PROFESSOR GEOFFREY HOFFMAN: This Is Progressive Liberalism? — Scofflaw Biden Administration Continues To Use Illegal Trump Subterfuge To Close Borders To Asylum Seekers (Disproportionately People Of Color) As AG Garland Looks The Other Way!

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/advocates-say-continued-use-of-title-42-to-exclude-most-asylum-seekers-from-the-us-discriminates-against-them/

From the Texas Standard:

The Biden administration’s approach to the border and immigration has been heavily criticized. With Trump-era policies still in place, some advocates object to the way the rules are being enforced right now, specifically a provision known as Title 42.

Geoffrey Hoffman is a clinical professor and director of the immigration clinic at the University of Houston Law Center. Hoffman told Texas Standard that Title 42 authorizes the surgeon general to suspend immigration into the United States on public health grounds. It has been on the books since the 1940s, and though Title 42 has been evoked several times, its use increased significantly during the Trump administration.

“Back in March of 2020, the Trump administration used Title 42 to curtail, basically, entry of almost everyone from the Mexican border coming in to try to seek asylum,” Hoffman said. “And so that was a very, very big impact on those people.”

Hoffman says 600,000 people have been expelled from the country under Title 42.

Immigration advocates say Title 42 is being used as an “end run” around laws allowing asylum-seekers to enter the United States and pursue their claims.

“The issue is really that it’s being used at the land border in Mexico and Canada, and not through other entries. So it’s been seen as being discriminatory, and a racial-justice issue,” Hoffman said.

The Biden administration has continued to use Title 42, carving out an exception for unaccompanied minors who are being allowed into the country to pursue asylum claims. Some immigration advocates say applying Title 42 differently to different populations should be ended.

“You have Title 42 being used, according to immigration advocates, as a pretext,” Hoffman said. “It’s a pretext to prevent people who are otherwise legitimately seeking asylum, preventing them from seeking that relief.”

Hoffman says the United States has an obligation under the nation’s own laws, and under international law, to provide a means by which asylum-seekers can make their claims. Forcing migrants out of the country without a hearing, under Title 42, violates those laws, he says.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.

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Remember how Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions was never shy about intervening in matters outside his agency jurisdiction, like child separation and DACA, when it fit his White Nationalist political agenda?

But, Judge Garland has not only failed to restore an operating legal asylum system @ EOIR, but also has stood by and watched while DHS daily commits gross violations of international, constitutional, and statutory law — violations that threaten life and safety — under a pretext carried over from the Trumpists.

Significantly, a U.S. District Judge in D.C. recently ruled that:

It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic,” she continued. “The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.

This rationale appears equally applicable to CDC’s legal authority to suspend international conventions, asylum statutes, immigration laws, and constitutional due process on a cosmic scale as pretext for ending our legal asylum system without passing legislation!

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/05/politics/cdc-moratorium-evictions/index.html

Sure, there are problems at the border. But, the solution is to:

restore legal screening at the ports of entry;
reinstate a fair and robust legal asylum process using more trained Asylum Officers and better Immigration Judges — progressive experts in asylum law (NOT like the “gang of 17” same old, same old “bureaucratic retreads” the tone-deaf Judge Garland just put on the bench);
repeal of the Sessions/Barr anti-asylum precedents and replacing the BIA with judges who are asylum experts;
creating more opportunities for legal immigration for both refugees and needed workers;
enlisting the support of the UNHCR, NGOs, religious organizations, universities, and local governments to aid in the processing, representation, and resettlement of asylum seekers; and
slashing artificial and unnecessary Immigration Court backlogs to allow qualified expert Immigration Judges to adjudicate on a “real time” basis represented asylum cases that can’t quickly be granted at the Asylum Office and to establish some positive precedents in asylum law to govern and guide practitioners, Immigration Judges, and Asylum Officers.

It’s not rocket science. But, it very clearly is beyond the capability of Mayorkas, Garland, and the other folks Biden has put in charge of the Administration’s immigration policies. There are folks out there who can do the job — Professor Hoffman is just one of many.

The responsible positions necessary to reform, restore, and revitalize our nation’s refugee, asylum, and immigration laws are mostly at the sub-cabinet level, not requiring Senate confirmation. EOIR is a prime example of a great opportunity for progressive change being inexplicably squandered by Garland and his clueless lieutenants. What is important, and has been conspicuously absent from Biden immigration policies to date, is some inspired leadership and enlightened personnel choices from Mayorkas, Garland, and Becerra.

For example, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions had no hesitation about spreading false narratives about asylum seekers, demeaning their humanity, disrespecting their hard-working attorneys, and encouraging “his” judges to deny more cases (particularly those involving women of color), and to elevate productivity, cutting corners, and obedience to his policies over quality, fairness, due process, and protecting the legal rights of asylum seekers and other immigrants from DHS overreach.

But, what inspiring statement has Judge Garland made about the necessity of making adherence to fundamental fairness, due process, best practices, quasi-judicial independence, and humane treatment of all respondents the touchstone of EOIR? What visible appointments of widely respected practical scholars and human rights experts has he made in EOIR management, the Immigration Judiciary, OIL, or elsewhere in the DOJ. NONE! Sometimes silence speaks more loudly than words!

With the pandemic and Trump’s xenophobic illegal attack on our legal immigration system, in the face of a sharply declining birth rate, we have plenty room for more immigrants, be they refugees, family members, or essential workers. As Professor Hoffman and others of us had predicted, the racist attack on our immigration system by Trump, unfortunately largely continued by the Biden Administration, has turned our immigration system over to smugglers, cartels, gangs, and pure chance.

A rational, orderly, humane, and most of all legal and constitutional immigration system would benefit all of us. It’s a shame that those currently in Government can’t or won’t make it happen.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-07-21

☠️🤮👎🏻⚰️OUTRAGEOUS “MILLER LITE” JUSTICE! — NO WONDER GARLAND WANTED TO KEEP HIS “JUDICIAL PICKS” SECRET! — It’s A “Two Sharp Sticks In The Eyes” Putdown Of The Human Rights/Immigration Advocacy Community That Helped Boost Biden & Harris To Their Jobs! — Tired Of Being Ignored, Disrespected, & Take For Granted? — Had Enough Of The Consistent Stupidity, Mind-Numbing Ineptitude, & Total Contempt For Constitutional Due Process @ EOIR Under Both The Dems & The GOP?

It’s “Miller Lite Time” @ Garland’s DOJ as this Dude gets the last laugh over immigration/human rights/due process advocates and experts who worked for Biden’s election! — Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

Every member of the NDPA should be outraged by Garland’s treachery:

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/file/1392116/download

Here’s the latest farcical roster of prosecutors, government attorneys, and non-immigration experts to be inflicted on migrants and their attorneys:

NOTICE

U.S. Department of Justice

Executive Office for Immigration Review

Office of Policy

5107 Leesburg Pike

Falls Church, Virginia 22041

Contact: Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

Phone: 703-305-0289 Fax: 703-605-0365 PAO.EOIR@usdoj.gov @DOJ_EOIR

www.justice.gov/eoir

May 6, 2021

EOIR Announces 17 New Immigration Judges

FALLS CHURCH, VA – The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced 17 new Immigration Judges (IJs), including one Assistant Chief Immigration Judge (ACIJ) and six Unit Chief Immigration Judges (UCIJs). ACIJs are responsible for overseeing the operations of their assigned immigration courts. In addition to their management responsibilities, they will hear cases. UCIJs serve as IJs in formal judicial hearings conducted via video teleconference and supervise the staff assigned to their virtual courtroom. IJs preside in formal judicial hearings and make decisions that are final unless formally appealed.

After a thorough application process, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Megan B. Herndon, Wade T. Napier, Tamaira Rivera, David H. Robertson, Elizabeth Crites, Bryan E. DePowell, Nicholle M. Hempel, Kathy J. Lemke, Martinque M. Parker, David M. Paxton, Bryan D. Watson, Kenya L. Wells, and Mark R. Whitworth to their new positions; then-Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson appointed Adam Perl to his new position; then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen appointed William H. McDermott to his new position; and then-Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Elliot M. Kaplan and Jeb T. Terrien to their new positions.

Biographical information follows:

Megan B. Herndon, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Megan B. Herndon was appointed as an Assistant Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration court duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Herndon earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1999 from Occidental College and a Juris Doctor in 2002 from the University of San Diego School of Law. From 2020 to 2021, she served as Senior Regulatory Coordinator, Office of Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State (DOS), in the District of Columbia. From 2018 to 2020, she served as Deputy Director of Legal Affairs, Office of Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, DOS. From 2015 to 2018, she served as Chief of the Legislation and Regulations Division, Office of Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, DOS. From 2013 to 2015, she served as a Section Chief, Immigration Law and Practice Division, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the District of Columbia and Falls Church, Virginia. From 2009 to 2013, she served as an Appellate Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in Falls

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Church. From 2007 to 2009, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in San Diego. From 2002 to 2007, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in Los Angeles, entering on duty through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. Judge Herndon is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and State Bar of California.

Wade T. Napier, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Wade T. Napier was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Napier earned a Bachelor of Science in 2001 from Transylvania University and a Juris Doctor in 2005 from Northern Kentucky University–Salmon P. Chase College of Law. From 2008 to 2021, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, in Lexington. In 2008, he served as a Staff Attorney for a Trial Court Judge, in Boone County, Kentucky. From 2005 to 2007, he worked in the Claims Litigation Department of Great American Insurance Company, in Cincinnati. Judge Napier is a member of the Kentucky Bar.

Tamaira Rivera, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Tamaira Rivera was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Rivera earned a Bachelor of Science in 1991 from Florida State University, a Juris Doctor in 1995 from California Western School of Law, and a Master of Laws in 2004 from The George Washington University Law School. From 2019 to 2021, she was an Immigration Practitioner with Advantage Immigration PA, in Orlando, Florida. From 2017 to 2019, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in Orlando. From 2012 to 2017, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in San Antonio. From 2010 to 2012, she served as an Attorney Advisor and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Air Force, in San Antonio. From 2009 to 2010, she served as a Senior Democracy Fellow, U.S. Agency for International Development, in the District of Columbia. From 2007 to 2009, she was a Senior Associate Attorney and Program Manager with BlueLaw International LLP, in the District of Columbia. From 1996 to 2006, she served as a U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate, in the following locations: Madrid, Spain; Tucson, Arizona; San Antonio; and Okinawa, Japan. Judge Rivera is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Florida Bar.

David H. Robertson, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

David H. Robertson was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Robertson earned a Bachelor of Science in 1986 from James Madison University, a Juris Doctor in 1989 from the University of Richmond School of Law, and a Master of Laws in 1999 from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. From 1990 to 2020, he served as a U.S. Army Judge Advocate in various locations throughout the U.S. and Germany. During that time, from 2010 to 2020, he served as a Military Judge in the following locations: Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Kaiserslautern, Germany; and Fort Stewart, Georgia. While serving as a Military Judge, he also presided over trials in Kuwait and Afghanistan. From 2004 to 2006, he served as a Regional Defense Counsel; from 1999 to 2001, as a Senior Defense Counsel; from 1995 to

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1997, as a Prosecutor; and from 1993 to 1995, as a Defense Counsel. From 1995 to 1996, he deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and from 2007 to 2008, he deployed to Kosovo. In 2020, he retired in the rank of Colonel. Judge Robertson is a member of the Virginia State Bar.

Elizabeth Crites, Immigration Judge, Chicago Immigration Court

Elizabeth Crites was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Crites earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2005 from Ball State University and a Juris Doctor in 2009 from the University of Illinois Chicago John Marshall Law School. From 2016 to 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Chicago. From 2009 to 2016, she was an Associate Attorney with Broyles, Kight & Ricafort PC, in Chicago. Judge Crites is a member of the Illinois State Bar.

Bryan E. DePowell, Immigration Judge, Adelanto Immigration Court

Bryan E. DePowell was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge DePowell earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2007 from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and a Juris Doctor in 2009 from Widener University Commonwealth Law School. From 2019 to 2021, he served as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Felony Trials Division – Office of Prosecuting Attorney, City and County of Honolulu. From 2018 to 2019, he served as Chief Counsel for the House Minority Research Office, State of Hawai’i, in Honolulu. From 2012 to 2018, he was an Associate Attorney with Crisp and Associates LLC, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Judge DePowell is a member of the Hawaii State Bar and the Pennsylvania Bar.

Nicholle M. Hempel, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Nicholle M. Hempel was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Hempel earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1996 from California State University, Fresno and a Juris Doctor in 2000 from Chicago-Kent College of Law. From 2010 to 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Los Angeles. From 2003 to 2010, she served as an Assistant State Attorney with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, in Chicago. From 1998 to 2003, she served as a Law Clerk for the First Municipal District, Circuit Court of Cook County, in Chicago. Judge Hempel is a member of the Illinois State Bar.

Kathy J. Lemke, Immigration Judge, Portland Immigration Court

Kathy J. Lemke was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Lemke earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1994 from the University of Chicago and a Juris Doctor in 1997 from Arizona State University School of Law. From 2019 to 2020, she served as the City Prosecutor for Phoenix. From 2009 to 2019, she served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, in Phoenix. From 2004 to 2009, she served as an Assistant City Prosecutor for Phoenix. In 2003, she served as a Deputy County Attorney for Pinal County in Florence, Arizona. From 1998 to 2003, she served as a Deputy County Attorney for Maricopa County, in Phoenix. Judge Lemke is a member of the State Bar of Arizona and the District of Columbia Bar.

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Martinque M. Parker, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Martinque M. Parker was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Parker earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2005, a Bachelor of Science in 2006 from the University of Georgia, and a Juris Doctor in 2011 from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. From 2017 to 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Lumpkin, Georgia. From 2011 to 2017, she served as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Judge Parker is a member of the Arkansas Bar and the State Bar of Georgia.

David M. Paxton, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

David M. Paxton was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Paxton earned a Bachelor of Science in 1998 from Texas State University, a Master of Business Administration in 2004 from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Juris Doctor in 2009 from Santa Clara University School of Law. From 2015 to 2021, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, in McAllen and Corpus Christi. From 2011 to 2015, he served as a Deputy District Attorney for the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office, in San Luis Obispo, California. From 2010 to 2011, he served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Criminal Division of the Northern District of California, in San Jose. From 1997 to 2004, he served as a Systems Engineer for Advanced Micro Devices and Legerity Inc., in Austin, Texas. Judge Paxton is a member of the State Bar of California.

Bryan D. Watson, Immigration Judge, Atlanta – W. Peachtree Street Immigration Court Bryan D. Watson was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Watson earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1993 from the University of Missouri, a Juris Doctor in 1996 from the University of Missouri, a Master of Arts in 2006 from Air University, and a Master of Science in 2014 from the National Defense University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as the Chief Trial Judge of the U.S. Air Force Trial Judiciary, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. From 2017 to 2019, he served as the Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s School, at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the General Counsel of the White House Military Office, in the District of Columbia. From 1996 to 2021, he served as a U.S. Air Force Active Duty Judge Advocate, in the following locations: Moody Air Force Base, Georgia; Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming; Langley Air Force Base, Virginia; Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Randolph Air Force Base, Texas; Joint Base Andrews, Maryland; Aviano Air Base, Italy; and the Pentagon, White House, Bolling Air Force Base, and Fort McNair, District of Columbia. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2021 as a Colonel. Judge Watson is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and the Missouri Bar.

Kenya L. Wells, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Kenya L. Wells was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Wells earned a Bachelor of Science in 2007 from Texas A&M University and Juris Doctor in 2010 from the University of Texas School of Law. From 2017 to 2021, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. From 2010 to 2016, he served as an Assistant District Attorney with the New York County District Attorney’s Office, in New York. Judge Wells is a member of the New York State Bar.

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Mark R. Whitworth, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Mark R. Whitworth was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Whitworth earned a Bachelor of Journalism in 1985 and a Juris Doctor in 1993, both from the University of Texas at Austin. From 2003 to 2021, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Harlingen, Texas. From 2001 to 2003, he served as an Assistant District Counsel with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, Office of the District Counsel, Department of Justice, in Harlingen. From 1994 to 2001, he served as an Assistant Attorney General and an Assistant Managing Assistant Attorney General for the Texas Office of the Attorney General, in Harlingen. From 1993 to 1994, he was an Associate Attorney with Roerig, Oliveira and Fisher LLP, in Brownsville, Texas. Judge Whitworth is a member of the State Bar of Texas.

Adam Perl, Immigration Court, New York – Broadway Immigration Court

Adam Perl was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Perl earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2006 from Florida International University and a Juris Doctor in 2011 from St. Thomas University School of Law. From 2018 to 2021, he served as a Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in New York. From 2016 to 2018, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in Newburgh, New York; from 2014 to 2016, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, in New York; and from 2011 to 2014, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, in Los Angeles. Judge Perl is a member of the Florida Bar.

William H. McDermott, Immigration Judge, New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court

William H. McDermott was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge McDermott earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2007 from Long Island University and a Juris Doctor in 2011 from The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. From 2019 to 2021, he served as the Deputy State’s Attorney for Wicomico County, Maryland. From 2011 to 2019, he served as an Assistant State’s Attorney, Deputy State’s Attorney, and Ad Interim State’s Attorney, in Worcester County, Maryland. Judge McDermott is a member of the Maryland State Bar.

Elliot M. Kaplan, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Elliot M. Kaplan was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Kaplan earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1998 from Antioch University, a Master of Business Administration in 1982 from Whittier College, and a Juris Doctor in 1982 from Whittier Law School. From 2019 to 2020, he was Of Counsel to Kutak Rock LLP, in Kansas City, Missouri. From 2004 to 2019, he was in private practice, in Kansas City. From 1995 to 2003, he was a Partner and Founder of Daniels & Kaplan PC, in Detroit and Kansas City. From 1991 to 1994, he was Of Counsel to Berman, DeLeve, Kuchan & Chapman LLC, in Kansas City. From 1990 to 1991, he was Of Counsel to DeWitt, Zeldin & Bigus PC, in Kansas City. From 1985 to 1990, he was Of Counsel to Husch, Eppenberger, Donohue, Cornfeld & Jenkins, in Kansas City. From 1983 to 1985, he was Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary of Air One Inc., in St. Louis. Judge Kaplan is a member of the Missouri Bar.

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Jeb T. Terrien, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Jeb. T. Terrien was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Terrien earned a Bachelor of Science in 1994 from The University of Virginia and a Juris Doctor in 1997 from Tulane Law School. From 2009 to 2021, he served as a Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, in Harrisonburg. During that time, from 2014 to 2015, he served as an Assistant Director, National Advocacy Center, Office of Legal Education, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Department of Justice, in Columbia, South Carolina. From 2004 to 2008, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, in Cincinnati, and the Northern District of West Virginia, in Martinsburg. From 2000 to 2004, he served as a Regional Drug Prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Virginia in Halifax, Charlotte, and Campbell Counties. From 1999 to 2000, he served as an Assistant Attorney General with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, in Richmond. From 1998 to 1999, he served as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney for the Accomack County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in Accomac, Virginia. Judge Terrien is a member of the Virginia State Bar.

— EOIR —

Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

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There’s a powerful message here NDPA! Elections DON”T matter, nor does your expertise, dedication, and hard work! Maybe it will be time to act on that message during the next election cycle. Stephen Miller? Judge “MillerLite?” What’s the real difference?

Here are some “early reactions” from the NDPA:

I just looked quickly, but was there only one new IJ coming from private practice? When I looked up the firm, it doesn’t practice immigration law.

I didn’t recognize any names. Shouldn’t the goal be to hire those with a scholarly understanding of immigration law, including at least some who have demonstrated a creative approach to asylum?

My take is why not put new IJ hiring on pause until the agency has figured out how it intends to move forward? EOIR should have their new Chief IJ in place, have revamped the IJ training, have figured out what AG precedents it intends to vacate, etc. Also, the quotas are still in place.

When new IJs with no immigration law background come on board, should they feel they can’t continue a case to study the law or consult with a colleague because they have to complete 4 cases that day to avoid being fired?

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Ah, Justice from “Miller Lite” Justice @ Justice. What a “poke in they eyes with a sharp stick” to the immigration/human rights bar!

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Thanks for sharing Judge Schmidt. In addition to the new hires, it’s deeply concerning that AG Garland’s DOJ is expanding its use of secretive and inaccessible immigration adjudication centers- opening a new location in Richmond, Virginia.

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Of 14 IJs appointed under Biden (Acting AG Wilkinson or AG Garland), 7 have worked for ICE, 5 have been prosecutors of other types, 2 have worked for ICE and been prosecutors, and 2 have worked as immigration defense attorneys (though these two have also worked for ICE).

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It is completely baffling. Two working theories: 1) EOIR is just so far down Garland’s radar that he just doesn’t care or have time to care; or 2) he has made a political decision to “hang tough” on immigration for the optics and to stave off Rethuglican encroachment in the mid-terms.

Neither theory speaks well of him.

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I don’t see how dissing the immigration/human rights bar is the key to success for the Dems in the midterms. I personally know lots of NDPA members who “busted tail” and donated lots of time and money to getting Biden & Harris elected. Don’t think that the “elections don’t matter for human rights/immigration/due process/racial justice” is going to “energize the base” for the midterms.

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I have essentially lost hope that anything will change….

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I guess this answers the question of whether establishing an independent, progressive, due process focused Immigration Judiciary within the Executive Branch is possible. Obviously, it isn’t! Litigation and Article I appear to be the only solutions.

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What is that old adage, “the more things change the more they stay the same”???

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🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! We need to translate Garland’s blatant disrespect, ignorance, and failure to stand up for racial justice, an end to misogyny, and progressive expertise in the Immigration Judiciary into action and resistance to his “Miller Lite” vision for the DOJ!

PWS

05-06-21

DIVIDED 3RD CIR. REJECTS CASTRO-TUM, DEEPENING CIRCUIT SPLIT & INCREASING CHAOS RESULTING FROM GARLAND’S FAILURE TO BRING IN “PRACTICAL EXPERTS” TO FIX BROKEN IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM & RESTORE BEST PRACTICES!

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-2-1-says-no-to-castro-tum

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA3 (2-1) Says “No!” to Castro-Tum

Arcos Sanchez v. Atty. Gen.

“We are fully persuaded that, as discussed in Romero and Meza Morales, the regulations afford IJs and the Board authority to take any action (including administrative closure) as is appropriate and necessary (in the context of each case) for the disposition of such case to resolve questions in a timely and impartial manner consistent with the Act and regulations. After applying the standard tools of interpretation, by considering the text, structure, history, and purpose of 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii), we hold that the plain language establishes that general administrative closure authority is unambiguously authorized by these regulations. … For the reasons stated above, we conclude that the relevant regulations confer the general authority to administratively close cases to IJs and the Board. We therefore grant the petition for review, vacate the Board’s order, and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Jerard A. Gonzalez!]

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So, the Third joins the Fourth and the Seventh in rejecting Castro-Tum, while the Sixth (wrongly) upheld it. In the other Circuits, Castro-Tum remains in effect “by default.” I’ve received reports, though, that some IJ’s in the Fourth Circuit simply ignore the Circuit precedent, emboldened by the “in your face contemptuous attitude” inculcated by the Trump Administration. Apparently, they fear their “enforcement boss” — the AG — more than life-tenured Article III judges. And, to date, Garland has done little or nothing to dispel that attitude.

Shortly after the election, many experts pointed out to the incoming Biden Administration the critical importance of “hitting the ground running” on EOIR reform: immediately vacating the Sessions/Barr precedents; ousting incompetents and restrictionists from EOIR “management,” replacing the BIA with expert progressive judges who could issue correct guidance and keep nativist judges in line; slashing artificial backlogs; reinstating the NAIJ; establishing progressive criteria for hiring and retaining judges; re-establishing a legal asylum system, particularly at the border; ending misogynistic attitudes and treatment of women of color; and bringing in nationally recognized immigration/human rights experts to reestablish due process and best practices nationwide.

Garland has basically ignored the experts in favor of an incomprehensible “Stephen Miller Lite” program of continued injustice, disrespecting and ignoring the needs of stakeholders and foreign nationals, and promoting chaos, inconsistency, and inept practices.

For example, without Castro-Tum, the majority of cases languishing in the 1.3 million backlog probably would be prime candidates for administrative closing under the Biden Administration’s own criteria of what constitutes a “priority.” Having differing and uncertain rules from Circuit to Circuit, along with tolerating IJs who feel empowered to ignore Circuit law, is a recipe for further disaster.

So far, 75% of the Circuits to consider the question have rightly rejected Castro-Tum. If this plays out, hundreds of thousands of cases will be subject to redos, reconsideration, and reopening because of Sessions’s poor judgment combined with Garland’s failure to engage with the endemic problems in “his” courts.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-05-21

🤮👎🏻SHOCKING BETRAYAL@ “JUSTICE” — GARLAND DISSES PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS WITH SECRET APPOINTMENTS OF 17 UNQUALIFIED IMMIGRATION JUDGES! — New AG’s Open Contempt For Racial Justice, Due Process, Human Rights Enrages Advocacy Community Who Believed & Supported Biden-Harris Campaign Pitch! — THE REINCARNATION OF “DEEP THROAT” @ EOIR “BLOWS WHISTLE” ON NEW AG’S ATROCIOUS FAILURE TO TAKE SERIOUSLY MOCKING OF DUE PROCESS, INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM, MISOGYNY, LACK OF SCHOLARSHIP, AVERSION TO PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING IN AMERICA’S DEADLY, DYSFUNCTIONAL STAR CHAMBERS!⚰️☠️🏴‍☠️

Deep Throat — Reincarnated @ EOIR? — Creative Commons License

Courtside Exclusive

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

May 4, 2021

Recently, some of America’s top legal minds were “wordsmithing” their “practical scholarly” advice on what actions Judge Garland should take to begin straightening out his EOIR mess. Common sense steps to slash the largely self-created Immigration Court backlog of an astounding 1.3 million cases actually could and should have been taken within hours of Garland’s swearing in as Attorney General. But, unknown to these experts, the battle they steadfastly had been fighting for the past four years in behalf of due process, common sense, and humanity in a broken system already was lost.

Basically, Garland and his team had secretly delivered the “big middle finger” to progressives earnestly seeking to assist and guide them in the right direction on long overdue reforms at Garland’s incredibly backlogged, totally dysfunctional, anti-due-process, Immigration “Courts” that don’t fit any known American definition of “court.” For while the wheels of scholarly, problem-solving brainpower were grinding away, Garland had cavalierly and clandestinely handed out 17 of the most important (and certainly most readily available to progressive judicial candidates) Federal Judicial positions to unqualified insiders and prosecutors basically “in the Stephen Miller White Nationalist pipeline.” Adding insult to injury, Garland and his lieutenants covered up their disgraceful actions. But, thanks to a reincarnated “Deep Throat” @ EOIR (see, Watergate for newer generations), we now know the truth.

According to “Deep Throat 2021,” (“DT-21”) it’s worse than I previously thought about Immigration Judge appointments. (And, I thought it was bad.) Garland actually secretly appointed 17 new IJs in April, but EOIR hasn’t released the names publicly because they (rightly) fear “the blowback” from Dems and progressives.

So, who is Team Garland” trying to please? “Gauleiter” Stephen Miller? “Billy the Bigot” Barr? Gene Hamilton? Donald Trump? Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions? Chad “Wolfman” Wolf? Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli? “Teddy the Traitor” Cruz? Tom “Blacks & Hispanics Should be Pickin’” Cotton?

The 17 include some for the VTC black box “court” in Richmond. The only one that went public was a story a judge himself placed. That’s apparently the one that Dan Kowalski and I picked up. According to sources, none of Garland’s new judges are good for due process or for progressive, expert, independent judging.

Also, there’s a rumor that the open BIA position is going to go to an “EOIR insider,” not someone from the outside who could help restore due process and fundamental fairness.

Let’s see, so far the Biden Administration has had exactly zero progressive Federal Judges confirmed by the Senate. Meanwhile, over at DOJ, Garland has handed out these 17 powerful judgeships with life or death authority serving on the front lines of racial justice in America to non-progressives apparently recommended and tapped by his restrictionist predecessor.

Make sense? Only if you’ve watched past Dem Administrations’ inept handling of the Immigration Courts.

In positive news, there’s “internal chatter” that EOIR Deputy Director Carl C. Risch, a political hack “burrower” from the Trump Administration, is leaving EOIR.

But, “DT-21” is still gravely concerned that “Millerite” BIA Chair David Wetmore (Maury Roberts must be turning over in his grave) has yet to be removed with his “probationary period” set to expire at the end of this month. What, exactly, have been Wetmore’s contributions to human rights scholarship, “applied due process,” fundamental fairness, racial justice, and fair treatment of female asylum seekers that justify his continued tenure as essentially the “Chief Justice of Immigration?”

Garland’s malfeasance at EOIR is not just disappointing, but totally outrageous! On Tuesday, he disingenuously asked the House for more money to promote civil rights while running Star Chambers of institutionalized racism that are undermining the American justice system at the critical “retail level.”

Star Chamber Justice — “Civil Rights” in Garland’s Star Chambers have a peculiar meaning! — Creative Commons License

Those advocates who almost single handedly kept the American justice system afloat by successfully challenging many of the unconstitutional racist actions of the Trump immigration kakistocracy once again find themselves “on the outside looking in.” Meanwhile, Judge Garland, who was hiding out above the fray @ the DC Circuit, treats them as “chopped liver” while continuing White Nationalist, anti-due-process policies and precedents initiated by Trump and his cronies.

How out of touch is Garland’s proposal to the House yesterday to address the Immigration Court backlog by casting 100 new Immigration Judges into this mess? (Presumably, these positions will be handed out “like candy” to more non-expert, non-diverse, non-due-process oriented insiders and former government prosecutors.) Well, even with many more Immigration Judges on the bench (more than twice as many as at the end of the Obama Administration), it’s been about two decades since EOIR has decided more cases than it has docketed! That’s how “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by DOJ politicos and EOIR bureaucrats builds uncontrollable backlogs!

Assume the highly unlikely, that under Garland, without any more quotas, corner cutting, or other anti-due-process gimmicks, the existing nearly 600 judges could keep “even” with new filings. Then, once selected, trained, and on duty (a process that took the Obama Administration an astounding average of two years), “Garland’s 100 new judges” could devote themselves to “backlog reduction.” At the DOJ’s quota of 700 cases per judge, the new judges could decide 70,000 cases per year. At that rate, it would take them approximately two decades (or five 4-year Administrations) to “wipe out” the backlog.

Sound like a plan? Only if you don’t understand the fundamental, endemic problems plaguing EOIR and have no “real life experience” representing individuals whose hopes, lives, and futures are being ground to dust by EOIR malfeasance on a daily basis!

Folks, this has to stop! Keep pressing those constitutional arguments that eventually will bring Garland’s corrupt, dysfunctional system to a screeching halt. And keep pushing for legislation to take this ungodly mess out of the DOJ. Also, keep reminding President Biden who helped get out the vote and get him his job. And, where is our African/Asian American/daughter of immigrants Vice President while this outrage at “Justice” is playing out?

How do supposedly progressive women legal luminaries like Lisa Monaco and Vanita Gupta justify their role in Garland’s misogynist, due process farce @ EOIR?

Woman Tortured — “She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — Lisa Monaco & Vanita Gupta have wandered into a strange vision of “justice” for refugee women of color @ “Justice!”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As for “DT-21,” he/she/them remains as enigmatic, unverifiable, unabashed, and unafraid as ever! This is a 21st Century “patriot” tired of the abuse of due process, racism, incompetence, and misogyny that EOIR has fostered over Administrations of both parties. EOIR under Garland is a progressive’s continuing nightmare!

Does “DT-21” lurk in the shadows of a parking garage, beyond the view of security cameras, as did the famous 1970’s namesake? Or, at the outskirts of an interstate rest area? Perhaps in a dark unwatched corner of an overcrowded Zoom chat room?

And, while you’re at it, say a prayer for Linda Lovelace (1949-2002), the original “Deep Throat” (1972), who later said she was an abused spouse coerced into a career as an adult actress that she eventually rejected. Somehow, there is a tie-in between Lovelace’s exploitation in the 1970s and the systemic mistreatment of asylum seeking domestic violence victims that went into high gear during the Trump regime and continues unabated under Garland! Interestingly, before her untimely death in 2002, Lovelace became an anti-porn activist who testified before the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (a/k/a “The Meese Commission”) in 1986.

Stay tuned for more “truth from the Tower.” You certainly won’t get it from “Team Garland.”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-04-21

🇺🇸🗽👍🏼PRESSURE FROM HUMANITARIANS WORKS: Biden Finally Keeps Promise To Raise Refugee Cap To 62,500 After Strong Pushback From Earlier Bobble!

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-05-03/biden-lifts-trump-refugee-cap-after-delay-backlash

By MATTHEW LEE AND ZEKE MILLER

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MAY 3, 2021 1:48 PM PT

WASHINGTON —

President Biden is formally lifting the nation’s refugee cap to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in removing former President Trump’s limit of 15,000.

Biden last month moved to expand the eligibility criteria for resettlements, removing one roadblock to refugees entering the U.S. put in place by Trump, but he had initially stopped short of lifting the annual cap, with aides saying they did not believe it was necessary. But Biden faced sharp pushback for not at least taking the symbolic step of authorizing more refugees to enter the U.S. this year and swiftly reversed course.

Biden, in a statement, said the new limit “erases the historically low number set by the previous administration,” adding that Trump’s cap “did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees.”

“It is important to take this action today to remove any lingering doubt in the minds of refugees around the world who have suffered so much, and who are anxiously waiting for their new lives to begin,” Biden added.

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

So, excruciating, aggressive, very public pressure from progressive humanitarians works with a President who pays attention to facts and actually wants to govern in the public interest.

Maybe the same advocacy groups, interest groups, and legislators need to radically step up the pressure for progressive changes (or at least the end of active oppression) at the Immigration Courts, which are a main impediment to a fair asylum system. Folks, asylum seekers are “refugees” — first and foremost! The failure to recognize that and treat them legally and humanely is beyond disgraceful!

The unmitigated Immigration Court disaster also undermines racial justice in America every single day that “Team Garland” continues with Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist nativist policies and Miller’s restrictionist “judges” in the Immigration Courts!

Judge Garland has been “living in the Ivory Tower” for a long time, obviously too long! But Lisa Monaco and Vanita Gupta actually have had to make a living in the “real world” for the past four years. Somebody in the advocacy community who knows these two needs to pick up the phone and read them the “riot act” on the racist, misogynistic, nativist, anti-due-process, regressive, mismanaged human rights disaster unfolding on their watch every day at EOIR — America’s worst excuse for a “court system!”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-03-21

CHARLES M. BLOW @ NYT BEGS TO DIFFER WITH GOP SENs SCOTT & GRAHAM: “However, it is important to remember that nearly half the country just voted for a full-on racist in Donald Trump, and they did so by either denying his racism, becoming apologists for it, or applauding it. What do you call a country thus composed?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/opinion/america-racism.html?referringSource=articleShare

. . . .

I personally don’t make much of Scott’s ability to reason. This is the same man who said in March that “woke supremacy,” whatever that is, “is as bad as white supremacy.” There is no world in which recent efforts at enlightenment can be equated to enslavement, lynching and mass incarceration. None.

Colfax

It seems to me that the disingenuousness on the question of racism is largely a question of language. The question turns on another question: “What, to you, is America?” Is America the people who now inhabit the land, divorced from its systems and its history? Or, is the meaning of America inclusive of those systems and history?

When people say that America is a racist country, they don’t necessarily mean that all or even most Americans are consciously racist. However, it is important to remember that nearly half the country just voted for a full-on racist in Donald Trump, and they did so by either denying his racism, becoming apologists for it, or applauding it. What do you call a country thus composed?

Historically, however, there is no question that the country was founded by racists and white supremacists, and that much of the early wealth of this country was built on the backs of enslaved Africans, and much of the early expansion came at the expense of the massacre of the land’s Indigenous people and broken treaties with them.

Eight of the first 10 presidents personally enslaved Africans. In 1856, the chief justice of the United States wrote in the infamous ruling on the Dred Scott case that Black people “had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The country went on to fight a Civil War over whether some states could maintain slavery as they wished. Even some of the people arguing for, and fighting for, an end to slavery had expressed their white supremacist beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln said during his famous debates against Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 that among white people and Black ones “there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man.”

Some will concede the historical point and insist on the progress point, arguing that was then and this is now, that racism simply doesn’t exist now as it did then. I would agree. American racism has evolved and become less blunt, but it has not become less effective. The knife has simply been sharpened. Now systems do the work that once required the overt actions of masses of individual racists.

. . . .

As Mark Twain once put it: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

Being imprecise or undecided with our language on this subject contributes to the murkiness — and to the myth that the question of whether America is racist is difficult to answer and therefore the subject of genuine debate among honest intellectuals.

Saying that America is racist is not a radical statement. If that requires a longer explanation or definition, so be it. The fact, in the end, is not altered.

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

Read Blow’s full article at the link.

Four things that are clear to me:

The “history” that most of us in my generation learned in high school was “whitewashed;”
The monumental achievements of non-white Americans, women, and children which allowed this country to exist, prosper, and flourish have consistently been ignored or downplayed;
America still has race issues;
The GOP, in particular, has failed to come to grips with the issue of race in 21st century America (apologists Scott & Graham notwithstanding).

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process For All Persons Under Law, Forever!

PWS

05-03-21

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️SCOFFLAW ADMINISTRATION: Biden, Garland, Mayorkas Continue Trump Policies That Fuel Kidnapping Of Asylum Applicants, Aid Smugglers! — Molly O’Toole Reports @ LAT!

Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times
Source: LA Times website

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=3c4571fa-1131-4b45-8fd5-a1903b21b58f

By Molly O’Toole

WASHINGTON — With shaking hands, Karen Cruz Caceres manages to hit record on the call.

“How many days have you gone without food?” she asks into the phone.

Tani, her younger sister, is heard sobbing. “Help me,” she gets out.

Cruz Caceres assures her: “I am going to pay today. I’ll make another deposit.”

The April 1 call ends abruptly, and Cruz Caceres stops recording.

A week before, Cruz Caceres, a single mother from Honduras who won asylum in Tennessee, had gotten another call that upended her already precarious life: Kidnappers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, had abducted her pregnant sister Tani and Tani’s 4-year-old son, and they wanted more than $20,000, according to a video recording of the call and messages reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. The family asked The Times not to use her sister’s last name, for fear of retribution from the kidnappers in Mexico and gangs back home.

Tani, 33, and her son were kidnapped on March 25, Cruz Caceres and lawyers said — just after U.S. authorities expelled them from Texas alongside other mothers and children under a Trump-era pandemic policy known as Title 42, which President Biden has continued.

The unprecedented policy, which relies on an obscure 1944 public health statute to indefinitely close the border to “nonessential” travel, has made migrant children and parents easy prey for the criminal groups waiting just on the other side. Biden’s continued reliance on Title 42 to quickly remove the vast majority of migrants at the southern border without due process contrasts with his pledge to restore “human dignity” to a U.S. immigration system targeted by former President Trump.

“My sister and my nephew were told they were going to kill them and feed them to the dogs,” Cruz Caceres told The Times. “If [U.S. officials] want to deport them back to their country, why don’t they do it now like prior presidents did?” she asked. “Why dump them to try their luck in the most dangerous cities in Mexico, to get abducted by kidnappers?”

The abduction of migrants in northern Mexico and the extortion from U.S. family members isn’t new, lawyers, experts and officials told The Times — what’s new is the reliance on Title 42 to expel thousands of these already vulnerable families, leaving them at the mercy of kidnappers and other criminals.

Since the Trump administration implemented Title 42 in March last year amid a global pandemic, U.S. border officials have carried out more than 630,000 expulsions under the policy, some 240,000 since Biden took office in January, according to a Times analysis of the latest government data.

. . . .

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

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

The Biden Administration ran and took office on a platform of kinder, saner policies that would restore human rights and the rule of law at the border. So far, that promise has been a deadly lie!

Arbitrarily and unlawfully closing legal ports of entry to asylum seekers and abrogating asylum and refugee laws plays directly into the hands of human smugglers and cartels while expanding the extralegal immigration system and the resulting underground of undocumented residents. Many of these individuals could and should have been legally admitted through legal channels if we had a functioning immigration system overseen by fair, impartial, expert Immigration Courts staffed with well-qualified progressive Immigration Judges.

Inevitably and predictably, these gross government failures lead to the type of human tragedy that occurred yesterday when a smuggling boat sank off the California coast, killing at least three and injuring dozens. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-02/boat-capsizes-off-coast-of-point-loma

Naturally, with no legal asylum system in place, and with asylum seekers arbitrarily rejected at legal ports of entry, as described in Molly’s article, desperate individuals will turn to smugglers to achieve refuge. It’s not rocket science; but sadly the human tragedy that illegal, inhumane government policies cause at our border appear to be “out of sight, out of mind” to Judge Garland and other Biden Administration officials. That is, until the dead bodies start to pile up on their doorsteps!

“Floaters” — “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
This appears to be the Garland, Monaco, Gupta view of human rights and the rule of law for asylum seeker! What if we thought of these folks as our fellow human beings, rather than statistics or problems to be “deterred” through illegal, deadly, and ultimately ineffective policies? What if Garland replaced Miller’s nativist “judges” with REAL progressive Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum and due process and have the guts to grant legal protection to eligible migrants in a prompt, fair, and timely manner and to demand that DHS Asylum Officers do likewise? (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

🇺🇸⚖️🗽😎🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-03-21

EOIR WRONG AGAIN: BIA’s Attempt To Limit Its Own Jurisdiction To Grant Waivers Thwarted By 4th Cir. — Jiminez-Rodriguez v. Garland

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca4-on-waivers-jimenez-rodriguez-v-garland#

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA4 on Waivers: Jimenez-Rodriguez v. Garland

Jimenez-Rodriguez v. Garland

“Reading the broad language of §§ 1003.10(b) and 1240.1(a)(1)(iv), we conclude that these regulations give the IJ the Attorney General’s discretionary authority to grant a § 1182(d)(3)(A)(ii) waiver. … [W]e grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s final removal order, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Brad Banias!]

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

Seldom has a supposed quasi-judicial tribunal worked as hard as the current BIA to find limits on its ability to solve legal and humanitarian problems. That leaves the work to the Circuits, as in this case.

So, why have EOIR at all? The system clearly is unconstitutional because it lacks fair and impartial adjudicators and even minimally competent administration of due process. If Garland, Monaco, and Gupta have no interest in fixing these glaring problems, then why not just transfer EOIR’s functions to the U.S. District Courts and U.S. Magistrate Judges under the supervision of the Courts of Appeals?

Dems talk big about the need for a more progressive Federal Judiciary to achieve racial justice. But, given the chance actually to create one, they sit on their hands!

Not so the GOP! Restrictionists, nativists, reactionaries and White Nationalists recognize the repressive power of a captive and co-opted Immigration Judiciary and act accordingly. “Act” — that’s the operative word that doesn’t appear to be in the Dem’s vocabulary when it comes to building a better Federal Judiciary for a better America.

Progressives might initially have cheered the appointment of these three to top leadership posts @ the DOJ. But, to date, they have shown no interest in rescinding Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist immigration policies or replacing Miller’s nativist judges with progressive expert judges @ EOIR.

Judge Merrick Garland — Judge Merrick B. Garland, U.S. Attorney General
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

Lisa Monaco
Deputy AG
Official USG Photo, Public Realm

Vanita Gupta
Associate Attorney General
Photo: Brookings Institution, Paul Morigi, Creative Commons License.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-02-21

🛡⚔️👍🏼“SIR JEFFREY” CHASE — Garland’s Immigration “Judges” Pull The Ol’ “Bait & Switch” — They Only Are “Judges” When “OIL” Is Trying To Convince Ethically & Legally Challenged Article III Courts To “Defer” To EOIR Decisions — Otherwise, They Are Expected To Act Like DOJ ”Grundoons” Mindlessly Carrying Out The Executive’s Agenda Cloaked In Quasi-Judicial Disguise!

Grundoon
From Walt Kelly’s “Pogo”
SOURCE: Pininterest

Grundoon: A diapered baby groundhog (or “woodchunk” in swamp-speak). An infant toddler, Grundoon speaks only gibberish, represented by strings of random consonants like “Bzfgt”, “ktpv”, “mnpx”, “gpss”, “twzkd”, or “znp”. Eventually, Grundoon learns to say two things: “Bye” and “Bye-bye”. He also has a baby sister, whose full name is Li’l Honey Bunny Ducky Downy Sweetie Chicken Pie Li’l Everlovin’ Jelly Bean. [From the Walt Kelly comic strip “Pogo.”]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/4/29/the-dojs-contradictions

Contact

The DOJ’s Contradictions

In a recent blog post, I discussed the difficulty in establishing asylum based on a political opinion expressed against MS-13. In the specific case discussed, the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the Immigration Judge’s finding that the asylum-seeker had expressed a political opinion to MS-13 members.1 In reversing the Immigration Judge, the BIA specifically stated as to MS-13 that “the gangs are criminal organizations, and not political or governmental organizations and gang activities are not political in nature.” The BIA has repeatedly expressed this same view (using this or similar boilerplate language) in its decisions denying asylum. In the particular case discussed in my blog post, a split panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals could not find enough evidence of record to compel the majority to overturn the BIA’s conclusion.

The BIA is of course a part of the U.S. Department of Justice; its judges are appointed by and employed by the Attorney General. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was one of the Department officials to make the following point to a class of new Immigration Judges in March 2019:

Immigration judges appointed by the Attorney General and supervised by the Executive Office for Immigration Review are not only judges. First, you are not only judges because you are also employees of the United States Department of Justice. It is a great honor to serve in this Department. In the courtyard just outside the entrance to this Great Hall, high up on the interior wall of the Main Justice building, there is a depiction of the scales of justice and an inscription that reads, “Privilegium Obligatio.” It means that when you accept a privilege, you incur an obligation. In this Department, our duty is in our name. We are the only cabinet agency with a name that articulates a moral value.

Justice is not measured by statistics. Our employees learn from day one that their duty is to gather the facts, seek the truth, apply the law, and respect the policies and principles of the Department of Justice.

The second reason that you are not only judges is that in addition to your adjudicative function – finding facts and applying laws – you are a member of the executive branch. You follow lawful instructions from the Attorney General, and you share a duty to enforce the law.2

The clear message being conveyed is “Don’t get any big ideas of judicial independence and neutrality; you work for ‘Team Justice,’ and you will behave accordingly.” Am I alone in thinking that the motto cited by Rosenstein, “when you accept a privilege, you incur an obligation,” here comes across as a boss reminding new employees where their loyalties lie rather than as a commitment to truth and justice?

As wrong as this message is when conveyed to judges who are supposed to enjoy the independence and neutrality to rule against the Department of Justice and the Attorney General when the facts and law compel such an outcome, let’s examine this view for the consistency of its application as to all DOJ employees. Presumably, the Board’s official stance that MS-13 is not a political organization and that its activities are criminal and not political in nature enjoys the Department’s seal of approval. In fact, other Department of Justice attorneys, working for the Office of Immigration Litigation, defend that view when the BIA”s decisions are reviewed on appeal by the Circuit Courts. I’m not aware of any Attorney General action to certify a BIA decision expressing this view in order to correct the Board’s position on this issue, or even to remand to the Board for further consideration of its position in light of other conflicting views within the Department.

Regarding such conflicting views, I was recently made aware of a criminal indictment drafted by the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in the Eastern District of New York.3 The indictment was filed in December, 2020, while the Trump Administration was still in office. The opening paragraph of the indictment states that MS-13 is a transnational criminal organization engaged in terrorist activity, and that its members use violence “in order to obtain concessions from the government of El Salvador, achieve political goals and retaliate for government actions against MS-13’s members and leaders.” (emphasis added).

The indictment contains a specific section titled “Political Influence in El Salvador.” The indictment states that a unit of MS-13, the Ranfla Nacional, “gained political influence as a result of the violence and intimidation MS-13 exerted on the government and population of El Salvador.” It continued that the organization exercised leverage on the Salvadoran government through its control on the level of violence. The indictment states that in 2012, MS-13 exercised its leverage to negotiate a truce with the ruling FMLN party and its rival 18th Street “to reduce homicides in El Salvador in return for improved prison conditions, benefits and money.” According to the indictment, MS-13 also negotiated a similar agreement with the rival ARENA party, promising to deliver votes in return for benefits. The indictment states that over time, “the Ranfla Nacional continued to negotiate with political parties in El Salvador and use its control of the level of violence to influence the actions of the government in El Salvador.”

The indictment also contains a section explaining the purpose of the Ranfla Nacional. The second specific goal listed is: “Influencing the actions of governments in El Salvador and elsewhere to implement policies favorable to MS-13.”

The attorneys who made the above claims in an indictment filed in Federal District Court are also employees of the U.S. Department of Justice. They are also members of the executive branch, following lawful instructions from the Attorney General, and sharing a duty to enforce the law. In the Second Circuit case I recently discussed, other Department of Justice attorneys in their brief to the court defended the Board’s decision by depicting MS-13 as “an institution that is entirely non-governmental – that is…a group of criminals who, in fact, reject the rules set out by the government.” Noticeably absent from the same brief was any mention that this “rejection of the rules set out by government” includes strategies to pressure said government into undertaking specific actions, as well as its entering into negotiations and ultimately agreements with political parties, the terms of which include MS-13’s delivering votes in return for the parties’ commitment to enacting beneficial policies.

So how can it be that attorneys in one office of the Department of Justice argue that MS-13 as an organization is engaged in exerting political influence to achieve its political goals, and at the same time, another group of attorneys within the same Department of Justice can sign orders sending victims of the same MS-13 to their death by employing a boilerplate sentence that MS-13 is not a political organization and its activities are not political in nature? And that the decisions of that latter group are then defended by a third group of Department attorneys on appeal who make no mention of the conflicting arguments? Let’s remember that, according to Rosenstein, these attorneys were taught from day one that their duties as Department of Justice employees include gathering the facts and seeking the truth.

In 1997, a very different BIA wrote the following in a decision that, although still binding as precedent, seems long forgotten:

immigration enforcement obligations do not consist only of initiating and conducting prompt proceedings that lead to removals at any cost. Rather, as has been said, the government wins when justice is done. In that regard, the handbook for trial attorneys states that “[t]he respondent should be aided in obtaining any procedural rights or benefits required by the statute, regulation and controlling court decision, of the requirements of fairness.” Handbook for Trial Attorneys § 1.3 (1964). See generally Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas Co. v. FERC, 962 F.2d 45, 48 (D.C. Cir. 1992)(finding astonishing that counsel for a federal administrative agency denied that the A.B.A. Code of Professional Responsibility holds government lawyers to a higher standard and has obligations that “might sometimes trump the desire to pound an opponent into submission”); Reid v. INS, 949 F.2d 287 (9th Cir. 1991)(noting that government counsel has an interest only in the law being observed, not in victory or defeat).4

This matter deserves the immediate attention of Attorney General Merrick Garland. The ability of asylum seekers to receive a fair review of their claims based on accurate information is a matter of life and death. At this early stage of the Biden Administration, it is critical that the Department send a clear message that the “obligation” mentioned in its motto is to serve an ideal of justice that is independent of the particular politics of those temporally in charge.

Copyright 2021 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

Zelaya-Moreno v. Wilkinson, No. 17-2284, ___ F.3d ___ (2d Cir., Feb. 26, 2021).

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/deputy-attorney-general-rod-j-rosenstein-delivers-opening-remarks-investiture-31-newly.

E.D.N.Y. Docket No.: 20-CR-577 (JFB). The Department of Justice’s Press Release can be found here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/ms-13-s-highest-ranking-leaders-charged-terrorism-offenses-united-states.

Matter of S-M-J-, 21 I&N Dec. 722, 727 (BIA 1997).

APRIL 29, 2021

Reprinted by permission.

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

As most outside the nativist world know, the BIA’s position that Northern Triangle gangs aren’t political in nature and action is absurd! For Pete’s sake, these guys negotiate “peace treaties” with governments, control large swaths of territory, manipulate “public death rates” for political gain, aid or punish political candidates and police, collect taxes, control jobs, and have economic policies. Sure sounds like a quasi-governmental, clearly political entity to me. Somewhere, there is a dissent of mine in an old published CAT case saying approximately that.

At least at one point, gangs in El Salvador controlled more jobs than did the Salvadoran Government! No competent, unbiased group of adjudicators (not to mention supposed “experts”) could have reached the BIA’s ridiculous, clearly politicized conclusions!

Sadly, to date, Judge Garland has followed in the footsteps of his dilatory Dem predecessors by destroying lives, promoting injustice, and blowing the Dems’ best chance to build a progressive, due process oriented, human rights advancing judiciary that also would help resolve America’s failure to come to grips with the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and its key role in our legal immigration system as well as being a prerequisite to achieving racial justice in America.

Supposedly, these are the goals of the Biden Administration. Unfortunately, Garland, Monaco, and Gupta haven’t gotten the message, although it has been “delivered” time after time by numerous experts and advocates!

A few historical notes:

I was on the en banc BIA that decided Matter of S-M-J-, cited by Jeffrey. It was written by Judge Michael J. Heilman, a fellow Wisconsinite who once had worked for me at the “Legacy INS” General Counsel, following service as a State Department consular officer. That case “originated” on a three-member panel of Heilman, the late Judge Lauri Steven Filppu, and me. It reflects the “government wins when justice is done” message that I had incorporated into INS attorney training years earlier, as well as fealty to UN Handbook standards encouraged by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, and the “best practices” that bygone BIA was consciously and aggressively advancing.
Former DAG Rod Rosenstein was once a respected career prosecutor who served Administrations of both parties. Then, he “sold out” to the Trump Administration and its neo-fascists. Although that probably should have ended his legal career, he’s currently enjoying life in “big law” while those victims harmed and wronged by the illegal and unethical policies (or, in some cases their survivors) he furthered continue to suffer.

Radical progressive due process reforms @ EOIR, starting with wholesale personnel changes and revocation of restrictionist, racist, misogynist policies and practices is long overdue. Nearly two months into his tenure Judge Garland has yet to demonstrate awareness of the need for immediate, decisive action. Meanwhile the bodies continue to pile up and the “adverse decisions” from the Article IIIs bearing his name and tarnishing his reputation continue to roll in!

Actually, Judge, each wrong decision from the BIA represents a human life ruined, often irrevocably. Is that the type of “impact” on American justice that you intend to leave as your “legacy?”

EOIR HQ, Falls Church, VA (a/k/a “The Tower of Babel”)
By Pieter Bruegel The Elder
Public Domain

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-01-21

☠️⚰️🤮👎🏽BIDEN/GARLAND/MAYORKAS WITH MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS FAILURE: 40% Of Asylum Seekers Illegally Returned By Biden Administration Suffered Attacks, Kidnapping Upon Return To Mexico — None Were Given Legal/Human Rights To Apply For Asylum (Under A System Already Biased Against People of Color & Women)! — This & Other News In The Gibson Report, Prepared By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group!

Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

COVID-19 & Closures

Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify information with the government and colleagues.

EOIR Status Overview & EOIR Court Status Map/List: Unless previously specified on the court status list, hearings in non-detained cases at courts are postponed through, and including, May 14, 2021. (It is unclear when the next announcement will be. EOIR announced 5/14 on Mon. 3/29, 4/16 on Fri. 3/5, 3/19 on Wed. 2/10, 2/19 on Mon. 1/25, 2/5 on Mon. 1/11, and 1/22 on Mon. 12/28.) There is no announced date for reopening NYC non-detained at this time.

USCIS Office Closings and Visitor Policy

TOP NEWS

An Early Promise Broken: Inside Biden’s Reversal on Refugees

NYT: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in the Oval Office, pleading with President Biden. In the meeting, on March 3, Mr. Blinken implored the president to end Trump-era restrictions on immigration and to allow tens of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing war, poverty and natural disasters into the United States, according to several people familiar with the exchange. But Mr. Biden, already under intense political pressure because of the surge of migrant children at the border with Mexico, was unmoved.

Trump Asylum Work Rules Under Review, Changes Possible, DOJ Says

Bloomberg: Trump regulations aimed at lengthening the amount of time an asylum seeker had to wait to apply for work authorization are now under review, with potential changes coming, according to a new government filing in a federal lawsuit over the rules.

New Report Documents Nearly 500 Cases Of Violence Against Asylum-Seekers Expelled By Biden

Intercept: A joint human rights report published Tuesday, based on more than 110 in-person interviews and an electronic survey of more than 1,200 asylum-seekers in the Mexican state of Baja California, documented at least 492 cases of attacks or kidnappings targeting asylum-seekers expelled under a disputed public health law, known as Title 42, since President Joe Biden’s January inauguration.

Biden’s open to doing immigration through reconciliation, Hispanic lawmakers say

Politico: A push from Biden touting the economic benefits of immigration reform could supplement efforts by progressive groups to sell a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people as a $1.4 trillion boon for the U.S. economy. It also may boost efforts by some on Capitol Hill to argue that a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants can be passed in a reconciliation package that, if sanctioned by the Senate parliamentarian, could move through the chamber with just 50 votes.

How ICE’s Mishandling of Covid-19 Fueled Outbreaks Around the Country

NYT: To date, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reported over 12,000 virus cases. Our investigation found that the impact of infection extended beyond U.S. detention centers.

Nearly 4,000 MPP Cases Transferred Out of MPP Courts Under Biden, But Most Cases Still Remain In Mexico

TRAC: Rates of case transfers out of MPP varied by court, from a high of 28 percent of cases assigned to the MPP court in Brownsville, Texas, transferred to a non-MPP court, to a low of just three percent of cases assigned to the MPP court in Laredo, Texas.

They missed their U.S. court dates because they were kidnapped. Now they’re blocked from applying for asylum.

WaPo: Many missed their court dates because they were kidnapped and held hostage, or detained by Mexican officials, or because they couldn’t find a safe way to get to the border in the middle of the night, when most were told to arrive for their hearings, according to lawyers, advocates and the migrants themselves. Some had medical emergencies related to the conditions in which they waited. An untold number, their asylum cases now closed, remain in hiding in northern Mexico.

Unaccompanied migrant children spend weeks in government custody, even when their U.S.-based parents are eager to claim them

WaPo: More than 40 percent of the minors released by the government have at least one parent already living in the United States, but HHS has been taking 25 days on average to approve release and grant custody to the mother or father, a number that dipped to 22 days Thursday, according to the latest internal data reviewed by The Washington Post. It takes an average of 33 days to release minors to other immediate relatives, such as siblings.

Despite Biden’s union support, immigration judges left waiting

Roll Call: More than a month after former D.C. Circuit judge Merrick B. Garland was confirmed as attorney general, the Justice Department — which houses the U.S. immigration court system — has not intervened.

What America would look like with zero immigration

CNN: In short, if immigration remained at near-zero levels, within decades, the country could be older, smaller and poorer. But if the US government welcomed more newcomers, within decades, the country could be younger, more productive and richer.

Sex Work Prosecution Changes in New York Are a Welcome Step — but Not Enough

Intercept: Historically, the criminalization of “promoting” sex work has left the loved ones and roommates of sex workers, as well as sex worker rights advocates, vulnerable to prosecution. For many immigrant workers, the risk of deportation will remain. The DA’s office said that it would continue to bring other charges that stem from prostitution-related arrests. “Trafficking” will no doubt be used to carry out raids and harass survival workers.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Justices Won’t Hear Texas Bid To Revive Public Charge Rule

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled Texas and 13 other states moved too quickly in attempting to revive the Trump-era public charge rule, saying the states would have to first make their case at the district court level.

BIA Finds Attorney Provided Ineffective Assistance by Missending Medical Examination

Unpublished BIA decision finds prior attorney provided ineffective assistance by mistakenly submitting medical examination to USCIS rather than immigration court. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Samuels-Foster, 7/30/20) AILA Doc. No. 21042002

BIA Finds IJ Improperly Drew Falsus in Uno Inference

Unpublished BIA decision finds IJ improperly drew falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus inference where sole false testimony related to whether respondent rather than his prior attorney signed his adjustment application. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Luwaga, 7/31/20) AILA Doc. No. 21042001

CA3 3rd Circ. Says Courts Can’t Help Asylum-Seeker Define Group

Law360: Immigration courts were not required to help a Mexican immigrant refine his definition of the persecuted group he identified with in order to prevent his deportation, a Third Circuit panel has ruled.

CA3 Holds That INA §237(a)(2)(B) Provides No Pardon Waiver for a Controlled Substance Offense

Denying the petition for review, the court held that INA §237(a)(2)(B), which provides for removal of a noncitizen convicted of a violation of any law or regulation of a state relating to a controlled substance, contains no pardon waiver. (Aristy-Rosa v. Att’y Gen., 3/16/21) AILA Doc. No. 21041934

CA8 Upholds Denial of Asylum to Somali Petitioner Who Was a Member of a Minority Islamic Sect

The court held that the petitioner was removable because his Minnesota conviction for possession of khat related to a federal controlled substance pursuant to INA §237(a)(2)(B)(i), and found that the petitioner had failed to prove that he was entitled to asylum. (Ahmed v. Garland, 4/8/21) AILA Doc. No. 21041935

CA8 Says “Serious Reasons for Believing” Standard Under INA §208(b)(2)(A)(iii) Requires a Finding of Probable Cause

Where BIA had denied asylum to petitioner based on a finding that serious reasons exist to believe he committed a serious nonpolitical crime, the court held that the “serious reasons for believing” standard requires a finding of probable cause. (Barahona v. Garland, 2/3/21, amended 4/15/21) AILA Doc. No. 21021636

CA8 Concludes That Petitioner Was Barred from Cancellation of Removal Based on His Iowa Conviction for Possessing Marijuana

The court held that the BIA did not err in determining that petitioner’s Iowa conviction for possession of a controlled substance disqualified him from relief in the form of cancellation of removal, because the Iowa statute is divisible as to marijuana offenses. (Arroyo v. Garland, 4/14/21) AILA Doc. No. 21041937

CA9 Affirms District Court’s Grant of a Preliminary Injunction Against Third Country Transit Ban

The court upheld the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction against the implementation of a DHS/DOJ joint interim final rule that categorically denies asylum to individuals arriving at the U.S./Mexico border. (East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Garland, 7/6/20, amended 4/8/21) AILA Doc. No. 20070636

CA9 Concludes IJ’s Adverse Reasonable Fear of Torture Determination Was Not Supported by Substantial Evidence

Granting the petition for review and remanding, the court held that the IJ’s decision to affirm the asylum officer’s adverse reasonable fear of torture determination as to the Honduran petitioner was not supported by substantial evidence. (Alvarado-Herrera v. Garland, 4/13/21)

AILA Doc. No. 21042032

CA11 BIA Mishandling Of Forged Letter Resurrects Removal Appeal

Law360: The Eleventh Circuit has revived a Gambian man’s bid to remain in the U.S., chiding the Board of Immigration Appeals for misrepresenting how attorney misconduct, including an alleged forgery, skewed his removal proceedings.

Texas Says Biden Admin. Ignores COVID-19 Immigration Rule

Law360: Texas’ attorney general said in a federal court complaint Thursday that the Biden administration was not abiding by Trump-era U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rules meant to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by restricting illegal immigration.

ICE Must Hand Over Alternatives To Detention Records

Law360: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must hand over records related to its Alternatives to Detention program by May 3, in response to a lawsuit in New York federal court seeking information on how the agency surveils immigrants in its supervision.

ICE Rescinds Civil Penalties for Failure to Depart

Posted 4/23/2021

DHS announced that ICE has rescinded two delegation orders related to the collection of civil financial penalties for noncitizens who fail to depart the United States. ICE had initiated enforcement of civil penalties in 2018; as of January 20, 2021, ICE ceased issuing these fines.

AILA Doc. No. 21042331

DHS Notice of Suspension of Requirements Governing Employment for Venezuelan F-1 Students

Posted 4/22/2021

DHS notice of the suspension of certain requirements governing employment for F-1 students from Venezuela who are experiencing severe economic hardship as a result of the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. (86 FR 21328, 4/22/21)

AILA Doc. No. 21042106

DHS Notice of Suspension of Requirements Governing Employment for Syrian F-1 Students

Posted 4/22/2021

DHS notice of the suspension of certain requirements governing employment for F-1 students from Syria who are experiencing severe economic hardship as a result of the civil unrest in Syria. (86 FR 21333, 4/22/21)

AILA Doc. No. 21042105

CBP Memo Updating Terminology for CBP Communications and Materials

Posted 4/21/2021

Troy Miller, senior official performing the duties of the commissioner, issued a memo establishing guidance on the preferred use of immigration terminology within the federal government. The memo provides a table listing prior terminology and the new terminology CBP will use moving forward.

AILA Doc. No. 21042100

ACTIONS

USCIS Request for Public Input on Reducing Administrative Barriers: Comments are due May 19, 2021.

March to Victory: Relay Across America

RESOURCES

AIC: The First 100 Days: Biden on Immigration Detention

AILA: Client Flyer: Extension of DED for Liberians

AILA: Client Flyer: Receipt Notice Delays and Related Intake Issues

AILA: From China’s One-Child Policy to Central America’s Gender-Based Violence Epidemic: An Argument for Expansive Application of the “Coercive Population Control” Political Opinion Ground

Asylos

Sierra Leone: Support for former victims of trafficking (AFR2021-01)

Namibia: Situation for people from Ovahimba tribe and treatment for diabetes (AFR2020-30)

Ecuador: Indigenous female children’s protection from domestic abuse and harassment, and young Indigenous mothers’ access to education and employment opportunities (AME2021-03)

India: Harassment and violence against Christians (ASI2021-01)

Ethiopia: Discrimination and violence against Eritrean children in Ethiopia (MEN2021-03)

Azerbaïdjan : Etat des lieux sur la corruption, l’opposition et les rapatriés (CIS2021-01)

CLINIC: Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I-9 and REAL ID Policies

CLINIC: Five Things to Know about Fraud and Marriage-Based Petitions

CLINIC: Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)

CLINIC: Legislative Relief Packages

CLINIC: Presidential Proclamations and Other White House Policies

CLINIC: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

CWS: COVID-19 Vaccine Informational Videos for Refugee Communities (multiple languages)

DOJ OIG: Limited-Scope Review of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

HRF: Failure to Protect: Biden Administration Continues Illegal Trump Policy to Block and Expel Asylum Seekers to Danger

IAN: Webinar Handout: Mendez Rojas Settlement Agreement

Immigrants Rights Voices – Map of Retaliation

ImmProf: Chart of Terminology Changes at CBP

NIP/NLG: Aggravated Felonies and the Harmful Exclusion of People from Immigration Relief

Witness Radio: Title 42, The Invisible Border Wall

EVENTS

4/26/21 Clean Slate Advocacy Day training

4/27/21 The Relationship Between Immigration and Journalism

4/27/21 Dusting Off DACA

4/27/21 Relief for immigrant youth under the Biden administration – Deferred Action for Childhood

4/28/21 Spring 2021 Asylum Seminar

4/28/21 A Chance to Come Home: A Roadmap to Bring Home the Unjustly Deported

4/28/21 Community Defense: Legal Service Partnerships with Organizers

4/29/21 Adjudication of trauma in immigration proceedings

4/30/21Dismantling MPP Moving Forward: Lessons Learned From Working With Detained People and Formerly Separated Families

5/3/21 Finding A New Norm: Resilience Fundamentals

5/4/21 Dealing with Difficult People

5/4/21 Avoiding Future Travel Issues for Clients with COVID-19 Travel Complications

5/4/21Public Charge: Current State of Play

5/5/21 100 Days: Accountability on Immigration

5/5/21-5/6/21 U Visas: Advanced & Emerging Issues

5/5/21 Straight Talk on Stress in Law and How to Cope: Mindfulness for Lawyers

5/6/21 IDP: The Ethics of Representing Clients with Criminal Contacts

5/6/21Hot Topics in Asylum Law

5/6/21 Advanced Considerations in TPS & DED (Late-breaking)

5/10/21All About DOJ Recognition and Accreditation

5/12/21 NYIC: Legal Research and Writing Training Series

5/12/21New Virtual Workshop Models

5/13/21Marijuana and Immigrants

5/17/21-5/20/21CLINIC Convening 2021

5/18/21 DOJ Recognition & Accreditation

5/18/21Ethics in Representing Family Members in U Visa, U AOS/929, and VAWA Cases

5/19/21 Phase 1 of a SIJS case: the intersection of immigration law and family law

5/20/21 Understanding your Client’s Contact with the Criminal Legal System in New York City

5/26/21Hot Topics in Removal Defense

6/1/21VAWA Adjustment of Status Fundamentals

6/2/21-6/23/21 CLINIC Webinar Series: Overview of Immigration Consequences of Crimes

6/8/21-6/29/21 CLINIC Webinar Series: Citizenship and Naturalization

6/9/21-6/12/21 2021 AILA Virtual Annual Conference on Immigration Law

6/9/21Hot topics: Adjudication and Enforcement Trends

6/10/21Public Charge and Hot Topics in Consular Processing

6/14/21Taxes at the Border: Understanding the Tax Consequences of Immigration Status

6/15/21U Visa Hot Topics

6/15/21Motions to Reopen in Immigration Court: Part III – VAWA Self-petitioners

6/16/21 Phase 2 of a SIJS case: Preparation & submission of the immigration forms to USCIS

6/22/21Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2021

6/30/21Immigration Update – June 2021

7/21/21 The ethics of dual representation (child and guardian) in SIJS practice

7/22/21PLI: Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2021

9/23/21Representing Children in Immigration Matters 2021: Effective Advocacy and Best Practices

ImmProf

Monday, April 26, 2021

Immigration Article of the Day: Regional Immigration Enforcement by Fatma Marouf

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Map of Retaliatory Actions Against Immigrant Activists

Human Smugglers Bypass Border Patrol, Deaths on the Border in South Texas

Immigration Article of the Day: The War Against Asian Sailors and Fishers by Gabriel Jack Chin and Sam Chew Chin

Saturday, April 24, 2021

Protagonist of The Infiltrators Speaks Out Against Deportation of Whistleblowers

Immigration Article of the Day: Athletes in Transit: Why the Game is Different in Sports and the Visas Should be Too by David P. Weber

Friday, April 23, 2021

Balls of F$%*ing Steel

April 29: Bridging the Scientific-Legal Divide in the Adjudication of Trauma in Immigration Proceedings, UC Davis Global Migration Center

Immigration Article of the Day: (Un)Equal Immigration Protection by Carrie Rosenbaum

American First Legal (a/k/a Stephen Miller’s Foundation) teams with Texas in challenge to Biden immigration policies

Accolades: Emily Ryo

Thursday, April 22, 2021

April 24: Access to Justice Scholar Showcase

May 07: ABA Administrative Law Section Virtual Live Spring CLE Conference

From the Bookshelves: Taste of Belonging by Welcoming America

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Conference June 9-11, 2021: ‘Ageing Gracefully? The 1951 Refugee Convention at 70’

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Chart of Terminology Changes at CBP

In Defense of Chain Migration

What America would look like with zero immigration

Rutgers Law: Latinx Civil Rights Conference

Call for Proposals: Global Borderlands: getting to the core of Crimmigration

Monday, April 19, 2021

Oral Argument in Sanchez v. Mayorkas

From the Bookshelves: The End of Asylum by By Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, and Philip G. Schrag

Peter Margulies: Biden’s Border Problem, and How to Fix It

More inclusive language for immigrants at ICE, CBP

America First Caucus Scrapped

Senator Booker Revives Bill To Overhaul Immigration Detention

Immigration Article of the Day: Expanding the Geographies of ‘Sanctuary’ and the Deepening and Contentious Nature of Immigration Federalism: The Case of California’s SB 54 by William Arroacha

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

The failure of President Biden, Judge Garland, and Secretary Mayorkas to end the grotesque abuse of asylum seekers at our borders will be a blot on their records. Human lives are at stake!

And establishing a due process compliant, robust, generous asylum adjudication system in the U.S. is not “rocket science.” With better, more courageous leadership, and different judges (a number of whom are already on the EOIR payroll), and a partnership with NGOs and organizations who know asylum law, a much better system could have been up and functioning well before now!

Just one word to describe the performance so far: INEXCUSABLE!

Biden Border Message — “Border Message”
By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-28-21

🏴‍☠️☠️HOW RACIST DISTORTIONS & ABROGATIONS OF EQUAL PROTECTION & DUE PROCESS IN IMMIGRATION LAW FEED & REINFORCE INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM IN AMERICAN LAW GENERALLY! — New Scholarship By Carrie Rosenbaum Highlights An Old Problem That Is Destroying American Law & Ripping Apart Our Society!🤮👎🏽

James “Jim” Crow

“Jim Crow” is still alive and well @ EOIR. To date, Judge Garland & his team seem to think that the rest of us won’t notice what’s happening in “his” Immigration Courts and how it undermines every aspect of his claim to be restoring faith in the DOJ and the American justice system. A progressively-oriented, independent, expert Immigration Judiciary is a prerequisite for finally achieving racial justice in 21st Century America. So far, Judge Garland has NOT enunciated any plan to “get there,” nor has he even publicly acknowledged the many disgraceful problems plaguing EOIR!

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/04/immigration-article-of-the-day-unequal-immigration-protection-by-carrie-rosenbaum.html

From ImmigrationProf Blog:

(Un)Equal Immigration Protection by Carrie Rosenbaum, 50 Sw. L. Rev. 232 (2021)

ABSTRACT

This article will contribute to immigration equal protection jurisprudential discussions by highlighting the way in which the plenary power in immigration equal protection cases creates a barrier parallel to the intent doctrine—both prohibit curtailment of government action resulting in racialized harm. The scant recognition of the double duty done by plenary power and the intent doctrine reflects the banality of what may appear as a mere redundancy at first glance. However, the insidiousness of the double-barrier all but ensures that equal protection challenges to facially race-neutral immigration laws with disparate impact will fail. Plenary power is effectively duplicative of the intent doctrine because the intent doctrine already results in great deference to lawmakers.

. . . .

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

Read the full abstract at the link.

Unquestionably, immigration jurisprudence has intentionally misread the due process and equal protection clauses to achieve racist immigration policies. Getting rid of these perversions — analogous to the legal and judicial gobbledegook used by White men to make the 14th and 15th Amendments (and to a large extent, the 13th Amendment) “dead letters” for African Americans following Reconstruction — isn’t a matter of complicated legal thinking. It’s a matter of better Federal Judges and better legislators. And, the mess @EOIR — our Immigration “Courts” — is the best and most logical place to begin the long overdue task of instituting constitutional compliance and equal justice for all.

To date, Judge Garland’s failure to demonstrate a commitment to eliminating unconstitutional racism and misogyny (not to mention poor quality decision-making which also disproportionately affects individuals and communities of color) in his Immigration “Courts” threatens to destroy our legal system and “kneecap” American democracy.

We are in the perilous position we are today because past Administrations, to the extent they have even tried to address systemic racism (obviously, the Trump Administration sought the exact opposite — to deepen, protect, and promote racism and hate), have intentionally or negligently ignored the clear link between immigration law and racism in the rest of our legal system.

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-26-21

⚠️🆘JUDGE GARLAND’S FAILURE TO ADDRESS HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRATION COURTS CONCERNS UNION, ADVOCATES, EXPERTS, & UNDERMINES HIS LEADERSHIP ON RACIAL INJUSTICE 🏴‍☠️ — Continuation Of Trump-Miller-Sessions-Barr White Nationalist, Anti-Asylum, Racist, Misogynist Agenda, Lack Of Plan To Replace GOP Hacks & Unqualified Judges Is A “Bad Look” For New AG & Team! — Round Table Star Judge Sue Roy Speaks Out!

Suzanne Monyak
Senior Reporter, Immigration

Hon. Susan G. Roy
Law Office of Susan G. Roy, LLC
Princeton Junction, NJ
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://rollcall.com/2021/04/22/despite-bidens-union-support-immigration-judges-left-waiting/

Suzanne Monyak reports for Roll Call:

. . . .

Garland has yet to indicate whether he will rescind several decisions penned by attorneys general under the previous administration. In the last four years, Trump officials limited asylum eligibility for those fleeing violence by private actors, like gang members and domestic partners, and immigration judges’ ability to maintain their own dockets.

“There’s no reason that Attorney General Garland hasn’t done a thorough review of the attorney general certifications from the last administration,” said Susan Roy, a former immigration judge. “He should rescind any of them which he can. He has the authority to do that.”

. . . .

The Biden administration has also inherited a lengthy immigration court backlog — containing roughly 1.3 million cases — that have kept immigrants facing deportation and asylum-seekers waiting years for decisions in their cases.

The Biden administration has recognized that immigration judges may be key to processing these claims quickly and efficiently. In a preview of its budget request released earlier this month, the White House proposed increasing funding for the Justice Department’s immigration court agency from $734 million to $891 million to hire 100 new immigration judges.

Immigrant advocates and former judges say freeing the immigration court system from political influences is also critical to this effort.

“Without a union, there’s no way to protect judges against political ideologies of a given administration,” Roy said.

While judicial independence has “always been a concern” with a court system housed within a federal agency, “rarely has that been as problematic as it was under the Trump administration,” she said.

. . . .

Some advocates also want to see immigration courts be removed entirely from the DOJ and made an independent court system. The issue is on the agenda for the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s virtual “day of action” on April 22.

Roy, the incoming chair of AILA’s New Jersey chapter, acknowledged that Garland faces a number of competing priorities outside of the immigration courts. But she urged the administration against letting the system fall to the wayside.

“The immigration court is a subject that needs immediate attention,” she said. “Otherwise, it’s going to collapse under its own weight.”

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

Thanks, Sue!

Today’s Immigration Courts, hotbeds of inefficiency, worst practices, racial bias, misogyny, and unnecessary backlogs, undermine everything that Biden and Harris campaigned on. They also make Judge Garland’s pledge to return justice and independence to the Department of Justice look like a farce.

You simply can’t be responsible for something as totally broken, biased, and due process denying as the current Immigration Courts and have ANY shred of credibility on racial justice, independence, and “good government!”

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
“Why won’t Judge Garland help me get back on my feet? I”m so tired of being ‘belly up!’”

Judge Garland’s concept of “justice” for refugee women and people of color seems a little out of touch — anti-asylum, misogynistic, anti-due process, xenophobic, racially charged precedents remain in place; regressive, unqualified judges on the bench; “worst practices” continue to flourish; 1.3 million case backlog builds; & He hasn’t spoken to the naij:

Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Trial By Ordeal — Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-23-21

🏴‍☠️GROSS HYPOCRISY — Biden Administration Praises “Chauvin Verdict,” Then Decides To Continue Abusing Human Rights Of People Of Color @ Borders — Without Justice For Asylum Seekers @ The Border, There Will Be Neither Racial Justice Nor Social Justice In America!

From Human Rights First:

Yesterday, Human Rights First welcomed news of former police officer Derek Chauvin’s conviction for murdering George Floyd.

“Accountability is only a first step toward justice,” said President and CEO Michael Breen. “Bringing true justice demands something deeper – a reckoning on race in America that has been a long time coming and must continue until systemic racism is eliminated.”

Yesterday also saw the release of our new report, “Failure to Protect,” which outlines how the Biden administration’s expulsions are endangering the lives of asylum seekers and causing a new wave of family separation.

From welcoming refugees at the southern border to the withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, we urged the Biden administration to put human rights first in policy and in action.

We also opened registration for our Spring Social, taking place on June 3.

REPORTING FROM THE SOUTHERN BORDER

Human Rights First, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Al Otro Lado released a new report on Tuesday, “Failure to Protect,” on the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42, the illegal Trump-era policy that endangers asylum seekers.

Despite his pledge to reverse former President Trump’s cruel approach to migration and the border, President Biden is continuing a policy that endangers children, drives family separation, and illegally expels asylum seekers to danger, including many Black & LGBTQ refugees who endure bias-motivated violence in Mexico.

Our report identifies at least 492 public and media reports of violent attacks since January 21, 2021 – including rape, kidnapping and assault – against people blocked from requesting asylum protection at the U.S.-Mexico border and/or expelled to Mexico.

To commemorate the Chauvin verdict, the Biden Administration decides to extend the abuse of migrants’ humanity and dehumanization of people of color at our borders:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/dhs-extends-border-restrictions-through-may-21-2021

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Don’t kid yourself: Steven Miller’s cruel, scofflaw policies still “rule” at our borders. You don’t have to look very far for institutionalized racism in the Federal “justice” system.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-22-21

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Biden Implements Stephen Miller’s Immigration Policies! ☠️⚰️ “On Twitter, Miller took a victory lap. He urged Biden to reduce refugee admissions to zero, which he declared would be the ‘most popular’ thing to do.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/19/joe-biden-is-president-why-is-he-maintaining-trumps-immigration-agenda/

Catherine writes:

. . . .

Biden campaigned, and won, on a very different message.

He promised to “restore the soul of America,” which he argued included welcoming the stranger. It was a message he had promoted for decades. Upon taking office, he declared plans to roll back the Miller/Trump immigration agenda. Among them: raising the refugee admissions ceiling from 15,000 to 62,500.

Biden’s rationale for this policy was partly moral, partly practical. Unlike their predecessors, Biden and his immigration advisers recognized that creating more pathways for people to come to the United States legally would actually promote “law and order” and alleviate stress on the immigration system. In a February report to Congress, the State Department said one reason to “increase the overall refugee admissions number” was to “facilitate safe and orderly migration and access to international protection and avert a humanitarian crisis at the U.S. southern border.”

Then, inexplicably, Biden got cold feet.

He delayed signing the paperwork necessary to put his policy into effect, leaving hundreds of vetted refugees in limbo. White House spokespeople could not explain the holdup. Reports leaked that Biden worried about the “optics” of letting in more refugees amid a surge of migration at the southern border, even though he knew the two issues were unrelated.

In other words: Biden seemed to concede that Miller’s propaganda had worked and that the public might view all immigrants as a dangerous, undifferentiated horde of intruders the new administration was failing to contain.

Rather than fighting the confusion and fear Miller had sown, Biden caved. Friday’s White House announcement even invoked the same weaselly excuse Trump officials had used to justify their record-low cap — that it was necessitated by the (irrelevant) border surge.

On Twitter, Miller took a victory lap. He urged Biden to reduce refugee admissions to zero, which he declared would be the “most popular” thing to do.

But Biden and Miller both misread the politics. Biden’s announcement drew immediate, widespread backlash. Perhaps unsurprisingly: Despite Team Trump’s relentless smears of refugees and other immigrants, polls show the public has grown more pro-immigrant in recent years — with support reaching record highs.

Within hours of its initial announcement Friday, the White House backtracked, saying a higher refugee ceiling would be forthcoming. Officials refused to specify the new level and will not commit to the 62,500 Biden previously promised. Biden is leaving his options open — perhaps in case Miller’s political assessment turns out to be right.

It’s not clear why Biden has been so timid. As Biden himself has persuasively argued, admitting more refugees is in the country’s moral and national security interests. What’s more, he was elected on a popular mandate to do it. The White House must exorcise the ghost of Stephen Miller and deliver the agenda that our new, soul-restoring president promised.

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Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

Thanks, Catherine, for continuing to speak out about the Biden Administration’s ill-informed approach to immigration, racial justice, and human rights — particularly refugee issues! You can read the rest of Catherine’s op-ed at the link.

No such “Victory Laps” for those who worked to get Biden, Harris, Garland, and Mayorkas their jobs!

As I’ve pointed out, Miller’s execs and “judges” remain in key positions at Garland’s EOIR as our Immigration Courts continue to fail to provide due process while institutionalizing racial injustice in America, just as Stephen Miller planned it.

Indeed, the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, “worst practices” precedents issued by Trump’s AGs remain in effect under Garland. And, the borders remain closed to most legal asylum seekers in violation of our Constitution, the statute, common sense, and simple human decency.

Equally discouraging is Judge Garland’s apparent indifference to the unparalleled opportunity given him to create a progressive Immigration Judiciary that would actually reflect the humane, due process ideals upon which Biden and Harris campaigned and won the election. Additionally, he could also bring diversity, expertise, and independent progressive thinking to a currently non-diverse judiciary that is often disconnected from both the laws they administer and the stakeholder communities most affected by their decisions, conduct, and attitudes.

I have said many times that Immigration Judges “teach from the bench” every day. The messages being sent and lessons being taught to many of those seeking justice and to their lawyers, basically the “heart and soul” of the next generation of our profession, do not reflect well on the Biden Administration or Judge Garland, nor will they be treated kindly by legal and social historians.

That’s a real shame, because once squandered, the ability to send positive messages about equal justice for all, due process, and respect for human dignity is not easily, if ever, regained! Every case is an opportunity to send a better message; every day the current mess remains in place in our Immigration Courts is a missed opportunity for Judge Garland.

So far, human rights and immigrants’ advocates groups are in a familiar position in a Dem Administration — locked out of the power structure, largely ignored, and treated with indifference bordering on contempt. Strange way to treat those who helped you gain power in the first place!

The good news: the brainpower and talent to force positive change out of incompetent, valueless, and intransigent bureaucracies is still out here in the NDPA. We’ll just have to continue to take the fight to the “powers that be” — in the legal, political, educational, and public opinion arenas until job gets done!

⚖️🗽🇺🇸👩🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-20-21

🤮BIDEN/GARLAND APPEAR HEADED FOR “VICTORY” @ SUPREMES OVER LONG-TIME RESIDENTS SEEKING GREEN CARDS — Progressives, Immigration Advocates, Dems Rebuffed As Biden Administration Goes “Full Stephen Miller” On Couple With Two Decades’ Residence, USC Child! — Only Justice Sotomayor Speaks Up For “Better” Interpretation Of Statute, Immigrants Rights, Common Sense In The Law!

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-supreme-court-doubts-green-cards-some-protected-migrants-2021-04-19/

Andrew Chung reports for Reuters:

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared reluctant to let people who have been allowed to stay in the United States on humanitarian grounds apply to become permanent residents if they entered the country illegally.

The justices heard arguments in an appeal by a married couple from El Salvador who were granted so-called Temporary Protected Status of a lower court ruling that barred their applications for permanent residency, also known as a green card, because of their unlawful entry.

The case could affect thousands of immigrants, many of whom have lived in the United States for years. President Joe Biden’s administration opposes the immigrants in the case. The dispute puts Biden, who has sought to reverse many of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, at odds with immigration advocacy groups and some of his fellow Democrats. read more

A federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act generally requires that people seeking to become permanent residents have been “inspected and admitted” into the United States. At issue in the case is whether a grant of Temporary Protected Status, which gives the recipient “lawful status,” satisfies those requirements.

. . . .

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Justice Department lawyer Michael Huston, “If you’re asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted.”

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

Garland helps Biden deliver “tough noogies, go pound sand, your lives don’t matter” message to immigrants like Jose and Sonia and their supporters who might have had the illusion that better times were on the horizon with Biden’s election! Progressives find that when push comes to shove, Biden & Garland can be just as cruel, dumb, and counterproductive as Trump & Miller!

Any hope that advocates might have had of help, sympathy, or understanding for their green-card-qualified clients with decades of residence and citizen family members goes down the tubes early in Dem Administration. Biden-Harris humane rhetoric and promises prove just another illusion for progressives in Administration’s first High Court test!

But for Justice Sotomayor, the thinness of the Justices’ understanding of both immigration law and the human issues involved was alarming, yet basically predictable. What do a bunch of highly privileged, above the fray, judges who have never personally dealt with the stupidity, arbitrariness, and trauma of our immigration system, and never represented clients in Immigration Court, care about shutting hard working American residents, people of color, like Jose and Sonia, out of our system and disenfranchising them for no particular reason. The worst, most racially discriminatory “interpretations” are “available” to those judges, so why not use them? For them, it’s a wooden academic exercise played out with human lives that don’t matter because they are “the other.” Except for Sotomayor, going for the best, most practical, humane interpretation evidently never crossed the minds of these Justices.

As Justice Sotomayor correctly said: “If you’re asking us to find the better reading of the statute, we should go by its terms: Those people have been admitted.”

It’s not rocket science. Just common sense, humanity, and a clear understanding of the effect of legal interpretations on human lives. At the Supreme Court level, most decisions represent a “choice” rather than a “mandate.” That’s where having Justices who neither care to understand nor have to live with the consequences of their decisions really hurts people of color, immigrants, asylum seekers, and others not in the “power structure!” Better judges for a better America!

Meanwhile, advocates and progressives should never underestimate the ability of Dem Administrations to screw up immigration policy.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-20-21

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Every member of the NDPA should be outraged by Garland’s treachery:

Here’s the latest farcical roster of prosecutors, government attorneys, and non-immigration experts to be inflicted on migrants and their attorneys:

Here are some “early reactions” from the NDPA:

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! We need to translate Garland’s blatant disrespect, ignorance, and failure to stand up for racial justice, an end to misogyny, and progressive expertise in the Immigration Judiciary into action and resistance to his “Miller Lite” vision for the DOJ!

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Courtside Exclusive

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

May 4, 2021

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From Human Rights First:

To commemorate the Chauvin verdict, the Biden Administration decides to extend the abuse of migrants’ humanity and dehumanization of people of color at our borders:

Due Process Forever!

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