REP. JOHN LEWIS, GIANT AMERICAN HERO IN AN AGE OF LILLIPUTIANS: 1940-2020

By NY Times Editorial Board:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/opinion/john-lewis.html

Representative John Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, will be remembered as a principal hero of the blood-drenched era not so long ago when Black people in the South were being shot, blown up or driven from their homes for seeking basic human rights. The moral authority Mr. Lewis exercised in the House of Representatives — while representing Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District for more than 30 years — found its headwaters in the aggressive yet self-sacrificial style of protests that he and his compatriots in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee deployed in the early 1960s as part of the campaign that overthrew Southern apartheid.

These young demonstrators chose to underscore the barbaric nature of racism by placing themselves at risk of being shot, gassed or clubbed to death during protests that challenged the Southern practice of shutting Black people out of the polls and “white only” restaurants, and confining them to “colored only” seating on public conveyances. When arrested, S.N.C.C. members sometimes refused bail, dramatizing injustice and withholding financial support from a racist criminal justice system.

This young cohort conspicuously ignored members of the civil rights establishment who urged them to patiently pursue remedies through the courts. Among the out-of-touch elder statesmen was the distinguished civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall, who was on the verge of becoming the nation’s first Black Supreme Court justice when he argued that young activists were wrong to continue the dangerous Freedom Rides of early 1961, in which interracial groups rode buses into the Deep South to test a Supreme Court ruling that had outlawed segregation in interstate transport.

Mr. Marshall condemned the Freedom Rides as a wasted effort that would only get people killed. But in the mind of Mr. Lewis, the depredations that Black Americans were experiencing at the time were too pressing a matter to be left to a slow judicial process and a handful of attorneys in a closed courtroom. By attacking Jim Crow publicly in the heart of the Deep South, the young activists in particular were animating a broad mass movement in a bid to awaken Americans generally to the inhumanity of Southern apartheid. Mr. Lewis came away from the encounter with Mr. Marshall understanding that the mass revolt brewing in the South was as much a battle against the complacency of the civil rights establishment as against racism itself.

On “Redemptive Suffering”

By his early 20s, Mr. Lewis had embraced a form of nonviolent protest grounded in the principle of “redemptive suffering”— a term he learned from the Rev. James Lawson, who had studied the style of nonviolent resistance that the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi had put into play during British colonial rule. The principle reminded Mr. Lewis of his religious upbringing and of a prayer his mother had often recited.

In his memoir “Walking With the Wind,” written with Michael D’Orso, Mr. Lewis explains that there was “something in the very essence of anguish that is liberating, cleansing, redemptive,” adding that suffering “touches and changes those around us as well. It opens us and those around us to a force beyond ourselves, a force that is right and moral, the force of righteous truth that is at the basis of human conscience.”

The essence of the nonviolent life, he wrote, is the capacity to forgive — “even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on you, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck” — and to understand that your attacker is as much a victim as you are. At bottom, this philosophy rested upon the belief that people of good will — “the Beloved Community,” as Mr. Lewis called them — would rouse themselves to combat evil and injustice.

Mr. Lewis carried these beliefs into the Freedom Rides. The travelers described their departing meal at a Chinese restaurant in Washington as “The Last Supper.” Several of the participants had actually written out wills, consistent with the realization that they might never make it home. No one wanted to die, but it was understood that a willingness to do so was essential to the quest for justice.

The Ku Klux Klan did its best to secure such a sacrificial outcome. It firebombed a bus at Anniston, Ala., and tried unsuccessfully to burn the Freedom Riders alive by holding the exit doors shut. “Walking With the Wind” describes the especially harrowing episode that unfolded on the Freedom Ride bus on which he arrived in Montgomery, Ala.

The terminal seemed nearly deserted, he writes, but “then, out of nowhere, from every direction, came people. White people. Men, women and children. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. Out of alleys, out of side streets, around the corners of office buildings, they emerged from everywhere, from all directions, all at once, as if they’d been let out of a gate . … They carried every makeshift weapon imaginable. Baseball bats, wooden boards, bricks, chains, tire irons, pipes, even garden tools — hoes and rakes. One group had women in front, their faces twisted in anger, screaming, ‘Git them niggers, GIT them niggers!’ … And now they turned to us, this sea of people, more than three hundred of them, shouting and screaming, men swinging fists and weapons, women swinging heavy purses, little children clawing with their fingernails at the faces of anyone they could reach.”

Mr. Lewis’s fellow Freedom Riders tried in vain to escape the mob by scaling trees and terminal walls. “It was madness. It was unbelievable,” Mr. Lewis recalled “… I could see Jim Zwerg now, being horribly beaten. Someone picked up his suitcase, which he had dropped, and swung it full force against his head. Another man then lifted Jim’s head and held it between his knees while others, including women and children, hit and scratched at Jim’s face. His eyes were shut. He was unconscious …. At that instant I felt a thud against my head. I could feel my knees collapse and then nothing. Everything turned white for an instant, then black.”

“Burn Jim Crow to the Ground”

Mr. Lewis clashed again with the elder statesmen of the movement when they prevailed on him to tone down a speech he was about to give at the March on Washington in 1963. Thrown out were the harshest criticisms of the John F. Kennedy administration’s civil rights bill as well as a fiery passage threatening that the movement would “march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground — nonviolently.”

Yet even the softened speech was radical for the context. At a time when civil rights leaders were commonly referring to African-Americans as Negroes, the Lewis speech used the term Black: “In the Delta of Mississippi, in Southwest Georgia, in the Black Belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and all over this nation the Black masses are on a march for jobs and freedom.”

To the dismay of many, the 23-year-old Mr. Lewis described the movement as “a revolution,” appealing to all who listened “to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until a revolution is complete. We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution.”

Mr. Lewis carried his faith in the power of nonviolence into the fateful Selma, Ala., voting rights demonstration — in March of 1965 — that was soon named Bloody Sunday to commemorate the vicious attack that state troopers waged on peaceful marchers. Mr. Lewis suffered a fractured skull and was one 58 people treated for injuries at a hospital.

The worldwide demonstrations that followed the brutal police killing of George Floyd underscored the extent to which many people need visual evidence to grow outraged over injustice that is perpetrated all the time outside the camera’s eye.

A television broadcast of the violence meted out by the police on Bloody Sunday worked in the same way. It generated national outrage and provided a graphic example of the need for the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law that summer.

The linchpin part of the law required certain states and parts of states to seek federal permission before changing voting rules. This seemed almost a godsend to the civil rights cohort and at least a partial repayment for the lives of the many men and women who had died in pursuit of voting rights.

Soon after the Supreme Court crippled the act in 2013, states began unveiling measures limiting ballot access. At the time of the decision, Mr. Lewis wrote that the court had “stuck a dagger into the heart” of a hard-won and still necessary law. With his customary eloquence, he urged Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act, describing the right to vote as “almost sacred” and “the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democracy.”

The passing of John Lewis deprives the United States of its foremost warrior in a battle for racial justice that stretches back into the 19th century and the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Americans — and particularly his colleagues in Congress — can best honor his memory by picking up where he left off.

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With an overtly racist President, an ineffective Congress where progress is blocked by a GOP that embraces and furthers racism, a Supreme Court that doesn’t believe in equal justice for all, actively undermines civil rights, and disenfranchises voters, and GOP-controlled states that have used the moral and intellectual failures of all of the foregoing to roll back voting access for people of color, America has actually backtracked on Congressman Lewis’s vision.

Who is big enough to fill Congressman Lewis’s shoes and lead America to a better future? Certainly not the moral and intellectual Lilliputians in the White House, the GOP, and the “JR Five” on the Supremes.

In the process of veneration, a “sanitized” version of Lewis’s life and legacy has already appeared. GOP politicos who have spent a lifetime working against everything Lewis stood for will issue the obligatory disingenuous condolences.

We shouldn’t forget the real John Lewis. The man who called Trump’s presidency “illegitimate” for the git go, even when other Democrats refused to go there.

He also spoke forcefully and passionately for Trump’s impeachment:

“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, do something,” the civil rights icon said. “Our children and their children will ask us: ‘What did you do? What did you say?’”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-lewis-dies_n_5e095e32e4b0b2520d179a3f

We should remember that Lewis’s GOP colleagues (but for Sen. Mitt Romney) “honored” him by voting unanimously against the overwhelming weight of the evidence and against conviction and removal of the corrupt, racist, unqualified President who, as Lewis had previously said, never should have been in office in the first place. Thousands of Americans and numerous refugees and others have subsequently been killed or suffered traumatic harm as a result of Trump’s continuing “malicious incompetence” in office.

The real questions that our children and grandchildren will ask is: What did YOU do to honor the legacy of John Lewis and other true American heroes by removing Trump and the GOP from office and insuring that such racists and a party that promotes racism will never be empowered to infect American governance again?

That struggle has just begun, and victory is neither assured nor easy. Yet, without turning Lewis’s words into actions and insuring that those who refuse to honor the Constitutional requirement of voting rights and equal justice for all are never again allowed to infiltrate and destroy our institutions of Government, Lewis’s vision of an America that finally provides “liberty and justice for all” will remain unfulfilled. And, that will be a true national tragedy!

This November, vote like your life and John Lewis’s legacy depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-18-20

⚖️CALLING OUT WHITE NATIONALIST JUDGING: In a Remarkable Opinion, 4th Cir. Chief Judge Roger Gregory Blasts Colleague’s Retrograde Views on Race, Judging, Policing, & Communities of Color!

U.S. v. Curry

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/184233A.P.pdf

GREGORY, Chief Judge, concurring:

Our decision today affirms that a central tenet of law nearly as old as this country—

namely, “[t]he right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures”—applies equally to all. U.S. Const. amend. IV. I join the majority Opinion in its entirety. However, I must say a few words in response to Judge Wilkinson’s dissent.

When I read the first line of Judge Wilkinson’s dissent I was heartened by the thought: well, at least he acknowledges that there are “two Americas.” But this glint of enlightenment was to serve as a “soap box” for his charge against the majority’s decision. It is understandable that such a pseudo-sociological platform was necessary as his assertions are bereft of any jurisprudential reasoning. More to the point, his recognition of a divided America is merely a preamble to the fallacy-laden exegesis of “predictive policing” that follows. Through his opinion, my colleague contributes to the volumes of work gifted by others who felt obliged to bear their burden to save minority or disadvantaged communities from themselves.

Of course, the story of two Americas of which Judge Wilkinson speaks is an ancient tale to some. See, e.g., Frederick Douglas, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 1852. There’s a long history of black and brown communities feeling unsafe in police presence. See, e.g., James Baldwin, A Report from Occupied Territory, The Nation, July 11, 1966 (“[T]he police are simply the hired enemies of this population. . . . This is why those pious calls to ‘respect the law,’ always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene.”). And at least “[s]ince Reconstruction, subordinated

communities have endeavored to harness the criminal justice system toward recognition 33

that their lives have worth.” Deborah Tuerkheimer, Criminal Justice and the Mattering of Lives, 116 Mich. L. Rev. 1145, 1146 (2018). Thus, just a few decades ago, laws designed to decrease violence in these communities were considered “a civil rights triumph.” James Forman, Locking Up our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America 73 (2017). The thought being that our government had finally “promised to provide police protection to a community so long denied it.” Id. This increased protection, however, led to what has been described as “a central paradox of the African American experience: the simultaneous over- and under-policing of crime.” Id. at 35.

Judge Wilkinson chooses to focus largely on one dimension of this paradox, ignoring the details of the familiar perils of over-policing. See, e.g., Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (2015); Michael Tonry, Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma (2011); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2010); Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (2010); Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag (2007). Describing the hazard of “hot spot policing” as “the danger of overreaction,” Wilkinson Dis. Op. at 68, Judge Wilkinson mitigates the concerns of some that any encounter with an officer could turn fatal. See Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2070 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (describing “the talk” that black and brown parents frequently give to their children “all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them”); see also United States v. Black, 707 F.3d 531, 541 (4th Cir. 2013) (“In certain communities that have been subject to overbearing or harassing police conduct, cautious parents may

counsel their children to be respective, compliant, and accommodating to police officers, 34

to do everything officers instruct them to do.”). In so doing, my dissenting colleague in turn presents a sordid view of under-policing, suggesting that our decision today will lead to “an America where gated communities will be safe enough and dispossessed communities will be left to fend increasingly for themselves.” Wilkinson Dis. Op. at 69.

But we know that many of our fellow citizens already feel insecure regardless of their location. In a society where some are considered dangerous even when they are in their living rooms eating ice cream, asleep in their beds, playing in the park, standing in the pulpit of their church, birdwatching, exercising in public, or walking home from a trip to the store to purchase a bag of Skittles, it is still within their own communities—even those deemed “dispossessed” or “disadvantaged”—that they feel the most secure. Permitting unconstitutional governmental intrusions into these communities in the name of protecting them presents a false dichotomy. My colleague insists on a Hobson’s choice for these communities: decide between their constitutional rights against unwarranted searches and seizures or forgo governmental protection that is readily afforded to other communities. But those inclined to shrug their shoulders at citizens who wave their Constitutions in the air during uncertainty must not forget “[h]istory teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.” Skinner v. Ry. Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 635 (1989) (Marshall, J., dissenting); cf. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). Indeed, it is in moments of insecurity that our constitutional bells ring the loudest.

Why even suppose that checking police power in these circumstances would lead to

some communities falling into a Hobbesian state of nature? It’s unclear. Judge Wilkinson 35

supports this slippery slope argument in a couple of mutually incompatible and individually questionable ways. He mentions Professor Rod K. Brunson’s work on policing to bolster the view that our decision here will further entrench the perception that police fail to serve those in disadvantaged communities. But Professor Brunson has long argued that this perception is largely created by aggressive policing strategies and discourteous treatment of members in their community. See, e.g., Rod K. Brunson, “Police Don’t Like Black People”: African-American Young Men’s Accumulated Police Experiences, 6(1) Criminology & Pub. Pol’y 71 (2007). Indeed, Professor Brunson has noted that “arrests and successful prosecutions are unlikely without cooperating witnesses.” Rod K. Brunson, Protests focus on Over-policing. But under-policing is also Deadly, Wash. Post, June 12, 2020. And those from disadvantaged communities “want a different kind of policing than the aggressive approaches they typically see—one that values their humanity.” Id.; see also Estate of Jones v. City of Martinsburg, W. Va., –– F.3d ––, 2020 WL 3053386, at *7 (4th Cir. 2020) (recognizing a “desperate need” for more and different police training).

From this perspective, the video of the present incident mimics the aggressive, discourteous, and ineffective policing that concern many. As the officers approached the scene seconds after gunshots rang out, the members of this community, including Curry, pointed them in the direction in which the perpetrator was likely to be found. Because, as Judge Diaz notes in his concurrence, it would have been difficult for the officers “to determine whether any firearm (which, of course, are generally lawful to possess) seized in the effort to identify the suspect was the source of the gunfire,” Judge Diaz Op. at 57,

one would think that the officers’ best hope for finding the shooter was to accept the 36

guidance offered by community members. See Black, 707 F.3d at 540 (“Being a felon in possession of a firearm is not the default status.”). That, of course, was not the case here. Cf. Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice 4 (2007) (describing the notion of “testimonial injustice,” where a speaker suffers from deflated credibility owing to an identity prejudice on the hearer’s part). The officers ignored the assistance and the shooter got away. Like most citizens, it is likely that residents of the Creighton Court community do not want police officers to be tough on crime, or weak on crime—they want them to be smart on crime.

No doubt it is beyond the scope of our roles to explain to any institution what it means to be smart on crime. I will leave that to our clever colleagues in the chambers of City Council. But it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803). Thus, “[i]n some circumstances . . . we must remind law enforcement that the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and that those protections extend to all people in all communities. Black, 707 F.3d at 534. This is one of those circumstances.

Contrary to Judge Wilkinson’s suggestion, our decision today does not deliver “a gut-punch to predictive policing.” Wilkinson Dis. Op. at 71. As Judge Wilkinson notes, predictive policing programs “differ in their details,” but generally seek to use “smart policies” to “affirmatively prevent crime from happening, rather than just solve it.” Id. at 65; see also Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Predictive Policing and Reasonable Suspicion, 62 Emory L.J. 259, 265 (2012) (“In simple terms, predictive policing involves computer

models that predict areas of future crime locations from past crime statistics and other 37

data.”). But see id. at 321 (“Predictive policing may well become an effective tool for law enforcement. Yet, the technology will also create tension for police in defending Fourth Amendment challenges by defendants.”); Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Policing Predictive Policing, 94 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1113, 1149 (2017) (“More bluntly, the initial predictive policing projects have raised the question of whether this data-driven focus serves merely to enable, or even justify, a high-tech version of racial profiling.”). But, as with all policies, the devil is going to lie in those details. Nothing in the majority Opinion prevents the police from using, in good faith with constitutional principles, smart policies to identify where crimes may occur and accordingly dispatching officers to those neighborhoods. But it is how they, upon arrival, engage with the people in those neighborhoods that is important here. A suspicionless, investigatory stop was not warranted under the circumstances. Affirming our long-standing rules is nothing novel. If merely preventing crime was enough to pass constitutional muster, the authority of the Fourth Amendment would become moot.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand the frustrations and uncertainties that attend most discussions of how to abate crime. As a country, we are in a moment of reckoning. And the unpredictability of the future encourages us to want to hang on to those entities that make us feel secure. Still, “[t]he facts of this case give us cause to pause and ponder the slow systematic erosion of Fourth Amendment protections for a certain demographic.” Black, 707 F.3d at 542. The “lifelines a fragile community retains against physical harm and mental despair,” Wilkinson Dis. Op. at 70, must be the assurance that there truly is equal protection under law. Thus, “[i]n the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are

[once again] reminded that ‘we are tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in 38

an inescapable network of mutuality,’ [and] that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of others.” Black, 707 F.3d at 542. It is with these truths that I join my colleagues in the majority in ensuring that “the Fourth Amendment rights of all individuals are protected.” Id. (emphasis in original).

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

You can read the majority, Judge Wilkinson’s tone-deaf dissent, and all of the other opinions at the above link.

To be honest, Judge Wilkinson’s opinion sounded like Jeff Sessions’s racist blather about how African American communities didn’t really want the DOJ to interfere with police brutality because it protected them from crime. And, according to “Sessions’ theory,” more crime originated in communities of color so they of course disproportionally benefitted from “aggressive” (mostly White) police tactics. That’s how we got to George Floyd and the backlash against police violence directed at communities of color.

Well, at least the 4th Circuit allows spirited dissent. That’s unlike today’s BIA that papers over the festering issues of racism and injustice in today’s bias-driven immigration enforcement and legal perversion of human rights with fake unanimity and mindless “go along to get alongism.”

Institutional racism and “Dred Scottification” of the “other” unfortunately are deeply ingrained in our Federal Court System. It’s very clear in the Supremes’ majority’s enabling of the Trump/Miller race-driven White Nationalist Agenda under various transparent “pretexts,” mainly relating to clearly bogus national emergencies or fabricated national security concerns. It ran throughout the majority’s “greenlighting” of the “Travel (“Muslim”) Ban,” “Remain in Mexico” (“Let “em Die In Mexico”), “Expedited Removal (“Systematic Dismantling of Due Process For Asylum Applicants”), “The Wall,” “Public Charge” (“Let’s Terrorize Ethnic Communities”), and “Punishing Sanctuary Cities” (“Attacking Those Who Dare Stand Against ICE Abuses”), sometimes without even deigning to provide a rationale.

Obviously, due process for “persons” in the United States under the Fifth Amendment means little or nothing to Justices who view migrants as sub-human with lives not worth protecting or even caring about. For these unfortunates, “due process” means something that would be totally unacceptable if applied to the Justices themselves, their families, or to those (largely White) folks to whom they are willing to extend constitutional protections. Sound familiar? It should, for anyone who has ever visited the Holocaust Museum.

As the vile racism and overt White Nationalism of the Trump regime unfold in full ugliness and irrationality during the final stages of the 2020 campaign, the abject failure of Roberts and his colleagues to recognize and enforce the constitutional rights and humanity of every person in the U.S.(including those actually here or at our borders but “fictionalized” by disingenuous judges into “non-presence”) comes into full focus.

America needs and deserves better Federal Judges at all levels from the Supremes to the Immigration Courts. Judges who will cut through the many layers of historical BS and racism-covering gobbledygook and make equal justice for all a reality in America.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What if we finally had courts comprised of courageous, principled Justices and Judges who believed Dr. King’s words and acted accordingly, rather than merely mouthing them in ceremonies every January?

Due Process Forever! Complicit courts that cover for the Trump/Miller White Nationalist agenda, never!

PWS

07-16-20

☠️👎🏻🤮GOODBYE GONZO! — Notorious Racist, Bigot, Homophobe, Misogynist Loses GOP Primary — Blinded By The Fog of Hate, Gonzo Never Understood Trump’s Sole Overriding Concern — Eventually, His Failure To Put Shielding Trump’s Corruption First Made Him “the only monument to the Confederacy that Trump was eager to remove.” (Pema Levy @ Mother Jones)

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Exclusive for Courtside

July 14, 2020

Back before the 2016 election, GOP backbench Jim Crow hate monger Senator Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions saw a kindred spirit who would help him realize his whitewashed, faux Christian view of America: Donald Trump. Becoming the first Senator to endorse Trump got Gonzo a ticket to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, where he quickly established himself as probably the worst inhabitant after the Civil War and before Billy Barr ( a period that notably includes “John the Con” Mitchell).

During his tenure, Gonzo separated families, caged kids, targeted vulnerable Latino refugee women for abuse, illegally punished “sanctuary cities,” expanded the “New American Gulag,” diverted prosecutorial resources from real crimes to minor immigration violations, expanded the “New American Gulag,” advocated discrimination against the LGBTQ community under the guise of religious bigotry, encouraged police brutality against Black Americans, aided efforts to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters, spread false narratives about immigrant crime and asylum fraud, dissed private lawyers, stripped Immigration Judges of their authority to control their own dockets, multiplied the Immigration Court backlogs, illegally tried to terminate DACA while smearing Dreamers, spoke to hate groups, issued unethical “precedent decisions” while falsely claiming to be acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, interfered with asylum grants and judicial independence, put anti-due-process production quotas on Immigration Judges, attempted to dismantle congressionally mandated “know your rights” programs, to name just a few of his gross abuses of public office. Indeed, other than Stephen Miller and Trump himself, how many notorious child abusers get to walk free in America while their victims suffer lifetime trauma?

Despite never being the brightest bulb in the pack, his feeble attempt at “legal opinions” sometimes drawing ridicule from lower court judges, Gonzo is generally credited with doing more than any other Cabinet member to advance Trump’s agenda of hate and White Nationalist bigotry. He actually was dumb enough to believe that his unswerving dedication to a program of promoting the white race over people of color and Christians over all other religions would ingratiate him with Trump.

That would assume, however, that Trump had some guiding principle, however vile and disgusting, beyond himself. Sessions might be the only person in Washington who thought racism would trump self-protection. I’m not saying that Trump isn’t a committed racist — clearly he is. Just that his commitment to racism is subservient to his only real defining characteristic — narcissism. Just ask his niece, Mary.

Gonzo failed in the only thing that ever counted: Protecting Trump, his family, and his corrupt cronies from the Mueller investigation. It wasn’t, as some have inaccurately claimed, a show of ethics or dedication to the law.

Even Gonzo realized that participating in an investigation involving a campaign organization of which he was a member and therefore both a potential witness and target, would be an egregious ethical violation that could cost him his law license as well as a potential criminal act of perjury, given that he had testified under oath during his Senate confirmation that he intended to recuse himself. Apparently, that was on a day when Trump was too busy tweeting or playing golf to focus on the implications of that particular statement under oath by his nominee.

After Trump fired him, Gonzo’s political fortunes took a sharp downturn. A guy who polled 97% of the vote in running unopposed for the Senate in 2014, polled only 38% of the vote in overwhelmingly losing the GOP primary to former Auburn Football Coach Tommy Tuberville. Tommy, a “Trump loyalist” with extreme far-right views and no known qualifications for the job, is not much of an improvement over Sessions.

Perhaps the only good news is that Alabama currently has a very decent and competent U.S. Senator, Doug Jones (D), who represents all of the people of the state. Everybody should support Doug’s campaign to maintain decency and commitment to equal justice in Government.

For those who want a further retrospective on Sessions’s grotesque career of promoting a return to Jim Crow while on the public dole, I recommend the following articles from Mother Jones and the Advocate:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/jeff-sessions-ends-his-political-career-in-a-blaze-of-racism/

https://www.advocate.com/politics/2020/7/14/career-racist-homophobe-jeff-sessions-over

Goodbye and good riddance to one of America’s worst and most disgusting politicos not named Trump or Steve King.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-15-20

🏴‍☠️🤡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!

🏴‍☠️🤡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!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

More Immigration Judges Leaving the Bench

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The latest judge-by-judge data from the Immigration Courts indicate that more judges are resigning and retiring. Turnover is the highest since records began in FY 1997 over two decades ago. These results are based on detailed records obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) which administers the Courts.

During FY 2019 a record number of 35 judges left the bench. This is up from the previous record set in FY 2017 when 20 judges left the bench, and 27 judges left in FY 2018.

With elevated hiring plus the record number of judges leaving the bench more cases are being heard by judges with quite limited experience as immigration judges.

Currently one of every three (32%) judges have only held their position since FY 2019. Half (48%) of the judges serving today were appointed in the last two and a half years. And nearly two-thirds (64%) were appointed since FY 2017.

While the Court is losing many of its most experienced judges, the backlog of cases continues to balloon. It is now almost three times the level when President Trump assumed office.

Update on Disappearing Immigration Court Records

Records continue to disappear in the latest data release for updated court records through the end of June 2020. The report provides the latest statement from EOIR Chief Management Officer Kate Sheehey about this matter.

To read the full report on Immigration Judges leaving the bench as well as the Sheehey statement, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/617/

TRAC’s free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through June 2020. 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 a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

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

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://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 US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://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.

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

Look folks, I’m not disputing that Susan B. Long and David Burnham of TRAC are smart people. I’m even willing to speculate that they are smarter than most of the folks still in so-called public service (that largely isn’t any more) in all three branches of our failing Government.

But, are they really that much smarter than Supreme Court Justices, Article III Federal Judges, and Legislators who have let this grotesquely unconstitutional, dysfunctional, and deadly Star Chamber masquerading as a “court system” right here on American soil unfold and continue its daily abuses right under their complicit noses? Or, do we have too many individuals in public office lacking both the human decency and moral courage to stand up against institutionalized racism, unnecessarily cruelty, corruption, and pure stupidity, all of which very clearly are prohibited by both the due process and equal protection clauses of our Constitution, not to mention the 13th and 15th Amendments. It’s not rocket science!

Enough with the Congressional and Court-enabled “Dred Scottification” of the other! That’s how we ended up with things like the “Chinese Exclusion Act” and “Jim Crow” and why we have an institutionalized racism problem now.

Instead of standing up for equal justice for all under the Constitution, the Supremes and Congress often have willingly been part of the problem — using the law knowingly and intentionally to undermine constitutionally required equal justice for all and an end to racism. And, we can see those same attitudes today, specifically in the Supremes’ ridiculously wrong, intellectually dishonest, and cowardly decisions “greenlighting” various parts of White Nationalist Stephen Miller’s bogus program of dehumanizing asylum seekers and immigrants of color. This is not acceptable performance from Justices of our highest Court!

We need better, more courageous, and more intellectually honest public officers in all three branches who are willing to stand up for individual rights, human lives, and the common good over bogus right wing legal doctrines and inhumanity cloaked in legal gobbledygook. It won’t happen overnight. But, a better America starts with throwing a totally corrupt, cruel, and maliciously incompetent President and his GOP enablers out of every public office at every level of government this November.

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

PWS

07-14-20

🛡⚔️⚖️ROUND TABLE RIPS REGIME’S FRAUDULENT PROPOSED REGS ELIMINATING ASYLUM IN 36-PAGE COMMENTARY — “The proposed rules are impermissibly arbitrary and capricious. They attempt to overcome, as opposed to interpret, the clear meaning of our asylum statutes.”

Knightess of the Round Table

Asylum Ban Reg Comments_July 2020_FINAL

INTRODUCTION

In their introduction, the proposed regulations misstate the Congressional intent behind our asylum laws.2 Since 1980, our nation’s asylum laws are neither an expression of foreign policy nor an assertion of the right to protect resources or citizens. It is for this reason that the notice of proposed rulemaking must cite a case from 1972 that did not address asylum at all in order to find support for its claim.

The intent of Congress in enacting the 1980 Refugee Act was to bring our country’s asylum laws into accordance with our international treaty obligations, specifically by eliminating the above- stated biases from such determinations. For the past 40 years, our laws require us to grant asylum to all who qualify regardless of foreign policy or other concerns. Furthermore, the international treaties were intentionally left broad enough in their language to allow adjudicators flexibility to provide protection in response to whatever types of harm creative persecutors might de- vise. In choosing to adopt the precise language of those treaties, Congress adopted the same flexibility. See e.g. Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. 64 (1804), pursuant to which national statutes should be interpreted in such a way as to not conflict with international laws.

The proposed rules are impermissibly arbitrary and capricious. They attempt to overcome, as opposed to interpret, the clear meaning of our asylum statutes. Rather than interpret the views of Congress, the proposed rules seek to replace them in furtherance of the strongly anti-immigrant views of the administration they serve.3 And that they seek to do so in an election year, for political gain, is clear.

In attempting to stifle clear Congressional intent in service of its own political motives, the ad- ministration has proposed rules that are ultra vires to the statute.

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

Read our full comment at the above link.

Special thanks to the following Round Table Team that took the lead in drafting this comment (listed alphabetically):

Judge Jeffrey Chase

Judge Bruce Einhorn

Judge Rebecca Jamil

Judge Carol King

Judge Lory Diana Rosenberg

Judge Ilyce Shugall

Due Process Forever! Crimes Against Humanity, Never!

PWS

07-14-20

🏴‍☠️TRUMP REGIME’S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: IMMIGRATION SUPERSTAR LINDSAY MUIR HARRIS & ONE OF HER ASYLEE CLIENTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST MILLER’S NEO-NAZI PROPOSAL TO BAR ASYLUM! — “My husband and I may not be alive today and our daughter would have been married off as the third wife of a man in his fifties by the time she was twelve.”

https://msmagazine.com/2020/07/13/an-american-mother-on-asylum-trumps-new-rules-would-have-rewritten-my-story/

An American Mother on Asylum: Trump’s New Rules Would Have Rewritten My Story

7/13/2020 by NENE BAH and LINDSAY M. HARRIS

Asylum is not a perfect solution for families like mine, who are fleeing human rights abuses. Starting all over again in another country is not easy.

We have, at times, struggled to survive. I have worked night shifts in a factory, as a janitor for a public school system, and in retail. I have worked hard to provide for my family.

Today, I am a U.S. citizen and my children are in college. My daughter can’t make up her mind about which major to choose. Above all, we are safe from physical harm and threats to my daughter’s safety and my own that we fled in our home country.

But, if the new asylum rules proposed by the Trump administration are put into practice, others like me will not have the same protection. They will be returned to danger.

This is my story.

I fled my home country in West Africa in 2010. My husband and I had a happy life and after university I worked as a high school biology teacher.

Things became too dangerous for us to stay, however, when family and community members came after us, insisting that my young daughter be subjected to female genital cutting and early forced marriage to a much older man.

Wanting to protect my child from what I myself had endured when I was young, I decided to take a stand. My husband and I were united in our opposition to female genital cutting, which is very common in our country, especially for girls between 5 and 9 years old. Given my traumatic and painful experience and how it has affected me throughout my life, we did everything we could to protect our daughter.

This antagonized our community and families, and we both endured numerous threats, physical attacks, and beatings, in an attempt by our family to convince us to let her be cut. We lived in constant fear of my daughter being kidnapped and cut.

At one point, an extended family member who insisted that we agree to let our daughter be cut ran over my husband, causing him to suffer brain damage and severe injuries. The authorities refused to intervene in what they saw as “family matters,” and the law against female genital cutting is not enforced in my country. To protect our child, I knew we had to leave.

I had visited the United States before and knew it would be a safe place to raise our family. There was no way to apply for asylum outside the U.S., so I obtained tourist visas for us. There are no direct flights from my home country to the United States, so we stopped in North Africa for a brief layover, before arriving in the U.S.

Soon after arrival, I found a lawyer, to help me with my case: Lindsay Harris, with the Tahirih Justice Center. I was lucky to find a lawyer, but the process of applying for asylum was extremely challenging—although Lindsay spoke French, one of the languages I speak comfortably, we had to complete all of the paperwork in English. I had to re-tell my story time and time again and eventually before an asylum officer.

I realize now that I was actually lucky because I had my asylum interview in 2011, and my case was granted only six months later that same year. Now, asylum seekers often wait several years before an interview, and the U.S. government just made the waiting period longer. During those six months, I lived with the constant anxiety of being sent back to my country where my daughter would be cut and our lives were in danger.

When we were granted asylum, we were finally able to live in safety and peace. My daughter was able to focus on school and have a happy childhood.

My heart sank earlier this month when I learned that other women and girls may not have the same access to safety that we did. The Trump administration wants to make major changes to the rules for asylum law. If these rules were in effect when I sought asylum in 2011, I would not have been granted.

The more I learn about these policy changes, the more stunned and saddened I am. It’s staggering to think that under these new rules, gender-based violence would not count—as if it’s not important enough to matter.

In my country, and many countries around the world, women are subjected to specific forms of harm based on their gender: gender-specific violence. Men simply are not at risk of female genital cutting and generally not child or forced marriage.

Under the new rules, what happened between my family and community members would be considered just a “private dispute”—despite the strong evidence then and now to show that my government would not intervene in what they see as family issues, even where serious physical harm and death are involved.

Part of my asylum claim was that I was targeted because of my feminist political opinion: I believe women and girls have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies. These new rules would prevent those claims too.

It’s unbelievable that things like taking a non-direct flight, as my family did—which had nothing to do with how much we needed protection or whether or not we were telling the truth—could bar someone from being granted asylum protection. That stop, briefly, at another airport in North Africa, would have undermined our entire claim for protection. My husband and I may not be alive today and our daughter would have been married off as the third wife of a man in his fifties by the time she was twelve.

It angers me that the government wants to create all of these new bars to asylum, leaving some asylum seekers with access only to something called “withholding of removal.”

For me, this would have meant separation from my husband and children—who would not have also been granted that protection as my derivatives or who would each have to have their own asylum claim—never being able to travel outside the U.S., never being able to become a lawful permanent resident or a citizen, and continually renewing a work permit and reporting to a deportation officer on a routine basis. We would be living in limbo.

Take Action

The public can comment on the proposed rules to change asylum until July 15, 2020.

It is painful and frightening for me to speak out, but I have chosen to do so.

I want to ensure that the women who come after me, seeking protection for themselves and their daughters, will not find that the United States has closed its doors and shut its eyes to human rights abuses and persecution against women and girls.

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

These proposals have been developed and promoted by neo-Nazi racist xenophobe Stephen Miller. They are totally outrageous and illegal. Many entitled to our nation’s protection have already been maimed, tortured, raped, or died as a result of our nation’s failure to stand up against this arrogant human rights abuser on our public payroll.

The humanity of every American is diminished by Miller’s White Nationalist hate agenda and the corrupt regime that employs him.

PWS

07-14-20

10 LEGAL REPAIRS FOR A POST-CLOWN 🤡 WORLD — From Jennifer Rubin @ WashPost

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/12/ten-ideas-post-trump-reform/

President Trump granting clemency to his crony Roger Stone, who served as the go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, on practically the eve of Stone’s incarceration for multiple crimes attendant to his coverup on behalf of the president, is grotesquely corrupt but unsurprising. Stone virtually confessed to a quid pro quo, telling Howard Fineman, “He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.” Silence for clemency. A separate system of justice for the president’s henchmen. This is the very definition of corruption.

“By this action, President Trump abused the powers of his office in an apparent effort to reward Roger Stone for his refusal to cooperate with investigators examining the President’s own conduct,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a written statement released Friday. “No other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose.”

Stone’s clemency should remind all Americans of the necessity of removing Trump at the ballot box and seeking a full accounting of Attorney General William P. Barr’s role in running interference for the president (e.g., spinning the Mueller report, turning a blind eye toward criminality in the Ukraine scandal, intervening to block Stone’s and Michael Flynn’s punishments). It should remind voters that if not for the spinelessness of every Republican senator save Utah’s Mitt Romney, Trump would not have survived impeachment to seek vengeance on witnesses (e.g., Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman), corruptly protect his friends and incompetently manage a pandemic, leading to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands. With the pardon of Stone, we can affirm that Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s assertion that he learned his lesson from impeachment was delusional.

In 2019, The Post’s editorial board argued the president tried to manipulate the justice system, wrongdoing that Congress must not let go. (The Washington Post)

However, we will need far more than an electoral shellacking of Republicans to address the damage Trump has done to the Justice Department and the rule of law. Ten simple measures would begin to repair our justice system:

1. A thorough redo of the special counsel/independent counsel law is necessary. The counsel’s final report should be issued to Congress and/or the courts, depriving a potentially corrupt attorney general or president the opportunity to pre-edit or spin it. Additional legislation should clarify that a special counsel is empowered to make specific findings of illegality. The DOJ guidelines preventing prosecution of the president while still in office should be revisited.

2. Congress must reassert the power of the purse. The executive branch must report all holds/impounds on congressionally appropriated funds. “Emergency” powers should be reexamined, tightened and clarified to prevent the sort of unilateral misappropriation of funds we saw regarding the wall.

3. Severe criminal penalties should be exacted for revealing the identity of whistleblowers or threatening and/or punishing federal employees for providing truthful testimony.

4. A new, speedy enforcement mechanism is required for contempt of Congress citations, allowing lawmakers to get a swift and definitive resolution of its conflicts with the executive branch.

5. We need a barrier between the White House and Justice Department to prevent political interference in specific cases, targets of investigation and prosecutorial recommendations. Any such communications must be logged and made available to the inspector general and/or Congress.

. . . .

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

Get the rest of the article with five more good ideas at the above link.

An essential that should have been #1 on the list: An independent Article I Immigration Court with an open, merit-based judicial selection process involving public input!

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

PWS

07-13-20

CHARLES M. BLOW @ NYT: TIME TO START CALLING IT WHAT IT IS: “It is time for us to simply call a thing a thing: White supremacy is the biggest racial problem this country faces, and has faced. It is almost always the cause of unrest around race. It has been used to slaughter and destroy, to oppress and imprison. It manifests in every segment of American life.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/racism-united-states.html

Blow writes in The NY Times:

Now that we are deep into protests over racism, inequality and police brutality — protests that I’ve come to see as a revisiting of Freedom Summer — it is clear that Donald Trump sees the activation of white nationalism and anti-otherness as his path to re-election. We are engaged in yet another national conversation about race and racism, privilege and oppression.

But, as is usually the case, the language we used to describe the moment is lacking. We — the public and the media, including this newspaper, including, in the past, this very column — often use, consciously or not, language that shields anti-Black white supremacy, rather than to expose it and hold it accountable.

We use all manner of euphemisms and terms of art to keep from directly addressing the racial reality in America. This may be some holdover from a bygone time, but it is now time for it to come to an end.

Take for instance the term “race relations.” Polling organizations like Gallup and the Pew Research Center often ask respondents how they feel about the state of race relations in the country.

I have never fully understood what this meant. It suggests a relationship that swings from harmony to disharmony. But that is not the way race is structured or animated in this country. From the beginning, the racial dynamics in America have been about power, equality and access, or the lack thereof.

Protests, and even violence, have erupted when white people felt their hold on those things was threatened or when Black people — or Indigenous people, or Hispanics — rebelled against those things being denied.

So what are the relations here? It is a linguistic sidestep that avoids the true issue: anti-Black and anti-other white supremacy.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

White Supremacy is at the core of Donald Trump and today’s GOP. It is willfully enabled by Chief Justice John Roberts and other Supreme Court Justices who refuse to acknowledge the obvious anti-Hispanic and anti-people of color motivations behind unconstitutional and inhuman immigration and asylum restrictions designed by notoriously outspoken neo-Nazi racist Stephen Miller.

Likewise, the intellectually corrupt Supremes’ majority fails to prevent the GOP’s racist strategy of suppressing voting rights of African Americans and Latinos. The unconstitutionality of these schemes to deny the vote and dilute the political power of people of color has been crystal clear under our Constitution since the enactment of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870.

You don’t need a Harvard law degree to figure this out. Just honesty, courage, and intellectual integrity — things that I once took for granted among Supreme Court Justices, but now see are sorely missing on today’s Court where extreme rightist ideology identified with white supremacy has replaced judicial qualifications as selection criteria when the GOP was in charge.

Ending white supremacy in America will require ousting Trump and the GOP and ending the GOP’s power to put more unqualified judges who are opposed to racial and social justice in America on the Federal Bench.

This November, vote like your life and our nation’s future depend it it. Because they do!

PWS

07-09-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!

Trump Administration Makes Immigration Courts an Enforcement Tool by Appointing Prosecutors to Lead

AILA Doc. No. 20070696 | Dated July 6, 2020

CONTACTS:

George Tzamaras
202-507-7649
gtzamaras@aila.org Belle Woods
202-507-7675
bwoods@aila.org

WASHINGTON, DC — The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) condemns the Trump administration’s recent ramp-up of efforts to turn the immigration court system into an enforcement tool rather than an independent arbiter for justice. The immigration courts are formally known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and are overseen by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

AILA President Jennifer Minear, noted, “AILA has long advocated for an independent immigration court, one that ensures judges serve as neutral arbiters of justice. This administration has instead subjected the courts to political influence and exploited the inherent structural flaws of the DOJ-controlled immigration courts, which also prosecutes immigration cases at the federal level. The nail in the coffin of judicial neutrality is the fact that the administration has put the courts in the control of a new Chief Immigration Judge who has no judicial experience but served as ICE’s chief immigration prosecutor. No less concerning is DOJ’s recent choice for Chief Appellate Immigration Judge – an individual who also prosecuted immigration cases and advised the Trump White House on immigration policy. This administration continues to weaponize the immigration courts for the sole purpose of accelerating deportations rather than dispensing neutral justice. Congress must investigate these politically motivated appointments and pass legislation to create an independent, Article I immigration court.”

Among the recent actions taken by this administration to bias the immigration courts:

Attempting to decertify the immigration judges’ union.

Blocking immigration judges’ ability to educate the public about the court system.

Endangering lives through haphazard and inconsistent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attempting to buy out and then outright dismantling the Board of Immigration Appeals.

More AILA resources on the immigration courts can be found at: https://www.aila.org/immigrationcourts.

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 20070696.

CONTACTS:
George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org	Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org

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

As a friend and former colleague said recently “I would have thought that the one thing everyone could get behind, regardless of political philosophy, would be a neutral court system.” Sadly, not so in today’s crumbling America.

There are three groups blocking the way:

The Trump Administration, where due process only applies to Trump and his corrupt cronies;
GOP legislators whose acquittal of Trump against the overwhelming weight of the evidence shows exactly what due process means to them;
Five GOP-appointed Justices on the Supremes who don’t believe that due process applies to all persons in the US, notwithstanding the “plain language” of Article 5 of our Constitution — particularly if those persons have the misfortune to be asylum seekers of color.

The end result is “Dred Scottification” — that is, dehumanization or “de-personification” of “the other.” The GOP has made it a centerpiece of their failed attempt to govern, from voter suppression, to looting the Treasury for the benefit of the rich and powerful, to immunity for law enforcement officers who kill minorities, to greenlighting cruel, inhuman,and counterproductive treatment of lawful asylum seekers and immigrants. Not surprisingly, this essentially “Whites Only” view of social justice is ripping our nation apart on many levels.

I find it highly ironic that at the same time we are rightfully removing statutes of Chief Justice Roger Taney, a racist who authored the infamous Dred Scott Decision, Chief Justice Roberts and four of his colleagues continue to “Dred Scottify” asylum seekers and other immigrants, primarily those of color, by denying them the due process, fundamental fairness, fair and impartial judges, and, perhaps most of all, racist-free policies that our Constitution demands!

Compare the “due process” afforded Trump by the GOP Senate and the pardon of a convicted civil and human rights abuser like “Racist Sheriff Joe” with the ugly and dishonest parody of due process afforded Sister Norma’s lawful asylum seekers whose “crime” was seeking fair treatment, justice, and an acknowledgement of their humanity from a nation that has turned it’s back on those values.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/07/06/%f0%9f%98%8e%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8fgood-news-9th-cir-deals-another-blow-to-stephen-millers-illegal-white-nationalist-war-on-asylum-now-will-the-supremes-majority-stan/

What Sister Norma’s article did not mention is that those who survive in Mexico long enough to get to “court” have their asylum claims denied at a rate of about 99% by an unfair system intentionally skewed and biased against them. Most experts believe that many, probably a majority, of those being denied actually merit protection under a fair and impartial application of our laws.

But, as pointed out by AILA, that’s not why Billy the Bigot has appointed prosecutors as top “judges” and notorious asylum deniers as “appellate judges.” He intends to perpetuate a highly unfair “deportation railroad” designed by infamous White Nationalist racist Stephen Miller. In other words, our justice system is being weaponized in support of an overtly racist agenda formulated by a racist regime that has made racism the centerpiece of its pitch for remaining in office. Incredible! Yet true!

The Supremes have life tenure. But, the other two branches of our failing Government don’t. And, a better Executive and a better Legislature that believe in our Constitution and equal justice for all is a necessary start on a better Federal Judiciary — one where commitment to due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all is a threshold requirement for future judicial appointments. Time to throw the “non-believers” and their enablers out of office.

This November, vote like your life and our country’s existence depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-07-20

😎🗽⚖️GOOD NEWS: 9th Cir. Deals Another Blow To Stephen Miller’s Illegal White Nationalist War On Asylum! Now, Will The Supremes’ Majority Stand For Equal Justice Under Law, Or Will They Again Side With A Racist Regime & Its “Crimes Against Humanity?”🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-upholds-injunction-against-asylum-rule

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Immigration Law

Daniel M. Kowalski

6 Jul 2020

asylum

CA9 Upholds Injunction Against Asylum Rule

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr

“On July 16, 2019, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security published a joint interim final Rule without notice and comment, entitled “Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications” (the “Rule”). With limited exceptions, the Rule categorically denies asylum to aliens arriving at our border with Mexico unless they have first applied for, and have been denied, asylum in Mexico or another country through which they have traveled. We describe the Rule in detail below. Plaintiffs are nonprofit organizations that represent asylum seekers. They brought suit in district court seeking an injunction against enforcement of the Rule, contending that the Rule is invalid on three grounds: first, the Rule is not “consistent with” Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158; second, the Rule is arbitrary and capricious; third, the Rule was adopted without notice and comment. The district court found that plaintiffs had a likelihood of success on all three grounds and entered a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Rule, with effect in the four states on our border with Mexico. We hold that plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the first and second grounds. We do not reach the third ground. We affirm.”

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

This isn’t rocket science. Neither the legal nor moral issues are particularly difficult in this case. Indeed, the Supremes should unanimously have tossed Solicitor General Noel Francisco out on his tail the last time he unethically requested their intervention. Instead, they rewarded him, thus enabling and encouraging further “crimes against humanity.”

Unfortunately, this Supremes’ majority has had a hard time seeing people of color, and particularly those seeking asylum and other legal protections under our laws, as human. Even though the lower Federal Courts have essentially made things easy by showing exactly why these racist-inspired policies are illegal, a Supremes majority has chosen to advance Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist agenda, sometimes hiding behind a smokescreen of nonsensical legal gobbledygook, while other times choosing to act without bothering to provide any rationale at all.

One thing is for certain. Someday, after the fall of Trump, and the banishment of Miller, the Justices who advanced their unconstitutional, illegal, racist immigration agenda will try to “save their legacies” by putting some distance between themselves and the neo-Nazi ramifications of their votes. It’s critically important for those of us who see exactly what’s happening to insure that the names of justices and judges who sided with Stephen Miller are inextricably linked for the rest of time with his disgraceful racist legacy of “crimes against humanity.”

There is only one side of history here! And, it’s certainly not with Stephen Miller and his enablers, be they judges, legislators, public officials, or voters.

Read today’s op-ed by Sister Norma Pimentel, of the Missionaries of Jesus, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Tex whose courage and dedication to human rights and the rule of law puts complicit judges to shame. Sister Pimentel lives and observes every day the grotesque, unforgivable “crimes against humanity” and disparagement of the human dignity of asylum seekers effected by Miller’s judicially-enabled campaign of hate, dehumanization, and abuse of power. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/covid-19-has-come-to-our-migrant-camp-it-makes-ending-the-mpp-policy-even-more-urgent/2020/07/03/455cacf8-bd41-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

She writes, in part:

Meanwhile, the pandemic has made it more difficult to care for those who are arriving at the border each day. Since that lone covid-19 case was identified, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute has not allowed the camps to accept any new arrivals. So refugees are being turned away and have no place to go. Some are being placed in hotels or churches, and volunteers are desperately looking for other options.

Within the camp, we have had to limit the volunteers’ activities — there are 10 to 20 volunteers allowed to enter and help provide the people with food, water and basic health care. We have set up areas for washing hands, and try to provide hope and reassurance amid the uncertainty. All this makes it even harder to keep the camps safe from the cartels and gangsters who continue to prey on these largely defenseless asylum seekers.

That young woman who tested positive for the coronavirus has been transferred to a covid-19 center operated by Doctors Without Borders. We pray for her recovery, and we pray for all the families’ safety, for their protection and for a resolution to their untenable situation.

While I know many people in many places are dealing with so much, I urge you not to look away from the border in this moment. Do not ignore the suffering occurring here. It is time that we put an end to it, and to end the MPP policy. Until that happens, we will continue to help those who are defenseless, whose only real “crime” is trying to seek protection for themselves and their families.

In addition to highlighting inhumanity, Sister Pimentel shows the gross intellectual fraud and immorality in the Trump Regime’s bogus claim that asylum seekers present a significant threat of spreading COVID-19. If anything, it’s the exact opposite which is most often the case with the Trump regime’s endless racist false narratives and fake “horror stories” about immigration.

It also exposes yet again both the intellectual dishonesty and immorality of those who present “pretextual justifications” for illegal acts being perpetrated by our Government against the most vulnerable and the spineless performance of judges who claim to accept at face value that which any reasonable person knows to be a pretext for racism and inhumanity.

The intent behind these bogus regulation changes and programs like the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (or, more properly, “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”) is very clear: dehumanize “the other” – in this case primarily brown skinned asylum seekers. But, in the process of letting this happen and tolerating legislators and judges without the decency to stand up for the rights of our fellow humans, WE are the ones who actually are dehumanized. We’re not allowed to look away from the horrors being perpetrated by the Trump regime in our name!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-20

JULY 4, 2020: Colbert I. King @ WashPost With a “Declaration of Independence” For Our Time! 🗽👍🏼⚖️💥 — DUMP TRUMP! ☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-declaration-this-independence-day-should-be-liberation-from-trump/2020/07/03/bfa53998-bc98-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

. . . .

Yes, the Fourth of July is a date to honor. But this year, it is also a day of sorrow for where we now find ourselves.

The United States of America, created in 1776 by men who put love of country over their own private interests — who staked their lives, fortunes and their sacred honor on the cause of their new nation — is now in the grasp of a man whose entire life has been spent taking, while giving nothing in return.

Trump’s successes are displayed in shrines across the country and around the world emblazoned with his name — Trump towers, Trump plazas, Trump golf courses, Trump casinos, and Trump streets and roads. Trump’s love is limited to his private interests. He stakes his life and fortune only on the cause of Trump.

To further sully the celebration of the most pivotal day in U.S. history, the White House is in the grasp of a president who thinks the United States’ heritage is exemplified by the legacy of the Confederate flag and the traitorous generals who fought under that symbol of white supremacy.

Trump’s meltdown over the attempted takedown of the slaveholding Andrew Jackson’s statue in Lafayette Square is, for instance, of a kind with his cherishing of monuments of the War of Southern Aggression, which started when the Confederacy fired on the American flag at Fort Sumter.

Douglass would be revolted by Trump’s infatuation with a history in which generations of blacks were robbed of their liberty and forced to show obedience to the master. As outraged as I am now.

Trump’s warm embrace of white nationalism on Independence Day 2020 makes a mockery of the concepts of justice and liberty entrusted to the nation in the Declaration.

Gwen and I celebrated our 59th wedding anniversary on July 3. The first four Fourth of Julys of our marriage were spent as citizens of a country with a large swath of areas that had hotels, restaurants and places of entertainment that we were not allowed to enter because we were black. Two of those years I spent proudly wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army commissioned officer.

Try living with that.

Today, we have the bodies of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery — with a preening, coldblooded bully ensconced in the Oval Office.

Whose Fourth of July is this?

The Founders discovered themselves faced with an oppressive Crown.

Separation from the Crown was right.

So, too, will be America’s liberation from Donald Trump.

That should be our declaration on this Independence Day.

**********

Read the rest of Colby’s statement at the link.

RESOLVE: To take back our nation from the White Nationalist racist kakistocracy of hate and malicious incompetence that has assumed power as our democratic institutions have failed their “stress test” and plunged us into a daily exhibition of “crimes against humanity.”

This November, vote like your life and the future of America depend on it. Because they do!

PWS🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼💥😎

07-04-20

🇺🇸😎⚖️🗽👍🏼LAW YOU CAN USE: Michelle Mendez and CLINIC Publish A New Practice Advisory on Opening & Closing Statements in Immigration Court

https://cliniclegal.org/resources/litigation/practice-advisory-opening-statements-and-closing-arguments-immigration-court

Practice Advisory: Opening Statements and Closing Arguments in Immigration Court

Last UpdatedJuly 2, 2020

Topics Litigation Removal Proceedings Appeals

Opening statements and closing arguments can win cases for clients, if the practitioner is able to deliver a performance that is both concise and compelling. This practice advisory offers guidance and tips that will help practitioners deliver concise and compelling opening statements and closing arguments in immigration court.

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

Read more and download this wonderful resource at the link.

Michelle and her team @ CLINIC promise more “great stuff” next week.

Going in Opposite Directions: Ironically, as the Trump DOJ has worked overtime to “dumb down” EOIR, Michelle and many others in the Immigration & Human Rights communities, particularly AILA, other NGOs, Clinical Professors, and pro bono counsel at “Big Law,” have been working even harder to promote “best immigration and legal practices” before all tribunals. And, despite the Supreme’s “willful blindness” to the Constitution, the rule of law, and human dignity as it applies to asylum seekers and migrants, the results are showing elsewhere in the justice system.

It also points to the obvious unconscionably overlooked untapped source for better Federal Judges in the future, from the Supremes to the Immigration Courts: the pro bono and clinical immigration and human rights bars — actually the main fount of courageous opposition to the regime’s concerted attack on our Constitution, our justice system, and our humanity.

If these folks and others like them were on the Supremes, American justice wouldn’t be in shambles and equal justice justice for all under our Constitution would actually be enforced, rather than degraded or intentionally skirted with legal gobbledygook. The lack of both legal and moral leadership from our highest Court in the face of a clearly out of control and unqualified White Nationalist Executive and his toadies is simply astounding, not to mention discouraging.

It’s little wonder that the tensions caused in no small measure by the Court’s systemic failure to stand up for voting rights, civil rights, the rights of other persons of color in the U.S., and to hold abusers at all levels accountable, is now overflowing into the streets. No, an occasional vote for a correct result from Roberts or another member of “The Five” is not going to solve the problem of Constitutional, racial, and moral dereliction of duty by our highest Court.

Almost every day, “real” Article III Lower Courts “out” some aspect of the outrageously biased and unprofessional performance of EOIR and the rest of Trump’s immigration kakistocracy before the courts. Even some GOP and Trump appointed Article III Judges have “had enough” and don’t want their professional reputations and consciences sullied by association with the regime’s unlawful White Nationalist agenda.

Unfortunately, however, the Federal Courts generally have failed to follow through by sanctioning the often unethical and dishonest performance of the regime in court and by shutting down EOIR’s unconstitutional “kangaroo courts,” DHS’s equally unconstitutional “New American Gulag,” and the fraudulent operation of bogus “Safe Third County Agreements,” “Remain in Mexico,” and patiently disingenuous ridiculously overbroad COVID-19 “immigration bars” (which are actually thin cover for Stephen Miller’s preconceived White Nationalist nativist agenda). Moreover, lower Federal Court Judges who courageously stand up against the regime’s unconstitutional agenda and program of “dehumanization” are too often improperly undermined by the Supremes (sometimes without explanations or “short circuiting” the system), thereby “greenlighting” further “crimes against humanity” by an unscrupulous and unethical Executive.

We’re making a permanent record of both the “crimes against humanity” committed by the regime and those public officials, be they so-called “public servants,” feckless legislators, or life-tenured judges who have actively aided, abetted, been complicit, or “gone along to get along” with Trump’s countless lies and abuses. Later judicial “corrections” by a better Court or legislative “fixes” by a real Congress will not reclaim the lives of those shot on the streets by police, infected with COVID-19 in the Gulag, kidnapped and abused by gangs in Mexico while waiting for fake hearings, or “rocketed” back to persecution and torture in the Northern Triangle and elsewhere in violation of U.S. and international laws without any meaningful process at all. Nor will they wipe out the abuses by governments at all levels elected without the full participation of American citizens of color and in poverty whose votes were purposely suppressed or political authority diminished by corrupt GOP pols and their Supreme enablers.

As we can see by the long-overdue historical reckoning coming to Confederates and other racists who actively worked to undermine our Constitution, block equal justice for all, and dehumanize other humans in America, there will be an eventual historical reckoning here, and justice ultimately will be served, even if not in our lifetimes. That’s bad news for Roberts, his right-wing colleagues, and a host of others who have willfully enabled the worst, most abusive, and most clearly lawless presidency in U.S. History, as well as the most overtly racist regime since Woodrow Wilson.

Due Process Forever!

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

JOIN THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY (“NDPA”) & BE PART OF THE SOLUTION TO UNEQUAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA!

PWS

07-03-20

🗽👍🏼😎EXCITING NEWS FOR AMERICA, JUST IN TIME FOR JULY 4! — No, My Fellow Americans, It’s Not An Invitation To Attend Another Idiotic Disease-Spreading & Disaster-Risking Trump Fireworks Event! — It’s A Brand New “Tempest Tossed Podcast Series” Called “Entry Denied, Immigration Policies In The Time of Trump,” Featuring My Friend, Uber Immigration Guru, Former U.N. Deputy High Commissioner For Refugees, Former “Legacy INS” Senior Executive, Former Georgetown Law Dean, Famous Textbook Author, All-Around Gentleman & Scholar, Now A Professor & Director @ The New School, The One, The Only, The Amazing: T. ALEXANDER ALEINIKOFF💥🎆🎇🗽🏅⭐️ & A CAST OF THOUSANDS, INCLUDING NPR’S DEB AMOS, & NY TIMES SUPERSTAR REPORTERS MICHAEL SHEAR AND JULIE HIRSHFELD DAVIS — Get It From Your Favorite Podcast Platform!

T. Alexander Aleinikoff
American Legal Scholar

Deb Amos
International Correspondent
NPR

Julie Hirshfeld Davis
Congressional Reporter
NY Times

Michael D. Shear
White House Reporter
NY Times

From: Alex Aleinikoff
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 1:58 PM
To: Immprof
Subject: [immprof] Entry Denied on the Tempest Tossed podcast

Please excuse this shameless self-promotion. We launched today the first of an 8-episode series on the Tempest Tossed podcast on Trump immigration policies. The series is called Entry Denied: Immigration policies in the time of Trump. In this first episode, Deb Amos (NPR) and I speak with NY Times reporters Michael Shear and Julie Hirshfeld Davis on how immigration became central to the Trump campaign. There will be a new episode each of the next 7 Tuesdays (on asylum, the wall, DACA, etc).

It is available on most podcast platforms (Apple, SoundCloud, Spotify)–search for Tempest Tossed.

Alex

—

University Professor

Director, Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility

The New School

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

I trust that at some point Alex will get around to telling everyone about the time back in the Carter Administration when we were on the verge of making then Associate Attorney General John H. Shenefield an official “Immigration Officer” to serve process on the tarmac @ JFK International. Or how with a little help from our late friend Jerry Tinker, Alex, David Martin, and I “perfected” the Refugee Act of 1980 just in time for the Cuban Boatlift. Whose idea was “Cuban/Haitian Entrant Status Pending” anyway? How come you never had to visit the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary during a lockdown, Alex?

Sounds like a most timely and fascinating series involving one of the all time great modern legal minds.

Thanks and best wishes to all involved in this historic enterprise! 🍾🥂🍻

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-02-20

FELIPE DE LA HOZ @ THE NATION: “The Shadow Court Cementing Trump’s Immigration Policy” — “It’s not a court anymore, it’s an enforcement mechanism,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, who was himself chair of the BIA between 1995 and 2001 and now writes a popular immigration blog called Immigration Courtside. “They’re taking predetermined policy and just disguising it as judicial opinions, when the results have all been predetermined and it has nothing to do or little to do with the merits of the cases.”

🏴‍☠️⚰️☠️👎

https://www.thenation.com/authors/felipe-de-la-hoz/

Just eight miles from the White House, the Trump administration has quietly opened a new front in its war against immigrants. Inside a 26-story office tower next to a Target in Falls Church, Virginia, the Board of Immigration Appeals has broken with any pretense of impartiality and appears to be working in lockstep with the administration to close the door on immigrants’ ability to remain in the country.

Created in 1940, when the immigration system was moved from the Department of Labor to the Justice Department, BIA serves as the appellate court within the immigration system, where both ICE prosecutors and noncitizen respondents can appeal decisions by individual immigration court judges around the country. It not only decides the fate of the migrants whose cases it reviews; if it chooses to publish a decision, it sets precedent for immigration courts across the country.

Under previous administrations, the BIA was ostensibly impartial and bipartisan, though mainly out of a long-standing tradition of promoting judicial objectivity. Since the entire immigration court system is contained in the Department of Justice—within an administrative agency known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—immigration judges, including those serving as board members on the BIA, are employees of the DOJ, and, by extension, are part of the executive branch. Unlike their counterparts in the federal judiciary, immigration judges are not independent.

TOP ARTICLES2/5READ MOREPence Masks Up While Trump Keeps Dog-Whistling

Since 2018, the Trump administration has exploited its powers over the BIA by expanding the board from 17 to 23 members to accommodate additional anti-immigrant hardliners. Justice Department memos obtained by the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) show that EOIR pushed shorter hiring timelines, which were used to bring on judges with more restrictionist records.

Now the court is stacked with members who have consistently ruled against immigrants, such as one judge who threatened to unleash a dog on a two-year-old boy during a hearing. Numbers obtained by a law firm through a Freedom of Information Request show that the six BIA judges appointed by Attorney General William Barr all had granted asylum in less than 10 percent of cases in fiscal year 2019. (One never granted asylum, despite hearing 40 cases.) An EOIR spokesperson told The Nation in an e-mail that“EOIR does not choose Board members based on prohibited criteria such as race or politics” and that “Board members are selected through an open, competitive, merit-based process.”

The most notable example of the administration’s preference for ultraconservative judges came in late May, when Barr appointed David H. Wetmore as BIA chairman. Wetmore, a former immigration adviser to the White House Domestic Policy Council, was around for some of the Trump administration’s most egregious policies, including the travel ban and family separation policy.

Although only two decisions have been issued since Wetmore was appointed chair, he seems set to pick up where his predecessor, former Acting Chair Garry G. Malphrus, left off. Malphrus, a George W. Bush holdover, became the face of the court’s lurch to curtail immigrants’ legal protections since Trump took office. He had the hawkish bona fides that made him an ideal chairman under the Trump DOJ: From 1997 to 2001, he served as chief counsel to one-time segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was made associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council after his roleas a Brooks Brothers rioter during the 2000 Bush v. Gore recount in Florida—during which GOP operatives staged a protest that disrupted a recount and may have handed Bush the presidency.

Malphrus was made acting chair in 2019, and authored 24 of the 78 BIA precedential decisions issued under the current administration. Almost all of these precedential decisions have made it more difficult for immigrants to win their cases. The board made it harder for victims of terrorism to win asylum and raised the bar of evidence needed for several types of protections.

“It’s not a court anymore, it’s an enforcement mechanism,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, who was himself chair of the BIA between 1995 and 2001 and now writes a popular immigration blog called Immigration Courtside. “They’re taking predetermined policy and just disguising it as judicial opinions, when the results have all been predetermined and it has nothing to do or little to do with the merits of the cases.”

Consider this: In a case decided in January, the BIA was considering whether an immigration judge had erred in refusing to postpone a removal decision for a person awaiting a decision on a U visa application—a visa type reserved for victims of certain crimes or those cooperating with authorities investigating a crime—to be resolved. (ICE had recently changed their policies to make it easier to deport people in this situation.) The BIA sided with the judge, acknowledging that the crime victim was “eligible for a U visa” but was not entitled to wait to receive it, in part due to his “lack of diligence in pursuing” one. The decision signals that immigrants eligible for crime victim visas, and who are willing to cooperate with law enforcement, can still be ordered deported.

While federal courts hear public oral arguments and largely deliberate openly, the BIA typically uses a paper review method, which means they receive briefs from opposing parties and hand down a decision some time later with the whole intervening process shrouded in secrecy. “Unlike federal courts, where unpublished decisions are still accessible by the public, and so you can track what judges are saying in decisions that do not make precedent, the [BIA] only sporadically releases those decisions,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

. . . .

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

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

Filipe’s final point in the article is one we should all keep in mind:

For hundreds of thousands of immigrants, it doesn’t matter if the anti-immigrant paper pushers in this obscure administrative body are tossed out and all of the policy is slowly reversed by another administration; for most, one shot is all they get. Whether a case was winnable before or even after the Trump BIA is irrelevant. The chance to stay in the United States will be lost forever.

The damage to our humanity and our national conscience inflicted by Trump’s White Nationalist regime, wrongfully enabled by complicit Supremes, and aided and abetted by a GOP Senate will not be “cured” by inevitable later “reforms,” be they next year under a better Administration or decades from now, as is happening with other racial justice issues. Undoubtedly, as eventually will be established, the current anti-immigrant and particularly the anti-asylum policies of the Trump regime are deeply rooted in racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. One need only look at the well-documented careers of “hate architects” like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Jeff Sessions to see the intentional ignorance and ugliness at work here.

I frankly don’t see how we as a nation ever can come to grips with the racial tensions and demands for equal justice now tearing at our society without recognizing the unconscionable racism and immorality driving our current immigration and refugee policies and the failure and untenability of too many leaders in all three branches who have either helped promote racial injustice or have lacked the moral and intellectual courage consistently to stand up against it. They are the problem, and their departure or disempowerment, no matter how long it takes, will be necessary for us eventually to move forward as one nation.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-30–20

🏴‍☠️☠️NO, IT’S NOT “JUST ENFORCING THE LAW” AS ALBENCE & THE DHS FALSELY CLAIM — THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL, STUPID, WASTEFUL, IMMORAL, & ENTIRELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE DEPORTATION POLICIES ARE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — We All Are Demeaned & Reduced As Human Beings By Allowing Trump’s DHS & His DOJ to Get Away With This!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/22/the-true-costs-of-deportation

Julia Preston reports for The Marshall Project:

The True Costs of Deportation
When immigrant parents of American children are expelled, the lives of their loved ones can fall apart. Here are the stories of three families who faced financial ruin, mental health crises—and even death.
By JULIA PRESTON

Before her husband was deported, Seleste Hernandez was paying taxes and credit card bills. She was earning her way and liking it.
But after her husband, Pedro, was forced to return to Mexico, her family lost his income from a job at a commercial greenhouse. Seleste had to quit her nursing aide position, staying home to care for her severely disabled son. Now she is trapped, grieving for a faraway spouse and relying on public assistance just to scrape by.
She went, in her eyes, from paying taxes to depending on taxpayers. “I’m back to feeling worthless,” she says.
This story was published in partnership with The Guardian.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of American families are coping with anguish compounded by steep financial decline after a spouse’s or parent’s deportation, a more enduring form of family separation than President Trump’s policy that took children from parents at the border.
Trump has broadened the targets of deportation to include many immigrants with no serious criminal records. While the benefits to communities from these removals are unclear, the costs—to devastated American families and to the public purse—are coming into focus. The hardships for the families have only deepened with the economic strains of the coronavirus.
A new Marshall Project analysis with the Center for Migration Studies found that just under 6.1 million American citizen children live in households with at least one undocumented family member vulnerable to deportation—and household incomes drop by nearly half after deportation.
About 331,900 American children have a parent who has legal protection under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that shields immigrants who came here as children. After the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Trump’s cancellation of the DACA program was unlawful, those families still have protection from deportation. But the court’s decision allows the president to try to cancel the program again. The debate cast light on the larger population of 10.7 million undocumented immigrants who have made lives in the country, raising pressure on Congress to open a path to permanent legal status for all of them.
We examined the impact of the wrenching losses after deportation and the potential costs to American taxpayers of expelling immigrants who are parents or spouses of citizens.
After an immigrant breadwinner is gone, many families that once were self-sufficient must rely on social welfare programs to survive. With the trauma of a banished parent, some children fail in schools or require expensive medical and mental health care. As family savings are depleted, American children struggle financially to stay in school or attend college.
Three families in northeastern Ohio, a region where Trump’s deportations have taken a heavy toll, show the high price of these expulsions.

. . . .

****************
Read the rest of Julia’s article at the link.

This isn’t the first time in American history that invidious racially-motivated enforcement of bad laws has been used to dehumanize or abuse “the other” while hiding behind transparently fake law enforcement pretexts. Poll taxes anyone?

A straightforward reading of our Constitution says that removing parents of U.S. citizens and breadwinners of American families without compelling reasons for doing so (lacking in these cases) is unreasonable and therefore a violation of Due Process. It’s time to stop doing the immoral and unconstitutional! And it’s past time to insure that public officials like Albence who promote and defend these assaults on humanity are removed from power.

The current institutions of Government have initiated, carried out, or failed to stop these illegal actions. Disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, considering that the nation, by minority vote, enabled a scofflaw White Nationalist regime in 2016.

But, voters still have the political power to oust the abusers of humanity and purveyors of racially-motivated lies and false narratives, and to insist on long-overdue changes to the system to make due process (reasonability), fundamental fairness, and equality under the law a reality for the first time in U.S. history, rather than continuing to be the Constitution’s intentionally unfulfilled promises.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-20

This November, vote like your life and John Lewis’s legacy depend on it! Because they do!

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

JOIN THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY (“NDPA”) & BE PART OF THE SOLUTION TO UNEQUAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA!

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🏴‍☠️⚰️☠️👎

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