Category: Stephen Miller

FRACTURED 9TH GIVES GO-AHEAD TO “REMAIN IN MEXICO” PROGRAM! — Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan

Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan, 9th Cir., 05-07-19, published

Innovation Law Lab 19-15716

DHS’s request for a stay GRANTED

PANEL: O’SCANNLAIN, W. FLETCHER, and WATFORD, Circuit Judges.

OPINION: Per Curiam with Concurring Opinions by Judges Watford & Fletcher

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

Lots of impenetrable legal gobbledegook. Pretty hard to see how Judges Fletcher and Watford concurred in a decision (which appears to have been “ghosted” by Judge O’Scannlain) they really didn’t agree with. But, hey, it’s only human lives at stake here.

Bottom line:  Trump wins, asylum seekers with a credible fear of persecution lose. Big Time!

But, in the end, it’s likely to be America and human values that lose here.

PWS

05-07-19

Related posts:

  1. WHILE LIFE-TENURED FEDERAL JUDGES CHICKEN OUT, FORMER ASYLUM OFFICER DOUG STEPHENS SPEAKS OUT IN NYT VIDEO EDITORIAL AGAINST JUDICIALLY-ENABLED NATIONAL DISGRACE OF “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” — “A former asylum officer says ‘remain in Mexico’ and other policies undermining asylum aren’t just racist, they’re illegal.”
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. 9TH CIRCUIT JUDGES COMPLICIT IN HUMAN RIGHTS & LEGAL VIOLATIONS INFLICTED ON TERRIFIED TEEN ASYLUM APPLICANTS: Reuters Study Exposes How Disingenuous Article III Judges Are Letting Trump Administration “Get Away With Potential Murder” Under Clearly Illegal, Unconstitutional, & Incompetently Administered “Remain In Mexico” Abomination!
  4. 18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!

THE GIBSON REPORT: 05-06-19 — Prepared By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TOP UPDATES

 

Trump Calls For Asylum-Seekers To Pay Fees, Proposing New Restrictions

NPR: In the memo, Trump said he is giving Attorney General William Barr and acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan 90 days to propose new regulations to speed up the processing of asylum claims, charge application fees for those seeking asylum, and to bar work authorization for certain applicants. See also Asylum seekers leave everything behind. There’s no way they can pay Trump’s fee.

 

White House asks Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency spending at border

WaPo: The request includes $3.3 billion for humanitarian assistance and $1.1 billion for border operations, and it represents a dramatic escalation of the administration’s efforts to address the situation at the border.

 

Trump administration to give Border Patrol agents authority to decide asylum claims on the spot

Wa Examiner: The Department of Homeland Security is racing to implement a plan that would give federal law enforcement on the border the authority to conduct interviews with asylum seekers who fear returning to their home countries, according to two sources with firsthand knowledge of the plan.

 

Civil servants say they’re being used as pawns in a dangerous asylum program

Vox: Asylum officers have raised concerns with their union. Vox spoke with several of them in their capacity as union members, in meetings facilitated and attended by the head of the union representing immigration officers in US Citizenship and Immigration Services, about how the new procedures have changed their jobs.

 

Emails show Trump admin had ‘no way to link’ separated migrant children to parents

NBC: On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a “central database,” an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. See also Homeland Security Used A Private Intelligence Firm To Monitor Family Separation Protests.

 

Bodies In The Borderlands

Intercept: Scott Warren Worked to Prevent Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert. The Government Wants Him in Prison.

 

John Kelly joins board of company operating largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children

CBS: Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates Homestead and three other shelters for unaccompanied migrant children in Texas. Prior to joining the Trump administration in January 2017, Kelly had been on the board of advisors of DC Capital Partners, an investment firm that now owns Caliburn.

 

Kushner’s immigration plan has skeptics lining up on both sides

CNN: For months, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser has been chipping away at a plan to overhaul the country’s immigration system, seizing an issue that’s otherwise belonged at the White House to senior adviser and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller.

 

ICE Reallocates Resources to Investigate Use of Fraudulent Documents at Southwest Border

ICE announced the reallocating resources to investigate the use of fraudulent documents to “create fake families seeking to exploit U.S. immigration laws.” During April 2019, HSI conducted about 100 family unit interviews and have found evidence of fraud in “more than a quarter of cases.” AILA Doc. No. 19050232

 

Administration Backs Plan for More Visas for Seasonal Workers

WSJ: The Trump administration is moving ahead to allow an additional 30,000 seasonal workers to return to the U.S. this summer, a higher-than-expected number that reflects internal tensions in the White House’s approach to legal immigration.

 

Trump Names Mark Morgan, Former Head of Border Patrol, to Lead ICE

WaPo: President Trump on Sunday named a former Obama administration official who has embraced some of Mr. Trump’s hard-line positions on border security as the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of a broad effort to force federal agencies into a more aggressive crackdown on migrants.

 

Trump says the border crisis is about criminals and gangs. His administration says it is about families and children.

WaPo: The sharp dichotomy between the president’s rhetoric and the tone of his aides reflects how they are waging a battle on separate fronts — one political and the other operational — as the administration struggles to deal with a mounting humanitarian crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico.

 

Why is Mexican migration slowing while Guatemalan and Honduran migration is surging?

WaPo: Migration from Mexico has dropped 90 percent over the past 20 years; this year, for the first time ever, Guatemala and Honduras are on pace to surpass it as the leading sources of illegal immigration to the United States.

 

Terrorism, immigration efforts hampered by Homeland Security vacancies

WaPo: Just 47 percent of key department slots are filled with confirmed appointees, according to the Political Appointee Tracker published by The Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service. Only Interior is worse, at 41 percent, among Cabinet-level agencies.

 

Push for driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants intensifies at Capitol

Buffalo News: Twelve states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, permit undocumented immigrants to get licenses. They do so, however, in vastly different ways, from two-tiered systems in some cases to making it be only used for driving and not, for instance, as identification to get into federal buildings.

 

We Got U.S. Border Officials to Testify Under Oath. Here’s What We Found Out.

ACLU: The information we uncovered through our lawsuit shows that CBP and ICE are asserting near-unfettered authority to search and seize travelers’ devices at the border, for purposes far afield from the enforcement of immigration and customs laws.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

No More Filing Window at OPLA-NYC

DHS: Please be advised that the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor New York City (OPLA-NYC)  will permanently close the reception window at 26 Federal Plaza effective Monday, June 3, 2019.  Starting on that date, OPLA-NYC will no longer accept in-person filings at 26 Federal Plaza.  OPLA-NYC will continue to receive documents 24/7 through ICE eService (visit: eserviceregistration.ice.gov)… Although OPLA-NYC will continue to accept service of filings by mail,  we will only provide proof of service via ICE eService.

 

Natz Interview Locations

USCIS: Starting June 1, 2019, Brooklyn and Staten Island residents will be interviewed (only natz cases) at the USCIS Field Office in Newark.  Newark Office will be working on Saturdays as well.  This is the way USCIS deals with the current  backlog.

 

On Heels of Barr Immigration Decision, Booker, Jayapal, Smith to Re-Introduce Bill to Counter Attorney General’s Efforts

Booker: The bill would directly combat Attorney General Barr’s efforts to indefinitely detain immigrants by, 1) mandating that all detained immigrants have access to a bond hearing before an immigration judge, and 2) shifting the burden to the government to prove that asylum seekers and other immigrants should be detained because they pose a risk to the community or a flight risk.

 

Unpublished Decision: Theft of Services not a CIMT (attached)

BDS: affirming Judge Farber’s grant of our motion to terminate because our LPR client’s recent petit larceny conviction is on direct appeal (following a successful late-filed notice of appeal) and his theft of services conviction is not a CIMT.

 

BIA Remands, Finding that a Subsequent Notice of Hearing Can “Perfect” a Deficient NTA

The BIA held that if a NTA does not specify time/place of initial removal hearing, the subsequent service of a notice with that information “perfects” the deficient NTA and triggers the stop-time rule. Matter of Mendoza-Hernandez and Matter of Capula-Cortes, 27 I&N Dec. 520 (BIA 2019) AILA Doc. No. 19050230

 

BIA Terminates Proceedings After Finding Grand Larceny Conviction Not an Aggravated Felony

Unpublished BIA decision terminated removal proceedings after finding respondent’s conviction of grand larceny in the second degree under NY law was not an aggravated felony and thus she was not removable under INA §237(a)(2)(A)(iii). Courtesy of Michael Goldman. (Matter of Reyes, 4/24/19) AILA Doc. No. 19050302

 

BIA Holds Ohio Statute Not a Firearms Offense

Unpublished BIA decision holds that the improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle under Ohio Rev. Code 2923.16(E)(1) is not a firearms offense because state has prosecuted under similar statutes for possessing antique firearms. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Edwards, 6/20/18) AILA Doc. No. 19050395

 

BIA Holds California Vehicle Manslaughter Not a CIMT

Unpublished BIA decision holds that vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence under Calif. Penal Code 192(c)(1) is not a CIMT because it does not require a sufficiently culpable mental state. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Pourmand, 6/18/18) AILA Doc. No. 19050295

 

BIA Grants Interlocutory Appeal Challenging Denial of Change of Venue

Unpublished BIA decision grants interlocutory appeal of denial of motion to change venue to immigration court close to his attorney where respondent had conceded removability and submitted application for cancellation of removal. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Linares Flores, 6/15/18) AILA Doc. No. 19050195

 

BIA Holds Virginia Hit-and-Run Statute Not a CIMT

Unpublished BIA decision holds that Va. Code Ann. 46.2-894 is not a CIMT because it does not require drivers to leave the scene of the accident or realize that the accident resulted in injury or property damage. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Sifuentes-Reyna, 6/15/18) AILA Doc. No. 19050196

 

CA1 Finds Petitioner Failed to Satisfy Prejudice Requirement for Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claim

The court upheld the BIA’s denial of petitioner’s motion to reopen his 2012 removal order, finding that the petitioner failed to show sufficient prejudice resulting from the alleged ineffective assistance of counsel upon which he based his motion to reopen. (Franco-Ardon v. Barr, 4/26/19) AILA Doc. No. 19042900

 

CA5 Finds BIA’s Retroactive Application of Matter of Diaz-Lizarraga Violates Due Process

The court found that the BIA erred in applying the definition of crimes involving moral turpitude (CIMTs) announced in 2016 in Matter of Diaz-Lizarraga to the petitioner’s 2007 conviction for attempted theft. (Monteon-Camargo v. Barr, 3/14/19, amended 4/26/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031974

 

CA9 Upholds BIA’s Decision Not to Certify Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claim for Review Under 8 CFR §1003.1(c)

The court held that the BIA’s decision not to certify a claim is committed to agency discretion and, in this case, was not subject to judicial review. (Idrees v. Barr, 12/13/18, amended 4/30/19) AILA Doc. No. 19011471

 

EDVA Finds Plausible Claims that ORR Family Reunification Policies Violate Constitutional, Statutory, and Administrative Laws

The judge granted two classes to be certified in this case challenging Office of Refugee Resettlement policies that the class has argued makes it too difficult for children to get out of detention and back with their families or in a home with a sponsor. (J.E.C.M. v. Lloyd, 4/26/19) AILA Doc. No. 18121803

 

DOJ Notice and Request for Comments on Proposed Revisions to Forms EOIR-42A and EOIR-42B

DOJ notice and request for comments on proposed revisions to Form EOIR-42A and Form EOIR-42B. Comments are due 5/28/19. (84 FR 17891, 4/26/19) AILA Doc. No. 19042936

 

USCIS Updates Officer Training on Credible Fear of Persecution and Torture Determinations

USCIS updated its Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations (RAIO) Directorate Officer Training course on credible fear of persecution and torture determinations, to explain how to determine whether an individual subject to expedited removal or an arriving stowaway has a credible fear. AILA Doc. No. 19050602

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

 

ImmProf

 

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Friday, May 3, 2019

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Monday, April 29, 2019

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

Elizabeth’s second and third items show how the Trump Administration is compromising the fairness of the credible fear and asylum systems within DHS by skewing the law and procedures against asylum seekers.  This is despite both the intent behind the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees that asylum seekers be “given the benefit of the doubt” and the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca holding that the term “well founded fear” must be given a generous interpretation so that even those whose chances of persecution are as low as 10% could qualify for asylum.

PWS

05-07-19

Related posts:

  1. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”
  2. “SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/03/can-united-states-retain-its-humanity-even-crisis

Brundage writes in WashPost:

By Fitz Brundage
Fitz Brundage is the William B. Umstead professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill and the author of “Civilizing Torture,” which was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

May 3

Does it violate human rights to hold children in fenced enclosures in grim facilities that are bone-chillingly cold for weeks on end? Is separating children from their parents a form of cruel and unusual punishment? When does a crisis justify the kind of treatment normally seen as inhumane?

The furious debate over migrant detention along the nation’s southwest border with Mexico has put these questions front and center in American politics. But they’re not new. The treatment of people on the margins of American life — criminals, immigrants, civilians in overseas war zones — has always proven a challenge to our democratic ideals.

Yet beginning in the 1920s, activists waged a half-century-long struggle to persuade the Supreme Court to stop abusive practices by authorities. After World War II, the United States also committed itself to the promotion of international human rights. These two signal developments have been seriously eroded, first by the excesses of the war on terrorism and now by the Trump administration’s targeting of the unwelcome and powerless, whether they are undocumented immigrants in the United States or asylum seekers. We have returned to a pattern of willful ignorance, one that allows us to avoid grappling with deeply immoral policies.

Threats to our safety, perceived or real, have long justified the kind of “tougher policies” that President Trump has demanded for the southern border. He may not be well versed in history, but the president is joining a long line of elected officials who found that rights and basic norms are easily jettisoned when they collide with demands for greater security. Across our history, from the Indian wars to the war on terrorism, officials were quick to call for “tougher policies” and slow to fill in the details. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered military commanders in the Philippines to adopt “the most stern measures” to punish Filipino guerrillas; in a subsequent campaign the Marines followed orders and left a trail of devastation and death across the island of Samar. But such methods were justified as a “military necessity.”

Roosevelt rationalized the brutal treatment of alleged guerrillas by citing the need to stanch the threat to security. This kind of evasive language has repeatedly prevented us from coming to terms with acts of cruelty carried out in the name of national security. We’re seeing that pattern again.

What precisely did Trump officials mean when they announced “a tougher direction” for immigration? They certainly imply more than just the proposals for new fees and regulations reducing the numbers of asylum seekers. Are the American people ready to confront the reality of harsh security measures? Or will we retreat into euphemisms such as a “hardened” border and “zero tolerance” for migrants that covers up the reality of what is actually happening on the border?

We are deciding day by day whether to extend the basic protections of law and civilization to the people arriving on our border. For much of the nation’s history, the prohibition on cruelty and torture in American law rested on the premise that the fundamental decency of Americans, especially empathy for fellow citizens, would make such violations unthinkable.

But our capacity to empathize begins to fray at the margins, and we grow less certain about who, exactly, deserves protection. Those deemed undeserving, unwelcome or powerless — Native Americans, the enslaved, prison inmates and criminal suspects — have commonly suffered forms of violence and abuse that violated our national principles. Some people are inside the protection of the law, and some are cast out from it.

In fact, we’ve already seen this pattern. Accusations of cruelty and torture by ICE and CBP agents have been circulating for years, and they follow this well-worn pattern. Official denials are followed by investigations that almost always find limited violations by “a few bad apples,” not the kind of systemic abuse that would call our broader policies into question.

This pattern has long historical roots: When investigations of police brutality in Washington during the 1930s revealed widespread use of abusive interrogation methods, the police superintendent, whose predecessors had dismissed similar allegations for decades, only grudgingly conceded that a few officers may have gone too far in their resolve to protect the public.

Focusing on bad apples has long allowed us to excuse morally bankrupt policies. We need to realize that human rights abuses on the southern border aren’t spurred by immoral actors in ICE or CBP, but rather because of a political leadership that can’t or won’t come up with humane immigration policies.

Congress needs to do its job and exercise scrupulous oversight of Trump’s immigration policies. But the real solution to our border crisis is to demand that all elected officials, from local sheriffs to senators, responsibly address immigration and human rights. Trump declared that he wants immigration to be a key campaign issue in 2020. His opponents should accept that challenge. We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.

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Join the New Due Process Army today and fight for human rights, the rule of law, accountability for Government scofflaws, and a return to basic human decency! Fight for a better future for ALL Americans!

PWS
05-07-19

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/04/world/americas/honduras-gang-violence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Azam Ahmed Reports for the NY Times:

. . . .

Shootouts, armed raids and last-minute pleas to stop the bloodshed formed the central threads of their stories. MS-13 wanted the neighborhood to sell drugs. The other gangs wanted it to extort and steal. But the members of Casa Blanca had promised never to let their neighborhood fall prey to that again. And they would die for it, if they had to.

Almost no one was trying to stop the coming war — not the police, not the government, not even the young men themselves. The only person working to prevent it was a part-time pastor who had no church of his own and bounced around the neighborhood in a beat-up yellow hatchback, risking his life to calm the warring factions.

“I’m not in favor of any gang,” said the pastor, Daniel Pacheco, rushing to the Casa Blanca members after the shooting. “I’m in favor of life.”

The struggle to protect the neighborhood — roughly four blocks of single-story houses, overgrown lots and a few stores selling chips and soda — encapsulates the inescapable violence that entraps and expels millions of people across Latin America.

Since the turn of this century, more than 2.5 million people have been killed in the homicide crisis gripping Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Igarapé Institute, a research group that tracks violence worldwide.

The region accounts for just 8 percent of the global population, yet 38 percent of the world’s murders. It has 17 of the 20 deadliest nations on earth.

And in just seven Latin American countries — Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela — violence has killed more people than the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen combined.

Most of the world’s most dangerous
cities are in Latin America

Latin America

Africa

U.S.

Other

SAFER CITIES

MORE DANGEROUS

Cancún,

Mexico

Kingston,

Jamaica

San Pedro Sula,

Honduras

San Salvador

London

Los Angeles

Paris

Tokyo

Istanbul

Los Cabos,

Mexico

Tijuana,

Mexico

Bogotá,

Colombia

St. Louis

Moscow

New Orleans

6.2 global avg.

0

40

60

80

100

120

Average homicide rate per 100k people

By Allison McCann

Source: Igarapé Institute and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Cities include the 50 highest homicide rates in the world and a group of prominent others for comparison, all with populations of at least 250,000. Average homicide rates are from 2016-2018 or the latest data available.

The violence is all the more striking because the civil wars and military dictatorships that once seized Latin America have almost all ended — decades ago, in many cases. Most of the region has trudged, often very successfully, along the prescribed path to democracy. Yet the killings continue at a staggering rate.

They come in many forms: state-sanctioned deaths by overzealous armed forces; the murder of women in domestic disputes, a consequence of pervasive gender inequality; the ceaseless exchange of drugs and guns with the United States.

Underpinning nearly every killing is a climate of impunity that, in some countries, leaves more than 95 percent of homicides unsolved. And the state is a guarantor of the phenomenon — governments hollowed out by corruption are either incapable or unwilling to apply the rule of law, enabling criminal networks to dictate the lives of millions.

For the masses fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, the United States is both a cause and solution — the author of countless woes and a chance to escape them.

Frustrated with the stream of migrants treading north, President Trump has vowed to cut aid to the most violent Central American nations, threatening hundreds of millions of dollars meant to address the roots of the exodus.

But the surviving members of Casa Blanca, who once numbered in the dozens, do not want to flee, like tens of thousands of their countrymen have. They say they have jobs to keep, children to feed, families, neighbors and loved ones to protect.

“There is only one way for this to end,” said Reinaldo. “Either they kill us or we kill them.”

. . . .

 

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

For the full version of Azam’s report and a much better chart graphic, go to the above link!

Trump’s complete lack of humanity, empathy, and his constant racist-inspired lies and misrepresentations about refugees and asylum seekers are truly reprehensible.

But, he and his henchmen like Stephen Miller are by no means the entire problem.

Every day in U.S. Immigration Court, DHS attorneys make demonstrably false representations minimizing the truly horrible conditions in the Northern Triangle, particularly for women. Every day, some U.S. Immigration Judges betray their oaths of office by accepting those false representations and using them, along with an unfairly skewed anti-asylum view of the law, to deny asylum cases that should be granted.

And, perhaps worst of all, every day some life-tenured Article III Circuit Judges turn a blind eye to the legal travesty and due process disaster taking place throughout our corrupted Immigration Courts by rubber stamping results that would be totally unacceptable in any other type of litigation and which don’t even pass the “straight face test.” I guess “out of sight is out of mind,” and the wrongfully deported are “out of sight” (or maybe dead, in hiding, or duressed into joining or cooperating with gangs after the U.S. failed to protect them)

But, there are folks our there resisting this malfeasance and dereliction of duty. Among other things, they are memorializing what is happening and making a record of where the “modern day Jim Crows” and their enablers stand and what they have done to their fellow human beings in the name of “expedience” and an “Alfred E. Neuman (“What Me Worry”)” view of the law and our legal system.

Donald Trump is horrible. But, his racism and infliction of lasting damage on our country and on humanity depend on too many judges and other supposedly responsible public officials supporting, acquiescing, enabling, or minimizing his inhumane, dishonest, counterproductive, and often illegal actions.

An appropriate response by an honest, competent Administration with integrity would be:

  • Establish legal precedents recognizing those fleeing politicized gang violence, domestic violence, and violence directed at famnilies as refugees;
  • Establish precedents incorporating the Article III decisions emphasizing the concept of “mixed motive” in determining “nexus” under asylum and withholding of removal laws;
  • Establish precedents granting temporary withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) to those who face torture at the hands of the gangs or Northern Triangle governments (or both), but who can’t establish the convoluted “nexus” for asylum, with a rebuttable presumption that the countries of the Northern Triangle will “acquiesce” in the torture;
  • Liberally use Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) for nationals from Northern Triangle countries which perhaps would make large-scale asylum adjudication less of a priority and allow most cases to be dealt with in due course through the Asylum Offices rather than clogging Immigration Court dockets;
  • Work to insure that applicants for protection have assistance of counsel in developing and presenting their claims (which would also dramatically increase fairness and efficiency).

PWS

05-05-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

WASHPOST: PROFESSOR LINDSAY MUIR HARRIS OF UDC LAW & JOAN HODGES WU OF THE ASYLUM SEEKERS ASSISTANCE PROJECT (“ASAP”) SPEAK OUT AGAINST TRUMP’S LATEST CRUEL & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE ATTACK ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/01/asylum-seekers-leave-everything-behind-theres-no-way-they-can-pay-trumps-fee/?utm_term=.f48b5ca8c238

Lindsay & Joan write:

On Monday evening, President Trump issued a memointended to make life more difficult for those seeking asylum in the United States. The memo calls for regulations that, among other things, require asylum seekers to pay a fee to apply for asylum and their first work permit, and denies work permits to immigrants who entered the United States without inspection, or “illegally.”

Since the creation of our asylum system, after the United States signed the Protocol to the Refugee Convention in 1968 and enacted its own Refugee Act in 1980, there has never been a fee to apply for asylum. Filing for asylum is free for a reason under U.S. law and in the vast majority of other countries: Seeking asylum is a human right.

There are already plenty of obstacles and limits to that right in our existing immigration system. For instance, asylum seekers have to wait to receive permission to legally work in the United States. Congress codified a waiting period for work permits for asylum seekers in 1996. Asylum seekers can apply for a work permit 150 days after they have submitted an application for asylum. The work permit is issued sometime after 180 days.

Introducing a fee to apply for asylum and to apply for the first work permit not only is cruel but also goes against common sense and U.S. economic interests. Asylum seekers typically cannot afford to pay even a nominal fee. Trump’s memo does not specify the fee amount, only that it would “cover the cost of adjudication.” But even the rumored $50 fee would be too high for any of our clients. All individuals present in the United States have a legal right to apply for asylum, and that legal right should not depend on ability to pay. Many asylum seekers flee their countries with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and the cash in their pockets. Other asylum seekers come with their life savings, which are often quickly depleted as they pay for living expenses awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims.

Years ago, one of us worked with one client who was homeless and lived in her car while she waited for her day in court. One of our current clients lives in a public storage locker because he cannot afford to pay rent. We have asylum-seeking clients who go hungry so that their children can eat, or who drink water to “feel full.” Other clients go without medication to treat chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure because they lack health insurance and money to pay out of pocket for their medications. Asylum seekers are not a population with an ability to pay extraneous fees.

This new fee would also put asylum seekers further at risk of being exploited, or even physically harmed, abused or trafficked within the United States. Asylum seekers are already vulnerable to such predatory behavior. For example, years ago, one of us worked with a young woman from Niger who fled a forced marriage and female genital mutilation. As an asylum seeker in the United States, she had no way to provide for herself and found herself passed from one abusive situation to another. By the time she filed her asylum application, she had been repeatedly raped, held captive and forced to work in various homes. She was providing free child-care in exchange for lodging but forbidden from leaving the house.

And contrary to some misconceptions among the public (and the Trump administration), asylum seekers are generally ineligible for any form of federal or state aid. Indeed, even after they are granted asylum, they do not receive significant support from the government. Between paying for rent, food and other living expenses, and not being able to work for a significant period of time, how will asylum seekers pay the fee?

[Trump isn’t trying to solve border problems. He’s trying to make them look worse.]

Asylum seekers, who have lost everything and been forced to leave their countries and start over in ours, have a tremendous amount to give to our communities if given the chance. Take Constance, for example, one of our West African clients. In 2015, while she was seeking asylum, she commuted two hours by bus each way to a factory to cut fruit during a 12-hour overnight shift. She now works as a French language newscaster for a major news and radio outlet. Another client is a microbiologist who worked waiting tables until he found a job directing a lab at a hospital. As one of our clients said: “I know I’ve lost my country, but I haven’t lost my skills. I can still contribute.” Requiring these individuals to remain idle while jobs go unfilled and immigration court and asylum office backlogs persist could mean years in limbo and is a waste of talent, expertise and the hard work asylum seekers contribute.

*****************************************
My good friends Lindsay and Joan are certainly two of the “good guys” — true role models for the “New Due Process Army.”
They have devoted their professional lives to making America a fairer and better place and helping the most vulnerable among us to have a fair shot at asylum and to contribute their full talents to our society. A terrific “win-win” for us and for asylum seekers. And they both work on “shoestring budgets” — giving much and asking little — just like the refugees they are helping!
What if we had a Government that recognized, honored, and worked with such talented folks to solve problems? Imagine what we could achieve with cooperation and positive efforts, involving real expertise from those who actually know and work with asylum seekers, and who therefore recognize asylum seekers as fellow human beings and great potential assets to our country?
PWS
05-03-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

WASHINGTON POST/ABC POLL: TRUMP’S “CRUEL, MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” APPROACH TO ASYLUM HIGHLY UNPOPULAR & INEFFECTIVE: Dems Can Build Support By Strengthening Current Asylum System & Making It Work! — The “Real Face” Of “Border Security” Has Little Or Nothing To Do With Trump’s White Nationalist Rants & Barrage Of Lies!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/30/trumps-asylum-changes-are-even-less-desired-than-his-border-wall/

Aaron’s Blake reports for the Washington Post:

President Trump has made immigration crackdown a central focus of his presidency, and a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a growing number of Republicans and Democrats agree that the worsening situation on the border is a “crisis.”

But Trump is offering a solution that relatively few Americans like. In fact, his newly announced decision to make it harder to seek asylum is even less popular than his border wall national emergency, according to the same poll.

The Post-ABC poll shows that 30 percent of Americans favor making it more difficult for those seeking asylum in the United States to obtain it. About as many — 27 percent — favor making it easier, while 34 percent want to leave the process as-is.

Even among Republicans, just 46 percent favor making it more difficult. Among the few groups where a majority support the idea are conservative Republicans (51 percent) and those who approve of Trump (53 percent). Even in the latter group, though, 29 percent say leave the system as-is, and 11 percent want to make it easier to seek asylum.

Late Monday, the White House announced that it was proposing a new fee for asylum seekers. It is also seeking to prevent those who cross the border illegally from obtaining work permits, and it set the ambitious goal of requiring asylum cases to be decided within 180 days.

There has been a huge uptick in the number of asylum seekers in recent months. More than 103,000 immigrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border last month, and 60 percent of them were Central American families who have requested asylum. The system has become overburdened, and even critics of Trump’s immigration approach acknowledge the situation must be addressed.

[The surge in migrants seeking asylum, explained]

But saying there’s a problem and saying this is the solution are two different things. Trump has repeatedly argued that asylum seekers are exploiting weak U.S. immigration and asylum laws and that many of them are criminals and gang members who are told to claim asylum even though they don’t need it. He has called the concept of asylum “a big con job.” Yet, even as the situation at the border is exacerbated by a growing number of asylum seekers, Americans are still clearly uncomfortable with increasing the burdens on them.

Because the poll was conducted before Trump’s announcement, it didn’t test the specific details of his proposal. A fresh debate about the specific proposals could feasibly change the levels of public support. But Trump has been pushing the idea that asylum seekers are exploiting the system for months, and it doesn’t seem to have led to a chorus of support within his base for tightening the rules.

The level of support is even less than the backing for his national emergency to build a border wall. The Post-ABC poll shows just 34 percent of Americans favor that, while 64 percent oppose it. But at least on that proposal, Trump’s base is strongly onboard. Seventy percent of Republicans back the border wall national emergency.

Trump’s overall approval on immigration stands at 39 percent, with 57 percent disapproving, according to The Post-ABC poll.

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

Bottom line: On asylum, the public essentially is split in thirds among 1) more generous; 2) less generous; and 3) current system. That means that neither radical retractions nor radical expansions of the current system are likely to be achievable at present. That opens the door for the Dems to put together a powerful coalition to strengthen and fairly and efficiently administer the current asylum system.  

It’s not rocket science — more like basic governing competence. Here are the elements:

  • Establish an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court;
  • Invest in representation of asylum seekers; 
  • Add more Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, and Port of Entry Inspectors;
  • Provide comprehensive basic and continuing training for all asylum adjudicators from experts in asylum law;
  • Use prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) to reduce Immigration Court backlogs to allow Immigration Judges to concentrate on timely hearings for recently arrived asylum cases;
  • Reduce immigration detention;
  • Hire more anti-smuggling, undercover, and anti-fraud agents for DHS;
  • Invest in improving conditions in “sending” countries in Central America.

It would 1) cost less than the money Trump is now squandering on “designed to fail” enforcement and detention efforts; 2) create a political constituency for funding and future improvements; 3) protect human rights; and 4) give the U.S the substantial benefits of integrating asylees and their talents into our society and economy through the legal system. Those found ineligible could also be removed in a humane and timely manner after receiving due process.

Not surprisingly, we just learned today that Trump’s “Malicious Incompetence Program” at the border has run out of money and is requesting another $4.5 billion from Congress. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/white-house-asks-congress-for-45-billion-in-emergency-spending-for-border/2019/05/01/725e2864-6c23-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html

Now is the time for House Dems to hang tough on demanding some real border security for the money — in plain terms, require the money to be spent in exactly the ways described above, not on more of Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist, anti-asylum schemes and gimmicks.  

Additionally, there should be specific prohibitions on: 1) wall and barrier building beyond what Congress has already authorized; 2) any additional spending for detention of non-criminal asylum applicants beyond the time needed to give them credible fear interviews; 3) family detention; 4) “tent cities;’ 5) “Remain in Mexico,” 6) “metering” of asylum applicants at Ports of Entry; 6) charging fees for asylum applications; 7) denial of work authorization for non-frivolous asylum applicants; 8) denial of reasonable bond to asylum applicants unless individually determined to be “threats to the community;” and 9) use of the military except to assist in providing humanitarian aid. There should also be a specific mechanism for accounting and constant Congressional oversight on how the Administration spends the extra funding.   

PWS

05-01-19

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

STANDING TALL: 2d Cir. Says “No” To Trump Kakistocracy’s Misuse Of Deportation To Violate First Amendment — Ragbir v. Homan

Press Release: Federal Appeals Court Holds that The First Amendment Protects Immigrant Rights Activists from ICE Retaliation

New York, NY —  A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of immigrant-rights activist Ravi Ragbir, concluding that the First Amendment prohibits the government from targeting immigration activists for deportation based on their political speech. “To allow this retaliatory conduct to proceed would broadly chill protected speech, among not only activists subject to final orders of deportation but also those citizens and other residents who would fear retaliation against others,” the decisionstates. It goes on to explain:

Ragbir’s speech implicates the apex of protection under the First Amendment. His advocacy for reform of immigration policies and practices is at the heart of current political debate among American citizens and other residents. Thus, Ragbir’s speech on a matter of “public concern” is at “the heart of . . . First Amendment[] protection,” and “occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.’”  Because Ragbir’s speech concerns “political change,” it is also “core political speech” and thus “trenches upon an area in which the importance of First Amendment protections is at its zenith.” Indeed, his “speech critical of the exercise of the State’s power lies at the very center of the First Amendment.”  (citations omitted).

The court of appeals concluded: “Ragbir’s speech implicates the highest protection of the First Amendment,” and “he has adduced plausible — indeed, strong — evidence that officials responsible for the decision to deport him did so based on their disfavor of Ragbir’s speech (and its prominence).”  

The decision further held that a federal statute stripping courts of their power to hear these First Amendment claims is itself unconstitutional. The court of appeals sent the case back to the district court to consider the case in light of its conclusions, directing the district court to stay Mr. Ragbir’s deportation as it considers the next steps in the case.

Mr. Ragbir, Executive Director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, was abruptly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) on January 11, 2018 after years of routine check-ins. ICE’s action came at the heels of its similarly abrupt arrest and detention of Jean Montrevil, a co-founder of New Sanctuary Coalition, that same month. ICE deported Mr. Montrevil and attempted to do the same to Mr. Ragbir before a federal court ordered his release. ICE officials made clear that they resented Mr. Ragbir’s and Mr. Montrevil’s outspoken activism and criticism of U.S. immigration policies.

Even after Mr. Ragbir’s release from detention in January 2018, ICE continued to pursue Mr. Ragbir’s deportation, prompting the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, CASA, Detention Watch Network, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and the New York Immigration Coalition to join Mr. Ragbir in filing suit (Ragbir v. Homan) to challenge the targeting of immigrant rights activists by federal immigration officials. The suit alleged that the specific actions against Mr. Ragbir, along with similar retaliatory actions against activists across the country, were part of a pattern and practice of unlawful targeting in violation of the First Amendment.

The district court denied Mr. Ragbir’s motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissed the claims challenging his deportation under the First Amendment. On appeal, the Second Circuit vacated that decision, concluding that the alleged retaliatory deportation by ICE was sufficiently “outrageous” to violate the First Amendment, and that the Constitution requires judicial review of these claims. The opinion was written by Judge Droney and joined by Judge Leval. A dissent was filed by Judge Walker, who stated that he agreed with much of the majority’s reasoning, but believed ICE’s retaliation against Mr. Ragbir ended with his release from immigration detention.  

“I cannot begin to express my gratitude to all those who have stood with us in this struggle. It humbles me to know that not only will my voice be protected, but that together we can protect the voices of so many people who are living in this country under the threat of deportation,” said Mr. Ragbir. “It was all of our voices together that made this decision possible and we have to continue to speak out against the travesty of our deportation system.”

“Today’s decision stands as a warning to this administration to end its pattern of retaliating against immigrant-rights activists across the country,” said R. Stanton Jones of Arnold & Porter, who argued the case at the Second Circuit. “Mr. Ragbir’s activism, his advocacy, and his protest for immigrant rights stand in America’s greatest civic traditions.  With today’s decision, Mr. Ragbir may continue his important work free from fear of forceful government retaliation.”

“This decision affirms a constitutional principle of critical importance — the First Amendment prohibits our government from silencing its political opponents by deporting them,” said William Perdue of Arnold & Porter. “Immigration officials are not above the Constitution.”

The lawsuit was supported by numerous faith leaders, immigrant rights organizations, elected officials, activists, and others who spoke out on behalf of protecting immigrants’ First Amendment rights (including but not limited to the New York State Council of Churches, Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy and the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, and the Knight First Amendment Institute). “Protecting activist voices is about protecting the movement,” said Jessica Rofé of the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic. “So many have stood up for Ravi because they know what is at stake.”

“Ravi’s crucial advocacy drives to the heart of our nation’s moral imperative to remember that immigrants are humans who deserve to be followed, listened to and protected,” said Pastor Kaji Dousa, co-chair of New Sanctuary Coalition. “For asserting that immigrants have rights and are not disposable, ICE sought to silence Ravi and deport him. We are grateful that the Second Circuit had the wisdom to rule on the side of liberty and to uphold the notion that even Congress can’t take away immigrants’ Constitutional rights. Now Ravi can continue with the very work this country so deeply needs.”

“CASA applauds the Second Circuit’s decision allowing Ravi to move forward with his case.  It is an important vindication of the First Amendment right of all members of our society to make their voices heard, free from fear of retaliation.  Our leaders will not be silenced, as we continue to fight back against the abuses of the current administration’s inhumane immigration policies, and call on Congress to finally reform our broken immigration system so that families can remain together,” said George Escobar, CASA Chief of Programs and Services.

“Today’s ruling by the Second Circuit is a victory for the First Amendment and for all immigration activists around the state. The Court’s finding affirms what we always knew — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unlawfully targeted New Sanctuary Coalition’s Ravi Ragbir for deportation as a result of his immigration rights activism,” said Betsy Plum, VP of Policy, New York Immigration Coalition.

“We know that the struggle is not over,” said Alina Das of the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic. “But we are on our way. We are so deeply grateful for this decision because it will allow us to continue our fight for justice for Ravi and for all those who have been targeted and taken from our community for speaking out.”

In Solidarity and gratitude,

New Sanctuary Coalition

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

Well, as we’ve seen in today’s posts, some judges stand tall, others are small.

PWS

04-25-19

Related posts:

  1. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  2. AMEN: A PRAYER IN THE TIME OF KAKISTOCRACY!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

INSIDE TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION KAKISTOCRACY WITH TRAC: “Malicious Incompetence” Reigns As DHS & EOIR “Fly Blind” On Asylum System & Are Now Hiding Data From Public To Cover Up Own Malfeasance!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__trac.syr.edu_immigration_reports_556_&d=DwMFAg&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=5P7-gWBTtD9g2EDR8U0pyQ5iVCpXWh5b63SXxj7pZPM&m=7PPq-dt8e4s-LLVyEA4t_Pm56qGq-luz6SZ4sXKnbvY&s=04Kf565VLlHoKvcIpERtb5vE2fKENyBuhZ-26wZhkmA&e=

Data Lacking on Why Immigration Courts Not Overwhelmed with Family Cases

Given reports on the number of families arrested at the border, why aren’t there more of these cases before the Immigration Courts? No one seems to know precisely what happens to each family after members are arrested by the Border Patrol and at ports of entry. In general, DHS itself is responsible for providing “notices to appear” to those arrested, and DHS agencies are also responsible for filing copies of these NTAs, where appropriate, with the Immigration Courts. This is supposed to occur whether or not families remain detained.

NTAs are the “notices to appear” that are given individuals providing official notification that the government is seeking to deport them. DHS agencies – including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) – have the authority to issue NTAs, and to file them as needed with the Immigration Courts. Although CBP initially arrests these families at the border and at ports of entry, ICE becomes involved if longer periods of detention are needed. Asylum officers at USCIS also enter the picture as they are responsible for conducting “credible fear” and “reasonable fear” reviews for those seeking asylum.

It appears that the government itself does not actually know what happens to those it arrests at the border. It admits it lacks the ability to reliably follow cases when they pass from one agency of DHS to another – such as CBP to ICE and to USCIS – or to connect those cases when jurisdiction has been passed to the Department of Justice (DOJ) where the Immigration Courts are located. This appears to parallel the difficulties the government has had in reuniting children separated from their parents because separate record systems didn’t pass along relevant information.

In many respects it appears that the Administration continues to be flying blind. Clearly, if agency officials don’t have the data they need, they will be unable to effectively manage the situation, or even to accurately identify what additional personnel and other resources are most urgently needed. They also will be unable to effectively assess the impact of alternative policy choices that may be proposed.

In addition, the public is not being providing sufficient access to the data that is being recorded. A new barrier to public access arose just this month when the Department of Justice decided to review what information was released under the Freedom of Information Act. It stopped providing TRAC with particular case-by-case Immigration Court records tracking the processing of asylum and related applications for relief. Information both on historical as well as new asylum applications are now being withheld during this review. Other vital data TRAC had been routinely receiving and making publicly available on its website are also now being withheld.

As a direct result, TRAC is currently unable to update either its asylum web query tool, or its access tool on representation in Immigration Court by state and county. In addition, several of the fields in its tool that allows the public to drill into details on deportation proceedings, are no longer available.

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

Attacks on Due Process fueled by “malicious incompetence” are the real “immigration emergency.”  And, unlike the “fake asylum/border crisis” staged by the Kakistocracy, this one is a threat to our national security. Why isn’t anyone being held accountable here?

PWS

04-25-19

Related posts:

  1. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: THIS IS WHY HE STAYS: UNDERNEATH ALL THE “TRUMP NOISE” SESSIONS IS METHODICALLY ERADICATING DUE PROCESS, PERVERTING THE LAW, & TURNING ONE OF THE LARGEST FEDERAL COURT SYSTEMS INTO A “KILLING FLOOR” TARGETING OUR MOST VULNERABLE & DESERVING REFUGEES! — “[Sessions] is dumbing down the judges and treating them like assembly-line workers whose only job is to stamp out final orders of removal.”
  3. 🏴‍☠️🤡KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: Experienced Immigration Judges Flee America’s Star Chambers At Record Numbers As Trump Regime’s Malicious Incompetence Triples Backlog With Twice The Number Of Judges On Bench, According To Latest TRAC Report!
  4. GONZO’S WORLD: HE FIDDLES AS ROME BURNS! — Threats To Judges, Xenophobia, Racism, Cutting Corners, Dissing Respondents & Their Lawyers, Bogus Numbers, Aimlessly Adding Bodies Fail To Stem Tide Of Backlogged Cases In An Obviously Broken System — When Will Congress &/Or The Article IIIs Do Their Jobs By Restoring Due Process, Impartiality, & Competent, Apolitical Court Management To This Sorry Caricature Of A Court System?

NAIJ PRESIDENT HON. A. ASHLEY TABADDOR BLASTS BARR’S INTERFERENCE IN THE BOND SYSTEM FOR ASYLUM APPLICANTS!

https://apple.news/ABEcuPRD5QP20VeTp4Xv5jA

Tess Bonn @ The Hill

Hon. A. Ashley Tabaddor, President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

Tess writes:

Immigration judge calls Barr’s move to deny asylum-seekers bond hearings ‘highly problematic’

Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor called the Justice Department’s latest move to deny asylum-seekers bond hearings “highly problematic,” saying courts should not be used as a political tool by law enforcement.

“This in terms of the procedure that has been used is highly problematic,” Tabaddor, who is the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball in an appearance on “Rising.”

“It is allowing the chief prosecutor of the United States to step in, in the middle of judicial proceedings and rewrite the law,” she continued.

Tabaddor added that Barr’s move is another example of why the immigrant court system should function independently of the Justice Department.

“It yet highlights again why immigration court proceedings should really be removed from the Justice Department and be outside of the purview of the political usage of the court as an extension of law enforcement,” she told Hill.TV.

Attorney General William Barr last week issued a new order directing immigration judges not to release asylum-seekers and detain them indefinitely while they await their court hearings.

Barr’s decision reverses a 2005 order, which said certain migrants who passed a “credible fear” interview could stay in the U.S. and seek release on bond until their case is heard in court. But Barr wrote that only the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to release asylum seekers.

The change comes amid an ongoing legal battle over the Trump administration’s policy that requires asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims make their way through the immigration court system.

Earlier this month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the policy, saying it failed to protect migrants from danger. Days later, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took action allowing the Trump administration to temporarily resume returning asylum-seekers to Mexico as it considers the administration’s appeal to the injunction.

Trump’s program of returning migrants to Mexico was initially launched in January, and the program is part of the administration’s crackdown on the recent influx of migrants at the southern border.

During a recent visit to the border, Trump said the U.S. is being overwhelmed by Central American migrants seeking asylum.

“We can’t take you anymore. I’m sorry. Can’t happen, so turn around,” Trump said, referring to the migrants.

—Tess Bonn

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

Undoubtedly, the participation of Chief Trump Cheerleader and immigration enforcement advocate Bill Barr creates an “appearance of bias.” Indeed, it’s more than an “appearance;” it’s actual bias. So, his interference in the quasi-judicial process is unethical.

The only real question is why Barr, like his predecessor Sessions and their predecessors, is allowed to get away with violating clear standards of ethical conduct. Why don’t “real” Article III Courts fulfill their constitutional role by vacating both the decisions and any case in which an Immigration Judge relies on these invalid attempts to influence and control the quasi-judicial decision-making process for the benefit of a party — the DHS?

PWS

04-24-19

Related posts:

  1. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  2. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  3. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LIES, BUT TRAC STATS DON’T: TRAC Exposes Trump’s False Narratives About Families & “Sanctuary Cities” – No Families Are Not “Overwhelming” The System & Most Of Them Already Have Been Absorbed By So-Called “Sanctuary Jurisdictions!”

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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Despite the concern about the number of families arriving at the border seeking asylum, families continue to remain a minor proportion of new cases arriving at the Immigration Courts each month. For example, during March 2019, just 18.7 percent of the new cases that came in involved these families. Despite this, the court’s backlog continues to climb and reached a new historic high of 869,013 cases on its active docket at the end of March.

After being released in border communities, families seldom remain there. Since September 2018, 32 courts in 24 states have received at least 100 new family cases. Over half of these cases are before courts headquartered in sanctuary cities. Among the top ten courts where family cases are located, six are usually classified as sanctuary jurisdictions. These courts include those in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

These results are based upon the latest court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. These data were obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Full data on what happens to families after they are arrested at the border, however, are not available. The Justice Department has now stopped providing TRAC with information needed to track the processing of asylum and related applications for relief. Information both on historical as well as new asylum applications are now being withheld during this review.

In addition, the government admits it lacks the ability to reliably follow cases when they are transferred from one agency to another. Without this information, agency officials are unable to effectively manage the situation. This appears to parallel the difficulties the government has had in reuniting children separated from their parents because separate record systems didn’t pass along relevant information.

For the full report, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/556/

In addition, a number of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through March 2019. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu

———————————————————————————
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), the DHS “Advisory Committee,” and other Trump Apologists to the contrary, neither arriving families nor the current asylum law are the problems (except that the Administration fails to apply the current asylum law and procedures fairly). No, the problem is the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump kakistocracy in the White House, at DHS, and in the DOJ.

Democrats must take care not to be “stampeded” by Trump’s bogus White Nationalist narrative (even parroted by some members of the “mainstream press”) into changing asylum laws to further screw asylum seekers. Rather they need to stand firm on insisting that the Trump Administration follow existing laws on asylum, protection of unaccompanied minors, and other forms of humanitarian protection.

There isn’t going to be a “grand bargain’ on immigration until the Trump kakistocracy and its enablers are removed from power. And “border security” does not require a reduction or truncation of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers as a “trade-off” for legalization programs.

Actually, clearing intentionally and maliciously overcrowded Immigration Court dockets of cases of individuals whose removal actually hurts the U.S. and figuring out a way of getting more of these folks we need into the legal immigration system right off the bat (instead of forcing them into the “immigration black market”) are essential parts of any border security program.

What real border security does require is a competent focus on making the asylum adjudication system and the Immigration Court system function in accordance with protection laws, Due Process, and fundamental fairness. A fair, timely, and efficient Immigration Court system serves everyone’s needs, including DHS enforcement.

Fair, impartial, and independent judges who are not controlled by politicos with a White Nationalist agenda would be the basic starting point. It also includes a fair application of the law to include gender based persecution and persecution by gangs and other entities exercising quasi-governmental authority in “failed states.” Indeed, if any “clarifications” are made in asylum law it should be to specifically write these interpretations into the refugee definition as was done by a bipartisan group of legislators in the past who were dissatisfied with the administrative failure to include victims of persecution in the form of coercive family planning in the refugee definition.

PWS

04-21-19

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

BILL BARR – Unqualified For Office – Unfit To Act In A Quasi-Judicial Capacity

BILL BARR – Unqualified For Office – Unfit To Act In A Quasi-Judicial Capacity

There have been many articles pointing out that Bill Barr unethically has acted as Trump’s defense counsel rather than fulfilled his oath to uphold the Constitution and be the Attorney General of all of the American people. There have also been some absurdist “apologias” for Barr some written by once-respected lawyers who should know better, and others written by the normal Trump hacks.

Here are my choices for four of the best articles explaining why Barr should not be the Attorney General. It goes without saying that he shouldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be running the Immigration Court system. His intervention into individual cases in a quasi-judicial capacity is a clear violation of judicial ethics requiring avoidance of even the “appearance” of a conflict of interest. There is no “appearance” here. Barr has a clear conflict in any matter dealing with immigration.

 

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/impeach-attorney-general-william-barr.html

Congress Should Impeach William Barr

By @jonathanchait
Attorney General William Barr. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

House Democrats are going to face a difficult decision about launching an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Balanced against the president’s impressive array of misconduct is the fact that several more criminal investigations that may add to the indictment are already underway, and that impeaching the president might jeopardize the reelection of red-state Democratic members. But in the meantime, Attorney General William Barr presents them with a much easier decision. Barr has so thoroughly betrayed the values of his office that voting to impeach and remove him is almost obvious.

On March 24, Barr released a short letter summarizing the main findings of the Mueller investigation, as he saw them. News accounts treated Barr’s interpretation as definitive, and the media — even outlets that had spent two years uncovering a wide swath of suspicious and compromising links between the Trump campaign and Russia — dutifully engaged in self-flagellation for having had the temerity to raise questions about the whole affair.

Barr had done very little to that point to earn such a broad benefit of the doubt. In the same role in 1992, he had supported mass pardons of senior officials that enabled a cover-up of the Iran–Contra scandal. Less famously, in 1989 he issued a redacted version of a highly controversial administration legal opinion that, as Ryan Goodman explained, “omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion” for “no justifiable reason.”

And while many members of the old Republican political Establishment had recoiled against Trump’s contempt for the rule of law, Barr has shown no signs of having joined them. He met with Trump to discuss serving as his defense lawyer, publicly attacked the Mueller investigation (which risked “taking on the look of an entirely political operation to overthrow the president”), called for more investigations of Hillary Clinton, and circulated a lengthy memo strongly defending Trump against obstruction charges.

The events since Barr’s letter have incinerated whatever remains of his credibility. The famously tight-lipped Mueller team told several news outlets the letter had minimized Trump’s culpability; Barr gave congressional testimony hyping up Trump’s charges of “spying,” even prejudging the outcome of an investigation (“I think there was a failure among a group of leaders [at the FBI] at the upper echelon”); evaded questions as to whether he had shared the Mueller report with the White House; and, it turns out, he’s “had numerous conversations with White House lawyers which aided the president’s legal team,” the New York Times reports. Then he broke precedent by scheduling a press conference to spin the report in advance of its redacted publication.

It is not much of a mystery to determine which officials have offered their full loyalty to the president. Trump has reportedly “praised Barr privately for his handling of the report and compared him favorably to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions” —whose sole offense in Trump’s eyes was following Department of Justice ethical protocol. Trump urged his Twitter followers to tune in to Barr’s conference, promotional treatment he normally reserves for his Fox News sycophants.

The press conference was the final disqualifying performance. Barr acted like Trump’s defense lawyer, the job he had initially sought, rather than as an attorney general. His aggressive spin seemed designed to work in the maximal number of repetitions of the “no collusion” mantra, in accordance with his boss’s talking points, at the expense of any faithful transmission of the special counsel’s report.

Barr’s letter had made it sound as though Trump’s campaign spurned Russia’s offers of help: “The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign,” he wrote. In fact, Mueller’s report concluded, “In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer,” but that the cooperation fell short of criminal conduct.

Where Mueller intended to leave the job of judging Trump’s obstructive conduct to Congress, Barr interposed his own judgment. Barr offered this incredible statement for why Trump’s behavior was excusable: “[T]here is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” Barr said. “Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation,” and credited him further with taking “no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.”

Sincere? How can Barr use that word to describe the mentality of a man whose own staffers routinely describe him in the media as a pathological liar? Trump repeatedly lied about Russia’s involvement in the campaign, and his own dealings with Russia. And he also, contra Barr, repeatedly denied the special counsel access to witnesses by dangling pardons to persuade them to withhold cooperation.

It is true that many of Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice failed. As Mueller wrote, the president’s “efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

This is a rather different gloss on the facts than the happy story Barr offered the press. What’s more, it is a pressing argument for Barr’s own removal. Next to the president himself, the attorney general is the most crucial actor in the safeguarding of the rule of law. The Justice Department is an awesome force that holds the power to enable the ruling party to commit crimes with impunity, or to intimidate and smear the opposing party with the taint of criminality.

There is no other department in government in which mere norms, not laws, are all that stand between democracy as we know it and a banana republic. Barr has revealed his complete unfitness for this awesome task. Nearly two more years of this Trumpian henchman wielding power over federal law enforcement is more weight than the rickety Constitution can bear.

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Dvid Leonhardt of the NY Times writes:

In the years after Watergate, Justice Department officials — from both parties — worked hard to banish partisan cronyism from the department. Their goal was to make it the least political, most independent part of the executive branch.

“Our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose,” Edward Levi, Gerald Ford’s attorney general, said at the time. Griffin Bell, later appointed to the same job by Jimmy Carter, described the department as “a neutral zone in the government, because the law has to be neutral.”

Attorney General William Barr clearly rejects this principle. He’s repeatedly put a higher priority on protecting his boss, President Trump, than on upholding the law in a neutral way. He did so in his letter last month summarizing Robert Mueller’s investigation and then again in a bizarre prebuttal news conference yesterday. As The Times editorial board wrote, Barr yesterday “behaved more like the president’s defense attorney than the nation’s top law-enforcement officer.”

Throughout his tenure, Barr has downplayed or ignored the voluminous evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing — his lies to the American people, his willingness to work with a hostile foreign country during a presidenial campaign, his tolerance of extensive criminal behavior among his staff and his repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation. Barr even claimed that Trump “fully cooperated” with that investigation, which Vox’s Ezra Klein notes is “an outright lie.”

Since he took office, Trump has made clear that he wants an attorney general who acts as first an enforcer of raw power and only second as an enforcer of federal law. In Barr, Trump has found his man. Together, they have cast aside more than four decades worth of Justice Department ideals and instead adopted the approach of Richard Nixon.

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-barr-misled-public-mueller-report_n_5cb8b2b0e4b032e7ceb60d05

The Ways William Barr Misled The Public About The Mueller Report

Instead of just releasing the special counsel’s findings, the U.S. attorney general spun the report to the benefit of President Trump.

 

President Donald Trump has long wished for an attorney general who would act as his own private lawyer, protecting him from any potential legal damage. He finally found his man in William Barr.

Barr could have released special counsel Robert Mueller’s report from the beginning. Instead, the attorney general chose to twice present his own interpretation of the special counsel’s findings on foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. election ― before allowing members of the public to see the report and decide for themselves whether Trump and his associates did anything improper.

The report, which finally came out on Thursday, paints a much more complicated picture of whether Trump obstructed justice than Barr let on.

The first time the public received a glimpse of what was in the Mueller report was on March 24, when Barr sent a four-page letter to congressional leaders summarizing his conclusions from the report the special counsel team had submitted to Barr two days earlier.

The second time the public heard about the report’s content was in a Thursday morning press conference when Barr went out of his way to echo Trump talking points, attacking the media and the president’s “political opponents.”

To the Justice Department’s credit, the redactions in the Mueller report were relatively light ― allowing the public to see a substantial amount of the content.

But still, in his public comments, Barr made sure to paint as positive a picture of Trump before the report became widely available.

Here’s how the attorney general misled the public:

He left out the Trump campaign’s expectation of benefiting from hacked material.

In his letter to Congress on March 24, Barr wrote:

The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: ”[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election inference activities.”

While it’s true that the Mueller report did reach that conclusion, that quote is incomplete. Barr left out the first part, which was less complimentary to the Trump campaign.

Below is the full quote from the Mueller report, with the part Barr omitted in bold:

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

He said it was up to him to make a decision on obstruction of justice.

Attorney General William Barr went to bat for Trump in a Thursday morning press conference.

Attorney General William Barr went to bat for Trump in a Thursday morning press conference.

In his March 24 letter, Barr said Mueller’s team did not come to a conclusion on whether Trump had obstructed justice in the course of the investigation. Therefore, Barr claimed, it was now up to him to make that determination.

“The Special Counsel’s decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime,” he wrote.

Barr said he concluded that the evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

But Barr never had to make that legal conclusion, as Matt Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department under President Barack Obama, pointed out. And Mueller never asked Barr to so.

Indeed, the report said the special counsel’s team couldn’t come to such a conclusion:

[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.

The report also said that ultimately, the obstruction call wasn’t for Mueller to make. The special counsel decided not to make a decision on whether to prosecute Trump because the Justice Department’s position, according to an Office of Legal Counsel memo, is that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“Given the role of the Special Counsel as an attorney in the Department of Justice and the framework of the Special Counsel regulations … this Office accepted OLC’s legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction,” the report states.

Furthermore, it seems clear that Mueller and his team expected that ultimately, Congress would make the decision on obstruction of justice.

NBC News reported earlier that some in Mueller’s office had said “their intent was to leave the legal question open for Congress and the public to examine the evidence.”

“[W]e concluded that Congress can validly regulate the President’s exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice,” the report says.

In other words, Congress can impeach the president if it wants to do so.

He gave an incomplete picture of Trump’s actions that could be construed as obstruction of justice.

“In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct,” Barr wrote in his March 24 letter.

The report doesn’t let Trump off the hook quite so easily. It says Trump tried to obstruct justice ― but he didn’t succeed because his staff refused to follow his orders.

“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the report reads.

The report detailed 10 acts by Trump that could amount to obstruction of justice.

He said Mueller found “no collusion.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been called to testify before Congress about his report.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been called to testify before Congress about his report.

One of Trump’s favorite phrases is that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 elections. He has tweeted it 84 times.

Barr used the phrase four times in his 18-minute remarks in Thursday’s press conference:

  • “Put another way, the special counsel found no ‘collusion’ by any Americans in the IRA’s illegal activity.”
  • “But again, the special counsel’s report did not find any evidence that members of the Trump campaign or anyone associated with the campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its hacking operations. In other words, there was no evidence of Trump campaign ‘collusion’ with the Russian government’s hacking.”
  • “After finding no underlying collusion with Russia, the special counsel’s report goes on to consider whether certain actions of the president could amount to obstruction of the special counsel’s investigation.”
  • “At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was, in fact, no collusion.”

But the Mueller report never actually said the investigation found no collusion. In fact, the report explains specifically why it doesn’t use the term “collusion.” The word only appears in the report as part of this explanation or in quoting someone else.

The Mueller report avoided using the term "collusion," and explains why here.

The Mueller report avoided using the term “collusion,” and explains why here.

Therefore, Barr repeatedly saying Mueller found “no collusion” was simply the attorney general adopting a Trump talking point.

He said Trump fully cooperated with the investigation.

Barr was extremely sympathetic to Trump in Thursday’s press conference. He tried to paint a picture of a president under extreme ― and unfair ― pressure, telling reporters, “As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates.”

He said Trump was “frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” so it’s not surprising if he may have lashed out a bit. And, he added, Trump deserved credit for “fully cooperat[ing]” with the special counsel at all:

Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims.

Trump, however, didn’t fully cooperate. He refused repeated requests to give an interview to Mueller and his team. The report said the special counsel’s team considered issuing a subpoena for Trump to testify but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it:

The Mueller report says Trump refused to be interviewed by the special counsel and his team.

The Mueller report says Trump refused to be interviewed by the special counsel and his team.
Finally, this editorial form the SF Chronicle really “hammers home” Barr’s patent unfitness to continue serving.
Opinion

Editorial: Attorney General Barr’s misplaced loyalties

Chronicle Editorial Board

Updated

  • Attorney General William Barr has been acting as if he is Presisdent Trump’s personal attorney. Photo: Tom Brenner / New York Times

 

Photo: Tom Brenner / New York Times

Attorney General William Barr has been acting as if he is Presisdent Trump’s personal attorney.

President Trump has never made any secret of his desire to have an attorney general whose first loyalty was to him. Regrettably for the nation and the honest administration of justice, Trump unquestionably now has one in William Barr.

The attorney general has lost all credibility with his disgraceful handling of the rollout of the Mueller report into Russian interference into the 2016 election. Barr left the American people for more than a month with a seriously skewed characterization of the “principal conclusions” from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings from the two-year investigation.

His four-page summary of those conclusions amounted to “nothing much to see here, folks.” While he was correct that the Mueller team could not make a case that anyone in Trump’s campaign broke the law by conspiring with Russians, the Barr summary was downright deceptive in its portrayal of the special counsel’s findings on possible obstruction of justice by the president.

Barr’s summary suggested that “difficult questions of law and fact” left it difficult for Mueller to determine whether Trump had obstructed the probe. Barr and his deputy took it upon themselves to conclude that “the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient” to establish obstruction.

Americans who have now read the Mueller’s team’s own words in the 448-page report discovered that Barr’s account was highly misleading. In fact, Mueller’s hesitation was not based on an inability to decide; it was guided in part by a Department of Justice policy that a sitting president could not be indicted. Given that, Mueller suggested it would be unfair to accuse Trump of a crime when the president could not have a chance to defend himself in a “speedy and public trial” with the constitutional protections.

Barr also suggested that Trump could not have obstructed justice into an investigation of a crime he did not commit.

Mueller’s report clearly stated otherwise.

“The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong,” it stated. Mueller’s investigation detailed “multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”

Rather than punting the obstruction decision to Barr, Mueller very clearly noted that a decision on what to do with the substantial evidence of wrongdoing he collected should be made by Congress, which has the power of impeachment.

Barr never bothered to correct Trump’s exhortation of “complete and total exoneration.” Barr might as well have been on a Trump spokesman, rather than the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, at a bizarre Thursday news conference (before the report’s release) in which he offered a sympathetic explanation for Trump’s repeated efforts to stymie the investigation. Barr chalked it up to Trump’s anger and frustration.

Justice has been frustrated. Americans are justifiably angry. Barr has proved himself unfit for the high office he holds.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

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Undoubtedly, Trump is unfit for office as many of us have been saying for some time now. The Mueller report confirmed what most thinking people already knew: the guy is dishonest, immoral, pathological, and a not very bright “con man.” (He’s also a racist and a White Nationalist would be authoritarian, although those admittedly were not points of emphasis in the Mueller report which focused on other aspects of his totally disgraceful conduct.)
But, I’ll concede that Trump’s removal is unlikely to happen except at the ballot box. Even that is uncertain with about 40% of American voters apparently wedded to a “beggar thy neighbor, who cares about the majority, country be damned” worldview. Trump is already focused on a “race-baiting” strategy of leveraging the most problematic aspects of our electoral college system while treating the interests of majority of Americans with mockery and disdain.
It remains to be seen whether any Democratic candidate can unite the diverse majority of Americans for at least long enough to save our country by removing Trump and, hopefully, his GOP enablers along with him. It also remains to be seen whether any country where 40% of the voters are so out of touch with reality and the common interests of the rest of us can actually be governed, once majority rule is restored.
But, Barr is a different matter. He’s not elected, he’s not President, and we don’t have to enable his continued unethical misuse of authority at the DOJ, at least not in the the all important area of the U.S. Immigraton Court.
If Congress won’t do the job by creating an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, it’s time for the Article III courts to invalidate precedents produced by Barr’s and Sessions’s unethical participation in individual quasi-judicial decision-making and to start invalidating removal orders entered by “courts” controlled by political enforcement officials, in clear contradiction to the Due Process requirement that individuals facing the life or death authority of the Federal Government are entitled to have fair and impartial decision makers and reasoned decisions. That can’t happen in a system controlled and directed by biased political “enforcement only” officials like Barr (and Sessions before him). Barr has made it crystal clear that he always will put the selfish interests of Trump above truthfulness, the law, due process, fundamental fairness, and the common good.
Letting this farce of a “judicial system” continue unfairly endangering individual lives and deferring to officials who are neither subject matter experts nor fair and impartial quasi-judicial decision makers is unconstitutional. By letting it continue, life-tenured Federal Judges both tarnish their reputations and fail to fulfill their oaths of office.
As a young attorney in the Department of Justice during the Watergate Era, I, along with many others, were indelibly impressed and inspired when then Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his Deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s illegal order to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor (a/k/a/ “The Saturday Night Massacre”). Obviously, Barr has dragged the Department and its reputation down to new depths — back to the days of Nixon and disgraced (and convicted) Attorney General “John the Con” Mitchell, who actually planned criminal conspiracies in his fifth floor office at the DOJ.
Obviously, there are systemic problems that have allowed unqualified individuals like Barr and Sessions to serve in and co-opt the system of justice, and denigrate the Department of Justice. (I spoke to some recently retired DOJ officials who characterized the morale among career professionals at the DOJ as “below the floor”). Some of those can be traced to the lack of backbone and integrity in the “Trump GOP” which controls the Senate and refuses to enforce even minimal standards of professionalism, meaningful oversight, and independent decision making in Trump appointees. That’s what a “kakistocracy” is. It’s up to the rest of us to do what is necessary under the law to replace the kakistocracy with a functioning democracy.
PWS
04-20-19

Related posts:

  1. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

INSIDE THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” — Jim Crow Lives In Stewart Co., Georgia — Perhaps He Never Left!

https://www.splcenter.org/attention-on-detention/healing-open-wounds-injustice-stewart-county-georgia

Mary Claire Kelly writes for the Southern Poverty Law Center:

On the stretch of highway careening south from Columbus to Lumpkin, patches of Georgia red clay lie like open sores on the road’s shoulder. The sun burns bright orange, through air that is hazy with pollen and smoke from controlled forest fires.

The land here was once valuable. It was coveted. Nearly 200 years ago, white men named this county Stewart, after a revolutionary war militia general. White men massacred the men, women and children of the Creek Confederacy over this land.

Wealthy white men forced black men, women and children to scrape this land and stuff it with cotton. They gouged this land. Farmers, laborers and enslaved Africans dug deep ditches, taking no steps to avoid soil erosion, and those ditches became pits. In one part of Lumpkin, flowing water carved out the enormous pinnacles that mark Providence Canyon State Park. Nicknamed Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon,” it is a beautiful scar of a violent extractive history.

Today, Stewart is one of the poorest counties in the state of Georgia. Its economic and population peak was in the mid-1800s, when slavery still reigned. Now, nearly half the roads in this majority-black district are still unpaved. Lumpkin’s downtown area, the county seat, has one four-way stop and many boarded up businesses.

The city’s population more than doubles when you include the 2,000 people locked away at the county’s main employer, Stewart Detention Center. The immigration prison is made of concrete and steel, but is sustained by a diversity of barriers.

First, there are the barriers you see: The trees hide Stewart from the roads, the two layers of curly-cue barbed wire fences insulate the facility, the formidable red gates stand tall, and the freshly cut grass stretches like a moat around the building.

Then, there are the barriers you experience: You leave your phone and any other connection to the outside world in your car, wait at two red gates outside the building entrance for an unseen force to open them, endlessly wait for one of three designated rooms to open for visitation, remove your jacket and shoes to endure the TSA-style security process to enter, and then you wait in the empty visitation room for a man with sleepless, red eyes to appear behind the thick, protective, plastic partition.

Next, there are the barriers you hear: the screech of your chair whenever you shift positions, the distracting human resources video blaring in the hallway outside of the visitation room, the echoes reverberating in the small concrete space that prevent you and the immigrant who sits behind the plastic barrier from being able to hear each other, and the static crackling across the telephone line that you must use to listen to the man who is sitting only feet away.

Then, there are the barriers that comprise the very reason this man sits in front of you: the violent political divisions in his home country, the obstacles to making a living wage, the language barrier, the gap in education needed to navigate the labyrinth of immigration bureaucracy.

And, last but not least, there is the barrier that is the entire reason for this place and this situation: the American border.

The logo of CoreCivic Inc. – the private, for-profit prison company that the government pays to run this facility – is a deformed American flag that is missing its stars, leaving only stripes that resemble the bars of a cage.

Through the entrance to the courtroom, President Donald Trump smiles in the lobby from his portrait above the list of that day’s hearings. In those hearings, detainees who have come from all over the world will sit on hard, wooden pews facing the U.S. Department of Justice seal.

Here, an attorney for the government will argue why each of these men and trans women should stay at this immigrant prison, or be sent back to the country they fled. In many cases, these immigrants might not have an attorney to represent them, because they do not have the constitutional right to counsel. Sometimes, family and friends can sit in on the hearing to show support for their loved one’s case.

Here, an immigration judge in black robes will methodically determine whether each of these people will remain caged at Stewart, be returned to the country they escaped, or be allowed to leave the prison. The verdict is delivered either by the judge with an authoritative tone, or the courtroom interpreter with a clinical lilt. If a person is allowed to leave, they will most likely have to continue waiting in this immigrant prison until someone on the outside can pay their bond, which is typically thousands of dollars. If they do leave, it will likely be late in the evening – too late to find transportation out of Stewart County.

The men and trans women who churn through Stewart’s machinery are called by their A-number, not their name. They are reduced to numbers. CoreCivic receives approximately $62 of taxpayer money for each body that fills a bed in its institution each day, according to Shadow Prisons, an SPLC report about the immigration system that is rife with civil rights violations, poor conditions, and little commitment to the safety of detainees. CoreCivic pays the people who are detained here as little as $1 a day for their “voluntary” labor.

To gain their freedom, these detained individuals must prove, through financial statements, that they will not be an economic burden on the government.

This is the knot of racist bureaucracy that staff of the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) – a project of the SPLC that provides pro bono legal counsel to those facing deportation proceedings in the Southeast – patiently work each day to untangle. The U.S. immigration system presses every parent, child, sibling and caregiver it entraps into an anonymous mold — a serial number in scrubs — that can be delivered to immigration prisons in a fleet of white vans.

SIFI staff see past the mold. They look into the eyes of each person they represent. They recognize the details that belong to that individual, and that individual alone: their family on the outside working for their release, the aches and pains that prevent them from sleeping, the professional skills they worked for years to achieve.

For many detained individuals, their bureaucratic purgatory in Stewart has been the end of an Odyssean journey to escape torture, the murders of loved ones, and threats on their lives. Every one of these tragic epics is woven with contagious trauma.

Yet, the men and women of SIFI are strong – even when the battles seem uphill every day. They model for volunteers how to confidently perform quality legal work, while treating each client with respect and compassion.

The small community of immigrants’ rights activists in Lumpkin, which also includes local immigration attorneys and the hospitality ministry El Refugio, often supports one another. They celebrate victories — the release of a client, the grant of a low bond amount — and quietly mourn defeats.

Stewart Detention Center is a painful symptom of violent injustice. It festers in a South Georgia landscape that bears deep, historic wounds.

Here, the men and women of SIFI are trying to heal the system.

Mary Claire Kelly is a Harvard Law School student and a former digital media associate at the SPLC.

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

Grotesque abuses of Constitutional Due Process, fundamental fairness, and human decency, not to mention errors of law, go on daily in the “NAG” aided and abetted by its EOIR enablers. What kind of “court” operates in such a one-sided and coercive atmosphere. Why don‘t those in charge insist on neutral hearing sites rather than those controlled by one of the parties in interest?

Bill Barr just went to great pains to insure that even those who pass “credible fear” and who can prove financial responsibility won’t in the future be released from detention (unless, of course, ICE runs out of detention space, which is already happening).

In fact, they won’t even get a chance to make the case for relief to an Immigration Judge. That’s the kind of mindless “Jim Crow” use of the law to promote cruelty and unfairness that corporate “stuffed shirts” like Barr, more concerned with covering for his corrupt boss than upholding the Constitution, can mete out from his protected perch at the DOJ. But, perhaps the folks at SIFI will be able to stuff Barr’s disregard for the Fifth Amendment back in his face in the “real” Federal Courts.

In any event, history won’t forget the Barrs of the world, any more than they have forgotten the Wallaces and others who were on its “wrong side.”

If nothing else, the performance of Bill Barr over the last several days shows why a true “court system” can’t possibly run under his auspices.

PWS

04-19-19

 

Related posts:

  1. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

DC CIRCUIT: Beginning Of The End For Broken & Biased U.S. Immigration Court System? — Court Slams Military Tribunals For Same Type Of Patent Lack Of Impartiality Present In Immigration Court On A Daily Basis — “This much is clear: whenever and however military judges are assigned, rehired, and reviewed, they must always maintain the appearance of impartiality.” — Aggressive Role, Control Of Enforcement-Biased AG’s Over Immigration Courts Appears In Conflict With Article III Court’s Reasoning!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-setback-for-guantanamo-court-throws-out-years-of-rulings-in-uss-cole-case/2019/04/16/6c63e052-606b-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html

Missy Ryan reports for the Washington Post:

A federal court dealt a major blow to the Guantanamo Bay military commissions Tuesday, throwing out more than three years of proceedings in the case against the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that former military judge Vance Spath “created a disqualifying appearance of partiality” by pursuing a position as an immigration judge while also overseeing the case.

The judges also voided an order issued by Spath that sought to require two defense attorneys for the defendant, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, to return to the case against their will.

The ruling is the latest blemish for the troubled commissions set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to try prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Of a once-vast detainee population there, only 40 inmates remain. Nearly two decades after the attacks, the start of the trial of 9/11 suspects remains far off amid seemingly endless legal wrangling and procedural delays.

Nashiri, a Saudi national in his 50s, faces a possible death penalty for his alleged orchestration of a string of plots to bomb Western vessels, including the Cole attack, which killed 17 Americans. After his capture, Nashiri was subject to extensive torture in CIA custody.

“Many years ago, when Abd al-Rahim first heard he was being handed over to the Americans, he was actually happy because he thought the United States was a country of laws and rights and that he’d at least be treated fairly,” said Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, a member of Nashiri’s defense team. “Finally, after 16 years, with this ruling, that has actually happened. Which is to say that this will mean a lot to him.”

A year into his involvement in the case, Spath meanwhile quietly applied to the Justice Department for a position as an immigration judge. Such judges are appointed by the attorney general.

The D.C. Circuit judges, in a stinging rebuke, responded this week by throwing out rulings in the case from the commission and at least some from its appeals body, beginning at the moment when Spath initiated his job application in November 2015.

“This much is clear: whenever and however military judges are assigned, rehired, and reviewed, they must always maintain the appearance of impartiality,” Tatel wrote.

The CMCR is the Guantanamo appeals body. Tatel was joined on the panel by Judges Judith Rogers and Thomas Griffith.

Michael Paradis, an attorney who represented Nashiri in the D.C. Circuit case, said the opinion revealed the judges’ frustration “that the system is cavalier about such basic roles and so broken as a consequence. The whole thing has become so shambolic.”

The government could appeal the ruling. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on pending litigation.

Spath’s successor on the military court also left to become an immigration judge.

Devlin Barrett, Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff contributed to this report.

**************************************
Legislative reform establishing an independent Article I Immigration Court outside the Executive Branch should be a bipartisan “no-brainer.”
Instead, while Congress diddles, the misdirected and mismanaged U.S. Immigration Courts under the DOJ continue full steam toward operational and legal disaster.  Without a timely Congressional remedy, that could eventually leave the entire removal system in the hands of the Article IIIs.
Notably, the “precipitating event” here was the Military Judge applying to the DOJ to become an Immigration Judge while handling a case in which the DOJ had an interest.
How about Attorneys General who have taken “point position” on the Administration’s harsh and often illegal immigration enforcement initiatives intervening in individual cases (sometimes over the objection of both parties) to change results to give DHS Enforcement, a party, a victory? Or, that all Immigration Judges are selected, evaluated, assigned, and directed by the Attorney General, a non-quasi-judicial official who is the “chief enforcer” and “chief prosecutor?”
Time for the U.S. Immigration Courts to be required to comply with Due Process!
PWS
04-17-19

 

Related posts:

  1. WASHINGTON POST/ABC POLL: TRUMP’S “CRUEL, MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” APPROACH TO ASYLUM HIGHLY UNPOPULAR & INEFFECTIVE: Dems Can Build Support By Strengthening Current Asylum System & Making It Work! — The “Real Face” Of “Border Security” Has Little Or Nothing To Do With Trump’s White Nationalist Rants & Barrage Of Lies!
  2. THE ASYLUMIST WEIGHS IN ON EOIR’S “FACT SHEET:” “Sometimes, myths and facts get mixed up, especially in the Trump Administration, which has redacted human rights reports to show that countries are safe, buried other reports that don’t say what they like, and claimed that asylum lawyers are making up cases to get their clients across the border. It’s all in the grand tradition of the merchants of doubt, men and women who know better, but who obfuscate the truth–about tobacco, global warming, vaccines, whatever–to achieve a political goal (or make a buck). Why shouldn’t EOIR join in the fun?”
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

INSIDE THE KAKISTOCRACY: Stephen Miller “repeatedly demanded implementation of policies that were legally questionable, impractical, unethical or unreasonable.” — Only Some Courageous Private Lawyers & Federal Judges Stand Between Us & A Racist Debacle! — Law Proving An Obstacle To Scofflaw White Nationalists!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/us/politics/trump-immigration-stephen-miller.html

Eileen Sullivan and Michael D. Shear report for the NY Times

WASHINGTON — Stephen Miller was furious — again.

The architect of President Trump’s immigration agenda, Mr. Miller was presiding last month over a meeting in the White House Situation Room when he demanded to know why the administration officials gathered there were taking so long to carry out his plans.

A regulation to deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants — a change Mr. Miller repeatedly predicted would be “transformative” — was still plodding through the approval process after more than two years, he complained. So were the new rules that would overturn court-ordered protections for migrant children. They were still not finished, he added, berating Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“You ought to be working on this regulation all day every day,” he shouted, as recounted by two participants at the meeting. “It should be the first thought you have when you wake up. And it should be the last thought you have before you go to bed. And sometimes you shouldn’t go to bed.”

A few weeks after that meeting, the consequences of Mr. Miller’s frustration and the president he was channeling have played out in striking fashion.

Mr. Trump has withdrawn Mr. Vitiello’s nomination to permanently lead ICE and pushed out Kirstjen Nielsen, his homeland security secretary. The department’s acting deputy secretary, Claire Grady, and the Secret Service director, Randolph D. Alles, are departing as well. And the White House has made it clear that others, including L. Francis Cissna, the head of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and John Mitnick, the department’s general counsel, are likely to go soon.

Mr. Trump insisted in a tweet on Saturday that he was “not frustrated” by the situation at the border, where for months he has said there is a crisis that threatens the nation’s security. But unable to deliver on his central promise of the 2016 campaign, he has targeted his administration’s highest-ranking immigration officials.

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And behind that purge is Mr. Miller, the 33-year-old White House senior adviser. While immigration is the issue that has dominated Mr. Trump’s time in office, the president has little interest or understanding about how to turn his gut instincts into reality. So it is Mr. Miller, a fierce ideologue who was a congressional spokesman before joining the Trump campaign, who has shaped policy, infuriated civil liberties groups and provoked a bitter struggle within the administration.

White House officials insisted to reporters last week that they had no choice but to move against administration officials unwilling or unable to make their agencies produce results. One senior administration official at the White House, who requested anonymity to discuss what he called a sensitive topic, said many of the administration’s core priorities have been “either moving too slowly or moving in the wrong direction.”

But current and former officials from those agencies, who also requested anonymity to discuss contentious relations with the White House, describe a different reality.

The purge, they said, was the culmination of months of clashes with Mr. Miller and others around the president who have repeatedly demanded implementation of policies that were legally questionable, impractical, unethical or unreasonable. And when officials explained why, it further infuriated a White House set on making quick, sweeping changes to decades-old laws.

In a twist, many of the officials who have clashed with the White House were the president’s own political appointees, who share his broad goal of limiting immigration into the United States. To that end, they have already succeeded in lowering the number of refugees allowed into the United States, imposing a travel ban on entry from mostly Muslim nations, speeding up denaturalization proceedings, slowing asylum processing at ports of entry and developing proposals to limit work permits for spouses of high-tech workers.

“I don’t think the president’s really cleaning house,” said Thomas D. Homan, a former acting ICE director and strong supporter of the president’s immigration agenda. “I think he’s setting the reset button.”

A White House spokesman declined a request for comment. But even several of the most right-wing, anti-immigration groups have had a mixed reaction to the treatment of the immigration officials Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller have targeted.

The Center for Immigration Studies tweeted that “Nielsen got tough at the end of her tenure, but it was largely too little, too late.” The Federation for American Immigration Reform wrote: “Under Francis Cissna’s leadership, USCIS has issued a steady stream of policy changes and regulations that are firmly in line with President Trump’s immigration agenda. Removing him would be a huge mistake.”

But it has not been enough for Mr. Miller and his allies in the White House feeling the constant pressure from Mr. Trump.

Perhaps the greatest point of contention within the administration has been the asylum laws that are the root cause of the most vivid manifestation of the immigration issue: the hundreds of thousands of migrant families from Central America who have surged toward the southwestern border, fleeing violence and poverty.

In a Tuesday afternoon “deputies” conference call last year with about 50 or 60 officials from across government, Mr. Miller demanded to know why nearly all of the families seeking asylum were passing the first hurdle — a screening interview to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they were returned to their home countries.

Mr. Miller and others in the White House were outraged that 90 percent or more of the applicants passed the first screening, a concern during the Bush administration, as well. Immigration judges ultimately deny all but about 20 percent of the asylum requests, but because of a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, many asylum seekers wait years for their case to be heard for the second time, giving them the chance to gain work permits, build roots and disappear in the United States.

To Mr. Miller, the asylum process was a giant loophole that needed to be plugged. And he faulted the asylum officers at Citizenship and Immigration Services who were conducting the screenings for having a cultural bias that made them overly sympathetic to the asylum seekers. “You need to tighten up,” Miller insisted.

Immigration officials on the conference call did not disagree that too many migrants were granted asylum in the initial “credible fear” screening. But the rules for conducting the screenings were written into law by Congress and designed to be generous so that persecuted people had a real opportunity to seek asylum. It was unclear, the officials said, what else the agency could do.

A Border Patrol vehicle near the border fence in Sunland Park, N.M. White House officials recently pushed to have Border Patrol agents, instead of asylum officers, conduct initial screenings of asylum seekers.CreditJose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
Image
A Border Patrol vehicle near the border fence in Sunland Park, N.M. White House officials recently pushed to have Border Patrol agents, instead of asylum officers, conduct initial screenings of asylum seekers.CreditJose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Listening to Mr. Miller continue to hammer the issue, two people on the call recalled, it was almost as if Mr. Miller wanted asylum officers to ignore the law. At one point during the call, Mr. Cissna erupted in frustration.

“Enough. Enough. Stand down!” he said.

But such pressure from the White House was hardly unique, according to officials from multiple agencies.

For instance, a federal judge last week ruled that the White House early in the administration had improperly pressured officials at Citizenship and Immigration Services to terminate an immigration program for Haiti called Temporary Protected Status.

The judge said the decision in 2017 to end the program was contrary to the statute and indicated that the White House had strongly influenced the department.

More recently, White House officials pushed during one of the Tuesday afternoon conference calls to have Border Patrol agents, instead of asylum officers, conduct “credible fear” interviews. The notion, they said, was that the Border Patrol agents could process interviews quickly and cut out the several-day wait to schedule a meeting with an asylum officer.

Many of the immigration officials recoiled at the idea. Assigning agents to interview duty would pull them from their primary roles at the ports and along the border. Even worse, asylum laws require interviewers to undergo up to two months of training that would strain the already understaffed Border Patrol stations.

But even if they could be trained, officials told the White House, the logistics would be a nightmare. Cramped Border Patrol stations — many of which look like small, rural police stations — were not set up to conduct scores of two-hour interviews with hundreds of migrants flooding into border communities each day.

When the idea leaked out in early April, immigrant rights advocates accused the Trump administration of trying to prevent migrants from having a real chance at asylum.

“Border Patrol officers are simply not qualified to do this,” said Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee program at Human Rights First. “This will put unfit, untrained and unqualified agents in charge of determining who warrants potentially lifesaving protection in the United States.”

To Mr. Miller and other White House officials, it was another instance in which the law and machinations of government were getting in the way of needed changes. And they think there are many others.

In November, as Mr. Trump railed publicly about the dangers of migrant caravans from Central America, a top White House domestic policy adviser floated the idea of taking migrants who had been apprehended to so-called sanctuary cities represented by Democrats. Homeland security officials, who saw the idea as political retribution, resisted.

In an email, Matthew Albence, the acting deputy director of ICE, said that it would create “an unnecessary operational burden” and that transporting the migrants to a different location was not “a justified expenditure.” Lawyers at the Department of Homeland Security, including Mr. Mitnick, also questioned the idea’s legality.

The idea was dropped until last week, when news stories about the rejected proposal prompted Mr. Trump to say his administration was still considering the option.

Mr. Trump has also not given up on the idea of shutting down the southern border, a move economists have said would be catastrophic and halt nearly $1.7 billion of goods and services that flow across the border each day.

Even as Mr. Trump retreated publicly and said he would give Mexico a year to do more to prevent migrants from reaching the southern border of the United States, he has made it clear to his advisers privately that the closing was still on the table.

His insistence increased the friction with his top immigration officials, especially Ms. Nielsen, who tried to talk him out of closing the ports of entry and refusing to grant asylum. Ms. Nielsen explained why she could not do that, citing economic and legal issues — banning migrants from seeking asylum would be against the law.

When Ms. Nielsen did not give the president the answer he sought, he turned to Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and asked him to stop migrants from entering the country. Mr. Trump told Mr. McAleenan that he would pardon him if he ran into any legal problems, according to officials familiar with the conversation — though he denied it in a tweet Saturday night.

Ms. Nielsen’s refusal to shut down the southern border appeared to be the final straw for Mr. Trump. After forcing her resignation, he named Mr. McAleenan the acting secretary of the department.

But Mr. Miller remains unsatisfied. Lately, he has made clear to immigration officials and others in the White House that he remains frustrated with the still-pending regulation on welfare benefits for immigrants. After nearly two years of painstaking work and more than 200,000 public comments, the 447-page rule is on track to eventually be published.

And it is not clear that the political bloodletting is over. Mr. Cissna and Mr. Mitnick remain in bureaucratic limbo, having received neither their walking papers nor an explicit stay of execution. While Mr. McAleenan is now the acting secretary of homeland security, rumors persist that Mr. Trump may want someone else to be the permanent head of the department.

Inside the immigration agencies, there is a persistent rumor that Mr. Trump may yet name an immigration czar to better coordinate — or, some believe, control — the sprawling immigration bureaucracy.

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

Good thing we have the New Due Process Army to fight against Miller and his forces of evil out to destroy American democracy.
PWS
04-15-19

Related posts:

  1. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE BY REJECTING THE POLITICS OF HATE & RACISM: Cities Can Embrace Asylum Applicants, Help Them Win Status, & Reach Full Potential!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/seattle-isnt-afraid-of-immigrants-mr-trump/2019/04/12/f26c370e-5d5e-11e9-9625-01d48d50ef75_story.html

By Jenny A. Durkan

April 12 at 7:05 PM

Jenny A. Durkan, a Democrat, is mayor of Seattle.

Here’s a message to President Trump: Seattle is not afraid of immigrants and refugees. In fact, we have always welcomed people who have faced tremendous hardships around the world. Immigrants and refugees are part of Seattle’s heritage, and they will continue to make us the city of the future.

What does scare us? A president and federal government that would seek to weaponize a law enforcement agency to punish perceived political enemies. A would-be despot who thinks the rule of law does not apply to him.

On Friday, Trump took to Twitter to confirm a Post report that the White House wants to place detained immigrants in so-called sanctuary cities represented by Democrats.

In doing so, he trotted out his favorite playbook: He is demonizing immigrants and refugees to incite fear and to distract the American public from his own failures. Despite his party having control of the whole federal government for two years, Trump has utterly failed to fix our immigration system, to provide real opportunity for middle America or to improve the lives of the Americans in the places that supported him.

It’s clear he hates the fact that the very cities he scorns are engines of innovation, opportunity and economic power. But we will not be deterred. The president’s threats won’t intimidate me as a mayor of a city with an open door, as a former federal prosecutor or as the granddaughter of a teenager who fled a war-torn, starving and impoverished country only to be welcomed in America.

This president believes that immigrants and refugees burden our country and burden cities like ours. But he could not be more wrong.

In Seattle, we know that our immigrant and refugee communities make our city a stronger, more vibrant place. Our immigrant neighbors make up more than 18 percent of our population, and 21 percent of our population speaks a language other than English at home. They create businesses and jobs. They create art and culture. They help teach our kids, serve in law enforcement and the military, and lead our places of faith.

Our immigrant and refugee neighbors have helped Seattle become the fastest-growing big city in the country and become home to some of the world’s most iconic companies. And we know that today’s immigrants are tomorrow’s U.S. citizens who should have the chance to contribute to the economic, cultural and civic life of Seattle — and our nation.

Contrary to what this president thinks, in Seattle, we have strong American values of inclusiveness and opportunity. Instead of threatening immigrant families and the cities that welcome them, this president should spend a little bit more time trying to learn from us.

In Seattle, we have started to provide tuition-free college for our public high school graduates, regardless of a young person’s immigration status. We’re expanding internship and apprenticeships opportunities to connect all our young people with the jobs and opportunities of the future. We’re working to help tens of thousands of legal permanent residents become U.S. citizens as part of the New Citizen Campaign and our other citizenship programs. Our Ready to Work program connects people with case managers and English language education to help our immigrant and refugee neighbors gain the skills necessary to enter our booming jobs market.

We will not allow a president who continues to threaten our shared values of inclusion, opportunity and diversity to jeopardize the health and safety of our communities. That’s why, shortly after taking office, I issued a mayoral directive strengthening Seattle’s “Welcoming City” laws that make clear that our city will not ask about — or improperly divulge information about — a resident’s immigration status. And our police officers will continue to focus on local law enforcement — not serve as federal immigration enforcement officials. This is what the president means when he uses the term “sanctuary city.”

Our city has already taken on this president and won. When Trump and the Justice Department threatened to withhold federal funding over our policies, we beat him in court. When he announced his cruel plan to separate children and families, Democratic mayors stood up to say we are better than this as a country.

So if this president wants to send immigrants and refugees to Seattle and other welcoming cities, let me be clear: We will do what we have always done, and we will be stronger for it. And it will only strengthen our commitment to fighting for the dignity of every person. We will not allow any administration to use the power of America to destroy the promise of America.

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Well said, Mayor Durkin!
Many, probably the majority, of these families legally seeking asylum are forced migrants. Out of detention, with access to counsel, community support, time to prepare, and without being regulated to “detention center judges,” many of whom are notoriously biased against asylum seekers, the asylum grant rates should go up substantially.
In fact, it’s quite possible that a majority will succeed, because we know that representation generally increases success rates by 4X with a much greater differential for women and children. Those who are unfairly denied will also have a chance to pursue appeals up to the “real” Article III Courts.
It’s a great opportunity for Democrats to put an end to the Trump Administration’s lies about forced migrants “gaming” the system and to strengthen local communities and economies by bringing into the legal immigration system many courageous, talented, determined individuals who seek only survival and a better life and will be grateful for the opportunities given them.
Here’s another article from Philip Bump in the Washington Post about how the Democrats can “call Trump’s bluff,” save lives, and really make America great just by doing the right thing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/12/white-house-wanted-send-migrants-cities-with-lot-immigrants/
PWS
04-12-19

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