DON KERWIN @ CMS: “Detention Should Not Be A Death Sentence.”☠️☠️⚰️⚰️

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

https://cmsny.org/publications/immigrant-detention-covid/

This essay was last updated on May 2.

In late March, I argued in an earlier version of this paper that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should immediately embark on an aggressive program of release, supervised release and alternative-to-detention (ATD) programs for immigrant detainees in response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.[1] Since that time, the number of immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention has fallen by nearly 8,400, but not nearly as fast or dramatically as necessary, given the perilous conditions in which nearly 30,000 immigrant detainees remain and how rapidly the virus has swept through immigrant detention facilities throughout the country and beyond.

The Size of the Crisis

On March 17, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that there were no “confirmed” cases of COVID-19 in its detention centers, a meaningless claim given the paucity of testing and the certainty of “unconfirmed” cases, as affirmed by ensuing lawsuits.[2] A month later, ICE reported 124 confirmed cases. Six weeks later, as of May 1, this number had more than quadrupled to 522 cases in 34 facilities, as well as 39 confirmed cases among ICE employees in those facilities (ICE 2020b).[3]

Yet ICE’s figures point to only the tip of the iceberg. By mid-April, ICE had tested only 300-400 detainees for COVID-19 infection (Misra 2020). By May 1, it had tested 1,073 detainees, a very low percentage of those in its custody during the course of the pandemic (ICE 2020b). Moreover, ICE figures do not count former detainees who contracted COVID-19 in its custody,[4] a large number of whom were deported prior to being tested (Dickerson and Semple 2020). Nor do they count the infected staff of ICE contractors, including employees of the private corporations that own and operate its largest detention centers and that administer many state and local ICE contract facilities.[5] On April 2, for example, ICE reported no confirmed cases of infected detainees, but one suspected case, at the massive Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia (Stewart). CoreCivic, one of ICE’s largest private detention contractors, operates Stewart.[6] By April 10, ICE “knew of” 30 suspected and five confirmed cases at Stewart.[7] As of April 28, 42 CoreCivic employees and one ICE employee at Stewart had tested positive for COVID-19 (Stokes 2020). In an April 21 email to Mark Dow, Amanda Gilchrist, the Director of Public Affairs at CoreCivic said there had been 98 positive cases among CoreCivic staff since the onset of the pandemic, a number that did not count staff who had “recovered from COVID-19” and received “a doctor’s clearance to return to work” (on file with author).

ICE has confirmed that “a number of non-ICE employees (contractors) in facilities that hold ICE detainees have contracted COVID-19, and some of them died from COVID-19” (Tanvi 2020). However, it has been “unable to determine how many non-ICE personnel in state and local jails have contracted COVID-19 or died from COVID-19” (ibid.). Finally, it reports that “some non-ICE detainees in non-ICE facilities, shared with ICE detainees, also contracted COVID-19, and some of them died from COVID-19” (ibid.).

As of March 21, 38,058 immigrants were in ICE custody. By April 25, this number had dropped to 29,675 including 15,855 persons apprehended by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, and 13,820 referred by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) (ICE 2020a). By way of comparison, Canada – which detains many times fewer immigrants than the United States – released more than one-half of those in its custody between March 17 and April 19 (Global News 2020).

As of April 25, ICE still unconscionably held 5,261 persons who had established “persecution” and “torture” claims, and who should not be detained in any circumstances, much less the present. It also continues to detain persons approved for release. In a particularly disturbing report, detainees in New York cannot post bond because of the closure of ICE’s New York City office (Katz 2020). Finally, it continues to detain families and minors. On April 13, the Washington Post reported that the population at ICE’s three family detention centers had fallen from 1,350 to 826 persons (Hsu 2020). By April 21, the number had fallen to 698 persons, including 342 minors.[8]

On March 28, a federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order that required the administration to “make and record continuous efforts” to release the more than 5,000 minors in ICE family detention facilities and Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelter-like facilities for unaccompanied minors.[9] Her decision recognized the “severity of the harm” to which children in these facilities, particularly ICE facilities, “are exposed and the public’s interest in preventing outbreaks of COVID-19 … that will infect ICE and ORR staff, spread to others in geographic proximity, and likely overwhelm local healthcare systems.” On April 24, the judge ordered ORR and ICE to continue “to make every effort to promptly and safely release” children with “suitable custodians.”[10]

ICE Policies and Procedures

ICE can decrease its detention population in two main ways, by admitting fewer immigrants into its system and by more generous and, in the circumstances, appropriate release standards. It has failed to move decisively enough in either direction.

. . . .

********************
Read Don’s complete article at the link.

Thanks Don!

In this regime, the Gulag is all about using the “facade” of euphemistically-named “civil immigration detention” as a way of punishing those who have the audacity to assert their legal rights, to limit their Fifth Amendment and statutory rights to counsel, to inhibit their ability to understand the applicable legal criteria and prepare their cases, to coerce them into abandoning claims for relief and waiving appeals, and to send “deterrent messages” to others.

What it doesn’t have much connection with these days is insuring appearance and protecting the public. Relatively few detained individuals have criminal records that present a realistic threat. Also, all reputable studies show that when individuals are represented by counsel, community alternatives to detention are used, and individuals actually understand the requirements, the appearance rate for those with asylum or other claims for relief approach 100%.

So, the Gulag is largely an expensive and dangerous fraud. That’s not to say that other Administrations haven’t misused detention of non-criminals. It been more or less increasing over the past four decades — ever since the Mariel Boatlift. But, this regime has gone “above and beyond” in the intentionally cruel, unnecessary, and coercive expansion and abuse of the Gulag.

The BIA has abandoned any attempt to bring integrity and uniformity to the bond system. Instead, they have adopted a “screw the individual, kiss up to Barr, Miller, & the White Nationalist politicos who run this dysfunctional system.”

The response from the Article IIIs has been mixed.

Hopefully, the extensive U.S. District Court detention litigation across the country will finally “open the eyes” of the Article III Judiciary to the callous disregard of human life and welfare and the abusive, racially driven, punitive intent fueling the regime’s “Gulag expansion.”

PWS

05-03-20

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

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

Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union Tribune:

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

By KATE MORRISSEY

APRIL 30, 202012:04 PM

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-02-20

Judge Mimi Tsankov @ ABA JOURNAL: 🆘 Immigration Courts Now A Human Rights Catastrophe Threatening The Heart ❤️ & Soul 😇 Of American Justice!

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

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/immigration/human-rights-at-risk/

Judge Tsankov writes solely in her capacity as Eastern Region Vice President with the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) in the ABA Journal:

April 28, 2020 HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights at Risk: The Immigration Courts Are in Need of an Overhaul

The views expressed here do not represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the attorney general, or the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The views represent the author’s personal opinions, which were formed after extensive consultation with the membership of NAIJ.

by Hon. Mimi Tsankov

Share this:

“While immigration courts reside within the executive branch, they should not be merely a tool to achieve desired policy outcomes.”

—Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

So wrote Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his February 13, 2020, letter to Attorney General William Barr, in which he and eight members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called upon Barr to take action against, what he termed, an increasingly troubling politicization of the immigration court adjudication process.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for those seeking human rights protection in the form of asylum and other forms of relief from persecution and torture. Individual liberty and personal safety interests are often at stake in immigration court proceedings where immigration judges have the authority to grant protection from persecution. Id.; see also, 8 U.S.C. 1158. Whitehouse gave voice to what is becoming an alarming trend—the increasing political influence over individual immigration cases. This action, he explained, is undermining the public’s confidence in the immigration courts and creating an impression that “cases are being decided based on political considerations rather than the relevant facts and law. The appearance of bias alone is corrosive to the public trust.” Whitehouse Letter, supra, at 5; see also, 8 U.S.C. Section 1229a(b)(4)(A) and (B); 8 C.F.R. 1003.10(b).

Whitehouse recounted a sentiment articulated previously by a host of legal community leaders for more than a decade, not the least of which was ABA President Judy Perry Martinez, who in a recent statement before the U.S. Congress explained that housing a court within a law enforcement agency has exacerbated an inherent conflict of interest undermining “the basic structural and procedural safeguards that we take for granted in other areas of our justice system.” See, Am. Bar. Assoc., 2019 Update Report: Reforming the Immigration System, Proposals to Promote Independence, Fairness, Efficiency, and Professionalism in the Adjudication of Removal Cases (Mar. 2019). As she explained, “this structural flaw leaves Immigration Judges particularly vulnerable to political pressure and interference in case management.” Martinez Testimony, supra, at 1.

It is important to note that these concerns are being expressed on the heels of what some see as growing impunity within the executive branch, focused almost single-mindedly on the speed of removal hearings at the risk of diminished due process. See Statement of Jeremy McKinney, Secretary, American Immigration Lawyer’s Association, NPR, Justice Department Rolls Out Quotas for Immigration Judges (April 3, 2018). The Justice Department is being charged with implementing a host of policies that diminish the primary responsibility of ensuring a fair hearing. For the past three years, the attorney general has used a process known as “certification,” a power historically used sparingly, to overrule decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals and set binding precedent. Id. Some have argued that the frequency with which this procedure has recently been employed borders on abuse as it seeks to severely limit the number of immigrants who can remain in the United States. Whitehouse Letter, supra, at 5. Equally troubling is the charge that the attorney general is using certification as a way to overrule immigration judges whose decisions don’t align with the administration’s immigration agenda. Id.

One area of particular concern is the recent encroachment by the agency into judicial independence. The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), which is the union representing sitting immigration judges, argues, alongside many others in the legal community, that these incursions into judicial independence are part of a broader effort to fundamentally alter how immigration removal cases are adjudicated, and that such actions are having deleterious effects. See Statement of Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Border Security and Immigration Subcommittee Hearing on “Strengthening and Reforming America’s Immigration Court System” 2 (Apr. 18, 2018).

An overcrowded, fenced area holds families at a border patrol station in McAllen, Texas.

Thomas Cizauskas from Flickr

Among the new measures implemented by the Justice Department are unrealistic and impractical one-size-fits-all case quotas and deadlines that squeeze immigration judges where they are most vulnerable—their status as “employees.” If an immigration judge provides one too many case continuances, even though related to a valid due process concern, she risks being terminated. Every pause for judicial reflection, or break for much needed legal research, risks slowing down the “deportation machinery” that the adjudication process is veering toward and threatens to eviscerate procedural due process, even though such due process is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Id.

These controversial new policies have become so pervasive and so threatening to judicial independence that they have raised alarms. What began in 2018 as a few dramatic instances involving the abrupt removal and reassignment of cases from an immigration judge’s docket previewed the agency’s more recent alarming actions where the shuffling of scores of cases and entire dockets sometimes multiple times within a single day has become the norm. The endless docket shuffling, and the chasing of performance “completions” that correspond to a job-preserving metric, seems designed to make political statements rather than ensuring victims of human rights abuses are afforded due process. A complex, multi-witness, multi-issue hearing is afforded the same value as an order of removal for failure to appear at a hearing. See Mimi Tsankov, Judicial Independence Sidelined: Just One More Symptom of an Immigration System Reeling, 55 Cal. W. L. Rev. 2 (2019).

. . . .

Mimi Tsankov serves as eastern region vice president with the National Association of Immigration Judges and has been a full-time immigration judge since 2006.

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

Read Judge Tsankov’s complete article at the link.Thanks Judge Tsankov. You are a “True American Hero!” 🗽🎖👩‍⚖️👍🏼

The situation in the Immigration Courts is totally out of control and unacceptable. Both Congress and the Article III Courts have failed in their duties to require and enforce the “fair and impartial adjudication” required by the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution.

These grotesque derelictions of duty are inexcusable. They call not just for an independent Immigration Court but also for “regime change” in both the Executive and the Senate and a total rethinking of what qualities should be required for the privilege of serving for life in the Article III Judiciary.

While there are many Article III derelictions of duty out there (and some courageous performances, particularly among the ranks of U.S. District Judges), I’m specifically highlighting the disgraceful performance of the “J.R. Five” ☠️🤮👎🏻 on the Supremes, who have been AWOL on Due Process, immigration, human rights, and humanity itself when our country needs them most. Never again! We need a better Supreme Court, one that lives up to its role as America’s highest tribunal entrusted with protecting our Constitutional, individual, and human rights! John Marshall must be turning over in his grave with the wimpy performance of John Roberts in the face of Executive tyranny and contempt for our Constitution!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts & Star Chambers, Never!

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

PWS

05-02-20

NDPA NEWS: JUST IN: MORE GOOD VIBES FOR THE GOOD GUYS: US District Judge Vince Chhabria “Rips DHS A New One” Over Grossly Deficient Treatment Of Detainees In Gulag: DHS Intransigence “speaks volumes about where the safety of the people at these facilities falls on ICE’s list of priorities.”☠️🤮⚰️☠️🤮⚰️

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

Round Table Member Judge Ilyce Shugall & Genna Beier, Deputy Public Defender report:

Hi all,

I write with wonderful news from the Zepeda Rivas crew. Judge Chhabria granted our motion for provisional class certification and motion for temporary restraining order. See attached!

He found that “the plaintiffs have demonstrated an exceedingly strong likelihood that they will prevail on their claim that current conditions at the facilities violate class members’ due process rights by unreasonably exposing them to a significant risk of harm.”

He also faulted the government for failing to be ready with basic information about class members:

“[C]ounsel for ICE asserted that it will take a significant amount of time for the agency to prepare a list of detainees with health vulnerabilities because it is ‘burdensome.’ The fact that ICE does not have such a list at the ready, six weeks after Governor Newsom shut down the entire state and one week after this lawsuit was filed, speaks volumes about where the safety of the people at these facilities falls on ICE’s list of priorities.” (emphasis added). ZING!!

He ordered ICE to provide records. Then, we will begin a process of individualized “bail” applications (“[T]his Court—likely with the assistance of several Magistrate Judges—will consider bail applications from class members over a roughly 14-day period.”). We don’t know yet what that process will look like, and we’ll have an opportunity to discuss it at a case management conference tomorrow. We’ll update you, of course.

If you haven’t already, please fill out the attached form for your clients! At tomorrow’s hearing want to be able to give the judge a survey of the individuals for whom we have clear release plans, for example. (Tips: try to use Adobe; if all else fails, save as PDF and email to me).

Lastly, we’ve got an amazing team of ACLU, SFPD, LCCR and UC Berkeley Law School people ready to take calls from unrepresented people in detention to start gathering info for bail applications. Please tell your clients to spread the following Lyon pin to others in their dorm who do not have attorneys to fill out these forms for them.

NUMBER TO CALL FOR UNREPRESENTED FOLKS: 7654

Folks will be on shifts taking calls from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm. Spread the word!

Genna

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

Congratulations, Team!👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Thank goodness! Another courageous U.S. District Judge refusing to “buy into” the regime’s disingenuous, immoral “no problem until the bodies start piling up, it’s only the lives of migrants, not ‘real humans’” approach.

Imagine what would happen if all Federal Judges were willing to act on their oaths of office and uniformly reject all aspects of the regime’s unlawful, unconstitutional “Dred Scottification” program directed at “deterrence through death, disease, and dehumanization.” What would it take? What if the families of Federal Judges were treated with the same basic disregard for due process, life, health, and human dignity as the regime inflicts on migrants? What if the corrupt officials carrying out these programs and the lawyers who defend them were actually held accountable for their actions by the Federal Courts rather than largely being given “free passes”?

What if we had a Government that actually respected our Constitution rather than seeking to shred it?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-01-20

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

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

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA7 on Byrne JAG Grant Conditions: Chicago v. Barr

Chicago v. Barr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Due Process Forever!

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

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE DEAD? ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ — Certainly, Not Jared! ☠️☠️☠️ — As U.S COVID-19 Death Toll, Already By Far The World’s Highest, Exceeds 60,000, Jared Declares “Success!” — Bess Levin @ Vanity Fair Says “Not So Much!”

Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

https://link.vanityfair.com/view/5bd67c363f92a41245df49ebc0e54.tmz/4e6714c1

Bess writes in The HIIVE for Vanity Fair:

Earlier this week a devastating statistic emerged from the coronavirus crisis: in a matter of months, more Americans have died from the virus than in the Vietnam War. While the Trump administration certainly did not cause the pandemic, it is fairly widely accepted—outside of the West Wing—that its shambolic response to COVID-19—from ignoring the early, dire warnings, to declaring them fake news, to putting a dog breeder in charge of the Health and Human Services task force, to listening to literally anything the first son-in-law had to say on the matter— allowed the deadly disease to gain a foothold in the United States, where, to date, more than one million people have tested positive and more than 58,000 have died.

Most people, regardless of their political allegiance, would probably agree that almost 60,000 dead Americans constitutes a lot. Particularly in light of the fact that in February, Donald Trump claimed that no more than 15 Americans would even test positive for the disease. And then you have Jared Kushner.

Appearing on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, the Boy Prince of New Jersey was asked about “two questions [that kept] coming up over the weekend on the Sunday shows,” the first one being, “Where’s the national strategy?” and the second, “Why did you guys collapse the pandemic office when you guys took over?” Claiming that the pandemic office “was an NSC situation,” and anyway, “there’s a lot of different parts of the government that are responsible for that and all those have been functioning”—fact check: not so much—the sentient jar of cold cream then boldly proclaimed: “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this and I think that we’ve achieved all of the different milestones that are needed, so the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s what really needs to be told.”

Aaron Rupar

✔

@atrupar

· Apr 29, 2020

Replying to @atrupar

“We’ve done more tests than any other country in the world, so we’ve gotta be doing a lot of things right” — Jared Kushner (the ability to test people when the virus was silently spreading across the country in February and March would’ve been nice … )

Aaron Rupar

✔

@atrupar

Jared Kushner, as the US coronavirus death toll surpasses the Vietnam War and approaches 60,000: “This is a great success story, and I think that’s really what needs to be told.”

893

11:32 AM – Apr 29, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

740 people are talking about this

To be fair to Kushner, who reportedly maintained as of mid-March that the coronavirus situation was “more about public psychology than a health reality,” after a lifetime of failing upward one might actually think this was true! If you had only ever fucked up at every job you ever held, only to be rewarded with more responsibility, you, too, might observe a five-figure body count and say to yourself, “Not bad, J-man, not bad at all.” Of course, it’s actually very bad and Jared, his equally unhelpful wife, and his criminally negligent father-in-law should all be run out of town for it, but you can see where he might’ve gotten that idea that he really nailed this one.

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

Get more from Bess & “The HIVE” @ Vanity Fair @ the above link.

Let’s see, we’re the 3rd most populous country in the world; but we’re the the “league leader” in deaths. And, the two countries ahead of us in population, China and India, are ahead by multiples: 4x. Yet, China and India between them have reported fewer than 10,000 deaths.

Yes, there’s good reason to be skeptical of both China’s and India’s reporting. That’s also true to some extent of the U.S. But, even if we doubled the numbers from India & China, while accepting the U.S. statistics as accurate, we still would have approximately 400% more deaths than both of those countries combined.

Of course Trump, Kushner, and their cronies have made a career out of falsifying and fabricating numbers and misconstruing statistics to claim endless successes and “business genius.” But, this time, there’s no getting around the numbers. And with states being encouraged to “open up” right and left despite universal non-compliance with even “step 1” of the Administration’s own “guidance,” (a 14-consecutive-day decrease in new cases) we’re nowhere near the end of the dying. ☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️

Obviously, Trump, Jared, Pence, Moscow Mitch, and a bunch of other science-denying right wingnuts think it’s a good and noble thing for YOU (not them) to join poor meat industry workers, first responders, and nursing home residents in laying down their lives so that they can keep on grifting, grafting, and running the country off a cliff.

Just hope you’re not the next to go “under the bus.” ⚰️🚌

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

PWS

04-30-20

GULAG WATCH ☠️: Another USDC Orders DHS To Release Detainee At Risk For COVID-19 — Pimentel-Estrada v. Barr, WD WA

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/court-orders-release-of-ice-prisoner-pimentel-estrada-v-barr

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Daniel M. Kowalski

29 Apr 2020

COVID-19

ICE

More

Court Orders Release of ICE Prisoner: Pimentel-Estrada v. Barr

NWIRP, Apr. 28, 2020

“Today U.S. District Court Judge Richard Martinez ordered the federal government to release an immigrant detained at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), AKA Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC), who is at high risk of serious illness or death if he contracts COVID-19. The Court ordered the release of Mr. Pimentel, a 65-year old man who has been a lawful permanent resident in the United States since 1996, but was placed in removal proceedings after pleading guilty to a drug offense. After completing his sentence, Mr. Pimentel returned to live with his family in Salt Lake City, Utah, but was subsequently arrested by ICE in May of 2019 after he appeared for an appointment. ICE ultimately transferred Mr. Pimentel to the detention center in Tacoma, Washington.

Judge Martinez found that federal immigration authorities “detain Petitioner at the NWIPC in conditions that create a substantial risk he will be exposed to the coronavirus and contract COVID-19.”

Judge Martinez relied on declarations from public health experts stating that once COVID-19 reaches the detention center it will spread like “wildfire.” The Court noted that experts have attributed a mortality rate as high as 15% for high risk individuals who contract COVID-19. Judge Martinez ultimately concluded that “Petitioner has made a clear showing that he faces a substantial risk of serious harm due to the conditions of his present confinement and the fact that he is at higher risk for serious illness or death from COVID-19.”

Judge Martinez ordered that Mr. Pimentel be immediately released. He will now be permitted to return to live with his son and daughter-in-law in Salt Lake City while he waits for his immigration case to be completed.

The order can be viewed here.

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

Wonder how many more “Mr. Pimentels” are out there in the Gulag but in the wrong jurisdiction or without the good fortune to get the legal representation necessary to secure release?

What if we had a functional, impartial, expert U.S. Immigration Court that could order release of folks like this without protracted litigation in the U.S. District Courts? Indeed, what’s the purpose of a so-called “court system” that’s incapable of doing much of anything except “rubber stamping” the unconstitutional actions and extraordinarily poor judgments of DHS officials and their contractors?

PWS

04-30-20

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

https://apple.news/A0a8Ej93WTp66f3Ujt4-_Ug

Jay Willis writes for The Appeal:

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jay Willis is a senior contributor at The Appeal.

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

Read Jay’s complete article at the link.

Yup. No surprise to readers of Courtside.

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

04-30-20

COMING ATTRACTION: Hear Round Table “Fearless Knightess” ⚔️🛡 Hon. Susan Roy On “NJ Insider — Politically Direct Podcast” — Thursday, April 30, @ 9:00 PM EDT!

Here’s the link:

http://www.insidernj.com/podcast/politically-direct-episode-92-guest-susan-roy-former-immigration-judge/

Podcast: Politically Direct Episode 92 With Guest Susan Roy, Former Immigration Judge

By Insider NJ | April 29, 2020, 12:45 pm

Coming up on Thursday Night April 30th and LIVE at 9:00PM, I welcome Former Immigration Judge Susan Roy to Politically Direct. We will discuss her time working in Federal Immigration Court, the challenges of Immigration Law, the current political climate, the impact of COVID-19 on current immigration cases and much more.

I am proud to partner with Insider NJ and host this weekly informative podcast.

Feel free to call in and chat with us during the program.

818-572-8032

Tell your family and friends about this upcoming episode.

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

Three cheers for Sue!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-20-20

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

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

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

Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin writes in The Guardian:

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

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

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

Advertisement

Hide

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

Trump’s court takeover

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

More from this series

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

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

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

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

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

Advertisement

Hide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

04-29-20

Alex Nowrasteh @ The National Interest: The Trump-Miller “Rationale” For Their So-Called “Immigration Ban” Is The Usual Nativist BS — Actually, Migrants To The US Don’t Threaten Your Health, Job, Or Wages, But White Nationalist Malarkey Dims Our Future! — Sadly, New Poll Shows Majority Supports Latest Round Of Immigrant Bashing!

https://apple.news/A_TYTiiUWPDyeXNykbPNZtQ

Here’s three reasons why.

by Alex Nowrasteh

President Trump recently said that there were two reasons for virtually halting all immigration to the United States in response to COVID-19. The first was to prevent the spread of the disease domestically. The second was to save American jobs for American citizens. We’ve already analyzed the first claim, this post will look at whether reducing immigration further will help save jobs for Americans. The answer is no.

Unemployment is spiking during the COVID-19 crisis. Americans are reacting to the virus by changing their economic behavior by working at home where possible, spending less time in dense public places, and in numerous other ways that result in less economic activity – sometimes voluntarily and sometimes in response to government shelter in place orders. As a result, employment is falling. In this situation, many pundits are arguing that further restricting immigration will preserve jobs for American citizens. Further restrictions will have no such impact. I’ve written much about the economic effects of immigration before, but here are some big takeaway points related to the recent immigration ban:

First, immigrants come to the United States primarily because of economic opportunity. Even those coming today on green cards intended for family‐ reunification are primarily coming to reunite with family members who, at one point in the chain, came for economic reasons. If the benefits of coming to the United States are greater than the costs (psychological costs, cost of moving, opportunity cost, danger of migrating, etc.), then many people will do so.

The biggest benefit of coming to the United States is higher wages, which are higher here because immigrant workers have a greater marginal value product (MVP=the number of goods produced by a worker multiplied by the market price for those goods). That means that immigrants are more productive here than in their home countries, so they supply more goods and services that are sold at higher prices. The amazing thing about demand for labor is that it is entirely determined by the worker’s MVP.

Economists Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett estimate the place premium, which is the estimated wage benefit of moving to the United States adjusting for the cost of living through a measurement called purchasing power parity (PPP). For example, they estimate that a working age Mexican male with 9–12 years of education who was educated in his home country can expect a 2.6-fold increase in his wages. That’s an enormous gain.

Immigration slows during a recession because the number of jobs decreases and, oftentimes, wages also adjust or their growth slows. Thus, the big benefit of immigrating to the United States evaporates for many immigrants during a recession. Immigration falls during recessions because immigrants benefit less from coming here, but natives benefit less too so the government also typically responds by increasing immigration enforcement. Less commonly, the government restricts legal immigration like President Herbert Hoover did in 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression. The flow of illegal immigrants into the United States changes most dramatically during a recession as they’re the most economically sensitive immigrants.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

For what it’s worth, Alex’s findings match my “anecdotal observations” over more than a decade at the U.S. Immigration Court. During the earlier recession and its aftermath, other than asylum applicants, more migrants appearing at my “Master Calendar” told me that they did not want to fight their cases and just wanted to “go home,” either voluntarily or at USG expense under a “final order.” As the US economy improved, the number of non-detained individuals agreeing to voluntary departure or “taking a final order” appeared to decrease.

While, as Alex acknowledges, immigration is not “totally market driven,” particularly for those fleeing persecution, we certainly would do better as a nation to design a robust legal immigration system that worked in harmony with market forces, rather than directly against them as has too often been the case.

Generally, markets are going to be a more effective and efficient regulators of immigration than expensive, coercive, and often ineffective, “maximum enforcement.”

Indeed, when our economy was “booming,” unemployment was low, and most of the estimated 10-11 million “undocumented individuals” in the U.S. were staying out of trouble, minding their own business, employed or studying, and contributing to our economic success. The trouble was not “failed enforcement,” as the White Nationalists like to claim, but rather a failed legal immigration system that should have found ways that these individuals who form an important part of our society could have been pre-screened and admitted legally in the first place. That also would have diminished the allure of human smugglers and facilitated even greater contributions to our tax base. The answer to a clearly failed and counterproductive policy is not to double down on its cruelest and most futile aspects — unfocused enforcement,

Even in cases where immediate immigraton isn’t possible, if there is a “real line” for legal immigration (not the bogus one invented by the nativists) and it progressed reasonably and predictably, most individuals would use it. In my experience, most immigrants and employers would much prefer to use the legal system, even if it has some delays and costs, if it presents a realistic and not-cost-prohibitive alternative to “extralegal” or “black market” migration.

If we are to continue to succeed as a nation, at some point, we must stop listening to the voices of the Trumps, Millers, Sessionses, Cuccinellis, Barrs and other White Nationalist bigots urging us to “return to the failed policies of the past” and instead develop a forward looking immigration and refugee system that sees migrants for what they are: an important and necessary element of our nation and our world. It’s the right and smart thing for a “nation of immigrants” to do.

The bad news: Despite its counterfactual basis and appeal to xenophobia and racism, the “temporary” immigration ban has widespread public support, according to today’s Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-support-state-restrictions-on-businesses-and-halt-to-immigration-during-virus-outbreak-post-u-md-poll-finds/2020/04/27/763249ee-88af-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html

So, expect the ban to last indefinitely and to increase in scope regardless of what happens with COVID-19. Xenophobia, racism, and appeals to White Nationalism are once likely to be the centerpiece of Trump’s reelection strategy, particularly with the economy in ruins.

PWS

04-27-20

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

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

Higgins writes:

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

Amy Howe writes at Scotusblog:

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

https://shar.es/aHxGIP

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

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

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

PWS

04-27-20

ERIN CORCORAN @ THE HILL: RACISM, BIGOTRY, & XENOPHOBIA ARE ALWAYS BAD POLICIES — The Pandemic Is No Exception — “Immigrants are part of the solution to the challenges we face today and should be welcomed rather than banned.”

https://apple.news/AKgOx97sDRfSvo9oc3h61cA

The use of executive branch power to wage a war on immigrants is one of the defining legacies of President Trump. He went on the offensive under the disguise of the coronavirus pandemic to advance his policy priority to significantly restrict legal immigration to the United States. This politically motivated maneuver violates federal and international law, and this is also morally reprehensible and disastrous for the domestic economy at home.

. . . .

It is not just health care that needs immigrants. A recent study found that the majority of economic growth between 2011 and 2016 is due to greater labor supply due to immigration. Immigrants also assist the country with innovation. They are twice as likely to start a business, to receive a Nobel Prize or Academy Award, or to receive a patent than native born workers.

Denying protection to individuals fleeing persecution based on potential public health grounds sends dangerous signals to oppressors and rogue nations that they are free to act with impunity because powerful nations are unwilling to protect their victims. Refugees searching for protection are built in the collective responsibility of the international community, even in any period of public crisis. Efforts by the president to renounce these duties are morally wrong and politically dangerous for the world.

Waging a war on immigrants will not protect us from the coronavirus. It instead puts individuals fleeing harm in further danger and weakens the economy of the United States. Immigrants are part of the solution to the challenges we face today and should be welcomed rather than banned.

.

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

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

The Clown Prince’s 🤡 “maliciously incompetent” ☠️ response to the coronavirus pandemic 🤮 continues to be one of the most stunning failures of Presidential leadership in U.S. history — one that will continue to put American lives at risk well into the future.

Unhappily, cowardly bashing of immigrants and constantly sending out racist “dog whistles” helped this charlatan get elected and remains one of the few things he’s good at (grifting, lying, and avoiding responsibility are others).

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

PWS

04-26-20

LEE SUNDAY EVANS @ WATERWELL: “The Power of Transcripts”— “It wasn’t hard to recognize the power of each individual story, and the patterns revealed when reading two, three, ten testimonies were a disturbing depiction of how the protections outlined in the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) were being violated.”

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

FYI, an essay by Waterwell Artistic Director Lee Sunday Evans on the company’s immigration law related work. Best, Jeff

https://howlround.com/power-transcripts

The Power of Transcripts

In July 2019, I sat down with a few people at the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School to discuss the possibility of bringing a performance of The Courtroom: a re-enactment of one woman’s deportation proceedings—a production by the New York City–based theatre company Waterwell, where I’m artistic director—to their campus. Fast forward thirty minutes and Elora Mukherjee—the director of the clinic, an immigration lawyer and professor—had our attention focused in a different direction.

Elora was describing her work as a monitor for the Flores Settlement Agreement—a court settlement that sets the time limit and conditions under which children can be held in immigration detention—over the past twelve years; two weeks earlier, she had provided testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform about the deplorable conditions she and her colleagues had witnessed in two immigration detention facilities in Clint and Ursula, Texas. Then, Elora politely declined to bring The Courtroom to Columbia Law School—at least for the time being—and asked if Waterwell would consider making a new project using first-person testimonies of the children and young parents she had met at the border.

I’ll start at the beginning of our company’s engagement with immigration and then describe The Flores Exhibits—the project Waterwell created in response to this conversation with Elora Mukherjee.

The Courtroom. Photo by Miguel Amortegui

The Courtroom

In the summer of 2018, Arian Moayed—an actor, writer, director, and co-founder of Waterwell—was watching, along with the rest of the United States, as an increasingly heated debate about immigration enveloped our country. Family separations at the border and the uproar that followed flooded the news, along with stories about how increasingly rapid deportation proceedings were compromising due process. Arian was born in Iran, immigrated here when he was seven years old, and became a citizen when he was twenty-six. The stories of how the United States was treating immigrants hit him personally.

He thought: How can Waterwell respond? What can we do to add something meaningful to this conversation?

Then a new question crystallized in his mind: We hear about them in the media, but what does a deportation proceeding in court actually look like? How do deportation proceedings work?

While reaching out to a handful of immigration lawyers and asking them to share transcripts of deportation proceedings, Arian met Richard Hanus, an immigration lawyer in Chicago, who has been practicing for over twenty-five years. Richard shared transcripts of one case he thought might be of interest, and Arian read it right away. The case was powerful.

The transcripts gave the story a certain kind of objectivity, an unvarnished truthfulness about immigration.

A few months later, I started as the newly appointed artistic director of Waterwell. Arian and I dove into these transcripts, did a rough edit of them, then another, then another, then an intense three-day text workshop with incredible actors, and came out with a script that had a three-act structure, with all the dialogue taken entirely from the court transcripts.

We asked Jeffrey S. Chase, a former immigration judge and widely respected leader in the field, to help us understand legal terms in the transcripts and to advise us on how to make most accurate representation of immigration court. He made a terrific recommendation: Go watch some proceedings.

We met at 26 Federal Plaza, went through the metal detectors, and headed up to the floors where proceedings take place. The courtrooms are small, with drop ceilings. There are no witness boxes and there is often no lawyer representing the immigrant—if you are an immigrant required to appear in immigration court, you don’t have automatic access to legal representation. This was not news to Arian, but for me, as a person born in the United States who had never interacted with the immigration system, I found it surprising and unsettling. Immigrants represent themselves, or pay not-unsubstantial sums to hire a lawyer. Non-profits and law school clinics step in to fill this gap, but they do not—and cannot—reach everyone.

Watching court proceedings—the combination of banal procedural details and life-and-death stakes—fundamentally shaped our thinking. What we witnessed was quiet, tense, tedious, disorienting. We knew that, for our performance, we’d have to risk recreating those very dynamics. It wouldn’t be quite a play but a reenactment. As we created The Courtroom, we focused on the small, regular mistakes shown in the transcripts—awkward phrasing of a thought, the quick mistaken use of a word—embracing them as interesting windows into how people function in court when they are prepared but don’t have a script, and set out to find real courtrooms to perform in. We created the original staging in our most hallowed venue: a grand courtroom on the seventeenth floor of the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, the seat of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Though this prestigious courtroom was very different from small, plain immigration courts, the architecture taught us a lot about how courtrooms work.

The Courtroom. Photo by Maria Baranova.

The transcripts we used to create the script were from the case of Elizabeth Keathley, an immigrant from the Philippines who came to the United States on a K3 visa after she married her husband, who was a United States citizen. After inadvertently registering to vote at the DMV in Bloomington, Illinois, receiving a voter registration card in the mail, and voting, Elizabeth had to appear in court for deportation hearings. She lost the first case, but her appeal was heard in the Seventh Circuit, where the federal judges ruled in her favor.

The first performances were terrifying. We had no idea if the piece would capture people’s interest and hold their attention. But we put our faith in how this case encapsulated the age-old adage about the personal and the political. Through this story about a married couple in the early stages of building their family, who had made one honest mistake that put the wife in danger of being deported, the audience got to see a portrait of our nation’s legal system that exposed its catastrophic flaws and showed its singular, profound potential.

We were floored by audiences’ responses to the performances and started to understand the real power of the transcripts.

The transcripts gave the story a certain kind of objectivity, an unvarnished truthfulness about immigration—a polarizing issue that seems relentlessly distorted when we encounter it in the media, something that is all the more painful because it is central to our country’s identity. Ali Noorani, director of the National Immigration Forum, put it perfectly in his book, There Goes the Neighborhood: “Immigration gets at the core of who we are, and who we want to be, as a country.”

The Courtroom gave audiences an opportunity to get closer to the immigration legal system’s inner workings. Not to be told what to think, not to be told again how bad things are, but to get closer to something true and real. It was our realization about the power of unaltered transcripts that guided us when we started to think about what to make in response to our conversation with Elora Mukherjee.

The Flores Exhibits

We told Elora we would think deeply about how we could make a meaningful project, and she said she’d send us the testimonies. We took the conversation with her very seriously, feeling a sincere responsibility as artists to take up the need she put before us but having very little idea what we could create in response.

I printed out everything Elora sent me and sat down to read the sixty-nine testimonies. I thought: Again, here is that combination of procedural banality alongside life-and-death stakes. It unnerved me. The project needed to capture that specific disorienting, haunting aspect of the testimonies. It wasn’t hard to recognize the power of each individual story, and the patterns revealed when reading two, three, ten testimonies were a disturbing depiction of how the protections outlined in the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) were being violated.

Here’s a quick history of the FSA and why it’s important: In 1985, a fifteen-year-old Salvadoran girl named Jenny Flores was held in substandard conditions in immigration detention for a prolonged period of time. Based on her experience, a number of legal organizations filed a lawsuit against the government, which in 1997 resulted in the Flores Settlement Agreement. This set standards for the treatment of unaccompanied children (anyone under the age of eighteen) while they are in detention, including requiring the government to provide reasonable standards of care as well as safe and sanitary living conditions, and to release minors without any unnecessary delay, setting a cap of twenty days.

It is often impossible for people held in detention to socially distance, and there are many reports that there is no access to soap or sanitizer in numerous facilities.

The sixty-nine testimonies that Elora gave us were exhibits filed by the National Youth Law Center in a temporary restraining order requesting emergency relief for minors held in Customs and Border Patrol facilities; the firsthand accounts demonstrated violations of the Flores Settlement. Wrenching news reports about children being held in detention facilities for extended period of times—sometimes in cages—without access to basic hygiene supplies and adequate nutrition or sleep were based on these lawyers’ experiences and these testimonies.

What could we create to respond? We wanted people to experience the testimonies in full. We wanted people outside of New York City, where we’re based, to hear them. We wanted to involve actors but also all the incredible people we’d met during the process of creating The Courtroom who were not actors: lawyers, former judges, immigrant-rights advocates, immigrants who are not in the arts, and playwrights, designers, and other artists invested in this issue.

We decided not to make a piece of theatre. We decided to make a series of videos.

The testimonies would be read in full, without any textual or cinematic editing. We would ask readers from different sectors of society to participate with the hope that it would demonstrate—in a quiet, un-didactic way—a wide-ranging solidarity and investment in the issue. Each reader would sit at a simple wooden table with a glass of clean water, which is often described in the testimonies as being hard for immigrants to get in detention.

The Flores Exhibits. Photo courtesy of Andrew Kluger.

We wanted the readers to be good storytellers but I directed them not to take on any “character” they gleaned from the text or embody the experience described by the person who gave the testimony to the lawyers. We said the goal was for people to hear the words as clearly as possible—without emphasis, without dramatization.

To date, we have filmed forty-three out of the sixty-nine testimonies and are working to complete the filming of the remaining ones. This coming fall, we hope to instigate and facilitate live screenings of The Flores Exhibits around the country as a way to bolster support, organizing, and advocacy for the protections outlined in the Flores Settlement Agreement to be upheld and improved.

Taking Action

Right now, there are efforts around the country to decarcerate as many people held in jails, prisons, and detention facilities as possible due to the amplified dangers posed by COVID-19 to anyone in this kind of environment. It is often impossible for people held in detention to socially distance, and there are many reports that there is no access to soap or sanitizer in numerous facilities.

Using excerpts from videos in The Flores Exhibits, we released this ninety-second video connecting firsthand testimonies of people held in detention in June 2019 to the urgent need to get people out of detention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you are interested in getting involved, here are a few ways to start:

Find out where there are detention facilities near you: local jails and prisons often have contracts with ICE, and there are dedicated ICE facilities, often in rural areas. Once you know where those facilities are in your state, follow them in the news and connect with and support local organizations and elected representatives who advocate for the release of immigrants, proper living conditions, and access to healthcare in detention. (For a full explanation of government agencies involved in immigration detention, watch this video.)
Join and amplify the efforts of Detention Watch Network, a coalition of eight hundred organizations around the country to get urgent messages to governors, ICE directors, sheriffs, and other represented officials to release people from detention during COVID-19.
Join New Sanctuary’s efforts to advocate to free unaccompanied minors held in immigration detention.
Join Freedom for Immigrants to get involved in your area.
Read the Southern Border Community Coalition’s New Border Vision so you can be part of their proactive movement to transform culture, values, and policy at our southern border.

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

Think about the grotesque perversions of justice going on in the US today! Desperate kids seeking protection and entitled to legal process being illegally held in detention as unlawful punishment and coercion in violation of U.S. Court orders.

Some of the criminals who masterminded and carried out these illegal, unethical, and totally immoral schemes not only remain free but, outrageously, are on our public payroll: Thugs like Stephen Miller, Chad Wolf, Billy Barr, and Ken Cuccinelli. “Cooch Cooch” actually continues to spew his vile propaganda after being held by a Federal Judge to have been illegally appointed.

Another notorious human rights criminal and child abuser, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, remains at large and is outrageously running for return to the Senate, a position he already had abused and misused to promote a White Nationalist racist agenda in the past.

Still others like “Big Mac With Lies” and Kirstjen Nielsen are also at large, disingenuously trying to “reinvent” themselves by having the audacity to tout their past criminal activities, public lies, and human rights abuses as “senior executive experience.”

As these transcripts show, it’s a “world turned upside down” under the vile Trump kakistocracy. But, we all have a chance to redeem our nation in November by voting the kakistocracy out and re-establishing honesty, human values, mutual respect, cooperation, our Constitution, and the rule of law as the hallmarks of America.

On the other hand, the despicable performance by those public officials who abandoned their legal and moral obligations to humanity also shines a light on the many unsung heroes of our time: folks like Professor Elora Mukherjee, Lee Sunday Evans, Arian Moayed, Judge Jeffrey Chase, and the many other members of the New Due Process Army throughout the U.S. Unlike many of our public officials, they are standing up for Due Process and the rule of law in the face of seemingly never-ending tyranny, racism, xenophobia, and hate-mongering from the Trump regime.

Due Process Forever! The Regime’s Continuing Child Abuse ☠️☠️ Never!

PWS

04-26-20

REGIME SCOFFLAW/CHILD ABUSE WATCH: For What Seems Like The Millionth Time, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee Finds Regime In Violation Of Court Ordered Release Of Migrant Kids From Trump’s “Kiddie Gulag,”☠️ Orders Immediate Corrective Action!

Stephen Miller Cartoon — Stephen Miller & Count Olaf
Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-orders-release-migrant-children-despite-challenges-presented-pandemic-n1192456

Dennis Romero reports for NBC News:

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration was again violating a longstanding agreement that compels the government to release migrant children detained at the border within 20 days and ordered the minors be released.

Plaintiffs represented by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law have been challenging the child detention policies of the administration of President Donald Trump in Los Angeles federal court, where they’ve alleged the coronavirus crisis has caused further delays in the mandated release of migrant children.

The challenges are being waged under a 1997 settlement between immigrant advocates and the government known as the Flores agreement. It generally requires children detained at the border and kept in nonlicensed facilities to be released within weeks.

Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee oversees the settlement and issued a mixed ruling to enforce the Flores agreement and again ordered the government to “expedite the release” of children in its custody.

“This court order could very well prevent hundreds of children from becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 infection, and may even save some children’s lives,” longtime plaintiffs’ attorney Peter Schey said by email. “On behalf of the 5,000 detained children we represent, we are deeply grateful for the court’s humane order.”

The Flores agreement has faced multiple challenges since the Trump administration in 2018 enacted a policy of separating family members at the border as a means of dissuading illegal crossings. The administration backed down but was slow to reunite children when their parents.

Plaintiffs alleged the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement stopped releasing children to parents, relatives or potential guardians in New York, California and Washington to avoid becoming entangled in those states’ stay-at-home rules during the pandemic.

They also argued the government was dragging its feet by halting the release process for some children because parents, relatives and potential guardians couldn’t easily be fingerprinted for background checks.

Plaintiffs said delays endangered children as the virus could spread in detention facilities, citing a nonprofit facility in Texas “placed under a 14-day quarantine order,” according to Friday’s ruling.

They also alleged that a teen turned 18 during “quarantine” and was released to ICE rather than going to a family placement program “already secured for him.”

Gee did not agree with all those claims. But she concluded: “ORR and ICE shall continue to make every effort to promptly and safely release” children represented by plaintiffs.

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

The solution is obvious: 1) release the kids👍; 2) jail Stephen ☠️🤮Miller👍👍👍.

Here’s a copy of Judge Gee’s latest order in Flores v. Barr:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6877191/Flores-Settlement-Order4-24-20.pdf

PWS

04-25-20

Related posts:

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts & Star Chambers, Never!

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

PWS

Related posts:

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

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

Related posts:

Related posts:

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

Related posts:

Three cheers for Sue!

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

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

Related posts:

Related posts:

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

Related posts:

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

Related posts:

Due Process Forever! The Regime’s Continuing Child Abuse ☠️☠️ Never!

Related posts:

Related posts: