Trump Tweets – Page 22 – immigrationcourtside.com

RISKING LIVES TO KEEP THE DEPORTATION RAILWAY RUNNING — FOR UNACCOMPANIED KIDS! — “It is inexplicable and dangerous that the Trump administration has insisted that detained unaccompanied children are still required to go to court,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense.” — Julia Preston Reports For The Marshall Project

Julia Preston
American Journalist
The Marshall Project

Wendy Young
President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/04/10/migrant-children-still-face-speedy-deportation-hearings-in-covid19-hotspots

Julia writes:

They are children who were caught crossing the southwest border without papers and sent to migrant shelters in New York when the coronavirus was silently spreading. Now the city is a pandemic epicenter in lockdown, but the Trump administration is pressing ahead with their deportation cases, forcing the children to fight in immigration court to stay.

In two courthouses in the center of the besieged city, hearings for unaccompanied children—migrants who were apprehended without a parent—are speeding forward. The U.S. Department of Justice, which controls the immigration courts, has said it has no plan to suspend them.

This week an 8-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a teenage single mother with an infant were preparing for imminent court dates and deadlines in New York, lawyers representing them said. With children trapped indoors in shelters and foster-care homes, many young migrants who don’t have lawyers may not even be aware of ongoing court cases that could quickly end with orders for them to be deported.

Hearings for unaccompanied children are also proceeding in courts in other COVID-19 hotspots, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency in charge of the immigration courts, has rejected calls from judges, prosecutors and immigration lawyers to shut down courts nationwide. Although hearings for immigrants who are not detained have been suspended through May 1, cases of people in detention are going forward at the same accelerated pace as before the pandemic.

That includes many unaccompanied children. Since last year, Trump administration officials have instructed the courts to treat those children as detained if they are in shelters or foster care under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, a federal agency. Immigration judges are under pressure to complete detained cases within 60 days—warp speed in immigration court—with no exception for children.

Across the country, about 3,100 unaccompanied children are currently in the custody of the refugee agency. Many have run from deadly violence and abuse at home and hope to find safety with family members in the United States. The demands for them to meet fast-moving court requirements are causing alarm among lawyers, caregivers and families.

“It is inexplicable and dangerous that the Trump administration has insisted that detained unaccompanied children are still required to go to court,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, which helps provide lawyers for unaccompanied children. Unlike in criminal courts, in immigration court children have no right to a lawyer paid by the government if they cannot afford one.

On April 8, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the immigration bar, and other legal groups asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order to force the Justice Department to suspend in-person hearings of detained immigrants during the pandemic.

Justice Department officials say they are holding hearings for immigrants in detention, including for children, so they can get their cases decided and perhaps be freed quickly.

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Read the rest of Julia’s report at the link.

The idea, as DOJ claims, that this is being done to facilitate the “freeing” of kids is preposterous on its face.

First, there is nothing stopping them from arranging placements for children without the Immigration Court hearings being completed. It used to be done all the time.

Second, the DOJ has intentionally and unethically rewritten asylum laws through “precedents” aimed primarily at making it harder to qualify for asylum. This abuse of process particularly targets those fleeing persecution resulting from various types of systematic government and societal violence in Central America. The approval rates for these types of cases have fallen to minuscule levels under Trump.

Third, no child has any chance of succeeding in Immigration Court without a lawyer. Almost all lawyers who represent children in Immigration Court serve “pro bono” — or work for NGOs who can only provide minimal salaries.

Yet, the Administration is making these lawyers risk their health and safety, while artificially accelerating the process, all of which actively and aggressively discourages representation.

Added to that is the constant “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” with Immigration Courts closing, reopening, and re-closing on a moment’s notice and dockets constantly being rearranged as judges, court support staff, interpreters, and DHS lawyers fall ill.

The Administration could work with groups like KIND and other NGOs to arrange placements, and schedule hearings in a manner that promotes health and safety for everyone while maximizing due process. But, the Administration refuses to do this.

Instead, those seeking to inject sanity, common sense, best practices, and human decency into the process are forced to sue the Administration in Federal Court. This further dissipates and diverts already scarce legal resources that could have been used to actually represent children in Immigration Court and arrange safe placements for them.

Finally, as I have noted previously, the Administration has simply suspended the operation of the Constitution and the rule of law at the borders. This means that thousands, including unaccompanied children, are “orbited into the void” without any process whatsoever or any effort to ascertain their situations or best interests.

All of this gives lie to the Administration’s bogus claim that this is about looking out for the best interests of these kids. No, it’s about maximizing cruelty, destroying lives (considered an effective and acceptable “deterrent” in nativist circles), and carrying out a noxious racist White Nationalist restrictionist immigration agenda.

And, to date, Congress and the Federal Courts, both of which have the power to put an end to this disgraceful, unlawful, and unconstitutional conduct have been largely “MIA.”

Nevertheless, thanks to courageous and dedicated journalists like Julia and organizations like KIND, a public record is being made. While those responsible for implementing and enabling these abuses directed at the “most vulnerable of the vulnerable” among us are likely to escape legal accountability, they will eventually be tried and found wanting in the “court of history.”

Due Process Forever! Trump’s Child Abuse Never!

PWS

04-10-20

AMERICA’S FUTURE IN HANDS OF SUPREMES — Based On Their Feckless Performance To Date, That’s Probably Not Going To Be A Good Thing — For Dreamers Or Anyone Else Who Respects Democracy & Human Values! — “That this is not about the law; this is about our choice to destroy lives.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/panic-and-fear-already-consume-our-daily-lives-will-the-supreme-court-pass-the-coronavirus-test

Cristian Farias in Vanity Fair:

. . . .

No case in the Supreme Court’s current docket has higher stakes for human life in the era of COVID-19 than its upcoming ruling on the fate of so-called Dreamers—young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children through no fault of their own, and who remain shielded from deportation thanks to a program President Barack Obama instituted in 2014.

A highly unusual letter made its way to the justices late last month, after the case had already been briefed, argued, and for which a decision is already in the works. Lawyers for a group of beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known colloquially as DACA, wrote to the justices to warn about the dire consequences that a ruling in favor of Trump would have on the roughly 27,000 health care workers who happen to be DACA recipients. Among them are doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others on the front lines of combating the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the country. “Termination of DACA during this national emergency would be catastrophic,” the lawyers wrote.

The letter wasn’t just an appeal to the justices’ humanity and sense of fairness—after all, like the rest of us, they themselves have had to cancel public hearings, practice social distancing, and adjust to telework. But the filing also brought to bear a legal requirement the Trump administration had to weigh, but didn’t, when the Department of Homeland Security first announced the wind-down of DACA: the multitude of “reliance interests” that the government had created when it instituted the program—not just for recipients who have built their livelihoods around it, but the scores of local governments, businesses, and institutions that rely on so-called Dreamers for their own day-to-day functioning. “The public health crisis now confronting our nation illuminates the depth of those interests as borne by employers, civil society, state, and local governments, and communities across the country, and especially by health care providers,” the lawyers wrote in their letter, which also listed examples of health care workers who would be at risk of losing it all if the Supreme Court somehow agreed with the arguments the Trump administration has made in its years-long bid to terminate DACA.

A pair of recent analyses by the Center for Migration Studies and the Center for American Progress broadened the lens and found that the number of DACA recipients who qualify as essential workers during the pandemic could reach hundreds of thousands, as many of them also work in the health industry as food preparers, custodians, or in administrative roles, or otherwise in the fields of education, manufacturing, transportation, food retail, or the hard-hit restaurant industry. Some of these health care professionals, like others in the trenches, have begun to speak up. “I am treating people suspected of having COVID-19, and all I’m asking is to stay in this country and provide that care,” Veronica Velasquez, a 27-year-old physical therapist at a Los Angeles community hospital, told USA Today. “We’re definitely helping them stay alive.” Speaking to the New York Times in the middle of his shift, Aldo Martinez, a 26-year-old paramedic in Florida who was brought to the U.S. when he was 12, seemed to make a direct appeal to the justices. “It’s imperative that the Supreme Court take account of conditions that did not exist back in November,” he said. “It seems nonsensical to invite even more chaos into an already chaotic time.”

The pandemic was unforeseen at the time the justices considered the DACA dispute in November and could well change the calculus for how the Supreme Court ultimately rules in the case. But the issue of “reliance,” which federal agencies promulgating or rolling back policy are required to consider under administrative law, is not new to the case. The words reliance or reliance interests came up dozens of times at the oral argument in November, with some justices appearing rightly concerned that the Trump administration did not engage in the due diligence federal law demands when rescinding a policy on which people’s lives, the economy, and other third parties depend. At the hearing, Justice Stephen Breyer articulated what the law expects in these circumstances. “When an agency’s prior policy has engendered serious reliance interests,” Justice Breyer said, quoting from a decade-old opinion by the late conservative stalwart Justice Antonin Scalia, “it must be taken into account.” Justice Scalia added in his original 2009 opinion “that a reasoned explanation is needed for disregarding facts and circumstances that underlay or were engendered by the prior policy.” In other words, explain to the public why the current reality doesn’t affect your thinking for what you’re trying to do.

But when one reads the 2017 memorandum that rescinded DACA, or a later one that purported to better explain the termination, there’s no indication anywhere that the Trump administration took into account the human, economic, and social costs of leaving so many people—many of them with jobs, small businesses, American families, and ties to the community—unprotected. Later reporting by the New York Times revealed that a key actor in the deliberations to end DACA, then Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, was herself deeply conflicted with signing her name to the anti-immigrant rationales that the White House, Stephen Miller, and then Attorney General Jeff Sessions advanced for rolling back the program—none of whom, it would seem, took into consideration the myriad harms that would flow from that decision.

Courts in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., took notice of these self-inflicted flaws and allowed DACA to remain in the books. “As a practical matter,” wrote a Brooklyn federal judge in early 2018, “it is obvious that hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients and those close to them planned their lives around the program.” United States District Judge John Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote in an opinion leaving DACA in place that the Trump administration showed “no true cognizance of the serious reliance interests at issue here”—and worse, that “it does not even identify what those interests are.”

The Trump administration’s evident failure to own up to the human cost of its policy choices and to spell them out clearly has now given the Supreme Court an opportunity to fix the mess. But as Joe Biden suggested in a statement shortly after the DACA letter was filed, the justices cannot just close their eyes to a reality that was not before them when they first took up the case: a pandemic that has touched every single one of us—and that has fallen hardest on those providing needed medical care. “If the Supreme Court upholds President Trump’s termination of DACA in the midst of a national public health emergency, it will leave a gaping hole in our health care system that is liable to cost American lives,” Biden said.

At the very least, the justices could discard the bare-bones justifications offered by the Trump administration for doing away with DACA and make him and his administration show their work. In the letter filed with the Supreme Court at the end of March, the lawyers suggest a sort of middle ground: a new round of legal arguments in writing addressing “whether remand to the agency for reconsideration of its decision to terminate DACA is appropriate in light of the extraordinary public health emergency.” In an interview, Muneer Ahmad, a Yale law professor who is a signatory to the letter, suggested that New York, where his clients reside, is a kind of ground zero that would be instructive for the justices. “New York is both an epicenter for Dreamers and DACA recipients and an epicenter of the pandemic,” he told me.

Trump may not want to take full responsibility for the federal response to the coronavirus. But the DACA controversy, at its very core, is about political accountability—about how the law requires the president and his government to take ownership of their policy choices, even those that harm others. During the hearing to consider DACA’s fate, Justice Sonia Sotomayor alluded to the realpolitik dimensions of ending the program when she asked Noel Francisco, Trump’s chief Supreme Court lawyer, to articulate the administration’s rationale for trying to end the program. “Where is the political decision made clearly?” she asked. “That this is not about the law; this is about our choice to destroy lives.”

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Read Cristian’s full article at the above link.

And, Cristian is by no means the only one joining me in “calling out” the J.R. Five for their betrayal of America in favor of an anti-democratic, far right political agenda, groveling before a President who has flouted his racism and open disdain for the law and courts who won’t do his bidding.

Linda Greenhouse in The NY Times flays the “J.R. Five’s” pathetic handling of the recent Wisconsin case that highlighted the GOP’s aggressive program of voter suppression.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/wisconsin-primary-supreme-court.html

Here’s an excerpt from Linda’s analysis of the Supreme mockery of justice in the recent Wisconsin voter case, RNC v. DNC:

In more than four decades of studying and writing about the Supreme Court, I’ve seen a lot (and yes, I’m thinking of Bush v. Gore). But I’ve rarely seen a development as disheartening as this one: a squirrelly, intellectually dishonest lecture in the form of an unsigned majority opinion, addressed to the four dissenting justices (Need I name them? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan), about how “this court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”

Let’s think about that. “Ordinarily not alter”?

There are quite a few things that should not ordinarily be happening these days. People shouldn’t ordinarily be afraid of catching a deadly virus when exercising their right to vote. Half the poll-worker shifts in the city of Madison are not ordinarily vacant, abandoned by a work force composed mostly of people at high risk because of their age.

Milwaukee voters are not ordinarily reduced to using only five polling places. Typically, 180 are open. (Some poll workers who did show up on Tuesday wore hazmat suits. Many voters, forced to stand in line for hours, wore masks.) And the number of requests for absentee ballots in Milwaukee doesn’t ordinarily grow by a factor of 10, leading to a huge backlog for processing and mailing.

I wonder how Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh understand the word “ordinarily.” And I wonder why the opinion was issued per curiam — “by the court.” Did none of the five have the nerve to take ownership by signing his name?

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Read Linda’s full article at the link.

When a case pits the Republican National Committee against the Democratic National Committee do you really have to wonder who’s going to win with the “J.R. Five” in the driver’s seat at the Supremes?

I’ve been warning for some time about the institutional failure of the Article III Courts led by the disgraceful example of Roberts who is afraid to stand up to Trump when it counts. Interesting that in this and other areas, the “professional commentators” are picking up on and reinforcing things I have been saying on Courtside for a long time. And, much of the shabby performance of America’s life tenured judiciary begins with failing to stand up to Trump’s racist assault on migrants and his unconstitutional dismantling of justice in our overtly biased Immigration Courts.

Justice Sotomayor said it very clearly at oral argument in the DACA case: “That this is not about the law; this is about our choice to destroy lives.” The same can be said about much of the J.R. Five’s one-sided immigration jurisprudence in the “Age of Trump.”

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

04-10-20

IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG: “Trump is dissolving Congress in plain sight, and immigration’s a top example”

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/04/trump-is-dissolving-congress-in-plain-sight-and-immigrations-a-top-example.html

Friday, April 10, 2020

Trump is dissolving Congress in plain sight, and immigration’s a top example

By Immigration Prof

Share

David Hernandez
Associate Professor for Latino Studies
Mount Holyoke College

David Hernandez for The Fulcrum analyzes how President Trump is circumventing Congress on immigration law and policy:

“The Trump administration’s power grab during the new coronavirus pandemic is well underway.

But even before the Covid-19 outbreak, President Trump was out-maneuvering the principal obligations of Congress — funding and providing oversight of the executive branch, and setting policy through legislation — by deploying executive orders, rule changes, fee schedules and international agreements to minimize the power of the legislative branch during his presidency.”

Click the link above for a detailed analysis.

KJ

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Yup. But, readers of “Courtside” already know this.

The LA Times Editorial Board expounded on the same theme today:

The pandemic as pretext

The Trump administration is using COVID-19 as an excuse to advance several controversial initiatives.

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=c41bb7af-9913-442e-a123-aadefb454e3e&v=sdk

PWS

04-10-20

NATION WITHOUT LAWS: With The Supremes’ “J.R. Five” Firmly In His Pocket, Trump Suspends The Constitution, The Rule Of Law, & International Treaties To “Orbit” Asylum Seekers To Who Knows Where! — Contempt For Humanity On Full Display During Time of Plague!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-administration-has-expelled-10000-migrants-at-the-border-during-coronavirus-outbreak/2020/04/09/b177c534-7a7b-11ea-8cec-530b4044a458_story.html

Nick Miroff reports for the WashPost:

The Trump administration has carried out nearly 10,000 summary deportations or “expulsions” since March 21, using emergency public health measures that have given U.S. Customs and Border Protection broad authority to bypass immigration laws, CBP officials said Thursday.

The measures have allowed the agency to quickly turn away most unauthorized migrants — sending them back across the Mexican border. The moves have dramatically slashed the number of detainees held in border stations, where they fear the coronavirus could spread, the officials said. CBP currently has fewer than 100 detainees in custody, down from nearly 20,000 at this time last year during last year’s border crisis, officials said.

[[Under coronavirus immigration measures, U.S. is expelling border-crossers to Mexico in an average of 96 minutes]]

Since the implementation of the rapid expulsions, unlawful border crossings have dropped 56 percent, said acting CBP commissioner Mark Morgan. Morgan also acknowledged that the United States has all but closed its borders to asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution, including those who attempt to enter legally at U.S. ports of entry.

“Those who are undocumented or don’t have documents or authorization are turned away,” Morgan said.

Democratic lawmakers have accused the administration of defying U.S. laws and exceeding the authority of the coronavirus public health order, but Morgan defended the emergency measures as a necessary step to stop the spread of the disease.

“This is not about immigration,” Morgan said. “This is about public health. This is about putting forth aggressive mitigation and containment strategies.”

[[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]]

CBP said the number of migrants detained at the border fell to 33,937 in March, down 7 percent from February. Single adults from Mexico accounted for 70 percent to 75 percent of those taken into custody, and most of the remainder were from Central America’s Northern Triangle countries: Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The Mexican government has agreed to accept the rapid return of migrants from those nations at the border under an agreement reached with the Trump administration last month.

The recent expulsions include children who would otherwise be protected from rapid removal by U.S. anti-trafficking laws. Since the emergency order took effect, the United States has expelled nearly 400 underage migrants, according to the most recent tally by the Reuters news agency. The minors were released into Mexico or boarded onto planes and flown back to Central America without being transferred to the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

. . . .

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

It’s going to take more than a letter from Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and other Dems to restore the Constitution and the rule of law. Indeed, with the help of J.R. and his Trumpist GOP majority on the Supremes, I would expect that asylum laws, like voting rights, Due Process, and other individual rights will remain a “dead letter” until we get both 1) regime change; and 2) reform in the appointment of Article III Judges.

There is little, if any, data right now to support the view that asylum seekers at the Southern Border have been a significant source for the initial spread of coronavirus in the U.S.; however, their arbitrary removal to other countries might have helped the worldwide spread of the disease.

Moreover, as COVID-19 spreads into the Gulag and the Immigration Courts from the rest of America, infections in those locations could help spread the virus, given the lawyers, Government employees, and contractors exposed at those dangerous locations. Nor were Asian Americans responsible.

We do, however, have some data to show that U.S. citizens and other travelers returning from Europe were inadvertently a source of the virus’s spread in New York, and that Trump’s ineptness and failure to heed early warnings contributed to the spread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html?referringSource=articleShare

But, science and truth seldom have any meaning for Trump and his toadies. And, we also know that while Trump often falsely claims “victories” that are either fabricated or largely someone’s else’s, he never takes responsibility for his own many mistakes and shortcomings.

PWS

04-09-20

PROFESSOR BILL ONG HING @ IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG: Intentional Mistreatment of Central American Refugees: A Grim American Tradition Now Unrestrained Under Trump Regime’s White Nationalist, Racist Policies & Supreme’s Complicity!

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/04/mistreating-central-american-refugees-repeating-history-in-response-to-humanitarian-challenges.html

Here’s an abstract:

Friends,

Happy to share my new article Mistreating Central American Refugees: Repeating History in Response to Humanitarian Challenge (forthcoming Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal). The full article can be downloaded here.

Abstract:

In the 1980s, tens of thousands of Central Americans fled to the United States seeking refuge from civil unrest that ravaged their countries. In a largely geopolitical response, the Reagan administration labeled those fleeing Guatemala and El Salvador as “economic migrants,” detained them, and largely denied their asylum claims. The illegal discrimination against these refugees was exposed in a series of lawsuits and through congressional investigations. This led to the reconsideration of thousands of cases, the enlistment of a corps of asylum officers, and an agreement on the conditions under which migrant children could be detained.

Unfortunately, the lessons of the 1980s have been forgotten, or intentionally neglected. Beginning in 2014, once again large numbers of Central American asylum seekers—including women and children—are being detained. Asylum denial rates for migrants fleeing extreme violence are high. The mixed refugee flow continues to be mischaracterized as an illegal immigration problem. Many of the tactics used in the 1980s are the same today, including hampering the ability to obtain counsel. President Trump has taken the cruelty to the next level, by invoking claims of national security in attempting to shut down asylum by forcing applicants to remain in Mexico or apply for asylum in a third country. We should remember the lessons of the past. Spending billions on harsh border enforcement that preys on human beings seeking refuge is wrongheaded. We should be implementing policies and procedures that are cognizant of the reasons migrants are fleeing today, while working on sensible, regional solutions.

Full article here.

Everyone stay safe and sane.

bh

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Get the full article at the link.

Professor Hing’s article echoes one of the themes of some of my speeches and comments, although, of course, he approaches it in a much more scholarly and systematic manner.

Check out my speech here:

“JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/03/24/our-implementation-of-asylum-law-has-always-been-flawed-now-trump-has-simply-abrogated-the-refugee-act-of-1980-without-legislation-but-led-by-the-complicit-supremes-federal-app/

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-08-20

SCOFFLAW NATION: Regime Uses Coronavirus Chaos To Ramp Up Attacks On Migrant Kids!

Trump Abuses Children — Trump & Children Cartoon
Joel Pett
Tribune Content Agency

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-deport-migrant-children-coronavirus-bill_n_5e8d8e46c5b6e1d10a6c30dc

Reuters reports:

Nearly 400 migrant children intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border have been deported in the past two weeks under new border restrictions.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) ― U.S. immigration officials have rapidly deported nearly 400 migrant children intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border in the past two weeks under new rules billed as seeking to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States, according to government data seen by Reuters.

President Donald Trump’s administration implemented new border rules on March 21 that scrapped decades-long practices under laws meant to protect children from human trafficking and offer them a chance to seek asylum in a U.S. immigration court. Under the new rules, U.S. officials can quickly remove people without standard immigration proceedings.

Overall, U.S. border officials have expelled nearly 7,000 migrants to Mexico since the new procedures took effect, according to the data and a Mexican government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Of those, 377 were minors, the data showed.

The overall number of 7,000 was first published by ProPublica, but the figure for children deported has not previously been reported.

Around 120 of the minors, who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian, were quickly sent on planes back to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to data from March 27 to April 2. It was not clear whether the remainder of the children intercepted at the border were pushed back to Mexico or returned to their home countries during the preceding week.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to comment. The agency in the past has said that all people caught crossing illegally, including minors, could be subjected to the new restrictions, which aim to cut the time migrants arrested at the border are held in U.S. custody.

Before the pandemic of COVID-19, the potentially lethal respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, unaccompanied minors caught at the border were placed in shelters run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Children traveling with adults other than parents or legal guardians would also be classified as “unaccompanied” and put into HHS care, even if the adults they were traveling with were family members. Under the new rules, however, they are now called “single minors” and can be sent back to Mexico, according to a CBP official.

. . . .

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Read the full story at the link.

Basically, Trump has repealed U.S. asylum and protection laws by unilateral action, with almost no “pushback” from Congress or the courts.

PWS

04-08-17

KAKISTOCRACY UPDATE: In a Crisis, It’s Bad To Have Your Country Run By A Narcissist Sociopath & His Gang Of Incompetents — “With the exceptions of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, Trump has surrounded himself with a Z-team of dangerously inexperienced toadies and flunkies — the bargain-bin rejects from Filene’s Basement — at a time when we require the brightest and most imaginative minds in the country.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare

Jennifer Senior writes in the NYT:

Since the early days of the Trump administration, an impassioned group of mental health professionals have warned the public about the president’s cramped and disordered mind, a darkened attic of fluttering bats. Their assessments have been controversial. The American Psychiatric Association’s code of ethics expressly forbids its members from diagnosing a public figure from afar.

Enough is enough. As I’ve argued before, an in-person analysis of Donald J. Trump would not reveal any hidden depths — his internal sonar could barely fathom the bottom of a sink — and these are exceptional, urgent times. Back in October, George T. Conway III, the conservative lawyer and husband of Kellyanne, wrote a long, devastating essay for The Atlantic, noting that Trump has all the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder. That disorder was dangerous enough during times of prosperity, jeopardizing the moral and institutional foundations of our country.

But now we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. The president’s pathology is endangering not just institutions, but lives.

TWITTER CHATS During these extraordinary times, Opinion columnists and writers will be going live on Twitter every weekday at 1 p.m. Eastern to chat with viewers. This was Jennifer Senior’s conversation.

Let’s start with the basics. First: Narcissistic personalities like Trump harbor skyscraping delusions about their own capabilities. They exaggerate their accomplishments, focus obsessively on projecting power, and wish desperately to win.

What that means, during this pandemic: Trump says we’ve got plenty of tests available, when we don’t. He declares that Google is building a comprehensive drive-thru testing website, when it isn’t. He sends a Navy hospital ship to New York and it proves little more than an excuse for a campaign commercial, arriving and sitting almost empty in the Hudson. A New York hospital executive calls it a joke.

Second: The grandiosity of narcissistic personalities belies an extreme fragility, their egos as delicate as foam. They live in terror of being upstaged. They’re too thin skinned to be told they’re wrong.

What that means, during this pandemic: Narcissistic leaders never have, as Trump likes to say, the best people. They have galleries of sycophants. With the exceptions of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, Trump has surrounded himself with a Z-team of dangerously inexperienced toadies and flunkies — the bargain-bin rejects from Filene’s Basement — at a time when we require the brightest and most imaginative minds in the country.

Faced with a historic public health crisis, Trump could have assembled a first-rate company of disaster preparedness experts. Instead he gave the job to his son-in-law, a man-child of breathtaking vapidity. Faced with a historic economic crisis, Trump could have assembled a team of Nobel-prize winning economists or previous treasury secretaries. Instead he talks to Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC host.

Meanwhile, Fauci and Birx measure every word they say like old-time apothecaries, hoping not to humiliate the narcissist — never humiliate a narcissist — while discreetly correcting his false hopes and falsehoods. They are desperately attempting to create a safe space for our president, when the president should be creating a safer nation for all of us.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Yup, you heard it here @ “Courtside” long ago — kakistocracy is dangerous to our democracy and our health. Who could have known?

PWS

04-07-20

UNDER THE RADAR SCREEN: Historian Heather Cox Richardson On Why “J.R. Five’s” Enthusiasm For GOP’s Voter Disenfranchisement/Suppression Plan In Wisconsin Is A Very Bad Harbinger For November & The Survival Of American Democracy! — You Know You’re In Trouble When The “Umpires” Take The Field Wearing The Home Team’s Colors!

http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkU1v4jAQhn8NuRX5I4Fw8KECQYNKpO4GKL1Ejj0QB2OnjtMQfv0G2MtKK81opHdmNB-P4B5O1vWsto0P2gZcriSLcIxQTAPJQonjKA5Ukx8dwIUrzbxrIajbQivBvbLm3kBQRGlQMjSNI0wRmQrAEqgQxyKGkEpCjiSEsAjuY3LeSgVGAIMfcL01EGhWel83I_o6IsvBSuC-BCfs1SlRcicba8ZNWzSei_NY2MtQUw_Oa6f0y-SFIIJGdOntGcyILqBfY0F2_SfR56SyeJOdus3idHufr7uCpuivfkuzQ7TJDk1y0aWcJ5NNtg3TKkFpdYjSvlP8M70NdUq87dR7lnRptrklqlOC7tRDX81uco77r_2ykiv9U6j1bLyC4gvvAV5rG03L4mA-6vJ3sbhuF5pcl7te7auP86rZ_spRoNh9cxSiKYpRGE3HeGy_25moJmdUjkJ0OZF_zg4cW4MxypwaTIY8t_ohDzjyIV5ao3yfg-GFBvkk5Z9oH4_3fQ3MQNdo8B7cUxzw0Wgyw5NgmCTtwNiw__3_D1PIvsA

There is complicated news nabout voter suppression tonight out of Wisconsin. It has overridden today’s news of the extraordinary outburst of Trump’s acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly, who flew almost 8000 miles to Guam to harangue the sailors from the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

I’ll cover the Modly story later in the week, but for tonight, Wisconsin.

There is a crucial election there tomorrow that landed tonight at the US Supreme Court. The backstory is that in 2010, thanks to REDMAP the Republican Redistricting Majority Project I wrote about on Saturday, the Wisconsin legislature was controlled by Republicans. They worked to guarantee their control, gerrymandering the state so effectively in 2011 that in the 2012 elections, Republicans lost a majority of voters, but took 60% of the seats in the legislature. (They won only 48.6% of the votes, but took 61% of the seats.)

With this power, they promptly passed a strict voter-ID law that reduced black and Latino voting, resulting in 200,000 fewer voters in 2016 than had voted in 2012. (Remember, Wisconsin is a key battleground state, and Trump won it in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes.)

Now, there is a move afoot to purge about 240,000 more voters from the rolls, thanks to the old system called “voter caging.” The state sent letters to registered voters, largely in districts that voted Democratic in 2016, and those who did not respond to the letters have been removed from the voter rolls on the argument that the fact they didn’t respond to the letters must mean they have moved. Initially, the purge was supposed to happen in 2021, after the election, but a conservative group sued to removed them earlier and a conservative state judge, Paul V. Malloy ordered it done. Malloy’s decision has been appealed to the Wisconsin state supreme court, which has deadlocked over the issue by a vote of 3-3.

On tomorrow’s ballot is a contest for a seat on that court. The Republicans desperately want to reelect their candidate, Justice Daniel Kelly, who recused himself from the voter purge vote pending the election. Trump has endorsed Kelly, who will uphold the purge if he is reelected. Before the pandemic, observers thought Kelly’s opponent had a good chance of unseating him because of expected high turnout among Democrats. But now, of course, all bets are off, especially since the Democratic strongholds in the state are in the cities, where the residents are hunkered down.

The election was originally scheduled for tomorrow, but the pandemic has gummed up the works. A stay-at-home order went into effect in the state on March 25, and more than a million voters have requested absentee ballots. But this huge surge means the state is running behind and hasn’t been able to deliver the ballots. Meanwhile, roughly 7000 poll workers, who are volunteers and often elderly, have said they would not come manage the election, so a large number of polls can’t open. The city of Milwaukee, whose 600,000 people normally would have 180 polling places, will have five. Milwaukee tends to vote Democratic.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, tried to get the Republican-dominated legislature to postpone the election or to mail ballots to all voters for a May 26 election deadline, but it refused. Over the weekend, the mayors of Wisconsin’s ten biggest cities urged the state’s top health official, Andrea Palm, to “step up” and use her emergency powers to replace in-person voting with mail-in voting, as Ohio did when faced with a similar problem. On Monday, Evers signed an executive order postponing the election until June 9—something even he was unsure he had the power to do, but he said he felt he had to try to keep people safe– but Republicans challenged the order and the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court blocked it.

Last Thursday, a federal judge permitted absentee ballots to be counted in the election so long as they arrived back to election officials by April 13, but Republicans immediately challenged the decision. Tonight, in a 5-4 decision, the US. Supreme Court refused to permit this extension of time for the state to receive absentee ballots, arguing (apparently without any self-awareness) that the federal judge made a mistake by changing the rules of an election so close to its date. This means that absentee ballots have to be postmarked tomorrow, even if the voter hasn’t gotten one by then.

The court insisted that the issue in the decision was quite narrow, and had nothing to do with the larger question of the right to vote. The four dissenting justices cried foul.

Writing for the four other judges in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote that “the court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement.” “The majority of this Court declares that this case presents a “narrow, technical question”…. That is wrong. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic. Under the District Court’s order, they would be able to do so. Even if they receive their absentee ballot in the days immediately following election day, they could return it. With the majority’s stay in place, that will not be possible. Either they will have to brave the polls, endangering their own and others’ safety, or they will lose their right to vote, through no fault of their own. That is a matter of utmost importance—to the constitutional rights of Wisconsin’s citizens, the integrity of the State’s election process, and in this most extraordinary time, the health of the Nation.”

The New York Times editorial board echoed Ginsburg, warning that what is happening in Wisconsin, where Republicans are trying to use the pandemic to steal an election, could happen nationally in 2020. This is why Democrats tried to get robust election funding in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus bill to bolster mail-in ballots, and why Trump said: “The things they had in there were crazy, they had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to, you would never have another Republican elected in this country again.”

This crisis in Wisconsin has national implications. The reelection of Kelly will likely mean Wisconsin loses another 240,000 voters, most of them Democrats. This will increase Trump’s chances of winning the state in 2020, and Wisconsin is likely key to a victory in the Electoral College.

This is why I watch the minutia of politics so carefully. It’s hard to imagine that the election of a state judge in Wisconsin matters to our nation of fifty states and 330 million people, but it does. Oh, boy, does it.

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

Remember, if more voters turn out, Trump & the GOP lose. The “J.R. Five” will be doing everything in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s why it’s critical for Dems to get out the vote and create a “Roberts-proof” majority. Also, winning the Senate is the way to start pushing back on the J.R.Five’s plans to dismantle democracy and with it any semblance of equality in America. Voter suppression is just the beginning.

PWS

04-07-20

TRUMP DECIMATES IG RANKS: Unqualified To Lead, “Grifter-in-Chief” Turns To Only Thing He’s Good At: Destroying American Democracy! — Expect Large Chunk Of Your $2 Trillion “Rescue Package” To Line Pockets Of Trump & Cronies As Independent Oversight Dismantled! 💸💸💸

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-corruption-glenn-fine_n_5e8caac7c5b6e1a2e0fabbf5

Kevin Robillard reports for HuffPost:

President Donald Trump removed the inspector general set to probe corruption and provide oversight of the government’s massive response to the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, the last sign of his disdain for any oversight of his administration.

The $2 trillion coronavirus response law, passed last month, set up a panel of 10 inspectors general to serve as watchdogs as the government tries to limit fraud, wrongdoing and mismanagement. That panel, dubbed the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, selected Fine — who was the acting Pentagon inspector general and is a former Justice Department inspector general — to lead them.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Trump got the GOP’s message loud and clear: Destroy away, we will never hold you accountable for any abuse!

Vote Like Your Life Depends On It this November! Because It Does!

PWS

04-07-20

ACLU DESPERATELY TRIES TO GET ATTENTION OF FEDERAL JUDICIARY AS COVID-19 HITS SAN DIEGO DETENTION CENTER! ☠️☠︎😰⚰️🧫

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2020-04-06/aclu-sues-for-release-of-ice-detainees-at-otay-mesa-detention-center-as-covid-19-cases-at-facility-increase

Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union Tribune:

On the same day the first person in immigration custody in San Diego was confirmed to have the new coronavirus, the American Civil Liberties Union sued for the release of certain high-risk detainees at the region’s two detention centers.

In the lawsuit, ACLU attorneys argue that specific detainees at Otay Mesa Detention Center and Imperial Regional Detention Facility who have pre-existing conditions that would make severe symptoms of COVID-19 more likely should be released in order to protect them from likely exposure to the virus. Some similar cases, filed by other groups around the country, have been successful in getting immigrant detainees released.

This coverage of the coronavirus pandemic is part of your subscription to The San Diego Union-Tribune. We also provide free coverage as a service to our community.

“During this pandemic, we’ve seen institutions at all levels take these really drastic, life-altering measures to preserve public safety and community well being,” said Monika Langarica, an attorney with the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. “(U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which oversees massive detention operations across the country, rather than follow the course of these other institutions, has done almost the opposite.”

. . . .

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

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

Similar suits have produced mixed results throughout the country. While some U.S. District Judges have ordered or threatened to order the release of certain detainees, others have “blown off” legitimate health concerns and the failure of DHS and DOJ authorities to follow health guidelines during the pandemic.

Of course, the idea that social distancing, universal testing, basic hygiene, or individual protective equipment is being employed in any part of the “DHS Gulag” and the Immigration “Courts” is preposterous on its face. Yet, remarkably, some U.S. District Judges prefer the “show me the dead bodies approach” as an alternative to the sensible preventive measures recommended by health professionals. After all, “they are only aliens” in the eyes of the regime and some Federal Judges.

Others, more astutely, have recognized that those stuck in the Gulag and the never-ending dysfunction of the Immigration “Courts” are actually their fellow human beings, most without serious criminal convictions. They are also “persons” under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, entitled to have their health, safety, and lives protected from dangerous and unreasonable actions by the Federal Government.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-20

SUPREMELY PARTISAN: “J.R. Five” Aids GOP Voter Suppression In Wisconsin As RBG & “Gang of Four” Lash Out In Dissent!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/supreme-court-wisconsin-absentee-ballots.html

Mark Joseph Stern reports for Slate:

On Monday, by a 5–4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court approved one of the most brazen acts of voter suppression in modern history. The court will nullify the votes of citizens who mailed in their ballots late—not because they forgot, but because they did not receive ballots until after Election Day due to the coronavirus pandemic. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent, the court’s order “will result in massive disenfranchisement.” The conservative majority claimed that its decision would help protect “the integrity of the election process.” In reality, it calls into question the legitimacy of the election itself.

Wisconsin has long been scheduled to hold an election on April 7. There are more than 3,800 seats on the ballot, and a crucial state Supreme Court race. But the state’s ability to conduct in-person voting is imperiled by COVID-19. Thousands of poll workers have dropped out for fear of contracting the virus, forcing cities to shutter dozens of polling places. Milwaukee, for example, consolidated its polling locations from 182 to five, while Green Bay consolidated its polling locations from 31 to two. Gov. Tony Evers asked the Republican-controlled legislature to postpone the election, but it refused. So he tried to delay it himself in an executive order on Monday. But the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court reinstated the election, thereby forcing voters to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote.

Because voters are rightfully afraid of COVID-19, Wisconsin has been caught off guard by a surge in requests for absentee ballots. Election officials simply do not have time, resources, or staff to process all those requests. As a result, a large number of voters—at least tens of thousands—won’t get their ballot until after Election Day. And Wisconsin law disqualifies ballots received after that date. In response, last Thursday, a federal district court ordered the state to extend the absentee ballot deadline. It directed officials to count votes mailed after Election Day so long as they were returned by April 13. A conservative appeals court upheld his decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the only protection in place to ensure that voters could still safely cast ballots.

Now the Supreme Court has reversed that order. It allowed Wisconsin to throw out ballots postmarked and received after Election Day, even if voters were entirely blameless for the delay. (Thankfully, ballots postmarked by Election Day but received by April 13 still count, because the legislature didn’t challenge that extension.) In an unsigned opinion, the majority cited the Purcell principle, which cautions courts against altering voting laws shortly before an election. It criticized the district court for “fundamentally alter[ing] the nature of the election by permitting voting for six additional days after the election.” And it insisted that the plaintiffs did not actually request that relief—which, as Ginsburg notes in her dissent, is simply false.

. . . .

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

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

Just last week Trump admitted that if more Americans voted, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwjBz7eao9XoAhUrlHIEHV-oARIQFjAAegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2020%2Fmar%2F30%2Ftrump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus&usg=AOvVaw2AKTPjFL8DI8bt9ii1CYF2

John Roberts and his fellow GOP partisans on the Supremes got the message loud and clear. Although, they didn’t really need much direction from their Great Leader, since the GOP Supremes have scarcely ever seen a civil rights or voting rights law that they didn’t want to gut and pervert.

With markets wobbling, unemployment rising, and Trump’s “malicious incompetence” threatening American lives every day, the GOP hopes for November could depend on large-scale disenfranchisement and massive voter suppression. And, the J.R. Five have made it clear that they are primed and ready to twist and manipulate the law as necessary to guarantee their party’s minority stranglehold on government.

So much for “just calling balls and strikes.” Nope! The J.R. Five “resizes the strike zone” as necessary to guarantee victory for “their team” and defeat for American democracy.

PWS

04-06-20

INSPIRING AMERICANS: Christina Fialho & Freedom For Immigrants Fight To End The “New American Gulag!”👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼😇😇😇😇😇

Lorena García Durán
Director, U.S. Ashoka Support Network

https://apple.news/A-C1bq74iQ4Kil76C8f9hjQ

From Forbes:

The United States operates the largest immigration detention system in the world. More than 50,000 immigrants are detained every day in county jails and for-profit prisons that contract with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) — at great human cost, and at a cost to taxpayers of $3 billion per year. The current administration has drastically expanded the system, establishing over 20 new detention centers (17,000 more people per day). Christina Fialho, an Ashoka Fellow since 2016 and co-founder of Freedom for Immigrants, is working not only to stop this expansion, but to end immigration detention altogether. Ashoka’s Lorena García Durán caught up with her to learn more.

You co-founded Freedom for Immigrants eight years ago with Christina Mansfield. What was the main goal you set out to achieve?

We want to build a country where no person is imprisoned for crossing a border. Freedom for Immigrants is working to achieve this goal through two main strategies. First, we’ve built a network of 4,500 volunteers that is a consistent watchdog inside this system. We started by building the first visitation program in California. Now volunteers in our network visit people in 69 immigrant prisons in nearly 30 states every week. Second, we launched a community-based alternative to free over 250 people by paying their immigration bonds. Once they are released, we connect them to housing, lawyers, transportation, and mental health services — and we do it all for only $17 per person per day, far less than the government pays to detain people (roughly $165 per person per day).

We are proving that our strategy works. Freedom for Immigrants drafted and co-sponsored the Dignity Not Detention Act — composed of the first statewide bills in the country to stop detention expansion and give the state attorney general oversight powers. These bills passed in California — a state that used to detain a quarter of all people in immigration detention. Since Dignity Not Detention went into effect, seven municipalities ended their ICE contracts. We then worked in a statewide coalition of immigrant rights groups to pass another bill to phase out private prisons in California. Together, we are proving that abolition is possible in the 5th largest economy in the world.

You talk a lot about the importance of creativity and risk taking in the face of obstacles. What are some obstacles you’ve overcome along the way?

Since 2013, we’ve faced “a litany of retaliatory acts by DHS in response to our public advocacy,” as Judge Andre Birotte Jr. explained in his recent court ruling granting us a preliminary injunction against ICE. We’ve had over a dozen of our affiliated visitation programs suspended when we’ve published articles or spoken out in favor of a new system. When we worked with Orange Is The New Black to dramatize the reality of detention, our national hotline was terminated. Private prison companies have muzzled us for reporting sexual assault in detention, and I was personally barred from visiting at certain detention facilities. However, we have successfully moved the work forward through creative persistence, community mobilization, and legal action when necessary.

Speaking of obstacles, ICE just ended all social visitation in response to COVID-19. How is Freedom for Immigrants responding?

If ICE is truly serious about ensuring the health and wellbeing of people in its custody, the agency would release immigrants, beginning with vulnerable populations. Other countries like Spain and Iran are releasing people in response to Covid-19. In fact, Spain’s Interior Ministry has begun a gradual release of people from immigration detention whose deportation cannot be effected before March 29. Freedom for Immigrants has launched an interactive map that tracks ICE response to Covid-19, and we have trained our national hotline volunteers to respond to medical negligence.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Lorena García Durán‘s interview of Christina Fialho at the above link.

In my experience, there are a few cases where ICE could show on an individualized basis that temporary detention is necessary to protect the public or insure appearance. But, such cases would be the “exception to the rule,” a very small percentage of today’s “New American Gulag” population.

As this article points out, in most cases government grants to enable community placements and legal representation actually would be much cheaper than today’s wasteful funding of the Gulag.

Unlike the Gulag, it also would promote due process, fundamental fairness, best practices, docket efficiency, and most important, maximize the chances of fair results.

Under the Trump regime, the cruel, costly, and counterproductive Gulag has expanded as a means of punishing, coercing, dehumanizing, and deterring those asserting legal rights, particularly the right to apply for asylum and mandatory protections like withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”).

It also is used by the regime to hinder the statutory and constitutional right to counsel and to promote biased results. Consequently, individuals entitled to relief and protection under our laws are instead railroaded out of the country by judges employed by the regime who have been instructed to disregard migrants’ rights and follow unethical and legally incorrect “precedents” intentionally misconstruing the law to make release from detention unnecessarily difficult and to promote unjust removals.

In other words, a systemic “Due Process Disaster” and a national disgrace.

Thanks to Christina and her team at Freedom for Immigrants for their courageous efforts to stand up to tyranny and defend due process. You certainly are brave front line fighters for the New Due Process Army!

Due Process Forever. The New American Gulag Never!

PWS

04-07-20

WASHPOST: “Maliciously Incompetent” Trump + Foot-Dragging GOP Govs = Existential Threat To America’s Health & Welfare — The Mortal Dangers of a “Governing” Kakistocracy Incapable Of Acting in the Overall Public Interest in Times of Real Crisis! ⚰️☠️🆘😰👎🏻🧫🦠🤡

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/foot-dragging-gop-governors-are-imperiling-the-whole-country/2020/04/03/b2fe45ee-75e0-11ea-85cb-8670579b863d_story.html

By Editorial Board

April 4 at 8:00 AM ET

PRESIDENT TRUMP likens the struggle against the pandemic to a war that will yield a colossal toll in human lives, but refuses to urge states uniformly to issue stay-at-home orders. The president’s equivocations have produced an uncoordinated jumble of policy subverted by foot-dragging governors who treat the coronavirus less as a national emergency and more as a political annoyance. They are guilty of an abdication of leadership whose consequences will be measured in body bags.

Messaging is critical in this crisis. By telling people in the strongest terms to stay at home, even with certain exceptions, most governors have conveyed the gravity of the spreading threat; that is likely to save many lives. By failing to do that, and treating a plague as one interest to be balanced among many, other governors treat the peril with a nod and a wink. Their message, sotto voce, is: Let’s not all get our knickers in a twist.

[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]

The nod-and-a-wink governors — in the Dakotas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas and elsewhere — pose as powerless to order a lockdown, or note they have already closed schools, restaurants, gyms and other establishments, but won’t order blanket edicts to individuals. They point at other states’ exceptions that allow people to carry on with essential work, or get groceries and pharmaceuticals. In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson says staying at home is a matter of “individual responsibilities”; in Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson scoffs there is nothing “magical” about stay-at-home directives; in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds protests that “I can’t lock everybody in their home.”

Those governors, all Republicans, have been enabled by Mr. Trump, who points to states that don’t yet “have the problem,” and remarks that it’s “awfully tough to say, ‘Close it down.’ ” He favors flexibility and is seconded by Vice President Pence, who says the federal government “will defer to state and local health authorities on any measures that they deem appropriate.”

As the White House leads from behind, the effect is to endorse and induce complacency. Faced with a stealthy pathogen that can spread from asymptomatic individuals, or incubate for weeks before a victim falls ill with fever, states are free to delude themselves into thinking the virus has passed them by — until, having bidden its time, it erupts inside their cities and towns. Governors of those states can entertain the illusion of alternative facts, imagining their borders are impermeable. They can, like Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, resist a stay-at-home order for weeks until discovering just this week — surprise! — that the virus is “transmitting before people see signs.”

[[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]]

Their magical thinking endangers the nation. It gives people license to minimize the threat — a threat the White House says could kill up to 240,000 people even with effective social distancing. It allows state-to-state gaps in the firewall that will likely encourage a raging disease to erupt in a series of rolling blazes across the country. As many states get tough, even deploying the police to encourage people to stay indoors, their odds of impeding the pandemic’s path of destruction are undercut by their neighbors’ selfishness.

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Steps for survival:

Tune out Trump & his political hack/toadies (the GOP Govs listed in this editorial are prime examples);
Listen to and follow advice from our health professionals;
Stay home unless you are actually performing “essential functions;”
Vote Trump and the GOP out of office, on every level, in November (but you have to survive the Trump/GOP kakistocracy to get to November).

NOTE: Not all GOP Governors are in the “Trump Kakistocracy.” Larry Hogan (MD), Mike DeWine (OH), and Charlie Baker (MA) and others are among those who have heeded public health advice.

Vote Like You Life Depends On It In November! Because Four More Years Of Trump & His GOP Toadies Could Kill Us All!☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️

PWS

04-05-20

“MORE TRUTH THAN FICTION” SATIRE FROM ANDY BOROWITZ @ THE NEW YORKER: “National Incompetence Stockpiles at Full Capacity” 🤡⚰️☠️🦠🧫😰👎🏻🆘

Andy Borowotz — Andy Borowitz
Political Satirist
The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/national-incompetence-stockpiles-at-full-capacity

NATIONAL INCOMPETENCE STOCKPILES AT FULL CAPACITY

By Andy BorowitzApril 4, 2020

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The National Incompetence Stockpiles, the federal reserves of inanity and ineptitude to be drawn upon in times of crisis, are at “full capacity,” the Government Accountability Office announced on Saturday.

According to the G.A.O., the Incompetence Stockpiles are so well stocked at the moment that they are in danger of overflowing.

“The sheer tonnage of failure and impotence that is being dumped into the stockpiles on a daily basis is straining their ability to contain it,” the G.A.O. statement read.

Davis Logsdon, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has written the definitive book about the National Incompetence Stockpiles, said that the nation’s futility reserves stand at their highest levels ever, eclipsing the record stockpiles established during the tenure of President George W. Bush.

“The Bush Administration tapped the National Incompetence Stockpiles when it invaded Iraq and responded to Hurricane Katrina,” Logsdon said. “At the time, it seemed as though the stockpiles would never be fully replenished, and that makes the Trump Administration’s achievement all the more striking.”

According to the statutes governing the National Incompetence Stockpiles, individual states may draw on the federal reserves of idiocy in times of emergency, but so far the governors of states like Georgia, Texas, and Florida have been able to rely on vast stockpiles of their own.

Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

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I can hardly wait for Jared to get the “Medal of Freedom” from “Big Daddy!”🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

04-05-20

AS U.S. DISTRICT JUDGES DITHER, DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRATION COURTS THREATEN NATION’S HEALTH & SAFETY — “I think it’s about time the American people woke up to the fact that EOIR’s willingness to perpetuate and extend this pandemic will inevitably bring the virus to their hometown!” ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻😰😰😰😰😰⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️🦠🦠🦠🦠🦠🧫🧫🧫🧫🧫🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘

https://apple.news/AiFcpYTPESciTT51hvpMdOQ

Liz Robbins reports for The Appeal:

One government lawyer who appeared in a crowded Newark, New Jersey, immigration court last month is in a medically induced coma. A New York immigration lawyer and her client are both sick. Immigration judges are being denied sick leave when they use anxiety or safety as reasons. Migrant children are asking their lawyers if they will fall ill if they go to court, and whether they’ll be deported if they don’t show up.

Sickness, panic, and confusion in the midst of a pandemic: These are the acute side effects of immigration courts continuing to operate as the novel coronavirus races across the country. Despite three weeks of intense pleading to close all 69 courts—across a united front of immigration lawyers, the union representing lawyers for ICE, and the immigration judges’ union—more than two-thirds of them remain open.

The courts that have been closed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the federal agency that runs them, have often only been shuttered in reaction to a confirmed case of COVID-19 or suspected exposure. The closures are often last-minute, and not clearly communicated, except on Twitter. This week, several immigration legal associations filed two separate federal lawsuits to close the courts because they fear that the government has put their lives in danger.

“I think it’s about time the American people woke up to the fact that EOIR’s willingness to perpetuate and extend this pandemic will inevitably bring the virus to their hometown,” Rebecca Press, the legal director at UnLocal in New York, said Thursday via email. She contracted coronavirus two weeks ago and at least one of her clients is sick. “The longer courts remain open even for filing, and the longer the courts require attorneys and immigrants to engage in the work of preparing evidence, the more likely it becomes that the virus will be brought right back to another community.”

Government lawyers are affected, too. Fanny Behar-Ostrow, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 511, the union representing ICE lawyers, is getting calls at all hours of the day from members who worry they have been exposed to the virus. “They are panicked, frightened, desperate, upset,” she said.

In addition to the 36,000 adults in ICE detention facilities, there are some 3,500 migrant children in government custody who are affected by the disarray in the courts. In most courts, children must still attend in-person hearings, putting them at exposure risk. In New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic, lawyers from Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) have not been told whether EOIR will reschedule cases for next week. They are also unclear about whether the minors even need to come to court at a time when state and city officials have issued stay-at-home orders.

“We are receiving phone calls from children who had their safety net shaken,” said Maria Odom, vice president for legal services for KIND, which is a nonprofit organization contracted to represent unaccompanied minors. “For us serving vulnerable children, there are so many moving pieces and at a time when we should be able to look to the government, they are just contributing to the chaos.”

Lawyers, judges, and advocates wonder: What will it take for EOIR to close courts nationally?

“I hope that it won’t take a death, but I worry that it will,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer and policy counsel for the American Immigration Council. His organization is one of the groups behind a lawsuit filed Monday by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

. . . .

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

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

Looks like the dead bodies will have to pile up before the Article IIIs and EOIR will take action. As the rest of us know, but to which U.S District Judges & EOIR appear willfully blind, by the time individuals show symptoms and begin dying, it’s too late to stop the spread. The larger community has already been infected.

I wonder what it is that gives both EOIR officials and Article III Judges such great confidence that they and their families will escape the consequences of their irresponsible behavior? Maybe, it’s that both EOIR Senior Execs and Article III Judges manage to studiously avoid “direct exposure” to Immigration Courts. “Below their pay grade,” so to speak.

But, according to folks like Dr. Fauci, who possibly knows even more about infectious diseases than EOIR Director McHenry and the Federal Judges who continue to defer to the irresponsible EOIR “guidance,” nobody will be immune.

So far, the U.S. has done the worst job of any developed country in the world of “flattening the curve.” Inevitably, we eventually will become the “world leader” in coronavirus deaths. After observing the inept response of EOIR and the failure of the U.S. District Courts to promptly intervene on the side of medical knowledge, common sense, and preserving human lives, I can now see why we are failing as a nation to take the extreme measures necessary for self-preservation.

I would think that as lawyers, judges, and other members of the legal community start dying as a result of EOIR’s policies, that the officials responsible eventually will face legal actions brought by surviving family members and colleagues. Life tenure and the judicial doctrine of “absolute immunity” will protect the feckless Federal Judges from legal accountability. But, it won’t protect them and their reputations from moral accountability and the “judgements of history” which are likely to be harsh and as unforgiving as the Trump Immigration Kakistocracy’s treatment of the most vulnerable among us and their brave lawyers.

Due Process Forever! Trump’s Immigration Kakistocracy & Feckless Federal Courts, Never!

PWS

04-04-20

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