"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
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Thanks, Paula, to you and everyone at AYUDA for your unwavering support and efforts in behalf of the “Good Hombres.”
PWS
09-05-17
I am a member of AYUDA’s Advisory Council.
Mark Joseph Stern writes:
“Many Republicans have made clear in recent weeks that they favor the basic policy DACA enshrined, and merely oppose its executive implementation. Sessions, who helped persuade Trump to kill the program, is not one of those Republicans. In his remarks, he directly denounced the very idea of granting any kind of amnesty to undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children through no fault of their own. At the heart of his speech were two lies, straight from Breitbart, explaining why DACA must end:
The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.
Let’s examine these falsehoods in turn.
First: Sessions claimed that DACA “contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border.” This allegation, often touted by far-right xenophobes, is false. A study published in International Migration, a peer-reviewed academic journal, found that the surge in unaccompanied minors actually began in 2008. (DACA was announced in 2012.) The authors pointed to a host of factors contributing to this phenomenon, including escalating gang violence in Central America, as well as drug cartels’ willingness to target and recruit children in Mexico. But the study found that DACA was not one of these factors. Its authors concluded that “the claim that DACA is responsible for the increase in the flow of unaccompanied alien children is not supported by the data.”
Even without the study, it should be obvious that DACA played no role in this surge of unaccompanied minors because the theory itself makes no sense. Undocumented children who arrived in the United States following DACA’s implementation would not qualify for the program. Only those individuals who “have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007” and “were physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012” could receive DACA status. Why would parents send their children to the U.S. to participate in a program in which they are not legally permitted to participate?
Second: Sessions alleged that DACA has “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.” This line is obviously drawn from the false narrative that immigrants steal jobs from American citizens. There is no actual evidence that DACA recipients have taken jobs from any Americans, let alone “hundreds of thousands.” There is, however, strong evidence that killing DACA will significantly damage the economy—a fact that Sessions conveniently omitted from his speech.
Once DACA is fully rescinded, its former recipients will lose their work permits (and thus their jobs) and face possible deportation. According to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, about 30,000 people will lose their jobs each month as their DACA status expires. The loss of these workers could reduce the national GDP by $280 billion to $433 billion over the next decade. According to estimates by the libertarian Cato Institute, DACA’s demise will cost employers $2 billion and the federal government $60 billion. Trump’s decision to end DACA isn’t a job-saver; it’s a job-killer.
Toward the end of his speech, Sessions praised the RAISE Act, a Republican-backed bill that would tightly curtail immigration into the U.S. Sessions claimed the act would “produce enormous benefits for our country.” In reality, the measure marks an effort to return America to an older immigration regime that locked out racial and ethnic minorities. Sessions has praised the 1924 law that created this regime—a law whose chief author declared that his act was meant to end “indiscriminate acceptance of all races.” On Tuesday, Sessions revived this principle in slightly more polite language.
The attorney general’s utterly gratuitous defamation of young Latino immigrants tells you everything you need to know about the decision to kill DACA. Before Tuesday, the Trump administration seemed eager to frame its DACA decision as respect for constitutional separation of powers: Congress, it insisted, not the president, must set immigration policy. But after Sessions’ speech, it is difficult to view this move as anything other than an attempt to implement the white nationalism that Trump and Sessions campaigned on.”
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Read the full report at the link.
It shouldn’t be news by now that “Gonzo Apocalypto” is a lifelong racist and White Nationalist totally unfit to serve as Attorney General. That’s what Liz Warren and others said during the confirmation process when Sessions’s GOP “fellow travelers” were so eager to brush over his un-American record and his anti-American views.
Latinos, Asians, Blacks, Jews and other American minorities need to unite with those of us who don’t want a return to the “Jim Crow” American South of the earlier 20th Century (which spawned the likes of Sessions and where the white GOP population is still racially and culturally tone deaf) behind some good candidates, get out the vote, and throw the White Nationalists and their GOP enablers and apologists (guys like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and most of the rest of the today’s GOP legislators who take responsibility for nothing while encouraging the Trump Administration’s outrageous conduct by refusing to join with Congressional Democrats to “just say no'”) out of office at the ballot box. Otherwise, there won’t be an America in the future. We’ve got to stop letting “the “30%” who either never knew or have forgotten what it means to be a real American run roughshod over our country and particularly our kids. It’s going to be a long four years. Feels like it already.
PWS
09-05-17
Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:
“SAN SALVADOR — Lizandro Claros Saravia was supposed to be at college in North Carolina by now. At soccer practice. At the library.
Instead, the 19-year-old soccer star from Germantown, Md., is hundreds of miles away, in a sweltering Central American nation he barely recognizes and sometimes fears.
U.S. immigration officials swiftly deported him and his older brother, Diego, on Aug. 2, days after Lizandro told them during a routine check-in that he had a scholarship to attend Louisburg College.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Lizandro, his gaze flat, said in an interview here last week as he and his brother waited to pick up their 83-year-old grandfather — who had been visiting the United States on a visa when his grandsons were deported — from the airport. “I feel like in this country, I don’t have a future.”
The expulsion of the brothers, both of whom graduated from Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg and neither of whom had been accused of any wrongdoing once in the United States, outraged Democratic lawmakers and advocates for immigrants, as well as their teachers, friends and teammates.
Lizandro and Diego, now 22, used fraudulent visas and passports to come to the United States in 2009 and reunite with their family; some of whom were also here illegally. Lizandro was 10, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement; his brother was 14.
They were ordered deported in 2012 and granted a stay in 2013. Two subsequent requests for stays were denied. But with their clean records and high school diplomas, the brothers were not a priority for deportation under the Obama administration.
Under President Trump, however, the “handcuffs” are off, in the words of ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan. Anyone in violation of immigration law can be targeted for deportation. Officials say that they want to reduce the United States’s population of undocumented immigrants, currently about 11 million, and dissuade would-be migrants from making the illegal, and sometimes deadly, journey north.
Critics say that the Trump administration’s approach is robbing the United States of talented and dedicated immigrants, and endangering Americanized young people by sending them to their now-unfamiliar homelands without their families.
Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) blasted ICE for deporting the brothers to El Salvador, which he called one of the “most violent countries in the world.” Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said “ICE should be ashamed of itself.”
Lizandro Claros Saravia played with Bethesda Soccer Club for four years, which helped him earn a scholarship to Louisburg College in North Carolina. (Bethesda Soccer Club)Lizandro’s teammates at the Bethesda Soccer Club — he calls them his “brothers” — have taken up a collection in hopes of helping him someday realize his dream to become the first in his family to earn a college degree.
The brothers say they miss everyone from their lives in Maryland, especially their parents and two siblings, friends and the staff at the Guapo’s — a restaurant where they had family dinners — just off I-270 in Gaithersburg. They don’t go out much now because they don’t think it is safe.
Instead, they stay in their new home, a pair of neighboring dwellings that Lizandro and Diego share with their aunts and uncle in a village of roughly 1,000 people outside of Jucuapa. Last year, Reuters cited that city as a place where the coffin-making business has taken off, partly fueled by the high homicide rates.
The rules are that Lizandro and his brother stay in constant touch with their aunts and uncle, unless they all travel somewhere together. At night, they sleep in one of their aunt’s houses, with bars on the windows and guard dogs at the door.
The brothers say they are trying to blend into their new country, but they clearly stand out. At the airport this week, they towered over the crowd, dressed as if they’d been plucked from an American shopping mall.
Diego wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the initials “USA.” Lizandro wore Top-Siders, shorts and a shirt decorated with tiny sunglasses. He speaks English better than Spanish. He wouldn’t recognize the president of El Salvador if he saw him on the street.
“To be honest, I don’t feel good being here,” he said. “People are looking at me different. . . . All my friends from when I was young, they barely know me now.”
Asked about the possibility of going to college in El Salvador, Lizandro said, “I don’t know if I can do that here. It’s hard to go from the bottom all the way to the top again.”
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If there is any good news here, it’s that “ordinary folks” in American communities are being exposed to and personally affected by the wastefulness and mindless cruelty of the current U.S. immigration laws. Hopefully, at some point in the future, this will result in the individuals who advocate, perpetuate, and maintain this system (in some cases actually trying to make it even worse) being tossed from office and replaced with more rational legislators and executives who have both human decency and America’s long term best interests in mind. Perhaps not likely in my lifetime. But, eventually, if the U.S. is to survive, it must happen.
PWS
08-22-17
Alan Gomez writes in USA Today:
“MIAMI — In the seven months since Thomas Homan was appointed to carry out President Trump’s promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., he has been accused of abusing that power by targeting undocumented immigrants without criminal records.
So far, the data seems to back up those accusations, with the percentage of undocumented immigrants without a criminal record arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents increasing each month, from 18% in January to 30% in June.
But Homan, a 33-year law enforcement veteran who has worked along the southern border and is now the acting director of ICE, doesn’t shy away from those numbers. In fact, he said they’re only the start.
“You’re going to continue to see an increase in that,” Homan told USA TODAY during a visit to Miami on Wednesday.
Homan has become the public face of Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, a central theme of his presidential campaign and one of the few areas where he’s been able to make wholesale changes without any help from Congress.
Under President Obama, ICE agents were directed to focus their arrests on undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of serious crimes, were members of gangs or posed a national security threat.
Trump and his Department of Homeland Security have vastly expanded that pool, ordering agents to focus on undocumented immigrants who have only been charged with crimes and allowing them to arrest any undocumented immigrant they happen to encounter.
ICE agents are also targeting undocumented immigrants who have been ordered removed from the country by a federal judge — a group that the Obama administration largely left alone. And they’re targeting people who have illegally entered the country more than once, which raises their actions to a felony.”
Using that new metric, Homan said 95% of the 80,000 undocumented immigrants they’ve arrested so far fall under their newly-defined “priority” categories.
“That’s pretty close to perfect execution of the policies,” Homan said. “The numbers speak for themselves.”
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Homan glories In his “near perfect execution” of gonzo policies that actually harm America while wasting taxpayer money. To go behind the Homan smokescreen, take a look at Maria Sacchetti’s previously posted article on what the numbers really mean:
As noted in both the USA Today article and Sacchetti’s article, criminal deportations are actually down under the Trump/Homan regime. Overall removals are also down, The difference has been made up by deporting non-criminals. Most of these are good folks, contributing to America, many with jobs providing services we need, and with U.S. families who depend on them. They are being sent to some of the most dangerous countries in the world.
Picking up many of them up took no particular skill or effort; they voluntarily showed up for periodic check-ins with DHS, were taken into custody, and removed with no rationale, other than “because we can.” For others, “due process” consisted of “final orders” issued “in absentia,” perhaps with no notice or other legal defects.
And, the only reason Homan and his minions have been able to achieve 95% of the goals, was by a mindless redefining of the “priorities” to include virtually anyone. That’s a rather lame definition of “success,” even by DHS terms.
Sure, the real problem here is Congress and the failure to enact reasonable immigration reform combined with the voters who put Trump’s xenophobic regime in power. But, that doesn’t necessarily give a “free pass” to guys like Homan who have the knowledge and experience, but fail to use it to stand up for human decency and the best interests of our country.
PWS
08–22-17
“Yet even if all 1,500 Confederate symbols across the country were removed overnight by some sudden supernatural force, the pernicious crusade to roll back voting rights would continue apace, with voters of color suffering its effects disproportionately. Pushing back hard against those who would purge voter rolls, demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess, and limit times and venues for voting — this should be a paramount cause for the Trump era.
In statehouse after statehouse where Republicans hold majorities, the playbook is well established, and the tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Mr. Trump’s voter fraud commission is at the vanguard of this crusade, and the fix is in. Its vice chairman, Kris Kobach, is the nation’s most determined, litigious and resourceful champion of voter suppression. Under his tutelage, the commission is likely to recommend measures whose effect will be that new obstacles to voting would be taken up in state legislatures. Millions of voters are at risk of disenfranchisement from this effort, and the knock-on effects of such a mass act of disempowerment are dizzying.
The events in Charlottesville and the president’s apologia for the right-wing extremists there should mobilize anyone passionate about civil rights. There would be no better target for their energies than the clear and present danger to the most fundamental right in any democracy: the vote.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
Sessions and his Civil Rights Division are supposed to be out there defending the right of citizens, particularly minorities, to vote. Instead, he has thrown the weight of the Justice Department to those GOP hacks seeking to suppress the vote. Meanwhile the Civil Rights Division is thinking of perverse ways to abuse Civil Rights laws by using them to promote white privilege and white supremacy.
Sen. Liz Warren was silenced by McConnell when she told the truth about Sessions’s continuing racism. She was right.
PWS
08-20-17
Dan Zak writes in the Washington Post:
“What about antifa? What about free speech? What about the guy who shot Steve Scalise? What about the mosque in Minnesota that got bombed? What about North Korea? What about murders in Chicago? What about Ivanka at the G-20? What about Vince Foster? If white pride is bad, then what about gay pride? What about the stock market? What about those 33,000 deleted emails? What about Hitler? What about the Crusades? What about the asteroid that may one day kill us all? What about Benghazi?
What about what about what about.
We’ve gotten very good at what-abouting.
The president has led the way.
His campaign may or may not have conspired with Moscow, but President Trump has routinely employed a durable old Soviet propaganda tactic. Tuesday’s bonkers news conference in New York was Trump’s latest act of “whataboutism,” the practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting moral equivalency between two things that aren’t necessarily comparable. In this case, the president wondered whether the removal of a statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville — where white supremacists clashed this weekend with counterprotesters — would lead to the teardown of others.
Donald Trump’s news conference on Tuesday offered a crash course in whataboutism. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)Robert E. Lee? What about George Washington?
“George Washington was a slave owner,” Trump said to journalists in the lobby of his corporate headquarters. “Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?”
Using the literal “what about” construction, Trump then went on to blame “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville.
“What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at the, as you say, the ‘alt-right’?” the president said. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”
For a nanosecond, especially to an uncritical listener, this stab at logic might seem interesting, even thought-provoking, and that’s why it’s a useful political tool. Whataboutism appears to broaden context, to offer a counterpoint, when really it’s diverting blame, muddying the waters and confusing the hell out of rational listeners.
“Not only does it help to deflect your original argument but it also throws you off balance,” says Alexey Kovalev, an independent Russian journalist, on the phone from Moscow. “You’re expecting to be in a civilized argument that doesn’t use cheap tricks like that. You are playing chess and your opponent — while making a lousy move — he just punches you on the nose.”
[‘There are no fine people marching with Nazis’: Seth Meyers on Trump’s Charlottesville response]
Vladimir Putin has made a national sport of what-abouting. In 2014, when a journalist challenged him on his annexation of Crimea, Putin brought up the U.S. annexation of Texas. The American invasion of Iraq is constantly what-abouted on state television, to excuse all kinds of Russian behavior.
In Edward Snowden, “Russia has found the ultimate whataboutism mascot,” the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan wrote in 2013. “By granting him asylum, Russia casts itself, even if momentarily, as a defender of human rights, and the U.S. as the oppressor.”
The term was first coined as “whataboutery” and “the whatabouts,” in stories about the Irish Republican Army in the 1970s, according to linguist Ben Zimmer. But the practice goes back to the chilly depths of the Cold War.
“An old joke 50 years ago was that if you went to a Stalinist and criticized the Soviet slave-labor camps, the Stalinist would say, ‘Well what about the lynchings in the American South?’” philosopher Noam Chomsky once said.”
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Read the entire article at the link.
Trump is an expert on this; most of us “bite” at least some of the time. He’s also a master practitioner of the “big lie” — a technique used by Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, among others.
PWS
08-19-17
Feingold writes:
“It takes approximately 30 seconds to send a tweet. A half hour to draft and release a statement. And the shelf life of both is only marginally longer. We should not commend Republican party elected officials who claim outrage on social media at Trump’s remarks, often without daring to mention his name. The phony claimed outrage becomes dangerous if it convinces anyone that there is a distinction between Trump’s abhorrent comments and the Republican Party agenda.
The lesson from Charlottesville is not how dangerous the neo-Nazis are. It is the unmasking of the Republican party leadership. In the wake of last weekend’s horror and tragedy, let us finally, finally rip off the veneer that Trump’s affinity for white supremacy is distinct from the Republican agenda of voter suppression, renewed mass incarceration and the expulsion of immigrants.
There is a direct link between Trump’s comments this week and those policies, so where is the outrage about the latter? Where are the Republican leaders denouncing voter suppression as racist, un-American and dangerous? Where are the Republican leaders who are willing to call out the wink (and the direct endorsement) from President Trump to the white supremacists and acknowledge their own party’s record and stance on issues important to people of color as the real problem for our country?
Republicans on the voter suppression commission are enabling Trump’s agenda and that of the white Nazi militia
Words mean nothing if the Republican agenda doesn’t change. Governors and state legislatures were so quick to embrace people of color in order to avoid the impression, they too share Trump’s supreme affinity for the white race. But if they don’t stand up for them they are not indirectly, but directly enabling the agenda of those same racists that Republican members were so quick to condemn via Twitter.
Gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement are all aimed at one outcome: a voting class that is predominantly white, and in turn majority Republican.
The white supremacist chant of, “you will not replace us,” could easily and accurately be the slogan for these Republican politicians. Their policies will achieve the same racial outcome as Jim Crow – the disenfranchisement and marginalization of people of color.
It is a sad day when more CEOs take action by leaving and shutting down Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum, and Manufacturing Council, than elected officials take action leaving Trump’s “election integrity” commission.
Businessman are acting more responsive to their customers than politicians are to their voters. At the end of the day, which presidential council is more dangerous? Which most embodies the exact ideology that Trump spewed on Monday? A group of businessmen coming together to talk jobs or a group of elected officials coming together to disenfranchise voters of color?
Anyone still sitting on the voter suppression commission is enabling Trump’s agenda and that of the white Nazi militia that stormed Charlottesville to celebrate a time when the law enforced white supremacy.
If Republican lawmakers want to distinguish themselves from Trump’s comments, they need to do more than type out 144 characters on their phone. They need to take a hard look at their party’s agenda.”
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Read the full article at the link.
I’ve noticed the clear pattern going back to the beginning of the campaign: Trump says or does something totally outrageous; GOP leaders disassociate themselves and claim it doesn’t represent the “real” GOP (whatever that might be); shortly thereafter the same folks go back to supporting Trump and the GOP agenda directed at insuring White control. Nobody switches party, resigns in protest, or tells voters how incompetent and dangerous Trump is. Indeed, these guys are scared silly that they will actually turn off Trump’s White Nationalist base that insures them power even though it’s been many years since they racked up a majority of the popular vote in a national election. Trump then goes on to the next outrage, and the process repeats itself.
Someday, the majority of American voters might actually get a Government that represents their interests rather than those of a White Nationalist minority. But, not any time soon if the GOP can prevent it. So far, they are doing a bang up job of it.
PWS
08-19-17
Sloan, a business columnist, writes:
“But Trump’s behavior shows, unfortunately, how right I was two weeks ago when I wrote that he’s making a classic business mistake — by surrounding himself with flunkies who kiss up to him and by not listening to the handful of strong subordinates whom he’s appointed.
If you’re a competent chief executive, you try to surround yourself with competent subordinates who don’t shrink from telling you when they think you’re wrong. You put them in a room and let them duke it out. And if you’re smart, you pay attention to what they say, because you’re secure enough to realize that they may know more about certain things than you do.
As we’ve seen from Charlottesville, Trump isn’t remotely like that.
As a business columnist, I know that I’m expected to write how some CEOs bailed on two presidential advisory committees that Trump created. And how Trump, true to form, disbanded the committees and embarrassed the CEOs who had stood by him, just so he could claim to get the last word.
But when it comes to analyzing the big picture, which is what I’m trying to do here, the advisory committees debacle isn’t even a rounding error. What really matters is that Trump is exhibiting the same behavior that led businesses he controlled into six Chapter 11 bankruptcies (which is why I call him Donald 66 Trump) as his casino-real estate empire collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s.
But that’s just business. What makes me truly angry about Donald 66 — who, like me, has Jewish children and grandchildren — is that he can’t be bothered to defend his own family. Unbelievable, isn’t it? But true.
It’s inconceivable to me that Trump, whose daughter Ivanka joined the Jewish people, married a Jew and has produced three Jewish grandchildren, can’t bring himself to tweet (let alone say) that he has a problem with a crowd chanting “Jew will not replace us.” Or with them chanting “Heil, Trump”— the Nazi salute — while wearing Trump gear.
What is wrong with this man? You can argue politics and taxes and health care and other bones of contention 100 different ways. But for God’s sake — pun intended — Trump isn’t even defending members of his own family, two of whom are among his closest advisers, against religious bigotry.
I’m especially sensitive to this because I’m an American who’s Jewish. Please note that “American” comes first; I loathe identity politics. Trump and I are from the same generation. I know, as Trump must know, what the Nazis were about. One of the many reasons that I love this country is that without America, I think the Nazis would have won World War II and murdered every Jew on Earth.
It’s one thing for Trump to use “America First” — a phrase that evokes 1930s Nazi sympathizers like Charles Lindbergh (a onetime aviation hero) and Father Charles Coughlin (the “radio priest” from Royal Oak, Mich., who spewed hate, was finally silenced by the pope, and whose Shrine of the Little Flower I passed twice daily during my first year at the Detroit Free Press). I’ll give Trump the benefit of the doubt on that one, and say he didn’t know what “America First” evoked before he started using it.
But for Trump to not tweet that he doesn’t want to see “heil” and “Trump” in the same sentence? To not come to the defense of the Jewish members of his family? Or the Jews among his presidential appointees? What the hell is wrong with this man?
The best thing I’ve read since Charlottesville erupted was what Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said. To wit, “My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged.” That’s exactly right. And my late father-in-law, who was a total mensch, didn’t spend five of the prime years of his life in the Seabees for Nazi ideals to go unchallenged. Nor did the millions of other Americans who took up arms to defend our country against overwhelming evil.
The Charlottesville counter-demonstrators were fools who fell into the demonstrators’ trap. (That’s one thing that Trump has gotten right. As the saying goes, “Even a blind pig can find an acorn.”)
But the counter-demonstrators, however foolish and out of control, aren’t remotely equivalent to swastika-toting provocateurs and Ku Klux Klan Kreeps demonizing blacks and Jews and immigrants, praising Hitler’s evil crew and by implication demeaning the Americans who fought to subdue the Nazi menace.
To return to sports analogies, you deal with these trolls by using what the late Muhammad Ali called “rope a dope” strategy. You let them march, you don’t physically confront them, you don’t help them get the attention they crave, you let them punch themselves into exhaustion. No harm, no foul, no mainstream publicity. They’re publicized by the Daily Stormer, today’s iteration of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic Der Sturmer newspaper? Who cares? Let it go.
At this point, unfortunately, I don’t think Donald 66 can change enough to become a competent chief executive instead of a faux CEO, even if he wants to. But maybe he can learn to be a decent father and grandfather, and stand up for his kids and grandkids. We need a lot more from him than that, but I’ll take what little I can get.”
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PWS
08-19-17
http://time.com/4902820/immigration-lawyers-judges-courts-continuance/
Tessa Berenson writes in Time:
“The president and attorney general have vowed to crack down on illegal immigration, and the new directive could help move cases through the system at a faster clip. Most immigration lawyers agree that the overloaded courts are a major issue. But they fear the end result will be more deportations as judges use the wide discretion afforded to them to curtail continuances. The Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t establish a right to a continuance in immigration proceedings, Keller’s letter notes. They’re largely governed by a federal regulation which says that an “immigration judge may grant a motion for continuance for good cause shown.”
Immigration lawyers often rely heavily on continuances for their prep work because immigration law grants limited formal discovery rights. Unlike in criminal cases, in which the prosecution is generally required to turn over evidence to the defense, immigration lawyers often have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what the government has on their client. These can take months to process.
“If their priority is speed, we all know that sounds really good, to be more efficient, but usually due process takes a hit when your focus is efficiency,” says Andrew Nietor, an immigration attorney based in San Diego. “By the time we are able to connect with our clients, that first court appearance might be the day after we meet somebody, so we haven’t had the opportunity to do the investigation and do the research. And up until several months ago, it was standard to give immigration attorneys at least one continuance for what they call attorney preparation. Now it’s not standard anymore.”
The Justice Department’s guidance says that “the appropriate use of continuances serves to protect due process, which Immigration Judges must safeguard above all,” and notes that “it remains general policy that at least one continuance should be granted” for immigrants to obtain legal counsel.
But the memo is more skeptical about continuances for attorney preparation. “Although continuances to allow recently retained counsel to become familiar with a case prior to the scheduling of an individual merits hearing are common,” it says, “subsequent requests for preparation time should be reviewed carefully.”
It remains to be seen if this careful review will streamline the ponderous system or add another difficulty for the harried lawyers and hundreds of thousands of immigrants trying to work their way through it. For Jeronimo, it may have been decisive. In mid-August, the judge found that the defense didn’t adequately prove Jeronimo’s deportation would harm his young daughter and gave him 45 days to voluntarily leave the United States. Now Jeronimo must decide whether to appeal his case. But he’s been held in a detention center in Georgia since March, and his lawyers worry that he has lost hope. He may soon be headed back to Mexico, five months after he was picked up at a traffic stop in North Carolina.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
OK, let’s have a reality check here. The tremendous backlog is NOT caused by giving respondents time to find an attorney in an already overwhelmed system or by giving those overworked and under-compensated private attorneys time to adequately prepare their clients’ cases.
No, it’s caused by two things both within the control of the Government. The first is the abuse of the system, actively encouraged by this Administration, for cases of individuals who are law abiding members of the U.S. community, helping our nation prosper, who either should be granted relief outside the Immigrant Court process, or whose cases should be taken off the docket by the reasonable use of prosecutorial discretion (something that the Trump Administration eliminated while outrageously calling it a “return to the rule of law” — nothing of the sort — it’s a return to docket insanity enhanced by intentional cruelty).
Your tax dollars actually pay for the wasteful and counterproductive abuses being encouraged by the Trump Administration! Eventually, Congress will have to find a solution that allows all or most of these folks to stay. But, mindlessly shoving them onto already overwhelmed Immigration Court dockets is not that solution.
The second major cause is even more invidious: Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) by the Government! The problematic continuances being given in this system — those of many months, or even many years — are forced upon Immigration Judges by EOIR and the DOJ, usually without any meaningful input from either the sitting Immigration Judges or the affected public. Immigration Judges are required to accommodate politically-motivated “changes in priorities” and wasteful transfer of Immigration Judges wth full dockets (which then must be reset, usually to the end of the docket, sometimes to another Immigration Judge) to other locations, often in detention centers, to support enforcement goals without any concern whatsoever for due process for the individuals before the court or the proper administration of justice within the U.S. Immigration Court system.
There is only one real cure for this problem: removal of the U.S. Immigration Courts from the highly politicized U.S. Department of Justice to an independent Article I Court structure that will focus on due process foremost, and efficient, but fair, court administration. But, until then, it’s up to the press to expose what’s really happening here and to the Article III Courts to call a halt to this travesty.
The “heroes” of the U.S. Immigration Court system, dedicated NGOs and attorneys, many of them acting without compensation or with minimal compensation, are under attack by this Administration and the DOJ. Their imaginary transgression is to insist on a fair day in court for individuals trying to assert their constitutional right to a fair hearing. They are being scapegoated for problems that the U.S. Government has caused, aggravated, and failed to fix, over several Administrations.
The DOJ is creating a knowingly false narrative to cover up their failure to deliver due process in the U.S. Immigration Courts and to shift the blame to the victims and their representatives. A simple term for that is “fraud.”
If we allow this to happen, everyone will be complicit in an assault not only on American values but also on the U.S. Constitution itself, and the due process it is supposed to guarantee for all. If it disappears for the most vulnerable in our society, don’t expect it to be there in the future when you or those around you might need due process of law. And, when you don’t get due process, you should also expect the Government to blame you for their failure.
PWS
08-19-17
Professor Ong Hing writes:
“From the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal:
President Trump’s recent call for overhauling the legal immigration system suffers from serious racial implications and violations of basic family values. Earlier this month he endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act, which would eliminate all family reunification categories beyond spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (reducing the age limit for minor children from 21 to 18), and would lower capped family categories from 226,000 green cards presently to 88,000. The prime relatives targeted for elimination are siblings of U.S. citizens and adult children of citizens and lawful residents. The diversity immigration lottery program, which grants 50,000 green cards to immigrants from low-admission countries, also would be terminated. The RAISE Act is essentially the Asian, Latino, and African Exclusion Act of 2017. Why? Because the biggest users of family immigration categories are Asians and Latinos, and the biggest beneficiaries of the diversity lottery are Africans.
The RAISE Act is an elitist point system that favors those with post-secondary STEM degrees (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics), extraordinary achievement (Nobel laureates and Olympic medalists), $1.35 to $1.8 million to invest, and high English proficiency. However, it fails to connect prospective immigrants with job openings and makes incorrect assumptions about family immigrants.
Promoting family reunification has been a major feature of immigration policy for decades. Prior to 1965, permitting spouses of U.S. citizens, relatives of lawful permanent residents, and even siblings of U.S. citizens to immigrate were important aspects of the immigration selection system. Since the 1965 reforms, family reunification has been the major cornerstone of the immigration admission system. Those reforms, extended in 1976, allowed twenty thousand immigrant visas for every country. Of the worldwide numerical limits, about 80 percent were specified for “preference” relatives of citizens and lawful permanent residents, and an unlimited number was available to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens. The unlimited immediate relative category included spouses, parents of adult citizens, and minor, unmarried children of citizens. The family preference categories were established for adult, unmarried sons and daughters of citizens, spouses and unmarried children of lawful permanent resident aliens, married children of citizens, and siblings of citizens. Two other preferences (expanded in 1990) were established for employment-based immigration.
Asian and Latino immigration came to dominate these immigration categories. The nations with large numbers of descendants in the United States in 1965, i.e., western Europe, were expected to benefit the most from a kinship-based system. But gradually, by using the family categories and the labor employment route, Asians built a family base from which to use the kinship categories more and more. By the late 1980s, virtually 90 percent of all immigration to the United States – including Asian immigration – was through the kinship categories. And by the 1990s, the vast majority of these immigrants were from Asia and Latin America. The top countries of origin of authorized immigrants to the United States today include Mexico, China, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador.
As Asian and Latin immigrants began to dominate the family-based immigration system in the 1970s and 1980s, somehow the preference for family reunification made less sense to some policymakers. Since the early 1980s, attacking kinship categories – especially the sibling category – has become a political sport played every few years. Often the complaint is based on arguments such as we should be bringing in skilled immigrants, a point system would be better, and in the case of the sibling category, brothers and sisters are not part of the “nuclear” family. Proposals to eliminate or reduce family immigration were led by Senator Alan Simpson throughout the 1980s, Congressman Bruce Morrison in 1990, and Senator Simpson and Congressman Lamar Smith in 1996. As prelude to the RAISE Act, the Senate actually passed S.744 in 2013 that would have eliminated family categories and installed a point system in exchange for a legalization program for undocumented immigrants.
Pitting so-called “merit-based” visas in opposition to family visas implies that family immigration represents the soft side of immigration while point-based immigration is more about being tough and strategic. The wrongheadedness of that suggestion is that family immigration has served our country well even from a purely economic perspective. The country needs workers with all levels of skill, and family immigration provides many of the needed workers.
A concern that the current system raises for some policymakers is based on their belief that the vast majority of immigrants who enter in kinship categories are working class or low-skilled. They wonder whether this is good for the country. Interestingly enough, many immigrants who enter in the sibling category actually are highly skilled. The vast majority of family immigrants are working age, who arrive anxious to work and ready to put their time and sweat into the job. But beyond that oversight by the complainants, what we know about the country and its general need for workers in the short and long terms is instructive.
The Wharton School of Business projects that the RAISE Act would actually lead to less economic growth and fewer jobs. Job losses would emerge because domestic workers will not fill all the jobs that current types of immigrant workers would have filled. In the long run, per capita GDP would dip. Furthermore, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s forecast of large-growth occupations, most jobs require only short- or moderate-term on-the-job training, suggesting lower skilled immigrants could contribute to meeting the demand for these types of jobs.
The economic data on today’s kinship immigrants are favorable for the country. The entry of low-skilled as well as high-skilled immigrants leads to faster economic growth by increasing the size of the market, thereby boosting productivity, investment, and technological practice. Technological advances are made by many immigrants who are neither well-educated nor well-paid. Moreover, many kinship-based immigrants open new businesses that employ natives as well as other immigrants; this is important because small businesses are now the most important source of new jobs in the United States. The current family-centered system results in designers, business leaders, investors, and Silicon Valley–type engineers. And much of the flexibility available to American entrepreneurs in experimenting with risky labor-intensive business ventures is afforded by the presence of low-wage immigrant workers. In short, kinship immigrants contribute greatly to this country’s vitality and growth, beyond the psychological benefits to family members who are able to reunite.
The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights highlights the unity of the family as the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” for good reason. Our families make us whole. Our families define us as human beings. Our families are at the center of our most treasured values. Our families make the nation strong.
Bill Ong Hing is the Founder and General Counsel of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Professor of Law and Migration Studies, University of San Francisco”
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Unhappily, America has a sad history of using bogus arguments about the economy and protecting American labor to justify racist immigration acts. Among other things, the Chinese Exclusion Act was supposed to protect the U.S. against the adverse effects of “coolie labor.”
I find it remarkable that those pushing the RASE Act are so ready to damage American families, the fabric of our society, and our economy in a futile attempt to achieve their White Nationalist vision.
PWS
08-18-17
http://www.asylumist.com/2017/08/17/in-a-time-of-hate-my-refugee-clients-give-me-hope/
Jason’s complete blog is reprinted below:
As an ordinary citizen, it is not easy to decide the best way to confront a Nazi march. Show up to peacefully protest? That might give additional attention to the other side. Protest violently? Not only could that elevate the Nazis, it might also de-legitimize the resistance to the Nazis (even those who peacefully resist). Ignore them? That might be viewed as condoning their views. Reasonable people can differ about what to do, at least as far as the peaceful responses are concerned.
As a great American philosopher once said, “I hate Nazis.”
But when you are a public figure, especially an elected official, the decision about how to respond is clear: First, ensure safety and free speech. Second, denounce the evils of Nazism and make it plain that Nazis, Klan members, and anyone who might march side-by-side with such people are un-American, illegitimate, and unworthy of a seat at the table of public discourse.
Fortunately, the vast majority of our country’s elected leaders knew what to say in response to the Nazi march last weekend. But unfortunately, there was one important exception–our President, Donald J. Trump. To me, Mr. Trump’s contemptible silence, followed by a reluctant “denunciation” of the Nazis, followed by a denunciation of the “denunciation” is an utter disgrace. It is a green light to Nazis. It is yet another attack on common decency and on our shared national values. It is complicity with Nazism. By the President of the United States. (As an aside, one of my lawyer-friends at the Justice Department told me–perhaps half jokingly–that she wanted to post a sign in her office that reads, “Nazis are bad,” but she feared it might get her into trouble–that is where we are under Mr. Trump.)
Frankly, I am not particularly worried about the Nazis themselves. They certainly can do damage–they murdered a young woman and injured many others. But they do not have the power or support to threaten our democracy. This does not mean we should take them for granted (few would have predicted Hitler’s rise when he was sitting in prison after the Beerhall Putsch), but we should not be unduly fearful either.
On the other hand, I am very worried about our President’s behavior. His governing philosophy (perhaps we can call it, “trickle down histrionics”) is poisoning our public debate, and it weakens us domestically and internationally. Thus far, his incompetence has served as a bulwark against his malevolence, but that can only go on for so long (see, e.g., North Korea). So there is much to be concerned about.
Here, though, I want to talk about hope. Specifically, the hope that I feel from my clients: Asylum seekers, “illegals,” and other immigrants. There are several reasons my clients give me hope.
One reason is that they still believe in the American Dream. Despite all of the nastiness, mendacity, and bigotry coming from the White House, people still want to come to America. They are voting with their feet. Some endure seemingly endless waits, often times separated from their loved ones, in order to obtain legal status here. Others risk their lives to get here. They don’t do this because (as Mr. Trump suggests) they want to harm us. They do it because they want to join us. They want to be part of America. My clients and others like them represent the American ideal far better than those, like our embattled President and his racist friends, who disparage them. When I see my country through my clients’ eyes, it gives me hope.
My clients’ stories also give me hope. Most of my clients are asylum seekers. They have escaped repressive regimes or failing states. Where they come from, the government doesn’t just tweet nasty comments about its opponents, it tortures and murders them. The terrorist groups operating in my clients’ countries regularly harm and kill noncombatants, women, children, and even babies. My clients have stood against this depravity, and many of them continue to fight for democracy, justice, and human rights from our shores. My clients’ perseverance in the face of evil gives me hope.
Finally, I have hope because I see the courage of my clients, who refuse to be cowed by the hateful rhetoric of our Commander-in-Chief. Since the early days of his campaign, Mr. Trump has demonized foreigners and refugees, and after he was sworn in as President, these individuals were the first to come into his cross hairs. If he can defeat people like my clients, he can move on to new targets. But many refugees and asylum seekers have been subject to far worse treatment than Mr. Trump’s bluster, and they are ready to stand firm against his bullying. Their fortitude encourages others to stand with them. And stand with them we will. The fact that vulnerable, traumatized people are on the front lines of this fight, and that they will not surrender, gives me hope.
I have written before about the tangible benefits of our humanitarian immigration system. It demonstrates to the world that our principles–democracy, human rights, freedom, justice–are not empty platitudes. It shows that we support people who work with us and who advance the values we hold dear. When such people know that we have their backs, they will be more willing to work with us going forward. And of course, that system helps bring people to the United States whose talents and energy benefit our entire nation. Add to this list one more benefit that asylees and refugees bring to our nation in this dark time–hope.”
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Thanks, Jason!
The irony and extreme contrast between those hollowly claiming to “Make America Great” and those who are actually “making America great” is simply stunning.
PWS
08-18-17
https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2017/8/17/the-need-for-an-independent-immigration-court
Jeffrey writes:
“On August 8, the Department of Justice issued a highly unusual press release that inadvertently illustrated the need for an independent Article I immigration court. Titled “Return to Rule of Law Under Trump Administration Marked by Increase in Key Immigration Statistics,” the release proudly cited a 30 percent increase in the number of people ordered deported by immigration judges since the present administration took office (which of course corresponded with a marked decrease in the number of individuals granted relief and allowed to remain legally in the country). The press release was posted on the public website of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency which includes both the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals.
On his blog immigrationcourtside.com, former BIA chairman Paul Schmidt drew some apt analogies, imagining what the reaction would be if the Supreme Court were to proudly announce that in support of Donald Trump’s deregulaton initiative, it had struck down 30 percent more regulations since he took office? Or if a circuit court released a self-congratulatory statement that in support of the president’s war on drugs, it issued 30 percent more convictions and 40 percent longer sentences for drug crimes than under the previous administration? Such statements would be unthinkable, and would trigger a strong backlash. But not so for the August 8 announcement. Fortunately, EOIR itself did not sink to issuing such a statement. Unfortunately, EOIR felt the need to post the release in a prominent place on its website (either because it was instructed to do so, or was afraid not to).
The National Association of Immigration Judges (the immigration judges’ union) has for years made a strong argument for the creation of an independent Article I immigration court. The 334 immigration judges are the only judges among the Department of Justice’s 112,000 total employees. The concept of the judges’ independence and political neutrality never really took within DOJ. When both the former INS and EOIR were housed within Justice (prior to the former being moved to the Department of Homeland Security after the reorganization that followed the 9/11 tragedy), INS higher-ups would make complaints about immigration judges known to the Deputy Attorney General’s office, which oversaw EOIR’s director, a process that would be highly improper in other courts. When 1996 legislation provided immigration judges with contempt power over attorneys appearing in their courts, INS managed to indefinitely block implementing DOJ regulations because the agency did not wish to afford immigration judges such authority over their fellow DOJ attorneys within INS; as a result, the judges still lack such contempt power 21 years later.
. . . .
It is a cornerstone of our justice system that judges not only be impartial, but that they also avoid the appearance of impartiality. 28 U.S.C. § 455(a) requires federal judges to recuse themselves in any proceeding in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. How can the impartiality of an immigration judge not be questioned when the agency that employs him or her releases statements celebrating the increase in the percentage of cases in which deportations are ordered as a “return to the rule of law?”
The partisan pronouncement raises questions not only as to the independence of the judges in their decision making. It also casts a cloud over hiring and policy decisions by EOIR’s management. In hiring new judges and Board members, will EOIR’s higher-ups feel pressured to choose candidates likely to have higher deportation rates? Are they likely to implement policies aimed at increasing fairness or expediency? As an example, let’s use what Paul Schmidt aptly refers to as “aimless docket reshuffling,” in which immigration judges are detailed away from their home courts to hear cases elsewhere. Of course, this means that the individuals scheduled for hearing in the home court (who have likely been waiting two years for their hearing) need to have their cases adjourned due to the judge’s absence. I have no information as to what factors go into making these detailing decisions. But hypothetically, if EOIR’s managers feel pressure to produce more deportations, might they consider shifting judges in high-volume courts in large cities such as New York or Los Angeles, where the respondents are likely to be represented by counsel, have adequate time to prepare and gather evidence, and have access to call witnesses (including experts), to instead hear cases of detained, recently-arrived respondents in remote areas where they have less access to counsel, community support, evidence, or witnesses? In which of those two scenarios might the judge “accomplish” more deportations in the same amount of time?
There is some irony in the use of the term “rule of law” in the Aug. 8 press release, because rules of law take a great deal of time to develop properly. In a 2013 article titled “Let Judges Be Judges,” , Hon. Dana Leigh Marks, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, stated that allowing “immigration judges to consider the individual circumstances unique to each case” in an independent Article I court setting “would create a fine-tuned tool…instead of the blunt instrument that now exists.” A “fine-tuned tool” is needed, as many of the claims presently being heard involve very complex legal issues. Many cases involve those fleeing an epic humanitarian crisis in Central America. Case law continues to develop, as leading asylum attorneys and scholars have spent years crafting nuanced theories to clarify the nexus between the serious harm suffered or feared and one of the five protected grounds required for a grant of asylum. In other claims from countries such as Albania or the former Soviet republics, highly detailed testimony from country condition experts is required to educate judges as to specific dangers not mentioned in the generalized State Department country reports. This type of painstaking development of the record cannot be accomplished under conditions termed in a 2009 report of the Appleseed Foundation as “assembly line injustice.”
In summary, a Department of Justice which chooses to publicly celebrate accelerated hearings resulting in orders of deportation as a positive development cannot oversee an immigration court system which aspires to provide “due process and fair treatment for all parties involved.”
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Head over to Jeffrey’s great blog at the above link for the complete story.
Jeff Sessions seldom, if ever, has a kind word to say about migrants of any type. He has been the enthusiastic “point man” for the President’s xenophobic, White Nationalist immigration enforcement program. He has promoted and repeated false narratives about immigrants and crime. The idea of him running the U.S. Immigration Court system charged with proving fair hearings to migrants is preposterous on it’s face.
And, it’s not just Sessions. All Attorneys General have the actual or apparent conflict of interest described by Jeffrey Chase. Sessions is just one of the most outrageous examples to date. If an Immigration Judge made the type of statement set forth in the DOJ press release, he or she would undoubtedly be charged with ethical violations. And, let’s not forget that under the bizarre structure of the U.S. Immigration Courts, the Attorney General has authority to “certify” any individual case to him or her self and substitute his decision for that of the Immigration Judge and the BIA.
PWS
08-16-17
Sari Horwitz and Mark Berman report in the Washington Post:
“On Wednesday, in response to Sessions’s latest comments, Emanuel invoked the controversy that has enveloped the White House over President Trump’s responses to the violence that erupted in Charlottesville this past weekend.
“In a week in which the Trump administration is being forced to answer questions about neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the KKK, they could not have picked a worse time to resume their attack on the immigrants who see America as a beacon of hope,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Chicago will continue to stand up proudly as a welcoming city, and we will not cave to the Trump administration’s pressure because they are wrong morally, wrong factually and wrong legally.”
While Sessions attacked Chicago, he praised Miami-Dade County for “complying with federal immigration law.”
“Americans — all Americans — have a right to full and equal protection under law,” Sessions said. “No one understands this better than the Cuban Americans here in Miami-Dade. . . . They understand that no single person — whether a dictator or a mayor — should determine whose rights are protected and whose are not.”
Sessions said that the county’s homicides were a third of what they were in the 1980s. But, according to the county’s police statistics, murders, rapes and assaults are up in Miami-Dade from where they were at this point last year.
Chicago has also been combating a surge in violent crime, an issue that Trump repeatedly cited during his presidential campaign and since taking office. The city had 762 homicides in 2016, more than the combined total reported by New York and Los Angeles, the only two American cities with larger populations.
There have been 428 murders in Chicago so far this year, down from 440 at the same point in 2016, according to police data. The city has also seen 1,811 shootings, down from 2,149 at this time a year ago, the data show.
Trump has been critical of the response by officials in Chicago, saying that “they’re not doing the job” and suggesting in a television interview this year that perhaps the police were being “overly politically correct.”
[Trump calls Chicago violence very easily fixable and blames it on political correctness]
Sessions took aim at a city that federal officials have pledged to help. Police have pointed to illegal guns and gang activity as explanations for the increase in crime and have called for harsher sentencing for people convicted of gun crimes. In June, Chicago police and federal authorities announced a new partnership aimed at cracking down on illegal guns.
The top police official in Chicago sharply disputed Sessions’s comments seemingly connecting the violent-crime increase with illegal immigration.
“I have said it before and I will say it again, undocumented immigrants are not driving violence in Chicago and that’s why I want our officers focused on community policing and not trying to be the immigration police,” Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent, said in a statement.
Rather than helping combat crime, Johnson said, “the federal government’s plans will hamper community policing and undermine the work our men and women have done to reduce shootings by 16 percent so far this year.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
Sessions is so steeped in White Nationalist, xenophobic propaganda that he just keeps on lying and misrepresenting with shocking regularity. This dude has no more interest in effective law enforcement and protecting civil rights (including the rights of undocumented individuals to fair treatment under the law) than the man in the moon (or Donald Trump). And he is the guy who is going to protect us from White Supremacists? Com’ on, Man! Liz was right on!
Now, some folks might think it strange that a supposed defender of “states rights” would be threatening to have the Feds roll over the needs and policies of local law enforcement. But, when the overriding agenda is driven by White Nationalism and xenophobia, consistency is beside the point.
PWS
08-16-17
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/politics/trump-news-conference-twitter/index.html
Key Quote from Stephen Collinson’s article:
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Read the full article at the link.
What a tragic nightmare for our country and the world. Watching the daily disintegration of the U.S. and our stunning fall from a position of world leadership. “Making America Great” — yup, for White Supremacists, Nazis, racists, and Vladimir Putin (who must be beside himself with joy at what a bunch of chumps we are). But not for the majority of Americans.
PWS
08-15-17
From the Washington Post:
President Trump on Tuesday said that counterprotesters at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville over the weekend acted violently and should share the blame for the mayhem that left a woman dead and many others injured. The president also defended those protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.
In a testy exchange with reporters at Trump Tower, the president called the events on Saturday a “horrible thing to watch,” but he emphasized that both sides of the clashes contributed to the violence.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.”
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Not surprising, since his earlier insincere follow-up statement in which he singled out racist and White Supremacist groups by name appeared to be “read from cue cards” probably written out for him by Ivanka. But, eventually his “White Nationalist rage” always boils over, and he goes on the attack, revealing once again just how unqualified he was and remains for the high office to which he was elected.
Very similar to the Travel Ban and the Comey firing when he couldn’t stick to the script that some of his advisers had prepared for him.
PWS
08-15-17
