"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Maine Voices: No walls are high enough to keep out people desperate for a safe place
Instead of wasting precious time trying to shut today’s refugees out, we can prepare for them in a way that could benefit all of us.
BY DAN KOLBERTSPECIAL TO THE PRESS HERALD
A young girl jumps rope inside the Portland Expo, home to several hundred asylum seekers. Much of the world’s population will be on the move, trying to survive, as sea levels and temperatures rise. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Kolbert has lived in Portland’s West End since 1988. He is a building contractor and an author.
In Central America, where corn was first cultivated over millennia and is still the home of many important seed bases, a drought is entering its second decade. It is possible that agriculture will soon be impossible there, along with many parts of Africa and Asia. Rising sea levels will mean many low-lying islands will disappear, and coastal cities will be forced to retreat or be swamped.
All of this means that much of the world’s population will be on the move, searching for a way to survive. Estimates top 1 billion people by mid-century. Here in Portland, we are already seeing previously unimaginable levels of immigration, with hundreds of recent arrivals sleeping in a sports arena, and housing shortages and rising rents forcing many new and established Mainers into the many homeless encampments dotting the city. And we are just getting started.
There are no walls high enough to keep out people desperate for a safe place for them and their families. So we can either spend the precious time that remains on a futile, and cruel, effort to keep people out, or we can prepare for them in a humane way that could have enormous benefits for all of us, new and old Mainers alike.
The first step is housing, and plenty of it. Multi-family housing in Maine has undergone a sea change in recent years. We can build healthy, functional housing with very low heating and cooling loads for much less than all the mediocre, drafty single-family houses we currently build. Greater Portland is home to much of the most expensive real estate in the state, but imagine if we could have planned development surrounding some other cities, like Bangor or Lewiston. Or even smaller population centers like Skowhegan, Farmington or Rumford. We are a sparsely populated state with an aging population – immigrant families could revitalize many parts of the state. In addition to the workforce we desperately need, they would bring children to boost shrinking school enrollments, new cultures and foods, and new outlooks. And of course it would be a big boost to the economies of parts of the state that haven’t always shared in the boom.
Next is finding work for people. We have already seen many immigrants going into health care, and our aging U.S.-born population will only need more services. Some Africans have taken up farming, helping revitalize that economy. In southern Maine, Central Americans are increasingly showing up in construction, where a 20-year-long labor shortage has created enormous demand. And many people show up with important professional skills, needing only some help with language and certifications to resume careers as doctors, engineers, teachers, administrators, etc. Of course we need to reform the work rules, to allow people to find employment much sooner.
It was disappointing to read of the events in Unity. Imagine using this existing, underutilized infrastructure for temporary housing! How many of these new arrivals might see central Maine as a safe, friendly place to establish their new lives?
I am a new Mainer myself, having only lived here for 35 of my 59 years, but my kids can trace their lineage in Maine and Quebec for over 300 years on their mother’s side. As the son of a refugee from the Nazis, I am perhaps more sympathetic to the plight of today’s refugees than others are, but I hope that we can see this as an opportunity to invest in our state, and to demonstrate basic humanity toward people who just want to live.
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You can listen to the audio version at the link!
Dan definitely has the right idea! Seems like what’s needed is 1) leadership, 2) organization to match people and skills to local needs, and 3) some “seed money” to get an affordable housing program going.
Haley Sweatband Edwards Nation Editor Time Magazine PHOTO: Pulitzer
The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.
These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.
The unmitigated human rights and racial justice disasters of the Trump years and the troubling difficulty the Biden Administration has had getting beyond that debacle reinforce the accuracy and inevitability of what Haley and Dan are saying.
The future will belong to those nations that learn how to welcome migrants, treat them humanely, screen and accept many of them in a timely, orderly, minimally bureaucratic manner, and utilize their energy, determination, ingenuity, and life skills to build a better future for all.
The open question is whether the U.S. will be among those successful future powers. Or, will the cruel, unrealistic, racially-driven, restrictionist nativism of the GOP right drive us to continue to waste inordinate resources fruitlessly trying to deny, deter, and prevent the inevitable, thus ultimately forcing us down to second or even third tier status. TBD.
In the meantime, here’s another great article from the PPH about how Mainers have led the fight to protect individual rights and freedoms while advancing American progressive values in contravention of the authoritarian neo-fascism sweeping over some so-called “red” states.
Maine has tacked left as nation lurches right in culture wars
Embracing the state motto – ‘I lead’ – Maine lawmakers led in a different direction, safeguarding and expanding access to abortion and gender-affirming care.
Robert Reich Former US Secretary of Labor Professor of Public Policy CAL Berkeley Creative Commons LicenseNaturalization Ceremony USG Official Photo Public Domain
On Saturday, Donald Trump conducted the second formal rally of his campaign — in Pickens, South Carolina, where an estimated 50,000 turned up under the scorching sun to hear him.
There, he advanced his version of patriotism based on White Christian Nationalism.
He began by celebrating the town’s namesake, Francis Pickens, who was governor of South Carolina when it was the first to secede from the Union on the eve of the Civil War. Trump assured the crowd he wouldn’t let “them” change the town’s name.
He commended the Supreme Court for rejecting affirmative action “so someone who has not worked as hard will not take your place.”
He saluted the court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade so “radical left Democrats will not kill babies.”
He promised to stop “men competing in women’s sports” and prevent classroom teachers from teaching the “wrong” lessons about sexuality or history.
He condemned foreign governments that “send” over the border “people in jails and insane asylums” and promised to deny entry to “all communists and Marxists.”
And he declared America’s most dangerous opponents not to be Russia, China, or North Korea but “enemies within” America.
Rubbish.
The true meaning of patriotism is the opposite of Trump’s exclusionary White Christian Nationalism.
America’s moral mission has been toward greater inclusion — providing equal rights to women, Black people, immigrants, Native Americans, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, and agnostic.
True patriots don’t fuel racist, religious, or ethnic divisions. Patriots aren’t homophobic or sexist.
Nor are patriots blind to social injustices — whether ongoing or embedded in American history. They don’t ban books or prevent teaching about the sins of the nation’s past.
True patriots are not uncritically devoted to America. They are devoted instead to the ideals of America — the rule of law, equal justice, voting rights and civil rights, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from fear, and democracy.
True patriots don’t have to express patriotism in symbolic displays of loyalty like standing for the national anthem and waving the American flag.
They express patriotism in taking a fair share of the burdens of keeping the nation going — sacrificing for the common good.
This means paying taxes in full rather than lobbying for lower taxes or seeking tax loopholes or squirreling away money abroad.
It means refraining from making large political contributions that corrupt American democracy.
It means blowing the whistle on abuses of power even at the risk of losing one’s job.
And volunteering time and energy to improving one’s community and country.
Nor is patriotism found in baseless claims that millions of people vote fraudulently. Or in pushing for laws that make it harder for people to vote based on the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Patriotism lies instead in strengthening democracy — defending the right to vote and ensuring more Americans are heard.
Patriots understand that when they serve the public, their responsibility is to maintain and build public trust in the institutions of democracy.
They don’t put loyalty to their political party above their love of America. They don’t support an attempted coup.
They don’t try to hold onto power after voters have chosen not to reelect them. They don’t make money off their offices.
When serving on the Supreme Court, they recuse themselves from cases where they may appear to have a conflict of interest. They don’t disregard precedent to impose their own ideology.
America’s problem is not as described by Trump and his White Christian Nationalism — that the nation is losing its whiteness or dominant religion, that too many foreigners are crossing its borders, that men are competing in women’s sports or teachers are not celebrating the nation’s history.
America’s problem is that too many Americans — including its lawmakers — are failing to understand what patriotism requires.
Holy card ( 1899 ) showing an illustration to the Gospel of Matthew 25, 34-36 – rear side of an obituary. Wolfgang Sauber Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
Editorial: Sanctuary cities are working just fine, thank you
When Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida bused and flew migrants to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other so-called “sanctuary cities,” they might have envisioned they were exporting the same chaos as border states have experienced as they grapple with a historic number of migrants. They wanted leaders in these cities to admit they were wrong about their immigrant-friendly policies.
But Abbott and DeSantis are mistaken if they think they are teaching cities with sanctuary polices any lessons with their inhumane political stunts or causing their leaders to rethink their commitment to not treating migrants as criminals.
Those governors and their political allies also seem to be confused about what it means when cities have sanctuary policies. Though policies vary, providing sanctuary means not turning migrants over to federal immigration authorities simply for being in the country illegally. It means treating them like humans in need rather than pawns.
That’s what leaders in Los Angeles, Sacramento and other “sanctuary cities” did as buses and planes dumped dozens of tired and often confused migrants on their doorsteps in recent months. They rallied attention and resources, while religious and other nonprofit organizations stepped up to welcome the migrants with shelter, food and clothes. In some instances, these migrants have even found temporary jobs, illustrating the need for their labor.
Abbott and DeSantis may also not realize that sanctuary policies were designed to help law enforcement keep communities safe. Sanctuary policies were developed because police in many cities such as Los Angeles were frustrated because undocumented immigrants were not reporting crimes or stepping forward as witnesses for fear of deportation.
Critics say these sanctuary cities have laws and policies that shield criminals and obstruct federal immigration policies. But cities with sanctuary policies have lower than average crime rates, higher household incomes and lower poverty rates, according to various studies.
Local authorities did not refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, as critics claim. They simply limited the role of local law enforcement in immigration cases, for example, by not using local police to do immigration checks or by not holding an undocumented immigrant in custody for a few extra days to serve federal authorities’ schedules.
Los Angeles is in the midst of transitioning from a “city of sanctuary” to “sanctuary city.” The difference is more than just semantics. The former designation is little more than a statement by city leaders in 2017 that they opposed then-President Trump’s dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies, which included separating young children from their parents. Some of those children have yet to be reunited with their parents years later. Earlier this month, the City Council voted to strengthen the policy by banning city personnel or resources from being used for immigration enforcement.
It’s true that the transports of migrants by the Texas and Florida governors have been inconvenient to cities such as Washington and New York, which have had to scramble to find housing and other resources. But they haven’t done a thing to undermine the foundation on which sanctuary policies were built.
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The money wasted by these GOP nativist neo-fascists could much better be spent on coordinated efforts to help asylum seekers to help themselves and our nation in the process. Obviously, GOP states like Florida and Texas have money toburn.
Also, to the extent that cities “targeted” by these GOP White Nationalist Governors have persevered in the face ofattempts to sow chaos, it has been largely without the coordination, guidance, and leadership of the Biden Administration. Seems like that should be “low hanging fruit” for progressive Democrats to change!
Melissa del Bosque reports for the Border Chronicle:
Both parties have doubled down on inhumane border policies, but it’s the GOP that is taking it to new depths in its race to the bottom over who can be more deliberately cruel.
It’s like some kind of grotesque Last Supper: In a publicity photo from last week’s press conference, Texas governor Greg Abbott is seated at the center of a long table surrounded by grim-faced White men, most of them elderly, in various postures of mental agita. Next to them is a large illustration on an easel board titled “Live Test of Attempt to Breach.” It shows a man with an inner tube (presumably an asylum seeker) clinging to a floating red buoy. Hundreds of these buoys Abbott announced, will be deployed on the Rio Grande near the town of Eagle Pass. The barrier will be 1,000 feet long, and its netting will extend underwater, catching anyone who tries to swim under it.
“We don’t want anyone to get hurt,” said Steve McCraw, head of Texas’s Department of Public Safety, at the June 9 press conference. “We want to prevent people from drowning.”
The floating buoy barrier will persuade people not to cross, he said. “This is to deter them from even coming in the water.”
But we already know this isn’t true. Both McCraw and Abbott were parroting the same strategy, known as “prevention through deterrence,” introduced in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration. It has turned our southern border into a graveyard. After nearly three decades of militarized border buildup that has pushed people into increasingly deadly terrain like the Sonoran Desert, people haven’t stopped coming. But thousands of them have died.
As Todd [Miller] recently wrote in his poignant piece about this deadly strategy, “On the cusp of summer, we can predict like clockwork that hundreds of otherwise healthy people will be dead by summer’s end. It has an aura of premeditated murder.”
These floating barriers, which, according to the manufacturer’s website, can also be reinforced with spikes, will only contribute to an already-skyrocketing death count. Abbott’s latest announcement has already spurred many human rights organizations to sound a warning. Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent and now border human rights activist, along with fellow Texas-based activist Marianna Treviño Wright, released a bilingual video warning migrants of the deadly new policy.
All-in on Fascism
Abbott has long toyed with the idea of running for president. While it increasingly looks less likely that he will, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has already joined the fray. And he’s all-in on fascism. When he’s not treating fellow human beings like FedEx packages, he’s modeling himself after Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian leader, and darling of the CPAC circuit. Last week DeSantis released “B-roll” of Florida state troopers surveying the Texas-Mexico border as they participate in Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. I suspect they didn’t include any audio in the B-roll because it would humanize the children and adults waving to the troopers from the Mexican side of the river, detracting from DeSantis’s threatening narrative of an invading army.
DeSantis’s campaign video begins with a Texas DPS officer, who sports an official DPS seal on his tactical face covering, unlocking a tiny metal door surrounded by razor wire. This is next-level border security theater, as comical as it is utterly surreal and tragic. Several other Republican-led states are also, once again, sending troopers and National Guard soldiers to the Texas border—as they did before the 2022 midterm—to wage war against the Biden White House before the election. Unfortunately, it’s border communities and migrants who are caught in the crossfire.
For many years, I’ve documented border theater as it has ebbed and flowed depending on the political tide. But as I’ve been documenting in The Border Chronicle, we’ve reached an altogether different and deadly era of disinformation, with the GOP parroting invasion and great replacement rhetoric, and increasingly dehumanizing people, spurring mass shootings and political violence. This behavior is championed by a growing right-wing media ecosystem which in turn promotes more anti-democratic and extremist behavior.
I spoke with Sergio Muñoz, vice president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that has tracked conservative media for nearly two decades. I quoted Muñoz in a recent article, and wanted to include my full Q&A with him here. As Muñoz warns, the U.S. is in a “dangerous moment” as it approaches the 2024 presidential election.
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Read Melissa’s full report, including the interview with Sergio Muñoz at the above link.
Yes, “deterrence gimmicks” directed at refugees have a decades-long proven record of failure. You can just look at the efforts of the EU to “bar the door” to refugees from Africa and the Middle
East.
The boats continue to come, some sink, people drown. But, not surprisingly to those other than the “overprivileged and elitist White power class” like Abbott and DeSantis, desperate individuals forced from their homes are going continue to come — at any cost, even their own health, safety, and sometime lives.
Most would rather “risk it all” on a shot — even a very long shot — at stability and a real life, rather than facing the certainty of wasting away without hope, freedom, or opportunity and having to watch the same thing happening to younger generations. Some, against all odds, continue to believe that rich, powerfu Western countries like the U.S. will eventually live up to their solemn legal obligations to protect refugees and asylum seekers!
While, as Melissa cogently points out, these inane, yet deadly, gimmicks do kill migrants, they don’t do so at a high enough rate to materially affect the flow. It’s just causing pain, suffering, and sometimes death for their own perverted sake.
Apparently, neo-fascists like Abbott, DeSantis, Trump, and their “role model” Stephen Miller just “get off on” watching others suffer unnecessarily. Bullies and cowards often get a kick out of observing the effects of their handiwork.
Meanwhile, the public money being wasted on these cruel, yet ultimately ineffective stunts (remember former AZ Gov. Ducey’s shipping containers arrayed and then disassembled at government expense), could much, much better be spent on providing representation, organized resettlement, and humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers.
As Melissa says, the GOP’s (and sometimes, unfortunately the Dems’) “uber-enforcement/deterrence gimmicks are “as comical as [they are] utterly surreal and tragic.” It’s time for decent Americans to “just say no” to these horrible folks and their failed and deadly policies of dehumanization and degradation!
Ron DeSantis Dave Grandlund PoliticalCartoons.com Republished under license Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago!
Maine Voices: ‘Woke’ should not be a four-letter word
Being aware of how we have treated and still treat other people in our society is so important to our society’s evolving that it should be honored, not vilified.
It is frustrating to see the continuous redefining of words and terms by the extremist conservative element in our society and government. One of these terms is “woke.” According to Merriam-Webster, the definition is “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues.” I will add in the qualification as well: “especially issues of ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For my entire life I have strived to embrace this philosophy, trying to listen to and understand other opinions, beliefs and religions, whether they agreed with mine or not, understanding that one cannot fully comprehend a point of view without appreciating the counterpoint. This certainly requires personal evolution and maturity. Being aware of the true history of our country, of how we have treated and still treat other people in our society, is so important to our society’s evolving that it should be honored, not vilified.
The term “woke” has now been unjustly transformed into a negative term. Let that sink in: Attention to important facts and issues, the truth, is something to avoid and discredit. Somehow, this makes sense to a significant number of our political leaders and fellow Americans. It appears that what is most troubling for those who would see “woke” as a vile four-letter word is the qualification above, that it applies to “issues of racial and social justice.”
One of the tag lines for objecting to this thought is that it may cause someone to feel uncomfortable or criticized by being confronted with these historical facts. Personally, I strongly desire to know the truth. I am delighted – admittedly, shocked sometimes – by learning about the history we were never taught, which was suppressed to a large extent for so many years by those who perpetrated many injustices. The historical truth has never made me feel bad about myself. In fact, it is enlightening. It expands my understanding of how and why we have come to this place in our evolution. It shows me how to be better and more empathetic, and it suggests the path forward.
I believe I do understand why this can be so threatening and discomforting to so many. I believe that the truth is like a mirror to them. They see their own racist views, their distrust of anyone they perceive as being “different” as a significant threat. I feel so sad for them, since in my life, through being open to other races, ethnicities, religions and thoughts, I have learned so much and have been blessed with a much more beautiful world, life and friends.
It is extremely troubling to see elected officials, the leaders of our political parties, and fellow Americans embracing and endorsing this philosophy of derision, division and hateful rhetoric that has its roots in the cesspool of white supremacist thought. They are leading us into the abyss of an authoritarian kakistocracy, or government by the worst of us. We must all, every rational one of us, stand and reject this thinking. We must only, and always, embrace truth, the actual facts. These people should not be leading our wonderful country.
Don Bessey is an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War and a resident of Old Orchard Beach.
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Well said, Don! Thanks for speaking out so forcefully!
Don’s views echo several previous postings from Courtside:
Walter Rhein: “When people say they are ‘anti-woke,’ I interrupt them and say ‘You mean ‘anti-black.’ They become enraged and act like they’re the victims (like racists always do).”https://wp.me/p8eeJm-8tJ
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As [Villanova University President] Father [Peter M.] Donohue said at yesterday’s celebration, “‘Woke’ means social justice!” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-8vF
On May 11th, I was with a group of people at the bottom of the Paso del Norte bridge in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t have the small change needed to cross the bridge and return to El Paso, Texas, where I was attending the 16th annual Border Security Expo. Worse yet, this was just three hours before Title 42, the pandemic-era rapid-expulsion border policy instituted by the Trump administration, was set to expire. The media was already in overdrive on the subject, producing apocalyptic scenarios like one in the New York Post reporting that “hordes” of “illegals” were on their way toward the border.
While I searched for those coins, a woman approached me, dug 35 cents out of a small purse — precisely what it cost! — and handed the change to me. She then did so for the others in our group. When I pulled a 20-peso bill from my wallet to repay her, she kept her fist clenched and wouldn’t accept the money.
Having lived, reported, and traveled in Latin America for more than two decades, such generosity didn’t entirely surprise me, though it did contradict so much of the media-generated hype about what was going on at this historic border moment. Since Joe Biden took office in 2021, the pressure on his administration to rescind Trump’s Title 42 had only grown. Now, it was finally going to happen — and hell was on the horizon.
But at that expo in El Paso that brought together top brass from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its border and immigration enforcement agencies, and private industry, I was learning that preparations for such a shift had been underway for years and — don’t be shocked! — the corporations attending planned to profit from it in a big-time fashion.
Seeing the phase-out of Title 42 through the lens of a growing border-industrial complex proved grimly illuminating. Border officials and industry representatives continued to insist that just on the other side of the border was a world of “cartels,” “adversaries,” and “criminals,” including, undoubtedly, this woman forcing change on me. By then, I had heard all too many warnings that, were the United States to let its guard down, however briefly, there would be an infernal “border surge.”
As I later stood in the halls of that expo, however, I became aware of another type of surge not being discussed either there or in the media. And I’m not just thinking about the extra members of the National Guard and other forces the Biden administration and Texas Governor Greg Abbott only recently sent to that very border. What I have in mind is the surge of ever higher budgets and record numbers of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts guaranteed to ensure that those borderlands will remain one of the most militarized and surveilled places on planet Earth.
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At $29.8 billion, the CBP/ICE portion of the DHS budget he praised was not just the highest ever but a $3 billion jump above 2022, including $2.7 billion for “new acquirements in our southwestern border.” In other words, the coming surge at the border was distinctly budgetary.
For context, when Donald Trump took office in 2017 his CBP/ICE budget was $21.2 billion. By 2020, it had gone up to $25.4 billion. In other words, it took him four years to do what the Biden administration essentially did in one. The last time there had been such a jump was from $9.4 billion in 2005 to $12.4 billion in 2007, including funding for huge projects like the Secure Fence Act that built nearly 650 miles of walls and barriers, SBInet which aimed to build a virtual wall at the border (with special thanks to the Boeing Corporation), and the largest hiring surge ever undertaken by the Border Patrol — 8,000 agentsin three years.
But if that’s what $3 billion meant in 2005-2007, what does it mean in 2023 and beyond? Gone was the Trump-era bravado about that “big, beautiful wall.” Hysen’s focus was on the Department of Homeland Security’s launching of an Artificial Intelligence Taskforce. A technocrat, Hysen spoke of harnessing “the power of AI to transform the department’s mission,” assuring the industry audience that “I follow technology very closely and I am more excited by the developments of AI this year than I have been about any technology since the first smartphones.”
This cuddly robo version of “man’s best friend” can be fully outfitted to “go into barracks and blow a motherfucker’s face off.” And, it can be triggered by an agent 30 miles away! How great is that! Sadly, in the midst of all this techno-warfare at the border, the Biden Administration can’t scrape together the resources to humanely resettle and fairly and timely process those asylum seekers they DO let into the country. It’s a question of priorities. PHOTO: Border Chronicle CAPTION BY COURTSIDE
That robo-dog in front of me caught the state of the border in 2023 and the trends that went with it perfectly. It could, after all, be controlled by an agent up to 33 miles away, according to the vendor, and apparently could even — thank you, AI — make decisions on its own.
The vendor showed me a video of just how such a dog would work if it were armed. It would use AI technology to find human forms. A red box would form around any human it detects on a tablet screen held by an agent. In other words, I asked, can the dog think?
I had in mind the way Bing’s Chatbox, the AI-powered search engine from Microsoft, had so infamously professed its love for New York Times reporter Kevin Roose. A human, using an Xbox-like controller, the vendor told me, will be able to target a specific person among those the dog detects. “But,” he reassured me, “it’s a human who ultimately pulls the trigger.”
In Mexico, when I walked to a spot where the Rio Grande flowed between the two countries, I ran into a small group of migrants camped out at the side of the road. Near them was a fire filled with charred wood over which a pot was cooking. A pregnant Colombian woman told me they were providing food to other migrants passing by. “Oh,” I asked, “so you sell food?” No, she responded, they gave it away for free. Before they had been camped out for months near the immigration detention center in Ciudad Juárez where a devastating fire in March killed 40 people. Now, they had moved closer to the border. And they were still waiting, still hoping to file applications for asylum themselves.
Behind where they sat, I could see the 20-foot border wall with coiling razor wire on top. There was nothing new about a hyper-militarized border here. After all, the El Paso build-up had begun 30 years ago with Operation Hold the Line in 1993. A desert camo Humvee sat below the wall on the U.S. side and a couple of figures (Border Patrol? National Guard?) stood at the edge of the Rio Grande shouting to a Mexican federal police agent on the other side.
The clock for the supposed Title 42 Armageddon was ticking down as I then crossed the bridge back to El Paso, where more barriers of razor wire had only recently been emplaced. There was also a slew of blue-uniformed CBP agents and several jeeps carrying camouflaged members of border units. Everyone was heavily armed as if about to go into battle.
At the Border Security Expo, Hysen pointed out that fear of a Title 42 surge had resulted in an even more fortified border, hard as that might be to imagine. Fifteen hundred National Guard troops had been added to the 2,500 already there, along with 2,000 extra private security personnel, and more than 1,000 volunteers from other agencies. Basically, he insisted, they had everything more than under control, whatever the media was saying.
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At the Edge of Everything — and Nothing At All
On the morning of May 12th, I was with border scholar Gabriella Sanchez at the very spot where the borders of Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua meet near El Paso. Title 42 had expired the night before and I asked her what she thought. She responded that she considered this the border norm: we’re regularly told something momentous and possibly terrible is going to happen and then nothing much happens at all.
And she was right, the predicted “surge” of migrants crossing the border actually decreased — and yet, in some sense, everything keeps happening in ways that only seem grimmer. Perhaps 100 yards from where we were standing, in fact, we soon noticed a lone man cross the international boundary and walk into the United States as if he were taking a morning stroll. Thirty seconds later, a truck sped past us kicking up gravel. For a moment, I thought it was just a coincidence, since it wasn’t an official Border Patrol vehicle.
Then, I noted an insignia on its side that included the U.S. and Mexican flags. The truck came to a skidding stop by the man. A rotund figure in a gray uniform jumped out and ran toward him while he raised his hands. Just then, a green-striped Border Patrol van also pulled up. I was surprised — though after that Border Security Expo I shouldn’t have been — when I realized that the initial arrest was being made by someone seemingly from a private security firm. (Remember, Hysen said that an extra 2,000 private security agents had been hired for the “surge.”)
In truth, that scene couldn’t have been more banal. You might have seen it on any May 12th in these years. That banality, by the way, included a sustained violence that’s intrinsically part of the modern border system, as geographer Reece Jones argues in his book Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move. In the days following Title 42’s demise, an eight-year-old Honduran girl died in Border Patrol custody and a Tohono O’odham man was shot and killed by the Border Patrol. In April, 11 remains of dead border crossers were also recovered in Arizona’s Pima County desert alone (where it’s impossible to carry enough water for such a long trek).
In the wake of Donald Trump, everything on the border has officially changed, yet nothing has really changed. Nothing of note is happening, even as everything happens. And as Hysen said at that border expo meeting, big as the record 2023 border budget may be, in 2024 it’s likely to go “even further” into the stratosphere.
Put another way, at the border, we are eternally at the edge of everything — and nothing at all.
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Read Todd’s complete report in the Border Chron at the link.
From Ike’s “Military-Industrial Complex” to Biden’s “Border-Industrial Complex” — my life has spanned it all! But, while Ike was trying to warn us about the dangers ahead, Biden (and the GOP) are trying to lull us into accepting unending and largely unaccountable border militarization as the inevitable wave of the future — even a good thing!
I’ve got nothing against technology! But, it should employed to make humanity better, not just for its own sake.As I suggest below, the “Armed Robot-Dogs v. CBP One” (or EOIR’s venture into the virtual world) strongly suggest the lack of a healthy balance!
Human migration is even older and more permanent than never-ending border militarization, industrialized cruelty, and dehumanization. The latter are now routinely practiced by the very Western nations who once, long ago, fought against Nazism and vowed, apparently somewhat disingenuously, “never again!”
Human migration was in motion long before the creation of the modern nation-state. It will be with us as long and there is life on earth.
Moreover, the realities of climate change and the future migrations and political reckonings it will force go well-beyond our already overly restrictive legal refugee regimes. Like it or not — and those of us fortunate to live in potential “receiving countries” shouldn’t fear it — there will be more, not less, human migration in the future.
In this context, I’m highly skeptical that “armed robo-dogs” — even those miracles of modern technology fully weaponized to “go into barracks and blow a motherfucker’s face off” — are the durable solutions to inevitable events that we need.
It struck me that the woman who insisted that Todd keep her 35 cents, and the patient folks camped out around a wood cooking fire just south of the fence, waiting for appointments and hearings that might never come from the poor technology (how would an armed robo-dog react to the badly flawed “CBP One App” inflicted on human asylum seekers — state of the art technology seems rather one-sided at DHS, as most advocates would tell you) and our broken asylum legal system, probably are closer to having the answers to the future than any of the “hot air” politicos calling the shots or aspiring to do so.
Anna Marie Gallagher, Esquire Executive Director CLINIC PHOTO: CLINIC website
Executive Director Opening Plenary Remarks CLINIC Convening 2023
May 17, 2023
Good afternoon, dear friends. My name is Anna Gallagher and I have the honor of leading CLINIC as executive director. It is such a pleasure to be here with you all as we officially begin our first in-person Convening since 2019.
Looking out at the sea of faces in front of me, I am filled with gratitude to finally be able to come together to engage with one another, to listen, learn and gather strength for the work ahead in support of our immigrant brothers and sisters.
Even just being in your presence I feel a sense of renewed hope and energy. I am so looking forward to the next few days, and I am certain that you will be reignited to take on the important work ahead.
In a moment I will welcome our wonderful panel of Affiliate experts, but right now I want to take a moment to recognize this moment we’re facing and my hopes for this year’s CLINIC Convening.
You all, of all people, know that immigrant communities are facing truly unprecedented challenges – and I do not use that word, unprecedented, lightly.
With the lifting of Title 42, and the camps of men, women and children along the border desperate to find welcome on the other side; the proposed USCIS fee increases which threaten to put immigration benefits out of reach for many; the newly announced delays for foreign-born religious workers and special immigrant juveniles; and, perhaps above all, our warming planet and the outbreaks of violence which force many more people to migrate around the world – these are extremely challenging times for migrants in our country and around the world.
Several months ago, the New York Times featured an op-ed that has stuck with me, entitled, “The Rich World Has a Shockingly High Tolerance for Cruelty.”
It was about how rich nations are more willing than ever to let migrants languish at their borders in sub-human conditions rather than create safe pathways for migration or address the conditions causing people to flee.
It was about how the promises that nations made after World War II to respect the dignity and rights of those who are fleeing have been eroded and now, on a practical level, forgotten.
When I read this article, in my mind I was transported back to the time I spent in North Africa several years ago, working with migrants as a representative of Jesuit Refugee Services.
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I interviewed migrants who had traveled for 18 months or more to try and find safety in these countries bordering Europe. I got to know some of the migrants, who called me “grandma” – a term of endearment, as my hair was grey.
While I was talking to some of them, they showed me their hands, which were scarred with wounds. When I asked them what happened, they said their hands were repeatedly pierced while climbing barbed wire to get through to safety.
Hearing this, my heart broke – as it has many times over the years.
The idea that we are using barbed wire to keep out our fellow human beings is inconceivable, yet true. Our immigrant brothers and sisters stand at our gates, begging for our aid, and we build barbed wire fences that pierce their hands.
Many wealthy nations are founded on a concept of all human beings being equal in dignity, but we do not act like it.
As we gather in Arizona, I know we are all mindful that these kinds of camps that the op-ed author is speaking of are just several hours away on the border. We also know that immigrant communities’ dignity is denied not only in these camps, but all over the country in the various places we’ve come from.
We must be clear, this is not an “other side of the world problem,” it is our problem. It affects all of us, in our integrity as people of faith and conscience, and as a reflection of our society.
And yet today, as I recall that New York Times op-ed, and the sense of frustration and despair I felt while reading it, I feel a surge of hope.
I want you to look around the room. Look at your neighbor to your left and right. YOU are the hope that fills my heart, and YOU are the hope that reignites me in our work.
As we gather here today, I am in a room full of people who DO act like all human beings are equal. Those who spend their precious time – often too much of their time, working long hours – trying to advance the truth that every person is precious, valuable, and deserving of a safe and dignified life.
That’s why being in your presence gives me such hope. I am reminded that the CLINIC network is full of holy people.
That is why our gathering here together, and throughout this week, is so powerful: we are, to borrow the words of Bishop Seitz of El Paso, working to be a “creative counterexample” to the culture of fear and hostility, to be a network that is slowly creating a new culture of solidarity and hospitality.
At CLINIC, we also are bolstered by our faith that we do not do this hard work alone. The spirit of God is inspiring us and pushing us forward, giving us strength and magnifying our efforts, especially when we are overwhelmed by the need in front of us.
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Our faith also acts as a mirror for us, forcing us to keep evaluating whether we are truly reflecting the gospel truth of God’s concern for all people.
To maintain this faith, and to maintain the energy to be this creative counterexample, we need one another. Our network is sustained through the support, advice, and solidarity we demonstrate to one another.
Throughout the next few days, we will take the time to step back, to reflect on our work and learn and share new strategies, information, and tips for the very practical day-to-day work of supporting immigrant clients and communities.
We know that this practical work – the forms, the bureaucracy, the nitty-gritty details – changes and saves lives. So how well we can do it matters, which is why we gather to learn and grow.
We also gather to enjoy one another – to laugh, share stories, and reconnect with beloved colleagues and friends.
So I also hope that over the next few days you will have some fun!
Thank you for coming here to CLINIC Convening and for your dedication to this work. I am so honored to be alongside all of you this week, and all days.
Now, I am pleased to introduce our panelists for our opening plenary, Preparing for the Lifting of Title 42: Key Insights from our Network. When we decided on “reunited and reignited” for our theme this year, we knew we wanted to do something different for our opening conversation.
This “Network Fireside Chat” will be an opportunity to highlight the work done by our network throughout the United States. During this conversation, you’ll hear how Affiliates in three distinct geographical regions are rising to meet the needs of our immigrant and refugee brothers and sisters – especially during this increased time of uncertainty.
From the Border region, Joel Enriquez-Cazarez will share about the work of Jewish Family Service of San Diego.
As a transit city, Carolina Rivera will share how Catholic Charities of Dallas assists our immigrant brothers and sisters.
And Yer Vang from Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Dubuque will give an interior city perspective of welcome.
Now please join me in welcoming our keynote panelists to the stage…
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Thanks, my friend, for a lifetime of service to due process, fundamental fairness, and social justice, and for speaking out as the “powers that be” and the “powers that wannabe” go into cowardly retreat and hide in fear from the needs and rights of humanity!
Francesco Isgro, Esquire President & CEO of Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center, Inc. Editor-in-Chief, Voce Italiana PHOTO: LinkedinFrancesco Isgro
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Thanks for speaking out so forcefully and articulately for some of the most vulnerable among us, Francesco, my long-time friend and former DOJ colleague! Your own continuing distinguished career in both the public and now private/NGO sectors is a testament to the irreplaceable contributions of generations of immigrants to our great nation!
I’m proud to say that Francesco started as a legal intern in the “Legacy INS” Office of General Counsel during my tenure as Deputy General Counsel. He was then selected to become a INS Trial Attorney (now known as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel) under the Attorney General’s Honors Program. He eventually went on to a stellar career as a Senior Litigator, editor, and “hands on” educator at the Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) in the DOJ’s Civil Division.
I specifically remember two of Francesco’s innovative contributions while in the INS OGC: collecting, indexing, and publishing the legal opinions of the General Counsel (and Deputy General Counsel); and creating a Law Bulletin that our office could use to inform the scores of field attorneys nationwide under our supervision and direction. This later led to vastly improved attorney training programs developed by OGC Counsel Craig Raynsford, assisted by Fran Mooney (who later went on to become the Public Information Officer for EOIR while I was BIA Chair).
I remember being a guest lecturer in Francesco’s immigration class while he was teaching at Georgetown Law. He also went on to found and become Editor-in-Chief of OIL’s Immigration Litigation Bulletin, a highly-respected internal source of information and guidance for USG attorneys involved in immigration.
My experiences on the bench during 13 years at the (now “legacy’) Arlington Immigration Court mirrored Francesco’s observations. Those whom we were able to help regularize their status under the law were overwhelmingly hard-working individuals making important contributions got our nation and our economy. Many had been doing it for years, sometimes even decades, and had USC children and even grandchildren who were “living proof” of the contributions of families who are given a chance to succeed.
Often, the “next generations” were present in court. I both congratulated them and asked them never to forget and appreciate the risks and hardships their parents had undertaken so that they could fulfill their complete promise in a free society! “Building America, one case at a time,” as I used to quip to the attorneys involved on both sides.
Francesco’s “Christian social justice message,” and his references to Pope Francis and the history of U.S. immigration also harken to a message I heard recently from Villanova University President Rev. Peter Donohue and Professor Michele Pistone during a recent educational event at Villanova Law. In his remarks, Rev. Donahue traced the founding of Villanova University to the response of Augustinian Friars to the burning of St. Augustine’s Church in downtown Philly during the Nativist Riots of 1844!
Professor Pistone credited Christian social justice teaching and the inspiration of Pope Francis for contributing to her success at the Villanova Immigration Clinic as well as the founding of the VIISTA Villanova Program to provide more well-qualified non-attorney accredited representatives to serve those in immigration proceedings. The VIISTA graduates whom I met and worked with on litigation skills over the two day seminar/celebration were totally impressive and dedicated.
Thanks again Francesco, for writing this inspiring piece setting forth fundamental truth about American immigration! That some in America shamefully and stubbornly refuse to recognize this truth doesn’t make it any less true, nor does it lessen the necessity to act upon it in moving our nation and our world forward toward a better future.
May 8, 2023—The Atlantic’s staff writer Caitlin Dickerson has won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for the September 2022 cover story, “‘We Need to Take Away Children,’” an exhaustive investigation that exposed the secret history of the Trump administration’s policy to intentionally separate migrant children from their parents; the incompetence that led the government to lose track of many children; and the intention among former officials to separate families again if Trump is reelected. Her reporting, one of the longest articles in The Atlantic’s history, laid out in painstaking detail one of the darkest chapters in recent U.S. history, exposing not only how the policy came into being and who was responsible for it, but also how all of its worst outcomes were anticipated and ignored. The investigation was edited by national editor Scott Stossel.
. . . .
In awarding Dickerson journalism’s top honor, the Pulitzer Board cited: “A deeply reported and compelling accounting of the Trump administration policy that forcefully separated migrant children from their parents resulting in abuses that have persisted under the current administration.”
The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote to staff: “This is a wonderful moment for everyone, but particularly for Caitlin, Liz, and Xochitl. There is much to say about their talents, and the talents of their editors. This is also a very proud moment for all of you who worked on these stories. Caitlin’s piece, one of the longest and most complicated stories The Atlantic has published across its 166-year history, required the unflagging work of a good portion of our comparatively small staff—from the copy-editing and fact-checking teams to our artists and designers and lawyers. Our ambitions outmatch our size, but I’m proud to say that our team rises to every challenge.”
Dickerson’s investigation exposed that U.S. officials misled Congress, the public, and the press, and minimized the policy’s implications to obscure what they were doing; that separating migrant children from their parents was not a side effect of the policy, but its intent; that almost no logistical planning took place before the policy was initiated; that instead of working to reunify families after parents were prosecuted, officials worked to keep families apart longer; and that the architects of the legislation will likely seek to reinstate it, should they get the opportunity. Over 18 months, Dickerson conducted more than 150 interviews––including the first extensive on-the-record interviews on this subject with Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly, and others intimately involved in the policy and its consequences at every level of government––and reviewed thousands of pages of internal government documents, some of which were turned over only after a multiyear lawsuit.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Many congrats and thanks Caitlin! Unfortunately, the message still doesn’t seem to have gotten through to politicos and policy-makers of both parties who continue to promote, tout, and sometimes employ illegal, immoral, and ineffective measures directed at migrant children and families!
Most important — no accountability for the perpetrators! Indeed, if the GOP gets power again they plan to repeat their crimes! And the Dems aren’t that much better — happily touting policies that can have the same effect, whether intended or not.
Dehydration is a nasty way to die! Théodore Géricault Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France-003341B – Raft of the Medusa (16237617902).jpg Copy [[File:France-003341B – Raft of the Medusa (16237617902).jpg|France-003341B_-_Raft_of_the_Medusa_ PHOTO: Dennis Jarvis, Halifax Nova ScotiaJasmine Garsd NPR Criminal Justice Reporter PHOTO: Linkedin
In some parts of this new route they are exploring, Arellano and Cordero are already leaving bottles of fresh water in bushy areas, where people may be taking refuge from the sun.
They check to see if anyone drank from them.
Arellano picks up the bottle. “Slashed”, she sighs.
This is where Border Kindness runs into one of the biggest hurdles in drawing a new map: not climate, not geography, but people. Occasionally, when they leave these bottles of water, they return to find them destroyed.
They don’t know who is doing it – but there’s plenty of people out here who disapprove of the work they do.
“If they recognize what the water is for… they’ll slash it. In hopes people die I guess?” Arellano says.
As they move along, Arellano and Cordero find about a dozen destroyed water bottles at various locations. All mangled. They replace them.
Before calling it a day, they drive up to one last spot where a migrant was found dead from dehydration just a few months ago.
In the nearby bushes, there’s the usual: shoes, socks, also, a small child’s pink winter glove, and a tiny winter jacket. It’s baby blue and filled with caked mud. Arellano inspects its tags. “4-T”, she reads out loud. It belonged to a 4-year-old child.
They walk over to check on the water bottle they left here a few days ago, to see if anyone was able to drink.
But it, too, has been slashed open.
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Read and listen to the complete report at the link.
A sad illustration of one of my sayings: “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!”
People all around the world look to the United States as a land of opportunity and safety. Every month, tens of thousands of people arrive at US border checkpoints and ask to be granted asylum. Over the last decade, the number of people showing up at the southern U.S. border seeking protection has increased five-fold to more than 200,000 every month. That huge increase has so overwhelmed the system that getting a final answer often takes years. There is bipartisan agreement that the asylum system is broken. How we fix the backlog, though, depends a lot on how we answer the question at the heart of today’s podcast episode: what is our obligation to asylum seekers? Are we responsible for taking these individuals in? We’ll be hearing from two previous asylum seekers about the challenges of seeking asylum in the United States, a writer who had an eye-opening experience learning how America’s asylum process differs from other countries, and two former immigration judges with differing perspectives on how we should implement asylum law in the United States. As we hear each of these perspectives, we’ll consider this question: what do we owe people who are no longer safe or able to prosper in the countries where they happen to have been born?
Podcast Guests: Razak Iyal, sought asylum in the U.S. in 2013, granted asylum in Canada in 2017 Joe Meno, Author of “Between Everything and Nothing: The Journey of Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal and the Quest for Asylum” Makaya Revell, CEO of Peace Promise Consulting, granted U.S. asylum in 2022 Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, former immigration judge 2006-2014 (York, Pennsylvania) Paul Wickham Schmidt, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, former immigration judge 2003-2016 (Arlington, Virginia) **This episode is part of Season 3 on Top of Mind: Finding Fairness. From health and immigration to prisons and pot, how can we get more peace and prosperity for all?
Holy card ( 1899 ) showing an illustration to the Gospel of Matthew 25, 34-36 – rear side of an obituary. Wolfgang Sauber Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
MATTHEW AT THE BORDER: ACTING ON THE MESSAGE OF CHAPTER 25
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
U.S. Immigration Judge (Retired)
Westminster Presbyterian Men’s Breakfast
April 14, 2023
I. INTRODUCTION: THE MESSAGE OF MATTHEW 25
Welcome. Thank you for inviting me and for coming out this morning.
Of course, I want to hold my friend and fellow “Badger” Dudley, the Men’s Group, honored guests, and anybody else of any importance whatsoever harmless for my remarks this morning. While I have borrowed liberally from the ideas and inspirations of others, I take sole responsibility for the views expressed in my presentation.
I don’t usually start my talks with a Biblical quote. But, since this is a church men’s breakfast, we are in the holy season, and my topic is integrally tied to Judeo-Christian values, I want to read from Matthew 25, verses 34-46:
34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;
35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
37 Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?
39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
40 And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
44 Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’
45 Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
II. OVERVIEW
The last time I was with you, five years ago, I described the mess and rampant unfairness in our immigration system. I’d like to say that those times are behind us: That we have restored the rule of law, enhanced due process, and acted, as a nation, in a manner that showed adherence to those passages from Matthew.
But, unfortunately, I can’t do that. Not yet! Despite many promises to fix the mistakes of the past and to do better in the future, and a few successes, the current Administration has, in my view, disturbingly failed to deliver on our obligation to treat “the stranger” and “the other” — in other words, some of “the least of these” — fairly and with human dignity. Nowhere is this more harmful, discouraging, and threatening to both human life and our democracy than at our borders.
The most vulnerable among us, asylum seekers, who ask for little other than to be treated fairly and humanely under our laws, are still being victimized by dysfunctional bureaucracies more intent on deterring and rejecting than on protecting!
I’m going to tell you truths that some find uncomfortable; briefly summarize our current and proposed “built to fail system” at the borders; and tell your why it doesn’t have to be this way!
I’m going to share with you some ideas from legal and humanitarian experts on how our nation could do a far better job for ourselves and for refugees just by more creatively, boldly, and courageously exercising authorities under existing law. In other words how we as a nation could reflect on Jesus’s parable in Matthew and make it a reality.
III. UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
Let me tell you a few truths that the “false prophets” find uncomfortable.
First, there is an internationally recognized right to seek asylum. Our law states that any person “who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including [someone] who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such [person’s] status, may apply for asylum.” [INA, 208(a)].
Second, according to the 5th Amendment to our Constitution, “no person . . . shall be . . .deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Note that it says “person,” not citizen or “lawfully present non-citizen.”
Third, according to our Supreme Court, asylum laws are to be applied generously, so that even those with just a 10% chance of suffering persecution could qualify. [INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca]. In other words, according to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative tribunal in immigration where I once served as an appellate judge and Chair, asylum can be granted “even where [the likelihood of persecution] is significantly less than clearly probable.”[Matter of Mogharrabi].
Additionally, the Handbook of the United Nations, whose Refugee Convention we adopted and which forms the basis for our refugee and asylum laws, says that because of the traumatic situation of refugees and the understandable difficulty they have in gathering and presenting “evidence,” refugees and asylum seekers should be given “the benefit of the doubt” in adjudications.
Fourth, by definition, refugee situations are driven by a variety of life-threatening forces occurring in sending countries, most of them outside our immediate control. Therefore, attempts to use harsh applications of our laws, intentionally “user-unfriendly” procedures, and punishment such as prosecution, imprisonment in life-threatening conditions, and even family separation as “deterrents” are ultimately doomed to failure. I’ve personally watched this “play out” during my five decade career in immigration.
Friends, human migration is a reality as old as humanity itself. It existed long before the evolution of the “nation state” and will continue as long as there is human life on this earth.
Consequently, the idea of some that we can unilaterally cut off or end human migration solely by our own cruel, repressive, and unfair actions is absurd. As I always say, “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.”
Fifth, America needs immigrants. Refugees and asylees are part of our legal immigration system. They should be treated as such and welcomed, rather than being dehumanized and viewed as a “loophole,” a “threat,” or“invaders.”
Unhappily, in my view, most of our past and current policies toward refugees and asylum seekers run afoul of these fundamental truths. Worse still, legislators, policy makers from both parties, and even Federal Judges have been willing to run roughshod over these fundamental principles when they believe it is personally, politically, financially, or even professionally expedient.
IV.CURRENT BORDER POLICIES
Currently, our border asylum policies, largely “holdovers” from the Trump Administration, are overwhelmingly weighted toward improper, and ultimately futile, “deterrence.” This reflects deeply imbedded nativist, often racist, views by those holding power.
Our Government currently claims that our border is “closed” to legal asylum seekers, as it has been since March 2020. Under a vestige of Trump-era policy, known as Title 42, the legal processing of asylum applicants and their admission has been suspended based on a transparently pretextual, manufactured claim of necessity to protect America from COVID.
This allows many individuals to be excluded from the U.S. without any legal process and without having a chance to make a claim for asylum or other legal protection. Others are allowed to come into the U.S. under highly discretionary — most would say arbitrary — opaque “exceptions” to Title 42 that are within the sole discretion or DHS officials without any meaningful review.
The result is a mess. Some refugees are returned to Mexico or their home countries where they are subject to abuse, extortion,exploitation, crime, torture, and sometimes death.
Others, who might or might not be refugees, are allowed into the U.S., often with inadequate screening and without clear instructions as to what they are to do next. Because the Biden Administration didn’t establish any uniform nationwide resettlement system for those allowed in, they have been subject to cruel political stunts.
One of the most well-publicized of these has been the so-called “voluntary relocation” of individuals from the border by the governors of Texas, Florida, and, until the recent election, Arizona. They are sent by these governors, without coordination or notice, to supposedly “liberal” cities such as New York, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C., in the calculated hopes of overwhelming community nonprofit organizations, creating chaos, and thereby causing a “backlash” against asylum seekers and the Administration.
V. BIDEN’S LARGELY MISGUIDED PROPOSALS
The Biden Administration has made some rather halfhearted efforts to end Title 42. To date, these have been blocked by right-wing Federal Judges, mostly Trump appointees.
But, it now appears that with the overall “COVID emergency” ended by President Biden, Title 42 will also end on May 11, barring further obstructionist litigation.
Many of us had hoped that after more than two-years to work on regularizing and normalizing asylum processing, the Biden Administration would have a “ready to implement” plan for restoring order, fundamental fairness, and due process to asylum adjudication.
But, sadly, this is not the case. The Biden Administration has actually proposed what many of us consider to be “gimmick regulations” to take effect upon the expiration of Title 42. These proposals actually build upon, and in some cases expand, unfair, restrictive, ineffective policies used by the Trump Administration to “deter” asylum seekers.
Obviously, many experts have opposed these measures. A group of which I am a member, the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, filed an official comment in opposition to these proposals.
In it, we stated:
[T]he proposed rule exceeds the agencies’ authority by seeking to create a ban on asylum that contradicts Congressional intent and international law. As former Immigration Judges, we can confidently predict that the rule would result in individuals being erroneously deported even where they face a genuine threat of persecution or torture. We urge that the rule be withdrawn in its entirety.
Notably, approximately 33,000 individuals and organizations joined us in submitting comments in opposition to these regulations. Among these is the union representing the DHS Asylum Officers who claim, with justification, that applying these proposed provisions would require them to violate their oath to uphold the law.
At the heart of the Administration’s proposed changes is a new bar for those who apply for asylum other than at a port of entry and who can’t show that they have applied and been denied asylum in a country they “transited” on the way to the U.S.
Absurdly, this includes some of the most dangerous countries in the world, without well-functioning, fair asylum systems: Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, being among those often transited.
This is also a rather obvious contradiction of the statutory command I read earlier that individuals can apply for asylum regardless of whether they arrive at a port of entry.
While there are some “emergency exceptions” to these new bars, they are narrow and will be almost impossible for individuals who have made the long, difficult, and dangerous journey to establish.
The proposal also improperly raises the statutory standards for preliminary screening of these individuals by Asylum Officers from “credible fear” to “reasonable fear.” This improperly weaponizes “gatekeepers” to block access to the asylum adjudication system.
Another “centerpiece” of the proposal is to require all asylum applicants arriving at ports of entry to schedule in advance an appointment for asylum screening using a new app called “CBP One.” Unfortunately, according to those actually at the border with asylum seekers, CBP One is “not quite ready for prime time.” It’s plagued by technical glitches, including disconnection, inability to schedule appointments for all family members, failure of the “facial recognition” software with some ethnic groups, and issues of usable wi-fi in Mexico and cell phone access among some applicants.
As Senator Cory Booker (D) of New Jersey stated following a recent trip to the border:
“Even if the CBP One app [were] as efficient, user friendly, fair, and inclusive as possible – which I hope one day it will be – it would still be inherently discriminatory.”
Additionally, the “appointments” currently available for asylum seekers are woefully inadequate and often are exhausted shortly after being posted, leaving legal asylum seekers frustrated and stranded in deplorable conditions near the Mexican border.
The Administration has recognized the need to encourage applications for refugee status in or near the countries from which refugees flee. But, instead of providing for more robust refugee admissions, the Administration has circumvented existing refugee laws by creating “special programs” for nationals of five countries to apply for temporary “parole into the U.S.”
This process is restricted to only five countries: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Ukraine. The numbers of paroles are limited, and the criteria do not necessarily relate to refugee qualifications, relying heavily on the ability to obtain a U.S. sponsor in advance.
While this undoubtedly benefits some nationals of these countries, it does not prioritize refugees and it contains numerical limitations that do not apply to those seeking asylum. The arbitrary, highly discretionary nature of the parole determinations is combined with the lack of any statutory mechanism for conferring green cards upon the expiration of parole. This “limbo” situation recreates many of the ad hoc factors of parole programs prior to the Refugee Act of 1980 that Congress specifically intended to eliminate.
Another so-called “feature” of the proposed system being touted by the Administration is the negotiated ability to remove up to 30,000 non-Mexicans per month to Mexico. This is despite the well-publicized dangers awaiting them there, including the recent murders of American tourists and the “slow roasting” of 39 detained asylum seekers in a Mexican detention center fire.
The Biden Administration is also considering re-instituting so-called “family detention” and increased criminal prosecutions of those who cross the border illegally. These policies, also employed by the Trump Administration, have proved highly problematic in the past.
Then there is the mess in the individual asylum adjudication system that was weaponized and largely destroyed by the Trump Administration. Unqualified personnel, perceived to be committed to denying asylum above all else, were selected both at DHS and for Immigration Judge positions at the Immigration Courts, known as EOIR in the Department of Justice. Both the Asylum Office and EOIR are now incredibly backlogged.
As currently operated, the Immigration Courts feature a number of so-called “asylum free zones” where asylum is almost never granted by judges who are renowned for denying 90-100% of the asylum claims, far above the already grossly inflated “national average.”
Even when asylum is granted, it too often depends more upon the attitude and background of the individual Immigration Judge assigned than on the merits of the case. The U.S. Courts of Appeals regularly return cases to EOIR after pointing out very basic legal and factual errors committed by the latter in their undue haste to deny protection!
The current dysfunction at EOIR violates the commands of the law, that I read to your earlier, for due process, fairness, generosity, and applying the benefit of the doubt to asylum adjudications.
Indeed, attempting to avoid the Immigration Courts, now with an astounding 2 million backlog of pending cases, at least 800,000 of them involving asylum, appears to be one of the “drivers” of Biden Administration asylum policies. Unfortunately, in their two years in office, this Administration has done little to reform the Immigration Courts to improve expertise, efficiency, and due process and to repair the systemic damage done during the Trump Administration.
To add insult to injury, incredibly, the Biden Administration just “put on hold” one of the few potential improvements they had made to the asylum process: Allowing Asylum Officers to grant asylum to border applicants who pass credible fear. This would actually bypass the EOIR backlog without diminishing anyone’s due process rights. After pushing this change as potentially “transformational,” the Administration totally blew the implementation in a stunning show of ineptness and lack of basic preparation.
V. BETTER SOLUTIONS THROUGH EXISTING LAW
In my view, and that of other experts, we are once again heading for a systemic failure to do right by refugees and asylum seekers. The primary reason is that, in contravention of the law, the lessons of the Holocaust, which gave birth to the Refugee Convention, and the scriptures, we view refugees — “the stranger in need” — as “problems” or “statistics” to be “deterred,” “punished,” “discouraged,” and “denied.”
This is a wrong-headed — and fundamentally un-Christian — view. Refugees are fellow humans — like us — in need. They are legally entitled and deserving of our protection.
But, beyond that, they are an important source of legal immigration that our country was built upon and continues to need. Indeed most of the ancestors of those of us in this room probably came to this country fleeing or escaping something, regardless of whether or not it would have met today’s refugee definitions.
The border doesn’t have to be a source of disorder and embarrassment to our nation. There are better alternatives, even under existing law.
My experience tells me that if, instead of straining to improperly deter refugees, we use available tools to construct a fair, timely, generous, practical, expert, user-friendly legal system for refugees and asylees, the vast majority of them will use it. That will necessarily take pressure off the task of apprehending those seeking to evade the system.
What I’m going to share with you are ideas for progressive, humane, constructive improvements developed and advocated by many experts and NGOs. Certainly, these are not just my ideas.
First, we must maximize use of the existing provisions for legal screening and admission of refugees processed outside the United States. Currently, those programs are overly cumbersome and far too anemic with respect to the Western Hemisphere, particularly for countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America that are traditional “sending countries.”
Refugees screened and approved abroad arrive at our borders with documents and immediate work authorization. They are also able to bring family members and have a clear statutory path to obtaining green cards and eventually citizenship. These are important factors missing from the ad hoc parole programs instituted by this Administration.
Second, we need radical reforms of our Asylum Offices at USCIS and the Immigration Courts at EOIR. The “deadwood and nay sayers” who overpopulated these agencies during the Trump Administration must be weeded out and replaced with true subject matter experts in asylum, preferably with actual experience representing asylum seekers.
There are many asylum cases, both among arriving applicants, and languishing in the largely self-created backlogs, that could and should be prioritized and rapidly granted. Better trained and qualified Asylum Officers should be encouraged to grant asylum at or near the border whenever possible. That avoids the need to “refer” cases to the backlogged Immigration Courts.
Within EOIR, a great place to “leverage” reform would be at the BIA. That body was intentionally “packed” with some of the highest asylum-denying judges during the Trump Administration. Bringing in well-respected subject matter experts to set positive asylum precedents, establish and enforce best practices, and “ride herd” on the toxic “asylum free zones” and “deniers’ clubs” allowed to flourish among Immigration Courts would be a huge step forward.
And, for those who are found not to have a credible fear of persecution, after a fair screening system and fair rules administered by Asylum Officers who are experts, the law already provides for “summary expedited removal” without resort to full Immigration Court hearings, thus avoiding that backlogged system.
There is not, and has never been, a legitimate need to resort to Title 42 and other improper gimmicks, to deal with large migration situations. To the extent that one believes in the effectiveness of “deterrence” for those who do not have credible asylum claims, it’s built right into our existing law.
Third, the Administration should be working with the private bar, NGOs, states, and local governments to maximize access to pro bono or low bono asylum representation. Currently, far too many adjudications take place either in detention centers in intentionally obscure locations or at out of the way ports along the border.
Achieving representation needs to be a driving factor in establishing asylum processing. Indeed, studies have shown that representation not only dramatically improves results for asylum seekers but also virtually guarantees their appearance at all immigration hearings, without detention. It’s probably the biggest “bang for the buck” in asylum adjudication strategies.
The Government should also be working to encourage and, where possible, fund innovative programs like VIISTA Villanova that train non-attorneys to be “accredited representatives” for recognized non-profit organizations representing asylum seekers.
Fourth, rather than expensive and inhumane detention prisons, the Government should establish a network of “reception centers” near the border and throughout the country. These could provide safe, sanitary, residential housing, education, and even work opportunities while individuals are being timely and professionally processed for asylum. They also could be matched with legal staff.
These centers should be run by NGOs and other social service organizations with government funding. They would be a humane replacement for the privately run “detention centers” that have been the center of controversy and human rights abuses.
Fifth, the government should work with NGOs, charitable organizations, and regional economic consortiums to establish orderly, effective resettlement programs in the U.S. that would match those granted refugee or asylum status with housing and employment opportunities in areas of America where there skills can be best utilized.
Sixth, our government should continue to engage with the UN, other democratic nations, and economic development agencies to address the root causes of migration.
There are many other great ideas out here in the private sector that are being largely ignored by our Government. While nobody disputes the desirability of structural changes in our immigration laws, we could drastically improve and humanize our response to refugee situations just by more creative and robust application of already existing authorities and the expertise available in the U.S. humanitarian and NGO sectors.Approaching asylum as a humanitarian responsibility, rather than a law enforcement conundrum, is the key to escaping from the wilderness of failed “deterrence schemes” and creatinga better future for humanity.
VI. CONCLUSION
I can sum up by quoting one of the members of what I call the “New Due Process Army,” Amy R. Grenier. She said, very perceptively, that stripped of all of its legalistic complexities,“the concept of asylum is fairly simple. It’s the ability to ask for help and have someone listen to your story. And I think that that’s very easy to lose sight of.” I think that is also the message of the quote from Matthew 25 that I began with.
When we ignore these pleas for help from the most vulnerable and instead dehumanize, or as I sometimes say “Dred Scottify” them, we not only endanger their lives, but we also diminish our own humanity. I’ve never found anyone who wanted to be a refugee. And, but for the grace of God, any of us could be a refugee, at any time, often when you are least expecting it.
The problem with asylum at the border is not the law. It’s the lack of will, moral courage, vision, creativity, competence, and basic skills from those charged with implementing the law. In reality, there is plenty of flexibility in the existing law to encourage refugees to apply outside the U.S., to fairly, timely, and generously process those arriving at the border who invoke our laws, and to expeditiously remove those who don’t belong in the asylum system.
There is also plenty of legal authority to change inhumane and expensive “border jails” into “reception centers,” to increase the availability of pro bono representation, to resettle refugees and asylees in an orderly fashion, and to match the needs and skills of refugees and asylees with the needs of communities throughout the U.S.
The real issue is why is our Government wasting time and resources on cruel, legally questionable, ultimately ineffective “deterrence gimmicks” rather than solving problems, protecting the lives, and recognizing the humanity of those in need? Matthew knew what’s the right thing to do! Why don’t our elected leaders and the bureaucrats working for them?
I’ve shared with you some ideas for getting closer to “the vision of Matthew 25” in dealing with refugees and asylees. Of course, I haven’t solved the hard part — how to get the attention of politicians, legislators, bureaucrats, and judges who have largely “tuned out” the legal rights of refugees and other migrants and are all too prone to run from creative solutions, rather than embrace them.
But, hopefully, I have helped to install the first step: For all of us to recognize that contrary to what many say, we can do better for refugees and we should make doing so one of our highest national priorities. How we treat “the most vulnerable — the “least of those among us” — does affect everything else in our lives and our nation’s well-being!
We need to improve the informed dialogue, stand behind our values, and insist that those who govern us do likewise. Thank you and, as we say in the New Due Process Army, due process forever!
It’s also remarkable, if not surprising, that 33,000 of us, many representing larger groups, filed written comments OPPOSING Biden’s tone-deaf, anti-due-process, anti-rule-of-law, racially-targeted, designed-to-fail, Stephen-Miller-inspired “death to asylum (and asylum seekers)” proposed regulations!https://default.salsalabs.org/Ta42828aa-7c89-4fca-a530-ab64d55d9cdf/e9c83407-de3b-4bcf-a318-704cbcd599a2. As someone who spent considerable time analyzing public comments on regulations during my career, that’s an astounding show of unified opposition.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas, or anyone else in the Administration will listen. But, they should!
Unfortunately, the ridiculously short 30-day comment period and that this major reversal of the positions and values that Biden and Harris campaigned upon, without meaningful input and discussion with experts who actually understand the borders and have been present there, indicates that the the comments are likely to be largely ignored. That’s going to lead to big time litigation — from both progressives and GOP nativist/restrictionists.
But, discouragingly, the Biden Administration has shown itself to be willing to tie up time and resources insanely (and not necessarily successfully) doing battle with its own would-be supporters rather than fighting the right! Just who they think is going to be the “winner” here — other than, perhaps, Donald Trump and Jim Crow— is beyond me!
James “Jim” Crow Symbol of American Racism. Biden’s ill-advised and tone-deaf nativist asylum policies appear designed to appease this guy rather than to please those who actually voted for him and other Democratic candidates!
Instead of “running away” in the face of the GOP’s scurrilous “Anti-Woke Campaign:” targeting immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Jews, Muslims, women’s reproductive rights, teachers, free speech, libraries, public education, medical science, the environment, social justice, the Federal Government, voting rights, unions, the working poor, and just about all “mainstream American” individual freedoms, the Biden Administration and Dems in general should stand up for what’s actually great about America and against the GOP’s vile, ignorant, hateful “culture warriors” and “Jim Crow racists and misogynists. Defending the legal rights and humanity of asylum seekers and other migrants would be a good place to start a real defense of American values and democracy! That is, if someone in power were really interested in those things!
On April 4, 1968, I was a senior in high school when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. That weekend I had been attending a planning meeting in Richmond, Virginia, for mobilizing white teens from suburban churches to serve in inner-city projects in the District of Columbia and Baltimore.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Irv Williams is a native of Baltimore, with family roots in the Northern Neck of Virginia. He moved to Maine in 1973 and is a resident of Peaks Island.
Driving home on Sunday afternoon I arrived at the Baltimore city line, about five miles from my house, to find National Guard troops and tanks blocking off access to the city. I was allowed to pass only on the condition that I drive directly home.
Today I know the real reason I was allowed to pass by those armed soldiers was that my face was white, not Black. Dr. King was only 39 years old when he was murdered.
William Page was only 25 years of age when he was lynched in August 1917 in Lilian, Virginia. My mother would have been a toddler sleeping in her crib at home, just a mile away from the schoolyard in which he was hanged. Newspaper reports state that a mob of about 500 men assembled to commit the murder.
William Page would be the last Black man to be lynched in my mother’s home county of Northumberland, but the lynchings would continue on for another seven years, claiming the lives of nine additional Black men across Virginia.
I am now just a bit older than my mother was when she died. At 72, I look back over a lifetime of witnessing racial injustice through the segregation of schools and other public and private facilities. The false doctrine of “separate but equal” was then in full force throughout Virginia, where both of my parents were born and raised.
I carry childhood memories of seeing “White” and “Colored” water fountains in the county courthouse. Of visiting the family doctor whose small brick office behind his house had separate waiting rooms. Hearing my grandmother talk about “the colored” schools that a neighboring county closed for five full years rather than integrate, meanwhile taking public funds to open white academies. Knowing that nearby was a “colored beach” that was a small sliver of sand allotted to Black children. And knowing that there would never be any Black worshippers or preachers at the church revival meetings where my grandmother played piano.
Looking back at all of those memories, I know full well that the privilege to pass by those National Guard tanks in 1968 had come at the expense of others, sometimes in deadly ways.
In his 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait,” Dr. King wrote: “Armies of officials are clothed in uniform, invested with authority, armed with the instruments of violence and death and conditioned to believe that they can intimidate, maim or kill Negroes with the same recklessness that once motivated the slaveowner.”
Now, nearly 60 years later, we see that Dr. King is still being proven right with the brutal beating death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. It wasn’t a rope like they used on William Page, or a bullet like the one that felled Dr. King, but the stun gun, pepper spray, fists and boots of police officers who have been charged with murder in an incident that equals the terror of the August night when 500 men watched William Page die.
Must we wait for another hundred years to pass for this senseless killing to stop? The simple answer is, no, we can’t wait.
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The work of achieving due process and equal justice for all persons in America, as required by our Constitution, remains urgent and unfinished!
Indeed, under the “New Jim Crow” GOP and it’s noxious, intellectually dishonest, morally challenged “leaders,” our nation has actually regressed from some of the key achievements that Dr. King championed.
James “Jim” Crow Symbol of American Racism. If YOU don’t share the GOP White Nationalist insurrectionist “vision” of an American wracked with hate, exclusion, dehumanization, inequality, bias, bogus myths, and return to a “whitewashed history that never was,” YOU must stand against the “21st Century Jim Crow Mob” that seeks to seize control over YOUR country.
It’s particularly critical for the next generations to decide whether they want to live in a better, fairer, more tolerant world, or be forever captive in a White Supremacist, misogynist, fearful past, beholden to a “whitewashed” version of history that never was!
President Biden’s plan to limit some migrants’ access to asylum could force federal asylum officers to break U.S. law, the union that represents asylum officers argued Monday in a formal filing opposing the proposal.
Enforcing Biden’s policy would violate asylum officers’ oath to carry out the immigration laws set out by Congress and “could make them complicit in violations of U.S. and international law,” attorneys for the American Federation of Government Employees Council 119 wrote in a comment submitted to the Department of Homeland Security.
The same union regularly protested the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict asylum at the southern U.S. border, including by joining lawsuits that sought to block his policies. Its decision to oppose Biden’s asylum proposal is one indication of the plan’s similarities to Trump-era efforts.
“At their core, the measures that the Proposed Rule seeks to implement are inconsistent with the asylum law enacted by Congress, the treaties the United States has ratified, and our country’s moral fabric and longstanding tradition of providing safe haven to the persecuted,” the union argued. “Rather, it is draconian and represents the elevation of a single policy goal — reducing the number of migrants crossing the southwest border — over human life and our country’s commitment to refugees.”
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Why is this guy still calling the policy shots in a Dem Administration? This is “nutsos!” Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
Much appreciation to the professional Asylum Officers for helping to lead the charge against these truly cruel, lawless, wasteful, dishonest, and damaging proposals!
One reason that the Biden Administration’s approach to immigration, human rights, and racial justice has been so incredibly inept and counterproductive is that they aren’t paying attention to the views of experts already on the USG payroll (not to mention those in the private sector) before going public with “designed to fail, warmed over Stephen Miller crackpot nativist policies” that any Dem Administration should vigorously oppose as a matter of principle and sound policy!
There are numerous ways to bring “order to the border,” enforce the law (including the rights of refugees to seek and receive protection), and encourage refugees to use the legal system without violating anyone’s legal rights or diminishing their humanity. Why won’t the Biden Administration just “do the right (and smart) thing?”
The amount of time, energy, and resources being devoted to trying to get the Administration to cut the nonsense and comply with the laws already on the books is astounding! Obviously, the wrong people are “calling the shots” on human rights and racial justice efforts in the Biden Administration! Why?
