, more than any other modern Attorney General, Barr has enabled the President to use the department for his own purposes. “I’ve lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese,” Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. “Those guys were choir boys next to Barr.” (A spokeswoman for Barr did not respond to a request for comment.)

. . . .

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

Ethics certainly has taken a holiday, a long one, during the Trump regime! Talk about someone “stocking the swamp!”🐊 On the “choirboy front,” remember that “John the Con” Mitchell actually served time in a Federal Pen for his role in Watergate. So, it’s “no mean feat” for Billy to achieve a higher “corruption rating” than “The Con” from Professor Gillers!

As someone who “came to Washington” during Watergate, I was shocked by the ease with which Trump and his cronies did away with all the ethical rules and protections put in place in the aftermath.

I’m still stunned and saddened by the lack of integrity and courage shown by the Article III Federal Judiciary under the spineless leadership and kowtowing to Executive authority of John Roberts. I actually thought he was better than that. But, hey, I was wrong to give him the “benefit of the doubt.”

I’m also surprised by the complete corruption of today’s GOP. During Watergate, Nixon certainly had his GOP defenders, particularly at first. But, as the evidence against him mounted, many members of the GOP joined in pressuring him to “do the right thing” and resign before being impeached and removed. And, Nixon, for all his quirks, biases, cover-ups, and total lack of personal charisma was still a better and more effective leader, even at the end, than Trump ever has been or will be.

Also, the “meltdown” at Justice stands out. During Watergate, Nixon had to get down to the #3 politico at the DOJ, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire the Watergate Prosecutor, after AG Elliot Richardson and DAG William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than violate their oaths of office. And, Bork’s questionable decision to comply with Nixon’s order probably helped cost him a seat on the Supremes.

Today, by contrast, the “5^th Floor” of the DOJ is teeming with unethical sycophants, starting with Barr, who seem to be competing with each other to “out-Trump Trump.”

Another interesting thing is how Billy managed to hide his far-right extremism, intellectual dishonesty, contempt for American Justice and rule of law beneath a veneer of “corporate respectability” in the ranks of “Big Law” for many years. At Billy’s confirmation hearing, perhaps glad to finally be rid of “Gonzo Apocalypto,” many seemed to “take him at his word” as he skirted the big questions and lied his way to the head position at one of the “nerve centers” of American Justice.

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it (and the future of our nation) does!

PWS

05-16-20

🏴‍☠️NATION WITHOUT HEART, SOUL, OR LAWS: Emboldened By A Derelict Supremes’ Majority Unwilling To Stand For Constitutional, Legal, Or Human Rights Of Migrants, Trump Regime Continues To Misuse “Emergency” Powers To Illegally Repeal Immigration & Refugee Laws — “‘Flattening the curve’ should not be an excuse for dismantling the law,” Say Lucas Guttentag & Dr. Stefano M. Bertozzi in NYT Op-Ed! — Agreed! — But, That’s Exactly What’s Happening As The Article III Courts Dither!

Lucas Guttentag
Professor of Practice
Stanford Law

Stefano M. Bertozzi MD
American Physician, Health Economist, & Educator

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/opinion/trump-coronavirus-immigration.html?referringSource=articleShare

Guttentag & Bertozzi write in the NYT:

For more than a month, under the guise of fighting the coronavirus, the Trump administration has used the nation’s public health laws as a pretext for summarily deporting refugees and children at the border.

This new border policy runs roughshod over legal rights, distracts from meaningful measures to prevent spread of the coronavirus and undermines confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s top health protection agency, which delivered the directive that imposes these deportations.

The administration has weaponized an arcane provision of a quarantine law first enacted in 1893 and revised in 1944 to order the blanket deportation of asylum-seekers and unaccompanied minors at the Mexican border without any testing or finding of disease or contagion. Legal rights to hearings, appeals, asylum screening and the child-specific procedures are all ignored.

More than 20,000 people have been deported under the order, including at least 400 children in just the first few weeks, according to the administration and news reports. Though the order was justified as a short-term emergency measure, the indiscriminate deportations continue unchecked and the authorization has been extended and is subject to continued renewal.

The deportation policy was issued by the C.D.C. based on an unprecedented interpretation of the public health laws. The policy bears the unmistakable markings of a White House strategy imposed on the C.D.C. and designed to circumvent prior court rulings to achieve the administration’s political goals.

The Border Patrol is carrying out the C.D.C. directive by “expulsion” of anyone who arrives at U.S. land borders without valid documents or crosses the border illegally, not because they are contagious or sick but because they come from Mexico or Canada, regardless of their country of origin. The deportations violate the legal right to apply for asylum and ignore the special procedures for unaccompanied children.

Our immigration laws guarantee that any noncitizen “irrespective” of status, no matter how they arrive, is entitled to an asylum process. U.S. law has adopted the international obligation that refugees cannot be returned “in any manner whatsoever” to a place where they risk persecution. The courts have protected these rights again and again. When the administration tried to impose an asylum ban more than a year ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked it, calling it an “end-run” around Congress, a decision the Supreme Court refused to overturn.

Now, with the C.D.C. directive, the administration is imposing an even more sweeping prohibition on asylum by exploiting pandemic fears, and U.S. Border and Customs Protection is labeling the policy a public health “expulsion” instead of an immigration deportation.

Despite what the administration says, the order is not part of any coherent plan to stop border travel or prevent introduction or spread of contagious people or the virus, which is already widespread in the United States. Nothing limits travel from Mexico or Canada by truck drivers, those traveling for commercial or educational purposes, and many others, including green card holders and U.S. citizens. And the restrictions that exist do not apply at all to travel if it’s by airplane.

. . . .

The administration’s order expelling refugees and children tarnishes the C.D.C., does nothing to protect public health, targets the most vulnerable, tramples their rights and cloaks the deportations as fighting the coronavirus in order to escape accountability. “Flattening the curve” should not be an excuse for dismantling the law.

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Read the full op-ed at the link.

While the authors quite legitimately “out” the CDC for its corrupt performance, the real problem here goes much higher and cuts much more broadly across our failing democratic institutions of government. A feckless Congress, under the control of Moscow Mitch and the GOP, and the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes have given the “green light” to the Trump regime’s White Nationalist assault on the rights of asylum seekers and migrants. It’s “Dred Scottification” at its worst, and it threatens the continued existence of our nation and the lives and well-being of many of our fellow Americans.

Contrary to the tone-deaf op-ed published by Charles Lane in the WashPost today, the Supremes are not “stepping up.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-ginsburgs-and-kagans-recent-opinions-send-a-healthy-signal-about-the-supreme-court/2020/05/11/84119b1c-93a6-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html

They are a huge part of the problem: an institution charged with protecting our legal rights, including the rights of the most vulnerable among us, supposedly immune from partisan politics, that has abdicated that duty while hiding behind a barrage of right-wing legal gobbledygook.

Why is it only the four “moderate to liberal” justices that have an obligation to cross over and help the conservatives, Charlie, my man? Where was Chief Justice Roberts when the regime carried out the “Miller White Nationalist plan” running roughshod over decades of well-established legal and constitutional rights of refugees, asylum seekers, children, and other migrants, using rationales so thin, fabricated, and totally dishonest that most high school civics students could have seen right through them. How does a bogus Immigration “Court” system run by uber partisan politicos like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and now Billy Barr come anywhere close to complying with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment?

Pretending like the Supremes aren’t a broken, politicized institution won’t help fix the problem. Even “regime change” in November won’t get the job done overnight.

The damage is deep, severe, life-tenured, and ultimately life-threatening. But, insuring that corrupt kakistocrats like Trump and Mitch won’t be in charge of future appointments to the Supremes and rest of the Federal Judiciary is an essential starting place.

A failure to vote this regime out of office in November likely spells the end of American democracy, at least as the majority of us have lived and understand it. And, even though they obviously, and arrogantly, believe themselves to be above the fray and accountability for their actions, the “J.R. Five” eventually would go down in the heap with the rest of our nation.

If nothing else, Trump has made it very clear that HE is the only “judge” he needs, wants, or will tolerate. We have only to look as far as the failed and flailing Immigration “Courts” under Billy Barr to see what the “ideal Trump judiciary” would look and act like.

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

PWS

05-12-20

ANOTHER BLOW TO THE REGIME SCOFFLAWS, AS MORE WILL BE REVIEWED FOR RELEASE FROM THE GULAG: Judge Dana Sabraw, USDC SD CA, Orders Further Review, After Plaintiffs Show Undercount In Original DHS Affidavit Submitted To Court!

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2020-04-30/judge-orders-review-for-release-of-ice-detainees-at-otay-mesa-detention-center

Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union Tribune:

The facility’s warden had initially given the judge an undercount of how many detainees were at high risk of complications due to COVID-19

By KATE MORRISSEY

APRIL 30, 202012:04 PM

A San Diego federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to review for release a list of newly identified detainees at the Otay Mesa Detention Center who would be at high risk for serious health complications if they get COVID-19.

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw granted the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to create a subclass of people at high risk under the pandemic, which has spread widely within the facility. The judge made his decision after learning that the facility’s warden had undercounted the number of people in that category in his initial declaration for the case.

“That information is significant,” Sabraw told attorneys during a telephonic hearing Thursday. “It does change measurably the underlying facts and whether or not the petitioners are entitled to relief.”

A spokeswoman for CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the facility, said that the initial report sent to the judge was compiled with data from ICE Health Service Corps, which provides the medical care at the facility, and the report “was made with the best available information we had from our partners at the time.”

. . . .

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

There was a time, long ago, when a Government agency’s submission of false, materially incomplete, or misleading information to a Federal Court would have earned sanctions up to and including threats of contempt from a U.S. District Judge. Sadly, bending the truth, omitting material information, and outright lies have become “the norm” for DHS and DOJ under Trump.

Indeed, the burden is now on the plaintiffs, often serving pro bono and stretched to the limit, to show and document for the courts each false, incomplete, or misleading affirmation from the Government. Against reason and the clear record over the past three years, Federal Courts continue to presume the proven unlikely — nay, likely impossible — that a regime led by a pathological liar and his toadies will provide them true, accurate, and complete information about anything!

Instead of asylum applicants being given “the benefit of the doubt,” as our law is supposed to require, that benefit of the doubt is now being given to an overtly bigoted and dishonest Executive who in no way has earned or deserved it. Everything has been turned upside down.

But, until the Article III Courts take actions to insure that this regime respects the integrity of the process, the practice of “lie, obfuscate, and mislead first and see if they catch you” will continue largely unabated. Vulnerable migrants aren’t the only victims here. Failing to force the regime to act in an honest, ethical, and professional manner in Federal litigation is eroding the integrity of the Article III Courts all the way up to the complicit Supremes.

Remember, several years ago, the DHS and DOJ lied to Federal Courts and the public about the existence of Sessions’s “child separation policy.” Two years later, they continue to feed erroneous information to the courts with impunity. But, who’s surprised when in the meantime the Supremes’ majority has sent such a powerful and consistent message that “Brown Lives Don’t Matter” and they won’t examine the truth or actual motivation behind any Executive attack on the rights, lives, and safety of migrants.

Here’s a report from a member of the NDPA and a Courtside reader on the front lines of the battle to save humanity: “[T]wo of our clients detained in Otay Mesa Detention Center were finally released after a Federal Judge issued a TRO. I am relieved. ICE has been unreasonable and in my opinion reckless with the lives of people in detention and even their own employees. . . . And the attorneys at the ACLU are the true heroes here and . . . students.”

Why is this abject failure of responsible Government and absence of powerful, coordinated, courageous judging that puts an end to these human rights abuses acceptable? Why isn’t our Supreme Court delivering a powerful message that Executive dishonesty, denials of due process, systemic detention abuses, and disregard of established human rights principles aren’t acceptable in 21st Century America? Why is “Dred Scottification” the new policy endorsed by the “JR Five” on the Supremes?

Until we get better Federal Judges willing to stand up to Executive abuses and a Congress that retakes its responsibility to legislate and oversee the Executive in the area of immigration and human rights, it will continue to fall to the private bar and NGO lawyers to force officials among our failed institutions in all three Branches to do their jobs in accordance with the law and the Constitution. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. But, it’s the only way it does work in today’s America. Thank goodness for the (non-regime) lawyers!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-02-20

REGIME SCOFFLAWS STUFFED AGAIN: 7th Cir. Blasts Barr’s Bogus Battle Bashing Local Law Enforcement In Chicago, Other Cities — Unconstitutional! — Nationwide Injunction Affirmed — “But states do not forfeit all autonomy over their own police power merely by accepting federal grants.“

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca7-on-byrne-jag-grant-conditions-chicago-v-barr

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA7 on Byrne JAG Grant Conditions: Chicago v. Barr

Chicago v. Barr

“We conclude again today, as we did when presented with the preliminary injunction, that the Attorney General cannot pursue the policy objectives of the executive branch through the power of the purse or the arm of local law enforcement; that is not within its delegation. It is the prerogative of the legislative branch and the local governments, and the Attorney General’s assertion that Congress itself provided that authority in the language of the statutes cannot withstand scrutiny. … Accordingly, we affirm the grants of declaratory relief as to the declarations that the Attorney General exceeded the authority delegated by Congress in the Byrne JAG statute, 34 U.S.C. § 10151 et seq., and in 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a), in attaching the challenged conditions to the FY 2017 and FY 2018 grants, and that the Attorney General’s decision to attach the conditions to the FY 2017 and FY 2018 Byrne JAG grants violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers. In light of our determination as to the language in § 10153, it is unnecessary to reach the constitutionality of § 1373 under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. We affirm the district court’s grant of injunctive relief as to the application of the challenged conditions to the Byrne JAG grant program-wide now and in the future, which included enjoining the Attorney General from denying or delaying issuance of the Byrne JAG award to grants in FY 2017, FY 2018, FY 2019 and any other future program year insofar as that denial or delay is based on the challenged conditions or materially identical conditions. We remand for the district court to determine if any other injunctive relief is appropriate in light of our determination that § 10153 cannot be used to incorporate laws unrelated to the grants or grantees. Finally, because the injunctive relief is necessary to provide complete relief to Chicago itself, the concern with improperly extending relief beyond the particular plaintiff does not apply, and therefore there is no reason to stay the application of the injunctive relief.”

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

The complete 111-page decision is available at the above link.

The 7th Circuit Panel was BAUER, MANION, AND ROVNER, Circuit Judges. The opinion is by Judge Rovner. Judge Manion filed a separate opinion concurring in the legal analysis, but dissenting from the nationwide scope of the injunction.

The 7th Circuit strongly upholds the Constitutional separation of powers and local jurisdictions’ rights to police in a manner that protects their local communities. Compare this with the obsequious kowtowing to Executive abuses by the Second Circuit in State of New York v. Barr, https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/02/27/2d-cir-to-ny-six-other-so-called-sanctuary-states-tough-noogies-trump-rules/

Some Federal Courts stand up for our rights in the face of Trump’s tyranny; others “roll over.” History will be their judge!

That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the “JR Five” on the Supremes — who seldom see a White Nationalist abuse of authority picking on immigrants that they aren’t willing to validate — will “torque the law and the facts as necessary” to further the regime’s scofflaw, xenophobic agenda.

History eventually will catch up with them too. History recognizes neither life tenure nor “absolute immunity.”

Due Process Forever!

Continue reading REGIME SCOFFLAWS STUFFED AGAIN: 7th Cir. Blasts Barr’s Bogus Battle Bashing Local Law Enforcement In Chicago, Other Cities — Unconstitutional! — Nationwide Injunction Affirmed — “But states do not forfeit all autonomy over their own police power merely by accepting federal grants.“

BARTON v. BARR: “J.R. Five” Jettisons Principles, Fudges Facts In Pathetic Attempt To Avoid Moral Responsibility For Advancing Trump Administration’s White Nationalist, Anti-Immigrant Agenda — Their Treachery & Cowardice Will NOT be Forgotten!

https://apple.news/A0a8Ej93WTp66f3Ujt4-_Ug

Jay Willis writes for The Appeal:

. . . .

Two things stand out about this outcome: first, the remarkable philosophical flexibility of the Court’s conservatives when their political allies appear before them. The case is only the latest instance in which they have tacitly endorsed some of the president’s more aggressive legal arguments, legitimizing his use of anti-immigrant fearmongering as public policy.

As Professor Nancy Morawetz detailed at the ImmigrationProf Blog, the majority reached its conclusion by selectively applying rules for analyzing vague laws—rules that, if applied to Barton’s case, might have led to a different result. Conservative judges often argue for resolving ambiguities by focusing on the plain meaning of statutory text. As a result, they are supposedly reluctant to assume that any statutory language is redundant or superfluous. (When the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservatives decided Democratic Governor Tony Evers couldn’t postpone in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, they leaned heavily on this principle.) But here, the majority’s reasoning required treating part of the text as redundant. Kavanaugh barely bothered to address this divergence from prevailing conservative judicial philosophy: He simply stated that “redundancies are common in statutory drafting,” and that in this case, “the better overall reading of the statute contains some redundancy.”

“That is not the argument you would expect from the conservative wing of the Court,” Professor Morawetz wrote. “It is hard to walk away without the sense that there are different statutory interpretation rules at work for those who are powerful and those who are not.”

The majority and dissenting opinions also contrast sharply in the extent to which the justices considered the impact of their decision on Barton, his family, and other people like Barton whose fates this case determined. The majority begins with a recitation of his involvement with the criminal legal system, noting his convictions “on three separate occasions spanning 12 years.” Later, Kavanaugh takes care to name the substances—methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana—involved in the drug arrests, and describes the gun and assault convictions using lurid, cinematic language, explaining that Barton and a friend “shot up” an ex-girlfriend’s house. (This phrase is decidedly not a legal term of art.) Read together, these rhetorical flourishes evoke a familiar stereotype: a scary, drug-involved career criminal who is liable to start shooting at any moment.

The Barton described in Sotomayor’s dissent, which all four liberal justices signed, sounds like a different person altogether. She carefully lays out the facts of Barton’s early life, personal challenges, and subsequent accomplishments—valuable context that Kavanaugh and company conspicuously omitted. (The details about his background included in the beginning of this article come primarily from her opinion.) For example, it was Barton’s friend, Sotomayor notes, who actually fired at the ex-girlfriend’s house. In court, Barton testified that he didn’t know the friend even had a gun, let alone planned to shoot it.

The rest of the dissent fills in more of the blanks left by the majority. She writes about Barton’s stints in boot camp and rehab, and praises him for getting his GED diploma, graduating from college, and leading “a law-abiding life.” She notes that his drug convictions were for possession, not distribution, and linked them to his since-resolved dependency. She frames Barton’s three convictions against the backdrop of his 30 years in the United States, not the 12-year period in which they occurred. And she quotes the immigration judge who evaluated Barton’s initial application for mercy and badly wanted to approve it; he “is clearly rehabilitated,” the judge said, and his family “relies on him and would suffer hardship” if he were deported.

At every juncture, Sotomayor emphasizes the real-world implications of what the conservatives presented as a rather dry question of statutory interpretation: By the time immigration authorities put Andre Barton in removal proceedings, every member of his immediate family was living in America. Deporting him deprives his family of its primary provider, and sends him off to a country he hasn’t seen in decades.

Not until the very end of Kavanaugh’s opinion does he begin to grapple with the stakes of the case before him. “Removal of a lawful permanent resident … is a wrenching process, especially in light of the consequences for family members,” he wrote. “Removal is particularly difficult when it involves someone such as Barton who has spent most of his life in the United States.”

Just as quickly as he began to acknowledge Barton’s humanity, though, Kavanaugh returned to emphasizing the length of Barton’s rap sheet and the gravity of his transgressions. Congress chose to provide for the deportation of immigrants who commit “serious crimes,” he reasons, and to cut off those with “substantial criminal records” from the possibility of relief; the law, he writes, does not extend leniency to someone who “has amassed a criminal record of this kind.” Put differently, the Court’s conservatives are not responsible for what happened to Andre Barton; Barton, in their telling, did this to himself.

The exact words the justices use while resolving arcane questions about obscure immigration statutes may not seem significant. But when the choice the Court ultimately makes is so callously indifferent to the plight of vulnerable people, framing becomes a critical tool for defending their deliberative process. The decision in Barton v. Barr enables an unapologetically anti-immigrant president to deport longtime legal residents over events that took place years ago, breaking up families and depriving children of their parents and parents of their children. Kavanaugh knows this perfectly well; he acknowledges as much in his opinion. By sketching a two-dimensional portrait of Andre Barton as a dangerous ex-con and ignoring decades of growth and development since, Kavanaugh and the conservatives quietly absolve themselves of any moral obligation to think about it.

Jay Willis is a senior contributor at The Appeal.

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

Read Jay’s complete article at the link.

Yup. No surprise to readers of Courtside.

While, as usual, I was willing to give J.R. and his merry band the “benefit of the doubt,” presuming at least some modicum of intellectual honesty and human decency regardless of philosophical disposition, I’ve been “onto” the judicial, intellectual, and moral fraud going on at our highest Court for some time now.

Yeah, on a few occasions (see, e.g., Pereira, Guerrero-Lasprilla) some members of “The Five” have had no choice but to recognize that there was no possible way to justify some aspects of the Administration’s vendetta against immigrants and asylum seekers. But, on the big questions, from the bogus “Travel Ban,” to the cruel, inhuman, and clearly illegal and unconstitutional “Let ’Em Die in Mexico” Program, to the illegal White Nationalist scheme to misapply “public charge” grounds to attack the health and welfare of ethnic communities, “The Five” have been out front on the White Nationalist movement to “Dred Scottify” and dehumanize “the other.”

To be fair, the BIA decision here Matter of Jurado-Delgado, 24 I&N Dec. 24 I&N Dec. 29 (BIA 2006), originated years ago, in the “Post-Ashcroft-Purge-Era” of the BIA, during the Bush II Administration. But, all that shows is that the BIA’s drift away from the most fair and humane interpretations of the immigration laws and toward “enforcement friendly jurisprudence,” has been going on for the last two decades, across three different Administrations. However, under Trump, Sessions, Whitaker, & now Barr that “drift” has now become a “mad dash to the bottom.”

Thanks to folks like Jay Willis, Professor Nancy Morawetz, and other lawyers, commentators, and journalists, history will not let the “J.R. Five” escape unscathed for their corrupt backing of “The New Jim Crow.”

Due Process Forever! Jim Crow & Complicit Supremes, Never!

PWS

04-30-20

“NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET” 🪓🔪 — MALE, PALE WHITE, & FAR RIGHT — The Clown Prince 🤡 & Moscow Mitch 👹 Have Put Together An Extreme Bench That Looks, Thinks, and Acts Nothing Like The Real America — Their Evil Specter 🧛‍♂️🧟‍♀️ Will Haunt Our Justice System For Decades To Come 💣! — Judges Should Have Demonstrated Reputations For Fairness, Scholarship, Courage, & Relevant Experience Successfully Interacting With A Broad Base Of Humanity, Not Just Reliable Right-Wing Voting Records!

The Honorable Shira Scheindlin — The Honorable Shira A. Scheindlin
Retired US District Judge
SDNY
Spector8745, 8/6/13, 8:58 AM, 8C, 3000×4000 (0+0), 50%, ten stop S cur, 1/12 s, R38.4, G30.1, B67.6

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/trump-judges-giant-step-backward-america?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin writes in The Guardian:

Whether or not he is re-elected, Donald Trump will be revered by conservatives for his judicial appointments. As of March, Trump has appointed 193 judges to the federal bench, with another 39 pending on the floor of the Senate or in the Senate judiciary committee. Those nominations will surely be acted on favorably by the Senate before 20 January 2021, when there may be a new president and a new Senate. There are another 38 district court vacancies awaiting nominations. In one presidential term, Trump may appoint up to 270 federal judges, or 31% of the entire federal judiciary. For perspective, Barack Obama appointed 329 in eight years.

There is no doubt that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, will confirm Trump’s appointments until the very last day of his term. This is of course the same Senate gatekeeper who infamously blocked Obama’s final supreme court nomination, Merrick Garland, for an entire year – on the ground that in the final year of a presidency, the Senate should await “the will of the people” in the upcoming general election. But that was then. The rules have apparently changed. McConnell will pack the courts with “right-thinking” ideologues who will carry out Trump’s agenda long after he has been subjected to the scorn of historical scrutiny.

We now know a lot about Trump’s judicial appointments. Eighty-five per cent are white and 76% are male. This is a significant step backward. Obama’s judicial appointments were 64% white and 58% male. Today, after more than three years of Trump’s appointments, the federal judiciary is 73% white and 66% male, but it will be even more male and pale by the end of his term. Even more troubling is the average age of the Trump judges. According to Brookings, the median age of Trump’s judicial appointments by the beginning of his fourth year in office is 48.2. By the same time in his presidency, the median age of Obama’s appointees was 57.2. This means that Trump judges will serve, on average, for 10 years more than the Obama judges.

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Statistics only tell part of the story. More important is the impact of these statistics on the critical issues that face the courts now and in the future. Courts should reflect the people they serve. I served as a federal district judge for 22 years. The vast majority of criminal defendants (in non-white-collar cases) were either African American or Hispanic, as were their family members. Plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases were overwhelmingly women, minorities or persons with disabilities. The same was true in actions involving prisoner rights, voting rights, housing discrimination and public benefits. Not all cases involve big corporations and business disputes.

Trump’s court takeover

This series examines the historic pace and nature of Trump’s remaking of the federal courts and the conservative agenda it will usher in on a range of issues from voting rights to climate and from healthcare to criminal justice

More from this series

A diverse bench engenders trust and credibility. Many studies have shown that decision-makers reach better decisions when they bring a variety of experiences to their analysis. A 36-year-old lawyer who has never tried a case, has not represented individual clients, and has not spent years facing life’s challenges is not well-positioned to decide on the length of a prison term, the need for access to healthcare, abortion, food stamps, Medicare or housing, or the impact of pollution or discrimination on working people’s quality of life. It is for this reason the American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary insists that a candidate for judicial office have at least 12 years of experience practicing law – not talking about it as a speech writer, lobbyist or media star.

When I was appointed to the bench I was 48. I had been a federal prosecutor, a defense lawyer, and had handled many civil cases in trial and appellate courts. That experience was invaluable. I knew both the substance and procedure of federal practice. The same cannot be said of many of Trump’s nominees, whose only qualifications appear to be their consistently rightwing voting records.

Consider the following four Trump judges, all of whom were appointed in their 30s. What they have in common is not their legal experience, but their outspoken support of Trump’s political agenda. All were members of the Federalist Society or other rightwing organizations, clerked for conservative judges, and have written articles or advocated for legal positions that are vastly out of step with most Americans.

Allison Rushing was 36 when she was confirmed to a seat on the fourth circuit court of appeals, 11 years after graduating from law school, and Trump’s youngest nominee to a circuit court judgeship. She clerked for then-circuit judge Neil Gorsuch and for Justice Clarence Thomas. Her law practice during the remaining nine years was limited to representing big corporations at one of the nation’s largest law firms.

Andrew Brasher was 38 when he was confirmed to a seat on the 11th circuit court of appeals, after serving for only nine months on the district court for the middle district of Alabama. In the years just before his appointment he served as Alabama’s solicitor general, often advocating for rightwing causes.

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Justin Walker, best known for his full-throated defense of Brett Kavanaugh (for whom he clerked), was appointed as a district judge in the western district of Kentucky, at 37, just 10 years after graduating law school. He is a protege of Mitch McConnell, who held up debate on a Covid-19 relief bill to attend Walker’s induction ceremony. Less than six months after Walker took the bench, Trump announced that he intended to nominate him for an upcoming vacancy on the DC court of appeals.

Patrick Wyrick was 38 when he was confirmed as a judge for the western district of Oklahoma. Four years after graduating law school he became the solicitor general of Oklahoma. He is a protege of Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

One of these judges could easily end up on the supreme court; two are known to be on the shortlist. All will probably still be on the bench 40 years from now. That alone should make voters think hard about the upcoming presidential election. As the saying goes: elections have consequences.

Shira A Scheindlin served as a United States district judge for the southern district of New York for 22 years. She is the co-chair of the Board of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a board member of the American Constitution Society

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I’ve been preaching on “Courtside” for some time now about the serious deterioration of America’s Article III Judiciary in the face of Trump’s tyranny. While there are some notable exceptions among appointees of both parties, even some of the “non-Trump appointees” have done a less than heroic job of standing up for Due Process, fundamental fairness, equal justice for all, and human rights, particularly when it comes to vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers, some children, being abused by a system that just no longer cares.

Witness the clearly unconstitutional and essentially unconscionable abuse and open mockery of the American Justice system, the rule of law, and respect for human dignity going on every day in our broken and dysfunctional U.S. Immigration “Courts” that betray and sometimes mock the most fundamental of American values.

Any Article III Judge personally subjected to the kind of intentional dehumanization (a/k/a/ “Dred Scottification”) and disrespect going on daily in Immigration Court would be outraged! But, that outrage seems to disappear when the grotesque abuses are only being inflicted on “the other.” Since, according to Trump and his cronies, the majority of Americans are “the other” — in some way or another — this abdication of judicial integrity has ominous implications far beyond the “world of immigration” — where those mistreated often get deported so their voices can no longer be heard!

While, yes, the Administration frequently gets bashed by some U.S. District Courts and some Circuits, we’re only getting at the “tip of the iceberg” for a system that is allowed to grind out unfair and substandard results and where far too many are simply railroaded out of the country without fair access to lawyers, Article III judicial review, and even time to prepare their cases or understand what they are required to prove to save their lives.

Emboldened by judicial intransigence and fecklessness, the Administration has now “one-upped” the complicit Article IIIs by simply unilaterally, and without legislation, cutting off access to even the Immigration Courts while the “J.R. Five” nods approval like a bunch of “judicial bobbleheads” gracing Stephen Miller’s mantle.

No, we can’t change life tenure. But, we can elect a President and a Senate majority committed to a diverse Federal Judiciary that will put excellence, due process, equal justice, human rights, and human understanding and empathy before far-right ideology. That’s an important start on fighting back and taking the challenge directly to those now on the bench who are committed to dehumanizing, degrading, and ignoring the rights of those who comprise the real America.

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

PWS

04-29-20

THE UGLY SIDE OF HISTORY: AMERICA CONTINUES TO TREAT ITS ESSENTIAL MIGRANT WORKERS AS “SUB-HUMAN” — “We cannot help what the virus does; all we can control is our reaction to it, and what we do next. This pandemic has shone a light on the ugliness of our “here.” Until the US treats all its immigrants as human beings, with full equal rights, we will still be far from ‘there,’” writes Maeve Higgins in the New York Review of Books.

https://apple.news/Ay-5bxf63ML-TZgioC-ixQA

Higgins writes:

While corporations are going on life support thanks to this huge government bailout, undocumented immigrants and their families, among them US citizens, are being allowed to suffer, to starve, and, without access to health care, perhaps even to die. As things already stood, undocumented immigrants were ineligible for any federally funded public health insurance programs. On top of that, the millions who have tax IDs, so that they can work without formal authorization, are now denied help in the form of unemployment benefits—they are the only US taxpayers excluded from the coronavirus stimulus package.

. . . .

It’s also troubling to single out immigrants because of the historic scapegoating of immigrants during other health crises. The historian Alan M. Kraut writes that in the 1830s, Irish immigrants were stigmatized as bearers of cholera, and at the end of the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was dubbed the “Jewish disease.” Scapegoating also obscures a longer thread in a bigger pattern, regardless of which party or administration is in power. According to Professor Viladrich, the American government’s denying assistance to this group of working immigrants is the historic norm.

“A lot of this is related to a labor force that is disposable,” she said. “There is no contradiction here; it is very consistent with ACA, with welfare reform, all of that. The systematic exclusion of immigrants is parallel with the systematic exploitation of immigrants.”

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, lobbied hard to ensure that people without work authorization would be excluded from the CARES Act. On the Senate floor, he spoke against child tax credit going to people without social security numbers:

If you want to apply for money from the government through the child tax credit program, then you have to be a legitimate person… It has nothing to do with not liking immigrants. It has to do with saying, taxpayer money shouldn’t go to non-people.

His office later said he was referring to people who fraudulently claimed a child in order to reap the federal benefit. Whatever he meant by “legitimate person” and “non-people,” the effect was the same: in the eyes of the law, undocumented immigrants would be non-people.

Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher, used the term “bare life” to describe a life reduced to plain biological facts, the robbing of a person’s political existence by those who have the power to define who is included as a worthy human being and who is excluded. While the labor of undocumented people is gladly accepted, their humanity has been tidily erased by lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

The immigration and legal historian Daniel Kanstroom reminds us that in times of trouble, like wars or national emergencies, immigrants are the first to get thrown overboard. It was in part due to the ban on Chinese immigrants back in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century that the demand for Mexican workers increased dramatically. In his 2007 book Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History, Kanstroom explained how this ban combined with wartime labor needs in 1917 led to the US government’s systematic recruitment of Mexican workers: “From 1917 through 1921, an estimated 50,000–80,000 Mexican farm workers entered the United States under this program, establishing a legal model and cultural mindset that endured for decades to come.”

Kanstroom cites a line from the 1911 Dillingham Commission, an extensive bipartisan investigation into immigration, that “The Mexican… is less desirable as a citizen than as a laborer.” The precedent was set, and what followed was a cycle of recruitment, restriction, and expulsion. More than one million people of Mexican ancestry were forcibly removed from the United States during the Depression years. Some of the people deported by the government to Mexico were US citizens, but then as now, because of their undocumented relatives, they were subject to the same brutal treatment.

In 1942, as a wartime labor shortage loomed, the US worked out an agreement with Mexico for short-term, low-wage workers to fill in the gap. The Bracero Program, as it was known, continued until 1964, with some 4.5 million Mexican workers legally entering the country during those years. There were enormous contradictions in the way those workers were treated: ad hoc legalization programs designed to help big farmers took place at some times; then, at others, there were huge deportation drives when the demand for labor fell off—most notoriously, the terrifying round-ups of 1954’s so-called Operation Wetback.

According to the scholar of migration Nicholas De Genova, “It is precisely their distinctive legal vulnerability, their putative ‘illegality’ and official ‘exclusion,’ that inflames the irrepressible desire and demand for undocumented migrants as a highly exploitable workforce—and thus ensures their enthusiastic importation and subordinate incorporation.” It is no mistake that there remain millions of “illegal” workers of Latino ethnicity contributing their labor, taxes, and humanity to this country; it suits America very well in the good times, and always has.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Maev’s outstanding analysis of our sordid history of abusing essential immigrant workers, from enslaved African Americans, to Chinese laborers, to Latino workers who have been propping up our economy and keeping us alive during the time of pandemic. Their reward: dehumanization, degradation, deportation without due process, and sometimes death.

I speak often at Courtside about how Trump’s self-righteous, immoral, scofflaw White Nationalist cabal — folks like Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Barr, Cuccinelli, Paul — have been engineering a vile “Dred Scottification” program to dehumanize, abuse, and exploit the most vulnerable, yet often most essential, among us.

I have also highlighted how the Trump kakistocracy’s efforts to create an extralegal, unconstitutional “Reincarnation of Jim Crow” too often have been supported and encouraged by some of those highly privileged Supreme Court Justices whose job was supposed to be protecting all of us, and particularly the most vulnerable persons, from invidious Executive abuses: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

The latest example: In the middle of humanitarian trauma, the “socially distant Justices” managed to find time for a little gratuitous cruelty: denying an application to stay the regime’s irrational, racist, and unlawful “public charge rules” that threaten the lives and safety of immigrants, their U.S. citizen families, and U.S. society as a whole. https://apple.news/ABNL4e_DtRPS4eN5m5gx1ug

Amy Howe writes at Scotusblog:

Under federal immigration law, noncitizens cannot receive a green card if the government believes that they are likely to become reliant on government assistance. The dispute now before the court arose last year, after the Trump administration defined “public charge” to refer to noncitizens who receive various government benefits, such as health care, for more than 12 months over a three-year period. The challengers had argued that the rule is “impeding efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, preserve scarce hospital capacity and medical supplies, and protect the lives of everyone in the community” because it deters immigrants from seeking testing and treatment for the virus out of fear that it will endanger their ability to obtain a green card. The federal government countered that it has made clear that the use of publicly funded health care related to COVID-19 “will not be considered in making predictions about whether” immigrants are likely to become a public charge.

https://shar.es/aHxGIP

The Government’s argument doesn’t pass the “straight face” test. The monetary savings from this rule are minuscule; its overriding purpose was to dump on immigrant families and intimidate ethnic, primarily Hispanic, communities. It was the “brainchild” of neo-Nazi Stephen Miller. What greater proof could there be of its White Nationalist purpose? Given the regime’s well-established record of lies and unbridled hostility toward immigrants and communities of color, why would anyone have confidence in the regime’s often hollow or disingenuous “promises?”

Those of us who believe in honoring our immigrant heritage, making our constitutional guarantees reality rather than unfulfilled promises, that human values, empathy, and kindness matter, and that we can and must do better than shallow, often outright evil, folks like Trump, Miller, Cuccinelli, Roberts, Barr, et al. need to retake our Government at the ballot box this November and build a better, fairer, more humane future for America and all persons in our country.

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

PWS

04-27-20

LAW YOU CAN USE: Denise Hammond, Esquire, @ Grossman Young & Hammond With All You Really Need To Know About Trump’s Bogus Executive Order “Banning” Immigration! — It’s A Racist Diversion, But Still Another Blow To Democracy!

BLY EO MH dch FINAL

By Denise Hammond, Senior Counsel, Grossman Young, and Hammond:

4922 Fairmont Avenue, Suite 200 Bethesda, MD 20814 240.403.0913

8737 Colesville Road, Suite 500 Silver Spring, MD 20910 301.917.6900

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER SUSPENDING IMMIGRATION:

WHAT IT COVERS AND HOW IT DISTRACTS FROM EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

On Monday, April 20, 2020, Donald Trump tweeted that he would be “

Who is Barred by the Order?

The Order is relatively short and bars the following foreign nationals from immigrating permanently to the United States:

• Foreign Nationals Overseas Who Lack an Immigrant Visa or Green Card. With the exceptions discussed below, the Order applies to foreign nationals who do not have an immigrant visa or green card. Unless you are covered by an exception, you are barred from entering the United States as an immigrant even if you are processing, or planning to process, an immigrant visa at a US consul abroad. These visas could be through employment sponsorship, family sponsorship, or the Diversity Visa (DV) green card lottery as discussed below.

• Foreign nationals outside the United States. The Order only applies to individuals who were outside the US on April 23d, the date of issuance. Presumably, someone in the United States on that day could go home today, apply for an immigrant visa at the US Consulate there, and not be barred by the Order.

Who is Not Barred by the Order?

• Anyone in the United States on April 23. This bears repeating. If you are in the United States, you remain eligible to adjust your status to lawful permanent residence or, presumably, to apply for an immigrant visa abroad (discussed below).

1 The Order is entitled

signing an Executive Order

to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” This caused great consternation and

confusion among immigrants and their families, US businesses, and the immigration bar. On April

23d, Mr. Trump issued his Order.1 Now that we’ve had a chance to review it, we want to break it

down and explain who it does and does not cover, how it does nothing to make us safer or

strengthen the economy, and how it is another log on the anti-immigrant fire and a thinly-veiled

distraction from the lack of effective leadership to actually combat the Coronavirus.

“Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market

During the Economic Recovery Following the Covid-19 Outbreak

• Nonimmigrants. It is very important to note that the Order does not prevent nonimmigrants from entering the United States. As explained below, nonimmigrants are foreign nationals who enter the United States on a temporary basis and lack intent and permission to remain permanently.

• Anyone with an Immigrant Visa. You can immigrate if you already have an immigrant visa. An explanation of the green card process is helpful to understand this exception.

The Immigrant Visa (Green Card) Process. The process typically begins when the sponsor (e.g. an employer or US Citizen spouse) files an immigrant visa petition in the United States asking the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to find that the foreign national beneficiary satisfies the requirements for classification in a certain immigrant category, such as an outstanding researcher or the spouse of a US Citizen. On approval, when the beneficiary reaches the front of the visa waiting line (or if there is no line), he or she applies for permission to immigrate either through “adjustment of status” or “consular processing.” If the beneficiary is in the United States, in H-1B visa status for instance, s/he can apply to USCIS to “adjust” his or her status to lawful permanent residence. On approval, s/he will receive a green card. If the beneficiary is overseas, however, s/he must apply to the US Consulate in his or her home country for an immigrant visa. On approval, s/he will be granted an immigrant visa, can be physically admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident and will soon get a green card in the mail.

Anyone who is overseas and already has received an immigrant visa is exempt from the Order and can immigrate. (But keep in mind that the immigrant visa must be used within 6 months of issuance, which can be a problem given current global travel restrictions).

• Lawful Permanent Residents. The Order also does not apply to you if you already have a green card, lawful permanent residence or, as noted, an immigrant visa.

• US Military Members. If you are a member of the US military (or the spouse or child of a servicemember), the Order doesn’t apply to you.

• Healthcare Workers. The Order doesn’t apply to anyone overseas (and most immediate family members) who seeks an immigrant visa:

 as a doctor, nurse or other healthcare professional

 to perform COVID19 research

 to perform work essential to combating or helping patients with COVID19.

• Job Creation Investors. The Order does not apply to anyone who has an approved “EB-5” petition. This visa category if for foreign nationals who invest $1 million (or less in economically depressed areas) in projects that will create jobs for US workers.

• Special Immigrants. The Order does not apply to anyone certain individuals who see to immigrate under USCIS “Special Immigrant” programs, and their spouses and children:

 Afghanistan or Iraq nationals who supported the US Armed Forces as translators  Iraq nationals who worked for or on behalf of the US Government in Iraq2

• Law Enforcement Aid. The Order does not apply to you if you can satisfy the US Government that your immigration will advance important law enforcement objectives.

• National Interest. The Order doesn’t apply to you if you can show that your entry would be in the national interest.

• Holders of Advance Parole or other Travel Document. The Order does not apply to any foreign national who is overseas but who has Advance Parole or other official travel document.

• Asylees and Refugees. By its terms, nothing in the Order can limit the rights of asylees, refugees and foreign nationals that seek other forms of humanitarian relief. The Trump Administration’s assault on these forms of relief makes this suspect.

• Spouse and Children of US Citizens. The Order does not apply to a spouse, minor child or prospective adoptee of a US Citizen. In an especially harsh stroke, the Order bars from entry the parents of US Citizens and all family members of Lawful Permanent Residents (discussed below).

The Order gives the US Consul the authority to decide if any of the above exemptions applies.

ANALYSIS

The Order is a Harsh and Illusory Distraction from Failed Leadership and Does not Advance its Stated Purpose

A close look at the Order reveals the actual limits of its reach and shows that it fails to promote its stated purpose. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Order is primarily a distraction from a failure of leadership in the war on Covid-19 and yet another log on the anti-immigrant fires.

The Order’s Limited Reach. The Trump Administration effectively gutted overseas visa processing more than one month ago when, on March 20, it suspended routine visa services at US Consulates around the world in response to the pandemic.3 Since then, absent an emergency, immigrant visa

2 https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/special-immigrants

3 https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/ea/routine-visa-services-suspended-worldwide.html

applicants have been practically prevented from processing their cases and immigrating to the United States. Thus, although it is not readily apparent, the Order does little if anything to further curtail immigration.

The number of foreign nationals who are NOT affected by the Order also suggests that its surrounding fanfare is a lot of white noise. This is because it only bars “immigrants” but not “nonimmigrants” who comprise the vast majority of foreign nationals who enter the United States. Immigrants, a/k/a lawful permanent residents or green card holders, are those admitted to the United States on a permanent basis. To be eligible, they must meet the highly demanding requirements of a legal visa category. These can be based on a hard-to-fill job offer, extraordinary contributions, a close family relationship to a US Citizen or lawful permanent resident, a US investment that will create jobs, humanitarian considerations or a few other grounds. Nonimmigrants, on the other hand, enter the United States temporarily for a specific purpose. These include highly skilled H-1B professionals, certain investors, business visitors and tourists, and students, and their family members, to name a few.

The number of immigrants to the United States is dwarfed by the number of nonimmigrants who enter temporarily and are allowed to remain for various periods. Just over 1 million immigrants are admitted to the United States annually; more than 186 million nonimmigrants are admitted in a typical year. During the most recent year for which data is available, 90% of nonimmigrants were visitors for business or pleasure, and a small handful were temporary high-skilled workers, some agricultural workers and students, with their families. Currently, about 2.3 million nonimmigrants reside in the United States. i Thus, the exemption of nonimmigrants from the Order underscores its limited reach and its true purpose of distracting from failed leadership and appealing to anti- immigrant sentiment during an election cycle.

The Order is Temporary. Additionally, the Order is limited to 60 days, although it could be extended. By its terms, it was designed to protect job opportunities for marginalized US workers during record unemployment. Whether it will be extended most likely will depend on the state of the US economy, although we fear that political considerations will come into play.

The Order Fails to Promote its Stated Purpose. As its title shows, the Order is designed to protect jobs for US workers. The preamble states that the Order was designed to protect unemployed marginalized Americans, from competing for jobs during high unemployment. However, the Order fails to accomplish this end.

First, the Order shuts the door to the best and the brightest and the most highly educated from around the world and a host of others who will not compete for jobs with marginalized US workers. These include foreign nationals with demonstrated “extraordinary ability,” outstanding researchers, multi-national managers, advanced degree workers and those with exceptional ability and a college- education, all of whom are barred from entering in what are known as the “EB” or employment- based immigrant visa categories. While these workers could boost the economy, they clearly will not take jobs from the marginalized American worker.

Second, the Order assumes that immigrants will seek to work once they get here. While some will, the Trump Administration’s exceedingly onerous “public charge” requirements make this a disingenuous basis for banning their immigration. As a general rule, an immigrant visa applicant must show that s/he will not become a “public charge.” This now requires voluminous evidence that the intending immigrant can support himself or herself and his or her household with an unprecedented degree of assets and income or that the sponsor can provide this level of support. Immigrants who are in a position to meet this high threshold are unlikely to compete with marginalized workers for low-skilled jobs. Accordingly, it is dishonest and cruel to close the doors to all immigrants, including family-based immigrants, based on an outcry for marginalized worker job protection. Rather, in barring all family-based immigrants other than the spouses and children of US Citizens, the Order accomplishes one of Mr. Trump’s long-stated goals of ending what he calls “chain migration.” Parents of US citizens, who have long been a preferred category under US immigration law, are barred by the Order. So are adult children of US Citizens, siblings of US citizens, as well as spouses and children of permanent residents. Congress has passed laws allowing these parents, children, husbands and wives to immigrate to join their families in the United States. The Order eviscerates this law and policy without reason.

Conclusion

Mr. Trump’s Order suspending immigration to protect the US labor market during the coronavirus pandemic is the legal equivalent of ear candling to treat liver disease. Neither works, and both are dangerous.

Fans of ear candling use a hollow candle to drip hot wax in the ear. They claim it creates negative pressure and funnels out unwanted ear wax. But there’s no evidence that it works. Additionally, the FDA warns that it can block the ear canal, puncture the eardrum and cause other injuries. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with liver disease.

Mr. Trump’s new Order, likewise, is unhealthy for us as a nation and economically toxic. It does nothing to protect job opportunities for marginalized Americans, which is its stated purpose. Instead, it closes our borders to the best and the brightest whose very help we need to wrestle the virus to the mat. It also cruelly separates families.

The corona virus does not discriminate on the basis of immigration status. Mr. Trump should behave accordingly.

i https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Nonimmigrant_Population%20Estimates_2016_0.pdf

*********

Here’s a copy of the order:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspending-entry-immigrants-present-risk-u-s-labor-market-economic-recovery-following-covid-19-outbreak/

Thanks, Denise!

What we really have here is an “Eternal Reichstag Fire.” 🔥 The Clown in Chief 🤡 continues to use bogus “emergencies,” as “greenlighted” by the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes, to suspend the rule of law and “govern” by Executive decree.

This looks less like the “immigration bar” tweeted by Trump for the benefit of his “base” and more like “Phase I” of Stephen Miller’s draft White Nationalist rewrite of the permanent immigration system. It’s basically a way of reducing permanent immigration by “picking on” relatives of U.S. green card holders, adult relatives (other than spouses) of US citizens, DV Lottery winners, and limiting “employment-based” permanent immigration to certain medical professionals, researchers, and “big investors.”

The attack on family immigration, at the core of our traditional immigration system and a source of both economic strength and diversity, is basically what has become the racist trope of “eliminating chain migration.” What it really means is attempting to restrict migrants of color for a “whiter, more Christian” America, long a dream of Miller and the White Nationalist hate groups he has been associated with.

Miller’s nativist program was resoundingly rejected by a bipartisan majority of Congress. But now, with the “J.R. Five” firmly in their pocket, and Congress largely in a state of permanent suspension when it comes to anything other than handing out money, Trump and Miller plan to rewrite the legal immigration system, piece by piece, using Executive decrees propped up by a bogus, but never ending, “employment national emergency.”

On the other hand, by allowing the admission of “non- immigrants” the order recognizes that we will continue to need migrants and their industry and skills at all levels of our economy as we recover. But, they will be relegated to a more subservient status where they are beholden to employers and can’t qualify to become permanent members of our society and eventually citizens. In other words, insuring that migrants coming to America will remain exploitable and disenfranchised. This fits right in with Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist playbook.

Once the bogus declaration of “immigration emergency” has been invoked as “temporary,” it never ends. But, with Roberts and his gang of right wing authoritarian enablers determined to “look the other way,” don’t expect any loosening until we stand up and rid ourselves of the Trump kakistocracy at the ballot box (unless Trump gets away with burning that too).

A corrupt and cowardly Supremes’ majority and a feckless Congress led by “Moscow Mitch” are allowing Trump’s “misrule by decree” similar to the Third Reich. And of course “the other” — immigrants — are the primary target.

But, this is also by implication directed at drumming up hate and resentment against Hispanic Americans, all Americans of color, and Muslims, etc. In other words, the “usual suspects” for the White Nationalists. This “Eternal Reichstag Fire” 🔥of hate, lies, scapegoating, and authoritarianism will continue burning and consuming our democracy and its institutions unless and until we get “regime change.”

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

PWS

0-24-20

SUPREME WIN FOR THE REGIME: “J.R. Five” Interprets Statute Broadly To Narrow Eligibility For Deportation Waiver — Justice Sotomayor + 3 Dissent — Barton v. Barr (5-4)

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/supreme-court-on-cancellation-barton-v-barr-5-4

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Supreme Court on Cancellation: Barton v. Barr (5-4)

Barton v. BarrMr.

[Maj. Op.] “Barton argues that the BIA and the Eleventh Circuit misinterpreted the statute. He contends that the §1182(a)(2) offense that precludes cancellation of removal must be one of the offenses of removal. We disagree with Barton, and we affirm the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.”

[Dissent] “At bottom, the Court’s interpretation is at odds with the express words of the statute, with the statute’s overall structure, and with pertinent canons of statutory construction. It is also at odds with common sense. With virtually every other provision of the INA, Congress granted preferential treatment to lawfully admitted noncitizens—and most of all to LPRs like Barton. But because of the Court’s opinion today, noncitizens who were already admitted to the country are treated, for the purposes of the stop-time rule, identically to those who were not—despite Congress’ express references to inadmissibility and deportability. The result is that, under the Court’s interpretation, an immigration judge may not even consider whether Barton is entitled to cancellation of removal—because of an offense that Congress deemed too trivial to allow for Barton’s removal in the first instance. Because the Court’s opinion does no justice to the INA, let alone to longtime LPRs like Barton, I respectfully dissent.”

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

Thanks Dan.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.

As a frequent critic of the “J.R. Five” and their general predisposition to stretch to reward the regime over individuals seeking Due Process and fundamental fairness, I wasn’t surprised by this result.

As compared with trashing the legal rights of asylum seekers and those seeking legal status as “The Five” have done in other cases, this decision on waivers has a much more limited impact. Nevertheless, it does unnecessarily “screw” long-time members of our society with potential equities to offset their misconduct.

The vote should have been 9-0 in favor of Mr. Barton. The “GOP majority,” supposedly made up of “strict constructionists,” “torqued” the actual language of the statute to reach their preferred result — “stiffing” Mr. Barton who has resided in the U.S. since age 10.

By contrast, reading the statutory language at its face value, Justice Sotomayor and her dissenting colleagues also reached a practical, common sense result that would have allowed Immigration Judges to “weigh the equities” in deciding whether to grant the waiver to long-time green card holders. It by no means guarantees them a “win.” It just allows them and their families to to “make their case” on the merits.

Perhaps, effectively denying individuals a meaningful “day in court” on relief from deportation speeds up the “deportation railroad” a bit. But, at what cost?

Read the full decision at the above link.

PWS

04-23-20

TRUMP’S AUTHORITY OVER IMMIGRATION HAS LIMITS — SADLY, THE “J.R. FIVE’S” WILLFUL BLINDNESS APPEARS TO HAVE NONE! — Failing Partisan High Court Threatens American Democracy! — PLUS, BONUS COVERAGE: My “Mid-Week Mini Essay”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/trump-immigration-executive-order.html

Jennifer M. Chacon and Ervin Chemerinsky in The New York Times:

A president has broad powers over immigration under the Constitution and federal laws, but they are not unlimited. At the very least, there must be a reasonable basis for restrictions on immigration. None exists for President Trump’s threat to temporarily ban all immigrant visa admissions to the United States.

As with earlier, problematic immigration policies like the entry ban aimed at several predominantly Muslim countries, this proposal started out with a remarkably broad promise by the president: a ban on all immigration. That sweeping rhetoric has a cost of its own. Among other things, it may discourage international students from enrolling in American universities this fall, and otherwise signal “keep out” to visitors who would actually boost the economy. But beyond the rhetorical overkill, there are other problems with this ban. The actual policy proposal is much less than promised by tweet, but even in its whittled down form, it is still unlawful.

A ban on the entry of individuals who have been granted immigrant visas would not affect as many people as you might think. Although there are usually more than 180 million entries into the United States every year, most of that traffic is by people holding temporary visas. This policy would affect only those immigrants who have been authorized for permanent residency. That involves less than a million people — a number that has declined in recent years because of other entry bans, new requirements on immigrants and slow visa processing. The answer to the crushing domestic unemployment crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak is clearly not going to be found in a ban on these immigrants.

On the other hand, the ban would cause enormous hardships for those who have been granted immigrant visas. Denial of green cards could keep parents and children and other family members from being together. Critical industries — including the overwhelmed medical industry — will lose out on vitally needed expertise just when it is needed most.

More on the Trump administration immigration policy.

Opinion | The Editorial Board

Coronavirus Doesn’t Care Where You Come From. Trump Still Does.March 31, 2020

One would think that such a draconian measure would have a strong justification. If nothing else, under the law, there has to be a legitimate basis for such an order. In upholding President Trump’s travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court stressed that it was based on a “DHS and other agencies … conduct[ing] a comprehensive evaluation” and “extensive findings.” The court found it constitutional because it served the legitimate purpose of national security.

In other words, even the court’s very deferential approach to presidential decisions concerning immigration in Trump v. Hawaii demanded that the actions be reasonable. The proposed ban on immigration cannot meet that test.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the op-ed at the link.

WISHIN’ & HOPIN’ WON’T MAKE IT SO: THE LAW IS NO LONGER SUPREME IN AMERICA — Obviously, Trump Has Placed Himself Above It, With Little Pushback From Congress Or A Compromised Supremes

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

April 22, 2020

I’m not going to argue with the scholarship of two distinguished academics like Dean Chemerinsky and Professor Chacón in today’s NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/trump-immigration-executive-order.html

But, I take issue with their characterization of Trump v. Hawaii, the so-called “Travel Ban Case,” as requiring a “reasonable justification” for Executive action in the area of immigration.

That’s what the rule should be; but, it isn’t. And, that’s unlikely to change as long as the “J.R. Five” rule the Supremes.

Even some of their “Brethren,” on the left side of the Court but the right side of history, gamely but vainly plugging away for our Constitution and some intellectual honesty from their righty colleagues, are struggling to process the obvious tilt taking place on what should be a “level plaything field.”

On the record in Hawaii, there was nothing approaching “reasonable” about the bogus “national security” grounds for the ban. The record made it clear that the real reason was invidious discrimination against Muslims to fulfill a vile White Nationalist driven campaign promise.

Almost every lower Federal Court to consider the issue realized and articulated this obvious controlling fact. It wasn’t “rocket science.” Just the courage, integrity, and decency to speak truth to power — what life tenure is supposed to be all about.

The “national security” ground was pure pretext that contravened the consensus of the Government’s own internal professional experts, as shown by the record. The “after the fact,” obviously contrived “letter” from Sessions and Kelly asking the President to act was as phony as a three-dollar bill. Indeed, the idea that either of these hacks was acting out of some genuine expertise and legitimate concern for the national security rather than just following “orders from on high” (Sessions also out of a lifelong embrace of racism and xenophobia) is preposterous.

The real message of Hawaii is that Trump can throw up any old fabricated or fraudulent rationale for xenophobia, racism, and religious bigotry designed purely for improper political purposes and the GOP Supremes’ majority will happily look the other way.

That’s apparently because the ideologues who control the Supremes truly believe the GOP far right dogma that some people are more equal than others and that only the rich and powerful truly deserve the protections of the law. That’s why corporations, guns, and Trump generally win before today’s Supremes while voters, African Americans, Hispanics, Democrats, immigrants, and unions generally lose. And, Trump “got” the “encouraging permissive message” of the “J.R. Five” (with Kavanaugh now substituting for Kennedy) loud and clear. He’s acted accordingly.

Trump is no legal scholar. But, he has spent a career using the courts as a battering ram to smash the rule of law to smithereens. This allows him to punish his enemies, reward his cronies, line his pockets, welch on his debts, stiff his creditors, and otherwise lie, cheat, and steal all the while escaping both legal and moral accountability.

If there is one thing that he can smell a mile away, it’s a toady judge. And, in Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, & Kavanaugh, the stench of cowardly complicity with tyranny is overwhelming.

To borrow from one of yesterday’s Courtside posts, the Constitution now appears to be essentially the “Maginot Line” of our democracy. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/04/21/failed-state-americas-clown-prince-%f0%9f%a4%a1-more-like-infamous-marshal-petain-than-leader-ofthe-free-world-but-the-leader-he-brings-to-mind-is/

Trump and his “Blitzkrieg” have simply outflanked and overwhelmed it. They have pushed decades of refugee, asylum, human rights, and immigration laws into a “mass grave” without any Congressional approval and, when expedient, have just ignored or directly contravened the clear intent of Congress. Any judge worth his or her salt would see this as an obvious existential assault on our Constitution and our fundamental values and act accordingly. But, not this Supremes’ majority. Certainly, the “J.R. Five” would have been right at home serving Henri Petain and the Vichy regime.

The “J.R. Five” employs all sorts of obtuse legal jargon and gobbledygook to cover up their immorality and intellectual dishonesty. It would be a mistake, however, to expect them to stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and human decency where immigration policy is concerned.

Expect them instead to buy Trump’s bogus public safety and economic emergency rationales hook, line, and sinker. Heck, this might even be a great opportunity for them to intervene at the U.S. District Court level to facilitate the abuse, further demoralize District Court Judges, reinforce xenophobia, suck up to Trump, and do away with nationwide injunctions except where the regime requests them. The lives of the vulnerable are dispensable to this group of privileged ivory tower jurists.

Trump and the GOP can eventually be voted out of power. But, the problems of a Supremes’ majority that has life-tenure and has lost its way, legally, intellectually, and morally, will be with us for the indefinite future.

Until that’s changed, expecting help from the Supremes in protecting democracy from tyranny is like expecting honesty, reasonableness, and leadership from Trump. Not likely!

Academic analyses, no matter how brilliant or cogent, that fail to account for the partisan bias and political realities at work at the Supremes’ today won’t help us much in predicting the bleak future of the rule of law and individual rights in America if change and reform doesn’t come to all levels of our Federal Judiciary. Sadly, what’s happening today has little to do with what we all learned in law school.

We need to be prepared to meet and deal with today’s reality, no matter how unpalatable it might be. More important, once we retake control of our country and our destiny, we need vastly improved Federal Judges at all levels, particularly the Supremes. The “J.R. Five” are the anthesis of what we should be seeking and demanding in a future, better Federal Judiciary. Never again!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

04-22-20

“DUH” ARTICLE OF DA’ DAY: The Ban Is (Yet Another) Scam! 🆘🤥👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/trumps-new-immigration-ban-is-scam-dont-pretend-otherwise/

Greg Sargent writes in the WashPost:

There is a single, overarching reality that President Trump cannot make disappear: Due to his pathological unwillingness to take coronavirus seriously, Trump catastrophically squandered numerous early weeks that could have been used to develop a much more robust federal response, and right now we’re living through the horrible consequences.

Trump’s new suspension on immigration, which he “announced” on Twitter late last night, should be seen through this prism.

The new suspension has two rationales, according to Trump and White House officials: To continue combating coronavirus and to protect U.S. workers amid a crushing economic downturn.

It will do neither of those things in any meaningful sense — which means that it won’t have the impact that Trump himself says it’s designed to.

According to the New York Times, Trump will sign an executive order that temporarily bars “the provision of new green cards and work visas,” which means the administration will “no longer approve any applications from foreigners to live and work in the United States for an undetermined period of time.”

It’s hard to say how much of an impact this will have. As the Wall Street Journal points out:

Administration officials said the order wouldn’t make substantial changes to current U.S. policy. Even without an executive order, the administration has already all but ceased nearly every form of immigration. Most visa processing has been halted, meaning almost no one can apply for a visa to visit or move to the U.S. Visa interviews and citizenship ceremonies have been postponed and the refugee program paused.

Immigration analyst Sarah Pierce notes that a lot will turn on details, such as whether this suspension applies to foreign nationals already here and applying for green cards or trying to renew visas, or if it only applies to people outside the country who want to come here, which is effectively no longer possible already.

“If they want to make official what’s already in place, it would make a flashy statement while having minimal impact,” Pierce told me, adding that if they did apply it to people who are already here as well, it could be a lot worse.

President Trump on April 20 said he will issue an executive order temporarily suspending all immigration into the country. (Reuters)

We’ll see soon enough. But we can say right now that this isn’t a solution to the current problems we face on coronavirus, because those problems are rooted in the spread that already took place here. We are starting to bend the curve through social distancing — which Trump long resisted, and which he then tried to undo prematurely before backing off.

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

Yup! You can read the rest of Greg’s article at the link.

Now, in a real democracy, with an independent judiciary, we’d expect immediate and forceful repudiation and perhaps sanctions against the Executive for this latest racist scam.

But, as I have pointed out many times, the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes has a never-ending appetite for putting the law, our Constitution, and simple human decency aside and blindly supporting, enabling, and encouraging the White Nationalist regime in its various immigration scams and shenanigans. They are all as transparently bogus as this one. Trump makes an off the wall political statement out of the White Nationalist playbook and the minions run around trying to engineer and fabricate a legal pretext. The lower Federal Courts often immediately see through the fraud; but, the Supremes step in to rescue the racist agenda, sweep it under the carpet, and in doing so “greenlight” the next extreme step.

Sadly, even regime change won’t be enough to immediately restore courage, integrity, and human decency to our failed highest court. But, it will be a start. Sometimes, “internal rebellion from below” can force change, or at least some integrity and accountability, back into a failing judicial system.

Due Process Forever! White Nationalist Scams Never!

PWS

04-21-20

JIM CROW WINS, AMERICA LOSES, AGAIN — WHITE NATIONALIST CLOWN-IN-CHIEF 🤡 HALTS IMMIGRATION TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM MASSIVE FAILURE OF GOVERNANCE, AS FECKLESS DEMS PROTEST! — Announced By Tweet At Time When Borders Closed Anyway — A “pathetic attempt to shift blame from his Visible Incompetence to an Invisible Enemy,” Says Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) 😰👎🏻

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

April 21, 2020. Migrants didn’t bring coronavirus to the U.S. Inevitable as its arrival was, U.S. travelers returning from abroad hastened the infection. The Trump regime ignored advanced warnings, wasted time, failed to prepare, and intentionally misled the public into believing that the problem was minor and under control. As we know, it was neither. No wonder the “Chief Clown” needs to shift attention to “the usual suspects.”

Rather than being a threat, courageous, talented, hard-working migrants of all types have been at the forefront of our battle against coronavirus. They put their own lives at risk to provide health care, medical research, food, sanitation, delivery, stocking, transportation, cleaning, technology, and other essential services. Their reward from Trump, Miller, and the other regime racists: to be scapegoated and further dehumanized by those whose “malicious incompetence” actually threatens the health and safety of all Americans.

Nobody knows what the U.S. economy will look like post-COVID-19. But, we can be sure that migrants will play a key role in our future. And, of course, permanent legal immigrants are carefully screened and required to undergo health examination before being admitted.

Meanwhile, Democrats complain, but show show no sign of actually using their leverage to halt the regime’s invidious assault on migrants. They weren’t even to get all taxpaying immigrant families included in the initial stimulus payments nor have they been able to require immigration authorities to comply with best health practices for detained migrants. Nor does it look like the needs of migrants will be addressed by the latest proposed legislation, although exact details are still pending. So, their bluster is just that —bluster.

Undoubtedly, the brave lawyers of the New Due Process Army will mount legal challenges to this latest assault on the rule of law. While some challenges might succeed in the lower Federal Courts, to date the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes have shown no inclination to look critically at any of the regime’s many misuses and abuses of so-called “emergency” and “national security” rationales, even when they are transparently bogus “pretexts” for xenophobia, religious bigotry, and racism.

Perhaps it’s largely a moot point right now. Market forces affect immigration. With worldwide travel restrictions, borders closed, and 22 million out of work in the U.S., the allure of migration to the U.S. should be sharply reduced.

The Trump regime’s open hostility to immigrants plus our chaotic response to COVID-19, perhaps the world’s worst overall at this point, might make the U.S. a less attractive place for future immigration, particularly for legal migrants who have other choices. Demand for migration is normally a sign of economic and social health. As America fades into disorder under the kakistocracy, so might our ability to attract migrants, particularly those we claim to prize.

According to James Hohmann at the Washington Post, senior officials at the DHS were surprised by Trump’s late night tweet announcing the impending action. As Hohmann noted, that’s an indication of the deep thought, analysis, and preparation that went into this action. Trump has normalized incompetence and dumb decisions made based on a racist political agenda to the point where they barley cause a ripple in our distorted national discussion anymore. I’d say it was like being “goverened” by a five-year-old, but that would be a supreme insult to most five-year-olds I know.

While the “Chief Clown” can’t move fast enough to reopen the economy, even in the face of solid evidence that the it’s premature in most areas, don’t expect the bogus “immigration emergency” to end as long as this regime is in power. Crisis becomes yet another opportunity for the “worst of the worst among us” — the kakistocracy — to act on their biases and prejudices and get away with it.

Here’s a report from Rebecca Shabad @ NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/xenophobe-chief-democrats-blast-trump-s-plan-suspend-immigration-u-n1188551

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats slammed President Donald Trump after he announced that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, arguing that such a move does nothing to protect Americans from the coronavirus and deflects attention away from his handling of the outbreak.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., tweeted that Trump is the “xenophobe. In. chief.”

“This action is not only an attempt to divert attention away from Trump’s failure to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, but an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda. We must come together to reject his division,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Shortly after 10 p.m. ET on Monday, Trump announced in a tweet, “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”

There were no additional details. A senior administration official said Trump could sign the executive order as early as this week.

The tweet came as the death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 topped 42,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins’ Coronavirus Resource Center.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee, called it a “pathetic attempt to shift blame from his Visible Incompetence to an Invisible Enemy.”

. . . .

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

Read Rebecca’s full article at the link.

Due Process Forever. The White Nationalist Kakistocracy Never!

PWS

04-21-20

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