🏴‍☠️THE PLAGUE STATES OF AMERICA: Where ☠️ Plague, Stupidity, & Inhumanity Rule, & Your U.S. Passport Is Largely Worthless (Except, If You Are A Person of Color To, Perhaps, Protect You From “Expedited Removal” By ICE & Trump’s Complicit Supremes)! — Welcome To The “Trump Hotel California!”🤮

Last thing I remember

I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

“Relax”, said the night man

“We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave”

—— From “Hotel California” by The Eagles

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Glenn Lewis Frey / Don Felder / Donald Hugh Henley

Hotel California lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management

Full Lyrics & Music here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjZqsKZpcXqAhU0oXIEHaegAiQQwqsBMAp6BAgLEAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvcmjDPDOk7c&usg=AOvVaw3ay3l2d6R_UlBVOg1k6Fnz

https://medium.com/@indica/the-plague-states-of-america-53b20678a80e?source=email-dafc55faa6fd-1594452458433-digest.reader——0-50——————1f52bfff_711d_4def_918f_7e9b8eddea74-1-1b0c1765_594d_4c73_8665_f93e3a786b9f—-&sectionName=top

American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map)

Oh the places you can’t go

Indi Samarajiva

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America is not united anymore and it’s barely a state. They have crashed right through failed state into a plague state, unwelcome across the world. This has been predicted, including here. Now it has come to pass. Just look at the map.

Americans have gone from having access to most of the world to being banned from most of it. Today, Americans are only allowed in a few Caribbean islands and the Balkans. An American passport is now worthless. Worse than worthless, it’s a plague.

In the absence of a humane government, America is now ruled by COVID-19. Welcome to the Plague States of America.

It’s too late

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/6800/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png” width=”3400″ height=”2400″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*EoSrvKpq71W0jTbJCKmBfw.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

Only America has self-inflicted a second wave

I think it is difficult for Americans to understand that they are, to use an epidemiological term, completely fucked. COVID-19 could have been managed in January, or February, or even now, but not a full year later, in January 2021. Given than you need a functioning government to manage this pandemic, that’s the soonest Americans can get one.

It’s far too late.

The most reliable projections are saying 200,000 dead and 50 million infected by election day in November. Even these projections struggle to account for completely irrational federal actions like denigrating masks, pushing to reopen early, and pushing students back into schools. This is not the absence of public health, this is its opposite.

It is, in effect, governance by COVID-19. Not a failed state. A plague state.

Even after election day, Donald Trump will still be in power for nearly 3 months, until January 20th. Besides impeaching a dead-duck President, there’s nothing America can do but wait, while COVID-19 grows ever stronger. Grows completely out of control. In a pandemic, days matter, hours matter. A year is entirely too late.

America will be lucky to exit this pandemic with less than a million dead and 100 million infected. The living will be lucky to exit their country within the next five years.

The worthless passport

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg” width=”1600″ height=”1137″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*dcgKqItSATd-t8a1R42Sbw.jpeg 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

Welcome to the club. Post-colonial bullshit and racism have made my Sri Lankan passport worthless for years. Now the American passport is worse. America has crashed straight through the third world into the fourth.

Here is a list, in total, of all the places Americans can go. Most of them are small Caribbean islands.

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/3200/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png” width=”1600″ height=”1022″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ddImUOx1j0smBVcsVeqbPg.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

ALL THE PLACES YOU CAN GO

1. Albania | 15. Lebanon

2. Antigua and Barbuda | 16. Maldives

3. Aruba | 17. Mexico

4. The Bahamas | 18. North Macedonia

5. Barbados | 19. St. Lucia

6. Belize | 20. St. Maarten

7. Bermuda | 21. St. Vincent &

8. Croatia | 22. Serbia

9. Dominican Republic | 23. Tanzania

10. Ecuador* | 24. Turkey

11. French Polynesia | 25. Turks &

12. Ireland* | 26. Ukraine

13. Jamaica | 27. UAE*

14. Kosovo | 28. UK*

*14 day quarantine required, not included in map.

American now have access to exactly two dozen states, four more (*) if they want to endure a 14-day quarantine on the end. Americans have gone from world power to getting the side-eye from Ecuador in a matter of months. Right now Americans are only really welcome on remote islands or at corralled resorts in Mexico, where they can be isolated from everyone else.

It’s not that other nations don’t want to welcome Americans, they just can’t. The point of a passport is that a sovereign power vouches for its bearer, but America can’t vouch for the health of their citizens at all. America’s public health regime is far less trustworthy than Liberia’s (which is actually quite good). Its sovereign is mad.

At the same time, you can’t trust Americans. Americans have poor hygiene (low masking rate) and at least 40% of the population can’t be trusted to even believe that COVID-19 exists, let alone to take it seriously. They’re likely to refuse testing, not report symptoms, break quarantine, and generally follow rules. Americans have a toxic combination of ignorance and arrogance that makes them unwelcome travelers.

They have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. Some of them, I assume, are good people, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a plague passport. Return to sender.

The Plague States

<img alt=”Image for post” class=”s t u hk ai” src=”https://miro.medium.com/max/4000/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png” width=”2000″ height=”1149″ srcSet=”https://miro.medium.com/max/552/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 276w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1104/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 552w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1280/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 640w, https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*weJ8xV5Wt2kCaKGnLXj4Hg.png 700w” sizes=”700px”/>

That’s the near future of the United States. An epidemic that spreads largely unchecked until next year. A population to unprotected and ignorant to be allowed anywhere else. A world that largely suppresses the virus — from Mongolia to Ghana to Trinidad & Tobago — but which has to keep America in isolation.

In the end, Trump did what he said. He built a wall around America and made the world pay for it. He just never told Americans that they’d be stuck inside. Welcome to the Plague States of America. You can check out, but you can never leave.

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

Check out the map accompanying the original article at the above link.

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

PWS

07-11-20

🏴‍☠️TRUMP “JUSTICE” — DHS DEATH CAMP ⚰️ IN VIRGINIA — Convicted Criminal Sleezeball Roger Stone Gets Out of Jail Free, But ICE Non-Criminal Prisoners @ Farmville Face COVID-19 Detain Until Dead ☠️ (“DUD”) Policy!🤮

NBC 4 Washington reports in this video:

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/covid-19-outbreak-at-ice-detention-center-in-virginia/2358116/

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This is justice? Unhappily, it’s what passes for justice for people of color in the era of Trump.

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

PWS

07-11-20

CHARLES M. BLOW @ NYT: TIME TO START CALLING IT WHAT IT IS: “It is time for us to simply call a thing a thing: White supremacy is the biggest racial problem this country faces, and has faced. It is almost always the cause of unrest around race. It has been used to slaughter and destroy, to oppress and imprison. It manifests in every segment of American life.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/racism-united-states.html

Blow writes in The NY Times:

Now that we are deep into protests over racism, inequality and police brutality — protests that I’ve come to see as a revisiting of Freedom Summer — it is clear that Donald Trump sees the activation of white nationalism and anti-otherness as his path to re-election. We are engaged in yet another national conversation about race and racism, privilege and oppression.

But, as is usually the case, the language we used to describe the moment is lacking. We — the public and the media, including this newspaper, including, in the past, this very column — often use, consciously or not, language that shields anti-Black white supremacy, rather than to expose it and hold it accountable.

We use all manner of euphemisms and terms of art to keep from directly addressing the racial reality in America. This may be some holdover from a bygone time, but it is now time for it to come to an end.

Take for instance the term “race relations.” Polling organizations like Gallup and the Pew Research Center often ask respondents how they feel about the state of race relations in the country.

I have never fully understood what this meant. It suggests a relationship that swings from harmony to disharmony. But that is not the way race is structured or animated in this country. From the beginning, the racial dynamics in America have been about power, equality and access, or the lack thereof.

Protests, and even violence, have erupted when white people felt their hold on those things was threatened or when Black people — or Indigenous people, or Hispanics — rebelled against those things being denied.

So what are the relations here? It is a linguistic sidestep that avoids the true issue: anti-Black and anti-other white supremacy.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

White Supremacy is at the core of Donald Trump and today’s GOP. It is willfully enabled by Chief Justice John Roberts and other Supreme Court Justices who refuse to acknowledge the obvious anti-Hispanic and anti-people of color motivations behind unconstitutional and inhuman immigration and asylum restrictions designed by notoriously outspoken neo-Nazi racist Stephen Miller.

Likewise, the intellectually corrupt Supremes’ majority fails to prevent the GOP’s racist strategy of suppressing voting rights of African Americans and Latinos. The unconstitutionality of these schemes to deny the vote and dilute the political power of people of color has been crystal clear under our Constitution since the enactment of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870.

You don’t need a Harvard law degree to figure this out. Just honesty, courage, and intellectual integrity — things that I once took for granted among Supreme Court Justices, but now see are sorely missing on today’s Court where extreme rightist ideology identified with white supremacy has replaced judicial qualifications as selection criteria when the GOP was in charge.

Ending white supremacy in America will require ousting Trump and the GOP and ending the GOP’s power to put more unqualified judges who are opposed to racial and social justice in America on the Federal Bench.

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future depend it it. Because they do!

PWS

07-09-20

🤮☠️🏴‍☠️ ⚰️As American Governance Crumbles, Desperate Neo-Nazi Regime Rolls Out Plans For More “Crimes Against Humanity” Targeting Helpless Refugees Legally Seeking Asylum — These Cowardly, Immoral, & Patently Unconstitutional Deeds Are Being Done in OUR Name While The Complicit Supremes Watch What They Have Enabled & Encouraged By Abandoning Humanity, Our Constitution, Intellectual Integrity, & American Values!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-plans-block-asylum-seekers-u-s-citing-public-n1233253

From NBC News:

July 8, 2020, 6:35 PM EDT

By Julia Ainsley and Adiel Kaplan

The Trump administration has proposed a new rule that would allow it to deny asylum to immigrants who are deemed a public health risk.

The soon-to-be published rule would let the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to block immigrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. based on “potential international threats from the spread of pandemics,” according to a notice announcing it Wednesday.

The rule would apply to immigrants seeking asylum and those seeking “withholding of removal” — a protected immigration status for those who have shown they may well face danger if returned to their home countries.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

This outrageous, totally pretextual, racist proposal violates the Constitution, asylum laws, international agreements, morality, and human values. The factual basis is absurd since there has been no showing that asylum applicants are a source of COVID spread. To the contrary, unnecessarily detained asylum applicants have been victims of Trump’s failed policies. Moreover, if DHS actually were worried about COVID, they could easily test and quarantine to identify and deal constructively and humanely with the few applicants who might have been infected someplace other than DHS facilities.

This is White Nationalist racism at its worst.

We need better judges, and particularly better Justices on the Supremes, for a better America! Judges who will prevent, rather than encourage, racist-driven “crimes against humanity.” Standing up against such crimes, particularly when they are disgracefully directed by a racist Executive at our most vulnerable humans, should be a “no-brainer” for a unanimous Supremes with Justices qualified for the high offices they hold. For the “JR Five” a “no brainer” has too often been a “non-starter.” So, the regime’s gross abuses of migrants and people of color and the damage, societal disorder, wasted time, squandered resources, and the human misery they cause roll on.

“Dred Scottification” is wrong! Period! And Supreme Court Justices who enable it are wrong for America!

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

PWS

07-09-20

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽🏅JULIÁN CASTRO: Former Presidential Candidate, Cabinet Secretary, Mayor, A Tireless Advocate For Equal Justice, & Now Biden Supporter Has Maliciously Incompetent Racist Trump Sized Up: “But he says the ‘scariest’ aspect of the Trump presidency is the fact that people still support ‘someone who is manifestly so unqualified.’”

https://apple.news/AYNljsGEARJmzW3bj8A6Tvw

From salon.com:

Former candidate tells Salon that Biden “gets it” on immigration and police reform, but Trump is “unconscionable”

Dean Obeidallah

Former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro may not be on the ticket in 2020, but he’s looking forward to getting rid of Donald Trump, whose strategy he says is designed to deepen the culture war in America. During our recent conversation for Salon Talks, Castro explained why he’s strongly supporting Joe Biden, while at the same time pressing the former vice president on immigration and police reforms.

Castro told me that Trump, even more than in 2016, is “appealing to that sense of white superiority, white nationalism” that got him elected in the first place, But he says the “scariest” aspect of the Trump presidency is the fact that people still support “someone who is manifestly so unqualified.” Castro, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama and before that mayor of San Antonio, is a senior advisor to Voto Latino, a grassroots political organization focused on empowering Latinx voters, who make up the largest ethnic or racial minority group of the electorate.

Castro laid out the top issues of concern to the Hispanic community, which is projected to account for a new high of 13.3 percent of all eligible voters in 2020 at 32 million. One of those is immigration reform, which Castro noted that Bernie Sanders successfully addressed during the 2020 Democratic primaries. Biden was less clear on the issue, but Castro explained that the certain Democratic nominee has since increasingly focused on outreach to the Hispanic community and is committed to bringing forth the “most progressive approach on immigration.”

Watch my Salon Talks episode with Castro embedded below, or read the following transcript — edited for length and clarity — to learn more about what Castro thinks about Biden’s approach to immigration and police reform, and his take on the COVID-19 public health crisis.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article and view the video of the interview at the link!

Yes, it is “scary.” Very much so, to know how many anti-Americans are living in our country. Taking back power from the White Supremacists masquerading as a legitimate political party is the first step to getting to where we need to be as a nation and as compassionate human beings. There will always be doubters and naysayers. But, never again should we let their dark vision control our destiny as a diverse nation of immigrants with equal justice for all!

Julián Castro “gets” it. He’s 10x more qualified than any of the “GOP Five” on the Supremes. Hopefully, he’ll get his chance to be on the Supremes in the future. Gosh knows, we need some real Justices who have the guts and decency to stand against overt racism and bigotry, instead of enabling, justifying, and encouraging it! He’d also be a great Attorney General or DHS Secretary.

Everything starts with replacing Trump with Biden and putting Democrats in every elected office. There is no excuse for Trump and today’s GOP and their morally and Constitutionally bankrupt racist agenda,

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

PWS

07-09-20

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: The GOP Lets Fly With Its Overtly Racist Vision of America! —A Party Without Ideas, Values, or Human Decency Peddles Hate & Lies As Its Message! ☠️💀🤮👎🏻

From “Letters From An American,” July 7, 2020

. . . .

The administration continues to court its base with a racist vision of the country. Yesterday, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Liz Harrington criticized presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of advancing “radical left socialism” for saying that “Independence Day is a celebration of our persistent march toward greater justice — the natural expansion of our founding notion from ‘all men are created equal’ to ‘all people are created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives.’”

On the same day, Trump tweeted an attack on Black racecar driver Bubba Wallace, accusing him of advancing a “HOAX” because someone (not Wallace) had found and reported a noose hanging in his garage. In the same tweet, Trump expressed outrage that NASCAR has banned the use of the Confederate flag at its events. (Republican strategist Karl Rove told the Fox News Channel the president’s defense of the Confederate flag did not help his campaign.)

Then, out of the blue, the official White House Twitter account published a photo of Trump and Pence apparently gazing in to the sky, alongside a quotation that said: “Americans are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars.” Manifest Destiny was a term coined in the 1840s by the editor of the Democratic Review magazine to explain why it was the divinely ordained duty of Americans to push west and take over the lands of indigenous peoples and Mexicans, spreading slavery into new lands. The term is widely associated with white supremacy and deadly dominance over people of color.

Meanwhile, the administration continues to move public money toward its supporters. Government data released this week shows that tax-payer funded bailouts went to churches whose leaders are Trump’s allies, as well as organizations traditionally opposed to government programs. Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform Foundation received between $150,000 and $300,000 in loans, while Norquist took a stand against the unemployment insurance in the CARES coronavirus relief act. The Ayn Rand Institute, named for the theorist who opposed government welfare programs despite using them herself, took a loan of between $350,000 and $1 million, calling it “partial restitution for government-inflicted losses.” Multiple businesses close to Trump got money, too; the government loaned as much as $273 million to more than 100 companies with ties to the president.

Also today, excerpts from the book written by Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, appeared in the media. Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the publication of the book. The excerpts don’t say much we didn’t already know, but the inside story of the Trump family is likely to get under the president’s skin. Dr. Trump, who holds a doctorate in psychology, portrays the president as a habitual liar who paid someone to take the SAT to get him into college. She shows a narcissist who can think only in terms of himself, and who is calculating and cruel to the point that he was willing to take away health care from a baby in order to gain leverage over his nephew.

After her dissection of Trump’s dangerous personality, Dr. Trump concludes that Trump himself “isn’t really the problem after all.” The problem is his enablers, including the Republican Senators who voted five months ago to acquit him of the charges for which the House of Representatives impeached him.

That those same Senators are now begging off from the upcoming Republican convention is too little a protest, too late.

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

For the rest of Heather’s letter or to subscribe to her letter, click here:https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtUE1vhCAQ_TXL0QAC6oFDL3vonzAIo5IiGBh3a3992fXUpMkkk7yZl_dhDcKS8qn3VJAcBfLonZasp7RvidPCsV72xJdxzgCb8UFjPoDsxxS8NehTfBE4lW1LVs04TK4bWGcHAczMvVJsskzQdqaMD4q8ZEZzOA_RgoYH5DNFIEGviHu5tR83fq-zgsEVsk3f2dvVZFdSbMoxFTT2q7Fpqz_EV1lOaUd7KoWSQ8OaeQoP_InPztwE3Rb-h0Oy_oQYfVwK4_VuUnjDNctY93ZEj-cI0UwB3BUTr17ervHcQUd4lgCIkC-wZleSi1aRquRSLSjq_8z_AkvpfL0

Take our country back for a brighter future this November! Vote for a better, more inclusive, more just America! Vote to end racism and hate! Vote Trump and the GOP out on every level!🇺🇸👍🏼🗽⚖️

PWS

07-08-20

🏴‍☠️KAKISTOCRACY COSTS: Trump Regime’s White Nationalist Attack on Foreign Students Threatens $40 Billion 💸 Hit on U.S. Economy!

🤡☠️👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-uses-the-coronavirus-to-impede-immigration-his-aim-at-foreign-students-is-a-new-low/2020/07/07/ec3ca966-c06a-11ea-b178-bb7b05b94af1_story.html

From WashPost Editorial Board:

By Editorial Board

July 7 at 3:54 PM ET

THE TRUMP administration has used the novel coronavirus as license to indiscriminately kill off and impede every sort of immigration — legal and illegal, permanent and temporary, work- and family-based. On Monday, it took aim at the more than 1 million international students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities, threatening them with deportation if their classes move online, as many already have.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made the announcement as a growing number of colleges, facing a widening pandemic, have shifted entirely or largely to virtual learning for the fall. International students at those institutions, who represent a sizable cohort, will have to go home or transfer to another school that offers in-person classes.

ICE provided no rationale — unsurprising, given that it is unfair and irrational as a matter of policy. But within hours of its announcement, President Trump sought to make school closings into an election issue. Democrats, he claimed on Twitter, want schools closed “for political reasons, not health reasons,” to help them in the fall elections.

[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]

That’s preposterous. Colleges and universities have scrambled to devise plans to operate safely in the fall, in some cases pivoting from one scenario to another as the virus has spread. Last week, the University of Southern California reversed course, scrapping a mix of in-person and online classes at its campus in pandemic-plagued Los Angeles and shifting to a mostly virtual schedule. Those decisions have nothing to do with partisan politics, nothing to do with the fall elections and nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

The new rule means colleges that depend critically on tuition revenue from international students — many from China, India and South Korea — will be under pressure to offer in-person classes even in places where covid-19 is a major threat. International students will face deportation even if their colleges, facing a fresh outbreak, shift mid-semester from in-person to online classes. International students with preexisting conditions will feel forced to attend in-person classes despite the risk to their lives.

Those students, who constitute 5.5 percent of overall higher education enrollment, contributed more than $40 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2019-2020 academic year. They provide a steady stream of energetic, talented youth, some of whom make key contributions to the U.S. economy and form lifelong ties with U.S. businesses and scientific and cultural institutions.

None of that matters to Mr. Trump, who has made it a personal and political crusade to rid the nation, to the extent possible, of foreigners. Last month, his administration suspended work visas for various non-immigrant categories and widened a ban on new green cards for applicants outside of this country. Under cover of the pandemic, asylum seekers have been effectively banned from the United States for the first time in modern history, and many U.S. embassies and consulates remain shut, closing off other avenues of legal entry for visitors, workers and immigrants alike.

The president’s goal is to turn America’s back on the world. Sadly, it is Americans, and institutions like U.S. universities, that will pay the price.

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This could well put some colleges and universities out of business. Racism is not only stupid and immoral, it costs the U.S. big time, in “real dollars” as well as in goodwill and “moral capital.”

Vote ‘Em Out in November — at all levels! Let America and everyone in it realize their full potential! End racism in America by sending the racists packing!

PWS

07-08-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: Trump’s Malicious Incompetence Bankrupts Once-Profitable Immigration Agency — The Solution Is NOT More Public Assistance For The Regime’s Freeloaders!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-brings-atlantic-city-style-bankruptcy-to-americas-immigration-agency/2020/07/03/a4619ff8-bc04-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

From the WashPost Editorial Board:

By Editorial Board

July 4 at 8:30 AM ET

AS A business mogul in Atlantic City, Donald Trump ran casinos that teetered continually toward bankruptcy, costing gullible investors well over $1 billion. Now President Trump’s policies have bankrupted the federal government’s main agency overseeing legal immigration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is on the brink of imposing furloughs on thousands of its employees and is begging Congress for a bailout.

USCIS, which handles green cards for permanent legal residents, manages citizenship procedures and vets visa applicants, depends for its operating revenue almost entirely on fees from “customers,” meaning immigrants. The business model Mr. Trump’s administration devised for USCIS was a recipe for financial ruin: deplete income by driving away fee-paying applicants and pile up expenses by hiring thousands of new employees. Little wonder that after three-and-a-half years, USCIS has gone hat in hand to Congress, pleading for $1.2 billion. Without the extra funds — for an agency meant to be self-sufficient — USCIS has said more than 13,000 employees, of some 20,000 total workers, will be furloughed without pay indefinitely, starting next month.

Under Mr. Trump, USCIS has become a model of dysfunction. Perversely, that may be just fine with a White House that has been intent on deterring not only undocumented migrants but legal immigrants as well. It has done the latter largely through a matrix of policies that have made the agency much less a means by which immigrants are connected with U.S. employers and reconnected with relatives living in this country, and much more a nearly impassable obstacle course.

Well before the pandemic, applications for an array of immigrant categories plummeted as word spread that layers of new rules and vetting were driving down approval rates, and even trivial mistakes such as typos in applications would trigger rejections. In-person interviews were added as requirements for applicants who had not previously needed them, including skilled workers already in the country who needed visa extensions. Green card applications slumped in the Trump administration’s first two years and might fall further as applicants learn they would be disqualified if deemed likely to need public benefits such as subsidized housing or food stamps. The pandemic accelerated the agency’s death spiral as revenue derived from fees has dropped by half since March.

The effect of a mass furlough of USCIS staff would be to throw even more grit into the bureaucratic gears, further slowing approvals for work permits, including for high-skilled immigrants, and green cards. If the administration is intent on breaking the nation’s complex immigration machinery, which has supplied American businesses with the talent and energy of millions of employees, it is on the right path.

Employers are alarmed at the prospect of such a breakdown, with good reason. Virtually every sector of the country’s economy depends on a steady supply of immigrants, which in itself is justification for Congress to reassess USCIS’s fee-based model. Immigrants have provided the spark, drive and muscle that have driven growth and success in the United States since its founding. Given their contributions, it seems a gratuitous burden that they are also required to shoulder the cost of their admission to the country.

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

The solution is actually very simple. Congress should require DHS to reprogram the necessary funds to run USCIS from the unneeded wall, unnecessary and often illegal immigration detention, and counterproductive civil deportations. All private detention contracts should be terminated and the money repurposed to USCIS. There should be a moratorium on DHS removals until USCIS is back in full operation and has eliminated all backlogs. Fee increases should be barred.

Exceptions should be made allowing deportations for those convicted of “aggravated felonies” and those whom the DHS can show by clear and convincing evidence entered the U.S. illegally after the date of enactment, following an opportunity for a full and fair hearing before a U.S. Magistrate Judge at which they will have an opportunity to apply for asylum and other protections without regard to any regulation or precedent decision issued during the Trump Administration. Appeal from any adverse decision may be had by either party to the U.S. District Judge and from there to the Court of Appeals with an opportunity to petition the Supreme Court for review. U.S. District Judges shall have the option of designating sitting U.S. Immigration Judges (but not anyone who has served a BIA Appellate Immigration Judge) with five or more years of judicial experience to serve as a “Special U.S. Magistrate Judge” to hear such immigration cases.

If Democrats can’t get a “veto proof majority” in both houses, they should just let the USCIS remain in bankruptcy until we get better Government. Like the rest of the Trump immigration kakistocracy, USCIS is a dysfunctional mess 🤮 that serves no useful purpose under current conditions.

Welfare Reform: We’ve identified the largest group of “welfare cheats” in U.S. history. Collectively, this gang of public benefits fraudsters is known as “The Trump Administration.” Its Members are worse than useless. We are actually paying them to pollute our environment, inhibit our voting, spread deadly disease, block access to health insurance, undermine scientific truth, destroy our justice system, defend Confederate statues, spread racism and hate, commit crimes against humanity, turn our nation into a despised international laughingstock, and often line their own pockets and pockets of their cronies with ill-gotten loot while doing it.

But we have it in our power to end these gross abuses of our public purse and to throw this dangerous band of indolent sponges on society off the public dole! This November, vote like your life and the future of our nation depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-06-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️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 Administration Makes Immigration Courts an Enforcement Tool by Appointing Prosecutors to Lead

AILA Doc. No. 20070696 | Dated July 6, 2020

CONTACTS:

George Tzamaras
202-507-7649
gtzamaras@aila.org Belle Woods
202-507-7675
bwoods@aila.org

WASHINGTON, DC — The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) condemns the Trump administration’s recent ramp-up of efforts to turn the immigration court system into an enforcement tool rather than an independent arbiter for justice. The immigration courts are formally known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and are overseen by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

AILA President Jennifer Minear, noted, “AILA has long advocated for an independent immigration court, one that ensures judges serve as neutral arbiters of justice. This administration has instead subjected the courts to political influence and exploited the inherent structural flaws of the DOJ-controlled immigration courts, which also prosecutes immigration cases at the federal level. The nail in the coffin of judicial neutrality is the fact that the administration has put the courts in the control of a new Chief Immigration Judge who has no judicial experience but served as ICE’s chief immigration prosecutor. No less concerning is DOJ’s recent choice for Chief Appellate Immigration Judge – an individual who also prosecuted immigration cases and advised the Trump White House on immigration policy. This administration continues to weaponize the immigration courts for the sole purpose of accelerating deportations rather than dispensing neutral justice. Congress must investigate these politically motivated appointments and pass legislation to create an independent, Article I immigration court.”

Among the recent actions taken by this administration to bias the immigration courts:

Attempting to decertify the immigration judges’ union.

Blocking immigration judges’ ability to educate the public about the court system.

Endangering lives through haphazard and inconsistent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attempting to buy out and then outright dismantling the Board of Immigration Appeals.

More AILA resources on the immigration courts can be found at: https://www.aila.org/immigrationcourts.

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 20070696.

CONTACTS:
George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org	Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org

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

As a friend and former colleague said recently “I would have thought that the one thing everyone could get behind, regardless of political philosophy, would be a neutral court system.” Sadly, not so in today’s crumbling America.

There are three groups blocking the way:

The Trump Administration, where due process only applies to Trump and his corrupt cronies;
GOP legislators whose acquittal of Trump against the overwhelming weight of the evidence shows exactly what due process means to them;
Five GOP-appointed Justices on the Supremes who don’t believe that due process applies to all persons in the US, notwithstanding the “plain language” of Article 5 of our Constitution — particularly if those persons have the misfortune to be asylum seekers of color.

The end result is “Dred Scottification” — that is, dehumanization or “de-personification” of “the other.” The GOP has made it a centerpiece of their failed attempt to govern, from voter suppression, to looting the Treasury for the benefit of the rich and powerful, to immunity for law enforcement officers who kill minorities, to greenlighting cruel, inhuman,and counterproductive treatment of lawful asylum seekers and immigrants. Not surprisingly, this essentially “Whites Only” view of social justice is ripping our nation apart on many levels.

I find it highly ironic that at the same time we are rightfully removing statutes of Chief Justice Roger Taney, a racist who authored the infamous Dred Scott Decision, Chief Justice Roberts and four of his colleagues continue to “Dred Scottify” asylum seekers and other immigrants, primarily those of color, by denying them the due process, fundamental fairness, fair and impartial judges, and, perhaps most of all, racist-free policies that our Constitution demands!

Compare the “due process” afforded Trump by the GOP Senate and the pardon of a convicted civil and human rights abuser like “Racist Sheriff Joe” with the ugly and dishonest parody of due process afforded Sister Norma’s lawful asylum seekers whose “crime” was seeking fair treatment, justice, and an acknowledgement of their humanity from a nation that has turned it’s back on those values.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/07/06/%f0%9f%98%8e%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fgood-news-9th-cir-deals-another-blow-to-stephen-millers-illegal-white-nationalist-war-on-asylum-now-will-the-supremes-majority-stan/

What Sister Norma’s article did not mention is that those who survive in Mexico long enough to get to “court” have their asylum claims denied at a rate of about 99% by an unfair system intentionally skewed and biased against them. Most experts believe that many, probably a majority, of those being denied actually merit protection under a fair and impartial application of our laws.

But, as pointed out by AILA, that’s not why Billy the Bigot has appointed prosecutors as top “judges” and notorious asylum deniers as “appellate judges.” He intends to perpetuate a highly unfair “deportation railroad” designed by infamous White Nationalist racist Stephen Miller. In other words, our justice system is being weaponized in support of an overtly racist agenda formulated by a racist regime that has made racism the centerpiece of its pitch for remaining in office. Incredible! Yet true!

The Supremes have life tenure. But, the other two branches of our failing Government don’t. And, a better Executive and a better Legislature that believe in our Constitution and equal justice for all is a necessary start on a better Federal Judiciary — one where commitment to due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all is a threshold requirement for future judicial appointments. Time to throw the “non-believers” and their enablers out of office.

This November, vote like your life and our country’s existence depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-07-20

🤡☹️A COURT W/O FRIENDS (THAT ISN’T A “COURT” AT ALL): EOIR Director Adopts Amicus’s Suggested Clarification, Then Shoots Messenger — Matter of Bay Area Legal Services, Inc. (“Bay Area II”)

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Michelle Mendez responds for CLINIC to McHenry’s latest decision in an e-mail to Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Subject: [immprof] RE: Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC., 28 I&N Dec. 16 (DIR 2020)

Dan, thank you for sharing this new decision from EOIR Director McHenry.

This second decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC. from EOIR Director McHenry may seem to come out of nowhere so, since the decision is aimed at CLINIC, we would like to provide background.

CLINIC’s network is comprised of approximately 380 immigration legal services organizations many of which have successfully relied on Recognition and Accreditation program to expand their legal services capacity in serving low-income immigrant communities. In support of our network, CLINIC has specifically catered to the needs of Accredited Representatives by, as examples, designing trial skills and legal writing trainings just for them and supporting them on their accreditation applications to EOIR. Given our expertise and interest in the Recognition and Accreditation program, when EOIR Director McHenry issued a call for amicus briefs on Recognition and Accreditation issues, CLINIC submitted a brief and we later learned, via the (first) decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), that we were the sole org to appear as amicus.

Unfortunately, in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), EOIR Director McHenry’s discussion of the skills needed to attain full accreditations was vague, unclear, and therefore confusing. Footnotes 13 and 14 in the decision appear to fault the applicant for full accreditation status for not practicing before EOIR before being granted full accreditation. At worst, the decision could lead one to infer that accredited representatives had to engage in unauthorized practice of immigration law to get the skills needed for full accreditation. We brought this issue to EOIR Director McHenry’s attention and he entertained our feedback during a phone conversation while disagreeing with our concerns. While the phone call was ultimately unhelpful as to this issue, we were able to discern just how unfamiliar he is with the Recognition and Accreditation program. At one point he stated that it was “totally conceivable that [accredited representatives] have some litigation experience.” It is not totally conceivable and we informed him of this too. After our call we sent EOIR Director McHenry the attached letter. We followed up with EOIR Director McHenry on Tuesday. On Wednesday he responded that “a type of formal response is forthcoming.” On Thursday he issued this second, published decision in which he chastises us for challenging him when we, as mere amicus curiae, have “no authority” to do so. However, you will notice that he also took the opportunity to clarify the very points we told him were vague and problematic. Of course, EOIR Director McHenry did not have to go the published decision route to deal with our concerns, but he preferred to project his power above being collaborative. And we have some concerns that EOIR will use this decision to prevent amici from following up to clear errors in other decisions where the respondent was pro se or the decision addresses in absentia orders. While I am surprised that CLINIC seemingly made him feel threatened, as a respected retired IJ said, it is an “honor to be called out in something like this.”

I am not on the ICLINIC@LIST.MSU.EDU listserv so if someone could forward this email to them, I would be grateful. Thank you.

Michelle N. Mendez (she/her/ella/elle)

Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)

Here’s a link to McHenry’s decision in Bay Area II:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.justice.gov_eoir_page_file_1291786_download&d=DwMFAw&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=Wq374DTv_PXfIom65XBqoA&m=YJ89kw8K2uqLIw5FdRsilIr3v_T7ai5C3pv9pIngFJM&s=9RKJ0zaLqmRz-W92NyUtHQFB12wC4rz5tVptNEOgYrw&e=

And, here’s a link to the CLINIC letter to McHenry that apparently spurred Bay Area II:

McHenry amend request final

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

So, CLINIC, the sole Amicus, with much more experience in the Recognition & Accreditation Program than McHenry, offers McHenry some helpful suggestions for clarifying his decision. He should have thanked them and issued an amended decision on his own, as “real courts” sometimes do.

Instead, McHenry threw a hissy fit, imagining that his “authority” was being challenged. While making the suggested clarification, he took the occasion unnecessarily and inappropriately to publicly dump on the Amicus who helped him.

Clearly, the act of an arrogant, yet insecure, person who knows he’s “way over his head” in his job. Sound familiar? But, hardly anything we didn’t already know about the awful legal and management mess at EOIR. And, in many ways a microcosm of the multiple disasters and institutional breakdowns sweeping our nation in the Age of the (Not So) Great Imposter.

I was gratified yesterday to hear former Ambassador Susan Rice on Meet the Press “channel Courtside” by referring to Trump’s so-called intelligence advisors as a “Clown Show” 🤡 in connection with the “Putin’s bounty fiasco.” On the other hand, that our national intelligence is in the hands of sycophantic clowns advising the “Chief Clown” is a cause for grave concern.

The involvement of the EOIR Director in any form of case adjudication is highly questionable from an historical and ethical standpoint. Here’s my previous “mini-history” of the Director position from Courtside: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/07/06/katherine-m-reilly-named-acting-deputy-director-of-eoir-also-a-mini-history-of-eoir-directors/

Suffice it to say that McHenry’s performance is powerful evidence of the reasons why the Director of EOIR should be abolished, hopefully as part of Article I legislation, and replaced with an “Executive Director,” a purely administrative position with no judicial or “legal policy” functions, and subordinate to and reporting to the Chief Appellate Judge who would replace the BIA Chair. The recent attempts to “reinsert” an improper adjudicative and “policy” role for the Director is yet another example of the gross legal, ethical, and management failures of EOIR under Trump’s DOJ kakistocracy.

Due Process Forever! Clown Courts,🤡 Never!

PWS

07-05-20

WE MUST DEFEAT THE “END OF AMERICA” CAMPAIGN: Lacking Constructive Ideas, Positive Achievements, or Human Values, Trump Makes Hate, Racism, & Lies His Message — It’s Joe Biden’s Time to Shine!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

July 5, 2020

Upon hearing Donald Trump declare his candidacy for President, I turned to my wife Cathy and said “The guy is totally without values and redeeming qualities.” While I didn’t get the outcome of the election right, I nailed the Trump kakistocracy. If anything, it’s been much worse than my bleak outlook.

Who would have thought that our un-President would dance on the graves of 130,000 dead Americans while urging his followers to “drink the Kool-Aid?” Who would have believed that our supposed leader would urge the maximum spread of deadly disease, intentionally overload an already stressed healthcare system, while looking to insure thousands of unnecessary deaths and disabilities by maliciously seeking to ax health insurance for some of America’s most vulnerable? With a “Jim Jones style” false leader like this, who needs enemies?

But, speaking of “enemies,” why not suck up to Putin while turning against long-time allies like the EU, Canada, and Mexico? Why not give the PRC an opening to subsume Hong Kong, while increasing its influence in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean as U.S. foreign policy crumbles?

Worldwide pandemic — embrace it. Climate change — deny it. Inevitable increase in worldwide migration driven by the preceding — build walls and prisons. High unemployment — end the Federal supplement. Failing bridges and unsafe highways — who cares. Falling revenues — cut taxes for the rich and services for the poor. Institutional racism — double down and glorify past racists. Voting rights — suppress them. Police brutality — enable it. Free speech —punish it. Environmental degradation — deregulate. Truth — be damned. Human decency — mock it. Justice — only for some. Reports of bounties on American soldiers — look the other way. Hate crimes — encourage them. Trump’s “malicious incompetence,” cruelty, corruption, and downright stupidity is endless and on public display every day.

Now, with no message of hope, healing, improvement, or a better future for all Americans and the world, Trump spews and babbles the only things he actually stands for (other than his own self-aggrandizement): hate and racism. Is this “Know Nothing/KKK Redux” really the message on which the GOP seeks to govern in 21st Century America? Outrageously, the answer clearly is “yes,” even if the Tim Scotts, Clarence Thomases, Herman Cains, and Ben Carsons of the world feign ignorance or believe that their privileged positions will save them, if not their souls.

For the rest of us, the time has come to rise up and throw the imposter out. Joe Biden might not be the “perfect candidate.” Has there ever been such a thing? As humans, we all have our warts and past mistakes. But, unlike Trump, Biden has a message and a plan for healing America, correcting long-standing injustices, and moving forward.

Biden’s July 4 message emphasized the positives that will make a better future for all in America, regardless of race, religion, status, or economic power:

Enhancing voting rights and maximizing participation in elections;
Safeguarding elections from Putin and other corrupt foreign governments leaders;
Reversing inhumane and counterproductive asylum, visa, “baby jails,” and family separation policies;
Reaffirming our identity as a proud nation of immigrants;
Protecting and enhancing judicial independence;
Honoring freedom of the press and independent journalism;
Rooting out institutionalized racism from every part of society where it is now embedded;
Leading the world to better times by example, encouragement, and mutual assistance, rather than constantly issuing threats, reacting with childish petulance to every perceived slight, and spewing the ugly, disproven gospel of selfish nationalism, that has nearly destroyed our world in the past, as the vision of the future.

Joe Biden is an accomplished public servant, capable leader, decent human being, and advocate for true American values. He will restore our humanity, reinvigorate our democratic institutions, bring Americans of goodwill together, rebuild our economy, protect our health, care about our environment, address racism and inequality, maximize everyone’s human potential, and reestablish our international political, economic, and moral leadership.

This is our chance to join together to retake our Government from the forces of darkness and hate and to finally achieve that which our Constitution has demanded for the last century: Equal justice for all. This November, vote like your life, the life of every American, and the future of our world depend on it. Because they do!

JULY 4, 2020: Colbert I. King @ WashPost With a “Declaration of Independence” For Our Time! 🗽👍🏼⚖️💥 — DUMP TRUMP! ☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-declaration-this-independence-day-should-be-liberation-from-trump/2020/07/03/bfa53998-bc98-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

. . . .

Yes, the Fourth of July is a date to honor. But this year, it is also a day of sorrow for where we now find ourselves.

The United States of America, created in 1776 by men who put love of country over their own private interests — who staked their lives, fortunes and their sacred honor on the cause of their new nation — is now in the grasp of a man whose entire life has been spent taking, while giving nothing in return.

Trump’s successes are displayed in shrines across the country and around the world emblazoned with his name — Trump towers, Trump plazas, Trump golf courses, Trump casinos, and Trump streets and roads. Trump’s love is limited to his private interests. He stakes his life and fortune only on the cause of Trump.

To further sully the celebration of the most pivotal day in U.S. history, the White House is in the grasp of a president who thinks the United States’ heritage is exemplified by the legacy of the Confederate flag and the traitorous generals who fought under that symbol of white supremacy.

Trump’s meltdown over the attempted takedown of the slaveholding Andrew Jackson’s statue in Lafayette Square is, for instance, of a kind with his cherishing of monuments of the War of Southern Aggression, which started when the Confederacy fired on the American flag at Fort Sumter.

Douglass would be revolted by Trump’s infatuation with a history in which generations of blacks were robbed of their liberty and forced to show obedience to the master. As outraged as I am now.

Trump’s warm embrace of white nationalism on Independence Day 2020 makes a mockery of the concepts of justice and liberty entrusted to the nation in the Declaration.

Gwen and I celebrated our 59th wedding anniversary on July 3. The first four Fourth of Julys of our marriage were spent as citizens of a country with a large swath of areas that had hotels, restaurants and places of entertainment that we were not allowed to enter because we were black. Two of those years I spent proudly wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army commissioned officer.

Try living with that.

Today, we have the bodies of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery — with a preening, coldblooded bully ensconced in the Oval Office.

Whose Fourth of July is this?

The Founders discovered themselves faced with an oppressive Crown.

Separation from the Crown was right.

So, too, will be America’s liberation from Donald Trump.

That should be our declaration on this Independence Day.

**********

Read the rest of Colby’s statement at the link.

RESOLVE: To take back our nation from the White Nationalist racist kakistocracy of hate and malicious incompetence that has assumed power as our democratic institutions have failed their “stress test” and plunged us into a daily exhibition of “crimes against humanity.”

This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it. Because they do!

PWS🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼💥😎

07-04-20

🇺🇸JULY 4 SPECIAL🗽: CRISTIAN FARIAS @ KNIGHT INSTITUTE WITH LOADS OF “PAYWALL-FREE” ONLINE RESOURCES HIGHLIGHTING REGIME’S ABUSE OF IJ’S 1ST AMENDMENTS RIGHTS AS WELL AS PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO KNOW ABOUT THE FRAUD, WASTE & GROSS ABUSES UNFOLDING DAILY IN AMERICA’S MOST OUTRAGEOUSLY UNFAIR AND MISMANAGED “COURT” SYSTEM! — Our Taxpayer Funds Are Being Flushed Down The Toilet 🚽 By “Billy The Bigot” & His “Maliciously Incompetent” Gang Of White Nationalist Enablers & Promoters @ EOIR!

Cristian writes:

Hi, Paul:

Lots of other, nonpaywalled coverage of this new case:

Link to complaint:

https://knightcolumbia.org/cases/naij-v-mchenry

https://www.inquirer.com/news/immigration-judges-trump-lawsuit-free-speech-eoir-columbia-knight-center-20200701.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/immigration-judges-challenge-doj-limits-public-speaking/story?id=71552573

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/505388-immigration-judges-union-sues-justice-dept-over-policy-restricting?rnd=1593610305

https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-court-immigration-judges/immigration-judges-challenge-justice-dept-over-policy-gagging-them-from-public-speech-idINKBN24263H?il=0

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/immigration-judges-lawsuit/index.html

Thank you for all you do,

Cf.

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

As many of you know, Cristian is a contributor to Courtside and a tireless advocate for free speech and Constitutional rights for everyone in America.

Thanks, Cristian, for all you do for America!

🇺🇸Celebrate America’s birthday by standing up for our Constitution and human dignity against the racism, ignorance, hate, & tyranny of the Trump regime!🗽

👍🏼Due Process Forever!⚖️

Here’s my previous reporting on this:

🤡CLOWN COURT REPORT: Dysfunctional “Court” System Notorious ☠️ For Denying Migrants’ Rights Forces Own Judges To Sue In Federal Court To Protect Their Individual Constitutional Rights! — No Wonder The Mis-Management-Induced Backlogs Are Endless & Growing!

PWS

07-04-20

🇺🇸😎⚖️🗽👍🏼LAW YOU CAN USE: Michelle Mendez and CLINIC Publish A New Practice Advisory on Opening & Closing Statements in Immigration Court

https://cliniclegal.org/resources/litigation/practice-advisory-opening-statements-and-closing-arguments-immigration-court

Practice Advisory: Opening Statements and Closing Arguments in Immigration Court

Last UpdatedJuly 2, 2020

Topics Litigation Removal Proceedings Appeals

Opening statements and closing arguments can win cases for clients, if the practitioner is able to deliver a performance that is both concise and compelling. This practice advisory offers guidance and tips that will help practitioners deliver concise and compelling opening statements and closing arguments in immigration court.

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

Read more and download this wonderful resource at the link.

Michelle and her team @ CLINIC promise more “great stuff” next week.

Going in Opposite Directions: Ironically, as the Trump DOJ has worked overtime to “dumb down” EOIR, Michelle and many others in the Immigration & Human Rights communities, particularly AILA, other NGOs, Clinical Professors, and pro bono counsel at “Big Law,” have been working even harder to promote “best immigration and legal practices” before all tribunals. And, despite the Supreme’s “willful blindness” to the Constitution, the rule of law, and human dignity as it applies to asylum seekers and migrants, the results are showing elsewhere in the justice system.

It also points to the obvious unconscionably overlooked untapped source for better Federal Judges in the future, from the Supremes to the Immigration Courts: the pro bono and clinical immigration and human rights bars — actually the main fount of courageous opposition to the regime’s concerted attack on our Constitution, our justice system, and our humanity.

If these folks and others like them were on the Supremes, American justice wouldn’t be in shambles and equal justice justice for all under our Constitution would actually be enforced, rather than degraded or intentionally skirted with legal gobbledygook. The lack of both legal and moral leadership from our highest Court in the face of a clearly out of control and unqualified White Nationalist Executive and his toadies is simply astounding, not to mention discouraging.

It’s little wonder that the tensions caused in no small measure by the Court’s systemic failure to stand up for voting rights, civil rights, the rights of other persons of color in the U.S., and to hold abusers at all levels accountable, is now overflowing into the streets. No, an occasional vote for a correct result from Roberts or another member of “The Five” is not going to solve the problem of Constitutional, racial, and moral dereliction of duty by our highest Court.

Almost every day, “real” Article III Lower Courts “out” some aspect of the outrageously biased and unprofessional performance of EOIR and the rest of Trump’s immigration kakistocracy before the courts. Even some GOP and Trump appointed Article III Judges have “had enough” and don’t want their professional reputations and consciences sullied by association with the regime’s unlawful White Nationalist agenda.

Unfortunately, however, the Federal Courts generally have failed to follow through by sanctioning the often unethical and dishonest performance of the regime in court and by shutting down EOIR’s unconstitutional “kangaroo courts,” DHS’s equally unconstitutional “New American Gulag,” and the fraudulent operation of bogus “Safe Third County Agreements,” “Remain in Mexico,” and patiently disingenuous ridiculously overbroad COVID-19 “immigration bars” (which are actually thin cover for Stephen Miller’s preconceived White Nationalist nativist agenda). Moreover, lower Federal Court Judges who courageously stand up against the regime’s unconstitutional agenda and program of “dehumanization” are too often improperly undermined by the Supremes (sometimes without explanations or “short circuiting” the system), thereby “greenlighting” further “crimes against humanity” by an unscrupulous and unethical Executive.

We’re making a permanent record of both the “crimes against humanity” committed by the regime and those public officials, be they so-called “public servants,” feckless legislators, or life-tenured judges who have actively aided, abetted, been complicit, or “gone along to get along” with Trump’s countless lies and abuses. Later judicial “corrections” by a better Court or legislative “fixes” by a real Congress will not reclaim the lives of those shot on the streets by police, infected with COVID-19 in the Gulag, kidnapped and abused by gangs in Mexico while waiting for fake hearings, or “rocketed” back to persecution and torture in the Northern Triangle and elsewhere in violation of U.S. and international laws without any meaningful process at all. Nor will they wipe out the abuses by governments at all levels elected without the full participation of American citizens of color and in poverty whose votes were purposely suppressed or political authority diminished by corrupt GOP pols and their Supreme enablers.

As we can see by the long-overdue historical reckoning coming to Confederates and other racists who actively worked to undermine our Constitution, block equal justice for all, and dehumanize other humans in America, there will be an eventual historical reckoning here, and justice ultimately will be served, even if not in our lifetimes. That’s bad news for Roberts, his right-wing colleagues, and a host of others who have willfully enabled the worst, most abusive, and most clearly lawless presidency in U.S. History, as well as the most overtly racist regime since Woodrow Wilson.

Due Process Forever!

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

JOIN THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY (“NDPA”) & BE PART OF THE SOLUTION TO UNEQUAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA!

PWS

07-03-20

☠️⚰️👎🏻🤡CLOWN COURT REPORT: BILLY THE BIGOT BARR APPOINTS STUNNINGLY UNQUALIFIED DHS ENFORCEMENT MAVEN, WITHOUT JUDICIAL EXPERIENCE, TRACY SHORT, AS NEW CHIEF IMMIGRATION “JUDGE” — Shock, Anger, Outrage Spreading Across Immigration & Legal Communities At Latest “Middle Finger” To Due Process & Fundamental Fairness Flipped By Racist Administration Of Human Rights Abusers!

💀☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1291891/download

July 2, 2020
EOIR Announces New Chief Immigration Judge
FALLS CHURCH, VA – The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced the appointment of Tracy Short as the Chief Immigration Judge of EOIR’s Office of the Chief Immigration Judge.
Biographical information follows:
Tracy Short, Chief Immigration Judge
Attorney General William Barr appointed Tracy Short as the Chief Immigration Judge in June 2020. Chief Judge Short received a Bachelor of Arts in 1990 from Texas Christian University and a Juris Doctor in 1995 from the Louisiana State University Law Center. Chief Judge Short began his legal career in 1995 as a judicial law clerk for Judge James M. Dozier, Jr., of the Third Judicial District Court of Louisiana. From 1997 to 1998, he served as a public defender, representing indigent criminal defendants in Louisiana state courts, while also practicing civil law. From 1998 to 1999, Chief Judge Short was an assistant attorney general for the Louisiana Department of Justice where he represented the State of Louisiana in civil litigation. From 1999 to 2000, he also served as a judicial law clerk for Justice Chet D. Traylor of the Louisiana Supreme Court. From 2000 to 2001, Chief Judge Short was a judicial law clerk for Judge Robert B. Maloney of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. From 2001 to 2003, Chief Judge Short litigated removal cases on behalf of the Department of Justice as trial attorney with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in Dallas. From 2003 to 2005, Chief Judge Short served as Assistant Chief Counsel in the Dallas office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). In 2005, he was appointed as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney (SAUSA) in the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Northern District of Texas, where he handled complex civil litigation involving ICE. In 2007, Chief Judge Short was appointed as a SAUSA in the USAO for the Eastern District of Texas, where he litigated criminal cases. From 2007 to 2009, he served as the Acting Deputy Chief Counsel and Senior Attorney in OPLA’s Dallas office. As a Senior Attorney, he litigated significant and complex immigration cases and served as the lead attorney for matters involving customs law and criminal investigations. From 2009 to 2015, he served as Deputy Chief Counsel in OPLA’s Atlanta office, where he managed litigation operations and client services in a multi- state field office. From 2015 to 2017, Chief Judge Short served as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border
Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

Page 2
Security. From January 2017 to June 2020, he served as the ICE Principal Legal Advisor and, later, as a Senior Advisor to the ICE Acting Director. He is a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas.
— EOIR —
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is an agency within the Department of Justice. EOIR’s mission is to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation’s immigration laws. Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, EOIR conducts immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and administrative hearings. EOIR is committed to ensuring fairness in all the cases it adjudicates.

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

The final paragraph above is, of course, a sick joke.

I predict that we will hear more from the legal and the human rights communities about this latest abuse of authority by a corrupt White Nationalist regime committed to a program of crimes against humanity.

Due Process Forever!

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

PWS

07-02-20

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