Jeff Sessions – Page 18 – immigrationcourtside.com

☹️HE BEAT THE GOVERNMENT TWICE IN COURT — But, After Three Years In Jail Without Being Charged With Any Crime, Omar Ameen Still Can’t Get A Bond From Garland’s Courts — How Can A System Where The Prosecutor Makes The Rules & Picks The Judges, Mostly From The Ranks Of Former Prosecutors, Provide The “Fair & Impartial Judging” Required By Due Process?

Hon. Ilyce Shugall
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired)
Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.

IMMIGRANT LEGAL DEFENSE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 10, 2022

Contacts:

Immigrant Legal Defense

Ilyce Shugall, ilyce@ild.org, (415) 758-3765

Siobhan Waldron, siobhan@ild.org, (510) 479-0972

Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, The University of Chicago Law School Nicole Hallett, nhallett@uchicago.edu, (203) 910-1980

Omar Ameen Files Federal Lawsuit Seeking His Release

After the U.S. Government Fails Once Again to Prove Any Connection to Terrorism

San Francisco, CA. Immigrant Legal Defense and the University of Chicago Immigrants’ Rights Clinic have filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Omar Ameen seeking his immediate release from immigration custody. Mr. Ameen has been held by the U.S. government for over three years based on false allegations that he was involved in terrorism in Iraq before he arrived in the United States as a refugee. Multiple courts have now rejected those allegations. The petition alleges that his continued detention in these circumstances violates the Due Process Clause and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

After an investigation initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Iraqi government issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the 2014 murder of a police officer in Rawa, Iraq. Mr. Ameen was subsequently arrested by U.S. authorities in August 2018 and placed in extradition proceedings, with the government arguing that not only was Omar responsible for the 2014 murder, but that he also occupied a leadership position in ISIS. After two and a half years of fighting his extradition, the federal magistrate judge found that the warrant was not supported by probable cause because Mr. Ameen had been in Turkey, not Iraq, at the time of the murder. He further found that there was no evidence that Mr. Ameen was an ISIS leader and ordered his immediate release.

Instead of releasing him or charging him with a crime, DHS took Mr. Ameen into immigration custody, and placed him in removal proceedings before the Department of Justice (DOJ). DHS abandoned the murder claim, but otherwise made the same terrorism allegations against Mr. Ameen in immigration court that had been made – and rejected – in the extradition proceedings. After months of proceedings, the immigration judge found that the government had not proved that Mr. Ameen had any involvement with terrorism, yet still denied him bond while he seeks relief from deportation. Mr. Ameen continues to fight for his freedom, to remain in the United States, and to clear his name.

“It is a fundamental principle that the government cannot detain someone based on unsubstantiated rumors and unproven accusations,” said Ilyce Shugall, an attorney with Immigration Legal Defense (ILD) and a member of Mr. Ameen’s legal team. “The government keeps losing, yet continues to believe it can detain Omar indefinitely without cause. The Constitution does not allow such a cavalier denial of individual liberty.”

“Omar’s bond request was denied by the same agency – the Department of Justice – that has maliciously targeted for him years. Omar deserves a fair hearing in federal court,” said Siobhan Waldron, another ILD attorney on Mr. Ameen’s legal team.

“The government seems to think that it can do whatever it wants as long as it invokes the word ‘terrorism,’” said Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, “Rather than admit it was wrong about Omar, the government will go to extraordinary measures to keep him locked up. We are asking the federal court to put a stop to this abuse of power.”

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Immigrant Legal Defense’s mission is to promote justice through the provision of legal representation to underserved immigrant communities.

The Immigrants’ Rights Clinic is a clinical program of the University of Chicago Law School and provides representation to immigrants in Chicago and throughout the country.

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Unfortunately, “cavalier denial of individual liberty” largely describes the daily operations of Garland’s dysfunctional and hopelessly backlogged “wholly owned Immigration Courts” — where due process, scholarship, quality, and efficiency are afterthoughts, at best. “Malicious targeting” — that’s a Stephen Miller specialty shamelessly carried forth by Garland in too many instances! Miller must be gratified, and not a little amazed, to find that the guy Dem progressives and human rights advocates thought would be leading the charge to undo Miller’s White Nationalist, scofflaw attack on migrants and people of color would instead be proudly “carrying his water” for him.

To punctuate my point, today Garland’s Solicitor General will follow in the disgraceful footsteps of predecessors in both GOP and Dem Administrations. Essentially (that is, stripped of its disingenuous legal gobbledygook), the SG will argue that individuals, imprisoned without conviction, struggling to vindicate their rights before Garland’s broken, backlogged, and notoriously pro-Government, anti-immigrant Immigration Courts, renowned for their sloppiness and bad judging, are not really “persons” under the Constitution and therefore can be arbitrarily imprisoned indefinitely, in conditions that are often worse than those for convicted felons, without any individualized rationale and without recourse to “real” courts (e.g., Article III courts not directly controlled by the DOJ).

“The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court seems to be planning to eliminate the only way a lot of people in immigration detention can challenge their imprisonment,” appellate public defender Sam Feldman commented in a quote-tweet. “People would still be held illegally, but no court could do anything about it.”

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/jan-11-2022-sc-oral-arg-previews-detention-bond-jurisdiction

One might assume that our nation’s highest Court would unanimously make short-shrift of the SG’s scofflaw arguments and send her packing. After all, that’s what several lower courts have done! But, most experts predict the exactly opposite result from a Supremes’ majority firmly committed to “Dred Scottification” — that is de-humanization and de-personification” — of people of color and migrants under the Constitution.

It’s painfully obvious that Congress must create an independent Article I Immigration Court not beholden to the Executive Branch. But, don’t hold your breath, given the current political gridlock in Washington. It’s equally clear that the Article IIIs, from the Supremes down, have “swallowed the whistle” by not striking down this blatantly unconstitutional system, thereby forcing Congress to take corrective action to bring the system into line with our Constitution.

In the meantime, Garland could bring in better-qualified expert judges, reform procedures, and appoint competent professional administrators who would institutionalize fairness, efficiency, and independence that would help transition the Immigration Courts to a new structure outside the DOJ. He could stop echoing Stephen Miller in litigation.

He could have replaced the architects of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and exponentially growing back logs with practical scholars and progressive experts who could reduce backlogs and establish order without violating human or legal rights of individuals. He could have set a “new tone” by publicly insisting that all coming before his Immigration Courts be treated fairly, with respect, dignity, and professionalism.

But, instead, Garland has stubbornly eschewed the recommendations of immigration and human rights experts while allowing and even defending the trashing of the rule of law at the border and elsewhere where migrants are concerned. He’s also done it with many questionably qualified “holdover” judges and administrators appointed by Sessions and Barr because of their perceived willingness, or in some cases downright enthusiasm, to stomp on the legal and human rights of asylum seekers and other migrants.

It’s curious conduct from a guy who once was only “one Mitch McConnell away” from a seat on the Supremes! I guess the “due process” Garland got from McConnell and his GOP colleagues is all that he thinks migrants and other “non-persons” of color get in his wholly-owned “courts.”

Good luck to our Round Table colleague, Judge Ilyce Shugall, and her great team, on this litigation! Obviously, the wrong folks are on the Federal Bench — at all levels of our broken and floundering system.

Interestingly, Judge Shugall was once an Immigration Judge until forced to prematurely resign, as a matter of conscience, by the lawless anti-immigrant policies of the Trump Administration carried out through its DOJ. As in many cases, the Government’s loss is the Round Table’s gain!🛡⚔️

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-11-22

⚖️4TH CIRCUIT: BIA ABUSED DISCRETION, BLEW ANALYSIS, FAILED TO FOLLOW PRECEDENT IN MINDLESS DENIAL OF CONTINUANCE FOR U VISA APPLICANT— Garcia Cabrera v. Garland — A Microcosm Of Garland’s Dysfunctional, Backlog-Building Immigration Courts & His Disgraceful Defense Of The Indefensible In The Article IIIs! — Why Garland’s Inept & Disinterested Performance @ EOIR Is A “Nail In The Coffin” Of American Democracy! ⚰️

Melody Bussey — Melody Busey ESQUIRE
Associate Attorney
Devine & Beard Law Office
Charleston, SC
PHOTO: Devineandbeard.com

It should have been a 2-minute “no brainer” administrative closing @ EOIR. Instead, it took two years of tough, smart, dedicated litigation by their firm to get justice in Garland’s broken and dysfunctional “Clown Court” system. But, in the end, Melody Busey, Mark Devine, & Ashley Beard got long-overdue justice for their client by pummeling “Garland’s DOJ Clown-ocracy” in the Fourth Circuit! Should justice in America really be this difficult and uncertain? Garland seems to think so! — Mark J. Devine & Ashley R. Beard
Principal Partners
Devine & Beard Law Office
Charleston, SC
PHOTO: Devineandbeard.com

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201943.P.pdf

Garcia Cabrera v. Garland, 4th Cir., 01-06-21, published

PANEL: MOTZ, QUATTLEBAUM, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.

OPINION: Judge Motz

CONCURRING OPINION; Judge Rushing

KEY QUOTE:

In sum, we hold that the BIA and IJ abused their discretion in denying Garcia

Cabrera’s motion for a continuance. Both the BIA and IJ departed from the established policies set forth in precedential opinions in holding that Garcia Cabrera failed to show good cause. Under Matter of L-A-B-R-, the BIA and IJs must consider two factors above all others: (1) the likelihood that USCIS will grant the movant’s U visa application, and (2) whether a U visa would materially affect the outcome of the movant’s deportation proceedings. 27 I. & N. Dec. at 406. Both of these factors weigh in Garcia Cabrera’s favor. The BIA recognized the existence of these factors but failed to consider whether or how they applied, focusing solely on less significant secondary factors. And although the IJ did address the primary factors, he nonetheless abused his discretion by failing to recognize that a U visa would materially affect the outcome of the deportation proceedings.

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Many, many congrats to NDPA stars Melody Busey, Mark J. Devine, and Devine & Beard Law Office in Charleston, SC, for their perseverance and outstanding advocacy in this case! As I’ve said before, it’s painfully obvious (to anyone but Garland and his team) that the wrong folks are on the bench and in key policy positions at EOIR!

Notably, this decision comes from an ideologically diverse 4th Circuit panel with two Trump appointees. Clearly, this panel took more time to understand the record and carefully and correctly analyze the applicable law and policy considerations than did the “faux experts” at EOIR, at either the trial or appellate levels!

Although I don’t always agree with Judge Rushing, her concurring opinion here shows that she took the time to carefully read the record, understand the applicable law, and clearly explain her position in straightforward, understandable terms. In other words, she treated this case like the important life or death matter it is, rather than “just another immigration case on the assembly line.” And, that led her to get the “bottom line” right. That’s a degree of judicial professionalism that we seldom, if ever, see from Garland’s EOIR these days.

That we get better performance on immigration cases from some Trump appointees on the Article IIIs than from Garland’s “wholly-owned EOIR” shows the total disconnect in the Biden Administration’s approach to the ongoing, unmitigated disaster unfolding every day in our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Unlike the Article IIIs, the Immigration Courts, now sporting an astounding, largely self-created 1.5+ million and growing case backlog, are a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the Administration and Garland’s DOJ!

When you’re in an EOIR “programmed to deny” by White Nationalist nativist overlords like Sessions, Barr, and Miller, you do dumb things and churn out sloppy work.

Indeed, “virtual discussion” of this case spurred some “PTSD” recollections by NDPA attorneys of other horrible, lawless decisions by this particular Immigration Judge, who never should have been on the bench in the first place. Incredibly, this judge, a member of the disgraceful “90% Denial Club” that has helped create disgusting “Asylum Free Zones” at EOIR throughout America, was appointed by the tone-deaf Obama Administration!

The idea that there weren’t better-qualified candidates out there at the time in private practice, the NGOs, clinical education, or even the government is simply preposterous! Failure of Dems to realize the progressive potential of the Immigration Courts has a long and disreputable history! Indeed, EOIR under Garland looks and performs disturbingly similar to EOIR under Miller, Sessions, and Barr!

While this particular IJ has retired, too many other unqualified judges appointed in the past under selection systems stacked against outside advocates and experts remain on the bench, at both the trial and appellate levels, under Garland.

Here’s part of the “Garland Tragedy/Missed Opportunity.” He actually has at least a few folks among his judiciary ranks who have experience and actually understand U visas and how to deal properly, justly, and efficiently with them. I guarantee that none of them would have come up with this inane and wasteful performance of judicial ineptitude and, frankly, anti-immigrant bias!

Why aren’t those folks “running the show” on the BIA, rather than the “deny anything for any reason” holdover gang that (save for Judge Saenz) Garland has “adopted as his.” Excluding Judge Saenz, I doubt that collectively the appellate judges on the BIA have ever handled a U visa case for an applicant. They are blissfully clueless as to both the practical stupidity and traumatic human consequences of the horrible decision-making exhibited at both the trial and appellate levels in this debacle! What’s a wrong with this bizarre picture of Dem incompetence and malfeasance?

Interesting that White Nationalist xenophobes like Sessions, Barr, and Miller had no problem whatsoever using their positions to further lies and myths about asylum seekers and other migrants and acting to weaponize the Immigration Courts (including “packing”them with unqualified and questionably qualified judges, unfairly selected) against individuals and their lawyers seeking justice (following eight years of indolent mismanagement of EOIR by politicos in the Obama DOJ which “teed EOIR up” for Trump and Miller).

By contrast, Dems appear afraid to speak out and act with resolve and purpose on due process, fundamental fairness, human rights, impartial professional expert judging, and human dignity — at our borders and in our Immigration Courts. Why?

Is is because deep down they don’t really believe in racial justice and equal justice for all? Because they can’t accept the humanity of migrants? Why is Garland still carrying out many of Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist policies and using a “court system” unfairly “packed” with those selected because they were perceived to be willing to carry out the Trump/Miller White Nationalist, anti-immigrant agenda?

More than nine months after taking over at “Justice,” why is Garland still defending clearly wrong, counterproductive, and frivolous EOIR decisions like this? Why should simple justice for migrants require a two-year battle by members of the NDPA to be realized?

And, I daresay that there are other panels, in other Circuits, that would have “rubber-stamped” EOIR’s errors. Lack of professionalism and judicial expertise at EOIR, promoted and defended by Garland, breeds wildly inconsistent results and turns justice in life or death cases into a “crap shoot.” That undermines and builds contempt for the entire Federal Justice System and exposes deep flaws at the DOJ that Garland has ignored!

In a functioning system, this case involving someone who is prima facie qualified to remain in the US: 1) should never have been brought by DHS, and 2) if brought, should have been promptly administratively closed or terminated without prejudice by EOIR. A competent judge might also have considered sanctioning DHS counsel for pushing ahead with this case with no justification whatsoever. In other words, conducting frivolous litigation!

That’s how you: 1) cut cases that don’t involve legitimate enforcement issues from the intentionally bloated EOIR docket; 2) reduce incredible, largely self-created backlogs; 3) hold DHS accountable for wasting court time; 4) deliver a long overdue “shape up or ship out” message to poorly performing Immigration Judges (like those in this case) at both the trial and appellate levels; 5) promote consistency and equal justice for all; 6) end the reprehensible practice of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at EOIR; and 7) stop wasting the time of the Article IIIs by defending garbage like that churned out at both the IJ and BIA level here!

Garland has demonstrated cluelessness, timidity, and intransigence in all of the foregoing essential areas of long overdue radical, yet common-sense and basically “no brainer,” progressive reforms at EOIR! You can’t get there with the current, holdover BIA! That’s as clear today as it was the day Garland was sworn in as AG.

The Biden Administration’s gross failure to bring progressive leadership, scholarship, competency, quality, and professionalism to a poorly performing, dysfunctional EOIR is corroding our justice system! Seems like an incredibly bad stance for an Administration claiming to be the “last best hope” for preserving American democracy, heading into midterms with a significant portion of its reliable progressive base angry and turned off by its contemptuous mal-performance on immigration, human rights, racial justice, and EOIR reforms!

Sometimes, just asking for financial support and votes isn’t enough! You have to earn it with bold actions!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-08-21

🤮👎🏽WASHPOST SLAMS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FOR ABANDONING NEGOTIATIONS WITH FAMILIES WHO SUFFERED CHILD ABUSE BY SESSIONS & MILLER! — “Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.”

“Floaters” — So, what’s the “dollar value” of brown-skinned human lives to Biden, Harris, & Garland? We’re about to find out!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/05/president-biden-broke-his-promise-separated-migrant-families/

Opinion by the Editorial Board

January 5 at 2:18 PM ET

When the Trump administration wrenched migrant babies, toddlers and tweens from their parents as a means of frightening away prospective asylum seekers, it was guilty of emotionally torturing innocent children. Americans of every political leaning expressed revulsion toward the policy implemented in 2018, especially when it became clear that the government had kept no clear records linking parents with their children — in other words, no ready means to reunite the families.

President Biden, as a candidate and also once in office, made clear his own disgust at the so-called zero-tolerance policy, calling it “criminal.” He said, correctly, that it “violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”

Now the president, having explicitly endorsed government compensation that would address the suffering of separated migrant family members, has apparently had a change of heart — or political calculation. In mid-December, the Justice Department abruptly broke off negotiations aimed at a financial settlement with hundreds of affected families. Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.

The government has no means of alleviating the trauma inflicted by the previous president’s egregious treatment of those families. That is particularly true as regards the children, whose torment has been described and documented by medical professionals, advocates and journalists. The babies and toddlers who didn’t recognize their own mothers when they were finally reunited; the depression; the fear of further separations, even brief ones — the human aftershocks of Donald Trump’s heartlessness will linger for years, and for lifetimes in some cases.

The administration compounds the hurt by breaking off negotiations on compensating victims. The government must be held accountable; compensation is the most potent and credible vehicle for achieving that.

Granted, there may be a political price to pay. Republicans had a field day blasting the White House after media reports this fall suggested the government might pay $450,000 to separated family members — a settlement that could amount to $1 billion if applied to the several thousand affected migrants. Mr. Biden, apparently unaware of the status of negotiations at that time, said the reports, first published in the Wall Street Journal, were “garbage.” He later backed away from that remark, saying he did not know how much money would be suitable but that some amount was certainly due.

Now, it seems, all bets are off. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, the government would enter into what would likely be years of costly litigation, in which Mr. Biden’s Justice Department would be in the awkward position of defending a policy that Mr. Biden himself — and most Americans — have condemned as evil. There is no predicting how individual judges or juries might react to documented accounts of harm done to children. No one should be surprised if some were to award enormous damages — conceivably in amounts that exceed the $450,000 contemplated in the now-stalled negotiations.

By walking away from the bargaining table, Mr. Biden has broken an explicit, repeated promise. Whatever the political calculus behind that decision, it is morally indefensible.

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Garland fails to stand up for the rights of families of color — again. At the same time, he ties up resources on a frivolous DOJ defense of the indefensible!

“Replacement theory,” White Nationalism, and racism always have been and remain at the core of the GOP’s anti-democracy insurrection. It’s no coincidence that Trump’s plans to de-stabilize American democracy began with cowardly attacks on vulnerable migrants (enabled by a failed Supremes) and culminated in open insurrection.

The dots aren’t that hard to connect. But, Garland doesn’t seem to be able to do it!

If Garland can’t handle the “low hanging fruit” — like settling these cases and creating a progressive judiciary at EOIR who will stand up for the rights of all persons while using expertise and “practical scholarship” to replace dysfunction with efficiency, his pledge to hold the January insurrectionists and their leaders accountable rings hollow!

I’m not the only one to note and question Garland’s uninspiring performance as Attorney General at a time of existential crisis. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Merrick-Garland-isn-t-going-to-save-16752522.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_opinioncentral&sid=5bfc15614843ea55da6b8709

For those who read the LA Times, there was a “spot on” letter to the editors today accurately characterizing Garland as the “Attorney General for different era.”

As I’ve noted before, this is NOT Ed Levi’s, Griffin Bell’s, or Ben Civiletti’s DOJ. It isn’t even Janet Reno’s DOJ. (I ought to know, as I worked under each of the foregoing.)

It’s an organization that has become increasingly politicized over the last two decades (as it was during Watergate), and that allowed itself to be weaponized by Trump’s White Nationalist regime. EOIR, Executive Orders, and immigration litigation were perhaps the most obvious, but by no means the only, examples.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-22

🏴‍☠️NO ACCOUNTABILITY: ONE YEAR AFTER PUBLICLY INSTIGATING A FAILED COUP, TRUMP CONTINUES TO OPENLY PLOT TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY, AS NEO-FASCIST GOP & ITS TOADY POLITICOS LINE UP BEHIND THE “BIG LIE!” — THE GOP, & THOSE WHO SUPPORT & ENABLE IT, HAS ACTUALLY BECOME THE BIGGEST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC!🤮👎🏽🏴‍☠️

S.V. Date
Senior White House Correspondent
HuffPost
PHOTO: HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coup-attempt_n_61c2733fe4b04b42ab6602a2

SV Date on HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — What if you attempted a coup but people were unwilling to wrap their heads around what you had done?

A year after Jan. 6, 2021, that is the peculiar situation in which Donald Trump finds himself. Instead of being carted off in handcuffs for inciting an insurrection against the United States, or even just being banished from federal office for life by the Senate, the former president instead remains the leader of one of the two major political parties and is openly considering another run for the White House in 2024.

. . . .

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/05/capitol-attack-january-6-democracy-america-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Cas Mudde on The Guardian:

The government is finally taking the threat of far-right militia groups seriously. But the larger threat are the Republican legislators who continue to recklessly undermine democracy

One year ago, he was frantically barricading the doors to the House gallery to keep out the violent mob. Today, he calls the insurrection a “bold-faced lie” and likens the event to “a normal tourist visit”. The story of Andrew Clyde, who represents part of my – heavily gerrymandered – liberal college town in the House of Representatives, is the story of the Republican party in 2021. It shows a party that had the opportunity to break with the anti-democratic course under Donald Trump, but was too weak in ideology and leadership to do so, thereby presenting a fundamental threat to US democracy in 2022 and beyond.

The risk of a coup in the next US election is greater now than it ever was under Trump | Laurence H Tribe

Clyde is illustrative of another ongoing development, the slow but steady takeover of the Republican party by new, and often relatively young, Trump supporters. In 2015, when his massive gun store on the outskirts of town was still flying the old flag of Georgia, which includes the Confederate flag, he was a lone, open supporter of then-presidential candidate Trump, with several large pro-Trump and anti-“fake news” signs adorning his gun store. Five years later, Clyde was elected to the House of Representatives as part of a wave of Trump-supporting novices, mostly replacing Republicans who had supported President Trump more strategically than ideologically.

With his 180-degree turn about the 6 January insurrection, Clyde is back in line with the majority of the Republican base, as a recent UMass poll shows. After initial shock, and broad condemnation, Republicans have embraced the people who stormed the Capitol last year, primarily referring to the event as a “protest” (80%) and to the insurrectionists as “protesters” (62%), while blaming the Democratic party (30%), the Capitol police (23%), and the inevitable antifa (20%) for what happened. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Republicans (75%) believe the country should “move on” from 6 January, rather than learn from it. And although most don’t care either way, one-third of Republicans say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who refuses to denounce the insurrection.

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The increased anti-democratic threat of the Republican party can also be seen in the tidal wave of voting restrictions proposed and passed in 2021. The Brennan Center for Justice counted a stunning 440 bills “with provisions that restrict voting access” introduced across all but one of the 50 US states, the highest number since the Center started tracking them 10 years ago. A total of 34 such laws were passed in 19 different states last year, and 88 bills in nine states are being carried over to the 2022 legislative term. Worryingly, Trump-backed Republicans who claim the 2020 election was stolen are running for secretary of state in various places where Trump unsuccessfully challenged the results.

. . . .

At the same time, the Republican party has become increasingly united and naked in its extremism, which denies both the anti-democratic character of the 6 January attack and the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency, and is passing an unprecedented number of voter restriction bills in preparation for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential elections. As long as the White House mainly focuses on fighting “domestic violent extremism”, and largely ignores or minimizes the much more lethal threat to US democracy posed by non-violent extremists, the US will continue to move closer and closer to an authoritarian future.

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You can read both articles in full at the above links.

If you are counting on AG Merrick Garland to “lead the charge” on establishing accountability, your optimism might be tempered by his own failure to “clean house” at DOJ and in particular by his failure to reform his wholly-owned Immigration Court system that was front and center in assisting and carrying out the Trump/Miller White Nationalist assault on the rule of law, primarily targeting individuals of color and the “world’s most vulnerable” seeking justice in our system.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-06-22

THE GIBSON REPORT— 01-02-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Garland’s Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) Squeezes Refugees On Both Ends Of His Ludicrous Backlog, As Those Patiently Waiting Given Court Dates Nearly A Decade In The Future, While Recent Arrivals Mindlessly Rocketed To The “Front Of The Line” Struggle To Find Lawyers & Prepare Cases — Plus Other New Year News From The Dystopian World Of U.S. Immigration!

NEWS

President Biden promised to reform immigration policy. How has that been going?

NPR: President Biden had an ambitious agenda to overhaul the nation’s border policies. But as the end of the year approaches, many of those proposals have been blocked, reversed or simply abandoned.

Biden asks U.S. Supreme Court to hear ‘Remain in Mexico’ case

Reuters: The Biden administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court whether it needed to continue to implement a Trump-era policy that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases. See also ‘Remain In Mexico’ Renewal May Bring More Solo Migrant Kids

Hundreds of Afghans denied humanitarian entry into US

AP: Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week. See also Months later, Afghan evacuees abroad and at US bases still wait to be resettled.

Mexico Is Detaining More US-Bound Migrants Than Ever

Vice: Authorities in Mexico detained more than a quarter of a million migrants this year, and most of them were from Honduras. See also Mexico disbands makeshift camp with thousands of migrants

“I Hope a Lawyer Will Answer”: Asylum Seekers Risk Deportation in Expedited Process

KQED: Advocates say the current system has more safeguards for migrant families and isn’t placing them in detention facilities, but the accelerated pace still makes it tough for asylum seekers like López to find legal representation.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Top Immigration Litigation To Watch In 2022

Law360: Federal courts in 2022 will grapple with immigration law questions ranging from the extent of the president’s authority to set immigration enforcement priorities to federal courts’ ability to review immigration decisions made by the executive branch. Here, Law360 breaks down the cases to watch.

Biden Administration Petitions the High Court, Seeking to End Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” Program

ImmProf: The petition, which asks to review a decision of the Fifth Circuit court of appeals, addresses issues relating to the Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” program.

Oral Argument and Other Court Operations at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

CA2: In light of the recent surge in Covid-19 infections, beginning January 4, 2022 oral arguments will be conducted remotely, by Zoom or teleconference.

Unpub. CA5 Niz-Chavez Remand: Lima-Gonzalez V. Garland

LexisNexis: Lima-Gonzalez v. Garland “Lima-Gonzalez’s NTA did not contain the information required to trigger the stop-time rule. See Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct. at 1478-79, 1485; see also § 1229(a)(1)(A)–(G). Neither did any of the subsequent notices of hearing. As a result, the Government has not furnished Lima-Gonzalez with the “single compliant document” required by statute. Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct…

Illinois’ law ending immigration detention in 2022 hits snag

WaPo: Three Illinois counties with such federal agreements faced a Jan. 1 deadline to end contracts. While one in downstate Illinois complied last year, two others are involved in a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The case was dismissed last month, but a federal judge on Thursday granted an extension while an appeal is considered. Authorities in McHenry and Kankakee counties now have until Jan. 13.

DOS Proposed Rule to Raise Several Consular Service Fees

AILA: DOS proposed rule which would raise several nonimmigrant visa application processing fees, the fee for the Border Crossing Card for Mexican citizens age 15 and over, and the waiver of the two-year residency requirement fee. Comments are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 74018, 12/29/21)

Third Delay of Effective Date of Final Rule on Pandemic-Related Security Bars to Asylum and Withholding of Removal

AILA: USCIS and EOIR interim final rule further delaying until 12/31/22 the effective date of the final rule “Security Bars and Processing” (85 FR 84160, 12/23/20). Comments on the extension of the effective date as well as the possibility of a further extension are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 73615, 12/28/21)

President Revokes Proclamation Suspending Entry of Certain People Who Pose a Risk of Transmitting Omicron Variant

AILA: Effective December 31, 2021, 12:01 am (ET), Presidential Proclamation 10315 was revoked, thus rescinding travel restrictions on Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Vaccine requirements remain in effect.

USCIS Extends Flexibility for Responding to Agency Requests

USCIS: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is extending the flexibilities it announced on March 30, 2020.

USCIS Provides Guidance on Expedited EADs for Healthcare Workers

AILA: USCIS stated that healthcare workers with a pending EAD renewal application, Form I-765, and whose EAD expires in 30 days or less or has already expired, can request expedited processing of their EAD applications. Proof of employment will be required.

RESOURCES

AILA: Client Flyer: U-Visa Petitioners – Bona Fide Determination and Employment Authorization

AILA: Practice Alert: DOS Expands Interview Waivers for Certain Nonimmigrant Visas

AILA: Client Flyer: Overview of the Naturalization Process and Basic Requirements

AILA: Practice Alert: Summary of Omicron Presidential Proclamation

AILA: Get the AILA Discount on the Spanish for Lawyers Online Course

AILA: Custody Redetermination Hearings And Material Change In Circumstances

Asylos Research

Ghana: Accessibility of Dialysis (AFR2020-27)

Nigeria: Mental Health Treatment (AFR2021-09)

Somalia: Situation of ‘Westernised’ Returnees (AFR2021-16)

Mexico: Persecution by and local/national presence of Cartel Jalisco and Familia Michoacana (AME2021-17)

Afghanistan: Treatment of Family Members of Human Rights Activists and Former Government Supporters after the Taliban Take-over (ASI2021-13)

Afghanistan: Availability of Psychiatric Treatment for Returnees with Mental Health Conditions and Treatment of Returnees with Mental Health Conditions by the Taliban (ASI2021-12)

Egypt: Opposing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Social Impact, and Availability of State Protection (MEN2021-18)

Egypt: Christians in Egypt & Obtention of Citizenship (MEN2021-17)

EOIR: Appearance Requirements at the New York – Varick Immigration Court (attached)

Project South: Escalating Jailhouse Immigration Enforcement: A Report on Detainers Issued by ICE Against Persons held by Local Law Enforcement Agencies in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina from 2016-2018

DHS OIG: Continued Reliance on Manual Processing Slowed USCIS’ Benefits Delivery during the COVID-19 Pandemic

US Embassy DR: Minors under 14 present during an Immigrant Visa interview

EVENTS

1/5/22 TPS Roundtable – Strategies for Adjusting TPS Holders in Proceedings Who Have Traveled on AP

1/6/22 Broken Promises: MPP 2.0 and Perspectives from the Ground

1/11/22 Comprehensive Overview of Immigration Law (COIL)

1/14/21 Assisting Citizens of Afghanistan

1/25/22 Adoptions for Orphans and Family Members

1/27/22 Immigration Options and Resources For Victims of Human Trafficking

02/02/22 How to Apply for DOJ Full Accreditation

02/03/22 Webinar Series: Overview of Immigration Consequences of Crimes

02/03/22 Basic Immigration Law 2022: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas

02/04/22 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Immigration Relief 2022

3/23/22 ASISTA Virtual CLE Conference (Save the Date)

ImmProf

Monday, January 3, 2022

Immigration Reform Is Dead

The Need for Attorneys in Dedicated Docket Cases

Immigration Article of the Day: Constantine’s Legacy: Preserving Empire While Undermining International Law by Craig Mousin

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Immigrant of the Day: Luis Ortiz (Professional Boxer), Cuba

Upcoming Webinar — Broken Promises: MPP 2.0 and Perspectives from the Ground

Saturday, January 1, 2022

U.S. Citizens Placed on Watch List While Taking Part in Caravan Through Mexico

Immigration Article of the Day: Asylum Under Attack by Lindsay Harris

Celebrating Immprof Books & Book Chapters of 2021 * UPDATED *

Americans seeking to renounce their citizenship can’t for now

Friday, December 31, 2021

Celebrating Immprof Achievements in 2021

Happy New Year!

Opinion: Harry Reid’s immigration legacy put politics over country

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Immigration Article of the Day: We Broke It, We Own It: How To Meet The Climate Migration Future by Elizabeth Keyes

Biden Administration Petitions the High Court, Seeking to End Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” Program

JOTWELL Administrative Law Listings feature immigration

The Citizenship Angle of the Ghislaine Maxwell Sex Trafficking Case

Disillusionment and disappointment: Biden’s White House struggles to find its footing on immigration

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Animated film about Afghanistan refugee in top ten movies list

Silver lining of remote learning for LEP parents

Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act

Latino USA: 9/11’s Immigration Legacy

Escalating Jailhouse Immigration Enforcement: A Report on Detainers Issued by ICE Against Persons held by Local Law Enforcement Agencies in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina from 2016-2018

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

A Proclamation on Revoking Proclamation 10315

Biden’s First Year Brings Modest Changes to Immigration Policy

Immigration Article of the Day, The Unexamined Law of Deportation, by David Hausman

The most neglected story of 2021? Immigration

Monday, December 27, 2021

Afghans in America: WaPo Calls for a Christmas Miracle

Has President Biden kept his immigration promises?

Xenophobia Spills Into Japan’s Covid-Era Debate on Immigration

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

Thanks, Elizabeth!

The problem with “ADR” @ EOIR is chronic! It’s one that Garland seems determined to repeat, despite ample advice to the contrary.

Also, he’s ignored the availability of many “practical experts” on the outside who, if appointed to key EOIR positions, could have helped him solve this without stomping on due process (although, I admit the solution would have been easier in March 2021, when Garland was sworn in as AG, than it is after 9 months of his making it worse — not to mention that his “defiant tone-deafness” has probably “turned off” some of the top-flight talent he needed to “reach out” to). As the KQED article points out:

“But there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I don’t know if the people that are being named to supervise this actually know what’s happening in the trenches.”
- Duh! That’s what all of us have been saying. Truth is, they aren’t the right people, and they don’t know what’s happening. Not by a long shot!
- I also understand why Torres, who’s trying to maintain a relationship with Garland’s “Clueless Crew” is trying to be charitable.
- But, as someone not currently “out there in the trenches,” I don’t have to be so reticent. So, I’ll say what she can’t. This is a totally unacceptable and inexcusable performance from Garland!
Another reason why this program is a massive failure is that, like their ADR-promoting, backlog-building predecessors, Garland & Mayorkas started this misguided and mishandled program without seeking the advice, counsel, and support of the pro bono lawyers who have to staff it to make it work!
- Think of the total absurdity of what Garland is doing here! While a pro bono (or low bono) lawyer is having already prepared cases “orbited” years out on the docket (a process that usually requires re-preparation of the entire case), the phone is ringing off the hook with desperate, perspective new clients given unrealistically expedited hearing dates that should have been used for the cases “orbited” to the end of the docket.
Also, having not practiced privately for many years, Garland appears to have forgotten the Code of Ethics.
- Attorneys are obligated not to take on work (even pro bono work) that they can’t professionally and timely handle.
- Yet, Garland is pushing them to do exactly that! The choice is let folks try to prepare their own cases (literally tantamount to a “death sentence” in many cases); or
- Take on work you can’t handle (a clear ethical violation that could have the same unfavorable result for the client).
There actually are ways of working with outside experts to increase pro bono representation. One of the most promising is the the amazing VIISTA Program created and run by Professor Michele Pistone at Villanova Law to train non-attorney “Accredited Representatives” to handle pro bono asylum cases.
- I have no knowledge that Garland or anyone at EOJ/EOIR has ever reached out to Professor Pistone, despite recommendations that Garland do so.
- Worse yet, Garland has allowed his “EOIR Clown Show” to also create a “new backlog” in the approval process for Accredited Representatives! Talk about clueless, counterproductive mismanagement!
Garland’s mis-handling of EOIR and his new round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” raises serious issues about his own performance.
- Whatever happened to Democratic oversight of EOIR in Congress? Why is Garland getting a “free pass” on mismanagement of EOIR, his further undermining of Due Process in Immigration Court, and his disrespectful treatment of the immigration pro bono and low bono bar?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-04-22

☹️👎🏽BIDEN’S MUDDLED IMMIGRATION APPROACH WINS FEW FANS, WHILE CONTINUING TO TREAT HUMAN LIVES CALLOUSLY! — Weak AG, Underperforming VP, Fear Of The Right, Dysfunctional Immigration Courts, Failure To “Connect The Dots” Between Immigrant Justice & Racial Justice Appear To Have Led Administration To Treat Re-Establishing The Rule Of Law & Standing Up For Human Rights As “Bogus Policy Option” Rather Than The Legal & Moral Imperative It Is! — Tal Kopan Reports In The SF Chron!

Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/One-year-in-Biden-has-been-slow-to-unwind-Trump-16725642.php

One year in, Biden has been slow to unwind Trump immigration policies

WASHINGTON — As President Biden approaches a year in office, immigration advocates fear he may have learned some lessons from his predecessor, Donald Trump — and not the ones they would have wanted.

Most immigration advocates abhor virtually every policy in the sphere that Trump pursued, but they do give him credit for two things: showing how much change an administration can make quickly, and driving home the power of fully committing to a salient political message. But they fear that instead of using those lessons to enact Biden’s stated objective — a fair, orderly and humane immigration system — the president has borrowed too many of his predecessor’s policies and not enough of the fervor.

Biden has extended Trump’s policy turning away the vast majority of immigrants at the border ostensibly because of COVID. The administration has also, under court order, reinstated and expanded a policy forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for court hearings, despite Biden running against the policy in his campaign. And his Justice Department is defending some of Trump’s policies in court against challenges from immigrant advocates.

Several immigration groups worked together on what became known as the “Big Book,” a collection of more than 500 policy recommendations for the incoming Biden administration. The pro-immigration group Immigration Hub has tracked about 150 that have been implemented so far. Many of those were reversing Trump policies.

“What we don’t have is a White House that’s committed to moving forward on the stated Biden administration agenda in the way that the Trump White House was committed to moving forward on theirs, and as a result, we’re living in a world where a whole lot of those Trump policies are still around,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project with the American Civil Liberties Union.

A White House spokesperson objected to the notion that Biden has not delivered progress on immigration, citing actions in the early days of the administration to roll back some of Trump’s policies, extend protections to young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and new protections for migrants whose home countries are in turmoil.

“This administration is committed to working day in and day out to provide relief to immigrants and bring our immigration system into the 21st century,” spokesperson Vedant Patel said.

During the presidential campaign, Biden ran on turning the page from Trump’s hardline immigration policies and talked up a plan to get a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented into law. He also emphasized the importance of letting asylum-seekers make their case to stay in the U.S., and said the Obama administration in which he served made a mistake in waiting too long to enact immigration reforms.

In his early days in office, Biden did introduce policies cheered by immigration advocates, including rescinding Trump’s travel bans and embracing an aggressive legislative strategy to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants through procedural maneuvers that would require only Democratic votes.

But he also kept in place a controversial policy known as Title 42 that essentially closed the southern border to virtually all immigrants. Then in the spring, when border crossings soared to historic levels, the Biden administration doubled down on deterring migration, vexing many advocates who saw that strategy as essentially an embrace of the right’s talking points. Others have pinned their hopes on Vice President Kamala Harris, who forged a strong progressive streak on immigration while serving as California’s senator. She has led administration efforts to improve conditions in Central America, but also adopted deterrence talking points, including urging would-be migrants directly while in Guatemala: “Do not come.”

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/One-year-in-Biden-has-been-slow-to-unwind-Trump-16725642.php

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

As Tal and others have observed, the Trump Administration “hit the ground running” on its White Nationalist anti-immigrant agenda, which was a key part of it’s overall anti-democracy, neo-fascist program.

The Biden Administration’s campaign pledges to undo the damage — not so much. In the end, lack of backbone, failure to leverage and use the expert talent available, not acting quickly, and treating values-based campaign promises as “fungible political capital” has left the Administration “wandering in the wilderness” on this key issue. Usually, standing for the right thing, even if risky, is a far better path than aimlessly wobbling around.

“Don’t come” is not part of our asylum law!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-03-22

🗽⚖️ “COURTSIDE” IN THE NEWS: BOTH NOLAN @ THE HILL & KEVIN @ IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG HIGHLIGHT MY BLISTERING ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S FIRST-YEAR IMMIGRATION POLICIES! — Garland’s Monumental EOIR Fail Writ Large Among “Underreported News” Of 2021 — Mishandling Of Immigration Courts Creates Key “Enthusiasm Gap” Among Progressives Heading Into 2022 Midterms!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/587347-has-biden-kept-his-immigration-promises

Biden promised to establish a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system. Has he done it?

Paul Schmidt, a former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals, doesn’t think so. He claims that Biden could have established due process and the rule of law at the border and expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries but he didn’t, “preferring instead to use modified versions of ‘proven to fail deterrence-only programs’ administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers.”

Predictably, nobody is pleased.

The problems Schmidt describes are not limited to the border and the treatment of asylum seekers. They are reflected in many of Biden’s other immigration measures too.

. . . .

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

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/12/has-biden-kept-his-immigration-promises.html

Nolan Rappaport for the Hill reports that Paul Schmidt, former chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals who now blogs at Immigration Courtside, does not think that President Biden has done enough on immigration. Schmidt claims that Biden could have established due process and the rule of law at the border and expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries but he didn’t, “preferring instead to use modified versions of ‘proven to fail deterrence-only programs’ administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers.”

KJ

December 27, 2021 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Thanks, guys! As I have told both of you, I really appreciate the huge contributions you have made to informing the public about this all-important, yet often misunderstood or “mythologized,” issue!

Following up on my last thought, I urge everyone to view this recent clip from “Face the Nation,” posted by Kevin on ImmigrationProf, in which reporter Ed O’Keefe succinctly and cogently explains how immigration is the “most underreported issue of 2021.” It’s fundamental to everything from COVID, to the economy, to voting rights, to racial justice, to climate change, to our position in the world.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/12/the-most-neglected-story-of-2021-immigration.html

And, I say that the absolute dysfunctional mess that Garland has presided over in his broken and jaw-droppingly backlogged Immigration Courts is the most widely ignored, misunderstood, mishandled, and under-appreciated part of this under-reporting!

As an example of how even “mainstream liberal progressive pundits” get it wrong by not focusing on the spectacular adverse effects of Garland’s botched handling of the Immigration Courts, check out this article by Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate. https://apple.news/AvmEJc5V0RXa8hCgKICcTOA

Overlooking Garland’s disastrous mis-handling of his “wholly owned” U.S. Immigration Courts and the unparalleled “missed opportunity” to put more brilliant progressive judges on the Federal Bench is an all too common “blind spot” for progressive pundits. Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

Stern does a “victory lap” over Biden’s 40 great Article III judicial appointments to the lower Federal Courts, closing with the astounding claim that: “Democrats are finally playing hardball with the courts.”

In truth, Dems are only belatedly starting to do what the GOP has been doing over four decades: Get your guys in the positions where they make a difference for better (Dems, in theory) or worse (GOP in practice).

Appointing a diverse, talented, progressive group of 40 out of 870 Article III Judges is an important, necessary, and long, long overdue start; but, it’s not going to make a cosmic difference overnight!

By contrast, there are about 550 Immigration Judges, the majority appointed by GOP restrictionist AGs, many with mediocre to totally inadequate credentials for the job. And, it shows in the consistently substandard performance and mistake-riddled, haphazard “jurisprudence” emanating from Garland’s EOIR.

The main qualifications for a number of these pedestrian to totally outrageous appointments appears to be willingness to carry out former GOP AGs’ restrictionist, nativist policies, or at least to adhere to the DOJ’s enforcement-oriented agenda, while ignoring, distinguishing, or downplaying the due process rights of migrants!

This is “complimented” by an appellate branch (the BIA) with about two dozen judges hand-selected or retained for notorious anti-immigrant records or willingness to “go along to get along” with the wishes of DHS Enforcement. The BIA turns out some truly horrible, almost invariably regressive, “precedents.” A number are so lacking in substance and coherent analysis that they are unceremoniously “stomped” by the Article IIIs despite limitations on judicial review and the travesty of so-called “Chevron deference” that serves as a grotesque example of Supremes-created “judicial task avoidance” by the Article IIIs.

From an informed Dem progressive perspective, it’s an infuriating, ongoing, unmitigated disaster! Only one BIA appellate judge, recently appointed “progressive practical scholar” Judge Andrea Saenz, would appear on any expert’s list of the “best and brightest” progressive legal minds in the field.

Unlike Article III Judges, who are life-tenured, EOIR Judges serve at the pleasure and discretion of the Attorney General and can be replaced and reassigned, including to non-quasi-judicial attorney positions, “at will.”

Starting with Attorney General John Ashcroft’s notorious “BIA Purge of ‘03,” GOP AGs haven’t hesitated to remove, transfer, “force out,” marginalize, demoralize, discourage from applying, or simply not select EOIR judges who stood for due process and immigrants’ rights in the face of nativist/restrictionist political agendas.

Yet, for eight years of the Obama Administration and now a year into the Biden Administration, Dem AGs have lacked the guts, awareness, and vision to fight back by “de-weaponizing” the regressive GOP-constructed Immigration Judiciary and recruiting replacements from among the “best and the brightest” among the “deep pool” of expert, intellectually fearless “progressive practical scholars.”

Not only that, but Dems have totally blown a unique opportunity to remake and establish the Immigration Judiciary not only as “America’s best judiciary” — a model for better Article IIIs — but also as a training ground for the diverse progressive judiciary of the future!

Even more significantly, tens of thousands of lives that should have been saved by an expert, due-process-oriented, racially sensitive judiciary have been, and continue to be, sacrificed on the alter of GOP nativism and Dem indifference to quality judging and human suffering in the Immigration Courts!

Compare the diverse, progressive backgrounds and qualifications of “Stern’s 40” with those on the totally underwhelming list of the most recent Garland “giveaways” of precious, life-determining Immigration Judge positions! See, e.g., https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1457171/download

Compare Garland’s regressive BIA with what could and should be if progressive practical scholars were “given their due:”https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/12/18/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽🇺🇸courts-justice-courtside-proudly-announces-the-dream-bia-its-out-there-even-if-garland/

The progressive talent is definitely out there to change the trajectory of the Immigration Courts for the better! Garland’s failure to inspire, recruit, appoint, and tout the “best and brightest” in American law for his Immigration Courts is a horrible “whiff” with disturbing national and international implications!

Article III Federal Courts deal with the mundane as well as the profound. By contrast, lives and futures are on the line in every single Immigration Court case! Often effective judicial review of EOIR’s haphazard, widely inconsistent, unprincipled, and one-sided decisions is unavailable, either as a legal or practical matter. The exceptionally poor performance of the Immigration Courts that continues under Garland threatens the underpinnings of our entire justice system and American democracy!

Right now, Garland’s broken system has a largely self-created 1.5+ million case ever-expanding backlog! At a very conservative estimate of four family members, co-workers, employees, employers, students, co-religionists, neighbors, and community members whose lives are intertwined with each of those stuck in Garland’s hopelessly broken, biased, and deficient system, at least 6 million American lives hang in the balance — twisting in the wind among Garland’s “backlog on steroids!” Yet, amazingly, it’s “below the radar screen” of Stern and other leading progressive voices!

I doubt that any Federal Court in America, with the possible exception of the Supremes, holds as many human lives and futures in its hands. Not to mention that “dehumanization” and “Dred Scottification” of the other in Immigration Court drifts over into the Article III Courts on a regular basis. Once you start viewing one group of humans as “less than persons” under the Constitution, it’s easy to add others to the “de-personification” process.

Yet, Garland cavalierly treats the Immigration Courts as just another mundane piece of his reeling bureaucratic mess at the DOJ. The long overdue and completely justified “housecleaning” at Trump’s anti-democracy insurrectionist regime seems far from Garland’s serenely detached mind!

For Pete’s sake, even ICE Special Agents understand the need to “rebrand” themselves by escaping the inept and disreputable ICE bureaucracy left over from Trump:

They say their affiliation with ICE’s immigration enforcement role is endangering their personal safety, stifling their partnerships with other agencies and scaring away crime victims, according to a copy of the report provided to The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/hsi-ice-split/2021/12/28/85dc6c66-61ad-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html

But, Garland doesn’t understand the well-deserved toxic reputation of EOIR among legal experts? Gimme a break!

Garland also stands accountable for his spineless failure to insist on a dismantling of the bogus, illegal, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual Title 42 abomination at the Southern Border and an immediate return to the rule of law for asylum seekers.

Unless and until the Dems get serious about gutsy, radical progressive reforms of the Immigration Courts, the downward spiral of American justice will continue! Lives will be lost, and many of those who helped put Dems in power will be pissed off and “de-motivated” going into the midterms. That’s a really bad plan for Dems and for America’s future!

As Dems’ hopes of achieving meaningful Article III judicial reforms predictably are stymied, their inexcusable failure to reform and improve the Immigraton Courts that belong to them becomes a gargantuan, totally unnecessary “missed opportunity!” Talk about “unforced error!” See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/28/supreme-court-term-limits/

If Dems suffer an “enthusiasm gap” among their key progressive base going into the key 2022 midterms, they need look no further than Garland’s tone-deaf and inept failure to bring long overdue and readily achievable progressive personnel, procedural, management, and substantive reforms to his dysfunctional Immigration Courts. That — not a false sense of achievement — should have been the “headliner” for Stern and other progressive voices!

“Expedience over excellence, enforcement over equity, gimmicks over innovation is good enough for Government work!” — The “vision” for Garland’s EOIR! But, progressive experts aren’t buying his “tunnel vision.”
PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-29-21

😇☠️👹THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY — NGOs & Citizens Make Extraordinary Efforts To Help, U.S. Vets Forced To Vainly Beg For Mercy For Afghan Comrades, & Some Of The Most Vulnerable Condemned To Suffering, Torture, Death W/O Process @ Disgraceful S. Border, As Biden Administration Flails To Find Leadership On Human Rights — “If it is actually the policy of the United States to turn away veteran-endorsed Afghan allies, then our bureaucracy isn’t just passively ‘letting them die’; it is actively killing them.“

JGOOD:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/24/afghan-evacuees-spending-first-christmas-america-seek-miracle-kindness/

. . . .

Here’s hoping in this season of fellowship that these latest “tempest-tost” — to use the words poet Emma Lazarus appropriated from Shakespeare to inscribe on the Statue of Liberty — find there is room for them in our countrymen’s hearts. So far, the signs are encouraging. Resettlement agencies, gutted in the Trump years when refugee admissions were slashed to historic lows, are overwhelmed but staffing up as fast as they can. In far-flung places around the nation, there is little political pushback as the evacuees become more numerous and visible.

One reason is that U.S. veterans, former soldiers and Marines, have their backs. Having fought side by side with and depended critically on their Afghan interpreters, fixers and guides, those veterans are going to bat for their former comrades in arms, officials say. In Republican communities such as Tulsa, as in Democratic ones like Northern Virginia, some of the arriving evacuees may be nearly penniless, but they are not without allies and advocates.

Let this Christmas, these Afghans’ first, be a moment when they tap into this country’s innate generosity, so that the American Dream is as successful for them as it has been for so many who arrived before them.

BAD:

https://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.com/search?query=Vets%20on%20Afghans&in=ALL&hideSimilar=0&type=1&state=0

Mr. President, hear this plea from Afghan war vets

The Washington Post25 Dec 2021BY JAYSON HARPSTER The writer is a U.S. Army veteran. He lives in D.C.

Please don’t let my friends die. It’s a simple plea to the U.S. government from many American veterans of the Afghanistan war. And so far, that plea is being ignored. My friends Nabi and Kohee are what our political class calls “Afghan allies.” They were Afghan intelligence officers whom I served with during my second deployment to Afghanistan. God blessed me the day I was assigned to work with such fine men. They taught me about their country, I taught them about intelligence analysis, and together we tracked Taliban threats.

Now our immigration system is leaving these men and their families to die at the hands of the Taliban. The special immigrant visa (SIV) for interpreters excludes Afghan soldiers like my friends. The Refugee Admissions Program is backlogged. And now Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) is blocking Afghans from accessing humanitarian parole, their only remaining lifeline. Director Ur M. Jaddou of CIS and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas need to fix humanitarian parole for our Afghan allies.

The Army gave me a Bronze Star for the work that I did with Nabi and Kohee. That helped get me into a good school, get a good job, a good life — the American Dream. But for my friends, the fact that they worked with the Americans is a death sentence, and I dare not use their full names given the ongoing threats to them and their families. The Taliban raided Nabi’s house the very night it conquered Kabul. If he had not already gone into hiding, he’d be dead. Kohee and his family had to flee their home when their pro-taliban neighbors threatened them with death and promised to “take care of ” their teenage daughter. “Take care of ” means forcibly marrying her off to a Taliban fighter to be raped.

If it is U.S. policy to turn away veteran-endorsed Afghan allies, then our bureaucracy isn’t just passively ‘letting them die’; it is actively killing them.

Working with fellow veterans and volunteers, I desperately tried to get Nabi, Kohee and their families into the Kabul airport so they could escape. But U.S. guards turned them away, all while some planes were taking off with unfilled seats. Nabi evaded a half-dozen Taliban checkpoints to get within six feet of his assigned pickup location, only to be attacked with tear gas by American guards and whipped by a Taliban fighter. It was only after days of failure at the airport that we made the difficult decision to help them flee to Pakistan.

In Pakistan, they live with the risk of being deported back to Afghanistan. They can barely go outside. The kids can’t go to school. And they can’t go to another country that will accept them. Every time I see a message notification on my phone, I’m afraid.

. . . .

UGLY:

. . . .

It felt to Chic as if her whole family had cohered in Florida while she was in Guatemala, leaving her on the outside. During Adelaida’s birthday parties, she was the square box on the FaceTime calls, peering through the screen, until she hung up and cried alone.

Separated at the border, reunited, then separated again: For migrant families, another trauma

David listened. More parents had arrived at the hotel; some were eavesdropping. When they shared their own stories, they would describe the moments of separation almost identically. But in each case, the familial chaos and dislocation that came next was different for each parent.

David’s son was also in South Florida, about an hour from Adelaida. But his wife and other children were still in Guatemala. To reunite with one of his children, he would have to leave the others. His son, who had slipped in and out of depression, needed him in Florida.

“So that’s my trouble,” he said. “One solution creates another problem.”

This time, it was Chic who nodded, permitting herself, briefly, to feel fortunate.

. . . .

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

Read the full version of all of these pieces at the respective links above.

So, inflicting irreparable harm on refugees and vulnerable asylum seekers became the official policy of the U.S. Government and a vile rallying cry for a morally bankrupt GOP. It would be naive to ignore that actively killing refugees and other migrants was part and parcel of the Trump regime’s hate and lie-based immigration policies. And, the Biden Administration has been too wobbly to undo Trump’s toxic legacy with integrity, dynamic leadership, and courage.

So, families suffer, Vets beg in vain, atrocious Government policies continue at the border, and NGOs and citizens struggle to fill the gap.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-26-21

👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!

The “Gauleiter”s” policies of “transportation” of legal asylum seekers to danger zones or death has, to a totally unacceptable extent, been adopted by the Biden Administration. America’s cowardly, immoral, illegal, and unethical treatment of these vulnerable individuals will haunt our nation for generations to come! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/672/

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

. . . .

Completed Asylum Cases and Outcomes

Asylum grant rates have often been the focus of public attention and discussion. An implicit assumption is often made that if the immigrants’ asylum applications are denied that they have been unsuccessful in their quest to legally remain in the U.S. However, this may not always be the case. In addition to asylum, there are often other avenues for relief, and other types of decisions where the Immigration Court can determine that an individual should be allowed to legally remain in the U.S. This report breaks new ground in empirically documenting just how often asylum seekers’ quests to legally remain in the U.S. have been successful.

According to case-by-case records of the Immigration Courts, Immigration Judges completed close to one million cases (967,552) on which asylum applications had been filed during the last 21 years (October 2000 – September 2021). Of these, judges granted asylum to 249,413 or one-quarter (26%) of these cases.

However, only about half of asylum seekers were ordered deported. More specifically, just 42 percent received removal orders or their equivalent,[4] and an additional 8 percent received so-called voluntary departure orders. These orders require the asylum seekers to leave the country, but unlike removal orders voluntary departure orders do not penalize individuals further by legally barring them for a period of years from reentry should their circumstances change.

The remaining one-quarter (24%) of asylum seekers were granted other forms or relief or Immigration Judges closed their cases using other grounds which allowed asylum seekers to legally remain in the country.[5] When this proportion is added to asylum grant rates, half of asylum seekers in Immigration Court cases — about twice the individuals granted asylum — have been successful in their quest to legally remain in the United States at least for a period of time. See Figure 5.

Figure 5. Outcome of U.S. Asylum Applications, October 2000 – September 2021

(Click for larger image)

Focusing on just Immigration Court asylum cases, however, does not take into consideration asylum seekers who have asylum granted by Asylum Officers from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Those cases end there with the asylum grant. Only unsuccessful cases are forwarded to the Immigration Court for review afresh, and thus included in the Immigration Court’s records. These referrals of asylum denials by USCIS Asylum Officers are classified in the Court’s records as affirmative asylum cases,[6] to distinguish them from those that start with DHS seeking a removal order from the Immigration Court and the asylum claim being raised as a defense against removal.

Thus, a more complete picture of asylum seekers to the U.S. would add in the asylum grants by USCIS on these affirmative cases. Over the period since October 2000, the total number of asylum grants totals just under 600,000 cases – more than double the asylum grants by Immigration Judges alone.[7] Asylum Officers granted asylum in just over 350,000 cases, while Immigration Judges granted asylum in an additional close to 250,000 cases. See Tables 5a and 5b.

Asylum grants thus make up almost half (46%) of the outcomes on the total number of 1.3 million cases closed in which asylum applications were filed. An additional one in five (18%) were granted some other form of relief or otherwise allowed to legally remain in the U.S. Thus, almost two-thirds (64%) of asylum seekers in the 1.3 million cases which were resolved have been successful over the past two decades.

Figure 5 above presents a side-by-side comparison of asylum case outcomes when examining Immigration Court completions alone, and how outcome percentages shift once Asylum Officers’ asylum grants are combined with decisions made by Immigration Judges.

. . . .

Outcome on Asylum Cases Number Percent**

IJ Outcome on Asylum Cases

Asylum Granted by IJ 249,413 26%

Other Relief, etc. 236,889 24%

Removal Order 403,252 42%

Voluntary Departure Order 77,998 8%

Total IJ Asylum Completions 967,552 100%

USCIS + IJ Outcome on Asylum Cases

Asylum Granted by USCIS+IJ 599,772 46%

Other Relief, etc by IJ 236,889 18%

Removal Order by IJ 403,252 31%

Voluntary Departure Order by IJ 77,998 6%

USCIS + IJ Asylum Completions 1,317,911 100%

. . . .

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

Read the complete TRAC report, containing all the graphs and charts that I could not adequately reproduce, at the link.

Applying the 50% “granted protection of some type” rate in Immigration Court to the ever expanding backlog of 667,000 asylum cases in Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR, that means that there are at least 333,000 asylum seekers who should be “out of Garland’s backlog” and legally living, working, and/or studying in the U.S., probably over 165,000 of whom should be on the way to green cards, citizenship, or already citizens in a functional system!

And, the TRAC-documented success rate has been achieved in a system that has been designed with bias to deter and discourage asylum seekers with mediocre, or even hostile, judges, a BIA that lacks asylum expertise and turns out incorrect restrictionist precedents, and administrative leadership that specializes in ineptitude, toadyism, and mindless “aimless docket reshuffling.”

Obviously, the “get to stay” rate would be much higher with better-qualified, better-trained, merit-selected judges, guided and kept in line by a BIA of America’s best and brightest appellate judges with proven expertise in asylum, immigration, human rights, due process, and racial justice, and dynamic, inspiring, well-qualified leadership. For a great example of what “could have been” with a better AG, see, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/12/18/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%97%bd%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%b8courts-justice-courtside-proudly-announces-the-dream-bia-its-out-there-even-if-garland/.

Better problem-solving-focused judicial leadership at EOIR could come up with innovative ways of screening and getting the many aged, grantable cases of asylum seekers and other migrants (cancellation of removal, SIJS, and “stateside processing” come to mind) out of the Immigration Court backlog and into an alternative setting where relief could granted more efficiently. For the most part, there is no useful purpose to be served by keeping cases more than three years old on the Immigration Court docket.

The Immigration Courts must work largely in “real time” with real judges who can produce consistent, fair results on a predictable timetable. Big parts of that are increasing competent representation, providing better legal guidance on recognizing and promptly granting meritorious cases (that, significantly, would also guide the USCIS Asylum Office), and standing up to efforts by DHS Enforcement to overwhelm judicial resources and use Immigration Courts to “warehouse and babysit” the results of their own mismanagement and misdirection of resources.

There’s no chance that Garland (based on inept and disinterested performance to date, and his near total lack of awareness and urgency) and the crew, largely of Sessions/Barr holdovers, currently comprising his EOIR can pull it off. That’s a monumental problem for migrants and American justice generally!

Without an AG with the guts, determination, expertise, and vision to “clean house” at EOIR and DOJ, or alternatively, a Congress that takes this mess out of the DOJ and creates a real Article I Immigration Court system, backlogs, fundamental unfairness, and incompetence at EOIR will continue to drag down the American legal system.

Worthy of note: The TRAC stats confirm the generally held belief that those asylum seekers held in detention (the “New American Gulag” or “NAG”) are very significantly less likely to be granted relief than those appearing in a non-detained setting. But, what would be helpful, perhaps a task for “practical scholars” somewhere, would be to know “why.”

Is it because the cases simply are not a strong, because of criminal backgrounds or otherwise? Or, is it because of the chronic lack of representation, intentional coercion, and generally less sympathetic judges often present in detention settings? Or, as is likely, is it some combination of all these factors?

Also worthy of note: Three major non-detained courts, with approximately 31,000 pending asylum cases, had success rates significantly below (20% or more) the national average of 50%:

Houston (19%)
Atlanta (29%)
Harlingen (24%)

On the “flip side,” I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see that the oft-criticized El Paso Immigration Court (non-detained) had a very respectable 48% success rate — a mere 2% off the national average! Interesting!

Also worthy of watching: Although based on a tiny, non-statistically-valid sampling (2% of filed asylum cases), Houston-Greenspoint had a 53% grant rate, compared with “Houston non-detained’s” measly 19%. If this trend continues — and it well might not, given the very small sample — it would certainly be worthy knowing the reasons for this great disparity.

In addition to “giving lie” to the bogus claims, advanced mostly by GOP nativists, but also by some Dems and officials in Dem Administrations, that most asylum seekers don’t have valid claims to remain, the exact opposite appears to be true! Keeping asylum seekers from getting fair and timely dispositions of their cases hurts them at least as much, probably more, than any legitimate Government interest.

Moreover, it strongly suggests that hundreds of thousands of legitimate asylum seekers with bona fide claims for protection have been illegally and immorally returned to danger or death without any semblance of due process under a combination of a bogus Title 42 rationale and an equally bogus “Remain in Mexico” travesty. It should also prompt some meaningful evaluation of the intellectual and moral failings of Administrations or both parties, poorly-qualified Article III judges, and legislators who have encouraged, enforced, or enabled these “crimes against humanity” — and the most vulnerable in humanity to boot!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-24-21

⚖️🗽NDPA CALL TO ARMS: THE GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE ISSUES RESEARCH TO COMBAT THE DISINGENUOUS ATTACK ON WOMEN & THE RACE-DRIVEN MISOGYNY & MINIMIZATION OF GENDER-BASED PERSECUTION THAT INFECTS THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY & BUREAUCRACY FROM TOP TO BOTTOM! — “Better Than The Third Circuit!”

“Make the record” to fight the ignorant nonsense and grotesque misconstruction of the asylum law and country conditions by the Third Circuit & far, far too many Federal Judges & Bureaucrats with this authoritative report authored by Natalie Gonnella-Platts, Jenny Villatoro, and Laura Collins of the George W. Bush Institute:

https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/resources-reports/reports/gender-based-violence-and-migration-central-america.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fiveforfriday&utm_term=12102021

No Justice: Gender-based Violence and Migration in Central America

Gender-based violence affects one in three women worldwide, making it an urgent and important policy challenge. Violence against women and girls is often excluded from conversations on the nexus of Central American migration, regional development, and domestic immigration reform.

Key Excerpts:

. . . .

Though there has been increasing focus from US and international influencers on the levels of violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (known as the Northern Triangle) and its impact on migration, an adequate response to the gendered differences in the ways violence is perpetrated remains limited and at times nonexistent.

This needs to change, especially since gender-based violence within the Northern Triangle constitutes a daily threat to women and girls—one that has been significantly worsened by corruption, weak institutions, and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators. At individual and community levels, gender-based violence drives women and girls to be displaced internally, migrate to the United States, or a somber third path—death either by femicide or suicide. At national levels, it seriously inhibits security, opportunity, and development.

As circumstances at the southern border of the United States demonstrate, gender-based violence has a direct influence on migration flows across the region and is deeply tangled with cyclical challenges of inequity and poverty. For those who choose to seek assistance or flee their communities, high rates of revictimization and bias further obstruct access to justice and safety.

Until policies and programs respond to the serious violations of agency and human rights perpetuated against women and girls (and within systems and society at large), instability in and migration from the Northern Triangle only stand to grow.

As the United States and the international community consider a comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform, proposed strategies must anchor the status and safety of women and girls at the center of solutions.

. . . .

In Guatemala, teenage girls face a substantial risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.7

. . . .

Guatemala: In Guatemala, about 8 of every 1,000 women and girls were the victim of violence in 2020. Thirty women were murdered on average each month last year, or almost one per day, the lowest rate in the last 10 years. Reported rape cases averaged 14 per day.17 One of the most extreme and recognizable forms of gender-based violence is sex slavery. According to a report by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and UNICEF: “A combination of gangs, crime families, and drug trafficking organizations run sex trafficking rings in Guatemala that may involve some 48,500 victims.”18

Women in Indigenous and rural communities may have it even worse. For example, Indigenous women in Guatemala face multiple layers of discrimination, including a history of repression and genocide.

During the genocidal Guatemalan civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996, state sanctioned mass rape during massacres was used to repress the Indigenous populations—with offenses committed publicly and bodies often left on display with the intent to instill terror in the Mayan communities.19 Truth commissions state that more than 100,000 Indigenous women were raped and forced into sex slavery.20

State-sanctioned and state-accepted gendered violence may have contributed to a culture that tolerates violence against women. Guatemalans were the most accepting of gender-based violence in a 2014 survey of Latin American countries by Vanderbilt University, while El Salvador came in second.21

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the risk of violence to women and girls in the Northern Triangle, as it has in every region

of the world. Exploited by gangs and others, lock-downs have forced those most at risk for violence to shelter in proximity to their abusers. All three countries within the region have reported sizable increases in intrafamily violence since the start of the pandemic. El Salvador has also seen a notable increase in intrafamily femicide.

. . . .

Coupled with the trauma already experienced by survivors, each of these factors contributes to a lack of trust in institutions, high levels of impunity for perpetrators, and a vicious cycle of repeat violence against women and girls.

Faced with this dire reality, women and girls often have three choices: (1) report and face disbelief, (2) stay and risk additional violence, or (3) flee.

. . . .

Women and girls undertake this risky journey with no guarantee of legal protection in the United States. But they come because the horrors they face at home are so much worse.

It’s important to remember that seeking asylum

is often the only legal means that migrants who qualify have of entering the United States. Although requesting asylum is legal, the path to asylum is not

safe. An understanding of legal rights and access to services—including health, trauma, and legal support—also remain out of reach for many female migrants, furthering cycles of exploitation.

Current US refugee and asylum law does not recognize gender-based violence as its own category warranting protection. According to the American Bar Association, US protections for victims of gender-based violence are built upon 20 years of advocacy and sometimes favorable legal opinions.54 These protections are tenuous, with any presidential administration able to roll back the decisions made under its predecessor. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently reinstated prior precedent for gen- der-based violence asylum requests and announced that the Department of Justice would pursue a formal rule.55 But even this could be reversed in the future.

Until legislation enshrines gender-based violence as a condition warranting humanitarian protection, the United States will continue to turn away women and girls who merit refuge.

. . . .

The Northern Triangle, Mexico, and the United States are at a crossroads. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras can either take advantage of a young population of prime working age by promoting pol- icies that create a safe, stable environment where women and girls can fully participate, or they can continue on a path that is leading to substantial lev- els of gender-based violence, instability, migration, and economic stagnation.

As research continuously demonstrates, when empowered, active, and engaged, women and girls are a critical catalyst for security and prosperity. Countries with higher levels of gender equity are more peaceful and stable overall.66 Gender equality can provide better outcomes for children, increased labor productivity, lower poverty rates, and reduced levels of violence.67

In seeking to secure a brighter future across the Western Hemisphere, immigration and develop- ment policies must include solutions to address gender inequity and gender-based violence. As current circumstances at the southern border of the United States demonstrate, stability and prosperity are not possible without them.

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

Debi Sanders ESQ
“Warrior Queen” of the NDPA
PHOTO: law.uva.edu

Many thanks to my good friend and “founding mother of the NDPA,” Deb Sanders for bringing this to my attention.

The Bush Institute has done some great “practical scholarship” on gender-based asylum, exposing many of the lies and misinformation upon which Government policies have been based, particularly GOP nativist policies and the overtly misogynistic attack on migrant women of color by the Trump regime.

“No justice,” “protections are tenuous” (at best), “high levels of impunity,” “dire reality,” “requesting asylum is legal, the path to asylum is not safe” come to mind when reading the Third Circuit’s abominably incorrect “analysis” in Chavez-Chilil v. A.G. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/12/10/%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%ae%f0%9f%91%8e%f0%9f%8f%bd-3rd-cir-badly-bungles-guatemalan-women-psg-chavez-chilel-v-atty-gen/

And let’s not forget that Ms. Chavez-Chilil is actually one of the lucky ones! She got a chance to make her claim and was awarded life-saving protection by an Immigration Judge under the CAT, albeit protection that leaves her unnecessarily and perpetually “in limbo” — ineligible to fully join our society and maximize her own human potential for everyone’s benefit.

By contrast, thousands of women and girls (also men and boys) are insanely, illegally, and immorally “orbited” back to danger zones without any opportunity to even make a claim and without any legitimate process whatsoever, let alone due process!

Why this is important:

Compelling documentation and cogent arguments will win individual cases and save lives;
We can build case law precedent for gender-based asylum grants;
We must make a clear historical record of which jurists and bureaucrats stood up for the rule of law and the humanity of refugee women and which of them purposely have aligned themselves with the “dark side of history.” See, e.g., Chief Justice Roger Taney.

Why is the Biden Administration mindlessly and immorally attempting to “deter” legal asylum seekers from seeking to save their own lives? What’s the excuse for treating a moral and legal requirement under domestic and international law as a “bogus political strategy option” rather than the legal obligation it is? Why was the DOJ “pushing” a legally wrong, corrupt, factually wrong position before the Third Circuit? Where’s the expertise? The backbone? The moral courage? The accountability?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-13-21

⚖️🗽TIRED OF BUREAUCRATIC DOUBLESPEAK & BS ON ASYLUM FROM EOIR & DHS? — Get The “Real Skinny” On How U.S. Asylum Should Operate From This Free ABA Seminar Featuring Round Table 🛡⚔️ Experts Judge Joan Churchill, Judge Paul Grussendorf, & Judge Jeffrey Chase On Wednesday, Nov. 10! (Registration Required)

Judge Joan Churchill — Honorable Joan Churchill
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Member Round Table of Retired Judges

Hon. Paul Grussendorf
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member, Round Table of Former IJs
Author
Source: Amazon.com

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

American Bar Association International Law Section

Program Spotlight: Refugees and Asylum in the U.S.

&

Review of Domestic Interpretations at Odds with International Guidance

Presented by the American Bar Association International Law Section, Immigration & Naturalization Committee, and the International Refugee Law Committee

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

12:00pm ET – 1:00pm ET

Register Today for this Free Program:

This program will review the differences between the Refugee and Asylum processes (which includes Withholding of Removal) in order to provide clarity to new practitioners about the stark contrasts between the two U.S. refugee programs and to inform on international law compliance.

Topic 1: Contrast and compare Refugees and Asylum law and process, and

Topic 2: Compare U.S. domestic interpretations of the legal criteria of Refugees and Asylum seekers with international law and policy.

Moderator and Chair: Joan Churchill (Former Immigration Judge)

Speakers:

Topic 1: The Hon. Paul Grussendorf

Paul Grussendorf has worked with both the refugee and asylum programs in the United States and abroad. He headed a law school legal clinic at the The George Washington University Law School representing asylum seekers, served as an Immigration Judge handling asylum cases, worked as a Supervisory Asylum Officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services [CIS], as a refugee officer with Refugee Affairs Division of USCIS, and as a refugee officer and supervisor with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Topic 2: The Hon. Jeffrey Chase

Jeffrey Chase is a retired Immigration judge for New York City. He has written extensively about the inter relationship of international law sources with the U.S. national law when administering cases involving asylum and refugee applications.

He has a blog entitled Opinions/Analysis on Immigration Law. He coordinates The Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges, an informal group of Retired Immigration Judges from both the trial and appellate level, who weigh in on topics relating to the administration of justice by the Immigration Court. The Round Table files amici briefs, and has issued position papers and testimony on issues affecting due process and the administration of justice by the Immigration Courts.

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

Many thanks to my round table friends and colleagues for putting this fantastic free program together and to the ABA International Law Section for sponsoring it!

In 1980, Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 to bring the U.S. into compliance with the U.N. Convention & Protocol on The Status of Refugees, to which we are a signatory through the Protocol.

After some steady progress over the first two decades, today, as a result of actions taken by the last four Administrations since 2001, we are further away than ever from the goal of compliance. Bungling bureaucrats at DHS and DOJ wrongfully view large numbers of refugees and asylees as a “threat” to be “deterred,” rather than as the legal obligation and undeniable assets to our nation that they in truth are.

They fail miserably to fix systemic problems, to properly welcome refugees and asylees, and to adjudicate their claims in a fair and timely manner consistent with due process and racial justice. With stunning tone deafness, they eschew the advice of experts like Judges Churchill, Grussendorf, and Chase in favor of cruel, inept, and “bad faith” gimmicks, like gross misuse of Title 42 to suspend the asylum system indefinitely without Congressional approval.

One only has to look at the evening news to see firsthand what a horrible failure these “Stephen Miller Lite” policies have been and how they ruin lives and trash the reputation of our nation. The failure of the Biden Administration to make good on its campaign promises to migrants and refugees is nothing short of a national disgrace!

The first step in holding Mayorkas, Garland, and the others responsible for this ongoing mess accountable and restoring the rule of law is to understand how the system should and could work.

Then, you will have the tools to sue the hell out of the irresponsible public officials and their bumbling bureaucrats, lobby Congress for better protections for asylum seekers, and generate outraged public opinion until the rule of law, common sense, and human decency are restored to our land! And, we can save some lives that are well worth saving in the process!

Knowledge is power! The Biden Administration’s knowledge of how to implement an efficient, practical, legal, successful asylum system would fit in a thimble with room left over! Get the “upper hand” by listening to these Round Experts!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-02-21

TAL @ SF CHRON: GARLAND’S LATEST BOGUS GIMMICK TO REDUCE BACKLOG GIVES BIG MIDDLE FINGER 🖕 TO DUE PROCESS, SAY ADVOCATES!

S.F. Immigration Court fast-tracking cases in what critics say call a deportation conveyor belt

By Tal Kopan and Deepa Fernandes

A San Francisco immigration judge took less than an hour on Tuesday to order 23 people deported. But none of the immigrants was present and it’s unclear whether they knew about the hearing — even as they were deported for missing it.

The proceedings are part of a recently enacted effort the San Francisco Immigration Court says it’s undertaking to find immigrants it loses track of. Instead, advocates say the court has set up a deportation conveyor belt, one that fast-tracks removal orders before immigrants can make their case to stay in the country.

The practice appears to have started this summer, when immigration attorneys became aware of a subset of hearings being scheduled for immigrants whose mail was being returned as undeliverable. The court was notifying immigrants of the hearings by sending mail to the same incorrect addresses, practically ensuring few would show up.

In immigration law, not showing up at a hearing is enough to be ordered deported on the spot, in what’s known as an “in absentia” order of removal.

According to court data reviewed by The Chronicle, as many as 173 people were given deportation orders because of such proceedings in August and September — a nearly ninefold increase from the 20 similar orders given the previous seven months combined.

ACLU of Northern California attorney Sean Riordan, who has been tracking the issue, compared the situation to a criminal proceeding where, if a defendant didn’t show up for a routine step, the judge declared them guilty with limited ability to challenge the verdict. What’s more, he said, the court scheduled the proceeding expecting the defendant not to show.

“Our society would not tolerate that, it’s just grossly unfair, and we shouldn’t tolerate something similar happening in the immigration courts,” Riordan said. “It’s especially problematic that the San Francisco Immigration Court is spending significant time and resources to obtain so many removal orders through a special docket in cases where they know people will not be able to appear for their hearings.”

At this time, the effort appears limited to the San Francisco court, one of 70 such venues nationwide that hear immigrants’ cases. But advocates fear other courts may see how many cases the San Francisco bench has closed through in-absentia orders and follow suit, saddling scores of immigrants with unknown deportation orders. The immigration court system is run entirely by the Department of Justice, which also employs the judges.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-Immigration-Court-fast-tracks-16576102.php

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

The (completely unnecessary and self-inflicted) “EOIR Travesty” continues! There are many, many ways that Garland could reduce his Immigration Court backlog (most covered by Courtside or elsewhere online) without stomping on any individual rights! But, this utter nonsense doesn’t happen to be one of them!

As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Immigration Court practice knows, DHS and EOIR are notorious for issuing defective notices and then creating illegal “in absentia” orders. The issue of bad notices has actually been to the Supremes twice recently, with the USG losing badly both times, and the possibility of yet a third trip on the horizon.

Yet, several overt rebukes from the Supremes about “unnecessary corner cutting” have engendered no fundamental changes in the notice system at either agency! Garland & Co. seem just as wedded to anti-due-process, wasteful “mondo enforcement gimmicks” at EOIR as Stephen Miller, “Gonzo” Sessions, and “Billy the Bigot” Barr!🤮

So much for the “racial justice agenda” at DOJ and the reputations of DAG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, and AAG/Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who have all “looked the other way” while their “boss” Garland continues to promote White Nationalist, anti-immigrant, resource wasting policies at EOIR.☠️

Then, incompetent, tone-deaf Dem politicos wonder why support among their “loyal progressive base” is fading fast? Progressives should “remember the EOIR disaster” and total lack of concern for those “fighting the good fight” in Garland’s disgracefully dysfunctional courts when any of Garland’s complicit lieutenants come up for future Article III judicial appointments!

Conduct like Garland’s at EOIR is a direct result of progressives allowing themselves to be “pushed around and disrespected” by a “Democratic Party Establishment” that gives not a hoot for immigrant justice, racial justice, or fair treatment of asylum seekers except when it’s time to solicit contributions or get out the vote! Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have taken a “leave of absence” on what was supposed to be one of her “signature issues!”

Garland’s “in your face tone-deafness” also contains a very clear message that progressive advocates aren’t “getting!” It’s going to take a “radical break from the past” to achieve any meaningful immigration reform at DOJ!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-01-21

☠️🤮UNDER NEW MISMANAGEMENT: Trump’s “New American Gulag” (“NAG”) Now Being Run By Biden, Harris, & Mayorkas, With Garland’s Embedded “Star Chambers” — Coercion, Denial Of Right To Counsel Endemic In Illegal, Immoral, Secretive Biden “Civil” Prison System! — “[W]ithout having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse!” ⚰️ — That’s The Goal Of “Detention & Deterrence!”

Slaughterhouse — “[W]ithout having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse!”
Creative Commons License

Star Chamber Justice — “Do you still want to talk to a lawyer, or are you ready to take a final order?” “Justice” Star Chamber Style

https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/10/29/ice-detention-contact-lawyer/

Emma Winger writes on Immigration Impact:

“Ben G.” is a 35-year-old veterinarian from Nicaragua who fled to the United States after he was beaten and tortured by police. When he crossed the border into the United States, he requested asylum. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) eventually transferred Ben to the Winn County Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility in rural Louisiana located four hours away from the nearest metropolitan area. It is also the facility with the fewest immigration attorneys available in the entire country.

Despite passing the government’s initial screening and having a credible fear of persecution, Ben was still unable to find a lawyer. As a fellow detained person noted, “without having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse.”

Ben’s story illustrates the monumental barriers that detained immigrants face in finding lawyers to represent them. As described in a letter sent October 29 by the American Immigration Council, the ACLU, and 88 legal service provider organizations to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ICE detention facilities have systematically restricted the most basic modes of communication that detained people need to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email access.

This must change. The immigration detention system is inherently flawed, unjust, and unnecessary. The best way to eliminate these barriers to justice is to release people from detention.

Although immigrants have the right to be represented by lawyers in immigration proceedings, they must pay for their own lawyers or find free counsel, unlike people in criminal custody who have the right to government-appointed counsel. In many cases, detained immigrants cannot find lawyers because ICE facilities make it so difficult to even get in touch and communicate with attorneys in the first place.

The importance of legal representation for people in immigration proceedings cannot be overstated. Detained people with counsel are 10 times more likely to win their immigration cases than those without representation. Yet the vast majority of detained people — over 70% — faced immigration courts without a lawyer this year.

ICE has set the stage for this problem by locating most immigration detention facilities far from cities where lawyers are accessible. Each year, ICE locks up hundreds of thousands of people in a network of over 200 county jails, private prisons, and other carceral facilities, most often in geographically isolated locations, far from immigration attorneys.

Even when attorneys are available and willing to represent detained people, ICE detention facilities make it prohibitively difficult for lawyers to communicate with their detained clients, refusing to make even the most basic of accommodations. For example, many ICE facilities routinely refuse to allow attorneys to schedule calls with their clients.

As described in the letter, the El Paso Immigration Collaborative reported that staff at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico have told their lawyers that they simply don’t have the capacity to schedule calls in a timely manner, delaying requests for more than one week or more.

The University of Texas Law School’s Immigration Law Clinic attempted to schedule a video teleconferencing call with a client at the South Texas ICE Processing Center. An employee of the GEO Group, Inc., which runs the facility, told them that no calls were available for two weeks.

. . . .

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

A “Jim Crow Mentality” of never being held accountable for abuses of law or human morality permeates the politicos, legislators, and Federal Judges of both parties responsible for enabling and upholding this toxic system.

Nowhere is this more obvious than at the DOJ Civil Rights Division. While pontificating on racially abusive local police policies and actions, these folks go to great lengths to overlook the DOJ-run “Star Chamber Courts” embedded in DHS’s “New American Gulag” that disproportionally harm persons of color and deny them basic legal, civil, and human rights every day.

This system is thoroughly rotten! Yet, Garland’s DOJ “defends the indefensible” in Federal Court almost every day.

🇺🇸⚖️ Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-30-21

☹️👎🏽BUMBLING BIA BADLY BUNGLES BASICS, AGAIN! — Applies Wrong Standard In Seeking To Reverse Valid CAT Grant — Obviously Frustrated 3rd Cir. Reinstates IJ Decision Following BIA’s Inept Attempt @ Appellate Review! — Arreaga Bravo v. A.G.

Woman Tortured — The BIA’s blunders in trying to help out their “partners” @ DHS Enforcement can sometimes seem almost comical. But, they are no laughing matter to those facing persecution or torture as a result! Why is Garland indifferent to life-threatening injustice in his courts?
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203300p.pdf

Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

Given the strength and rigor of the IJ’s underlying opinion, along with the BIA having exceeded its proper scope of review, we will vacate the BIA’s final order of removal and remand with instructions to reinstate the IJ’s opinion.

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

There is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurdly horrible. This latest BIA travesty falls in the latter category.

Not surprisingly, the Circuit opinion quotes liberally from the BIA’s insipid, mealy-mouthed “bureaucratic double-speak” language! To paraphrase my BIA colleague the late Judge Fred Vacca, thank goodness the 3rd Circuit finally put an end to this “pathetic attempt at appellate adjudication.”

Interesting that rather than remanding to give the BIA a chance to deny again on some newly invented specious basis, the court just reinstated the IJ opinion. There should be a message here! But, Garland and his lieutenants aren’t “getting it!”

This case illustrates deep systemic and personnel problems that Garland has failed to address. Instead of summarily dismissing the DHS’s frivolous appeal with a strong warning condemning it, these types of bad BIA decisions contribute to the unnecessary backlog and both encourage and reward frivolous actions by the DHS.

Additionally, reversing, for specious reasons, a well-done and clearly correct IJ decision granting relief, just to carry out the wishes of DHS Enforcement and political bosses, is intended to discourage respondents and their attorneys while unethically steering Immigration Judges toward a “norm of denial.”

Abused women of color from the Northern Triangle have been particular targets of the EOIR’s seriously skewed anti-immigrant adjudications. This makes the Garland DOJ’s claims to be a “champion of racial justice” ring all the more hollow and disingenuous in every context. There will be no racial justice in America without radical EOIR reform!

What ever happened to our first ever woman of color Veep? Hypothesize that one of the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges responsible for this mess had come before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation. Wouldn’t you have had some questions about judicial qualifications? So, why is it OK to continue to employ them in untenured Executive Branch quasi-judicial positions where they exercise life or death power over many of the most vulnerable among us, overwhelmingly persons of color, many women, lots of them unrepresented! Kamala Harris, where are you?

It’s all part of an improper “culture of denial” at EOIR, led and “enforced” by the BIA. Garland has disgracefully failed to come to grips with the “anti-due process” that he fosters every day that the “Miller Lite Holdover BIA” remains in their appellate positions.

For heavens sake, with unnecessary “TV Adjudication Centers” coming out EOIR’s ears, reassign these purveyors of bad law and appellate injustice to those lower “courts” where they can do less cosmic damage and real, better qualified appellate judges can “keep on eye” on them!

I keep thinking (or perhaps hoping) that eventually Circuits will tire of continually redoing the BIA’s sloppy work product and then having the cases come back again, sometimes years later, denied on yet another bogus ground!

On the flip side, Judge Garland seems to have infinite “patience” with well-documented substandard performance and painfully obvious anti-immigrant, pro-DHS bias on the part of his BIA.

Wrongful denial of CAT costs lives and can improperly condemn individuals to gruesome and painful death! This is no way to run a court system! I guess it’s easier to “tolerate” lousy judicial performance when you aren’t the one being unfairly and illegally condemned to torture!

Past time for a “line change” in Falls Church!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-29-21

⚖️”THEY BELONG IN THE TRASH BIN” 🗑☠️ — NAIJ CAUTIOUSLY HOPEFUL THAT END OF QUOTAS WILL BRING MEANINGFUL CHANGE — Will Director David Neal Topple Toxic Top-Down Paramilitary Bureaucratic Structure @ EOIR? — Courts Aren’t “Agencies” & Can’t Be “Micromanaged” By “Edicts From On High” — Meaningful Advance Input From Judges, Court Clerks, Stakeholders, Outside Judicial Experts Has Been MIA @ EOIR For Decades, & Disaster & Dysfunction In Courts Show It!

Honorable Mimi Tsankov
U.S. Immigration Judge
President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

For immediate release – October 20, 2021

Contact: Jamie Horwitz, jhdcpr@starpower.net, 202/549-4921

An End to a Highly Controversial Quota System Imposed on Immigration Judges

This week Immigration Judges received an email message from Chief Immigration Judge Tracy Short stating that the performance metrics imposed by the Trump administration which violated judicial ethics are now “suspended.”

WASHINGTON –A deeply flawed and inefficient U.S. Department of Justice program that evaluated Immigration Judges primarily on the number of cases they heard, has been “suspended.” The DOJ will no longer evaluate judges on the number of cases they decide Chief Judge Tracy Short wrote in an email sent to the nation’s roughly 500 Immigration Judges this week.

Over the past three plus years, Immigration Judges have looked over their shoulders, worried about being disciplined, just for doing their jobs — providing due process.

“This week’s actions by the Department of Justice under Executive Office for Immigration Review Director David Neal are a step in the right direction toward restoring a greater measure of integrity to our nation’s Immigration Courts,” said Mimi Tsankov, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “Our organization looks forward to working with management to restore a fairer process that allows judges to focus on doing their jobs properly. The performance metrics developed by the Trump administration were a violation of judicial ethics, they belong in the trash bin.”

“The Agency is in the process of developing new performance measures, drawing from past successful measures and appropriate input, that will accurately reflect the workload of an immigration judge,” the chief judge wrote in his emailed message. “These new performance measures will focus on balance and equity for the various types of docket assignments.”

In 2018, then U.S. Attorney General Jeff Session imposed a quota of 700 decisions per year on each Immigration Judge, tied to performance reviews, regardless of the complexity of the cases.

The Trump administration also attempted to silence NAIJ from speaking out on the quota system and other policies by decertifying the union. While the union-busting efforts of the previous administration were not completely successful, full collective bargaining rights have yet to be restored to NAIJ.

The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), founded in 1971, is a voluntary organization formed with the objectives of promoting independence and enhancing the professionalism, dignity, and efficiency of the Immigration Court.

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

Hon. David. L. Neal — Hon. David L. Neal
Director
Executive Office For Immigration Review
USDOJ
PHOTO: C-SPAN

Can David Neal bring all the real parties in interest “to the table,” fashion workable, realistic judicial policies and procedures driven by due process and the realities of Immigration Court practice, keep DOJ’s political meddling at bay, and then tap “new talent” that can actually implement positive change in a judicial, non-bureaucratic manner that achieves “systemic buy-in?” Does he even want to? If so, will Team Garland empower him to succeed, or undermine him?

One thing in Director Neal’s favor: He already retired from EOIR once and presumably could do so again if pressured to elevate political agendas over due process and best practices.

On the flip side, at least one other Director in that same position chose to “go along to get along” with decisions and policies from the DOJ that actively undermined due process and substantially decreased confidence in government.

We’ll see whether the NAIJ’s “cautious optimism” about the “Neal Era @ EOIR” is justified or just another dashed dream about due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-24-21

Outcome on Asylum Cases	Number	Percent**
IJ Outcome on Asylum Cases
Asylum Granted by IJ	249,413	26%
Other Relief, etc.	236,889	24%
Removal Order	403,252	42%
Voluntary Departure Order	77,998	8%
Total IJ Asylum Completions	967,552	100%
USCIS + IJ Outcome on Asylum Cases
Asylum Granted by USCIS+IJ	599,772	46%
Other Relief, etc by IJ	236,889	18%
Removal Order by IJ	403,252	31%
Voluntary Departure Order by IJ	77,998	6%
USCIS + IJ Asylum Completions	1,317,911	100%

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Garcia Cabrera v. Garland, 4th Cir., 01-06-21, published

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JGOOD:

BAD:

UGLY:

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Completed Asylum Cases and Outcomes

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No Justice: Gender-based Violence and Migration in Central America

Gender-based violence affects one in three women worldwide, making it an urgent and important policy challenge. Violence against women and girls is often excluded from conversations on the nexus of Central American migration, regional development, and domestic immigration reform.

Key Excerpts:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Emma Winger writes on Immigration Impact:

🇺🇸⚖️ Due Process Forever!

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Key Quote from Judge Greenaway’s decision:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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An End to a Highly Controversial Quota System Imposed on Immigration Judges

This week Immigration Judges received an email message from Chief Immigration Judge Tracy Short stating that the performance metrics imposed by the Trump administration which violated judicial ethics are now “suspended.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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