"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Honorable Joan Churchill Retired U.S. Immigration Judge Member Round Table of Retired JudgesHon. Paul Grussendorf U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.) Member, Round Table of Former IJs Author Source: Amazon.comHon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
American Bar Association International Law Section
Program Spotlight: Refugees and Asylum in the U.S.
&
Review of Domestic Interpretations at Odds with International Guidance
This program will review the differences between the Refugee and Asylum processes (which includes Withholding of Removal) in order to provide clarity to new practitioners about the stark contrasts between the two U.S. refugee programs and to inform on international law compliance.
Topic 1: Contrast and compare Refugees and Asylum law and process, and
Topic 2: Compare U.S. domestic interpretations of the legal criteria of Refugees and Asylum seekers with international law and policy.
Moderator and Chair: Joan Churchill (Former Immigration Judge)
Paul Grussendorf has worked with both the refugee and asylum programs in the United States and abroad. He headed a law school legal clinic at the The George Washington University Law School representing asylum seekers, served as an Immigration Judge handling asylum cases, worked as a Supervisory Asylum Officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services [CIS], as a refugee officer with Refugee Affairs Division of USCIS, and as a refugee officer and supervisor with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
Topic 2: The Hon. Jeffrey Chase
Jeffrey Chase is a retired Immigration judge for New York City. He has written extensively about the inter relationship of international law sources with the U.S. national law when administering cases involving asylum and refugee applications.
He has a blog entitled Opinions/Analysis on Immigration Law. He coordinates The Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges, an informal group of Retired Immigration Judges from both the trial and appellate level, who weigh in on topics relating to the administration of justice by the Immigration Court. The Round Table files amici briefs, and has issued position papers and testimony on issues affecting due process and the administration of justice by the Immigration Courts.
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Many thanks to my round table friends and colleagues for putting this fantastic free program together and to the ABA International Law Section for sponsoring it!
In 1980, Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 to bring the U.S. into compliance with the U.N. Convention & Protocol on The Status of Refugees, to which we are a signatory through the Protocol.
After some steady progress over the first two decades, today, as a result of actions taken by the last four Administrations since 2001, we are further away than ever from the goal of compliance. Bungling bureaucrats at DHS and DOJ wrongfully view large numbers of refugees and asylees as a “threat” to be “deterred,” rather than as the legal obligation and undeniable assets to our nation that they in truth are.
They fail miserably to fix systemic problems, to properly welcome refugees and asylees, and to adjudicate their claims in a fair and timely manner consistent with due process and racial justice. With stunning tone deafness, they eschew the advice of experts like Judges Churchill, Grussendorf, and Chase in favor of cruel, inept, and “bad faith” gimmicks, like gross misuse of Title 42 to suspend the asylum system indefinitely without Congressional approval.
One only has to look at the evening news to see firsthand what a horrible failure these “Stephen Miller Lite” policies have been and how they ruin lives and trash the reputation of our nation. The failure of the Biden Administration to make good on its campaign promises to migrants and refugees is nothing short of a national disgrace!
The first step in holding Mayorkas, Garland, and the others responsible for this ongoing mess accountable and restoring the rule of law is to understand how the system should and could work.
Then, you will have the tools to sue the hell out of the irresponsible public officials and their bumbling bureaucrats, lobby Congress for better protections for asylum seekers, and generate outraged public opinion until the rule of law, common sense, and human decency are restored to our land! And, we can save some lives that are well worth saving in the process!
Knowledge is power! The Biden Administration’s knowledge of how to implement an efficient, practical, legal, successful asylum system would fit in a thimble with room left over! Get the “upper hand” by listening to these Round Experts!
S.F. Immigration Court fast-tracking cases in what critics say call a deportation conveyor belt
By Tal Kopan and Deepa Fernandes
A San Francisco immigration judge took less than an hour on Tuesday to order 23 people deported. But none of the immigrants was present and it’s unclear whether they knew about the hearing — even as they were deported for missing it.
The proceedings are part of a recently enacted effort the San Francisco Immigration Court says it’s undertaking to find immigrants it loses track of. Instead, advocates say the court has set up a deportation conveyor belt, one that fast-tracks removal orders before immigrants can make their case to stay in the country.
The practice appears to have started this summer, when immigration attorneys became aware of a subset of hearings being scheduled for immigrants whose mail was being returned as undeliverable. The court was notifying immigrants of the hearings by sending mail to the same incorrect addresses, practically ensuring few would show up.
In immigration law, not showing up at a hearing is enough to be ordered deported on the spot, in what’s known as an “in absentia” order of removal.
According to court data reviewed by The Chronicle, as many as 173 people were given deportation orders because of such proceedings in August and September — a nearly ninefold increase from the 20 similar orders given the previous seven months combined.
ACLU of Northern California attorney Sean Riordan, who has been tracking the issue, compared the situation to a criminal proceeding where, if a defendant didn’t show up for a routine step, the judge declared them guilty with limited ability to challenge the verdict. What’s more, he said, the court scheduled the proceeding expecting the defendant not to show.
“Our society would not tolerate that, it’s just grossly unfair, and we shouldn’t tolerate something similar happening in the immigration courts,” Riordan said. “It’s especially problematic that the San Francisco Immigration Court is spending significant time and resources to obtain so many removal orders through a special docket in cases where they know people will not be able to appear for their hearings.”
At this time, the effort appears limited to the San Francisco court, one of 70 such venues nationwide that hear immigrants’ cases. But advocates fear other courts may see how many cases the San Francisco bench has closed through in-absentia orders and follow suit, saddling scores of immigrants with unknown deportation orders. The immigration court system is run entirely by the Department of Justice, which also employs the judges.
The (completely unnecessary and self-inflicted) “EOIR Travesty” continues! There are many, many ways that Garland could reduce his Immigration Court backlog (most covered by Courtside or elsewhere online) without stomping on any individual rights! But, this utter nonsense doesn’t happen to be one of them!
As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Immigration Court practice knows, DHS and EOIR are notorious for issuing defective notices and then creating illegal “in absentia” orders. The issue of bad notices has actually been to the Supremes twice recently, with the USG losing badly both times, and the possibility of yet a third trip on the horizon.
Yet, several overt rebukes from the Supremes about “unnecessary corner cutting” have engendered no fundamental changes in the notice system at either agency! Garland & Co. seem just as wedded to anti-due-process, wasteful “mondo enforcement gimmicks” at EOIR as Stephen Miller, “Gonzo” Sessions, and “Billy the Bigot” Barr!🤮
So much for the “racial justice agenda” at DOJ and the reputations of DAG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, and AAG/Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who have all “looked the other way” while their “boss” Garland continues to promote White Nationalist, anti-immigrant, resource wasting policies at EOIR.☠️
Then, incompetent, tone-deaf Dem politicos wonder why support among their “loyal progressive base” is fading fast? Progressives should “remember the EOIR disaster” and total lack of concern for those “fighting the good fight” in Garland’s disgracefully dysfunctional courts when any of Garland’s complicit lieutenants come up for future Article III judicial appointments!
Conduct like Garland’s at EOIR is a direct result of progressives allowing themselves to be “pushed around and disrespected” by a “Democratic Party Establishment” that gives not a hoot for immigrant justice, racial justice, or fair treatment of asylum seekers except when it’s time to solicit contributions or get out the vote! Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have taken a “leave of absence” on what was supposed to be one of her “signature issues!”
Garland’s “in your face tone-deafness” also contains a very clear message that progressive advocates aren’t “getting!” It’s going to take a “radical break from the past” to achieve any meaningful immigration reform at DOJ!
“[W]ithout having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse!” Creative Commons License“Do you still want to talk to a lawyer, or are you ready to take a final order?” “Justice” Star Chamber StyleEmma Winger Staff Attorney American Immigration Council PHOTO: Immigration Impact
“Ben G.” is a 35-year-old veterinarian from Nicaragua who fled to the United States after he was beaten and tortured by police. When he crossed the border into the United States, he requested asylum. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) eventually transferred Ben to the Winn County Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility in rural Louisiana located four hours away from the nearest metropolitan area. It is also the facility with the fewest immigration attorneys available in the entire country.
Despite passing the government’s initial screening and having a credible fear of persecution, Ben was still unable to find a lawyer. As a fellow detained person noted, “without having knowledge, we’ll go directly to the slaughterhouse.”
Ben’s story illustrates the monumental barriers that detained immigrants face in finding lawyers to represent them. As described in a letter sent October 29 by the American Immigration Council, the ACLU, and 88 legal service provider organizations to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ICE detention facilities have systematically restricted the most basic modes of communication that detained people need to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email access.
This must change. The immigration detention system is inherently flawed, unjust, and unnecessary. The best way to eliminate these barriers to justice is to release people from detention.
Although immigrants have the right to be represented by lawyers in immigration proceedings, they must pay for their own lawyers or find free counsel, unlike people in criminal custody who have the right to government-appointed counsel. In many cases, detained immigrants cannot find lawyers because ICE facilities make it so difficult to even get in touch and communicate with attorneys in the first place.
The importance of legal representation for people in immigration proceedings cannot be overstated. Detained people with counsel are 10 times more likely to win their immigration cases than those without representation. Yet the vast majority of detained people — over 70% — faced immigration courts without a lawyer this year.
ICE has set the stage for this problem by locating most immigration detention facilities far from cities where lawyers are accessible. Each year, ICE locks up hundreds of thousands of people in a network of over 200 county jails, private prisons, and other carceral facilities, most often in geographically isolated locations, far from immigration attorneys.
Even when attorneys are available and willing to represent detained people, ICE detention facilities make it prohibitively difficult for lawyers to communicate with their detained clients, refusing to make even the most basic of accommodations. For example, many ICE facilities routinely refuse to allow attorneys to schedule calls with their clients.
As described in the letter, the El Paso Immigration Collaborative reported that staff at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico have told their lawyers that they simply don’t have the capacity to schedule calls in a timely manner, delaying requests for more than one week or more.
The University of Texas Law School’s Immigration Law Clinic attempted to schedule a video teleconferencing call with a client at the South Texas ICE Processing Center. An employee of the GEO Group, Inc., which runs the facility, told them that no calls were available for two weeks.
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A “Jim Crow Mentality” of never being held accountable for abuses of law or human morality permeates the politicos, legislators, and Federal Judges of both parties responsible for enabling and upholding this toxic system.
Nowhere is this more obvious than at the DOJ Civil Rights Division. While pontificating on racially abusive local police policies and actions, these folks go to great lengths to overlook the DOJ-run “Star Chamber Courts” embedded in DHS’s “New American Gulag” that disproportionally harm persons of color and deny them basic legal, civil, and human rights every day.
This system is thoroughly rotten! Yet, Garland’s DOJ “defends the indefensible” in Federal Court almost every day.
The BIA’s blunders in trying to help out their “partners” @ DHS Enforcement can sometimes seem almost comical. But, they are no laughing matter to those facing persecution or torture as a result! Why is Garland indifferent to life-threatening injustice in his courts? Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Given the strength and rigor of the IJ’s underlying opinion, along with the BIA having exceeded its proper scope of review, we will vacate the BIA’s final order of removal and remand with instructions to reinstate the IJ’s opinion.
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There is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurdly horrible. This latest BIA travesty falls in the latter category.
Not surprisingly, the Circuit opinion quotes liberally from the BIA’s insipid, mealy-mouthed “bureaucratic double-speak” language! To paraphrase my BIA colleague the late Judge Fred Vacca, thank goodness the 3rd Circuit finally put an end to this “pathetic attempt at appellate adjudication.”
Interesting that rather than remanding to give the BIA a chance to deny again on some newly invented specious basis, the court just reinstated the IJ opinion. There should be a message here! But, Garland and his lieutenants aren’t “getting it!”
This case illustrates deep systemic and personnel problems that Garland has failed to address. Instead of summarily dismissing the DHS’s frivolous appeal with a strong warning condemning it, these types of bad BIA decisions contribute to the unnecessary backlog and both encourage and reward frivolous actions by the DHS.
Additionally, reversing, for specious reasons, a well-done and clearly correct IJ decision granting relief, just to carry out the wishes of DHS Enforcement and political bosses, is intended to discourage respondents and their attorneys while unethically steering Immigration Judges toward a “norm of denial.”
Abused women of color from the Northern Triangle have been particular targets of the EOIR’s seriously skewed anti-immigrant adjudications. This makes the Garland DOJ’s claims to be a “champion of racial justice” ring all the more hollow and disingenuous in every context. There will be no racial justice in America without radical EOIR reform!
What ever happened to our first ever woman of color Veep? Hypothesize that one of the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges responsible for this mess had come before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation. Wouldn’t you have had some questions about judicial qualifications? So, why is it OK to continue to employ them in untenured Executive Branch quasi-judicial positions where they exercise life or death power over many of the most vulnerable among us, overwhelmingly persons of color, many women, lots of them unrepresented! Kamala Harris, where are you?
It’s all part of an improper “culture of denial” at EOIR, led and “enforced” by the BIA. Garland has disgracefully failed to come to grips with the “anti-due process” that he fosters every day that the “Miller Lite Holdover BIA” remains in their appellate positions.
For heavens sake, with unnecessary “TV Adjudication Centers” coming out EOIR’s ears, reassign these purveyors of bad law and appellate injustice to those lower “courts” where they can do less cosmic damage and real, better qualified appellate judges can “keep on eye” on them!
I keep thinking (or perhaps hoping) that eventually Circuits will tire of continually redoing the BIA’s sloppy work product and then having the cases come back again, sometimes years later, denied on yet another bogus ground!
On the flip side, Judge Garland seems to have infinite “patience” with well-documented substandard performance and painfully obvious anti-immigrant, pro-DHS bias on the part of his BIA.
Wrongful denial of CAT costs lives and can improperly condemn individuals to gruesome and painful death! This is no way to run a court system! I guess it’s easier to “tolerate” lousy judicial performance when you aren’t the one being unfairly and illegally condemned to torture!
Reuters: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling said the preliminary injunction issued last year improperly placed ICE’s entire network of detention facilities under the direction of a single federal judge, an error because the plaintiffs failed to show systemic nationwide shortfalls in detainee health protections.
NPR: The Border Patrol recorded nearly 1.7 million migrant apprehensions at the Southern border over the past year — the highest number ever, eclipsing the record set more than two decades ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s the biggest number of individual migrants who’ve illegally crossed from Mexico into the U.S. in a single year. In fact, it’s probably not even close. See also Tired of waiting for asylum in southern Mexico, thousands of migrants march north.
BuzzFeed: The report offers a rare window into the behind-the-scenes dysfunction and confusion surrounding the so-called Remain in Mexico program, which is set to come back.
NYT: More than 160 reports, obtained by Human Rights Watch, reveal details of mistreatment that asylum seekers described experiencing from border officials and while in U.S. custody.
WaPo: A U.S. Customs and Border Protection discipline board found that 60 agents “committed misconduct” by sharing violent and obscene posts in secret Facebook groups but fired only two — far fewer than an internal discipline board had recommended, according to a House Oversight and Reform Committee report released Monday.
Intercept: An internal review of Efraín Romero de la Rosa’s death in ICE custody found almost two dozen policy violations during his stint in detention.
Law360: President Joe Biden hasn’t shied away from using controversial technologies for immigration enforcement, raising concerns that his predecessor’s pet project to build a border wall is being replaced with a “virtual wall” rife with privacy and civil liberties problems.
Newsweek: SLS was previously assigned to build the border wall under the Donald Trump administration, but now it is expected to work with the health department to also offer migrants prescription services and transportation for “safe onward travel.”
Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated a Third Circuit ruling in a deportation case that barred a Yemeni man from acquiring citizenship through his naturalized but divorced parents, after the Biden administration said the lower court overlooked precedent.
Law360: Advocates of drastically reduced immigration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn decisions in the Third and Ninth circuits that said migrants who have been detained more than six months should get a bond review hearing.
Law360: A coalition of conservationists and ranchers has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Ninth Circuit ruling that the federal government need not subject immigration policies to environmental review, saying it created an “impossible” standard for challenging immigration programs.
Law360: The First Circuit revived a Honduran man’s bid for protection from a deportation order, ruling that immigration authorities saw discrepancies in his testimony that he faced persecution as an HIV-positive gay man where there were none.
AILA: The court held that the petitioners’ convictions under Connecticut General Statute §21a-277(a) were controlled substance offenses and aggravated felony drug trafficking crimes, and that the jurisdictional holding of Banegas Gomez v. Barr remained good law. (Chery v. Garland, 10/15/21)
AILA: Granting the petition for review and remanding, the court held that while the BIA was correct in finding that the petitioner had not suffered political persecution in China, its reasons for rejecting religious persecution were flawed. (Liang v. Att’y Gen., 10/12/21)
AILA: The court abrogated Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-, holding that 8 CFR §§1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii) unambiguously grant IJs and the BIA the general power to terminate removal proceedings. (Chavez Gonzalez v. Garland, 10/20/21)
Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday asked the federal government to respond to Texas and Louisiana’s petition for the full appellate court to review a panel’s decision allowing the Biden administration’s policy curbing immigration enforcement operations to remain in place.
Law360: The Fifth Circuit refused to freeze the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court order stopping the federal government from approving new applications under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while it inks a replacement rule.
LexisNexis: Fraihat v. ICE Maj. – “COVID-19 presents inherent challenges in institutional settings, and it has without question imposed greater risks on persons in custody. But plaintiffs had to demonstrate considerably more than that to warrant the extraordinary, system-wide relief that they sought.
AILA: The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the defendants to commence processing the 9,905 DV-2020 visas as soon as is feasible, and to conclude such processing no later than the end of FY2022, or September 30, 2022. (Gomez, et al. v. Biden, et al., 10/13/21)
Law360: The federal government urged the D.C. Circuit to erase a lower court’s injunction blocking its use of a public health law to expel migrant families, arguing that the lower court interpreted its powers under the authority too narrowly.
Law360: A D.C. federal judge ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Monday to release previously withheld documents related to the government’s 2017 attempt to unmask a Trump administration critic’s Twitter account, while scolding the agency for its “lackluster efforts” to comply with Freedom of Information Act requirements.
Law360: A Michigan federal judge rejected two brothers’ claims that their due process and religious freedom rights were violated when they were denied travel authorization to Mexico for their grandfather’s funeral, saying that they had no recourse against the officials involved.
AILA: DOJ provided a status update to the court, which states that the BIA and NYLAG are in discussions regarding the possibility of posting certain unpublished BIA decisions online, both prospectively and retrospectively. (NYLAG v. BIA, 10/15/21)
Law360: The Pentagon denied foreign-born soldiers’ contention that it was flouting an injunction to process their citizenship requests, telling a Washington, D.C., court that it was complying and close to doubling the number of requests that are processed annually.
AILA: In balancing respondent’s desirability as a permanent resident with social and humane considerations, the IJ found that respondent was entitled to a waiver of removability for fraud or misrepresentation under INA §237(a)(1)(H). Courtesy of Christopher Helt. (Matter of Mohammed, 9/13/21)
AILA: CBP notification of the continuation of travel restrictions limiting non-essential travel from Mexico into the U.S. at land ports of entry through 1/21/22, while also announcing the intent to lift these restrictions for individuals fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (86 FR 58216, 10/21/21)
AILA: DHS notice establishing procedures for individuals covered by Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Hong Kong to apply for employment authorization through 2/5/23. (86 FR 58296, 10/21/21)
Suffolk County DA: Newly created Immigrant Affairs unit. The Chief of the unit is Leslie Anderson and Deputy Chief is Imran Ahmed. Their hotline is 631-852-2950 and the dedicated email address is immigrantaffairsDA@suffolkcountyny.gov.
Sadly, more than eight months in, the Biden Administration lacks:
A coherent vision for the border;
A cogent plan to restore the refugee system and the legal asylum system (the poorly conceived “proposed asylum regs” — mostly opposed by our Round Table and other asylum experts — don’t make it);
The tough, courageous, well-informed leadership to make the necessary border enforcement and Immigration Court reforms and to stand up to the entirely predictable, well-organized nativist opposition, led by Stephen “Gauleiter” Miller and his accomplices.
Not a “recipe for success,” in my view!
Another item worthy of note: The pending settlement between NYLAG and EOIR on making unpublished decisions readily accessible to the public could open new avenues for advocates.
BIA panel decisions favorable to respondents are almost never published as precedents by an organization where judicial independence and due process have long taken a back seat to “job preservation” within the DOJ. Politicos @ DOJ are normally much more interested in supporting enforcement and “false deterrence” goals than with enhancing due process, enforcing immigrants’ rights, and achieving racial justice when it comes to immigrants.
They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs.The gruesome massacre three years ago, considered the worst in Haiti in decades, was more than the work of rival gangs fighting over territory. It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department announced last year.
Since then, Haiti’s gang members have grown so strong that they rule swaths of the country. The most notorious of them, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, fashions himself as a political leader, holding news conferences, leading marches and, this week, even parading around as a replacement for the prime minister in the violent capital.
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Read the rest of this gruesome, yet telling, report at the link.
Over 21 years on the Immigration Bench as both a trial and appellate judge, I adjudicated thousands of asylum claims. The circumstances described on this article undoubtedly would give rise to many potentially valid asylum and withholding claims, based on actual or implied political opinion and/or family or gender-based “particular social groups” and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) grants based on torture with government acquiescence or actual connivance!
So, how do Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland, who to my knowledge have never represented an asylum applicant or adjudicated an individual asylum case among them, “get away” with simply suspending the rule of law, under false pretenses, for those entitled to seek asylum?
Stephen Miller must be on “Cloud Nine” as Biden & Co. carry out his White Nationalist plans to eradicate asylum, particularly when it protects women and people of color! This is even as Miller and his neo-Nazi cohorts (a/k/a “America First Legal”) are gearing up to sue the Biden Administration to block every measure that might aid immigrants, particularly those of color.
He’s delighted with Biden’s abuse of asylum seekers of color! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
NGOs don’t share the Biden Administration’s vision of what a “safe” Haiti looks like. Neither do kidnapped American missionaries! PHOTO: Marcelo Casal, Jr., Creative Commons License
Angering and alienating your potential allies and supporters to aid the far-right program of your enemies who are determined to do whatever it takes to undermine, discredit, and destroy your Presidency! Obviously, I’m no political expert. But, sure sounds like an incredibly stupid, “designed to fail” strategy to me!
U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General
BEFORE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i), I direct the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”) to refer this case to me for review of its decision. The Board’s decision in this matter is automatically stayed pending my review. See Matter of Haddam, A.G. Order No. 2380-2001 (Jan. 19, 2001).
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This terse decision conceals a total, disgraceful mess in our justice system!
Mr. Negusie, the respondent in this case, filed his asylum application before an Immigration Judge in 2004 — 17 years ago!
In 2005, the IJ denied his application because of the so-called “persecutor bar,” but “deferred” his removal to Eritrea under the Convention Against Torture(“CAT”).
The BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision.
In 2007, the 5th Circuit affirmed the BIA.
In 2009, the Supreme Court reversed the BIA, and remanded the case to the BIA under their “Chevron doctrine” of “judicial task avoidance,” Negusie v. Holder, 555 U.S. 511 (2009].
At that time, in separate opinions, five Justices expressed rather definitive views about the substantive legal issue.
Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Alito all clearly believed that there should be no “duress exception” to the persecutor bar.
Justices Stevens and Breyer obviously thought that there was a “duress exception.”
The other four, Chief Justice Roberts, Justices Kennedy, Souter, & Ginsburg, had obviously studied matter, but rather than resolving the issue, chose to “punt” it back to the BIA for their supposed “expert interpretation” — an unusual “vote of confidence” in an administrative body they had just found to have misinterpreted their prior decisions.
“The Interregnum:” For the next nine years, during which both Administrations and BIA membership changed several times, the BIA “ruminated” on the task assigned them by the Supremes. Finally, in 2018, the BIA issued a precedent decision finding a limited “duress defense.”Matter of Negusie, 27 I&N Dec. 347 (BIA 2018). Nevertheless, the BIA found that Negusie didn’t qualify for that limited defense. So, Negusie lost! But, that was hardly the end of the matter within the convoluted world of the DOJ!
Despite the Government’s prevailing in Negusie’s case, four months later, AG Sessions “certified” that decision to himself.
Two years later, in 2020, another AG, Billy Barr, who had succeeded Sessions, reversed the BIA in a precedent, finding that there was no “duress exception,” however limited, to the “persecutor bar.” Matter of Negusie, 28 I&N Dec. 120 (A.G. 2020). Mr.Negusie lost once again, but this time on a different rationale than employed by the BIA!
The case was returned to the BIA for “background checks,” since Mr. Negusie’s removal had been indefinitely “deferred” under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). After Mr.Negusie’s background “cleared,” the BIA apparently entered a final order of removal to Eritrea, but “deferred” execution of that order under CAT.
But, before that review was complete, AG Garland “certified” the last BIA decision (actually Barr’s 2020 precedent) for review, thus “staying” its effect.
Summary: one IJ decision; three trips to the BIA; two trips to the Fifth Circuit; three AG decisions; one trip to the Supremes = no decision on a 2004 application!
In other words, five different tribunals have had this case before them at least nine times over 17 years without finally resolving the issue!
In the meantime, I can tell you from past experience that this issue arises on a regular basis before Immigration Judges. They, in turn, must resolve it as best they can without definitive guidance from higher judicial authorities, sometimes relying on “precedents” that later are vacated or invalidated.
The solution: How about a BIA made up of real judges: true nationally respected experts and “practical scholars” in immigration, human rights, and due process who will provide timely, legally correct guidance at the initial appeal level?
And, if they do happen to get it wrong, how about Supremes that decide the legal issues coming before them, as they are paid to do, rather than aimlessly “orbiting” legal questions back to the lower tribunals that got them wrong in the first place under the highly problematic “Chevron doctrine of high-level judicial task avoidance?”
Also, in the event such reforms were made, how about Attorneys General, who traditionally have particular expertise in neither immigration nor human rights, keeping their “fingers out of the pie” and letting the real experts do the work? (In this respect, while AG Sessions had a long, disgraceful political history of advancing far right, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic tropes, such that his nomination to become a Federal Judge was rejected by his own party, no recognized immigration/human rights expert would classify Sessions as having either legal expertise in the area or proper qualifications to serve in any judicial capacity including a “quasi-judicial” one, particularly in areas where he had previously and consistently shown extreme bias and intellectual dishonesty in his public statements and actions. Nor did AG Barr have any legitimate expertise that would qualify him to participate in quasi-judicial capacity in immigration and human rights cases. While, ordinarily, a Federal Circuit Judge with long service would acquire some immigration experience and perhaps develop expertise, Judge Garland sat on the DC Circuit, which did not regularly review Immigration Court cases, because there is no Immigration Court sitting in D.C.)
One might also ask why the Supremes would remand to a purportedly “expert agency” for statutory interpretation, only to have the process hijacked by politicos?
Finally, multi-raspberries to Congress who let this disgraceful abuse of both taxpayer resources and our justice system go on, in plain sight, for decades without corrective action. America needs an independent Article I Immigration Court, with judges selected on a merit basis, NOW!
Where’s Charles Dickens when we need him? See, e.g., Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
“Comeback Kid?” — Advocates thought they were getting a welcome change from “Gonzo Apocalypto’s” vile legacy of abuses at EOIR. But, Garland seems to be warming to the idea of “wholly-owned courts” where he can manipulate “his” judges, many of them Sessions-Barr holdovers,” to achieve pro-DHS results in key cases. Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com Republished under license
The judge overseeing the last two weeks of hearings and testimonies of Omar Ameen’s immigration case has been changed by the Department of Justice, sources close to the case told KCRA 3.
Ameen was the Sacramento refugee accused of being an ISIS leader and killing an Iraqi police officer in 2014.
Earlier this year, a Sacramento federal judge said there were major problems with the case against Ameen and refuse extradition to Iraq.
However, the U.S. Immigration Department took Ameen into custody the day he was released and began proceedings to deport him, claiming he lied on refugee applications.
Sources told KCRA 3 Investigates that immigration Judge Scott Laurent, after weeks of hearings and testimony in the deportation case, is no longer the judge in the case.
The removal comes just two weeks after Laurent issued an order that was, in part, critical of the government’s case against Ameen.
In particular, Laurent was critical of the Department of Justice for wanting FBI agents to testify for the government, but not be cross-examined by Ameen’s attorneys.
Unlike a criminal court, immigration judges work for the Department of Justice, which is the agency looking to deport Ameen.
No reason was immediately provided for Laurent’s removal from the case.
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Go to the link to see the TV report!
In what other system can the prosecutor “switch judges,” with no explanation in the middle of a case?
Given the DOJ’s lack of transparency, one has to assume the worst!
Divide and conquer is a good military strategy but a bad judicial one. Judges must consider how related facts weave to- gether into a narrative.
Chinese officials caught Cha Liang practicing his faith, so they beat, jailed, and then threatened him. When he sought asy- lum, the Board of Immigration Appeals minimized the threats and physical abuse as discrete incidents. But Liang’s twenty- minute beating and fifteen days in jail made the later threats more menacing. Because the Board should not have ignored this context, we will grant the petition and remand.
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Perhaps unwittingly, Judge Bibas’s use of a military analogy for EOIR “judging” is very, very apt! After four years of corrupt, White Nationalist, Stephen Miller inspired “leadership” and “judicial selections,” far, far too many judges and others at today’s EOIR view immigrants and their attorneys as “the enemy.” By contrast, they think of their “partners” at DHS as their “comrades in arms” against Stephen Miller’s fabricated “alien invasion” — a euphemism for “replacement theory” and other racist tropes that were seldom far below the surface of Trump-era immigration policies and actions.
It’s tempting to blame this entire mess on theTrump regime. But, sadly, manifestations of this problem were present well before 2017.
I remember an Immigration Judge Conference where, strangely, a recently appointed IJ, a former government prosecutor, was given an “instructor slot” at small group training. This Judge proceeded to repeatedly refer to the the DHS as “we” and the respondents and their lawyers as “them” as he enthusiastically described Government litigation “victories” while ignoring or downplaying Circuit Court decisions that had found serious flaws in EOIR judging and DHS legal positions.
That individual went on to a “judicial career” at EOIR that consistently demonstrated a disturbing and inappropriate inability to view those humans coming before the Immigration Court and their lawyers as anything other than “the enemy!” So, the ethical, cultural, and quality control problems at EOIR are very deep-seated.
Remember, this is a broken agency that once, but no more, was supposed to stand for “through teamwork and innovation, become the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”
As the recent “John Gruden Episode” in the NFL shows, “corrosive culture” remains a huge problem in professional football. Similarly, EOIR’s “culture of denial with a heavily dose of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia” remains every bit as much of a problem as those plaguing the NFL. Disingenuously “minimizing threats” to asylum seekers, as in this case, is “business as usual” at Garland’s anti-immigrant, anti-asylum EOIR.
While the response of the NFL’s leadership has obviously been not fully effective, it’s still much better than Garland’s “what me worry, hear nothing, see nothing” approach to the crippling problems at his dysfunctional EOIR.
Garland’s inept approach to the ongoing due process disaster at his EOIR has been perplexing, to say the least! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
Gruden actually was promptly forced out when the full extent of his misconduct finally surfaced. By contrast, with overwhelming public evidence of systemic failure, Garland has catastrophically failed to replace the problematic judges and inept senior leaders at EOIR with better-qualified, progressive, practical scholar-expert judges unswervingly committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice!
Although not cited by the 3rd Circuit, the BIA and the IJ also ignored the leading BIA precedent of Matter of O-Z- & I-Z-, 22 I&N Dec. 23 (BIA 1998) (Panel: Hurwitz, Rosenberg, Schmidt) on the importance of considering harm cumulatively.
The concurring opinion by Judges Jordan and Ambro on past persecution as a “mixed question of fact and law” subject to a “two-step review process” is also well worth a read, particularly for those practicing in the 3rd Cir.
“I believe when I go to do this work, I need to integrate myself into the lives of the people I’m covering,” he says. “I don’t want them to see me as above them. We’re on the same level; we’re human.”
That context is needed to understand why Dennison entered the Darién Gap several weeks ago and why, unlike other photographers and videographers, he didn’t take any security guards with him.
That decision would end up giving him a different experience from that of others who have gone there to document the harrowing passage. They have left that jungle and come home with photos that show the horrific struggles of others. He almost didn’t leave the jungle, and he came home with only a fraction of the photos he took and with his own horrific story.
“What he’s been through is horrible and really disturbing,” says Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer who is the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado, an advocacy and legal aid organization that serves migrants, refugees and deportees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The organization has been working with Dennison to create a film that captures the experiences of U.S.-bound Black migrants.
“The only way to understand it is to see it, and that’s what he’s providing,” Pinheiro says. “It’s really important that people understand what’s happening, and that it’s not over in Del Rio.”
The Biden administration recently cleared out a border camp in Del Rio, Tex., where an estimated 15,000 migrants, most of them Haitian nationals seeking asylum, had gathered. The clearing out of the camp came after viral images and video footage showed Border Patrol agents on horseback grabbing migrants and charging at them. In one video, a young girl in a mint-green dress scrambles to get out of the way of a horse heading toward her.
President Biden decried the agents’ actions, and the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into the incident.
But what happened in Del Rio captures only part of what many Haitians experience to get to the United States. Many pass through the Darién Gap, some with children in tow and infants strapped to their backs or chests. Officials in Panama have said that a record 70,000 people traveled the 66 miles through the terrain this year.
Before going, Dennison did extensive research on what to expect: spiders with bites that can cause death within six hours, criminals who routinely rob travelers, and polluted water that if not filtered can sicken you. But nothing, he says, could have prepared him for what he experienced.
“When you’re in the jungle, you’re no longer a filmmaker,” he says. “You’re no longer a humanitarian. It becomes about survival.”
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Read the full story at the link.
Sad as truth is, it’s not rocket science:
Desperate people do (and will continue to do) desperate things;
For forced migrants, the dangers of staying will always exceed those of leaving;
“Die in place” isn’t a “policy;”
“Deterrence only” can’t work in the long run;
While institutionalized racism has a long history in U.S. immigration policy, it’s never been a good policy for America, nor will it ever be!
Honestly, where does the Biden Administration get these folks who don’t “get the obvious,” lie about it, and then expect good results?
Right now, after nearly eight months, the Biden Administration still appearsto be in no better position to process the next border influx than they were on January 20, despite numerous warnings and eight months of graphic practical and humanitarian failures. Racially charged rhetoric and more cruel, wasteful, dishonest enforcement and removals won’t do it!
We need reopened legal border ports of entry staffed with more and better Asylum Officers overseen by a pragmatic progressive corps of expert Immigration Judges and a BIA composed of progressive asylum experts with the guts to knock heads and get our broken border legal system back to functionality. To state the obvious, that would promote consistency, transparency, and take some of the pressure off of the Article III Courts!
Because neither Mayorkas nor Garland is committed to taking the bold actions necessary to change the dynamics at the border, America, the Biden Administration, and vulnerable legal asylum seekers appear headed for another four years of avoidable failure with all of its unhappy human and political consequences!
So far, defending this guy and his cruel policies is about the only thing that Judge Garland has done well at a DOJ that continues to treat “justice” for migrants of color as a joke! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.comUnlike Miller, the “losers” under Garland’s unconscionable policies often aren’t in a position to complain — at least in this world! EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
On Thursday, a federal appeals court allowed the continued use of the Title 42 policy, pushed initially through the previous administration by Stephen Miller, that’s used the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers, including thousands of Haitians who have arrived at the southern border in search of help.
The Biden administration was set to be blocked from using the policy against families, following a federal judge’s order earlier this month. That lower court order was set to go into effect Thursday. But the policy was saved by the Biden administration, which had shockingly appealed the lower court’s decision. To be clear, the administration could have let the lower court decision stand. But it decided to protect this scientifically unsound order for continued use.
“It’s troubling to see the court grant the government’s motion to reinstate Title 42 just days after the district court ruled that its policy violates U.S. law,” Oxfam America global policy lead Noah Gottschalk told NBC News. The group is among the organizations that have led lawsuits against the policy. “We all saw the horrific images of the abuse faced by Haitian asylum-seekers subjected to Title 42, and we cannot allow people to face further harm because of this xenophobic policy.”
Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has claimed it is continuing Title 42 “out of a public health need.” Meanwhile, White House Press Sec. Jen Psaki has defended the policy as “a public health requirement.” That’s complete bullshit. “Vice President Mike Pence in March directed the nation’s top disease control agency to use its emergency powers to effectively seal the U.S. borders, overruling the agency’s scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus,” The Associated Press (AP) reported last October.
The previous administration got its way by twisting arms. There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus. “That was a Stephen Miller special. He was all over that,” a former Pence aide told the AP.
And, as vaccines have become readily available, the supposed rationale to keep Title 42 in place has only gotten more flimsy. If this is truly all about public health, why not rescind the policy and offer families the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine? “Let me also remind the Biden administration that over 300,000 people cross the border from Mexico every day through ports of entry,” American Immigration Council Policy Counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted in July. “None are given COVID tests, unlike migrants who all get tested and nearly all get vaccinated.”
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“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color — Progressive human rights experts and migrants of color haven’t been welcome at Garland’s DOJ “Happy Hours” where Stephen Miller’s policies, his judicial appointments, and his dysfunctional “star chamber” immigration courts are celebrated, defended, and even “enhanced!”
Read more about this legal, moral, and political travesty perpetrated by the Biden Administration with Garland’s support at the link.
When it comes to things like defending ending the reprehensible “killer-program” known as “Remain in Mexico” or protecting the DACA program, Garland’s litigation team has fared poorly.
They also have drawn raised eyebrows, even if not yet any ethical complaints, from Article III Judges for their questionable representations and disingenuous defense of wrongfully issued BIA final orders of removal.
Perhaps, part the problem is that after four years of “anything goes” often misleading, sometimes downright dishonest, defense of the Trump/Miller White Nationalist xenophobic, often misogynistic, dehumanizing agenda, their hearts aren’t in it. The other glaring problem is the obvious lack of commitment to progressive humanitarian values, due process for all, and “cleaning house” at a broken and dysfunctional DOJ that has been shown by Garland.
Obviously, Garland’s DOJ lawyers are more at home and more successful when when arguing for intellectually dishonest and unconstitutional dehumanization (or “Dred Scottification”) of “the other,” primarily individuals of color who are the most vulnerable among us.
What a totally disgraceful legacy for a guy that was once just “one Moscow Mitch” away from the Supremes! On the other hand, it now appears that the GOP right wingers wouldn’t have had much to fear from a guy who won’t stand up for liberal American democratic values or even simple human decency! I doubt that he would have presented much threat to the far-right, anti-American agenda!
The Slippery Slope of Systemic Racism in Immigration Law – Del Rio by Carrie Rosenbaum
When Senator Maxine Waters proclaimed that what we witnessed in Del Rio, Texas last week, Customs and Border Protection officers on horseback whipping black men, harkened back to slavery, she drew an age-old, but still relevant connection between slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-immigrant racism. In a press briefing, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated, “[w]e know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation’s ongoing battle against systemic racism.” Yet, if both are right, where are our equality, anti-racism principles and why haven’t they been enough to dismantle systemic racism? Should U.S. anti-discrimination law inhibit anti-black and anti-immigrant racism, in the U.S. and at the border? Does it? Is there a slippery slope, such that undeterred discrimination against immigrants at the border seeps beyond the immediate individuals at the border?
Senator Waters was right to blur the boundaries of citizenship and rights in her speech. Racism begets racism, and racism towards black Haitians at the border translates to anti-black racism within the United States, just as anti-Mexican racism does not confine itself to noncitizens, and never has. Examples abound including obvious examples, like Latinx lynching of the late 1840s through 1920s (which coincided with lynching of Blacks), mass expulsion or “repatriation” of persons of Mexican descent that included U.S. citizens in the early 1920s and 1930s again via “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s and more subtle ones like exploitation and expropriation of Mexican and Central American farm workers and laborers, whether authorized or not, and colorblind or race neutral policies that fall most heavily, even if not completely, on persons from Mexico and Central America, like border jails.
While the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. constitution does not limit itself to citizens, it falls vastly short in protecting racialized people of color, especially immigrants. The U.S. treatment of Haitians in Del Rio implicates the problem of anti-black and anti-immigrant racism, and is indicative of the express and implicit bias that continues to evade remedy. It runs much deeper than the disturbing images of CBP agents on horseback, and its impacts have ripple effects.
At the same time that DHS Secretary Mayorkas decried systemic racism, he spelled out the government’s potential argument that the exclusion of Haitians, and Central Americans, and Mexicans that accompanies such brutal treatment was not discriminatory pursuant to the current state of immigration equal protection. He stated, “if we are able to expel them under Title 42 … we will do so” and announced that its application was “irrespective of the country of origin, irrespective of the race of the individual, irrespective of other criteria that don’t belong in our adjudicative process and we do not permit in our adjudicative process.”
Yet this is precisely how systemic racism flourishes. The reality is, this provision has been used to exclude the same racialized immigrants who have been subject to the worst treatment under immigration law. However, because the law is colorblind, Mayorkas can suggest that there was no discrimination. Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 1977 Arlington Heights decision, discriminatory impact has to be accompanied by proof of discriminatory intent. Just by saying that wasn’t his (or implying it was not Congress’) intent, he can erase what too many know to be real. A new immigration priorities memo by the Agency released today stated that ““We must ensure that enforcement actions are not discriminatory and do not lead to inequitable outcomes.” It is a step in the right rhetorical direction, but does little to meaningfully address the colorblind racism that plagues enforcement.
What is the solution? Aside from a more expansive interpretation of the Equal Protection doctrine in line with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in the Trump era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals case, and modest progress at the district court level in the crimmigration context, Congress could take steps to stop racial harm inflicted via immigration law and policy. By creating a path to legal status for those who not only have been here, but who have suffered the greatest harms of systemic racism, Haitian immigrants, Mexican immigrants, and others, Congress could start to undo the damage. It could also stop the relatively new practice of detaining or imprisoning migrants at the southern border, who happen to be almost entirely from Mexico and Central America, or abolish immigration prisons entirely. The policies that result in the imprisonment of Mexicans and Central Americans at the southern border now started with expulsion and imprisonment of Haitians in the 1980 and 1990s. Instead of expulsions and rumored potential imprisonment at the notorious Guantanamo Bay as was done in response to Haitians fleeing violence after the U.S. supported overthrow of democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the U.S. could re-evaluate both its involvement in foreign affairs, and treatment of those who flee here after our interventions cause disruption and civil strife. The largest number of Black migrants come from Haiti and their mistreatment is rooted in anti-Black racism. Racializing anti-immigrant demonization does not confine itself to noncitizens, nor should the remedies. Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.
Access my law review articles and scholarship on SSRN
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Very eloquently said, Carrie!
Compare this with the racist blather and White Nationalist nonsense of nativist pols like Abbott, DeSantis, Cruz, Cotton, and others who glorify Jim Crow and seek to force a sanitized, whitewashed version of American history down the throats of the public!
Also, compare this with the intellectually dishonest actions by Biden Administration officials. They disingenuously claim to be champions of racial equality and racial justice.
But, in reality, they operate “star chamber courts,” “New American Gulags,” and implement discredited, outmoded, and ineffective “Stephen Miller Lite” border enforcement policies that basically dehumanize people of color and deny them the due process and equal protection to which they are entitled under law. Also, think about the many Federal Judges who spinelessly enable that which most first year law students could tell you is illegal and unconstitutional, not to mention totally immoral!
What exactly does Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke do every day at the Civil Rights Division if unraveling the White Nationalist, racially tone deaf policies of her own Department, the DHS, and the “star chambers for people of color” being operated by her “boss” aren’t first and foremost on her “to do” list?
“Floaters” — The ugly reality of Biden’s “Miller Lite border strategy.” It’s mostly people of color floating face-down in the river, being illegally returned to danger zones, rotting in the “New American Gulag,” and being railroaded through Garland’s biased and dysfunctional “star chamber courts.” Right now, Garland and and the rest of of the Biden Administration have “zero (0) credibility” on racial justice and voting rights!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
The biggest failure of the Biden Administration to date is their willful blindness to the obvious connection between lack of overall racial justice in America and running star chambers, gulags, and border enforcement policies that are unconstitutional, dehumanizing, and racially demeaning to individuals of color. Sadly, and tragically we seem to have gone from “zero tolerance” under Trump to “zero credibility” under Biden! “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”
Heidi Altman Director of Policy National Immigrant Justice Center PHOTO: fcnl.org
Haiti has been in turmoil for many years and the recent assassination of the Haitian president, political and economic insecurity, devastating storms, and an earthquake have further destabilized the nation.
Yet, Haitians seeking protection in the United States face treacherous journeys, racial abuse, violence from border patrol agents, detention, and deportation and expulsion back to the life-threatening situation they fled in Haiti.
All people—including Haitian migrants and asylum seekers—need freedom, shelter, dignity, and compassionate welcomes.
In the past couple of weeks, the Biden administration has expelled more than 4,600 people to Haiti. And they continue to deport and expel even more people.
The Biden administration has the authority to grant humanitarian parole and stop the deportations to Haiti. We at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) are teaming up with other organizations to urge them to do just that.
A federal appellate court Thursday temporarily granted the Biden administration’s request to continue the use of a public health order to quickly expel migrants with children who are stopped along the U.S. border.
A lower court had given the Biden administration until Thursday to limit use of the law, while immigrant and legal advocates proceeded with a lawsuit against it. The Trump administration had invoked the 1944 health statute, known as Title 42, to close the border to prevent people from entering the country, citing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
The case, brought in the District of Columbia by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, focuses on families with children, meaning the administration can continue to expel single adults under the provision.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan found earlier this month that advocates were likely to succeed with their case. In a 58-page ruling, he wrote that migrant families subjected to Title 42 “face real threats of violence and persecution” and are deprived of statutory rights to seek protection in the U.S.
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Read Andrea’s complete article at the link!
More unfair and unjustified returns of refugees to death and despair courtesy of an Administration that doesn’t care and Federal Judges unwilling to do their jobs! The dead can’t speak. But, history will judge all those involved in this disgraceful episode!
There are enormous downsides to border disorder, to immigration policy paralysis and to leaving the fates of more than 11 million current immigrants without any path to a secure future — even beyond the reinforcement it provides to the United States’ growing international reputation for dysfunction. No one gains by the chaos except smugglers who soak desperate migrants financially on their way north in hopes of a better life. The losers include not only the “dreamers” brought to this country as children, who must live in perpetual anxiety, but also the country as a whole, which loses the value of immigrants, skilled and otherwise, who would turbocharge entrepreneurship, create jobs and help the economy grow.
There are available solutions if Congress could overcome its horror of bipartisan compromise. The goal should be to establish a realistic annual quota of immigrant visas for Central Americans, Haitians and others desperate to reach this country who otherwise will cross the border illegally — a number that recognizes the U.S. labor market’s demand for such employees. That must be supplemented by a muscular guest worker program that enables legal border crossing for migrants who want to support families remaining in their home countries.
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Read the complete editorial at the link.
It’s worth adding that the current “border disorder” is largely the result of White Nationalist, legally defective, anti-immigrant policies of the Trump regime compounded by the failure of Mayorkas and Garland to take the obvious, available, common sense steps necessary to reopen legal border ports of entry, to make the long overdue necessary reforms to establish a fair, efficient, and generous legal asylum system at the USCIS Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts, and to insist on the creation of a robust, functional refugee program for Latin America and the Caribbean.
None of the this is “rocket science!” 🚀 Plenty of great blueprints for administrative reforms and the potential expert leadership to implement them were “out there for the taking” at the beginning of the Biden Administration. By dawdling, tapping the wrong leaders, and continuing enforcement policies and bad judicial practices that were proven failures, the Administration predictably put itself “behind the eight-ball” in establishing order and implementing the rule of law at our borders!
Until the Biden Administration ends its disgraceful, cowardly, illegal, cruel, ineffective, and inhumane reliance on bogus “Title 42” restrictions to suspend orderly legal processing at the border, they will continue to bobble the next predictable “border crisis.” The GOP will continue to spout nativist nonsense. Desperate people will continue to do desperate things. Only a tone-deaf Administration would continue to ignore this reality!
