Category: zero-tolerance

INSIDE EOIR: LA TIMES: Former EOIR Attorney Reveals Truth Of Sessions’s Ugly, Corrupt, Mean-Spirited, Attack On Judicial Independence & The Totally Demoralizing Effect On Judges & Other Dedicated Civil Servants – No Wonder This “Captive Court System” Is A Dysfunctional Mess Being Crushed Under An Artificially Created “Sessions Legacy Backlog” of 1.1 Million+ Cases With Neither Sane Management Nor Any End In Sight!

https://apple.news/AnkcqK5ITQ76IwHCZq2FnBw

I resigned from the Department of Justice because of Trump’s campaign against immigration judges

Gianfranco De Girolamo November 26, 2018, 3:05 AM

One of the proudest days of my life was Dec. 16, 2015, when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

I shed tears of joy as I swore allegiance to the United States at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with more than 3,000 other new Americans. I was celebrating a country that had welcomed me with open arms, treated me as one of its own and opened doors I hadn’t known existed. Just a few years before, in the remote village in southern Italy where I grew up, this would have been unimaginable.

Another of my proudest moments came just a year later, when I was awarded a coveted position in the U.S. Department of Justice. This happened in late November 2016, a few weeks after President Trump was elected.

Like many, I harbored reservations about Trump. But I did not waver in my enthusiasm for the job. In law school, l had learned about the role of civil servants as nonpolitical government employees who work across administrations — faithfully, loyally and diligently serving the United States under both Republicans and Democrats.

I was designated an attorney-advisor and assigned to the Los Angeles immigration court. There, I assisted immigration judges with legal research, weighed in on the strengths and weaknesses of parties’ arguments and often wrote the first drafts of judges’ opinions.

Soon enough, however, the work changed. In March 2018, James McHenry, the Justice Department official who oversees the immigration courts as head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, announced a mandate imposing individual quotas on all the judges. Each judge would be required to decide 700 cases per year, he said.

With these new quotas, which went into effect on Oct. 1, immigration judges must now decide between three and four cases a day — while also reviewing dozens of motions daily and keeping up with all their administrative duties — or their jobs will be at risk.

The announcement of the quotas in March was the first in a series of demoralizing attacks on immigration judges this year. In May, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, since fired by Trump, personally issued a decision that placed limits on the ability of immigration judges to use a practice known as administrative closure, which allows judges to put cases on indefinite hold, and which, in immigration cases, can be a tool for delaying deportation orders.

The Justice Department enforced the decision in July by stripping an immigration judge in Philadelphia of his authority in scores of cases for continuing to use administrative closure.

All this was in addition to a barrage of disparaging comments made directly by the president. In June, Trump tweeted that there is no reason to provide judges to immigrants. He also rejected calls to hire more immigration judges, saying that “we have to have a real border, not judges” and asking rhetorically, “Who are these people?”

The demoralizing effect on immigration judges was palpable. Morale was at an all-time low. I was new to civil service, but these judges, some of whom have served continuously since the Reagan administration, made clear that this was an unprecedented attack on the justice system.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion »

I’ve long admired the independence and legitimacy that the judiciary enjoys in the United States, so I found the attacks on judges deeply disturbing and troubling. They reminded me of Trump’s Italian alter-ego, Silvio Berlusconi, who spent most of his tenure as Italy’s prime minister fighting off lawsuits by delegitimizing and attacking the judiciary, calling it “a cancer of democracy” and accusing judges of being communist.

I voiced my concerns to my supervisors and directly to Director McHenry in a letter. Seeing no opportunity to make a positive difference and unwilling to continue to lend credence to this compromised system, I submitted my resignation in July, explaining my reasons in a letter.

This was not how I wanted to end my career in government. I had hoped to serve this country for the long haul. But I couldn’t stand by, or be complicit in, a mean-spirited and unscrupulous campaign to undermine the everyday work of the Justice Department and the judges who serve in our immigration courts — a campaign that hurts many of my fellow immigrants in the process.

Gianfranco De Girolamo was an attorney at the Department of Justice from 2017 to 2018.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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Thanks for speaking out Gianfranco! I published an earlier, at that time “anonymous,” letter from Gianfranco at the time of his resignation. I’m sure there are many others at EOIR who feel the same way.  But, they are “gagged” by the DOJ — threatened with job loss if they “tell the truth” about the ongoing legal farce and parody of justice within our Immigration Courts.

It’s a “closed system” at war with the public it serves, the dedicated attorneys who represent migrants, the essential NGOs who are propping up what’s left of justice in this system, and the very civil servants who are supposed to be carrying out the courts’ mission. What a horrible way to “(not) run the railroad.”

Someday, historians will dig out the whole truth about the “Sessions Era” at the DOJ and his perversion of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts. I’m sure it will be even worse than we can imagine. But, for now, thanks to Gianfranco for shedding at least some light on one of the darkest and most dysfunctional corners of our Government!

PWS

11-16-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  4. THE ROUNDTABLE IN ACTION: HON. ILYCE SHUGALL DELIVERS POWERFUL STATEMENT IN THE LA TIMES ON WHY SHE COULD NO LONGER SERVE AS A JUDGE IN OUR OBSCENELY DISTORTED AND UNFAIR U.S. IMMIGRATON COURT SYSTEM – “But nothing prepared me for the unprecedented, unfair and unworkable policies the Trump administration imposed on the courts and the immigration process.”

SESSIONS’S TOXIC WHITE NATIONALIST LEGACY OF BIAS AND MISMANAGEMENT CONTINUES TO HAUNT U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS – Inappropriate “Certifications” & Skewed Precedents Denied Asylum To Legitimate Refugees While Improperly Limiting Authority of Immigration Judges To Control & Manage Their Dockets – “Gonzo” Actions Diverted Attention & Resources From Pursuing Long-Overdue Improvements In Delivery of Due Process!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Jeff-Sessions-unfinished-legacy-of-reversing-13420329.php

Bob Egelko reports for the SF Chronicle:

In 21 months as the nation’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions affected no area of public policy more than immigration, from his “zero tolerance” orders to arrest and prosecute all unauthorized border crossers to establishing new rules speeding up deportations and limiting legal challenges.

But with his dismissal by President Trump the day after the Nov. 6 election, one part of Sessions’ immigration agenda remained unfinished: his reconsideration, and often reversal, of pro-immigrant rulings by the immigration courts, particularly on the rights of migrants seeking political asylum in the United States.

Because immigration courts are a branch of the Justice Department, the attorney general has the authority to review and overturn their rulings. Sessions used that authority at an unprecedented pace, reversing decisions that had allowed immigration judges to delay or postpone hearings to give immigrants time to apply for legal status, and eliminating grounds for asylum that were commonly invoked by migrants from Central America.

In October, he announced plans to reconsider a ruling that, if repealed, would keep thousands of asylum-seekers locked up even after they convinced hearing officers that they had a case for fearing persecution in their homeland.

A 2005 ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals allowed immigrants seeking asylum to be freed on bond after an immigration officer ruled that they have a “credible fear” of persecution if deported. They remain free until the immigration courts decide whether their fear of persecution is “well founded,” entitling them to asylum, a work permit and legal residence. If not, they can be deported.

That determination sometimes takes a year or longer. Immigration rights advocates and legal commentators say tens of thousands of asylum-seekers would be locked up for that period if the attorney general overturned the 2005 decision.

“It’s a dramatic change in policy … part of a pattern of efforts to implement the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy” that Sessions declared in April for unauthorized border-crossing, said Kevin Johnson, UC Davis law school dean and an immigration law expert.

This was “Sessions, on his own initiative, trying to rewrite immigration law,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired immigration judge, former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals and publisher of the ImmigrationCourtside blog.

Now the decision will be left to Sessions’ successor. Or maybe not.

, , , ,

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Go to the above link to read the rest of the story.

Sessions’s biased jurisprudence and his intentional mismanagement resulted in a largely artificial “backlog” of 1.1 million cases and a group of demoralized judges who are treated as assembly line workers on a deportation conveyor belt. This preventable disaster is a major contributor to the bogus crisis on the Southern Border.

Sessions admittedly built on and intentionally aggravated pre-existing problems left by the Bush II and Obama Administrations. Nearly two decades of abuse and misuse of the U.S. Immigration Court System by the DOJ for political aims often unrelated to due process and fairness won’t be resolved “overnight.”

But competent court administration combined with a return to an exclusive focus on delivering full due process with maximum achievable efficiency would certainly make an immediate difference and put the Immigration Courts back on track to fulfilling their noble (now abandoned) vision of “being the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” No rational observer would say that these courts are moving in that direction under Trump and his toadies at the DOJ and DHS.

PWS

11-26-18

Related posts:

  1. GONZO’S WORLD: THIS IS WHY HE STAYS: UNDERNEATH ALL THE “TRUMP NOISE” SESSIONS IS METHODICALLY ERADICATING DUE PROCESS, PERVERTING THE LAW, & TURNING ONE OF THE LARGEST FEDERAL COURT SYSTEMS INTO A “KILLING FLOOR” TARGETING OUR MOST VULNERABLE & DESERVING REFUGEES! — “[Sessions] is dumbing down the judges and treating them like assembly-line workers whose only job is to stamp out final orders of removal.”
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

“NOT SO FAST!” — CONFUSION AS USUAL IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: LA Times, HuffPost Report That Mexico Denies Reaching Immigration Pact With U.S.! – Incoming Oversight Chair Cummings (D-MD) Opposes Trump’s Border Policies – “That’s The Law!”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=4f1306b6-386f-4594-85ce-f14cbc1126b4

By Cecilia Sanchez and Patrick J. McDonnell

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s incoming leadership is denying a published report that it had agreed to a Trump administration proposal requiring asylum seekers arriving at the southwest border to wait in Mexico as U.S. authorities consider their claims for safe haven.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Washington had won the support of the government of Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who takes office on Dec. 1 — for a plan mandating that asylum seekers at the border remain in Mexico as their claims move through the U.S. immigration system.

The Trump administration has long sought such an accord with Mexico as a means of resolving what it has termed a “crisis” of an escalating number of Central American asylum applicants — and limited detention space in which to hold them on U.S. territory as their petitions are considered.

Critics on both sides of the border have long assailed the notion of Mexico serving as a way station or detention grounds for Central Americans and others applying for asylum in the United States.

The administration of Mexico’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, rejected a similar Trump administration proposal last year.

But the Post quoted Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico’s interior minister-designate, as saying Mexico’s new government had accepted the policy as a “short-term solution” to the issue of Central American migration — which has been dramatized in recent weeks as thousands of U.S.-bound Central Americans have made their way north through Mexico in caravans.

Later Saturday, however, she denied that Mexico had agreed to host people seeking U.S. asylum as their cases awaited judgment.

“There is no agreement of any sort between the future Mexican federal government and the U.S.,” the incoming interior minister said in a statement.

Moreover, she said Mexico’s new government had rejected any deal in which Mexico would be considered “a safe third country” for U.S. asylum applicants.

In a Twitter message on Saturday, President Trump reiterated threats to close the southern border — threats that have alarmed many in Mexico, since cross-border trade is a mainstay of the Mexican economy.

In his tweet, Trump also said migrants would not be allowed into the United States “until their claims are individually approved in court.”

Others, he said, would “stay in Mexico,” he added, without elaboration.

The Twitter message did not specify whether Washington had reached any kind of agreement with Mexico on the matter.

Only a small minority of Central American applicants are ultimately granted political asylum in the United States, but the decision-making progress can take months or years — during which time many are released and gain footholds in the United States.

Trump has vowed to end what he calls the “catch and release” system. “Our very strong policy is Catch and Detain,” he tweeted Saturday. “No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S.”

The White House has also pushed an alternative “safe third country” approach in talks with Mexican officials. Under such a plan, Central Americans seeking asylum would generally have to file for protection in Mexico, not in the United States.

The proposal is a variant of the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” plan, under which asylum seekers would wait in Mexico until their cases were adjudicated in the United States.

With a “safe third country” designation, the United States would consider Mexico a secure nation for receiving asylum applicants. In practice, that would bar most asylum seekers who entered Mexico from filing asylum claims in the United States. The United States already has such an understanding with Canada.

But immigrant advocates have long opposed such a designation for Mexico for a number of reasons — principal among them the country’s widespread and rising violence, which often targets Central American migrants. Mexico cannot be considered safe for asylum seekers, many argue.

Critics also say Mexico’s system for processing refugee requests is already overwhelmed and ill-prepared to handle a huge new influx.

In her statement, Mexico’s incoming interior secretary echoed the vows of leftist President-elect Lopez Obrador to protect the human rights of caravan travelers and other Central American migrants while providing them with food, healthcare and shelter. Lopez Obrador has also vowed to help Central Americans acquire work papers if they opt to remain in Mexico.

More than 6,000 caravan members, mostly Hondurans, have arrived this month in the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, posing a humanitarian, logistical and political challenge for the two cities on the border. The migrants say they are fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands.

Tijuana’s mayor declared a “humanitarian crisis” Friday as the border city sought additional federal and state aid to help house the migrants, most of whom are crowded into a sports complex a block from the U.S.-Mexico border fence.

Tijuana officials anticipate that as many as 10,000 Central American migrants could eventually converge on the city and be stuck there for months as they seek to file asylum claims in the United States, a time-consuming process. U.S. officials at the San Ysidro crossing generally accept no more than 100 asylum applications a day.

Special correspondent Sanchez reported from Mexico City and Times staff writer McDonnell from Washington.

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mexico-asylum-migrant-deal-trump_us_5bfa5d83e4b0eb6d930f3155

Dominique Mosbergen reports for HuffPost:

President Donald Trump suggested on Saturday that asylum seekers would be allowed to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed through the U.S. immigration system — but Mexico’s incoming government has denied making any such deal.

“There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government,” future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez told Reuters on Saturday, contradicting Trump and an earlier Washington Post report that said a deal ― albeit an informal one ― had been struck between the two governments.

The Post had quoted Sanchez as saying the administration of Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will take office on Dec. 1, had “for now” agreed to the so-called “Remain in Mexico” plan.

Sanchez was quoted by the paper as saying that Mexico would allow asylum seekers to stay in the country as a “short-term solution.”

Following the publication of the Post’s report, however, Sanchez back-pedaled on those remarks. She told Reuters that Obrador’s administration was “in talks” with the U.S., but stressed officials who weren’t yet in office couldn’t formally make any agreements.

Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at two U.S. border control helicopters flyi

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at two U.S. border control helicopters flying overhead near a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.

Reuters reported that Sanchez “did not explicitly rule out” that Mexico could allow Central American caravan migrants ― thousands of whom have arrived in Tijuana, just south of California ― to wait in the country while their claims are processed in the U.S.

Sanchez did, however, say that plans for Mexico to assume “safe third country” status had been “ruled out.” Under a “safe third” agreement, the U.S. could force migrants to seek asylum in Mexico.

Trump said in a pair of Saturday evening tweets that migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border “will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court.”

“No ‘Releasing’ into the U.S. … All will stay in Mexico,” the president wrote.

His tweets were interpreted as possible confirmation of the posible deal between the U.S. and Obrador’s administration.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum declared a humanitarian crisis last week as approximately 5,000 Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty arrived in the city ― to the chagrin of many locals.

Gastélum said on Friday that he’d asked the United Nations for aid to help with the influx of asylum seekers.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-cummings-it-s-law-let-asylum-seekers-across-border-n939806

 

By Leigh Ann Caldwell for NBC News

WASHINGTON — The incoming chairman of a key oversight committee in the House of Representatives said Sunday that any attempt by President Donald Trump to keep migrants from claiming asylum in the U.S. would be unlawful.

“That’s not the law,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in an exclusive interview on “Meet the Press,” indicating that Congress will act if the president moves ahead with that policy. “They should be allowed to come in, seek asylum, that’s the law.”

President Donald Trump has said he’s reached a deal with the government of Mexico to keep migrants traveling in large caravans from Central America in Mexico until their court date to plead asylum. But a spokesman for incoming Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said talk of such a deal is premature and U.S. officials told NBC News that the details are still being worked out.

Cummings said he supports the law as it stands. “I think we have a system that has worked for a long time. This president’s come in, wants to change it, that’s up to him. But now the Congress has got to stand up and hopefully they will,” Cummings said.

Family detention at the border and the separation of children from their parents after crossing the border was already on Cummings’ list of potential investigations as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee when Democrats take control of Congress in January.

Cummings has a list of 64 subpoenas it is ready to send to the Trump administration on a variety of issues ranging from immigration to voting rights act, drug prices and the opioid epidemic.

“I think the American people have said that they want checks and balances,” Cummings said. “And subpoenas, by the way, that may involve, say, private industries like the pharmaceutical companies” over “these skyrocketing drug prices.”

Full Cummings Interview: ‘We have to hit the ground flying’

NOV. 25, 201808:09

When asked about the priorities he is setting for areas of investigation, Cummings said he will focus on issues that “go to the very heart of our democracy and protecting that democracy.”

Cummings also said Sunday that his committee will “probably” look into Trump’s financial ties, especially to Saudi Arabia, and if it violates the emoluments clause, which is aimed at preventing a president from profiting on the office.

Cummings said he wanted to determine “whether the president is acting in his best interest or those of the American people,” adding, “I think this would be appropriate and there are other committees that will be looking at this too.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also criticized Trump over his support for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite reports that a CIA assessment concluded that the Saudi ruler ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Lee said that Trump’s assessment is “inconsistent” with the intelligence he’s seen. “Intelligence I’ve seen suggests this was ordered by the crown prince,” he said.

Lee says that Khashoggi’s murder and Trump’s response provides “an opportunity” for Congress to weigh in to the U.S.-backed Saudi role in Yemen that has created a worsening humanitarian disaster.

“I think Congress has to take some ownership of U.S. foreign policy, especially as it relates to our intervention in this war,” Less said. “Our unconstitutional fighting of a civil war in Yemen that has never been declared by the U.S. Congress as a problem. And that’s on us.”

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I agree with Congressman Cummings.  Indeed, I’ve been saying for some time now that the law is well-designed to deal with the flow of asylum applicants to the Southern Border. This Administration has simply chosen not to make it work, in many ways. The result is a self-created crisis. I’m looking forward to some real oversight of the intentionally created immigration mess in the coming year, including holding some of those responsible for creating it accountable!
PWS
11-25-18

Related posts:

  1. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

THE HILL: Nolan Reminds Us That Bad Border Policies Didn’t Originate With The Trump Administration!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/417994-bill-clintons-attempts-to-secure-the-border-caused-a-humanitarian-crisis

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

In 1994, President Bill Clinton established a prevention through deterrence border security strategy for the Border Patrol that concentrated enforcement resources on major entry corridors.

This made it more difficult for migrants to make illegal entries at those locations. Consequently, many of them went around those areas to make their entries at remote locations that were not patrolled so heavily, such as the Arizona desert.

This resulted in a humanitarian crisis.

According to U.S. Border Patrol data, 7,216 people died while illegally crossing the southwest border at remote locations in the 20-year period from FY 1998 to FY 2017. Most of them perished in the desert from dehydration, hypothermia or heatstroke.

The actual number of deaths is much higher. According to CNN, the Border Patrol usually just counts dead bodies they discover while patrolling the border. In FY 2017, for instance, the Border Patrol reported 294 deaths, but CNN identified at least 102 more, not including scores of other likely crossing deaths in which officials were not able determine whether the remains were migrants.

Clinton’s plan was to make some of the resources available for other locations when the Border Patrol had control over the major corridors. The Border Patrol would then monitor the flow of illegal entries and shift resources to areas that had a lot of activity.

The instructions on implementing the strategy acknowledged, however, that although the Border Patrol knew where apprehensions were made, it did not have a reliable way to determine where aliens who eluded them were crossing. This made it difficult to know where to place additional resources.

. . . .

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Go on over to The Hill to read the rest of Nolan’s article. It’s a timely historical reminder that failed border policies have a long and unhappy history in the U.S.

I was in private practice in 1994. However, I will admit to being involved in a number of such failed efforts over the past 45 years. That’s why I’m convinced that the issues driving migration to and across our Southern Border won’t be solved unilaterally by draconian enforcement strategies on this end. They have all been tried to some degree or another and ultimately failed.

An effective answer must involve a cooperative international effort to address the “sending” or “push” factors so that the vast majority of folks in Latin America will be able to live safely, peacefully, and relatively prosperously in their native countries.

Of course there will always be those who want to emigrate. More power to them and to us for finding ways to accept, integrate, and benefit from their skills. But, an orderly, predictable, legal migration system would be in everyone’s best interests. Sadly, we’re heading in the opposite direction at present.

PWS

11-25-18

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  1. NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: WHILE MANY RIGHT WING APOLOGISTS (ALONG WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ) PAN NAZI COMPARISON, ACTUAL HOLOCAUST CHILD SURVIVOR YOKA VERDONER UNDERSTANDS THE PARALLELS! — Child Abuse Is Child Abuse —Evil Is Evil — Damage Is Irreparable!
  2. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  3. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  4. EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: KID KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: “Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.”

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION REACHES “REMAIN IN MEXICO” AGREEMENT WITH MEXICO!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/deal-with-mexico-paves-way-for-asylum-overhaul-at-us-border/2018/11/24/87b9570a-ef74-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html

By Joshua Partlow and
Nick Miroff

November 24 at 12:09 PM

MEXICO CITY — The Trump administration has won the support of Mexico’s incoming government for a plan to remake U.S. border policy by requiringasylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts, according to Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition team.

The agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and place a formidable new barrier in the path of Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence. By reaching the accord, the Trump administration has also overcome Mexico’s historic reticence to deepen cooperation with the United States on an issue widely seen here as America’s problem.

The White House had no immediate comment.

. . . .

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Go to the WashPost at the link to read the rest of the story!

  • Will the UNHCR & the US help Mexico establish humane accommodations for those awaiting asylum decisions?
  • Will Mexico allow free access to US lawyers to assist asylum seekers in preparing their claims?
  • Will US Immigration Courts be established at Ports of Entry to conduct hearings for those who pass “credible fear?”

If properly staffed and run in good faith by both the US and Mexico, with the assistance of the UNHCR and various NGOs, this potentially could be a reasonable way to process asylum seekers at the border.

But, it’s difficult to imagine the Trump Administration conducting any immigration related program fairly and in accordance with the law.

Stay tuned!

PWS

11-24-18

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)
  2. DC SUPERLAWYERS LINDSAY M. HARRIS AND DREE K. COLLOPY COMPLETELY DEBUNK TRUMP’S BOGUS CLAIMS ABOUT ASYLUM SEEKERS IN WASHPOST OP-ED! Immigration lawyers like us know the truth about the people whom Trump calls an “invasion.” These asylum-seeking families, most fleeing horrific violence in Central America, where their own governments cannot protect them, are doing what is most human — trying to survive and protect their children.”
  3. Julia Edwards Ainsley @ NBC: DHS Set To Launch “Wait in Mexico” Program For Asylum Seekers — Expect Another Disaster!
  4. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-plan-would-force-asylum-seekers-to-wait-in-mexico-as-cases-are-processed-a-major-break-with-current-policy/2018/11/21/5ad47e82-ede8-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html?utm_term=.4059c5192c0c

Nick MIroff, Joshua Partlow, and Josh Dawsey report for the WashPost:

November 21 at 10:18 PM

Central Americans who arrive at U.S. border crossings seeking asylum in the United States will have to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under sweeping new measures the Trump administration is preparing to implement, according to internal planning documents and three Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the initiative.

According to DHS memos obtained by The Washington Post on Wednesday, Central American asylum seekers who cannot establish a “reasonable fear” of persecution in Mexico will not be allowed to enter the United States and would be turned around at the border.

The plan, called “Remain in Mexico,” amounts to a major break with current screening procedures, which generally allow those who establish a fear of return to their home countries to avoid immediate deportation and remain in the United States until they can get a hearing with an immigration judge. Trump despises this system, which he calls “catch and release,” and has vowed to end it.

Among the thousands of Central American migrants traveling by caravan across Mexico, many hope to apply for asylum due to threats of gang violence or other persecution in their home countries. They had expected to be able to stay in the United States while their claims move through immigration court. The new rules would disrupt those plans, and the hopes of other Central Americans who seek asylum in the United States each year.

[Trump lashes out at judge after order to allow illegal border crossers to seek asylum]

Trump remains furious about the caravan and the legal setbacks his administration has suffered in federal court, demanding hard-line policy ideas from aides. Senior adviser Stephen Miller has pushed to implement the Remain in Mexico plan immediately, though other senior officials have expressed concern about implementing it amid sensitive negotiations with the Mexican government, according to two DHS officials and a White House adviser with knowledge of the plan, which was discussed at the White House on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the administration’s new plan, if a migrant does not specifically fear persecution in Mexico, that is where they will stay. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is sending teams of asylum officers from field offices in San Francisco, Washington, and Los Angeles to the ports of entry in the San Diego area to implement the new screening procedures, according to a USCIS official.

To cross into the United States, asylum seekers would have to meet a relatively higher bar in the screening procedure to establish that their fears of being in Mexico are enough to require immediate admission, the documents say.

“If you are determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will be permitted to remain in the United States while you await your hearing before an immigration judge,” the asylum officers will now tell those who arrive seeking humanitarian refuge, according to the DHS memos. “If you are not determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will remain in Mexico.”

Mexican border cities are among the most violent in the country, as drug cartels battle over access to smuggling routes into the United States. In the state of Baja California, which includes Tijuana, the State Department warns that “criminal activity and violence, including homicide, remain a primary concern throughout the state.”

The new rules will take effect as soon as Friday, according to two DHS officials familiar with the plans.

Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for DHS, issued a statement late Wednesday saying there are no immediate plans to implement these new measures.

“The President has made clear — every single legal option is on the table to secure our nation and to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants at our borders,” the statement says. “DHS is not implementing such a new enforcement program this week. Reporting on policies that do not exist creates uncertainty and confusion along our borders and has a negative real world impact. We will ensure — as always — that any new program or policy will comply with humanitarian obligations, uphold our national security and sovereignty, and is implemented with notice to the public and well coordinated with partners.”

A Mexican official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that current Mexican immigration law does not allow those seeking asylum in another country to stay in Mexico.

On Dec. 1, a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will be sworn in, and it’s also unclear whether his transition team was consulted on the new asylum screening procedures.

The possibility that thousands of U.S.-bound asylum seekers would have to wait in Mexico for months, even years, could produce a significant financial burden for the government there, especially if the migrants remain in camps and shelters on a long-term basis.

[At the U.S. border, migrant caravan will slow to a crawl]

There are currently 6,000 migrants in the Tijuana area, many of them camped at a baseball field along the border, seeking to enter the United States. Several thousand more are en route to the city as part of caravan groups, according to Homeland Security estimates.

U.S. border officials have allowed about 60 to 100 asylum seekers to approach the San Ysidro port of entry each day for processing.

Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that U.S. and Mexican officials were discussing such a plan.

Mexico also appears to be taking a less-permissive attitude toward the new migrant caravans now entering the country.

Authorities detained more than 200 people, or nearly all of the latest caravan, who recently crossed Mexico’s southern border on their way to the United States. This is at least the fourth large group of migrants to cross into Mexico and attempt to walk to the U.S. border. They were picked up not long after crossing. The vast majority of the migrants were from El Salvador, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.

After the first caravan this fall entered Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration offered migrants the chance to live and work in Mexico as long as they stayed in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. Most chose not to accept this deal, because they wanted to travel to the United States.

nick.miroff@washpost.com

joshua.partlow@washpost.com

josh.dawsey@washpost.com

Partlow reported from Mexico City. Dawsey reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

*******************************************************
Let’s see, Trump shrugs off the murder of a Washington Post journalist by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, downplays Putin’s overt interference in our elections, promotes mindless nationalism of the exact type responsible for two World Wars and tens of millions of avoidable deaths, and praises massive human rights violator and murderer Kim even as the latter is duping him on nukes. So, he’s scared to stand up to anyone powerful or for ideals and values that take courage to promote and advance.
But, when it comes to bullying, demonizing, and beating up on harmless but extremely vulnerable and desperate refugees, many of them women, children, and families fleeing for their lives, he excels. What does that tell us about the lack of character of the “man,” and the total lack of judgement and regard for American values of those in the minority who put him in office and continue to prop him up?
This appears to be a reaction to: 1) Federal Courts requiring Trump to follow the  law; 2) Mexico’s refusal to be bullied into signing an absurdly inappropriate and totally one-sided “safe third country” agreement; 3) Congresses failure to fund the wasteful “Wall;” and 4) the near total, yet highly predictable, failure of Trump’s racist, White Nationalist inspired “get tough” immigration enforcement policies.
The Federal Courts are likely to permanently enjoin Trump from ignoring the law that specifically allows anyone in the U.S., legally or not, to apply for asylum. Additionally, Trump encourages violence against refugees and creates unsafe, inhumane conditions on the Mexican side of the border.  Consequently, the end result of Trump’s intentional “making folks wait in Mexico” policy is likely to be encouraging individuals seeking asylum to enter illegally and then turn themselves in to the authorities to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the better options of working with the UNHCR and Mexico to promote a multinational approach to protection and to solve the problems in the Northern Triangle causing this humanitarian flow remain unaddressed by the Trumpsters.
Also, when will the “Face of Evil,” Stephen Miller, finally be held accountable for his consistently cowardly and racist attacks on the law and the American legal system?
PWS
11-22-18

Related posts:

  1. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

CHIEF JUSTICE DEFENDS JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AS BABY DONALD CONTINUES TO THROW SPITBALLS – Trump Makes Absurd Claims In Desperate Attempt to Deflect Attention From Existential Danger He & His Historically Corrupt Administration Pose To America’s Future!

https://apple.news/ANc5WDrEdTK-LHT9ys0Qtqg

Matthew Choi reports for Politico:

Politics

Trump hits back at Chief Justice Roberts, escalating an extraordinary exchange

The president had originally attacked a District Court judge who ruled against his asylum policy as an ‘Obama judge.’

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump took swipes at each other Wednesday in an extraordinary exchange over just how partisan federal courts really are.

Roberts said Wednesday morning there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges” after the president attacked the judge who ruled against his attempt to restrict asylum seekers at the border earlier this week.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Later in the afternoon, Trump hit back with two posts on Twitter:

“Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’ but if it is why…..,” the president wrote, followed by: “…..are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking. We need protection and security — these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!”

The statement from Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, was a stark divergence from the chief justice’s stoic aversion to publicly criticizing Trump, even as the president has railed against federal judges who did not rule in his favor.

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, called Trump’s comments against the judiciary “unprecedented” in modern history and praised Roberts for defending the Judicial branch. Chief justices have historical avoided fighting with the other co-equal branches of government, but Tobias said he was “heartened” by Wednesday’s break from deference to keep Trump in his lane.

“I think it’s great that the chief justice has said something, because the Senate has done nothing on these issues and somebody has to protect the independence of the judiciary,” Tobias said. “So I’m not troubled.”

The Associated Press first reported Roberts’ comments.

Talking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump criticized Judge Jon Tigar of U.S. District Court in Northern California, who ruled against his policy announced this month that would require migrants to apply for asylum at legal border crossings. Currently, migrants can present themselves to immigration officers after illegally crossing the border and request asylum. Cases from the Northern District of California are appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A number of advocacy groups sued the Trump administration shortly after it announced the policy, and Tigar issued a temporary restraining order effectively thwarting the president’s efforts. Trump on Tuesday accused Tigar of being an “Obama judge” and called the 9th Circuit a “disgrace.” Tigar was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

“Every case gets filed in the 9th Circuit because they know that’s not law. They know that’s not what this country stands for. Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten.” Trump said. “People should not be allowed to immediately run to this very friendly circuit and then file their case.”

He also said, “The 9th Circuit is really something we have to take a look at because it’s not fair.”

Trump added that he felt confident the case over his asylum policy would go to the Supreme Court where his administration would prevail — similar to his travel ban on citizens of several majority Muslim countries. A modified version of that policy was upheld in the Supreme Court after several challenges in lower federal courts, with Roberts writing the majority opinion in that case.

Even before Trump’s presidency, Republicans have tried to fill federal courts with conservative judges, blocking Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from getting a Senate vote. Trump ultimately filled the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death with Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Senate Republicans stalled several of Obama’s appointees to federal courts until former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unleashed the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules requiring only a simple majority to approve most federal judicial nominations.

This year, Republicans and Democrats engaged in a dramatic fight over the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh — Trump’s second nominee to the high court — which was mired in allegations of sexual assault. Both parties accused each other of toying with parliamentary procedure and manipulation in order to block or ram through the confirmation.

Trump has a track record of attacking the judiciary. He disparaged a federal judge in Hawaii last year as practicing “unprecedented judicial overreach” when he blocked an executive order barring entry to citizens of some majority Muslim countries.

In another Wednesday tweet, Trump even toyed with dividing the 9th Circuit into two or three circuits because, he said, it is “too big.”

Trump also lambasted U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who presided over a class-action lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University in 2016. Trump called Curiel, who is of Mexican descent and was born in Indiana, a “Mexican judge” to discredit his rulings. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the remarks at the time the “textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get top news and scoops, every morning — in your inbox.

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

I could have told Chief Justice Roberts that his weak-kneed attempt to tell Trump to “cool the rhetoric” and stop “pushing the envelope” in the Travel Ban case would fall on deaf ears. In fact, as I predicted, Trump’s toxic combination of ignorance, arrogance, and corruption was only “fired up” by the disingenuous performance of the Supremes’ majority in that case.

Trump believes that there are now five “bought and paid for GOP Justices,” including Roberts, on the Supremes; he fully intends to exploit and treat them as the same type of cowards and toadies who have done, and continue to do, his dirty work for him in Congress and the Executive Branch.

Statements in support of judicial independence are most welcome and in this case long overdue. But, actions speak louder than words. Until Roberts and the majority of this colleagues start enforcing the Constitution and the rule of law against the all-out assault by a President who neither understands nor believes in American democracy, Trump will continue to treat them as the same type of patsies that he regularly counts on to mindlessly do his bidding (See, e.g., Sen. Chuck Grassley; Sen. Mitch McConnell; Sen. Lindsey Graham; Speaker Paul Ryan, etc.).

The solution is pretty simple: All nine Justices need to pull together in the future (starting now) and “just say no” to Trump’s abuses of the rule of law.

PWS

11-21-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. 🤡CLOWN CAPITOL:  J.R. PRESIDES OVER GOP CLOWN SHOW HE HELPED CREATE — Empowering The Koch Bros, Suppressing Minority Votes, Enabling GOP Gerrymandering, Ignoring Invidious Racial & Religious Motives, Turning A Blind Eye To Lies & Pretexts, It All Contributed To The Arrogant Display Of GOP Dishonesty & Impunity Now On Public Display In The Senate! — Plus Bonus Friday Mini-Essay: “Profiles in Fecklessness”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!

TRUMP & HIS TOADIES ARE THE BIGGEST LOSERS: Lower U.S. Courts Forcing Scofflaw, Anti-American Administration To Follow The Law, & There Is Nothing That Trumpsters Hate More Than Being “Outed” & Held Accountable For Their Many Misdeeds!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/donald-trump-losing-courts-jurisprudence.html

Dahlia Lithwick reports for Slate:

We have just witnessed what can now—after the accounting of several races that went uncalled on election night—be described as an all-out shellacking for Trump and Trumpism. The people who knocked on doors and texted voters and drove people to the polls leading up to the midterms may be wondering what’s to be done between now and the 2020 election. The answer is simple: protect the courts.

This doesn’t just mean fighting for the integrity, scope, and independence of the Robert Mueller investigation, which is now under existential threat from a president who openly wants his new acting attorney general to blow the thing up altogether. As we wait for Mueller’s next move, it’s tempting to assume that whatever he may have is already enough to place the president in immediate and serious legal jeopardy. Maybe. In many ways even that result will depend on a robust and independent judicial branch—something this president has been tearing down since the 2016 campaign.

Between the impending conclusion of the Mueller probe and the promise of oversight from various Democratic-controlled House committees come January, it’s clear that the president is starting to panic. And it’s easy to see why—given his tax returns, financial dealings, Russian investments, and other wrongdoing being surfaced in litigation, he has a good deal to worry about.

But that brings us once more to the greatest and least appreciated place at which President Donald Trump is proving to be the losing-est loser of all: the courts. Because they happen so frequently, it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the massive and consequential rulings against this president and his administration that are logged every week and rarely viewed in the aggregate. But let’s try: Late Monday night, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the president’s Nov. 9 rule that barred migrants from applying for asylum unless they made the request at a legal checkpoint. The judge’s order applies nationally. Last Friday’s decision—by a Trump-appointed judge—to side with CNN against the White House in a dispute about revoked press credentials is only the most recent iteration of a near-constant drip-drip of legal losses. Even with a bench now containing almost 1 in 6 Trump appointed judges (and these are not your President Bush–edition conservative judges), Trump mainly loses, and then loses some more.

It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the massive and consequential rulings against this president and his administration that are logged every week.

Here’s another set: On Nov. 9, a federal judge in Montana temporarily blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, ruling that the Trump administration had failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires “reasoned” explanations for government decisions and reversals. (The president immediately decried the ruling as “political” and “a disgrace.”) Indeed, this is just the most recent in a line of environmental cases Trump keeps losing in the federal courts. One recent tally shows the Trump administration has actually lost in all but one of the legal challenges it’s brought in its efforts to undo Obama-era regulations. The government has either lost or ditched its position in 18 others. As a recent Brookings roundup notes, this 5 percent “win rate is far below the normal agency win rate, which averages 69 percent across eleven studies.”

But there’s so much more. Also in November, a federal judge allowed the massive emoluments lawsuit filed against Trump in Maryland and D.C. to proceed over the Justice Department’s objections. In August, a federal judge struck down the bulk of three separate executive orders seeking to hobble unions that Trump had signed in an attempt to make it easier to fire federal employees. While we were all looking for solace to the great media blackout that is the Mueller investigation, federal courts halted the Trump effort to ban transgender members of the military, stopped the effort to kill DACA, assisted in terminating the president’s circus-level vote fraud commission, and stymied efforts to defund sanctuary cities. In August, a Trump-appointed judge batted away a challenge to Robert Mueller’s appointment. Courts have acted swiftly and decisively to end Trump’s irresponsible and cruel immigration policies. In many of these cases there are three and four separate losses logged in different courts. As Fred Barbash noted a few weeks ago in the Washington Post, “by a very rough count, 40 to 50 federal judges have weighed in against the Trump administration in cases.”

This is not, as Barbash observes, because these are all a bunch of demented “judicial activists,” as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions once attempted to argue. Nor are they the “judges of the Resistance”—a phrase that obscures more than it illuminates. A good many of these jurists were appointed by Republican presidents and in some cases Trump himself. No, the Trump administration is still managing to lose a tremendous amount of its lawsuits despite the fact that the judicial branch has changed dramatically in the past two years and the Supreme Court itself now tilts to the political right.

As Barbash further clarifies, Trump loses so much at least partially because his administration must often contort itself into absurd postures to justify policies enacted by random tweet (as was the trans ban) or by vengeful tantrum (as was the sanctuary cities policy) or without proper procedures (the asylum changes). When agencies make abrupt and ill-considered policy changes, then send lawyers into courts to defend them, even the most conservative judge is apt to be frustrated. Trump also loses whenever courts take his tweeting or offhand comments into account, because they often undermine or even contradict stated legal arguments. As we saw last week in the CNN litigation, Trump loses when pretextual claims about Jim Acosta assaulting a White House intern are exposed as the pretextual—that means false—claims they are. Judges tend to find all this less amusing than you might think.

Regardless of inclination or ideology, most judges still prefer facts to alternative facts, and reasoned discourse to free-flowing policy by hissy fit. And regardless of inclination or ideology, most judges still don’t like lies or liars. And regardless of inclination or ideology, most judges favor sobriety, stability, and the integrity of the judicial branch to nihilist attacks on everyone and everything that is fact-based. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that judges are as totally exhausted by the lurches and feints of the first Honey Boo Boo presidency as the rest of us.

Is everything perfect? No. As long as Mitch McConnell draws breath, more and more unsuitable Trump judges will be mashed through the Senate and confirmed, regardless of qualifications. And the Supreme Court, we must recall, ended up reversing the lower court rulings on the travel ban, deciding it was in no position to question the president’s integrity or motivations. The Supreme Court could stymie many of the important legal reversals noted above as well, but it’s worth remembering that it only hears about 70 cases a year. It doesn’t want to be in the business of rubber-stamping every crazy idea Trump bleats out, not if it cares about its own public approval and that of all the courts below. Even the Supreme Court, even this Supreme Court, doesn’t want to go all in on all of it. And the losses are adding up.

It’s easy to miss the way this administration is getting trounced in the courts in part because it happens so often that we are almost inured to it, or because the courts are in fact behaving as they have largely done: as a quiet, meticulous check on that which is persistently unlawful and overreaching. It would be more newsworthy if courts behaved like rubber stamps every time the administration produced another ill-conceived rule change. David Cole, the national legal director of the ACLU, who wrote about this last year, puts it this way in an email:

The courts have ruled against the Trump administration consistently and appropriately. They have ruled against the administration on family separation, the revocation of DACA, punishing sanctuary cities, arbitrarily detaining asylum-seekers, barring young women in federal custody from obtaining abortion, expelling Jim Acosta from the White House press briefing, holding a US citizen as an enemy combatant without chargers or access to a lawyer, and banning transgender individuals from the military. We told Donald Trump we’ll see you in court, and we have, and for the most part, the courts have stood up for the rule of law against an administration that seems not to understand what it means.

To be sure, there is still a great deal to be worried about. Competent partisan hack Jeff Sessions is soon to be replaced by less competent partisan hack Matt Whitaker. If Whitaker—whose appointment as acting attorney general may not be legal—opts to deploy the DOJ’s astonishing power to do harm to civil liberties and basic freedoms, a lot of damage can be done in the coming months. That appointment is itself now subject to multiple legal challenges, which means that the man tasked with defending the Trump administration against the raft of legal challenges is himself the subject of a raft of legal challenges.

People who knocked on doors last month to protect democracy could continue that same work by expressing their support for Mueller and demanding a qualified attorney general. And the same reasoning can apply to the need to stand up for the judicial branch every time the president threatens, dismisses, or insults a judge or ruling. It’s also worth keeping in mind that all of these institutions depend on public support, and few of them punch back when the president attacks them. We need to support an independent judiciary for all the same reasons we have often failed to notice how effectively it has held Trumpism at bay. Because, despite being smacked around like a tetherball for two years, the courts have, to a large degree, acted soberly and with restraint. That’s not because judges have all, en masse, joined the “Resistance.” It’s because we still have a judiciary that resists that which is apparently still unlawful.

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

Like most would-be autocrats, Trump is a loser.  With the exception of the Supreme majority’s “dive” on the Travel Ban case, the losses have been widespread, totally deserved, and have come from Federal Judges appointed by Presidents of both parties. And the good thing is that despite the Supreme’s failure to back the rule of law in the Travel Ban cases, the majority of Federal Judges have continued to uphold the law and the Constitution by rejecting the Trump Administration’s dishonest and unethical abuse of Executive authority.

PWS

11-21-18

Related posts:

  1. “THE GIFTS OF THE MAGA-I:” DESPAIR, DEHUMANIZATION, DEATH — “[W]e keep wondering, how many 7-year-old girls would need to die for this to be something that would get in the headlines and stay in the headlines for a day or two?”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/judge-denies-trump-asylum-policy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.

“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Mr. Tigar wrote in his order.

As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest border, President Trump signed a proclamation on Nov. 9 that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, he said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the United States borders.

Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal registry, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment.

But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the United States, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, swiftly sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.

The advocacy groups accused the government of “violating Congress’s clear command that manner of entry cannot constitute a categorical asylum bar” in their complaint. They also said the administration had violated federal guidelines by not allowing public comment on the rule.

But Trump administration officials defended the regulatory change, arguing that the president was responding to a surge in migrants seeking asylum based on frivolous claims, which ultimately lead their cases to be denied by an immigration judge. The migrants then ignore any orders to leave, and remain unlawfully in the country.

”The president has sought to halt this dangerous and illegal practice and regain control of the border,” government lawyers said in court filings.

Mr. Trump, who had made stanching illegal immigration a top priority since his days on the campaign trail, has made no secret of his frustration over the swelling number of migrants heading to the United States. The president ordered more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the border to prevent the migrants from entering.

The new rule was widely regarded as an effort to deter Central Americans, many of whom request asylum once they reach the United States, often without inspection, from making the journey over land from their countries to the border.

United States immigration laws stipulate that foreigners who touch American soil are eligible to apply for asylum. They cannot be deported immediately. They are eligible to have a so-called credible fear interview with an asylum officer, a cursory screening that the overwhelming majority of applicants pass. As result, most of the migrants are released with a date to appear in court.

In recent years, more and more migrants have availed of the asylum process, often after entering the United States illegally. A record 23,121 migrants traveling as families were detained at the border in October. Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.

The Trump administration believes the migrants are exploiting asylum laws to immigrate illegally to the United States. Soaring arrivals have exacerbated a huge backlog of pending cases in the immigration courts, which recently broke the one-million mark. Many migrants skip their court dates, only to remain illegally in the country, which Mr. Trump derides as “catch and release.”

But advocates argue that many migrants are victims of violence or persecution and are entitled to seek sanctuary. Gangs are ubiquitous across El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where lawlessness and corruption enable them to kill with impunity.

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

Entirely predictable. “Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.”

Why aren’t ethical requirements being enforced on Government lawyers who present and defend these clearly frivolous positions in court?  Knowingly and intentionally depriving individuals of statutory, civil, and constitutional rights, while tying up Federal Judges and other “officers of the court” on frivolous political stunts directed at harming individuals on the basis of race and nationality must, at some point, be deterred!

These are not criminal proceedings, and the Administration is not entitled to a “presumption of innocence” for its lawless actions. At some point, ethical lawyers have an obligation “not to serve” a lawless Administration and to publicly disclose and oppose the Administration’s intentionally illegal actions and intentional wrongdoing aimed at migrants and communities of color in the U.S.  “Job security” doesn’t entitle Government employees, let alone those who also are members of the bar, to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

And no, no matter how much the GOP appointees might want to do so, the Supremes can’t authorize the President to rewrite the clear terms of the law at his whim.

PWS

11-20-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema Lays Groundwork For Holding Trump’s Child Abusers & Family Separators Accountable!

https://www.justice4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/JECM-Motion-to-Dismiss-Ruling.pdf

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:      Rebecca Wolozin, (571) 373-0518
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, (434) 218-9376

FEDERAL COURT ALLOWS CHALLENGE TO GOVERNMENT POLICY

USING DETAINED CHILDREN AS BAIT TO ARREST FAMILIES

 

ALEXANDRIA, VA (November 16, 2018) — Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss Legal Aid Justice Center’s lawsuit on behalf of detained immigrant children and their families, striking a blow to a new immigration policy that has kept thousands of children unnecessarily detained for months. The Court’s decision is a victory for immigrant children and their families in Virginia and across the country.

This case is particularly significant, not only in Virginia, but nationally. Over 13,000 children are held by Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the policies challenged in this suit, hundreds of whom are in Virginia. Because the policies are federal policies implemented across the country, the outcome of this case will have a nationwide impact.

Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), together with the intellectual property law firm of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, and Fox, brought this first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit challenging the government’s recent policy of sharing sponsor information and information about sponsors’ household members with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That policy has resulted in ICE arrests of family and friends that came forward to bring their children home.

“The Trump administration has been carrying out a backdoor family separation agenda, keeping immigrant children apart from their families and using children as bait to break up the very families they have traveled so far and risked so much to join,” said Becky Wolozin, lead counsel and attorney with LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “This decision is a victory for immigrant children and families. The Court has said clearly that the government cannot run roughshod over the rights of these children and their loved ones.”

The lawsuit stemmed from the experience of four children in ORR custody on Virginia who were held by the government for over five months while their relatives tried to bring them home. Three of the four children were finally reunified with their families – one just weeks before the Court’s order came down. The three children who have been reunified with their families have been dismissed from the case. One child remains in government custody, where he has been held apart from his adult sister for six months, after fleeing violence and neglect in his home country.

“For years, ORR has neglected its obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Sterne Kessler Director Salvador Bezos, lead of the firm’s immigration-focused pro bono matters. “The Administrative Procedure Act provides essential protections against this kind of agency overreach. I am proud of my colleagues’ and LAJC’s efforts to force the government to meet its obligations to the children in its custody.”

“ORR is supposed to protect vulnerable immigrant children. Instead it is placing them in harm’s way under the guise of child welfare,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Legal Director of LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “Their policy and its enforcement undermine successfully placing children with their families and the vast surveillance actions are destabilizing immigrant communities.”

In the November 15th ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema firmly upheld children’s right to liberty and the right to family unity for immigrant families. Judge Brinkema found that the children and their sponsors provided sufficient reason to suggest that their constitutional rights were violated, and that the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it enacted its ICE sharing policy earlier this year.  The case will now move forward as LAJC works to certify the class and the parties work to complete discovery.

Read the legal ruling here.

 

# # #

Legal Aid Justice Center is a statewide Virginia nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the voices of low-income communities and root out the inequities that keep people in poverty. We provide legal support to immigrant communities facing legal crises and use advocacy and impact litigation to fight back against ICE enforcement and detention abuses.  More information is available at http://www.justice4all.org/current-initiatives/fighting-family-separation/

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

Congrats to Rebecca, Simon, and the wonderful crew over at Legal Aid Justice in Virginia! True fighters and leaders of the New Due Process Army!

Hopefully this will pave the way not only for the end of these despicable and illegal behaviors, but also holding the Trump Administration scofflaws and their career employee accomplices who plan and execute these violations of law fully accountable for their intentionally unlawful and unconstitutional actions.

PWS

11-18-18

Related posts:

  1. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  2. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  3. [BUREAU] ‘CRATS CONTINUE TO FLEE SINKING DHS SHIP AS ABUSES, LIES, COVER-UPS MOUNT — John Sanders Latest To Exit — Trump Taps Mark Morgan, Eager Architect Of Administration’s Temporarily Aborted “Community Reign of Terror” (A/K/A/ “Operation Wetback ‘19”) Program As Next Acting CBP Chief — Expect More Mindless Cruelty, Lies, False Narratives, White Nationalist Racism, Violations Of Law & Human Rights!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

EYORE FIDDLES WITH DOCKET AS ROME BURNS – Latest Bureaucratic Gobbledygook From Falls Church Shows Why EOIR Must Be Abolished & Replaced By An Independent Court, Run By Sitting Judges, With Professional, Apolitical Administration!

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1112036/download

**************************************************
So, let’s see what’s really going on here, beneath all of the “Tower bureaucratese.”
  • Bureaucrats at Falls Church “Headquarters,” who are beholden to DOJ politicos, are setting the local Immigration Court docket priorities to the exclusion of sitting Immigration Judges, Respondents’ Counsel, NGOs and the members of the public who actually use the system;
  • But one party, the DHS, is effectively being given unilateral authority to establish the Immigration Courts’ “docket priorities;”
  • DHS also unilaterally decides which cases will be designated as “family units” and therefore “prioritized;”
  • EOIR notes that the prioritization of certain “aliens with children” cases between 2014 and 2017, also at the behest of DHS, was a MASSIVE failure that actually decreased productivity and significantly accelerated the backlog (what I refer to as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”);
  • Nevertheless, EOIR inexplicably decides to “double down” on a known failure just because their “partners” (Sessions’s term) at DHS essentially have ordered them to do so;
  • Why “Baltimore, but not Arlington;” “San Francisco, but not San Diego,” “Denver, but not Dallas,” etc.?
  • “EOIR remains committed to the timely completion of all cases consistent with due process” — Really?
    • Lead by enforcement guru Jeff Sessions and DHS, the Trump Administration has intentionally “artificially jacked” the “backlog” to over 1.1 million cases;
    • If the approximately 350 currently authorized Immigration  Judges were all on board and each met their 700 case “quota,” the Immigration Court could complete only about 250,000 cases per year;
    • If no additional cases were filed, and none of the judges left, the pending cases wouldn’t be completed until the latter half of 2023;
    • But of course, under the Trump Administration’s mismanaged and totally undisciplined enforcement program, new cases will be piled into the system without regard to its capacity and judges will continue to burn out and leave;
    • So, effectively, there is no cogent program for getting the backlog under control — ever;
  • What’s missing from this bureaucratic never-never land is any sense of fairness, competence, or meaningful participation by those most affected by the backlogs and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and who possess the most expertise at arranging dockets for fairness and efficiency: sitting Immigration Judges, Respondent’s Counsel, NGOs, and respondents themselves (along, of course, with the ICE Chief Counsel unencumbered by the “DHS Enforcement Wackos“);
  • Also glaringly absent: any requirement that the DHS justify their requests to prioritize the dockets or exercise any responsible “prosecutorial discretion” to take “lower priority ” cases off the dockets;
  • A “no-brainer” in a functioning independent court system would be requiring DHS to remove one (or more) “low priority” cases for each case they wish the court to “prioritize” or otherwise move ahead of other, older pending cases.

The rapidly failing and unfair system needs aggressive oversight and monitoring — from Congress (read the House) and the Article III Courts!

Ultimately, it will continue its “death spiral” until both the EOIR bureaucracy and the Administration politicos who abuse it are permanently removed from the equation  and an independent court, run by sitting judges with assistance from other court management professionals with meaningful public input is established. A strong, independent, efficient, unbiased U.S. Immigration Court will also help ICE carry out its law enforcement mission in a professional, legal, non-discriminatory, de-politicized, and humane manner, perhaps bringing enough rationality to the system to save that beleaguered agency from its critics.

PWS

11-18-18

 

Related posts:

  1. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Trump & His GOP’s Cowardly “War On Children” Should Outrage Every American! — Join The “New Due Process Army” & Fight To Save Humanity!

TAL @ SF CHRONICLE: DHS Enforcement Policies Calculated To Maximize Kiddie Detention @ ORR, Create Backlogs, Increase Suffering, & Maximize Long-Term Damage To Kids, Families!

More than 14,000 immigrant children are in U.S. custody, an all-time high

WASHINGTON — The number of undocumented immigrant children in government custody has topped 14,000 for the first time, a rise that shows no signs of slowing as the Trump administration enforces policies that are keeping them in care longer.

 

There were 14,056 unaccompanied immigrant minors in Health and Human Services custody on Friday, according to a government source familiar with the number. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the total had reached approximately 14,000.

 

That number tops records set just two months ago, putting further strain on an already overburdened system.

 

The issue of immigrant children in government custody gained widespread attention in the spring and summer when the Trump administration separated thousands of families at the southern border. Almost all those separated children have since left Health and Human Services care, but the total number of children in the system has steadily grown.

 

The reason is that children who arrive unaccompanied in the U.S. are spending more time in holding facilities before they can be released to suitable adults, often family members. One change that has especially slowed that down is an agreement Health and Human Services signed earlier this year for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do background checks on potential sponsors.

 

ICE confirmed in September that it had used that information to arrest undocumented adults who came forward to take custody of children. Previous administrations didn’t look into people’s immigration status when deciding whether to release children into their care, but that changed under President Trump.

 

The Health and Human Services care system was intended to be a temporary bridge for often-traumatized children into a more stable home while they sought legal status in the U.S. But the Trump administration changed course, declaring that no undocumented immigrant was off limits from potential arrest and deportation.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/More-than-14-000-immigrant-children-are-in-U-S-13399510.php

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

The nasty incompetents in charge of these programs need some meaningful oversight from both Congress (read House) and the Article III Courts. When this sorry episode is finally over, there should be some accountability for both the politicos and the career bureaucrats who have designed and implemented a system intended to inflict maximum harm and suffering on kids and their families, and, in some cases, lied to cover up or mask what they are really doing. Nielsen should be first in line as she fits all the categories: intentionally inhumane (probably illegal) policies, incompetent administration, and intentional lies.

“Nice folks” working for the Government these days!

PWS

11-17-18

Related posts:

  1. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  2. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: AS SESSIONS RAMPS UP THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG,” RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE DETAINEES CERTAIN TO INCREASE! – AG’S Child Abuse Also Makes Him Complicit In Sexual Abuse! – See The Short Video By Emily Kassie Here!
  4. CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Trump & His GOP’s Cowardly “War On Children” Should Outrage Every American! — Join The “New Due Process Army” & Fight To Save Humanity!

THE HILL: Alex Nowrasteh @ CATO Says Trump Had No Business Restricting Asylum

https://apple.news/A6lssfpDNQByUfFOz21B3iA

Alex Nowrasteh writes in The Hill:

Trump should not restrict asylum

Last week the Trump administration announced new rules that deny asylum to immigrants who initially entered the United States illegally. Immigration law explicitly allows illegal immigrants to apply for asylum, but the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Muslim Travel Ban case gave the president wide power to ban any group of foreigners if he considers them detrimental to the United States.

President Trump’s announcement is in response to the caravan of 4,000-5,000 Central American migrants and asylum seekers slowly making their way to the border. Before the election, Trump stated that “unknown Middle Easterners” were in the caravan who pose a national security threat. President Trump justified the Muslim Travel Ban with an exaggerated national security threat, the legitimacy of the new asylum rules rest on the same fear.

There is little national security threat from the caravan.

There have been zero terrorists from Mexico or Central America who have committed or attempted to commit attacks on U.S. soil during the 43-year period from 1975 through the end of 2017. Those countries are afflicted with ghastly rates of violent crime exacerbated by an American-funded war on drugs, but there is no international terrorist threat emanating from Central America.

Most people in the migrant caravan will apply for asylum while the rest will try to enter illegally. Looking more broadly at terrorist attacks committed by all asylum seekers and illegal immigrants over the last 43 years, only 20 people entering the country illegally or as asylum seekers committed or attempted to commit an attack on U.S. soil.

The illegal immigrant terrorists, who all came from countries outside of the Western Hemisphere except for a single Canadian environmental extremist, killed zero people in their attacks. The asylum seekers, who all came from countries outside of the Western Hemisphere except for one Cuban, did manage to murder nine people in attacks. The annual chance of being murdered by a terrorist who entered as an asylum-seeker was about 1 in 1.3 billion per year from 1975 through the end of 2017.

To put that small chance in context, the annual chance of being murdered in a homicide in the United States is about 89,000 times as great as being murdered in a terrorist attack by an asylum-seeker during the same 43-year period.

Altogether, terrorists who initially entered as asylum-seekers or illegal immigrants accounted for only about 0.3 percent of the 3,037 people murdered in attacks committed by foreign-born terrorists on U.S. soil during that time.

As terrible as each of those murders were, they are not a sufficient national security justification for changing asylum rules and potentially deny many legitimate claims.

There are few foreign-born terrorists who want to commit attacks on U.S. soil, but the government’s revamped visa vetting system is superb at weeding them out. Asylum-seekers and everybody else seeking to enter the United States legally are rightfully subject to a vetting procedure that mistakenly permitted the entry of one radicalized terrorist for every 29 million visa or status approvals from 2002 to 2016 according to research by my colleague David Bier. Most of those terrorists didn’t murder anybody in their attacks, meaning that one radicalized terrorist was admitted for every 379 million visa or status approvals from 2002 through 2016.

Even by government standards, that’s an effective system.

Obviously, people who enter as illegal immigrants are not vetted by the government. However, none of those vetting failures from 2002-2016 was of an asylum-seeker who radicalized and had terroristic intents before coming here. They either entered as children or radicalized after their arrival.

To be fair to the president, it’s theoretically possible that the current caravan of Central Americans could contain entirely new national security threats that are different from the past. The Trump administration has revealed no evidence to indicate that this caravan poses more of a risk to national security than previous Central American migrants or that it contains “unknown Middle Easterners.” The government should have to show that these people threaten our national security.

The recent Supreme Court rubber stamp of Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban granted the president seemingly unlimited powers to close the border or to clog up the asylum system with new red tape. The major justification for new asylum rules has been the national security threat posed by the caravan. Regardless of the president’s power, there is no evidence that this caravan poses an actual national security threat.

Alex Nowrasteh is a senior immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

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

Interestingly, Alex reaches the same conclusion that Nolan Rappaport did in his recent article in The Hill, http://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/11/13/the-hill-nolan-says-trumps-border-order-is-nqrfpt/, although their supporting reasoning was different.

Alex correctly points out that the Supremes took a “nose dive” in the “Travel Ban case” by allowing Trump to get away with a clearly bogus and discriminatory “national security” rationale. While Chief Justice Roberts, ensconced in the “Supreme Ivory Tower,” might have fantasized that his mealy-mouthed “words of caution” would have some restraining impact on Trump, as I had predicted, they did nothing of the sort.

No, it just showed Trump that Roberts and his GOP colleagues on the Court were afraid to stand up to him. The same type of obsequious sycophants to Executive power that Trump believes that he and Mitch McConnell (with help from the Heritage Foundation, voters who don’t understand their own best interests, and a subservient Senate majority) have been rapidly installing on the Federal Courts.

Unless and until Roberts & Co. get some backbone, read the Constitution, and “just say no” to Trump’s lies, racism, and disingenuous White Nationalist agenda, he’s going to continue to roll over them while crushing democracy and our Constitutional system of government along the way, not to mention destroying the lives of real human beings — something that the majority of today’s Supremes seem to have totally tuned out.

Meanwhile, while I never had pictured myself as having lots in common with the folks at Cato, I’m happy that Alex has the courage to expose both the irrational evil of Donald Trump and the gross dereliction of duty going on at the Supremes in such clear and understandable language.

If the Supreme aren’t willing to stand up for the Constitutional rights of the rest of us when it counts, they might well find their black robes, marble palace, and lifetime tenure scant protection when Trump or some future lawless demagogue in his mold comes after them.

PWS

11-16-18

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. CHILD ABUSE BY COWARDLY REGIME OFFICIALS RAMPS UP AS COURTS TANK IN FACE OF LATEST ASSAULT ON RULE OF LAW & HUMANITY ☠️ — “This incredibly callous treatment of young migrants as well as their families is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to erase any vestige of due process at the border with Mexico.“
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

MEXICO A “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY?” — No Way! — “‘It’s a Crisis of Civilization in Mexico.’ 250,000 Dead. 37,400 Missing.“

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-crisis-of-civilization-in-mexico-250-000-dead-37-400-missing-1542213374?emailToken=b782c4822fa5027d9168b45cd695195eFqzrxRlC5OCkGVY8Z0EA4pb8VXl6RHkHREQ1AmaH8yMyeAlVb6MpXqPHHsAocieCxuQWuPDERMwhcxLvXsFRFQsRI5WkHZo3DKDR+cMb5uAd8bNn8ryiZ5q4Nt0344LX&reflink=article_email_share

José de Córdoba and Juan Montes report for the WSJ:

That day, the mothers scoured the site outside El Fuerte, a town in Sinaloa state, on Mexico’s northern Pacific Coast, looking for one of two men presumably kidnapped by cartel gunmen in recent weeks. One body had already been found in a field. The women believed the other may be nearby. In the end, they came up empty.

“This is my life,” said Mirna Medina, a forceful woman who holds the group together. “Digging up holes.”

Her son, who sold CDs by a gas station, was kidnapped in 2014. Three years later to the day, she and the other mothers of the search group dug up his remains. “I felt his presence,” she said, remembering the day and breaking out in tears. “I wanted to find him alive, but at least I found him.”

Some 37,000 people in Mexico are categorized as “missing” by the government. The vast majority are believed to be dead, victims of the country’s spiraling violence that has claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2006. The country’s murder rate has more than doubled to 26 per 100,000 residents, five times the U.S. figure.

Because the missing aren’t counted as part of the country’s official murder tally, it is likely Mexico’s rate itself is higher.

The killing and the number of missing grow each year. Last year, 5,500 people disappeared, up from 3,400 in 2015. Mexico’s murders are up another 18% through September this year.

Victims’ families, mostly mothers, organize search parties, climbing down ravines or scouring trash dumps. Their technique is crude. Sometimes they hire laborers to hammer steel rods into the soil and haul them up to see if they smell like decomposition. Other times, they simply look for an exposed body part or shallow grave.

The sheer numbers of the disappeared now rival more famous cases of missing people in Latin American history.

The Disappeared, or Desaparecidos, became a chilling part of Latin America’s vocabulary during the Cold War, when security forces kidnapped, killed and disposed of the bodies of tens of thousands of leftist guerrillas as well as civilian sympathizers. The most infamous case is Argentina’s “Dirty War,” where at least 10,000 people vanished from 1976 to 1983. In Buenos Aires, mothers of the missing organized weekly vigils in front of Argentina’s presidential palace, gaining world-wide prominence.

Mexico fought its own far-smaller war against Marxist guerrillas during the 1970s. According to the government human-rights commission, 532 people went missing, and at least 275 people were summarily executed by security forces.

This time around, the horror in Mexico is bigger and its causes more complex. Many of the disappeared in recent years are believed to be the victims of violence unleashed by criminal gangs fighting to control drug routes and other lucrative businesses such as extortion, kidnapping and the theft of gasoline from pipelines, often with the complicity of police forces, government officials say.

“It’s a crisis of civilization in Mexico,” said Javier Sicilia, a poet and victims’ advocate whose son was murdered in 2011. “It’s diabolical—an unprecedented perversity to disappear human beings and erase any trace of them from the world.”

The trauma of Mexico’s missing is an open wound in the nation’s psyche. Families who can’t grieve for their loved ones spend the day alternating between doubt and despair, praying for, and dreading, the blessing of certainty.

“We don’t sleep nights, we have nightmares wondering what happened, where can he be,” said Maria Lugo, 62, whose son disappeared in 2015.

. . . .

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

Those with WSJ access can get the rest of the gruesome story at the link, along with pictures and graphs illustrating the extent of the problem.

Obviously, by no stretch of the imagination is Mexico a “Safe Third Country” for purposes of U.S. asylum law. The brazen attempt by the Trump Administration and GOP Senators led by Chuck Grassley and Mike Lee to force such an agreement down the throat of Mexico is as disingenuous as it is immoral.

It also is appalling the number of Trump Administration senior immigration officials who parrot the bogus claim that “refugees from Central America are required to apply for asylum in Mexico.” Neither international law nor U.S. law imposes such a requirement, for good reasons. Actually, the single “Safe Third Country Agreement” that we have negotiated with Canada in compliance with our immigration laws is quite circumscribed and very limited in scope. And, there are ongoing efforts in Canada to force Canada to withdraw from this agreement because of the Trump Administration’s mistreatment of asylum applicants.

Nevertheless, as I have previously pointed out, given conditions in the Northern Triangle, while Mexico isn’t a “Safe Third Country” for purposes of our law, it might well be a “safer third country,” in practical terms, for many Central American refugees and their families. It’s bigger than the Northern Triangle countries, somewhat better governed than the “failed states” of the Northern Triangle, easier and less dangerous to reach, has more economic opportunities and resettlement options, and is generally (although, sadly, not always) not as overtly hostile to refugees as is the U.S. under Trump.

To encourage (rather than attempt to force) more individuals to apply for asylum in Mexico, our Government should:

  •  Publicly acknowledge and treat the migration from Central America as a “humanitarian situation,” rather than a law enforcement issue;
  • Work with the UNHCR and Mexican authorities to improve asylum processing, adjudication, and resettlement in Mexico;
  • Provide financial aid and incentives for Mexico to improve its asylum system (rather than law enforcement money or threats to cut off funding);
  • Emphasize to Central American refugees the possible benefits of applying for asylum in Mexico (or elsewhere), rather than threatening them and trying to intimidate them from coming to the U.S.
  • Finally, and most important, the U.S. should be taking a leadership role with the UNHCR and other countries in our hemisphere to address the endemic problems in the Northern Triangle that are creating these refugee flows.

Refugee situations are complex, on a number of levels. They won’t be solved by the simplistic approaches (a/k/a political stunts) currently being taken by the Trump Administration, including the ridiculous “Wall.” Indeed, they can’t be solved by any single country. It takes the countries of the world working together to resolve them. That’s exactly what the mechanisms set up under the U.N. Convention on Refugees were intended to do. It’s beyond foolish for our Government to ignore them.

PWS

11-16-18

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  2. “SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  
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DC SUPERLAWYERS LINDSAY M. HARRIS AND DREE K. COLLOPY COMPLETELY DEBUNK TRUMP’S BOGUS CLAIMS ABOUT ASYLUM SEEKERS IN WASHPOST OP-ED! Immigration lawyers like us know the truth about the people whom Trump calls an “invasion.” These asylum-seeking families, most fleeing horrific violence in Central America, where their own governments cannot protect them, are doing what is most human — trying to survive and protect their children.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/13/trumps-attack-asylum-is-based-entirely-false-claims/

President Trump’s recent action to limit asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border is just his latest attempt to scare Americans about asylum seekers, undercutting long-standing principles of decency and humanity.

And like most of what Trump says about immigrants, the rationale the administration is using to keep out asylum seekers is based on myths and deliberate obfuscations.

Trump may not like it, but seeking asylum from persecution is a core human right. This right was recognized by the world and enshrined in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has also been recognized by the United States and enshrined in our own domestic laws. Specifically, anyone “who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival . . .), irrespective of [their] status, may apply for asylum.” The Trump administration’s order will curtail this fundamental right and inevitably prompt strong legal challenges and protracted, resource-intensive litigation in our courts.

[Trump administration tightens immigration asylum rules as caravans continue to push for U.S. border]

Immigration lawyers like us know the truth about the people whom Trump calls an “invasion.” These asylum-seeking families, most fleeing horrific violence in Central America, where their own governments cannot protect them, are doing what is most human — trying to survive and protect their children.

We are asylum attorneys, but like many of our asylum-seeking clients, we are also mothers — of children ages 1 and 4, and one of us is nine months pregnant. Like most parents, we would do anything to keep our children safe. This is, indeed, the primary reason mothers decide to flee, sometimes pregnant, sometimes with small children, and take what they know and understand is the dangerous journey north — because they determine that is their best option for safety. This very human act of seeking protection for one’s children should be met with humanity, not hate-driven policies.

And the idea of an invasion isn’t the only false claim the administration is making to justify its new policy.

[Trump isn’t trying to solve border problems. He’s trying to make them look worse.]

The administration alleges that most individuals who file asylum claims don’t return to court to adjudicate them. In his Nov. 1 speech, Trump himself claimed that only 3 percent of asylum seekers show up in court. In reality, the Justice Department’s own statistics recognize that 60 percent to 75 percent of non-detained individuals show up to court, while a recent study showed that 96 percent of families with legal representation seeking asylum showed up to court.

The administration seems to assume that those seeking asylum between ports of entry are less worthy, genuine or credible than those who seek entry at the border. In reality, there are totally valid reasons people enter between ports of entry — first and foremost, the U.S. government has a track record of unlawfully turning away asylum seekers from ports of entry.

The administration assumes that asylum seekers from Central America will be safe in Mexico. Trump said in his speech earlier this month that Mexico had offered asylum to members of a large refugee caravan traveling from Central America, and that if they did not accept it, they must not be genuine asylum seekers.

[How to organize a 5,000-person migrant caravan]

Trump gets two facts wrong here. First, the United States does not have a “safe third country agreement” with Mexico (as we do have in place with Canada), which would make it a requirement for any asylum seeker who set foot on Mexican soil to seek asylum in Mexico first or be barred from pursuing asylum in the United States.

And second, the reason we don’t have such an agreement with Mexico is because Mexico is not capable of providing adequate protection for many migrants. For example, last year, the University of the District of Columbia law school’s immigration clinic handled the case of a Honduran woman who fled severe harm and targeting by a powerful transnational gang and was then attacked by Los Zetas in Mexico as she traveled with her two young children to the United States. She dutifully sought asylum in Mexico, only to be told by Mexican officials that they could not protect her from the Zetas or the gang who had targeted her in Honduras. They advised her to continue to the United States to seek meaningful protection. She was granted asylum.

[Border arrests surged to highest levels of Trump presidency in October]

The Trump administration’s rule and proclamation are grounded in rhetoric about the need to cut down on government resources devoted to asylum seekers at the southern border. However, the changes are unlikely to save government resources; while they will bar individuals who enter between ports of entry from gaining asylum, making them eligible only for withholding of removal or relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), withholding and CAT still require a court hearing, which will continue to be delayed given the backlog of now more than 1 million cases in our immigration courts.

Moreover, granting withholding or CAT relief, as opposed to asylum, will add to the creation of a permanent underclass of refugees. These refugees will be barred from a path to permanent residence, family reunification and full inclusion as members of our society. Instead, they will live in limbo.

For example, take one of the UDC law school clinic’s clients from last year. Her persecutor kidnapped her at age 17 and then kept her in a hut for six months, raping her repeatedly. After six months, he said she was his wife and warned that if she left him, he would kill her younger siblings. For the next 20 years, she endured horrific abuse at his hands, eventually escaping and making it to the United States on her third attempt. She was barred from asylum because of her unsuccessful prior attempts to enter but eventually granted withholding of removal. While she works hard legally as a nanny in the D.C. metro area, she has no right to ever sponsor her children for immigration; nor can she leave the United States without losing her status. She will live in permanent limbo and never see her children again. This rule will create the same situation for many more people like her.

This move is just the latest in a string of efforts by the Trump administration to dehumanize asylum seekers, to create an “us vs. them” mentality. The fearmongering has already contributed to the massacre of 11 Jewish Americans at a synagogue in Pittsburgh because the suspect allegedly believed the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and all Jews were assisting the “invasion” of America.

But it is not “us vs. them.” We are all human. We all breathe the same air. We all want to be free. And above all else, we want our children to be safe. We implore the Trump administration and our fellow Americans to recognize our common humanity and start treating asylum seekers like fellow human beings, rather than demons to blame, criminals to punish and monsters to detain and fear. It is our common humanity that should guide our policy. Only then can the United States begin to return to its position of moral leadership.

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

The problem is that the Trump Administration doesn’t recognize a “common humanity.” Only its own, self-interested, White Nationalist, exclusive agenda. So, there’s no “core of decency” to which one might appeal.

What if we had a different “leader?” One who paid attention to facts, respected experts, sought different views, possessed values and human compassion, and, most of all, sought to solve problems rather than using lies, slander, and slurs to dehumanize individuals and promote an essentially racist agenda!

PWS

12-15-18

Related posts:

  1. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations!