8th Amendment – Page 13 – immigrationcourtside.com

GEORGE PACKER @ THE ATLANTIC: With Failed Institutions & Lousy Leaders, Including a President Leading the Charge to the Bottom, America Faces An Uncertain Future — “A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters.” — Joe Biden & The Dems Could Be The Last, Best Hope For American Democracy & Real Progress Toward “Equal Justice For All!”

George Packer
American Journalist, Author, Playwright

https://apple.news/A-6795FCPQU6LRBMW1_nzvw

Packer writes in The Atlantic:

IDEAS

Shouting Into the Institutional Void

Demonstrators are hammering on a hollowed-out structure, and it very well may collapse.

The urban unrest of the mid-to-late 1960s was more intense than the days and nights of protest since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis policeman. More people died then, more buildings were gutted, more businesses were ransacked. But those years had one advantage over the present. America was coming apart at the seams, but it still had seams. The streets were filled with demonstrators raging against the “system,” but there was still a system to tear down. Its institutions were basically intact. A few leaders, in and outside government, even exercised some moral authority.

In July 1967, immediately after the riots in Newark and Detroit, President Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to study the causes and prevention of urban unrest. The Kerner Commission—named for its chairman, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois—was an emblem of its moment. It didn’t look the way it would today. Just two of the 11 members were black (Roy Wilkins, the leader of the NAACP, and Edward Brooke, a Republican senator from Massachusetts); only one was a woman. The commission was also bipartisan, including a couple of liberal Republicans, a conservative congressman from Ohio with a strong commitment to civil rights, and representatives from business and labor. It reflected a society that was deeply unjust but still in possession of the tools of self-correction.

The commission’s report, written by the executive director, David Ginsburg, an establishment liberal lawyer of New Deal vintage, appeared at the end of February 1968. It became an instant million-copy best seller. Its language is bracing by the standards of any era: “What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” The report called for far-reaching policy reforms in housing, employment, education, and policing, to stop the country from becoming “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

[Anne Applebaum: History will judge the complicit]

It was too much for Johnson, who resented not being credited for his efforts to achieve civil rights and eradicate poverty, and whose presidency had just been engulfed by the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. He shelved the report. A few weeks later, on the evening of April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis. The next night, Johnson—who had just announced that he wouldn’t run for reelection—spoke to a country whose cities were burning from coast to coast. “It is the fiber and the fabric of the republic that’s being tested,” he said. “If we are to have the America that we mean to have, all men of all races, all regions, all religions must stand their ground to deny violence its victory in this sorrowful time, and in all times to come. Last evening, after receiving the terrible news of Dr. King’s death, my heart went out to his family and to his people, especially to the young Americans who I know must sometimes wonder if they are to be denied a fullness of life because of the color of their skin.” To an aide, he was more blunt in assessing the uprising: “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”

King’s murder and the riots it sparked propelled Congress to pass, by an overwhelming and bipartisan margin, the decade’s last major piece of civil-rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which enforced fair standards in housing. Johnson signed it on April 11. It was too late. The very best reports, laws, and presidential speeches couldn’t contain the anger in the streets. That year, 1968, was when reform was overwhelmed by radicalization on the left and reaction on the right. We still live in the aftermath. The language and ideas of the Kerner Report have haunted the years since—a reminder of a missed chance.

The difference between 1968 and 2020 is the difference between a society that failed to solve its biggest problem and a society that no longer has the means to try. A year before his death, King, still insisting on nonviolent resistance, called riots “the language of the unheard.” The phrase implies that someone could be made to hear, and possibly answer. What’s happening today doesn’t feel the same. The protesters aren’t speaking to leaders who might listen, or to a power structure that might yield, except perhaps the structure of white power, which is too vast and diffuse to respond. Congress isn’t preparing a bill to address root causes; Congress no longer even tries to solve problems. No president, least of all this one, could assemble a commission of respected figures from different sectors and parties to study the problem of police brutality and produce a best-selling report with a consensus for fundamental change. A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters.

After half a century of social dissolution, of polarization by class and race and region and politics, there are no functioning institutions or leaders to fail us with their inadequate response to the moment’s urgency. Levers of influence no longer connect to sources of power. Democratic protections—the eyes of a free press, the impartiality of the law, elected officials acting out of conscience or self-interest—have lost public trust. The protesters are railing against a society that isn’t cohesive enough to summon a response. They’re hammering on a hollowed-out structure, and it very well may collapse.

[James Fallows: Is this the worst year in modern American history?]

If 2020 were at all like 1968, the president would go on national television and speak as the leader of all Americans to try to calm a rattled country in a tumultuous time. But the Trump administration hasn’t answered the unrest like an embattled democracy trying to reestablish legitimacy. Its reflex is that of an autocracy—a display of strength that actually reveals weakness, emptiness. Trump’s short walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church had all the trappings of a strongman trying to show that he was still master of the country amid reports that he’d taken refuge in a bunker: the phalanx of armored guards surrounding him as he strutted out of the presidential palace; the tear gas and beatings that cleared his path of demonstrators and journalists; the presence of his daughter, who had come up with the idea, and his top general, wearing combat fatigues as if to signal that the army would defend the regime against the people, and his top justice official, who had given the order to raid the square.

William Barr has reacted to the killing of George Floyd like the head of a secret-police force rather than the attorney general of a democratic republic. His first act was not to order a federal investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, but—as he’s done before—to rush out ahead of the facts and try to control public opinion, by announcing that the violence following Floyd’s death was the work of left-wing agitators. Streets of the nation’s capital are now blocked by security forces from Barr’s Department of Justice—many from the Federal Bureau of Prisons—wearing uniforms that make them impossible to identify, like paramilitary troops with unknown commanders.

The protests have to be understood in the context of this institutional void. They resemble the spontaneous mass cry of a people suffering under dictatorship more than the organized projection of public opinion aimed at an accountable government. They signify that democratic politics has stopped working. They are both utopian and desperate.

[Read: The double standard of the American riot]

Some public figures—politicians, policy experts, civic leaders—have come forward with proposals for changing the mindset and tactics of the police. Terrence Floyd, the brother of the murdered man, urged protesters to educate themselves and vote. But the overwhelming message of the protests is simply “end racism,” which would be a large step toward ending evil itself. The protesters are demanding an absolute, as if they’ve stopped expecting the state to produce anything that falls a little short. For white protesters—who are joining demonstrations on behalf of black freedom and equality in large numbers for the first time since Selma, Alabama, 55 years ago—this demand means ending an evil that lies within themselves. It would be another sign of a hollow democracy if the main energy in the afterglow of the protests goes into small-group sessions on white privilege rather than a hard push for police reform.

. . . .

This is where we are. Trust is missing everywhere—between black Americans and police, between experts and ordinary people, between the government and the governed, between citizens of different identities and beliefs. There’s an election coming in five months. It won’t end racism or the pandemic, or repair our social bonds, or restore our democracy to health. But it could give us a chance to try, if we get that far.

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

Read the rest of Packer’s article at the above link.

Well said! The only thing missing is specific reference to the toxic failure of the U.S. Supreme Court.

We once had a Court with the legal experience, ethics, vision, and moral courage to lead America forward toward a more just and equal society. That’s been totally dissipated by years of GOP erosion of the Court’s legal expertise, practical problem-solving ability, humanity, courage, vision of a better future for all in America, and integrity.

The “journey downward and march backward” from Brown v. Board of Education to legal travesties like Trump v. Hawaii and Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab (to name just two glaring examples of the Court’s disgraceful and illegal “Dred Scottification” of the other in our society) is certainly one of the most outrageous, disturbing, and disgusting tales in post-Plessy v. Ferguson American jurisprudence.

The Court’s abject failure to move forward and make voting rights and equal justice for all a reality is in no small measure linked to the death of George Floyd and other Americans of color and the nationwide protests of injustice. Failure of judicial integrity, vision, and leadership — in other words failures of both legal and moral justice — imperils our nation and many of its inhabitants.

America already faces long-term threats to our justice system and those it supposedly serves from the irresponsible and poorly-qualified life-tenured judicial appointments of Trump and the Mitch-led GOP. To them, things like “equal justice for all,” “voting rights,” “due process for all,” “women’s rights,” and “human rights” are just cruel hoaxes — things to be privately mocked, publicly “lip-serviced,” then buried forever beneath an avalanche of disingenuous and opaque legal gobbledygook intended to hide their true anti-democratic, White Nationalist enabling intent. The appointment of any more Justices along the lines of the “J.R. Five” likely would be the final “nail in the coffin” for our democratic republic! 🏴‍☠️👎🏻🥵

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

PWS

06-06-20

ANNE APPLEBAUM @ THE ATLANTIC: “History Will Judge the Complicit: Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?” ☠️👎🏻

https://apple.news/Al__dZnidS7iBkjiQiuWRfg

. . . .

In February, many members of the Republican Party leadership, Republican senators, and people inside the administration used various versions of these rationales to justify their opposition to impeachment. All of them had seen the evidence that Trump had stepped over the line in his dealings with the president of Ukraine. All of them knew that he had tried to use American foreign-policy tools, including military funding, to force a foreign leader into investigating a domestic political opponent. Yet Republican senators, led by Mitch McConnell, never took the charges seriously. They mocked the Democratic House leaders who had presented the charges. They decided against hearing evidence. With the single exception of Romney, they voted in favor of ending the investigation. They did not use the opportunity to rid the country of a president whose operative value system—built around corruption, nascent authoritarianism, self-regard, and his family’s business interests—runs counter to everything that most of them claim to believe in.

Just a month later, in March, the consequences of that decision became suddenly clear. After the U.S. and the world were plunged into crisis by a coronavirus that had no cure, the damage done by the president’s self-focused, self-dealing narcissism—his one true “ideology”—was finally visible. He led a federal response to the virus that was historically chaotic. The disappearance of the federal government was not a carefully planned transfer of power to the states, as some tried to claim, or a thoughtful decision to use the talents of private companies. This was the inevitable result of a three-year assault on professionalism, loyalty, competence, and patriotism. Tens of thousands of people have died, and the economy has been ruined.

This utter disaster was avoidable. If the Senate had removed the president by impeachment a month earlier; if the Cabinet had invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment as soon as Trump’s unfitness became clear; if the anonymous and off-the-record officials who knew of Trump’s incompetence had jointly warned the public; if they had not, instead, been so concerned about maintaining their proximity to power; if senators had not been scared of their donors; if Pence, Pompeo, and Barr had not believed that God had chosen them to play special roles in this “biblical moment”—if any of these things had gone differently, then thousands of deaths and a historic economic collapse might have been avoided.

The price of collaboration in America has already turned out to be extraordinarily high. And yet, the movement down the slippery slope continues, just as it did in so many occupied countries in the past. First Trump’s enablers accepted lies about the inauguration; now they accept terrible tragedy and the loss of American leadership in the world. Worse could follow. Come November, will they tolerate—even abet—an assault on the electoral system: open efforts to prevent postal voting, to shut polling stations, to scare people away from voting? Will they countenance violence, as the president’s social-media fans incite demonstrators to launch physical attacks on state and city officials?

Each violation of our Constitution and our civic peace gets absorbed, rationalized, and accepted by people who once upon a time knew better. If, following what is almost certain to be one of the ugliest elections in American history, Trump wins a second term, these people may well accept even worse. Unless, of course, they decide not to.

When I visited Marianne Birthler, she didn’t think it was interesting to talk about collaboration in East Germany, because everybody collaborated in East Germany. So I asked her about dissidence instead: When all of your friends, all of your teachers, and all of your employers are firmly behind the system, how do you find the courage to oppose it? In her answer, Birthler resisted the use of the word courage; just as people can adapt to corruption or immorality, she told me, they can slowly learn to object as well. The choice to become a dissident can easily be the result of “a number of small decisions that you take”—to absent yourself from the May Day parade, for example, or not to sing the words of the party hymn. And then, one day, you find yourself irrevocably on the other side. Often, this process involves role models. You see people whom you admire, and you want to be like them. It can even be “selfish.” “You want to do something for yourself,” Birthler said, “to respect yourself.”

For some people, the struggle is made easier by their upbringing. Marko Martin’s parents hated the East German regime, and so did he. His father was a conscientious objector, and so was he. As far back as the Weimar Republic, his great-grandparents had been part of the “anarcho-syndicalist” anti-Communist left; he had access to their books. In the 1980s, he refused to join the Free German Youth, the Communist youth organization, and as a result he could not go to university. He instead embarked on a vocational course, to train to be an electrician (after refusing to become a butcher). In his electrician-training classes, one of the other students pulled him aside and warned him, subtly, that the Stasi was collecting information on him: “It’s not necessary that you tell me all the things you have in mind.” He was eventually allowed to emigrate, in May 1989, just a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In America we also have our Marianne Birthlers, our Marko Martins: people whose families taught them respect for the Constitution, who have faith in the rule of law, who believe in the importance of disinterested public service, who have values and role models from outside the world of the Trump administration. Over the past year, many such people have found the courage to stand up for what they believe. A few have been thrust into the limelight. Fiona Hill—an immigrant success story and a true believer in the American Constitution—was not afraid to testify at the House’s impeachment hearings, nor was she afraid to speak out against Republicans who were promulgating a false story of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” she said in her congressional testimony. “The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.”

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman—another immigrant success story and another true believer in the American Constitution—also found the courage, first to report on the president’s improper telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, which Vindman had heard as a member of the National Security Council, and then to speak publicly about it. In his testimony, he made explicit reference to the values of the American political system, so different from those in the place where he was born. “In Russia,” he said, “offering public testimony involving the president would surely cost me my life.” But as “an American citizen and public servant … I can live free of fear for mine and my family’s safety.” A few days after the Senate impeachment vote, Vindman was physically escorted out of the White House by representatives of a vengeful president who did not appreciate Vindman’s hymn to American patriotism—although retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, the president’s former chief of staff, apparently did. Vindman’s behavior, Kelly said in a speech a few days later, was “exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave. He went and told his boss what he just heard.”

[Read: John Kelly finally lets loose on Trump]

But both Hill and Vindman had some important advantages. Neither had to answer to voters, or to donors. Neither had prominent status in the Republican Party. What would it take, by contrast, for Pence or Pompeo to conclude that the president bears responsibility for a catastrophic health and economic crisis? What would it take for Republican senators to admit to themselves that Trump’s loyalty cult is destroying the country they claim to love? What would it take for their aides and subordinates to come to the same conclusion, to resign, and to campaign against the president? What would it take, in other words, for someone like Lindsey Graham to behave like Wolfgang Leonhard?

If, as Stanley Hoffmann wrote, the honest historian would have to speak of “collaborationisms,” because the phenomenon comes in so many variations, the same is true of dissidence, which should probably be described as “dissidences.” People can suddenly change their minds because of spontaneous intellectual revelations like the one Wolfgang Leonhard had when walking into his fancy nomenklatura dining room, with its white tablecloths and three-course meals. They can also be persuaded by outside events: rapid political changes, for example. Awareness that the regime had lost its legitimacy is part of what made Harald Jaeger, an obscure and until that moment completely loyal East German border guard, decide on the night of November 9, 1989, to lift the gates and let his fellow citizens walk through the Berlin Wall—a decision that led, over the next days and months, to the end of East Germany itself. Jaeger’s decision was not planned; it was a spontaneous response to the fearlessness of the crowd. “Their will was so great,” he said years later, of those demanding to cross into West Berlin, “there was no other alternative than to open the border.”

But these things are all intertwined, and not easy to disentangle. The personal, the political, the intellectual, and the historical combine differently within every human brain, and the outcomes can be unpredictable. Leonhard’s “sudden” revelation may have been building for years, perhaps since his mother’s arrest. Jaeger was moved by the grandeur of the historical moment on that night in November, but he also had more petty concerns: He was annoyed at his boss, who had not given him clear instructions about what to do.

Could some similar combination of the petty and the political ever convince Lindsey Graham that he has helped lead his country down a blind alley? Perhaps a personal experience could move him, a prod from someone who represents his former value system—an old Air Force buddy, say, whose life has been damaged by Trump’s reckless behavior, or a friend from his hometown. Perhaps it requires a mass political event: When the voters begin to turn, maybe Graham will turn with them, arguing, as Jaeger did, that “their will was so great … there was no other alternative.” At some point, after all, the calculus of conformism will begin to shift. It will become awkward and uncomfortable to continue supporting “Trump First,” especially as Americans suffer from the worst recession in living memory and die from the coronavirus in numbers higher than in much of the rest of the world.

Or perhaps the only antidote is time. In due course, historians will write the story of our era and draw lessons from it, just as we write the history of the 1930s, or of the 1940s. The Miłoszes and the Hoffmanns of the future will make their judgments with the clarity of hindsight. They will see, more clearly than we can, the path that led the U.S. into a historic loss of international influence, into economic catastrophe, into political chaos of a kind we haven’t experienced since the years leading up to the Civil War. Then maybe Graham—along with Pence, Pompeo, McConnell, and a whole host of lesser figures—will understand what he has enabled.

In the meantime, I leave anyone who has the bad luck to be in public life at this moment with a final thought from Władysław Bartoszewski, who was a member of the wartime Polish underground, a prisoner of both the Nazis and the Stalinists, and then, finally, the foreign minister in two Polish democratic governments. Late in his life—he lived to be 93—he summed up the philosophy that had guided him through all of these tumultuous political changes. It was not idealism that drove him, or big ideas, he said. It was this: Warto być przyzwoitym—“Just try to be decent.” Whether you were decent—that’s what will be remembered.

This article appears in the July/August 2020 print edition with the headline “The Collaborators.”

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

Read Applebaum’s entire, much longer article at the link. Part of it is a fascinating study of how and why, despite backgrounds pointing in exactly the opposite directions, Lindsey Graham abandoned principle and became one of Trump’s “chief collaborators,” while Mitt Romney stood up against Trump and his GOP collaborators in the Senate.

These days, the GOP doesn’t produce many folks with intellectual honesty and capacity for self-examination. Indeed, those exhibiting anything suggesting those qualities might be lurking in their souls are shunned or railroaded out of the party (see, e.g., Jeff Flake). So, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any of Trump’s toadies to actually own up to or take responsibility for their “crimes against humanity.”

And “decency,” well, that’s been absent from GOP politicos for some time now. Kids in cages. Taking away the legal and constitutional rights of asylum seekers. Sending abused women refugees back to be tortured by their abusers. Attacking California’s meager payments to our undocumented fellow humans, many performing essential services at risk to their health. Turning Immigration Courts into Star Chambers. Using false narratives to incite hate attacks on African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and American Journalists. Failing to speak out forcefully against anti-semitic White Nationalist thugs. Looking the other way or even encouraging Trump to mistreat those courageous civil servants who dare speak truth to his lies. “Orbiting” vulnerable asylum seekers back to squalid danger zones. Denying detained kids toothbrushes.The list of indecent acts could go on almost forever.

But, fortunately, as Applebaum suggests, that won’t save these GOP collaborators from the judgments of history. Unfortunately, however, historical vindication won’t save the lives of those victims who have died at the collaborators’ hands, nor will it undo the scars that some will bear for life as the result of the “crimes against humanity” committed by Trump and his GOP cronies. And, that’s the indelible shame of a nation that let Trump and the GOP wield their toxic political power in the first place.

Due Process Forever! Complicity in the Face of Tyranny, Never!

PWS

06-04-20

🤡CLOWN SHORTAGE IN AMERICA? — EOIR CAN’T FIND ONE TO FILL DEPUTY DIRECTOR JOB — Re-Advertises, Again! — ☠️☠️☠️WARNING: Successful Candidate Must Have Experience in “Cooking Books” & Be Willing “Fall Guy” For America’s Most Dysfunctional Parody of a “Court System!”☠️☠️☠️

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

Deputy Director

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Executive Office for Immigration Review

Overview
Locations
Duties
Requirements
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Benefits
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Overview

Open & closing dates
Opening and closing dates 06/02/2020 to 07/02/2020

Service
Senior Executive

Pay scale & grade
ES 00

Salary
$131,239 to $197,300 per year

Appointment type
Permanent

Work schedule
Full-Time

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Location

1 vacancy in the following location:

Falls Church, VAFalls Church, VA

Relocation expenses reimbursed

No

Telework eligible

No

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This job is open to

Senior executives
Those who meet the five Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs).

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U.S. Citizens

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Announcement number

SES-10830644-20-AS

Control number

569755300

Duties
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Duties
Summary
If you are interested in a rewarding and challenging career, this is the position for you!

Learn more about this agency
Responsibilities
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) seeks highly-qualified individuals to join our team of expert professionals in becoming a part of our challenging and rewarding Agency. The primary mission of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation’s immigration laws. Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, EOIR conducts immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and administrative hearings. EOIR consists of three adjudicatory components: The Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, which is responsible for managing the Immigration Courts where Immigration Judges adjudicate individual cases; the Board of Immigration Appeals, which primarily conducts appellate reviews of these Immigration Judge decisions; and the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which adjudicates immigration-related employment cases.

This position is located in the Office of the Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review, U. S. Department of Justice. Incumbent serves as the Deputy Director. This position enjoys the full delegated authority of the Director to manage all aspects of EOIR operations. Thus, the incumbent is responsible for the supervision of the Chairman of BIA, the Chief of OCIJ, the Chief of OCAHO, and all agency personnel in the execution of their duties.

Typical work assignments will include:

Responsible for the formulation and administration of policies affecting the mission of EOIR.

Manages the development, evaluation, and implementation of policies for agency-wide programs.

Explores and plans long-range development goals, as well as short-term strategies.

Develops and implements funding and resource strategies to further the agency’s goals and oversees strategic planning for all agency components.

Exercises the authority delegated by the Attorney General and represents the position and policies of EOIR the the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, Members of Congress and other governmental bodies, the press, the bar, and private groups interested in immigration matter.

Travel Required
Occasional travel – You may be expected to travel for this position.Supervisory status
Yes

Promotion Potential
00

Job family (Series)
0905 Attorney

Requirements
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Requirements
Conditions of Employment

You must be a U.S. Citizen or National.

You must complete a background investigation, credit check, and drug test.

Selective Service Registration is required, as applicable.

May be required to file a Financial Disclosure.

Salary payments must be by direct deposit to a financial institution.

Probationary period: For those entering the SES career service for the first time are subject to a one-year probationary period.

Managerial qualifications of those not a current or former SES employee must be approved by OPM before appointment.

Those who completed the Candidate Development Program (CDP) and have ECQ’s certified by OPM must provide a copy with the application.

Applicants must meet all qualifications and eligibility requirements by the closing date of the announcement.

Qualifications
In order to qualify for the Deputy Director position, you must meet the following minimum qualifications:

Education: Applicants must possess a LL.B. or a J.D. degree.

-AND-

Licensure: Applicants must be an active member of the bar, duly licensed and authorized to practice law as an attorney under the laws of a U.S. state, territory, Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia (include the MM/YY date of your admission to the bar).

-AND-

Experience: Applicants must be U.S. citizens and must have practiced as an attorney, post-bar admission, for a minimum of seven (7) years at the time the application is submitted with at least 1 year of experience at a level equivalent to the GS-15 in the Federal service.(Your resume must CLEARLY demonstrate this experience)

Applicants must meet all qualifications and eligibility requirements by the closing date of the announcement.

IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE MAY NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE. If your resume does not support your questionnaire answers, we will not allow credit for your response(s).

For more information on the qualifications for this position, click here.

Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs):

ECQ 1- LEADING CHANGE. This core qualification involves the ability to bring about strategic change, both within and outside the organization, to meet organizational goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to establish an organizational vision and to implement it in a continuously changing environment.

Leadership Competencies: Creativity & Innovation, External Awareness, Flexibility, Resilience, Strategic Thinking, Vision

ECQ 2- LEADING PEOPLE. This core qualification involves the ability to lead people toward meeting the organization’s vision, mission, and goals. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to provide an inclusive workplace that fosters the development of others, facilitates cooperation and teamwork, and supports constructive resolution of conflicts.

Leadership Competencies: Conflict Management, Leveraging Diversity, Developing Others, Team Building

ECQ 3 – RESULTS DRIVEN. This core qualification involves the ability to meet organizational goals and customer expectations. Inherent to this ECQ is the ability to make decisions that produce high-quality results by applying technical knowledge, analyzing problems, and calculating risks.

Leadership Competencies: Accountability, Customer Service, Decisiveness, Entrepreneurship, Problem Solving, Technical Credibility.

ECQ 4- BUSINESS ACUMEN. This core qualification involves the ability to manage human, financial, and information resources strategically.

Leadership Competencies: Financial Management, Human Capital Management, Technology Management

ECQ 5- BUILDING COALITIONS. This core qualification involves the ability to build coalitions internally and with other Federal agencies, State and local governments, nonprofit and private sector organizations, foreign governments, or international organizations to achieve common goals.

Leadership Competencies: Partnering, Political Savvy,Influencing/Negotiating

Mandatory Technical Qualification Requirements:

In addition to the ECQs above, qualified candidates must possess the following technical qualifications. Possession of these technical qualifications must be clearly documented in your application package and should be addressed separately.

1. Ability to interpret cases, statues and administrative regulations and apply them to an organizations mission.

2. Comprehensive knowledge of immigration law and procedure, with particular expertise in administrative and Judicial case law and regulations.

3. Ability to draft regulations to implement Department and agency policy and statutory requirements.

4. Ability to represent an organization in administration hearings and proceedings.

5. Demonstrated decision-making, problem- solving, and legal writing skills.

6. Ability to create a customer-service driven organization.EducationAdditional information
Conditions of Employment: Only U.S. Citizens or Nationals are eligible for employment with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Dual citizens of the U.S. and another country will be considered on a case-by-case basis. All DOJ applicants, both U.S. citizens and non-citizens, whose job location is with the U.S., must meet the residency requirement. For a total of three (not necessarily consecutive years) of the five years immediately prior to applying for a position, the applicant must have: 1) resided in the U.S., 2) worked for the U.S. overseas in a Federal or military capacity; or 3) been a dependent of a Federal or military employee serving oversees.

NOTE: Veteran’s preference does not apply to this position. 5 USC 2108(3), which defines “preference eligible”, indicates this does not include applicants for, or members of, the Senior Executive Service.

If you are unable to apply online or need to fax a document you do not have in electronic form, view the following link for information regarding an Alternate Application.Read moreHow You Will Be Evaluated
You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.
Once the application process is complete, a review of your resume and supporting documentation will be made and compared against your responses to the assessment questionnaire to determine if you are qualified for this job.

In order to be rated as meeting the minimum qualifications, we must be able to determine from your application package that you have the education and/or specialized or general experience that is required.

Applicants who have qualifying experience performed on less than a full-time basis must specify the percentage and length of time spent in performance of such duties.Read more
Background checks and security clearance
Security clearance
Top Secret Drug test required
Yes

Required Documents
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To apply for this position, you must provide a complete Application Package by the closing date of this announcement, which includes:

1. Your Resume showing relevant experience; cover letter optional

2. A complete Assessment Questionnaire

3. For those attempting to enter the SES career service for the first time, you must submit mandatory statements to address the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ).

4. All applicants are required to submit the Mandatory Technical Qualifications (MTQ).

5. Current or former SES must submit SF-50 and/or SES certificate to show current or prior service.

Note: Please ensure that your resume contains your full name, address, phone number, employment information such as: Employer name and location; From and to dates (or from date to present for current position), which include the month and year MM/YY for each description of experience, with grade level held, if applicable, education, training etc. Qualifying experience performed on less than a full-time basis must specify the percentage and length of time spent in performance of such duties.
If you are relying on your education to meet qualification requirements:
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Failure to provide all of the required information as stated in this vacancy announcement may result in an ineligible rating or may affect the overall rating.

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A career with the U.S. Government provides employees with a comprehensive benefits package. As a federal employee, you and your family will have access to a range of benefits that are designed to make your federal career very rewarding. Learn more about federal benefits.Review our benefits
Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time, or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.

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How to Apply
You must submit a complete application package by 11:59 PM (EST) on the closing date of the announcement.

* To begin, click Apply Online to create a USAJOBS account or log in to your existing account. Follow the prompts to select your USAJOBS resume and/or other supporting documents and complete the occupational questionnaire, which can be previewed here: https://apply.usastaffing.gov/ViewQuestionnaire/10830644.

* Click the Submit My Answers button to submit your application package.

* It is your responsibility to ensure your responses and appropriate documentation is submitted prior to the closing date.

* To verify your application is complete, log into your USAJOBS account, select the Application Status link and then select the more information link for this position. The Details page will display the status of your application, the documentation received and processed, and any correspondence the agency has sent related to this application. Your uploaded documents may take several hours to clear the virus scan process.

* To return to an incomplete application, log into your USAJOBS account and click Update Application in the vacancy announcement. You must re-select your resume and/or other documents from your USAJOBS account or your application will be incomplete.Read more
Agency contact information
Allison Smith Allison Smith
Phone
(816) 426-5706
Email
allison.smith@opm.govAddress

Office of the Director

5107 Leesburg Pike, Ste. 2300

Falls Church, VA 22041

USLearn more about this agencyNext steps
You will be notified of your application status during the hiring process, as applicable. You may check your application status by accessing the USAJOBS website and clicking “Application Status”. The process may take up to 6 weeks.

The four points of notification are:

Application Received or Application Incomplete

Minimum Qualification Requirement Met/Not Met

Eligible (Application Referred) or Eligible (Application Not referred)

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If your name is referred to the hiring official, you may be contacted directly by that office for a possible interview.Read more

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The Federal hiring process is setup to be fair and transparent. Please read the following guidance.
Equal Employment Opportunity Policy
The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) for federal employees & job applicants

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Reasonable Accommodation Policy
Federal agencies must provide reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities where appropriate. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process should follow the instructions in the job opportunity announcement. For any part of the remaining hiring process, applicants should contact the hiring agency directly. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.
A reasonable accommodation is any change to a job, the work environment, or the way things are usually done that enables an individual with a disability to apply for a job, perform job duties or receive equal access to job benefits.
Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, federal agencies must provide reasonable accommodations when:

An applicant with a disability needs an accommodation to have an equal opportunity to apply for a job.

An employee with a disability needs an accommodation to perform the essential job duties or to gain access to the workplace.

An employee with a disability needs an accommodation to receive equal access to benefits, such as details, training, and office-sponsored events.

You can request a reasonable accommodation at any time during the application or hiring process or while on the job. Requests are considered on a case-by-case basis.
Learn more about disability employment and reasonable accommodations or how to contact an agency.Read more

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

According to insiders, this is the fourth or fifth attempt by the current regime to fill what normally would be a “highly desirable” career Senior Executive position. But, in the kakistocracy, it’s likely to be a “career ender.”

My advice: make sure you have paid up liability insurance and “alternate career plans” if you apply. A good “White Collar Crime” lawyer on retainer wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

PWS

06-05-20

🏴‍☠️“BIZARRO COURTS” — THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES TO ALL PERSONS IN THE U.S., YET ICE & THEIR “PARTNERS” AT EOIR HAVE ESTABLISHED A CONSTITUTION-FREE “COURT SYSTEM” THAT OPERATES BEYOND THE LAW & MORALITY IN A LEGAL NEVER-NEVER LAND 🧚‍♂️ — How Do They Get Away With It Under The Noses Of Congress & Article III Courts? — An Outrageous Story of Gross 🤮 Institutional & Personal Failures & Ethical Lapses Across All Three Branches of Our Federal Government ☠️👎🏻!

Paul Moses and Tim Healy report for The Daily Beast:

‘The Bizarro-World’ Immigration Courts Where the Constitution Isn’t Applied Detainees can be held for weeks or months before seeing a judge. The Justice Department gave “the word of the agency under penalty of perjury” that it would fix that—but only in NY

·         ICE officials acknowledged that they couldn’t handle the volume of arrests their own agents made; the major clog was in getting a legal review from the agency’s understaffed legal unit.

·         In 11 of the 55 venues that heard more than 500 cases last year, detainees spent six weeks or more in jail before an initial hearing. Such long waits would be unconstitutional in criminal cases; the right to due process requires authorities to not only get a case filed but also to provide an arraignment promptly, generally in no more than 48 hours.

·         Among the 55 venues that handled 500 or more detainee cases last year, the longest waits from arrest to initial hearing were in hearing locations at privately run lockups under contract with ICE: Winn Correctional Center in Winnifield, Louisiana, a median of 140 days; T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, 72 days; Richwood Correctional Center in Richwood, Louisiana, 64 days…

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

Ironically, by his own overt corruption and open disdain for our Constitution and the rule of law, Trump has exposed the deep flaws, grotesque derelictions of duty, and unethical complicity throughout our Constitutional institutions that are supposed to protect all of us, particularly the most vulnerable among us like civil immigration detainees and asylum seekers, from abuses by would-be authoritarian tyrants like Trump!

Here’s a gem:

“The larger question behind this mass of numbers is why DHS is detaining so many people when both its legal office and the court lack the staffing—not only judges but support staff as well—to handle them.

‘I would just say, they are the prosecuting agency and in this context, they have complete control over the timeline,’ said Aaron Hall, an immigration lawyer who practices at the court in Aurora, Colorado, which has had substantial delays. ‘If the charging document isn’t ready to go, why are they arresting them?’”

Good question! But don’t expect a straight answer from the “malicious incompetents” at DHS. Nor will today get anything except misleading nonsense from their “partners” at EOIR (“ICE Jr.”).

DOJ was forewarned of this disaster by an independent consultant back in 2017. But, rather than solving the problem, then AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions intentionally made things even worse at EOIR. You might remember “Gonzo” as the “mastermind” behind the regime’s unconstitutional child separation policy. His victims were returned to abuse, scarred for life, or imprisoned for the “crime” of asserting their Constitutional and legal rights to fair treatment.

All of this is wrong, plain and simple! It’s part of “Dred Scotiffication” — now playing out across our nation in many ways. Finally, the systematic “dehumanization of the other” as aided, abetted, and actually encouraged by a majority of the Supremes, is getting some much-needed and long overdue “pushback.”

But the abuses of our Constitution and our values, and the unaccountability of corrupt public officials, present and former, of the Trump immigration kakistocracy, won’t cease until we get “regime change.” That requires substantial personnel and attitude changes across all three branches of our reeling Federal Government! And that definitely includes accountability for those who have failed to insure “equal justice for all” and instead permitted and sometimes aided and abetted the existence of “Constitution-Free Zones” right under their noses!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Officials & Institutions, Never!

PWS

6-04-20

🗽⚖️A VOICE FOR THE TIMES: Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Interviewed by Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith — “My vision comes from the pledge of allegiance: liberty and justice for all. That remains a vision—but we’re not doing much to make that vision a reality. Mitch McConnell goes on the floor of the Senate and calls me out, as if there’s something nasty about my vision. He never asked me what my vision was.”

Rep. James Clyburn
D-SC

Chris Smith
Writer
Vanity Fair

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/james-clyburn-on-the-floyd-killing-and-the-role-of-race-in-the-coming-election?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HivePS_053020&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67c363f92a41245df49eb&cndid=48297443&hasha=8a1f473740b253d8fa4c23b066722737&hashb=26cd42536544e247751ec74095d9cedc67e77edb&hashc=eb7798068820f2944081a20180a0d3a94e025b4a93ea9ae77c7bbe00367c46ef&esrc=newsletteroverlay&utm_campaign=VF_HivePS_053020&utm_term=VYF_Hive

“At Some Point the Country Is Going to Have to Wake Up”: James Clyburn on the Floyd Killing and The Role of Race In The Coming Election

Chris SmithMay 29, 2020

Clyburn, who helped hand Biden his presumptive nomination, talks about Biden’s “you ain’t black” and V.P. possibilities, and why this moment is defined by “raw politics and meanness.”

by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images.

James Clyburn grew up in a segregated South Carolina. He is now the longest-serving member of the state’s congressional delegation and the highest-ranking black Democrat in the House. In February, Clyburn basically saved Joe Biden’s presidential bid, endorsing Biden three days before South Carolina’s pivotal primary and helping deliver the decisive black vote. On Thursday evening, just after landing in his home state for a weekend visit, the 79-year-old Clyburn talked about holding on to his optimism in the wake of yet another brutal killing of a black man by police.

Vanity Fair: What was your reaction when you saw the video of a Minneapolis cop kneeling on the neck of George Floyd?

James Clyburn: I don’t know that I would describe my emotion as anger. I guess I should be angry. Maybe at my age, and as many of these kinds of things as I’ve experienced, you get to the point where you say, but for the video, I would not have seen it; other people would not have seen it; and the official word would be all anyone knew. I do feel, though, that at some point the country is going to have to wake up to this reality.

What do you tell black Americans, particularly young black male Americans, who say the country is long past the point when it should have awakened, and that the reality is just racism and hatred?

Going back to the student movement and the civil rights movement, I’ve really questioned many times whether or not what we were doing made any real sense. Whether there was any possibility of success. But along with people like John Lewis, who I met in October 1960, he’s held on to his faith in the country, and I’ve held on to mine. I went to jail several times. I ran for office three times before I got elected. You don’t give up. You aren’t going to win by giving up.

by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The four Minneapolis police officers have been fired. Should they be tried for murder?

They certainly should stand trial. The hand of one is the hand of all, so four people need to be on trial.

In a conference call with House leaders two days after Floyd’s death, you talked about it being a symptom of larger problems that plague minority communities, and that it showed the need for systemic change. What did you mean?

I have been saying for a long time now that so much in this country needs to be restructured. Health care, education, the judicial system. Every time these issues are raised, folks on the Republican side find a way to parse the words and turn it to their agenda, and they get accommodated by too many people in the media. When we first started discussing the CARES Act, I said to my caucus, in a Zoom call, that this was a tremendous opportunity for us to restructure things in our vision. My vision comes from the pledge of allegiance: liberty and justice for all. That remains a vision—but we’re not doing much to make that vision a reality. Mitch McConnell goes on the floor of the Senate and calls me out, as if there’s something nasty about my vision. He never asked me what my vision was. I’ve got it on billboards all over Charleston: “Making America’s Greatness Accessible and Affordable for All.” What’s wrong with that? And that’s been weaponized by the other side as something untoward. It’s ideology, it’s raw politics, and meanness. That’s why we can’t fix these things.

Do you think the Floyd killing will end Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar’s chances of being picked as Joe Biden’s running mate?

It certainly won’t help. But it’s not just this. Her history with similar situations when she was a prosecutor came up time and again during the campaign. I suspect this incident plays into that.

You said you cringed when Biden told a radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”

I compare Joe Biden to the alternative, not the Almighty. One of the things I learned early in this business is that one of the worst things you can do in politics is to make a joke out of any serious matter. He would have been better off not doing that.

Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina who happens to be black, said that Biden’s remark showed him to be “condescending and arrogant.”

I’ve known Joe Biden for a long, long time. I don’t perceive anything about him to be arrogant. Tim Scott supports [Donald] Trump, and I don’t. If he can reconcile his blackness with Trump, that’s fine. I can’t reconcile mine with Trump. I’ll never ever accept the president of the United States looking into a camera and calling a black woman a dog. I will never get over that. Nothing else he says will matter to me. And he said that not about one of his opponents—that was about one of his staffers! Who supported him! I have three daughters, and I know how I’d feel about any man calling one of them a dog.

With his attacks on former president Barack Obama, among other things, it’s clear that Trump is going to play the race card in his reelection campaign. Do you worry about the tensions becoming dangerous, or is it better to have the issue out in the open?

I think we’re in much better shape for it to be out in the open than for it to be hidden under a bushel. That’s what happened in 2016. The whole thing about African American males responding to Trump saying, “What do you have to lose?” I know from my visits to barber shops that it resonated. But if you fool me once, that’s on you. If you fool me twice, that’s on me. If black men allow themselves to be fooled twice, it’s on them. Four years later, if it ain’t clear what they have to lose, if they can’t count up their losses with Trump, ask them to ask me.

You have said that it isn’t “a must” for Biden to pick a black woman as the vice presidential nominee. Why not?

I remember Sarah Palin. She was fine until it turned out the vetting hadn’t been thoroughly done. I remember Geraldine Ferraro. She was fine. It was her husband that got exposed during the campaign. So if I say it’s a must and something turns up in the vetting, what does that make me? I’m never going to say it’s a must for him to choose a black woman. It would be a plus.

Are you confident that black turnout will be high enough to win no matter whom Biden chooses?

I don’t know about that. Black voters are incentivized already. You can always stimulate the vote. There are picks that could energize the vote.

If Biden said, “Jim, I’ll choose whomever you want,” what would say?

I’m not gonna tell you! But I would tell him.

There’s a tremendous amount of outrage right now about the George Floyd and the Ahmaud Arbery killings. But unfortunately, we’ve seen this cycle many times before, where attention fades after a few weeks.

I think something’s going to be different about this. After the Minneapolis killing, I saw the Minnesota attorney general on TV. For the first time in the state’s history, that attorney general is African American. Also Muslim. That, to me, helps set this whole issue on a different plane. Minneapolis had issues with the former mayor and the police. This mayor says he’s calling for these men to be indicted. To me, that’s progress in something all of us need to work on. You can’t take these things in silos. I’m a history guy. I’ve been studying this country’s history pretty much all my life. It’s pretty sordid in some areas. But that history ought to inform us. Everybody’s not going to learn the lessons. The ones who learn, you hope they change the world.

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

Our country can’t get to the better future we need with horrible, unqualified, bigoted leaders like Trump, Pence, Mitch, et al.

One of the most unhelpful of our failed institutions: A Supreme Court that has abandoned the courageous heritage of Brown v. Board of Education and instead encouraged, embraced, aided, and abetted the “Dred Scottification of the other” by a corrupt, bigoted, racist, overtly White Nationalist Executive and his equally corrupt cronies and toadies.

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

PWS

05-31-20

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Will Trump’s Incompetence Save America From His Maliciousness?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-all-about-deregulation–except-when-it-comes-to-his-enemies/2020/05/28/dcfb9638-a116-11ea-b5c9-570a91917d8d_story.html

Catherine writes:

. . . .

That’s because the pretense was nonsense from the start. Trump’s regulatory agenda was never about helping the economy; it was always about rewarding friends and punishing enemies. White House officials have weaponized the “administrative state” they claim to hate and have repeatedly tried to strangle disfavored groups with regulations and red tape.

Not just Twitter, either.

Arbitrary delays in processing visa applications, for example, have been used to punish immigrants and the companies that employ them. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has rejected visa applications because applicants lack a middle name. It has also waited to mail approved visas until (oops!) after the visas had already expired.

The additional costs and uncertainty these processing changes create for workers and their employers are a feature, not a bug.

Elsewhere, both federal and state officials have ratcheted up bureaucratic hurdles for the poor, as Georgetown University professors Pamela Herd and Donald P. Moynihan have documented.

Right now, for example, states can decide a poor family is automatically eligible for food assistance if the family is enrolled in other means-tested safety-net programs. The Trump administration is trying to block states from doing this, and require more paperwork to prove eligibility. By the administration’s own calculations, this would cause 1 million children to lose their automatic eligibility for free school lunches.

The administration, of course, argues that its regulatory decisions are determined not by Trump’s political whims but by meticulous analysis of what’s best for the economy.Helpfully, a method exists to check their work: the cost-benefits analysis that agencies must produce ahead of major rule changes.

These records show, however, that the administration has repeatedly struggled to prove that its regulatory actions actually increase economic and social welfare.

To get the numbers to work out in its favor, the administration has had to cook the books.

. . . .

The only upside to this slapdash math is that it makes the administration’s most damaging and punitive regulatory changes less likely to hold up in court. Already, the Trump administration has lost more than 90 percent of the legal challenges to its regulatory policies, according to New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. By comparison, previous administrations lost only about 30 percent of the time.

“A lot of these losses have been because of the poor quality of the analysis — who’s harmed, who’s helped, by how much,” said Richard Revesz, a law professor who directs the institute.

The only thing that may save us from the administration’s regulatory vindictiveness is its incompetence.

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

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

As usual, Catherine’s analysis is “spot on.” My problem is this.

If the same private litigant and his or her lawyers kept presenting Federal Courts with false, misleading, or just plain faked evidence and statistics, the private lawyers likely would be facing discipline or disbarment for failure to provide “candor to a tribunal.” The client would be facing large penalties and likely contempt for continuing to institute or cause frivolous litigation.

Yet, except for occasional “harsh but toothless” language in judicial opinions or a couple of minor fines, Trump, his sycophantic toadies, and his battery of unethical Government lawyers get off scot-free for abusing the Article III Judiciary and our legal and judicial processes. Meanwhile, the private litigants are forced to file the same challenges over and over again in different jurisdictions across the country. In the area of immigration, asylum, and human rights, most of the lawyers are donating their time pro bono, while the unethical Government attorneys and their corrupt clients are on the taxpayer’s dime.

The occasional Equal Access to Justice Act award against the Government seldom comes close to compensating private lawyers for their actual lost time and lost opportunities. Nor does it deter the Trump regime, because it comes out of “you of the taxpayers’” pocket.

A Federal Judge demands accurate statistics from DHS after private litigants show the last batch was bogus; the DHS merely submits another set of bogus or misleading data, forcing the private litigants to once again have to demonstrate their unreliability. Government officials and their attorneys claim, contrary to fact, that there is no “child separation” policy, but suffer no consequences other than to be told to stop violating the Constitution. Instead of doing that, they “repackage” unconstitutional child separation as a bogus “parental choice.” So, now the private litigants, who have already won once, have to show that the latest iteration of a clearly illegal and contemptuous policy is what it is: unlawful.

A Federal Judge orders they DHS to make individualized release determinations for detainees held in overcrowded substandard conditions that violate the Government’s own health guidance. Instead of doing that, the DHS merely moves them to another, slightly less crowded facility with equally bad conditions and falsely claims they have “fixed” the problem. Again, the private litigants have to gather new evidence that the move has not materially reduced the health risks to the clients. And so on.

Essentially, the Trump regime and their lawyers are playing a big game of “hide the ball;” every time the private advocates show the Federal Judge where the ball actually is hidden, the Government simply moves it again. And, unfortunately, most Federal Judges give the regime and its ethics-challenged lawyers unlimited “plays” at the expense of the other side. Even when relief is ordered, it just solves the “problem of the moment” rather than halting the pattern of ethical abuses, contemptuous attitudes, and unlawful conduct by the regime and its complicit lawyers.

In effect, the regime has “weaponized” the Federal Courts and the Article III Judiciary in a way not dissimilar from how Sessions and Barr have “weaponized” the Immigration Courts. Turning the Article III Courts into a feckless “runaround” where the individuals and their lawyers “lose even when they win” makes the process punitive and serves as a deterrent to those seeking to challenge the regime’s overtly lawless agenda.

The November election is the chance to throw a scofflaw regime out of office. But, the deep-seated institutional and integrity problems of an Article III Judiciary, beginning with the dangerously complicit and spineless in the face of tyranny “Roberts Court,” that has allowed itself to be “weaponized” and used by the army of authoritarian scofflaws to punish those seeking to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law won’t be solved so quickly. The Article III Judiciary requires an institutional re-examination and a philosophical and ethical overhaul so that it serves the Constitution, due process of law, and equal justice for all, rather than protecting the interests of an insular right-wing minority that seeks nothing less than the disintegration of our nation and our cherished democratic institutions.

PWS

05-29-20

☠️RUSE FOR CHILD ABUSE: Trump Regime Uses COVID-19 Chaos As Cover For Evading Court Order, Inflicting Gratuitous Cruelty On Vulnerable Families & Children!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/migrant-children-are-still-confined-and-vulnerable-its-a-gratuitous-act-of-cruelty/2020/05/25/8884fc4a-9bb5-11ea-a2b3-5c3f2d1586df_story.html

From the WashPost Editorial Board:

Opinions

Migrant children are still confined and vulnerable. It’s a gratuitous act of cruelty.

By Editorial Board

May 25 at 2:09 PM ET

As the pandemic gathered speed In March, a federal judge called the government’s immigrant detention centers “hotbeds of contagion” and ordered that migrant children be released from them without delay. Some have been. But the Trump administration has dragged its feet in freeing many migrant children detained with their families, offering parents the formal “option” of letting their children go — to be separated from their mothers and fathers.

That Hobson’s choice was presented in mid-May to several hundred asylum-seeking parents at the three migrant family detention centers, in Texas and Pennsylvania, run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many Americans may have assumed that the administration, scalded by its last experiment with separating migrant children from their families, would not again broach that subject. But it did.

[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]

On May 13 and 14, parents at those facilities, mainly mothers, were herded into sudden encounters with ICE officials, who presented them with forms to sign. The detainees’ lawyers were neither notified nor aware of what was going on. The forms presented parents with the option of allowing government agents to place their children with relatives or other sponsors elsewhere in the United States, while the parents would stay behind in detention. Very few of the parents assented, though plenty were shaken by the experience; some agreed without realizing the repercussions, according to a subsequent court filing.

Judge Dolly M. Gee, of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, has jurisdiction over detained migrant children under the 1997 Flores settlement, which prohibits the long-term detention of migrant minors. In March, as covid-19 cases were spreading rapidly in migrant detention facilities, she ordered the administration to speed up the release of minors; hundreds were placed with sponsors. However, the Flores agreement grants the judge no jurisdiction over parents detained with their children.

That apparently prompted ICE to undertake its proceedings in the family detention centers, in which agents asked asylum-seeking parents if they were willing to part with their children, some of them babies and toddlers. In fact, ICE has the authority to release families pending their next appearance in immigration court, and has done so routinely in the past. The Trump administration has taken a different tack, raising the bar on asylum as it subjects migrant families to months-long confinements even if children suffer in the process — which they do.

According to advocates and attorneys for the migrant parents, the parents summoned by ICE officials were confused and intimidated. Some thought they risked being deported if they refused to let their children be taken away. In at least one instance, according to a court filing, a mother who signed the form asked an ICE officer if she could change her mind; she was told no.

[[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]]

The administration closed the U.S. southern border to asylum seekers this spring, citing the risk of the pandemic. Most detained migrants had entered the country months earlier, and more than 1,000 covid-19 cases have been reported in detention facilities nationwide, including among detainees and staff members. None have been confirmed in the three family detention centers, perhaps because there has been little testing. Still, hundreds of migrant minors detained with their families remain at risk of contracting the virus. At this point, their continuing confinement seems a gratuitous act of cruelty.

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

A regime of scofflaws, child abusers, and human rights violators. How will we explain that to future generations?

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

PWS

05-26-20

☠️⚰️DHS DEATHWATCH: Second Detainee Dies of COVID-19

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigrant-ice-coronavirus-death

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

A 34-year-old Guatemalan man who tested positive for COVID-19 died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at a Georgia hospital on Sunday, according to an internal government report obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Santiago Baten-Oxlaj, 34, had been in ICE custody at Stewart Detention Center, in Lumpkin, since early March and was granted a voluntary departure to Guatemala, ICE later confirmed in a press release.

Baten-Oxlaj was arrested on March 2 at a probation office in Marietta, Georgia “pursuant to his conviction for driving under the influence,” ICE said. On March 26, an immigration judge granted him voluntary departure. “At the time of his death, Baten was awaiting departure from the United States,” ICE added.

On April 17, he was admitted to a local hospital for treatment of decreased oxygen saturation levels, hospital officials tested the man for COVID-19 and the result was positive.

On Sunday, he died at the hospital, according to the report, which listed his preliminary cause of death as COVID-19.

ICE said it “is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident, as it does in all such cases.”

His death comes weeks after a 57-year-old man in ICE custody in San Diego died after testing positive for COVID-19. The San Diego County medical examiner’s office said the man, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, died of acute respiratory failure due to pneumonia resulting from COVID-19. He was the first immigrant in ICE custody to die of the disease.

As of May 16, 1,201 immigrant detainees have tested positive for the disease in ICE custody out of 2,394 who had been tested.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Hamed’s article at the above link.

Unfortunately, this won’t be the last victim. According to the article, over 50% of those detainees tested for COVID-19 were positive.

With the BIA basically taking a “pass/dive” on requiring health and safety considerations to be serious factors in custody decisions, custody cases will continue to be litigated in U.S. District Courts throughout the country. Why have a BIA incapable of functioning as an independent tribunal consistent with due process?

PWS

05-26-20

FORBES PROFILES DUE PROCESS WARRIOR STEPHEN MANNING OF INNOVATION LAW LAB!

Stephen Manning ESQUIRE
Founder, Innovation Law Lab
Portland, OR

https://apple.news/ADjIgsd5vTR6lN15QEpey1w

Over the last several years, America has been rocked by evidence of the mistreatment of migrants in detention centers. While the nation makes its political judgments about the future of immigration policy, Stephen Manning has assembled a team of lawyers, organizers, and tech innovators working to squeeze more humanity out of the current system while imagining its replacement. We talked to Stephen about how he pursues justice and reform.

How did you get involved in immigration law in the first place?

I was volunteer teaching at an elementary school, helping immigrant children from Central America with homework. I asked, “Why don’t you do your homework?” and I found their answer hard to believe: “We’re going to be deported.” No one deports second-graders, I thought. It must be an administrative matter. Naively, I took the whole family to Immigration, unprepared for the experience. I discovered a system based on the otherization and exclusion of human beings, as core principles. I could have gotten the whole family deported but luckily everyone was ok, and are still ok—I’ve since presided over two of their weddings.

What is so dehumanizing about immigration?

In fact, immigration could be a deeply humanizing experience—it could be the ultimate humanizing concept, actually. Instead, though, today it is the opposite. Its purpose is to categorize persons and judge their desirability. Racism and other biases have corrupted these functions. For example, on April 22nd, President Trump issued a proclamation to end family-based immigration. The next day his advisor explained that they want to “re-white” the country. The Remain in Mexico program does the same thing. Take a person seeking asylum: they are treated based not on their individual lives and circumstances, but on their assignment to a less desirable macro category—the asylum-seeker. They lose their individuality and simply become members of an undesired group. That classification has nothing to do with their hopes, fears, dreams or their contributions to our collective prosperity.

The same sense of power affects the whole system and shows up in myriad small ways. For example, I remember being at a detention center filled with families, working on a very compelling claim by a mother and her children. I’m working on my laptop surrounded by small children playing. We had sent a letter to the officer showing cause for their release. He showed up armed, in aviator glasses, ignored the children, and crumpled up and threw away the letter right in front of everyone. That’s dehumanization on a micro scale.

What surprises people when they learn about the realities of the U.S. immigration system?

People expect law to reflect some kind of morality. We expect the power of the law to be used justly. When law and power seem to align against common sense—that’s a tough lesson, even for lawyers. The immigration legal system is a world unto itself, and even for experienced lawyers, nothing prepares them for it.

You started and lead Innovation Law Lab, one of the largest pro bono projects in the country, to push for reforms. How do you recruit lawyers to volunteer?

Innovation Law Lab is equal parts lawyers, organizers, and coders. Our core team is about 20 people. For volunteers, actually, we don’t have any formal recruitment mechanisms. The work itself is demanding—you’re volunteering, giving up family time, spending your own money to participate. What we offer is a chance to use the law for justice and to join a team of like-minded people. And we’ve also structured it so that it can scale. We ask, Can you come for a day, a week, three weeks? Big law does not have to worry—there’s no mass exodus coming, but there is a small trend towards movement-based lawyering. The last time I looked, our numbers at Innovation Law Lab were in the tens of thousands of volunteers. And about 30% are repeat volunteers; they participate in multiple projects.

. . . .

Stephen Manning is an Ashoka Fellow. You can read more about him and his work here.

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

You can read the rest of the profile at the link.

Innovation Law Lab is doing some spectacular work in defending the Constitution, the rule of law, and humanity against the Trump regime’s relentless onslaught.

PWS

05-22-20

🏴‍☠️”FAMILY SEPARATION 2.0″ — NEW REPORT FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: 200+ Years of American Democracy No Match For Trump Regime’s Blackshirts! — “One officer told several mothers that “‘it doesn’t matter what you sign because we will do what we want.’”

Amnesty International USA-Family Separation 2.0_May 21, 2020

Family Separation 2.0: “You aren’t going to separate me from my only child.”

On April 7, 2020, Amnesty International issued a report, ‘We are adrift, about to sink’: The looming COVID-19 disaster in US immigration detention facilities, documenting how the Trump administration was failing to adequately protect tens of thousands of immigrants and asylum- seekers whom the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) agency was detaining in over 200 detention centers across the United States.1

Three of these facilities detain families, including infants as young as 1-year-old who are still breast-feeding. Deceptively named “family residential centers” (FRC), these detention facilities are: the Berks County Residential Center (“Berks”) in Leesport, Pennsylvania; the South Texas Family Residential Center (“Dilley”) in Dilley, Texas; and the Karnes County Residential Center (“Karnes”) in Karnes City, Texas.

While the dangerous conditions in immigration detention remain little changed since Amnesty International published its April report, ICE has now introduced a new element of harm: family separation. Once again, this administration is weaponizing its public health response to COVID- 19 to punish and deter people seeking safety.

. . . .

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

Read the complete report at the above link.

The regime’s “Dred Scottification” — dehumanization of “the other” before the law — continues unabated as those institutions charged with preventing such abuses tank.

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

PWS

O5-22-20

CHILD ABUSE BY COWARDLY REGIME OFFICIALS RAMPS UP AS COURTS TANK IN FACE OF LATEST ASSAULT ON RULE OF LAW & HUMANITY ☠️ — “This incredibly callous treatment of young migrants as well as their families is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to erase any vestige of due process at the border with Mexico.“

https://apple.news/AfPeFLsDGQTyTuvEeyuQsIg

Esther Wang writes in Jezebel:

Another day, another extreme cruelty: according to a report in the New York Times, the Trump administration has deported almost 1,000 migrant children and teens during the past two months of the covid-19 pandemic, sending them out of the United States alone and at times putting them on a flight without even telling their family members. Stephen Miller, who is unfortunately still alive, must be thrilled.

Trump’s latest tactic in the service of slashing immigration is, as the New York Times points out, a complete 180 from past policy:

The deportations represent an extraordinary shift in policy that has been unfolding in recent weeks on the southwestern border, under which safeguards that have for decades been granted to migrant children by both Democratic and Republican administrations appear to have been abandoned.

Historically, young migrants who showed up at the border without adult guardians were provided with shelter, education, medical care and a lengthy administrative process that allowed them to make a case for staying in the United States. Those who were eventually deported were sent home only after arrangements had been made to assure they had a safe place to return to.

But now, not even children who are already in the United States with pending asylum cases are safe from deportation. As the Times reported, in addition to the more than 900 children and teens who were deported in March and April shortly after arriving at the border, 60 young people who were already being held in government shelters were also abruptly sent out of the United States, at times “rousted from their beds in the middle of the night.”

According to the Times, even young children have been put on flights by themselves. Take the case of Sandra Rodríguez and her 10-year-old son Gerson, whom she sent across the southern border with the expectation that once Gerson arrived in the United States, he would be able to eventually live with Rodríguez’s brother in Houston. But instead, shortly after entering the U.S., Gerson was sent to Honduras alone.

This incredibly callous treatment of young migrants as well as their families is part of the Trump administration’s attempt to erase any vestige of due process at the border with Mexico. Citing the pandemic, immigration officials have used provisions in the 1944 Public Health Act as justification to essentially close the United States to all asylum seekers who cross the border. The impact has been severe: In an almost two-month period from mid-March to May, only two people seeking protection on humanitarian grounds at the border were allowed to stay within the United States.

“What is happening at the border right now is a tragedy. We are abandoning our legal commitment to provide asylum to people whose lives are in danger in other countries,” Kari Hong, an immigration attorney and Boston College law school professor, told the Washington Post. “By invoking these emergency orders, the Trump administration is simply doing what it’s wanted to do all along, which is to end asylum law in its entirety,” she said.

While Trump administration officials have justified their likely illegal use of emergency orders in the name of public health, the fact that officials have also deported children and teens who were already in the care of the federal government sure indicates that something else is going on here. I wonder what that could be.

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

Who would have thought that America would become a nation of child abusers and that Federal Courts would be so feckless and complicit in the face of such clear abuses? Three years of concerted failure, led by John Roberts and the Supremes, to give meaning to Due Process and Equal Protection in the face of the “New Jim Crow” have emboldened the regime’s White Nationalist, anti-American abusers while kneecapping democratic and constitutional institutions.

Then, there’s the extreme, wanton cruelty and dehumanization inflicted on the mostly vulnerable among us that has come to symbolize our nation in the Age of Trump. Like all the other abuses by the regime, it’s been “normalized” by feckless legislators and judges: “Another day, another extreme cruelty!” ☠️⚰️🤮🏴‍☠️

Somewhere down there in the fires of the underworld, Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the infamous “Dred Scott Decision” must be feeling totally vindicated by Roberts and his gang!

Is this really how we want to be remembered by future generations? If not, vote ‘em out this November!

PWS

05-21-20

SURPRISE: CHAD WOLF LIES! — Planned Child Abuse Has Always Been About White Nationalist, Anti-Hispanic Agenda, Not “Public Health” or Any Other “Emergency Pretext” Encouraged & Enabled By Roberts & Co.

Julia Ainsley — Julia Edwards Ainsley
Investigative Reporter, NBC News

https://apple.news/AGD3GSaiJTAK50Gkwhyyuyw

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports for NBC News:

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has expedited the deportation of child migrants during the coronavirus pandemic, citing public health, but documents obtained by NBC News show that as far back as 2017, now–DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf sought to expedite child deportations in order to discourage Central American asylum seekers.

Recent reports from immigration lawyers, DHS officials and congressional staff have indicated a rise in the number of rapid deportations of unaccompanied migrant children. Previously, children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian were given protections under anti-trafficking laws, which included the right to claim asylum and to be placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services until they could be placed with a guardian.

The New York Times recently reported that more than 900 children have been deported under a new policy that sends children back to their home countries before they have had a chance to coordinate plans with a guardian at home or claim asylum in the U.S.. Many of those children, according to the Times, were in the U.S. and living in HHS custody or with family members before the pandemic began.

DHS has said the deportations are justified under Title 42, which allows restrictions on immigration to slow the spread of disease.

But a 2017 policy proposal by Wolf shows that the agency has long sought the ability to deport children more quickly, long before the threat of a virus gave it cover to do so.

The documents were first obtained by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D.-Ore., and then shared with NBC News.

Wolf, who was then chief of staff to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, sent a collection of policy ideas to the Justice Department, which included plans to reclassify unaccompanied migrant children as accompanied once they had been placed in the care of a parent or sponsor.

. . . .

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

Read Julia’s complete article at the link.

As I keep saying, ever since “tanking” on the so-called “Travel Ban Cases,” John Roberts and his GOP buddies on the Supremes have been avoiding their duty to critically examine the clearly invidious motives of the Trump regime. They have encouraged legal and intellectual fraud by inviting the regime to present a plethora of demonstrably bogus pretexts to thinly cloak their unlawful intent.

Undoubtedly, we’re just seeing the “tip of the iceberg” here. Future historians will unearth overwhelming evidence of the racism and other improper drivers of the regime’s cowardly attack on vulnerable children and asylum seekers. They will expose fully the disgraceful role of Roberts and his gang in encouraging and covering up what future generations will almost universally view as grotesque abuses of human rights and the rule of law. Which they are!

This November, we have a chance to change course and start writing an end to this disgraceful chapter of American history. Don’t blow it!

PWS

05-20-20

🏴‍☠️AMERICA THE CHILD ABUSER: Trump Regime ☠️ Uses Pandemic As Pretext To Violate Migrant Children’s Legal & Human Rights As Feckless Congress & Complicit Federal Courts Fail To Act! — Disintegration Of Nation’s Values & Humanity 🦹🏿‍♂️ Continues Unabated!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-migrant-children-unaccompanied-minors.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200520&instance_id=18629&nl=the-morning&regi_id=119096355&segment_id=28532&te=1&user_id=70724c8ee3c2ebb50a6ef32ab050a46b

Caitlin Dickerson reports for The NY Times:

The last time Sandra Rodríguez saw her son Gerson, she bent down to look him in the eye. “Be good,” she said, instructing him to behave when he encountered Border Patrol agents on the other side of the river in the United States, and when he was reunited with his uncle in Houston.

The 10-year-old nodded, giving his mother one last squinty smile. Tears caught in his dimples, she recalled, as he climbed into a raft and pushed out across the Rio Grande toward Texas from Mexico, guided by a stranger who was also trying to reach the United States.

Ms. Rodríguez expected that Gerson would be held by the Border Patrol for a few days and then transferred to a government shelter for migrant children, from which her brother in Houston would eventually be able to claim him. But Gerson seemed to disappear on the other side of the river. For six frantic days, she heard nothing about her son — no word that he had been taken into custody, no contact with the uncle in Houston.

Finally, she received a panicked phone call from a cousin in Honduras who said that Gerson was with her. The little boy was crying and disoriented, his relatives said; he seemed confused about how he had ended up back in the dangerous place he had fled.

Hundreds of migrant children and teenagers have been swiftly deported by American authorities amid the coronavirus pandemic without the opportunity to speak to a social worker or plea for asylum from the violence in their home countries — a reversal of years of established practice for dealing with young foreigners who arrive in the United States.

The deportations represent an extraordinary shift in policy that has been unfolding in recent weeks on the southwestern border, under which safeguards that have for decades been granted to migrant children by both Democratic and Republican administrations appear to have been abandoned.

Historically, young migrants who showed up at the border without adult guardians were provided with shelter, education, medical care and a lengthy administrative process that allowed them to make a case for staying in the United States. Those who were eventually deported were sent home only after arrangements had been made to assure they had a safe place to return to.

That process appears to have been abruptly thrown out under President Trump’s latest border decrees. Some young migrants have been deported within hours of setting foot on American soil. Others have been rousted from their beds in the middle of the night in U.S. government shelters and put on planes out of the country without any notification to their families.

The Trump administration is justifying the new practices under a 1944 law that grants the president broad power to block foreigners from entering the country in order to prevent the “serious threat” of a dangerous disease. But immigration officials in recent weeks have also been abruptly expelling migrant children and teenagers who were already in the United States when the pandemic-related order came down in late March.

Since the decree was put in effect, hundreds of young migrants have been deported, including some who had asylum appeals pending in the court system.

Some of the young people have been flown back to Central America, while others have been pushed back into Mexico, where thousands of migrants are living in filthy tent camps and overrun shelters.

In March and April, the most recent period for which data was available, 915 young migrants were expelled shortly after reaching the American border, and 60 were shipped home from the interior of the country.

During the same period, at least 166 young migrants were allowed into the United States and afforded the safeguards that were once customary. But in another unusual departure, Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose how the government was determining which legal standards to apply to which children.

“We just can’t put it out there,” said Matthew Dyman, a public affairs specialist with the agency, citing concerns that human smugglers would exploit the information to traffic more people into the country if they knew how the laws were being applied.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration extended the stepped-up border security that allows for young migrants to be expelled at the border, saying the policy would remain in place indefinitely and be reviewed every 30 days.

Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the policy had been “one of the most critical tools the department has used to prevent the further spread of the virus and to protect the American people, D.H.S. front-line officers and those in their care and custody from Covid-19.”

An agency spokesman said its policies for deporting children from within the interior of the country had not changed.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Caitlin’s article at the above link.

Thanks to my friend, the amazing “Due Process Warrior Queen,” 👸🏼 👑 ⚔️🛡Deb Sanders for bringing Caitlin’s article to my attention.

Kids suffer, the law is ignored, corrupt bureaucrats like Chad Wolf continue to wander around spreading lies. There is no evidence that any of those kids “rocketed” out of the country in violation of laws and human rights had coronavirus.

And if they did, returning them to a poorer nation with even fewer resources to fight the pandemic without taking proper precautions and safeguards would be totally irresponsible, inhumane, and ultimately counterproductive. What goes around, comes around!

This has absolutely nothing to do with “protecting” the U.S. from coronavirus (something that Trump otherwise largely eschews) and everything to do with advancing a racist, xenophobic, White Nationalist political agenda designed to appeal to a relatively narrow slice of Trump voters. So, how does this pass “legal muster?” Clearly, “It doesn’t!”

How do folks like Trump, Miller, Wolf, and their accomplices get away with it? Easy when GOP legislators and life-tenured Federal Judges look the other way rather than forcing the regime to comply with the rule of law and simple human decency.

Congressional letters, particularly to a lawless regime, are useless unless accompanied by veto-proof legislation. Courts that fail to take a unified “Just Say No” approach to Trump’s systemic abuses, all the way up to the Supremes, and which rule without holding the officials and lawyers masterminding these abuses legally accountable are basically feckless!

These are not difficult questions from either a legal or moral standpoint. What the Administration is doing is wrong! Period! Those who say otherwise are wrong! Period!

The Trump regime disguises their vicious attacks on human dignity and the rule of law as bogus “legal issues.” And, the Federal Courts encourage them by going along with the charade. This is no “normal Executive.” It’s a “rogue regime” and must be treated as such!

The failure to end these disgraceful practices and hold those who are abusing their authority accountable says much about the current state of our democratic institutions, justice system, civil servants, and the inadequacy and moral complacency of many of our current GOP legislators and Federal Judges.

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

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts, Never!

PWS

05-20-20

🏴‍☠️CHILD ABUSE/“CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY”☠️ – Scofflaw DHS Officials Scheme to Avoid Flores, Separate Kids, Put Families in New American Gulag (“NAG”) – Julia Edwards Ainsley Reports for NBC News!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/family-separation-back-migrants-u-s-mexican-border-say-advocates-n1208186

Julia writes:

WASHINGTON — Several immigrant rights organizations are outraged by a new choice U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is presenting to migrant parents: Separate from your child or stay together in detention indefinitely.

Starting on Thursday, the groups claim, ICE began distributing a form in all three of its family detention centers that would allow parents to apply for their minor children to be released. The form, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, states that it is in compliance with the Flores court agreement, which prohibits ICE from holding minors for more than 20 days.

The released children are placed with family members, sponsors or placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Trump administration faced intense criticism for a Zero Tolerance policy in 2018 in which undocumented migrant children were separated from parents who had illegally crossed the order. The policy was implemented in May 2018 but reversed after an outcry in June.

Click here to see the form.

The current, “voluntary” concept was previously termed “binary choice,” but has never been fully implemented. Now, lawyers representing clients in ICE family detention say parents may be persuaded to separate from their children if they are worried about exposing them to COVID-19 in detention.

The timing is no coincidence, said Shayln Fluharty, director of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which provides legal services for families in detention in Dilley, Texas. A federal judge recently told ICE it was not in compliance with the Flores agreement, and the forms, said Fluharty, are a way for ICE to show that these parents have chosen to keep their children in detention.

. . . .

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

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

Just another “in your face” unlawful move by DHS officials sending a strong message of contempt to the Federal Judges handling various aspects of the regime’s intentional child abuse, family separation, and punishing asylum seeking families by needless imprisonment in the New American Gulag (“NAG”).

Yes, the District Court Judges handling these matters have ordered the Government to take various forms of corrective action. But, even where the judges use forceful language, it’s largely ineffective to change illegal policies. The regime and its officials just play “hide the ball” and develop schemes and “work arounds” to violate the law and court orders in other ways. That they continue to do this over and over – a strategy known as “malicious compliance” – shows their total disrespect for the Federal Courts and that they share Trump and Miller’s belief that they are above the law.

So far, particularly in the immigration and refugee area, the scofflaws have largely prevailed. They have dismembered immigration and asylum laws with neither legislative enactments nor meaningful judicial consequences. They have publicly and arrogantly “thumbed their noses” at court orders they don’t like. Unless and until the Federal Judges back up their orders by holding Chad Wolf and other scofflaw officials in contempt – real contempt – jail time not just meaningless fines – the abuse and the open disregard for the rule of law and for the authority of Federal Judges will continue.

The law, our Constitution, and human rights will continue to be mocked. Even the best of Federal Judges will appear feckless unless and until they start treating immigration officials as the lawless criminals they actually are!

Undoubtedly, some of the children and families intentionally being abused, dehumanized, and punished by the Trump regime as Federal Courts play bystander won’t survive long enough to tell their stories. But, some will. While those officials, legislators, and judges enabling, or in some cases masterminding and encouraging, these abuses appear likely to escape “temporal” legal accountability for their actions, moral and historical accountability are a different matter altogether. Lots of folks who believe they are “operating under the radar screen” are going to look very bad when the light of history shines on the grotesque human rights, moral, and constitutional violations at our borders and in our Gulags and those who carried them out or failed to effectively halt them.

Due Process Forever. Feckless Courts Never!

PWS

05-18-20

THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-world-leaders?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-world-leaders?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.

Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.

“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

The US has emerged as a global hotspot for the pandemic, a giant petri dish for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the US is leading the way.

None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them – when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later, politicians in Berlin accused Trump of an “unfriendly act” for offering “large sums of money” to get a German company developing a vaccine to move its research wing to the US.

People gather to protest the stay-at-home orders outside the state capitol building in Sacramento, California, this month. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

The president’s abrupt decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization last month also came as a shock. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: “There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the coronavirus pandemic.”

A poll in France last week found Merkel to be far and away the most trusted world leader. Just 2% had confidence Trump was leading the world in the right direction. Only Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping inspired less faith.

A survey this week by the British Foreign Policy Group found 28% of Britons trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, a drop of 13 percentage points since January, with the biggest drop in confidence coming among Conservative voters.

Dacian Cioloș, a former prime minister of Romania who now leads the Renew Europe group in the European parliament, captured a general European view this week as the latest statistics on deaths in the US were reported.

“Post-truth communication techniques used by rightwing populism movements simply do not work to beat Covid-19,” he told the Guardian. “And we see that populism cost lives.”

Around the globe, the “America first” response pursued by the Trump administration has alienated close allies. In Canada, it was the White House order in April to halt shipments of critical N95 protective masks to Canadian hospitals that was the breaking point.

The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, who had previously spoken out in support of Trump on several occasions, said the decision was like letting a family member “starve” during a crisis.

‘It will disappear’: the disinformation Trump spread about the coronavirus – timeline

“When the cards are down, you see who your friends are,” said Ford. “And I think it’s been very clear over the last couple of days who our friends are.”

In countries known for chronic problems of governance, there has been a sense of wonder that the US appears to have joined their ranks.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the above link.

Are we still “to be feared,” even if no longer admired or respected? Good question!

Probably, insofar as our collapse would take down a chunk of the world’s economy with it, leave a leadership vacuum, and change the balance of power, perhaps in favor of China, Russia, South Korea, Canada, and India. We also still have a big military and lots of sophisticated weapons, although modern terrorism has shown that sophistication in expensive weaponry is not always the “be all and end all” either for winning wars or causing mass disorder, death, and mayhem.

Still, as our civil governance and international influence disintegrates, what happens with and to our military is a huge concern and a “big X factor.” Will the tradition of “civilian control over the military” also fall victim to the kakistocracy and the failure of civilian governing institutions? What’s happened to our intelligence community under the Trump kakistocracy is likely a bad omen.

Who would have thought that Trump could do so much permanent or at least long-term damage in such a short period of time? And who would have believed that our centuries-old constitutional and democratic institutions, meant to protect individual rights, enforce the rule of law, and check unrestrained abuses of power by a megalomaniac, yet highly incompetent, dishonest, dangerous, and evil Executive would have crumbled so quickly and performed so haplessly when confronted by a President and an unscrupulous, corrupt, authoritarian regime and party of toadies perfectly willing to press aggressively inane and illegal policies and false narratives to destroy the nation and everyone in it as a means of pillaging and enhancing their own power?

Yet, here we are! Much of the rest of the world appears to “get” it. Yet tens of millions of Americans who continue to support and enable the kakistocracy don’t, or they simply don’t care about our nation and the common good.

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

PWS

05-15-20

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

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