Trump Tweets – Page 20 – immigrationcourtside.com

PAUL KRUGMAN: WE MUST CALL OUT TRUMP’S EVIL MOTIVES: “When you’re confronting bad-faith arguments, the public should be informed not just these arguments are wrong, but they they are in fact being made in bad faith. . . . Trump has assembled an Administration of the worst and the dimmest.” — I/O/W “A Kakistocracy”

Charles Kaiser
American Author, Journalist, Academic Administrator

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/03/arguing-with-zombies-review-paul-krugman-trump-republicans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Charles Kaiser writes about Krugman in The Guardian:

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has four essential rules for successful punditry:

Stay with the easy stuff

Write in English

Be honest about dishonesty

Don’t be afraid to talk about motives

Active Measures review: how Trump gave Russia its richest target yet

Those maxims have consistently made Krugman the most intelligent and the most useful New York Times pundit, at least since Frank Rich wrote his final must-read column 11 years ago. A new collection of Krugman’s pieces, therefore, is a timely reminder that actual knowledge and ordinary common sense are two of the rarest qualities in mainstream journalism today.

Krugman’s enemies are the “zombie ideas” of his book’s title, especially the belief that budget deficits are always bad and the notion that tax cuts for the rich can ever benefit anyone other than the plutocrats who never stop pleading for them.

The same tired arguments in favor of coddling the rich have been rolled out over and over again, by Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, even though there has never been a shred of serious evidence to support them.

These relentless efforts over five decades culminated in the Trump tax cut, memorably described by the political consultant Rick Wilson as a masterwork of “gigantic government giveaways, unfunded spending, massive debt and deficits, and a catalogue of crony capitalist freebies”.

Wilson also identified the billionaires’ effect on the nation’s capital. Washington, he wrote, has become “the drug-resistant syphilis of political climates, largely impervious to treatment and highly contagious”.

Krugman’s columns act like a steady stream of antibiotics, aimed at restoring the importance of the economic sciences that have been so successfully displaced by brain-dead Republican ideology.

Very few political columns are worth reading 12 months after they are written – the New York Times grandee James Reston accurately titled one of his collections Sketches in the Sand. But Krugman’s book proves that he, a Nobel-prize winning economist, shares two rare qualities with George Orwell, the novelist who also wrote much of the best journalism of the 20th century: deep intelligence and genuine prescience.

The modern GOP doesn’t want to hear from serious economists, whatever their politics. It prefers charlatans and cranks

Krugman is at his Orwellian best here: “When you’re confronting bad-faith arguments, the public should be informed not just these arguments are wrong, but they they are in fact being made in bad faith.”

It’s “important to point out that the people who predicted runaway inflation from the Fed’s bond buying were wrong. But it’s also important to point out that none of them have been willing to admit that they were wrong.”

Krugman also writes that “even asking the right questions like ‘what is happening to income inequality’” will spur quite a few conservatives to “denounce you as un-American”. And it’s worse for climate scientists, who face persecution for speaking the truth about our continued dependence on fossil fuels, or social scientists studying the causes of gun violence: “From 1996 to 2017 the Centers for Disease Control were literally forbidden to fund research into firearm injuries and deaths.”

The history of the last half-century is mostly about how the unbridled greed of the top 1% has perverted American democracy so successfully, it has become almost impossible to implement rational policies that benefit a majority of Americans.

To Krugman, an “interlocking network of media organizations and think tanks that serves the interests of rightwing billionaires” has “effectively taken over the GOP” and “movement ‘conservatism’ is what keeps zombie ideas, like belief in the magic of tax cuts, alive.

“It’s not just that Trump has assembled an administration of the worst and the dimmest. The truth is that the modern GOP doesn’t want to hear from serious economists, whatever their politics. It prefers charlatans and cranks, who are its kind of people.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Hopefully, Joe Biden has Krugman and others like him on “speed dial.” He’s going to need lots of help and ideas from “the best and the brightest” to undo the damage inflicted by the Trump kakistocracy and Moscow Mitch.

And, the “best and the brightest” should also be the plan for rebuilding an independent Immigration Judiciary and the Article III Judiciary. The severe damage inflicted by Trump, Mitch, and the White Nationalists can’t be undone overnight, but “gotta start building for a better future somewhere.”

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

PWS

05-03-20

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: The “Reopen America” Movement Has Been A Haven For White Supremacists & Neo-Nazis!

http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkc1u4yAURp8m3iXCYDvOgkWbvyaKPeooTTuziTDc2CQ2ZADXtZ–JJnNSCOBkA4X3ct3OHNQatPTq7YuaC2YoxQ0DlOEUhIIGokwjdNA2uPJADRM1tSZFoJrW9SSMye1uj3AKCYkqGiMyOw0Dac4CpFgiIkZ4uKUwjSNOCpOKLi1ObJWSFAcKHyC6bWCoKaVc1c7Ik8jvPKrAuYqMFx_GckrZoTVamLbwjrGLxOuG19z9bth_RiPMcJoRFZOX0CNyAL6bcjxof_A9WVz1mG2L7tsUQ67-bYrSI7-cpSd33C2yOymqSsx3yTZ_i36sXiN8mEZ57KT7CMffJ3kLwe522-6fJ8NG885Ocg7X88GMQ_73–rs1jXn4XcziYh-nWWccTquWsO789DuX593o1TxNo8X-2Xf5z8mZrP5Zd4eQokvU2OfGgowQlJJuGkunRKJ9a4uB1FqCnxP78ODN2CUlKVNsT-nun6jr2Noz-bVknXH0GxogbxEOUeZu-5u_4KVEFna3AOzAN6exGOE0QC30lor1jR_8X_Df8lvRc

Heather writes:

. . . .

The political conversation is also shifting to benefit the president in a second way: the now repeated warnings that the coronavirus might have a “second wave” and peak again in the fall. Here’s the thing: we never finished the first wave. Our highest daily number of deaths was… yesterday, when 2,909 Americans died. We are still very much in the heart of this first wave, but by shaping this conversation as looking ahead to concern in the future, it rhetorically accomplishes what Trump set out to do just a week ago—convince us that we have successfully lived through the worst part of the pandemic and that it is safe to reopen the economy.

Finally, the political conversation is shifting in way that undermines our nation’s deepest principle. People are actually arguing about whether it might be a good thing to kill off society’s weakest members. A member of a planning commission from the San Francisco area took to Facebook to suggest we should just let coronavirus take its course. Lots of people would die, he wrote, primarily old and sick people, but that would take the pressure off Social Security and lower health care costs. There would be more jobs and housing available. And as for homeless people, when they died it would “fix what is a significant burden on our society….”

This man was removed from office, but his sentiments are not isolated. It is impossible to overlook that the people demanding states ease restrictions are overwhelmingly white, when both African Americans and Native Americans are badly susceptible to Covid-19. In Chicago, for example, 32% of the population is African American; 67% of the dead have been black. Further south, the Navajo Nation is behind only New York and New Jersey for the highest infection rate in the US.

White supremacists are celebrating these deaths, and calling for their supporters to infect minorities with the virus. But even those who insist they simply want society to open up again are demanding policies that will disproportionately kill some Americans at higher rates than others. Some are overt about their hatreds—like the Illinois woman who carried a sign with the motto from Auschwitz and the initials of the Jewish governor—and others simply sacrifice minorities in the course of business, as Trump did when he used the Defense Production Act to keep infected meat processing plants operating, plants overwhelmingly staffed by black and brown people.

If we accept the idea that some of us matter more than others, we have given up the whole game. This country was—imperfectly, haltingly—formed on the principle that we are all created equal, and equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we are willing to admit that our founders were wrong, that we are not equal, that older Americans, Black Americans, Brown Americans, sick Americans, all matter less than healthy white Americans, we have admitted the principle that we are not all created equal, and that some of us are better than others.

This is, of course, the principle of white supremacy, but it does no favors to most white people, either. Once we have abandoned the principle of equality, any one of us is a potential sacrifice.

And then it will not matter anymore what our political narrative is, for it will be as much as our lives are worth to disagree with whatever our leaders say.

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

Read the latest installment of Heather’s “Letters From An American” at the above link.

A real President might have used the Defense Production Act to order “Big Meat” 🥩 to immediately take the necessary steps to insure the safety of its workers in accordance with Federal guidelines so they could return to work. He could have ordered companies to prioritize the production of personal protection equipment for meat workers to the same degree as that for “first responders.”

Instead, he basically ordered the workers, usually low paid and heavily made up of minorities, immigrants, and undocumented residents to return to their dangerous and low paying jobs while absolving “Big Meat” 🥩 of responsibility for negligent disregard of their workers’ health and welfare.

Clearly, for Trump and his band, concern for human life stops at birth. The whole premise of Trumpism and the modern GOP has been that some lives matter more than others.

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

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

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

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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

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

DUE PROCESS/GENDER-BASED ASYLUM WINS: 1st Cir. Slams BIA, Sessions’s Matter of A-B- Atrocity – Remands For Competent Adjudication of Gender-Based Asylum Claim — DE PENA-PANIAGUA v. BARR

DE PENA-PANIAGUA v. BARR, 1^st Cir., 04-24-20, published

OLBD OPINION VACATING AND REMANDING

PANEL: Howard, Chief Judge, Kayatta and Barron, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Kayetta

KEY EXCERPTS (Courtesy of Amer S. Ahmed, Esquire, Gibson Dunn, Pro Bono Counsel for the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges as Amici):

[The BIA] added, however, that “[e]ven if [De Pena] had

suffered harm rising to the level of past persecution,” De Pena’s

proposed particular social groups are analogous to those in Matter

of A-R-C-G, 26 I. & N. Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), which the BIA

understood to have been “overruled” by the Attorney General in

Matter of A-B, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316, 319 (A.G. 2018). The BIA read

A-B as “determin[ing] that the particular social group of ‘married

women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship’ did

not meet the legal standards to qualify as a valid particular

social group.”

…

That conclusion poses two questions to be resolved on

this appeal: First, does A-B categorically reject any social group

defined in material part by its members’ “inability to leave” the

relationships in which they are being persecuted; and, second, if

so, is A-B to that extent consistent with the law?

…

Is it reasonable to read the law as supporting such a categorical

rejection of any group defined by its members’ inability to leave

relationships with their abusers? A-B itself cites only fiat to

support its affirmative answer to this question. It presumes that

the inability to leave is always caused by the persecution from

which the noncitizen seeks haven, and it presumes that no type of

persecution can do double duty, both helping to define the

particular social group and providing the harm blocking the pathway

to that haven. These presumptions strike us as arbitrary on at

least two grounds.

….

First, a woman’s inability to leave a relationship may

be the product of forces other than physical abuse. In

Perez-Rabanales v. Sessions, we distinguished a putative group of

women defined by their attempt “to escape systemic and severe

violence” from a group defined as “married women in Guatemala who

are unable to leave their relationship,” describing only the former

as defined by the persecution of its members. 881 F.3d 61, 67

(1st Cir. 2018). In fact, the combination of several cultural,

societal, religious, economic, or other factors may in some cases

explain why a woman is unable to leave a relationship.

…

We therefore do not see any basis other

than arbitrary and unexamined fiat for categorically decreeing

without examination that there are no women in Guatemala who

reasonably feel unable to leave domestic relationships as a result

of forces other than physical abuse. In such cases, physical abuse

might be visited upon women because they are among those unable to

leave, even though such abuse does not define membership in the group

of women who are unable to leave.

…

Second, threatened physical abuse that precludes

departure from a domestic relationship may not always be the same

in type or quality as the physical abuse visited upon a woman

within the relationship. More importantly, we see no logic or

reason behind the assertion that abuse cannot do double duty, both

helping to define the group, and providing the basis for a finding

of persecution. An unfreed slave in first century Rome might well

have been persecuted precisely because he had been enslaved (making

him all the same unable to leave his master). Yet we see no reason

why such a person could not seek asylum merely because the threat

of abuse maintained his enslaved status. As DHS itself once

observed, the “sustained physical abuse of [a] slave undoubtedly

could constitute persecution independently of the condition of

slavery.” Brief of DHS at 34 n.10, Matter of R-A, 23 I. & N. Dec.

694 (A.G. 2005).

For these reasons, we reject as arbitrary and unexamined

the BIA holding in this case that De Pena’s claim necessarily fails

because the groups to which she claims to belong are necessarily

deficient. Rather, the BIA need consider, at least, whether the

proffered groups exist and in fact satisfy the requirements for

constituting a particular social group to which De Pena belongs.

Amer S. Ahmed

GIBSON DUNN

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

Read the full opinion at the link above.

While Judge Kayetta does not specifically cite our Round Table’s brief, a number of our arguments are reflected in the opinion. Undoubtedly, with lots of help from Amer and our other superstar friends over at Gibson Dunn, we’re continuing to make a difference and hopefully save some deserving lives of the refugees intentionally screwed by our dysfunctional Immigration Court system under a politicized DOJ.

I’ve heard of the bogus rationale used by the BIA in this case reflected in a number of wrongly decided unpublished asylum denials by both the BIA and Immigration Judges. This should make for plenty of remands, slowing down the “Deportation Railroad,” jacking up the backlog, and once again showing the “substantial downside” of idiotic “haste makes waste shenanigans” at EOIR and allowing biased, unqualified White Nationalist hacks like Sessions and Barr improperly to interfere with what are supposed to be fair and impartial adjudications consistent with Due Process and fundamental fairness.

Great as this decision is, it begs the overriding issue: Why is a non-judicial political official, particularly one with as strong a prosecutorial bias as Sessions or Barr, allowed to intervene in a quasi-judicial decision involving an individual and not only reverse the result of that quasi-judicial tribunal, but also claim to set a “precedent” that is binding in other quasi-judicial proceedings? Clearly, neither Ms. De Pena-Paniagua nor any other respondent subject to a final order of removal under this system received the “fair and impartial decision by an unbiased decision-maker” which is a minimum requirement under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Let’s put it in terms that an Article III Circuit Court Judge should understand. Suppose Jane Q. Public sues the United States in U.S. District Court in Boston and wins a judgment. Unhappy with the result, Attorney General Billy Barr orders the U.S. District Judge to send the case to him for review. He enters a decision reversing the U.S. District Judge and dismissing Public’s claim against the United States. Then, he orders all U.S. District Judges in the District of Massachusetts to follow his decision and threatens to have them removed from their positions or demoted to non-judicial positions if they refuse.

The First Circuit or any other Court of Appeals would be outraged by this result and invalidate it as unconstitutional in a heartbeat! They likely would also find Barr in contempt and refer him to state bar authorities with a recommendation that his law license be revoked or suspended.

Yet this is precisely what happened to Ms. A-B-, Ms. De Pena Paniagua, and thousands of other asylum applicants in Immigration Court. It happens every working day in Immigration Courts throughout the nation. It will continue to happen until Article III Appellate Judges live up to their oaths of fealty to the Constitution and stop the outrageous, life-threatening miscarriages of justice and human dignity going on in our unconstitutional, illegal, fundamentally unfair, and dysfunctional Immigration Courts.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-24-20

🏴‍☠️BRING IT ON! – “Moscow Mitch” 🇷🇺 Throws Down The Gauntlet, Challenges Trump For “Vilest Pol In America” 🤮☠️ — Can He Beat A Guy Who Uses The “Bully’s Pulpit” To Encourage Americans To Drink & Inject Poison? ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ — Nobel Prize 🏆 Winning Economist Paul Krugman @ NY Times Tells Us How “MM” Can Go Even Lower: “So yes, McConnell’s position is stupid. But it’s also vile.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/opinion/mcconnell-coronavirus-states.html

Krugman writes, in part, in the NYT:

. . . .

So yes, McConnell’s position is stupid. But it’s also vile.

Think of who would be hurt if state and local governments are forced to make drastic cuts. A lot of state money goes to Medicaid, a program that should be expanding, not shrinking, as millions of Americans are losing their health insurance along with their jobs.

As for the state and local government workers who may be either losing their jobs or facing pay cuts, most are employed in education, policing, firefighting and highways. So if McConnell gets his way, America’s de facto policy will be one of bailing out the owners of giant restaurant chains while firing schoolteachers and police officers.

Last but not least, let’s talk about McConnell’s hypocrisy, which like his stupidity comes on multiple levels.

At one level, it’s really something to see a man who helped ram through a giant tax cut for corporations — which they mainly used to buy back their own stock — now pretend to be deeply concerned about borrowing money to help states facing a fiscal crisis that isn’t their fault.

At another level, it’s also really something to see McConnell, whose state is heavily subsidized by the federal government, give lectures on self-reliance to states like New York that pay much more in federal taxes than they get back.

We’re not talking about small numbers here. According to estimates by the Rockefeller Institute, from 2015 to 2018 Kentucky — which pays relatively little in federal taxes, because it’s fairly poor, but gets major benefits from programs like Medicare and Social Security — received net transfers from Washington averaging more than $33,000 per person. That was 18.6 percent of the state’s G.D.P.

True, relatively rich states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut probably should be helping out their poorer neighbors — but those neighbors don’t then get the right to complain about “blue state bailouts” in the face of a national disaster.

Of course, McConnell has an agenda here: He’s hoping to use the pandemic to force afflicted states to shrink their governments. We can only hope both that this shameless exploitation of tragedy fails and that McConnell and his allies pay a heavy political price.

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

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

Have we all just been transported to “Jonestown 1978” ☠︎⚰️☠️⚰️?” Is our “Clown Prince” 🤡 actually the reincarnation of Rev. Jim Jones 🏴‍☠️?

Tired of being in the “Blue Majority” supporting “Red America” while excluded from control of our National Government? Tired of a Government of self-centered grifters — incapable of governing responsibly and in the public interest, but great at lining their pockets and those of their fat cat backers? Tired of an “Amateur Night at the Bijou” foreign policy that diminishes our nation and makes us the laughingstock the world? Tired of dealing with dirty water, polluted air, and crumbling bridges while the “Chief Clown” 🤡 sharpens his golf game? Tired of a kakistocracy that’s also a kelptocracy 💸 and practices nepotism? Tired of expensive health care that too often doesn’t improve the health of our nation? Tired of wages stagnating and benefits disappearing while the stock market goes bonkers and execs and shareholders get big payouts? Tired of lousy, anti-democracy judges 👨‍⚖️ who advance the interests of corporations, guns, and the GOP over the rights and dignity of individuals under our laws? Tired of paying the salaries of Neo-Nazi bigots like Stephen Miller? Tired of funding the “Afternoon Clown Show” 🤡 from the White House every day and dealing with its never-ending stream of dangerous ☠️ lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications?

Vote ‘Em Out, Vote ‘Em Out!

This November, send the “Clown Prince” 🤡, MM 🤮, and the rest of their anti-American party of disunity, incompetence, disorder, cruelty, stupidity, racism, and grift packing! Vote like your life depends on it! Because, it does!

PWS

04-24-20

LAW YOU CAN USE: Denise Hammond, Esquire, @ Grossman Young & Hammond With All You Really Need To Know About Trump’s Bogus Executive Order “Banning” Immigration! — It’s A Racist Diversion, But Still Another Blow To Democracy!

BLY EO MH dch FINAL

By Denise Hammond, Senior Counsel, Grossman Young, and Hammond:

4922 Fairmont Avenue, Suite 200 Bethesda, MD 20814 240.403.0913

8737 Colesville Road, Suite 500 Silver Spring, MD 20910 301.917.6900

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER SUSPENDING IMMIGRATION:

WHAT IT COVERS AND HOW IT DISTRACTS FROM EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

On Monday, April 20, 2020, Donald Trump tweeted that he would be “

Who is Barred by the Order?

The Order is relatively short and bars the following foreign nationals from immigrating permanently to the United States:

• Foreign Nationals Overseas Who Lack an Immigrant Visa or Green Card. With the exceptions discussed below, the Order applies to foreign nationals who do not have an immigrant visa or green card. Unless you are covered by an exception, you are barred from entering the United States as an immigrant even if you are processing, or planning to process, an immigrant visa at a US consul abroad. These visas could be through employment sponsorship, family sponsorship, or the Diversity Visa (DV) green card lottery as discussed below.

• Foreign nationals outside the United States. The Order only applies to individuals who were outside the US on April 23d, the date of issuance. Presumably, someone in the United States on that day could go home today, apply for an immigrant visa at the US Consulate there, and not be barred by the Order.

Who is Not Barred by the Order?

• Anyone in the United States on April 23. This bears repeating. If you are in the United States, you remain eligible to adjust your status to lawful permanent residence or, presumably, to apply for an immigrant visa abroad (discussed below).

1 The Order is entitled

signing an Executive Order

to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” This caused great consternation and

confusion among immigrants and their families, US businesses, and the immigration bar. On April

23d, Mr. Trump issued his Order.1 Now that we’ve had a chance to review it, we want to break it

down and explain who it does and does not cover, how it does nothing to make us safer or

strengthen the economy, and how it is another log on the anti-immigrant fire and a thinly-veiled

distraction from the lack of effective leadership to actually combat the Coronavirus.

“Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market

During the Economic Recovery Following the Covid-19 Outbreak

• Nonimmigrants. It is very important to note that the Order does not prevent nonimmigrants from entering the United States. As explained below, nonimmigrants are foreign nationals who enter the United States on a temporary basis and lack intent and permission to remain permanently.

• Anyone with an Immigrant Visa. You can immigrate if you already have an immigrant visa. An explanation of the green card process is helpful to understand this exception.

The Immigrant Visa (Green Card) Process. The process typically begins when the sponsor (e.g. an employer or US Citizen spouse) files an immigrant visa petition in the United States asking the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to find that the foreign national beneficiary satisfies the requirements for classification in a certain immigrant category, such as an outstanding researcher or the spouse of a US Citizen. On approval, when the beneficiary reaches the front of the visa waiting line (or if there is no line), he or she applies for permission to immigrate either through “adjustment of status” or “consular processing.” If the beneficiary is in the United States, in H-1B visa status for instance, s/he can apply to USCIS to “adjust” his or her status to lawful permanent residence. On approval, s/he will receive a green card. If the beneficiary is overseas, however, s/he must apply to the US Consulate in his or her home country for an immigrant visa. On approval, s/he will be granted an immigrant visa, can be physically admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident and will soon get a green card in the mail.

Anyone who is overseas and already has received an immigrant visa is exempt from the Order and can immigrate. (But keep in mind that the immigrant visa must be used within 6 months of issuance, which can be a problem given current global travel restrictions).

• Lawful Permanent Residents. The Order also does not apply to you if you already have a green card, lawful permanent residence or, as noted, an immigrant visa.

• US Military Members. If you are a member of the US military (or the spouse or child of a servicemember), the Order doesn’t apply to you.

• Healthcare Workers. The Order doesn’t apply to anyone overseas (and most immediate family members) who seeks an immigrant visa:

 as a doctor, nurse or other healthcare professional

 to perform COVID19 research

 to perform work essential to combating or helping patients with COVID19.

• Job Creation Investors. The Order does not apply to anyone who has an approved “EB-5” petition. This visa category if for foreign nationals who invest $1 million (or less in economically depressed areas) in projects that will create jobs for US workers.

• Special Immigrants. The Order does not apply to anyone certain individuals who see to immigrate under USCIS “Special Immigrant” programs, and their spouses and children:

 Afghanistan or Iraq nationals who supported the US Armed Forces as translators  Iraq nationals who worked for or on behalf of the US Government in Iraq2

• Law Enforcement Aid. The Order does not apply to you if you can satisfy the US Government that your immigration will advance important law enforcement objectives.

• National Interest. The Order doesn’t apply to you if you can show that your entry would be in the national interest.

• Holders of Advance Parole or other Travel Document. The Order does not apply to any foreign national who is overseas but who has Advance Parole or other official travel document.

• Asylees and Refugees. By its terms, nothing in the Order can limit the rights of asylees, refugees and foreign nationals that seek other forms of humanitarian relief. The Trump Administration’s assault on these forms of relief makes this suspect.

• Spouse and Children of US Citizens. The Order does not apply to a spouse, minor child or prospective adoptee of a US Citizen. In an especially harsh stroke, the Order bars from entry the parents of US Citizens and all family members of Lawful Permanent Residents (discussed below).

The Order gives the US Consul the authority to decide if any of the above exemptions applies.

ANALYSIS

The Order is a Harsh and Illusory Distraction from Failed Leadership and Does not Advance its Stated Purpose

A close look at the Order reveals the actual limits of its reach and shows that it fails to promote its stated purpose. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Order is primarily a distraction from a failure of leadership in the war on Covid-19 and yet another log on the anti-immigrant fires.

The Order’s Limited Reach. The Trump Administration effectively gutted overseas visa processing more than one month ago when, on March 20, it suspended routine visa services at US Consulates around the world in response to the pandemic.3 Since then, absent an emergency, immigrant visa

2 https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/special-immigrants

3 https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/ea/routine-visa-services-suspended-worldwide.html

applicants have been practically prevented from processing their cases and immigrating to the United States. Thus, although it is not readily apparent, the Order does little if anything to further curtail immigration.

The number of foreign nationals who are NOT affected by the Order also suggests that its surrounding fanfare is a lot of white noise. This is because it only bars “immigrants” but not “nonimmigrants” who comprise the vast majority of foreign nationals who enter the United States. Immigrants, a/k/a lawful permanent residents or green card holders, are those admitted to the United States on a permanent basis. To be eligible, they must meet the highly demanding requirements of a legal visa category. These can be based on a hard-to-fill job offer, extraordinary contributions, a close family relationship to a US Citizen or lawful permanent resident, a US investment that will create jobs, humanitarian considerations or a few other grounds. Nonimmigrants, on the other hand, enter the United States temporarily for a specific purpose. These include highly skilled H-1B professionals, certain investors, business visitors and tourists, and students, and their family members, to name a few.

The number of immigrants to the United States is dwarfed by the number of nonimmigrants who enter temporarily and are allowed to remain for various periods. Just over 1 million immigrants are admitted to the United States annually; more than 186 million nonimmigrants are admitted in a typical year. During the most recent year for which data is available, 90% of nonimmigrants were visitors for business or pleasure, and a small handful were temporary high-skilled workers, some agricultural workers and students, with their families. Currently, about 2.3 million nonimmigrants reside in the United States. i Thus, the exemption of nonimmigrants from the Order underscores its limited reach and its true purpose of distracting from failed leadership and appealing to anti- immigrant sentiment during an election cycle.

The Order is Temporary. Additionally, the Order is limited to 60 days, although it could be extended. By its terms, it was designed to protect job opportunities for marginalized US workers during record unemployment. Whether it will be extended most likely will depend on the state of the US economy, although we fear that political considerations will come into play.

The Order Fails to Promote its Stated Purpose. As its title shows, the Order is designed to protect jobs for US workers. The preamble states that the Order was designed to protect unemployed marginalized Americans, from competing for jobs during high unemployment. However, the Order fails to accomplish this end.

First, the Order shuts the door to the best and the brightest and the most highly educated from around the world and a host of others who will not compete for jobs with marginalized US workers. These include foreign nationals with demonstrated “extraordinary ability,” outstanding researchers, multi-national managers, advanced degree workers and those with exceptional ability and a college- education, all of whom are barred from entering in what are known as the “EB” or employment- based immigrant visa categories. While these workers could boost the economy, they clearly will not take jobs from the marginalized American worker.

Second, the Order assumes that immigrants will seek to work once they get here. While some will, the Trump Administration’s exceedingly onerous “public charge” requirements make this a disingenuous basis for banning their immigration. As a general rule, an immigrant visa applicant must show that s/he will not become a “public charge.” This now requires voluminous evidence that the intending immigrant can support himself or herself and his or her household with an unprecedented degree of assets and income or that the sponsor can provide this level of support. Immigrants who are in a position to meet this high threshold are unlikely to compete with marginalized workers for low-skilled jobs. Accordingly, it is dishonest and cruel to close the doors to all immigrants, including family-based immigrants, based on an outcry for marginalized worker job protection. Rather, in barring all family-based immigrants other than the spouses and children of US Citizens, the Order accomplishes one of Mr. Trump’s long-stated goals of ending what he calls “chain migration.” Parents of US citizens, who have long been a preferred category under US immigration law, are barred by the Order. So are adult children of US Citizens, siblings of US citizens, as well as spouses and children of permanent residents. Congress has passed laws allowing these parents, children, husbands and wives to immigrate to join their families in the United States. The Order eviscerates this law and policy without reason.

Conclusion

Mr. Trump’s Order suspending immigration to protect the US labor market during the coronavirus pandemic is the legal equivalent of ear candling to treat liver disease. Neither works, and both are dangerous.

Fans of ear candling use a hollow candle to drip hot wax in the ear. They claim it creates negative pressure and funnels out unwanted ear wax. But there’s no evidence that it works. Additionally, the FDA warns that it can block the ear canal, puncture the eardrum and cause other injuries. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with liver disease.

Mr. Trump’s new Order, likewise, is unhealthy for us as a nation and economically toxic. It does nothing to protect job opportunities for marginalized Americans, which is its stated purpose. Instead, it closes our borders to the best and the brightest whose very help we need to wrestle the virus to the mat. It also cruelly separates families.

The corona virus does not discriminate on the basis of immigration status. Mr. Trump should behave accordingly.

i https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Nonimmigrant_Population%20Estimates_2016_0.pdf

*********

Here’s a copy of the order:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspending-entry-immigrants-present-risk-u-s-labor-market-economic-recovery-following-covid-19-outbreak/

Thanks, Denise!

What we really have here is an “Eternal Reichstag Fire.” 🔥 The Clown in Chief 🤡 continues to use bogus “emergencies,” as “greenlighted” by the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes, to suspend the rule of law and “govern” by Executive decree.

This looks less like the “immigration bar” tweeted by Trump for the benefit of his “base” and more like “Phase I” of Stephen Miller’s draft White Nationalist rewrite of the permanent immigration system. It’s basically a way of reducing permanent immigration by “picking on” relatives of U.S. green card holders, adult relatives (other than spouses) of US citizens, DV Lottery winners, and limiting “employment-based” permanent immigration to certain medical professionals, researchers, and “big investors.”

The attack on family immigration, at the core of our traditional immigration system and a source of both economic strength and diversity, is basically what has become the racist trope of “eliminating chain migration.” What it really means is attempting to restrict migrants of color for a “whiter, more Christian” America, long a dream of Miller and the White Nationalist hate groups he has been associated with.

Miller’s nativist program was resoundingly rejected by a bipartisan majority of Congress. But now, with the “J.R. Five” firmly in their pocket, and Congress largely in a state of permanent suspension when it comes to anything other than handing out money, Trump and Miller plan to rewrite the legal immigration system, piece by piece, using Executive decrees propped up by a bogus, but never ending, “employment national emergency.”

On the other hand, by allowing the admission of “non- immigrants” the order recognizes that we will continue to need migrants and their industry and skills at all levels of our economy as we recover. But, they will be relegated to a more subservient status where they are beholden to employers and can’t qualify to become permanent members of our society and eventually citizens. In other words, insuring that migrants coming to America will remain exploitable and disenfranchised. This fits right in with Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist playbook.

Once the bogus declaration of “immigration emergency” has been invoked as “temporary,” it never ends. But, with Roberts and his gang of right wing authoritarian enablers determined to “look the other way,” don’t expect any loosening until we stand up and rid ourselves of the Trump kakistocracy at the ballot box (unless Trump gets away with burning that too).

A corrupt and cowardly Supremes’ majority and a feckless Congress led by “Moscow Mitch” are allowing Trump’s “misrule by decree” similar to the Third Reich. And of course “the other” — immigrants — are the primary target.

But, this is also by implication directed at drumming up hate and resentment against Hispanic Americans, all Americans of color, and Muslims, etc. In other words, the “usual suspects” for the White Nationalists. This “Eternal Reichstag Fire” 🔥of hate, lies, scapegoating, and authoritarianism will continue burning and consuming our democracy and its institutions unless and until we get “regime change.”

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

PWS

0-24-20

☠️☠️👎🏻👎🏻BAD FAITH REGIME: Federal Judge Slams DHS Detention Response To COVID-19, Orders Custody Reviews: “Defendants have likely exhibited callous indifference to the safety and wellbeing of the Subclass members [detained immigrants at risk]. The evidence suggests systemwide inaction that goes beyond a mere ‘difference of medical opinion or negligence.’”

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/court-orders-custody-review-of-ice-prisoners-at-risk-for-c19

Court Orders Custody Review of ICE Prisoners at Risk for C19

SPLC, Apr. 20, 2020

“A federal judge today ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to promptly revisit custody determinations, including consideration of release for all persons in ICE detention whose age or health conditions place them at increased risk due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The order comes weeks after the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Orrick LLP and Willkie Farr and Gallagher LLP filed for an emergency preliminary injunction on March 25.

In his blistering rebuke of the government’s response to Covid-19 in detention centers, U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal wrote, “As a result of these deficiencies, many of which persist more than a month into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Court concludes Defendants have likely exhibited callous indifference to the safety and wellbeing of the Subclass members [detained immigrants at risk]. The evidence suggests systemwide inaction that goes beyond a mere ‘difference of medical opinion or negligence.’” “

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

Go on over to LexisNexis above for a link to the SPLC report and copy of Judge Bernal’s order.

Thanks and congrats to SPLC and all the pro bono all-stars involved for taking this on. Will there eventually be accountability and liability for what appears to be intentional, life threatening misconduct, or at best criminal negligence, among officials of the Trump regime?

PWS

04-21-20

“DUH” ARTICLE OF DA’ DAY: The Ban Is (Yet Another) Scam! 🆘🤥👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/trumps-new-immigration-ban-is-scam-dont-pretend-otherwise/

Greg Sargent writes in the WashPost:

There is a single, overarching reality that President Trump cannot make disappear: Due to his pathological unwillingness to take coronavirus seriously, Trump catastrophically squandered numerous early weeks that could have been used to develop a much more robust federal response, and right now we’re living through the horrible consequences.

Trump’s new suspension on immigration, which he “announced” on Twitter late last night, should be seen through this prism.

The new suspension has two rationales, according to Trump and White House officials: To continue combating coronavirus and to protect U.S. workers amid a crushing economic downturn.

It will do neither of those things in any meaningful sense — which means that it won’t have the impact that Trump himself says it’s designed to.

According to the New York Times, Trump will sign an executive order that temporarily bars “the provision of new green cards and work visas,” which means the administration will “no longer approve any applications from foreigners to live and work in the United States for an undetermined period of time.”

It’s hard to say how much of an impact this will have. As the Wall Street Journal points out:

Administration officials said the order wouldn’t make substantial changes to current U.S. policy. Even without an executive order, the administration has already all but ceased nearly every form of immigration. Most visa processing has been halted, meaning almost no one can apply for a visa to visit or move to the U.S. Visa interviews and citizenship ceremonies have been postponed and the refugee program paused.

Immigration analyst Sarah Pierce notes that a lot will turn on details, such as whether this suspension applies to foreign nationals already here and applying for green cards or trying to renew visas, or if it only applies to people outside the country who want to come here, which is effectively no longer possible already.

“If they want to make official what’s already in place, it would make a flashy statement while having minimal impact,” Pierce told me, adding that if they did apply it to people who are already here as well, it could be a lot worse.

President Trump on April 20 said he will issue an executive order temporarily suspending all immigration into the country. (Reuters)

We’ll see soon enough. But we can say right now that this isn’t a solution to the current problems we face on coronavirus, because those problems are rooted in the spread that already took place here. We are starting to bend the curve through social distancing — which Trump long resisted, and which he then tried to undo prematurely before backing off.

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

Yup! You can read the rest of Greg’s article at the link.

Now, in a real democracy, with an independent judiciary, we’d expect immediate and forceful repudiation and perhaps sanctions against the Executive for this latest racist scam.

But, as I have pointed out many times, the “J.R. Five” on the Supremes has a never-ending appetite for putting the law, our Constitution, and simple human decency aside and blindly supporting, enabling, and encouraging the White Nationalist regime in its various immigration scams and shenanigans. They are all as transparently bogus as this one. Trump makes an off the wall political statement out of the White Nationalist playbook and the minions run around trying to engineer and fabricate a legal pretext. The lower Federal Courts often immediately see through the fraud; but, the Supremes step in to rescue the racist agenda, sweep it under the carpet, and in doing so “greenlight” the next extreme step.

Sadly, even regime change won’t be enough to immediately restore courage, integrity, and human decency to our failed highest court. But, it will be a start. Sometimes, “internal rebellion from below” can force change, or at least some integrity and accountability, back into a failing judicial system.

Due Process Forever! White Nationalist Scams Never!

PWS

04-21-20

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Vote ‘Em Out, Vote ‘Em Out!

This November, send the “Clown Prince” 🤡, MM 🤮, and the rest of their anti-American party of disunity, incompetence, disorder, cruelty, stupidity, racism, and grift packing! Vote like your life depends on it! Because, it does!

PWS

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