National Security – Page 175 – immigrationcourtside.com

AILA TV: In Less Than 5 Minutes, Superstar Attorney Dree Collopy Tells You Everything You Need To Know About The Revised USCIS Guidance On Credible/Reasonable Fear — Must Watch TV!

Here’s the You-Tube link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgVJkysse2Y

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

Great job by Dree!

Bottom Line: Under pressure from the Trump Administration, USCIS is tilting the system against (largely unrepresented) asylum applicants from the Northern Triangle. The only questions are 1) whether the Immigration Courts will follow suit, and 2) if so, whether the Article III Courts will blow or swallow (as they have done so far in the credible/reasonable fear context) the whistle on due process for the most vulnerable.

A good introduction to reality for anyone who believes that conscientious career civil servants will be able to persevere in the face of the Trump Administration’s all-out assault on due process and fundamental fairness.

POLITICO: “Street-Corner Rules” — Sessions’s Fate Entirely In The Hands Of His GOP Colleagues & Trump — Dems Irrelevant (What’s New?)

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/sessions-recuses-himself-trump-russia-214857

Jeff Greenfield writes in Politico:

“Want to understand the key to the way the Jeff Sessions story is playing out today? Then leave the stately halls of the Capitol, and come with me to the playgrounds and streets of New York, where I first learned one of the most reliable of political rules.

We had no Little League, no organized games of any kind, and certainly no umpire to preside over stickball contests, or pickup games in Riverside Park. So pretty much every other play resulted in an argument (it was, coincidentally or not, a Jewish neighborhood). And the arguments always ended the same way: when a member of one team conceded.
“Yeah, he was out.”

“See?—your own man says so.”

When a political figure gets in trouble, that street-corner rule is the most significant metric of how to measure the depth of the trouble. President Richard M. Nixon could have survived the Watergate scandal had Republican senators backed him; there were 42, well over the one-third-plus-one needed to keep him in office. But when Barry Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott and other GOP leaders went to the White House on August 6 to tell him his support had melted away, Nixon understood he was finished.

By contrast, President Bill Clinton retained almost total support from his part in Congress—just five House Democrats voted for impeachment—and his survival was assured. As New York Times reporter Peter Baker details in his book on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, “The Breach,” had Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle and House leader Dick Gephardt gone to the White House with a call to resign, the outcome might well have been very different.

So far, congressional Republicans have protected President Donald Trump from a host of otherwise troubling issues. No tax returns? No problem. Blatant family conflicts of interest? Nothing to see here. Cabinet members with “incomplete” disclosures? Only Labor nominee Andrew Puzder’s nomination was derailed, and that took everything from hiring an undocumented housekeeper to allegations of spousal abuse. (“Fake news,” in Puzder’s telling.)

The story of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is another matter. Rep. Darrell Issa—who as chair of the House Oversight Committee launched approximately 24,598 investigations of Obama administration malfeasance—called for Sessions to recuse himself from looking into charges of Russian meddling in American campaigns. The committee’s current chair, Jason Chaffetz, did the same. So did Rep. Raúl Labrador, one of the leaders of the House Freedom Caucus, the most militant of conservative voices.”

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

PWS

03/02/17

GREEN BAY PRESS-GAZETTE: Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh Police Chiefs Oppose Trump’s Local Enforcement Initiative!

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/2017/03/02/police-chiefs-oppose-immigration-enforcement-duty/98608450/

“GREEN BAY – Police Chief Andrew Smith has joined 79 other law enforcement leaders around the country in calling to keep local police out of the federal role of immigration enforcement.

Smith, Appleton Police Chief Todd Thomas, and Oshkosh Chief Dean Smith were among those who signed a letter to Congress urging “a constructive immigration enforcement approach that prioritizes criminals and not peaceful residents.” Two top officers in Madison also signed the letter.

It was sent in advance of hearings this week by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the subject. The letter urges the federal government not to use withholding of grants as leverage to force police to enforce immigration laws.

The police chiefs argue that involvement in enforcing immigration laws would hamper their efforts to build community policing relationships and could discourage illegal immigrants who are crime victims or witnesses from cooperating with police.”

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

B’Gosh, they “get it” in Oshkosh!

PWS

03/02/17

WALTER PINCUS IN THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The Coming Immigration Court Disaster!

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/01/trump-us-immigration-waiting-for-chaos/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR Dennett immigration reform Chopin&utm_content=NYR Dennett immigration reform Chopin+CID_c0a3091a06cff6ddbb541b093215f280&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=US Immigration Waiting for Chaos

“One thing however is clear. Trump’s recent efforts to use blunt executive power to close our borders and prepare the way for deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants are confronting far-reaching problems. Not only is there opposition from federal judges, the business sector, civil liberties groups, and others. There is also a major roadblock from another quarter: our already broken system of immigration laws and immigration courts.

The nation’s immigration laws needed repair long before Trump came to office. Even without the measures taken by the new administration, immigration courts face a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, while the existing detention system is plagued, not just by arbitrary arrests, but also by deep problems in the way immigrant detainees are handled by our courts, one aspect of which is the subject of a Supreme Court challenge.

But will the potential Trump excesses—driven by the president’s fear mongering about immigrant crimes and the alleged potential for terrorists to pose as refugees—be enough to light a fire under a Republican-led Congress that has for years balked at immigration reform?

. . . .

For better or worse—and it may turn out to be worse if Congress continues to refuse to act—the Trump administration’s determination to enforce current laws has pushed long-standing inequities in immigration justice onto the front pages.

Take the matter of those immigration judges, who now number some three hundred and are scheduled to grow substantially under the Trump administration. In April 2013, the National Association of Immigration Judges issued a scathing report pleading for omnibus immigration reform. Describing the morale of the immigration judge corps as “plummeting,” the report found that “the Immigration Courts’ caseload is spiraling out of control, dramatically outpacing the judicial resources available and making a complete gridlock of the current system a disturbing and foreseeable probability.”

The judges also noted that, “as a component of the DOJ [Department of Justice], the Immigration Courts remain housed in an executive agency with a prosecutorial mission that is frequently at odds with the goal of impartial adjudication.” For example, the judges are appointed by the Attorney General and “subject to non-transparent performance review and disciplinary processes as DOJ employees.” As a result, “they can be subjected to personal discipline for not meeting the administrative priorities of their supervisors and are frequently placed in the untenable position of having to choose between risking their livelihood and exercising their independent decision-making authority when deciding continuances”—the postponement of a hearing or trial.

The immigration judges writing this complaint were working under the Obama administration Justice Department, with Eric Holder as attorney general. What will their situation be like with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a believer in tighter immigration controls, as their boss?

As it is now, an immigration judge’s job is exhausting. They carry an average load of 1,500 cases, but have minimal staff support. In the 2013 report, the immigration judges noted that they have no bailiffs, no court reporters, and only one quarter of the time of a single judicial law clerk. The backlog of immigration cases in the United States now stands at roughly 542,000. Most important, the immigration judges claim some 85 percent of detained immigrants appearing before them are unrepresented by counsel.

Meanwhile, another pending lawsuit highlights a different long-running problem concerning our nation’s immigration judges. In June 2013, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, along with Public Citizen and the American Immigration Council (AIC) filed a case in federal district court in Washington, D.C., seeking documents that would disclose whether the federal government adequately investigated and resolved misconduct complaints against immigration judges.

Such complaints have been widespread enough that the Justice Department reports annually on the number. In fiscal 2014, the latest figures published, there were 115 complaints lodged against 66 immigration judges. Although 77 were listed as resolved, the outcomes are not described.”

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

This timely article was brought to my attention by my good friend and former colleague retired U.s. Immigration Judge (NY) Sarah Burr. Walter Pincus is a highly respected national security reporter. He’s not by any means an “immigration guru.”

As I have pointed out in previous blogs and articles, this problem is real! In the absence of sensible, bipartisan immigration reform by Congress, which must include establishing an independent immigration judiciary, our entire Federal Justice System is at risk of massive failure.

Why? Because even now, immigration review cases are one of the largest, if not the largest, components of the civil dockets of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. As due process in the Immigration Courts and the BIA (the “Appellate Division” of the U.S. Immigration Courts) deteriorates under excruciating pressure from the Administration, more and more of those ordered removed will take their cases to the U.S. Courts of Appeals. That’s potentially hundreds of thousands of additional cases. It won’t be long before the Courts of Appeals won’t have time for anything else but immigration review.

In my view, that’s likely to provoke two responses from the Article III Courts. First, the Circuits will start imposing their own minimum due process and legal sufficiency requirements on the Immigration Courts. But, since there are eleven different Circuits now reviewing immigration petitions, that’s likely to result in a hodgepodge of different criteria applicable in different parts of the country. And, the Supremes have neither the time nor ability to quickly resolve all Circuit conflicts.

Second, many, if not all Courts of Appeals, are likely to return the problem to the DOJ by remanding thousands of cases to the Immigration Courts for “re-dos” under fundamentally fair procedures. Obviously, that will be a massive waste of time and resources for both the Article III Courts and the Immigration Courts. It’s much better to do it right in the first place. “Haste makes waste.”

No matter where one stands in the immigration debate, due process and independent decision making in the U.S. Immigration Courts should be a matter of bipartisan concern and cooperation. After all, we are a constitutional republic, and due process is one of the key concepts of our constitutional system.

PWS

03/02/17

BREAKING: Sessions In Hot Water Over Failure To Disclose Contacts With Russian Ambassador — Administration Tries To Deflect Controversy!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/politics/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-meetings/index.html

Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Eli Watkins write on CNN:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice last year with the top Russian diplomat in Washington whose interactions with former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn led to Flynn’s firing, according to the Justice Department.

Sessions did not mention either meeting during his confirmation hearings when he said he knew of no contacts between Trump surrogates and Russians. A Justice official said Sessions didn’t mislead senators during his confirmation.
The Washington Post first reported on Sessions’ meetings with the official. Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, is considered by US intelligence to be one of Russia’s top spies and spy-recruiters in Washington, according to current and former senior US government officials.

Sessions met with Kislyak twice, in July on the sidelines of the Republican convention, and in September in his office when Sessions was a member of the Senate Armed Services committee. Sessions was an early Trump backer and regular surrogate for him as a candidate.
Attorney General Sessions responded swiftly Wednesday, strongly stating that he never discussed campaign-related issues with anyone from Russia.
“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” he said in a statement. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

Key Democratic lawmakers immediately called for Sessions’ resignation after the news broke.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi characterized Sessions’ comments in his confirmation “apparent perjury,” and said the attorney general should resign.
Kislyak’s potential proximity to Russian spying is one reason why Flynn’s interactions with him, and Flynn’s failure to disclose what he discussed with Kislyak, raised concerns among intelligence officials.
In his confirmation hearing to become attorney general, Sessions was asked about Russia and he responded at the time that he “did not have communications with the Russians.”

Sessions’ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said there was nothing “misleading about his answer” to Congress because the Alabama Republican “was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee.”

. . . .

Minnesota Democrat Sen. Al Franken, who asked Sessions about Russia at the confirmation hearing, said if the reports of Sessions’ contacts with Kislyak were true then Sessions’ response was “at best misleading.”
“It’s clearer than ever now that the attorney general cannot, in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and the FBI of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself immediately,” Franken said.”

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

Although somewhat lost in the shuffle, in another controversial move, on Tuesday, Attorney General Sessions announced another major shift on civil rights policy. He said that the DOJ would drop pending investigations of unwarranted violence and violations of civil rights by local police. By giving local police a free hand, Sessions said that he expected that poor and minority individuals living in high crime areas would be “safe, happier.” Sessions’s actions were met by skepticism from many civil rights advocates and African American community leaders.

PWS

03/02/17

UPDATE FROM CNN: Top GOP Reps Chaffetz and McCarthy Call For Sessions To Recuse!

“The revelation prompted key Democrats to call for Sessions’ resignation and led two top Republicans to call on him to recuse himself from Trump-Russia inquiries.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Sessions should “clarify his testimony,” while House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, in an interview with MSNBC, said Sessions should not participate in such investigations for “the trust of the American people.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, told CNN’s “New Day” that Sessions’ testimony in January was “extremely misleading.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/politics/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-meetings/index.html

PWS

03/02/17

Despite Softer Tone, Not Everyone “Sold” On Trump’s Vision, Particularly As It Relates to Immigration!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-policies-joint-session_us_58b6e282e4b0780bac2f010b?

Igor Bobic , Amanda Terkel , Kate Sheppard write in HuffPost:

“Yet many key assertions Trump made were patently false. America is neither crime-infested nor still mired in a recession, as he portrayed. Moreover, some of his bold rhetoric on issues like the environment, immigration, civil rights, women’s rights and child care are directly undercut by the policies he has pursued or promised to pursue since taking office on Jan. 20.

Immigration Reform
Trump welcomed the idea of compromise on immigration reform, calling on Democrats and Republicans to “work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades.” Prior to the speech, he even told reporters that he wanted a bill that could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Despite his call for compromise, however, Trump has directed his administration to enforce the nation’s immigration laws more aggressively. The policy, which he dubbed a “military operation,” has given immigration officials the freedom to target not only serious criminals, as Trump has promised, but also undocumented immigrants with misdemeanors and some with no criminal history at all. And he still has plans to build a “great” wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, which Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress strongly oppose.

“At one point, he mentioned that he was targeting and criminalizing immigrants, but at the same time, he’s saying we need to unite?” asked Roque Pech, a beneficiary of former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants temporary deportation relief to certain young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

Pech, who attended the event as a guest of Rep. Nanette Barragan (D-Calif.), said Trump’s immigration talk made no sense: “I felt like multiple times he was contradicting himself. That was one of the clearer examples.”

Matthew Cooper, writing in Newsweek, was also blunt in his assessment:

“Yet no one listening to the nearly hour-long address would think Trump had mellowed his nationalist agenda. His decision to create an office at the Justice Department focused on crime caused by illegal immigrants elicited groans from Democrats in the chamber. Just as President Barack Obama once held up DREAMers—immigrants who arrived illegally as children and went on to lead productive lives—Trump pointed to families gathered in the House of Representatives who had lost family members to crimes perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. Trump showed no signs of softening his stance on immigration, save for not invoking his usual promise to have Mexico pay for the wall. If anything he went further, by suggesting that the current immigration system should be overhauled and based on “merit,” however that’s defined. Despite news reports earlier on Tuesday that he might be open to some kind of immigration reform allowing 11 million undocumented migrants to stay in the U.S., there was no indication of that kind of softening in his address. Instead he invoked the frightening image of immigrants driving down wages and raising havoc. “Lawless chaos,” he called it. The solution, he said: “We must restore integrity and the rule of law to our borders.” By applauding Jamiel Shaw, the African-American man whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant, Trump made his case for getting tough on the border and did so in a way that would help insulate him against charges of racism.”

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-congress-speech-immigration-paul-ryan-obamacare-trade-crime-562365

And, according to the Washington Post’s “Fact Checkers,” Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, striking a more “Presidential tone,” Trump continues to pile up erroneous statements at an impressive rate:

“An address to Congress is such an important speech that presidents generally are careful not to stretch the truth. The “16 words” in George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address that falsely claimed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa led to significant turmoil in the administration, including the criminal conviction of a top aide.

President Trump’s maiden address to Congress was notable because it was filled with numerous inaccuracies. In fact, many of the president’s false claims are old favorites that he trots out on a regular, almost daily basis. Here’s a roundup of 13 of the more notable claims, in the order in which the president made them.

. . . .

“We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.”

The data are mixed on the amount of drugs coming through the borders. The amount of marijuana seized at the border continues to decline — probably a reflection of drug use in the United States, as more states legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use. In fiscal 2016, 1.3 million pounds of marijuana were seized, down from 1.5 million the year before, and lower than the peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The amount of cocaine seized at the borders overall in fiscal 2016 (5,473 pounds) was roughly half the amount seized the previous year (11,220 pounds).

But the amount of heroin and methamphetamine seized has increased in recent years. In fiscal year 2016, CBP seized 9,062 pounds of heroin (compared to 8,282 in fiscal 2015) and 8,224 pounds of methamphetamine (compared to 6,443 pounds in fiscal 2015).

Meanwhile, illegal immigration flows across the Southern border in fiscal 2015 were at the lowest levels since 1972, except for in 2011. The apprehensions in fiscal 2016 (408,870) exceeded fiscal 2015 (331,333), but still indicate an overall decline since their peak in 2000 (1.6 million).

. . . .

“As we speak, we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak and as I have promised throughout the campaign.”

Trump is referring to the recent arrests of undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, or the “bad ones.” Trump takes credit for fulfilling his campaign promise of cracking down on illegal immigration, but these arrests are routine. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has always targeted dangerous criminals in enforcement priorities. The recent arrests, however, did include people who would not have fallen under narrowed enforcement priorities under Obama.

Still, 25 percent of the arrests that grabbed headlines in early February were of people who had lesser charges and noncriminal convictions. According to anecdotes of recent arrests, undocumented people with traffic violations were subject to arrest. They are not the “bad ones,” such as drug dealers or gang members, that he describes.

“By finally enforcing our immigration laws we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions and billions of dollars and make our communities safer for everyone.”

Trump exaggerates the impact of illegal immigration on crime, taxpayer money and jobs.

Extensive research shows noncitizens are not more prone to criminality than U.S.-born citizens. The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are not criminal aliens or aggravated felons.

Trump appears to reference the cost of illegal immigration from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports lower levels of legal and illegal immigration. According to the group, the annual cost of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local levels amounted to about $113 billion as of 2013.
The scene as President Trump delivers his first address to a joint session of Congress
View Photos The president returned to familiar themes from his campaign in his speech to Congress, promising to reduce regulations and taxes, combat terrorism, crack down on illegal immigration and replace the Affordable Care Act.
But this calculation makes assumptions that are not necessarily tied to illegal immigration, like enrollment in English proficiency classes. The enrollment number doesn’t tell you anything about the actual citizenship status of students (i.e., they could be native-born children of undocumented immigrants, raised in a non-English-speaking home).
In general, economists have found that immigration overall results in a net positive to the U.S. economy. There are slight negative effects, which are felt most strongly by less-educated and low-skilled workers. Illegal immigration, in particular, tends to affect less-educated and low-skilled American workers the most — groups disproportionately consisting of black men and recently arrived less-educated legal immigrants.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2010 report found that illegal immigration has tended to depress wages and employment particularly for black men. But factors other than illegal immigration contribute to black unemployment, the report found, including the high school dropout rate and low job-retention rates.

. . . .

“Jamiel’s 17-year-old son was viciously murdered by an illegal immigrant gang member, who had just been released from prison. Jamiel Shaw Jr. was an incredible young man, with unlimited potential who was getting ready to go to college where he would have excelled as a great quarterback. But he never got the chance. His father, who is in the audience tonight, has become a good friend of mine.”

Trump likes to use anecdotes as evidence for associating violent crimes with illegal immigration, telling stories of victims of homicide by undocumented immigrants. He brought family members of those killed by illegal immigrants as his guests for Tuesday night’s speech. He often talks about the death of Jamiel Shaw Jr., a 17-year-old football star who was killed in 2008 by a gang member who was in the country illegally.

Clearly, stories like this exist. But the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants do not fit Trump’s description of aggravated felons, whose crimes include murder. U.S. Sentencing Commission data show homicides are a small percentage of the crimes committed by noncitizens, whether they are in the United States illegally or not.

The Congressional Research Service found that the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants do not fit in the category of aggravated felons, whose crimes include murder, drug trafficking or illegal trafficking of firearms.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/28/fact-checking-president-trumps-address-to-congress/?utm_term=.dc2c2a6b69c0&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

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

PWS

03/02/17

SLATE: Bannon, Sessions, Miller Plan To Use Justice Department To Implement Far Right Agenda!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/magazine/jeff-sessions-stephen-bannon-justice-department.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Emily Bazelon reports:

“One night in September 2014, when he was chief executive of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon hosted cocktails and dinner at the Washington townhouse where he lived, a mansion near the Supreme Court that he liked to call the Breitbart Embassy. Beneath elaborate chandeliers and flanked by gold drapes and stately oil paintings, Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama, sat next to the guest of honor: Nigel Farage, the insurgent British politician, who first met Sessions two years earlier when Bannon introduced them. Farage was building support for his right-wing party by complaining in the British press about “uncontrolled mass immigration.” Sessions, like other attendees, was celebrating the recent collapse in Congress of bipartisan immigration reform, which would have provided a path to citizenship for some undocumented people. At the dinner, Sessions told a writer for Vice, Reid Cherlin, that Bannon’s site was instrumental in defeating the measure. Sessions read Breitbart almost every day, he explained, because it was “putting out cutting-edge information.”

Bannon’s role in blocking the reform had gone beyond sympathetic coverage on his site. Over the previous year, he, Sessions and one of Sessions’s top aides, Stephen Miller, spent “an enormous amount of time” meeting in person, “developing plans and messaging and strategy,” as Miller later explained to Rosie Gray in The Atlantic. Breitbart writers also reportedly met with Sessions’s staff for a weekly happy hour at the Union Pub. For most Republicans in Washington, immigration was an issue they wished would go away, a persistent source of conflict between the party’s elites, who saw it as a straightforward economic good, and its middle-class voting base, who mistrusted the effects of immigration on employment. But for Bannon, Sessions and Miller, immigration was a galvanizing issue, lying at the center of their apparent vision for reshaping the United States by tethering it to its European and Christian origins. (None of them would comment for this article.) That September evening, as they celebrated the collapse of the reform effort — and the rise of Farage, whose own anti-immigration party in Britain represented the new brand of nativism — it felt like the beginning of something new. “I was privileged enough to be at it,” Miller said about the gathering last June, while a guest on Breitbart’s SiriusXM radio show. “It’s going to sound like a motivational speech, but it’s true. To all the voters out there: The only limits to what we can achieve is what we believe we can achieve.”

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

Talk about “the fox guarding the chicken coop!” And, I don’t share Bazelon’s view that DOJ career attorneys will be a significant moderating influence.

They all work for Jeff Sessions. Resisting Administration policies or positions could be considered insubordination — a ground for firing. Short of that, those who don’t “get with the program” could find themselves demoted, denied pay increases, transferred to obscure offices (perhaps in different locations), or given meaningless “busywork” assignments as punishment. In DOJ lingo the disfavored and exiled are known as “hall walkers.”

Yes, it’s true that in many past Administrations those with opposing views were tolerated and often even had their differing perspectives considered and occasionally adopted. That often had a moderating effect. But, that assumes an Administration acting in good faith. Sounds like Sessions and his colleagues have already decided to dismantle those parts of the U.S. justice system that don’t fit their ultra nationalist, restrictionist, white-power-Christian-oriented agenda. It could be a long four years at the DOJ for career lawyers (those who survive). Sad!

PWS

02/28/17

NYT OPINION: Migrant Children & Their Families Deserve Fair Treatment!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/opinion/sunday/these-are-children-not-bad-hombres.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region%C2%AEion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Sonia Nazario writes:

“Last year 7-year-old Kendra Cruz Garcia and her 10-year-old-brother, Roberto Guardado Cruz, crossed the Rio Grande alone. When their tiny boat reached the shore, they started walking into Texas.

The Border Patrol agents who soon caught the Salvadoran siblings deemed them “unaccompanied” because no parent was with them. Children with this designation are granted special, well-deserved protections.

They aren’t subject to quick deportation and are entitled to a full hearing before an immigration judge. They can’t be held for long periods in immigration jails. Instead, they are transferred to child-friendly shelters operated by Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, and released, usually within a month, to a parent, relative or sponsor while their court hearings proceed. Instead of facing cross-examination by adversarial prosecutors, children are interviewed by an asylum officer trained to gently probe whether they qualify to stay in the country legally.

In other words, they are treated with kindness and decency by our government because they are innocent children.

But President Trump has decided to get tough on many of the 60,000 Central American children who arrive at our border each year begging for safety after fleeing some of the most dangerous places on earth. His executive orders, and memos from the Department of Homeland Security on how to interpret them, could strip this special treatment from the roughly 60 percent of unaccompanied children who have a parent already living in the United States. If Kendra and Roberto were just entering the United States now, they would fall into this group; instead they kept their protections and were eventually united with their mother, a house painter in Los Angeles.

Parents like her, the argument goes, are exploiting benefits established to help children who really are alone here. The administration has threatened to deport parents who send for their children or prosecute them for hiring smugglers.

Last week Mr. Trump’s press secretary said the president’s intention was to prioritize the deportation of immigrants who “represent a threat to public safety.” Supporters say he’s upholding the law. But these children are not threats, and there are many ways to preserve the integrity of our immigration laws while treating them humanely.”

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

I have written on a number of occasions that turning our collective backs on families and children in need of protection will come back to haunt us as a nation.

PWS

02/26/17

NYT: Is The Trump Administration Creating A “New Underground” In America?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/trump-migrants-deportation.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0&mtrref=undefined

MAX FISHER and AMANDA TAUB report:

“New deportation rules proposed by the Trump administration risk creating an American underclass with parallels to others around the world: slum residents in India, guest workers in oil-rich Persian Gulf states and internal migrant workers in China.

Those groups provide a cautionary tale for what could happen if the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, as well as their family members, are forced deep into the shadows.

Stuck in a gray zone outside the legal system, they are vulnerable to exploitation, including wage theft and sex trafficking. Because they are denied formal protections or services, informal alternatives take their place — creating an ideal space for corruption, gangs and other forms of criminality.

The result is often the precise opposite of what the administration is seeking: not a cohesive society but a fragmented one, not less crime but more, and, rather than ending undocumented immigration, deepening the secrecy that makes it difficult to manage.”

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

Read the full article at the link.

PWS

02/26/17

The Economy: Build Safe Dams, Not Walls — America Needs Some Serious Infrastructure Programs That Create Jobs While Making Our Country Safer — When, If Ever, Is the Trump Administration Going To Get Going On Fixing The Real Problems?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/23/us/americas-aging-dams-are-in-need-of-repair.html?emc=edit_nn_20170223&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=79213886&te=1&_r=1

TROY GRIGGS, GREGOR AISCH and SARAH ALMUKHTAR write in today’s NY Times:

“After two weeks that saw evacuations near Oroville, Calif., and flooding in Elko County, Nev., America’s dams are showing their age.

Nearly 2,000 state-regulated high-hazard dams in the United States were listed as being in need of repair in 2015, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. A dam is considered “high hazard” based on the potential for the loss of life as a result of failure.

By 2020, 70 percent of the dams in the United States will be more than 50 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

“It’s not like an expiration date for your milk, but the components that make up that dam do have a lifespan.” said Mark Ogden, a project manager with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers keeps an inventory of 90,000 dams across the country, and more than 8,000 are classified as major dams by height or storage capacity, according to guidelines established by the United States Geological Survey.

Dam failures can have
serious consequences.

Two weeks ago, heavy rains caused the Twentyone Mile Dam in Nevada to burst, resulting in flooding, damaged property and closed roads throughout the region.

The earthen dam, built in the early 1900s and less than 50 feet tall, is one of more than 60,000 “low hazard” dams, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Typically, failure of a low hazard dam would cause property damage, but it would most likely not kill anyone.
What Happened at the Oroville Dam
Built in the 1960s and more than 16 times the height of the Nevada dam, Oroville was listed as a high hazard dam. Had it not been for the speed of the response last week, there could have been severe flooding of the surrounding area.

“The larger dams are being watched very carefully. The smaller dams don’t enjoy that level of scrutiny,” Mr. Ogden said.

The U.S. would need to spend billions
to repair public and private dams.

In 2016, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimated that it would cost $60 billion to rehabilitate all the dams that needed to be brought up to safe condition, with nearly $20 billion of that sum going toward repair of dams with a high potential for hazard.”

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

Read the complete article with charts and maps at the link. Sure seems like this would be a better way to spend our money and create meaningful jobs for U.S. workers than building an expensive, impractical, unneeded, and sure to be ineffective border wall.

Why not create some “win-win” situations, rather than provoking confrontation, controversy, and potential litigation at every turn? As the full article points out, there already is some pending legislation that, while not solving the entire program, would be a start on both job creation and improving the infrastructure. And, fixing dams would not provoke Mexico, Canada, the EU, China, or anyone else.

PWS

02/23/17

President Trump Might find That Mexico Has More Leverage Than He Anticipated — Beating Up On Your Friends & Neighbors To Score Political Points At Home Is Likely To Backfire!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mexico-may-strike-back-heres-how/2017/02/22/5d1e8f56-f949-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.12282059b

WashPost Editorial:

“PRESIDENT TRUMP has a good idea of the power the United States wields over Mexico, and the pain it may inflict — the construction of a wall Mexico fiercely opposes; taxes that could be slapped on Mexican imports, wreaking havoc on its economy; deportations of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States, who would be thrust back into a country that would struggle to absorb them. Mr. Trump might have a fuzzier idea of the pain Mexico, its people furious and its pride wounded by his taunts and contempt, might inflict on the United States.

Start with those deportations. At least half of America’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants are Mexican, but many have no documents proving their nationality. For the Trump administration to deport them, it would need cooperation from Mexico, which cannot be forced to accept deportees without certifying that they are Mexicans. As former Mexican foreign minister Jorge G. Castañeda has already warned, Mr. Trump can round up hundreds of thousands or millions of migrants, but without Mexico’s cooperation, they could clog U.S. detention centers and immigration courts — at enormous cost and, conceivably, for years.

Consider, too, the effect on America’s southern border if Mexico were to loosen immigration controls on its own southern border — the one over which Central American refugees are already streaming north in near-record numbers. Even with what U.S. officials say are aggressive interdiction efforts by Mexican authorities, the Border Patrol detained more than 220,000 mainly Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans crossing from Mexico into the United States in the fiscal year ending last fall, exceeding the number of Mexicans apprehended, which has fallen to a 45-year low. If you think the Border Patrol is swamped now, as Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly insists, imagine if Mexico, which last year sent home more than 140,000 Central Americans, simply stepped aside.”

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

Predictably, other countries take “sovereignty” just as seriously as we do.

PWS

02/22/17

The Atlantic: The Eternal Wall — Even Two Terms Might Not Be Enough To Complete “Trump’s Folly!”

http://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/02/21/president-trump-takes-very-nuanced-approach-to-daca-retention-see-the-video-clip-from-cnn/

Nolan Rappaport forwarded this very interesting piece by ADRIENNE LAFRANCE in The Atlantic:

“The construction of a massive wall along the border of the United States and Mexico is one of President Donald Trump’s central campaign promises. And it’s a promise he intends to keep.

Within days of taking the oath of office in January, Trump began laying the groundwork for the construction of a series of walls and fences that would span some 1,250 miles along the border. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo outlining its commitment to “begin planning, design, construction and maintenance of a wall” to deter and prevent illegal entry into the United States. The memo follows an executive order in which Trump called for the wall’s “immediate construction.”

But how immediately can Trump’s wall be built?

One of the latest estimates, from an internal Department of Homeland Security report obtained by Reuters, is that the wall will take three-and-a-half years to build. The agency is aiming to seal the border in three phases of construction of fences and walls, completing its work by the end of 2020, Reuters reported.
But that estimate is almost certainly too ambitious, and for a few reasons. First and foremost, there’s the fact that Congress still has to approve the bulk of the money for a project that is likely to cost tens of billions of dollars, according to several estimates.

Even if lawmakers approved that kind of cash this week, the wall almost certainly wouldn’t be complete by the end of Trump’s first term—or even a potential second term. The “iron law” of infrastructural megaprojects, according to a paper by Bent Flyvbjerg published in the Project Management Journal in 2014, is that they will go “over budget, over time, over and over again.”

This is obviously the case in projects where everything that can go wrong seemingly does (think: Boston’s infamous Big Dig highway project). But even for well-managed megaprojects, building major infrastructure always seems to take longer than estimates suggest. Sometimes that’s because a time estimate only pertains to the actual construction—not the time leading up to it, says Andrew Natsios, the director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University.”

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

Gotta ask the obvious question: Why not repair bridges and highways to somewhere rather than build a wall to nowhere?

PWS

02/21/17

CNN: There Are Human Faces And Real Stories Of Horror, Pain, Perseverance, Belief, And Redemption Exposing The Trump Administration’s Wrong-Headed Attempt To Ban Refugees!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/us/travel-ban-somali-refugees-separated/index.html

Catherine E. Shoichet writes on CNN:

“For minutes that feel like hours, Abdalla and his family stand like statues in a line, their eyes laser focused on the set of escalators at Atlanta’s airport where waves of arriving passengers emerge.
Businessmen with briefcases, pilots in uniforms and families wearing winter coats come into view.
But so far, there’s no sign of Batulo.
Suddenly, Abdalla yells and bolts across the waiting area, past a bright red security line on the floor that says “DO NOT CROSS.”
Guards shout. He doesn’t hear them. To Abdalla, only one thing matters now. He sees his daughter’s face and sprints toward the light.
He sweeps Batulo into his arms and carries her like a running back toward a wall on the other side of the lobby. The rest of the family follows, like a trail behind a comet as it speeds through the sky.
Habibo sobs as she sits beside Batulo on the airport floor. They had feared this day would never come.
Habibo sobs as she sits beside Batulo on the airport floor. They had feared this day would never come.
Batulo is still wearing a plastic pouch around her neck, stuffed with a plane ticket and an ID card from the International Organization for Migration.
“I am a refugee from SOMALIA,” the card says. “I may not speak English and need help to find my next flight.”
Batulo flew more than 10,000 miles to get here, from Kakuma to Nairobi to Dubai to New York to Atlanta. American Airlines Flight 1687 brought her to a strange city, yet she is home.
Abdalla and his family sit on the airport floor, pressed together like puzzle pieces. They cling to each other, sobbing.
A new home
Batulo beams as she sips a can of Sprite through a straw.
Her sisters tug at her arms, pulling her from room to room as they show her their new home.
The living room floor is covered with plates stacked high with food that the family cooked together for hours as they awaited her arrival.
They sit in a circle, devouring baked chicken, fried fish, french fries and ugali, a cornmeal dish they prepared especially for Batulo.
Abdalla sends a voice message to Ramadhan, his oldest son, who’s still living in Kakuma. Batulo made it safely, he says.

Ramadhan replies that he’s relieved. “God willing,” he says, “someday I will make it, too.”
As they eat, Batulo’s family peppers her with questions.
Is there a still a mango hanging from the tree outside the transit center in Nairobi?
How many countries did you fly through to get here?
When we left, you didn’t look like this. Why are you so thin?
Ibrahim brings out some of his favorite new toys. Together, they sing the ABCs. He falls asleep, curled up on the floor beside his sister.
Abdalla yawns, then quickly gulps down a cup of coffee.
Exhaustion is starting to set in, but this is a moment he doesn’t want to miss. He leans back against the couch and listens to his daughters’ voices.
The only sound he hears is laughter.”

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

Read the complete story and see the video and pictures at the link. Happy ending to this one, thanks to the U.S. Courts which stood up to President Trump and his minions. As you read the entire story, compare the real situation of real refugees, human beings in great need, with the “fake news” and fear mongering put forth by the Trump Administration in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

PWS

02/21/17

Supremes Hear Case Today On Cross-Border Application Of U.S. Constitution!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-considers-case-of-a-shot-fired-in-us-that-killed-a-teenager-in-mexico/2017/02/19/c2935c36-f548-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.47f4d29a4b1c

Robert Barnes writes in the Washington Post:

“The gun was fired in the United States. The bullet stopped 60 feet away in Mexico — tragically, in the head of a 15-year-old boy named Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca.

Border patrol agent Jesus Mesa Jr. pulled the trigger that day six years ago in the wide concrete culvert that separates El Paso from Juarez, Mexico. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Constitution gives Hernández’s parents the right to sue Mesa in American courts for killing their son.

The case comes amid a time of increasing tension and controversy over how this country polices the daily churn along the border, where essential international commerce takes place alongside narcotics trafficking and human smuggling.

Courts have struggled to deal with the national security and foreign policy implications of the case, and the Supreme Court’s precedents.

U.S. Border Patrol agent shoots Mexican teenager near border Play Video0:17
In 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jesus Mesa Jr. shot and killed 15-year-old Mexican national Sergio Hernandez while Hernandez was playing in a culvert separating Juarez, Mexico, from El Paso, Tex. A witness recorded the incident on their cell phone. (Outreach Strategists, LLC)
If Hernández had been killed inside the United States, then the case could proceed. Or if he had been a U.S. citizen, it would not have mattered that Mesa was on one side of the border and he was on the other.

But the courts so far in Hernández’s case have said the Constitution does not reach across the border — even 60 feet — to give rights to those without a previous connection to the United States.”

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

The case is Hernandez v. Mesa, and either way the Court decides, it’s likely to play an important role in the effort to enhance U.S. border enforcement.

PWS

02/21/17

HuffPost: U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster Is President Trump’s New National Security Adviser

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-hr-mcmaster_us_58ab49d0e4b0a855d1d8bd43?o66zx49zt759afw29\

Christina Wilkie reports:

“McMaster, an active service member, will replace retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn. Flynn resigned last week after confirmation he’d spoken about U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

Trump announced McMaster’s selection at Mar-A-Lago, his Florida resort, with McMaster and Keith Kellogg, the National Security Council chief of staff.

“He’s a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience,” Trump said of McMaster. “I watched and read a lot over the last two days. He is highly respected by everybody in the military and we’re very honored to have him.”

In brief remarks to reporters, McMaster thanked Trump for the opportunity, and said he “looks forward to joining the national security team and doing everything I can to advance and protect the interests of the American people.”

Kellogg said he felt “very honored and privileged to serve along alongside H.R. McMaster. I’ve known him for years, and he’s a great statesman and a great soldier.”

“This is a great team, and we are very, very honored, and our country is lucky to have two people like this,” Trump said of Kellogg and McMaster. “And frankly, after having met so many people in the military, we are lucky to have all of them.”

As soon as they finished their remarks, Trump and the two men departed for Washington.

The appointment of McMaster ends a weeklong search for Flynn’s replacement that was complicated by reports of power struggles and staffing problems within the president’s National Security Council. At least one candidate for the job, retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, reportedly declined it in part because he was concerned he would not be given full control over staffing decisions.”

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

PWS

02/20/17

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: