🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮⚔️🛡TWO RECENT LAW360 ARTICLES HIGHLIGHT ROUNDTABLE’S SUPPORT FOR AILA’S LITIGATION AGAINST DANGEROUS CONDITIONS IN NEWARK IMMIGRATION COURT! —”It’s somewhat of a shocking argument to hear the DOJ say there’s nothing the attorneys can do to protect themselves if the [Board of Immigration Appeals] decides not to take action,” Judge Vasquez said. “It’s disheartening.” — But, sadly, not very surprising to those in the “Immigration Community” forced to deal with EOIR’s now chronic disregard and disrespect for human life, on several levels, on a daily basis!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

Hon. Susan G. Roy
Law Office of Susan G. Roy, LLC
Princeton Junction, NJ
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1306711/ex-immigration-judges-say-nj-court-risking-public-health-

Ex-Immigration Judges Say NJ Court Risking Public Health

By Sarah Martinson

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Law360 (September 2, 2020, 7:00 PM EDT) — More than 30 former immigration judges voiced support for New Jersey lawyers’ lawsuit seeking to stop in-person hearings at Newark Immigration Court during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the court needs to prioritize people’s health over case completion numbers.

In a letter Tuesday supporting the New Jersey chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association‘s suit against the Trump administration, the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges said the fact that the New Jersey immigration court is requiring judges, court staff and interpreters to appear in person at all hearings and not requiring them to wear masks is “troubling,” especially in light of four coronavirus-related deaths of people who visited and worked at the courthouse building.

The U.S. Department of Justice‘s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates the Newark Immigration Court, is putting case completion numbers ahead of people’s health and safety, to “the detriment of all those who appear at the court,” the former immigration judges said.

“EOIR’s push to move forward and complete as many cases as possible demonstrates that it has abdicated its responsibility to ensure that all parties are guaranteed a semblance of due process,” they said, adding that the agency’s “complete disregard of the health and safety of not only litigants, but its own employees, is further testament of the agency’s misguided priorities.”

In April 2018, the EOIR announced starting in October of that year immigration judges would be required to complete 700 cases annually and remand less than 15% of cases to have satisfactorily met their job expectations.

The policy change came after the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University released a February 2018 report finding that there was a backlog of more than 680,000 cases in immigration courts nationwide. Later that year, TRAC reported that the immigration court backlog surpassed 1 million cases.

The agency’s policy shift raised concerns among immigration advocates that immigration judges wouldn’t be able to decide cases fairly and prompted six immigration advocacy groups to sue the EOIR in federal court. The groups alleged that the Trump administration was weaponizing immigration courts by denying immigrants a fair chance at obtaining asylum.

The former immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges said in their letter that the Newark Immigration Court has “no legitimate reason” for not using videoconferencing technology that is being used by other New Jersey courts in place of in-person hearings.

“We are well aware of the fact that EOIR has the technology to handle its cases via televideo,” they said.

In March, the American Immigration Lawyers Association along with two other advocacy organizations filed a similar complaint in D.C. federal court seeking the immediate suspension of in-person detention hearings or the release of all detained migrants who have no means to remotely access legal representation or the immigration court.

A D.C. federal judge ruled in that case that the organizations didn’t show the court had the authority to stop proceedings, allowing in-person hearings to continue.

AILA-NJ’s attorney Michael Noveck of Gibbons PC told Law360 in a statement Wednesday that “there is no excuse for EOIR’s failure to conduct proceedings by remote videoconferencing, where the technology to do so is fully available to EOIR.”

“EOIR’s failure to use this readily accessible technology risks the health and lives of attorneys (among others) who are compelled to appear in person at the Newark Immigration Court, and, as we have argued in our complaint and motion for preliminary injunction, it is therefore unlawful and cannot be justified by a rush to deport people,” Noveck said.

Counsel for the federal government declined to comment Wednesday.

AILA-NJ is represented by Lawrence S. Lustberg and Michael R. Noveck of Gibbons PC.

The federal government is represented by Ben Kuruvilla of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

The case is American Immigration Lawyers Association et al. v. Executive Office for Immigration Review et al., case number 2:20-cv-09748, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

–Additional reporting by Alyssa Aquino and Suzanne Monyak. Editing by Stephen Berg.

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

https://www.law360.com/articles/1307316/nj-immigration-attys-can-t-stop-in-person-hearings-for-now

NJ Immigration Attys Can’t Stop In-Person Hearings For Now

By Jeannie O’Sullivan

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Law360 (September 3, 2020, 8:53 PM EDT) — A New Jersey federal judge on Thursday expressed sympathy for attorneys’ concerns about mandated in-person hearings in Newark Immigration Court during the COVID-19 pandemic, but said he needed more information from the government before ruling on their request to halt the in-person requirement.

During a telephone hearing, U.S. District Judge John Michael Vasquez declined to grant a temporary restraining order for the Garden State chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, citing a dearth of information about the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review’s July decision to resume in-person proceedings.

The AILA’s emergency request came as part of its lawsuit seeking to reverse the EOIR’s mandate after an attorney and law clerk who attended March hearings later died of the coronavirus. Judge Vasquez said he needed to know more about the EOIR’s plan for social distancing and screening before it ordered the in-person hearings.

“I’m looking for the decision-making process before these instructions were put in place,” Judge Vasquez told the parties. “I want to understand what the EOIR considered, and what the Newark immigration judges considered, before they made these decisions. I’m looking for what they actually took into account.”

The judge instructed the government to furnish the information within two weeks, and said the immigration attorneys would have a week after that to reply.

“In-person can be workable, but there’s a lot more information that I need,” Judge Vasquez said at one point.

Also during the hearing, Judge Vasquez suggested that he was going to reject the government’s argument that the district court can’t hear the matter due to jurisdiction-limiting provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“It’s somewhat of a shocking argument to hear the DOJ say there’s nothing the attorneys can do to protect themselves if the [Board of Immigration Appeals] decides not to take action,” Judge Vasquez said. “It’s disheartening.”

The AILA’s July 31 complaint targets the EOIR’s July 8 decision to resume in-person hearings for nondetained immigrants on July 13. The group said forcing immigration attorneys to show up to court is needlessly risky with the availability of videoconferencing technology, and claimed that when the EOIR restarted hearings in the Newark court, it did so without “basic information” on how to safely social distance in the building.

The AILA claimed attorneys have been “arbitrarily” denied requests to postpone scheduled hearings, and that an immigration judge has even threatened disciplinary action against two lawyers if they failed to appear for an in-person hearing. On Thursday, AILA attorney Michael R. Noveck of Gibbons PC said attorneys were “risking their lives” by showing up to court, or facing potential discipline if they didn’t.

The government has countered that halting the in-person proceedings would bring the Newark Immigration Court’s caseload, which currently tops 67,500, to a standstill. The EOIR has pointed to the availability in court of video-teleconferencing technology, or VTC, which allows attorneys to join proceedings from an empty courtroom.

The AILA has pushed to use Zoom or Skype in order to avoid having to go to a courtroom at all, but the government has said that those applications lack VTC’s transcription capabilities and security features.

The AILA is represented by Lawrence S. Lustberg and Michael R. Noveck of Gibbons PC.

The government is represented by Ben Kuruvilla of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.

The case is American Immigration Lawyers Association et al. v. Executive Office for Immigration Review, case number 2:20-cv-09748, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

–Additional reporting by Jennifer Doherty and Alyssa Aquino. Editing by Breda Lund.

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.

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

Should representing individuals in the “No Due Process Star Chambers” really be health and life endangering as well as frustrating?⚰️🤮

I agree with Judge Vasquez’s statement quoted in my headline, except for one thing: “shocking” as this behavior by DOJ might be to the Judge, it’s hardly unusual. Unhappily, it’s “business as usual” for hard working, often pro bono or “low bono” attorneys, trying to represent clients in today’s “Beyond FUBAR” Immigration “Courts” (that aren’t “courts” at all). Isn’t it time for Article III Judges throughout the nation to stop “expressing shock, puzzlement, annoyance, and disbelief” and take some effective action to force EOIR into at least minimal compliance with the Due Process Clause of our Constitution?

When, exactly, during the “Gonzo/Billy the Bigot Era” has the BIA EVER intervened in a high profile case on the side of individual rights and Due Process rather than promoting the Stephen Miller White Nationalist, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-due-process agenda?

To be honest, an Article III Judge would only be “surprised” by dishonesty and intransigence from the DOJ, EOIR, and the BIA if he or she hadn’t been paying attention to the daily charade of justice unfolding in “America’s Star Chambers” under the dishonest, unethical, biased, and racism-promoting stewardship of Billy the Bigot! Whatever happened to the role of DOJ lawyers as “officers of the court” and the “duty of candor to tribunals?” Seems to have done a “disappearing act” in the Article IIIs!

I imagine that if Article III Judges were subjected to the same conditions and humiliations as attorneys trying to represent individuals in Immigration Court, serious systemic change would have happened long ago. That’s why we need some “new faces and enlightened minds” from the private sector immigration bar on the Article III bench!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-05-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🏻CRIME & (NO) PUNISHMENT: Not An Administration, An Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy, Says Max Boot!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/31/this-isnt-an-administration-its-an-ongoing-criminal-conspiracy/

Max Boot in WashPost:

It is entirely fitting that Donald Trump — the least law-abiding president in our history — was renominated at a convention that was itself a seeming cavalcade of crime. Every night featured apparent violations of the 1939 Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities “in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an individual employed or holding office in the Government of the United States.”

The White House certainly qualifies as such a facility. Yet Trump used it as a convention prop, even going so far as to televise a naturalization ceremony for immigrants — some of whom did not realize they would be shown at the Republican convention — as part of the nightly show. Trump not only flouted the law but also reveled in doing so. During his acceptance speech, he boasted, “We’re here — they’re not,” and the New York Times reported that Trump “relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him.”

While the president is exempt from the civil provisions of the Hatch Act, he could be subject, once he leaves office, to criminal penalties if he should “intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce … any employee of the Federal Government … to engage in … any political activity.” That is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

This is, of course, barely scratching the surface of an administration that should more accurately be described as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. While many of Trump’s awful acts — e.g., confining children in cages or unleashing riot police on peaceful protesters — are merely violations of democratic norms, there is also plentiful evidence of lawbreaking on his part.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has identified Trump as “Individual-1” in a conspiracy with his attorney Michael Cohen to violate campaign finance laws by secretly paying off two women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. Cohen went to prison; Trump, who as president claims immunity from prosecution, wasn’t indicted.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III uncovered a great deal more potential illegality. He found 10 instances when Trump might have obstructed justice, and in at least four of those cases he found evidence that Trump’s conduct met all three elements of the obstruction-of-justice statute. Each violation carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee suggests that Trump also lied to Mueller when, in written testimony, he claimed not to remember speaking to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks. If he committed perjury, that would subject him to up to five years’ imprisonment.

. . . .

Trump could try to short-circuit justice by seeking to pardon himself before he leaves office — or even by resigning a few hours early and having Vice President Pence sworn in to issue a pardon (as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon). In that case, the special counsel would be limited to investigating Trump’s accomplices (unless they are also pardoned) and helping state prosecutors. But the special counsel should still issue a comprehensive report on Trump’s lawbreaking. We must expose and root out this ethical rot before it eats away at the foundations of our democracy.

**********

Read the rest of Boot’s article at the link. Actually, Max understates the case. Trump long ago ate the ethical underpinnings of American democracy for lunch, with the “JR Five” providing “table service.”

Under “normal” circumstances, the scenario outlined by Boot in his final paragraph would be beyond preposterous! But, in the failed state of American democracy under Trump, it’s perfectly plausible. Whose going to stop him from the “final abuse and mockery of our republic?” Feckless Congress? The Supremely and Serenely Complicit ones? No way. Trump will exploit the moral cowardice and spinelessness of the other failed two branches of Government until the end!

It started about the time that Roberts and his colleagues threw Muslims, refugees, and migrants under the bus in their ridiculously wrong and intellectually dishonest “Travel Ban Fiasco.” The “Dred Scottification” of migrants and people of color and open corruption, aided and abetted by Roberts and his gang, have continued largely unabated since then.

Max’s use of the term “rot” brings to mind the refugees from many nations, most people of color, rotting in Mexico, futilely waiting for “asylum hearings” that might never come and where denial without due process has been predetermined. This is what “American Justice” has become under Trump, Billy the Bigot, Wolfman the Illegal, and Roberts the Complicit!

Actually, separating families, misrepresenting the policy to Federal Courts, and long-term “civil” detention of families in life-threatening conditions as a “deterrent” to exercising important, fundamental legal and human rights might well be criminal violations in a functioning justice system. Sadly, America basically lacks the latter these days because of the Supremes’ coddling of the “crimes against humanity” committed by Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, Cooch, and their co-conspirators.

As those of us with experience adjudicating asylum cases know, lack of accountability before the courts and failure of the judiciary to exercise independent judgment to control a corrupt and tyrannical executive are hallmarks of failed states and banana republics.

Let’s see! America’s founders created an independent judiciary to insure the right of the “King” to use the Government as his personal servants to violate the Bill of Rights, exploit the nation for his own gain, and create “alternate Kings’ Courts” where the “judges” are his employees, he makes the rules, the results are largely preordained by the King’s personal biases and the interests of his royal cronies, and the penalty can be “death without due process.” Not likely!

But, that’s what happens when judges’ fealty to ideology, party, or personality often exceeds their loyalty to the Constitution and to the human rights and human dignity of their fellow men, women, and children. It happens when we create an elitist, right-leaning judiciary, out of step with and non-representative of the majority of Americans, where actual knowledge and experience defending the human rights of individuals against Government overreach, courage to speak truth to power, and demonstrated unswerving commitment to equal justice under law is far, far undervalued, even intentionally ignored. Where practical problem-solving skills and human empathy, perhaps the two most important qualities for fair and honest judging, are all too often disrespected and even demeaned.

Better Federal Judges for a better, fairer, functional America! One where the humanity of all persons is honored and respected, rather than being mocked by those in positions of power and privilege. One where the highest Court finally stands up for and enforces the hard-fought Constitutional right to vote, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, rather than aiding and abetting the blatant schemes of the GOP to suppress voting and deny deserved political power to Americans of color. One where an honest Court enforces to the maximum degree the Voting Rights Act rather than intentionally and disingenuously gutting it at the demand of some in the White power structure.

These travesties have unfolded right in front of us. Yet, even so called “liberal-progressive” commentators largely shrug them off as somehow “normal” or “just the way the system functions.” That’s BS! It’s “judicial malpractice.” It’s a major reason why two centuries after our founding we have not yet achieved racial justice and why our nation is coming apart at the seams under grotesque misgovernance and judicial complicity.

The current Federal Judiciary has facilitated the takeover of our Government by an ongoing criminal conspiracy, as described by Boot. We need change! Sooner rather than later! And, it can’t and won’t happen with the current cast of characters in the Executive, the Senate majority, and the Article III Judiciary.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-04-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎INJUSTICE WATCH: 4th Cir. Judge Stephanie Thacker Cogently Castigates Colleagues For Misapplying “Standard Of (No) Review” To Approve BIA’s Sloppy, Clearly Erroneous, Deadly Anti-Asylum Farce! – Portillo-Flores v. Barr — – “[A]t worst nonsensical and cursory at best”

Judge Stephanie D. Thacker — Honorable Stephanie D. Thacker
U.S. Circuit Judge
Fourth Circuit
Photo From Ballotpedia

Portillo-Flores v. Barr, 4^th Cir., 09-02-20, published

Portillo decision

PANEL: THACKER, QUATTLEBAUM, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Quattlebaum

DISSENTING OPINION: Judge Stephanie D. Thacker

KEY QUOTES FROM JUDGE THACKER’S DISSENT:

The majority opinion begins its analysis with a reminder of the applicable standard of review, emphasizing the importance of deference in this context. But the majority fails to mention a threshold requirement for the application of deference — in order to be accorded deference, agency decisionmakers below must conduct sufficient analysis to which we can defer. See Cordova v. Holder, 759 F.3d 332, 338 (4th Cir. 2014) (“[T]he Supreme Court long ago instructed that ‘the process of review requires that the grounds upon which the administrative agency acted be clearly disclosed and adequately sustained.’” (quoting SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 94 (1943))). Here, neither the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) nor the Board of Appeals (“BIA”) provide even the bare minimum level of explanation that our precedent requires. This failure is an abuse of discretion.

The agency decisions here are precisely the kinds of cursory opinions we have repeatedly rejected for their failure to engage with an applicant’s arguments and evidence. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. . . .

In conclusion, I borrow from the majority opinion, which likens the standard of review to an offensive lineman in football. In light of the limited analyses below, which were at worst nonsensical and cursory at best, the standard of review “offensive lineman” in this case cannot protect the decision below. Instead, the weak analysis of the agencies left their blind side wide open.

I dissent.

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

“[A]t worst nonsensical and cursory at best.” Those prophetic words from Judge Thacker’s dissent should outrage every American! Don’t vulnerable individuals, effectively on trial for their lives, deserve better from the U.S. Justice system? Is the “half-baked” standard applied by the panel majority really the way we would want ourselves or our loved ones judged in any matter of importance, not to mention what is in many ways a “capital case?” What’s going on in our Article III Judiciary?

Read the full opinion at the link. This is a prime, very disturbing example of the “any reason to deny” standard used by the Trump regime to subvert justice for asylum applicants of color. Here, as effectively pointed out by Judge Thacker it was (laboriously and wordily) “rubber stamped” by two complicit Article III Judges.

To call this “second class justice” would be far too generous. It’s basically no justice at all and a damning illustration of how intellectual absurdity and race-driven results have become institutionalized and acceptable, not just in the Immigration Courts, but in various places throughout our judicial system that is failing to deliver on the Constitutional requirement of “equal justice for all.”

Any activists who think that the problems of racial tension in America are going to be resolved without addressing the systemic judicial failure to stand up against the illegal, racially-biased mistreatment of asylum seekers and other migrants by the likes of Trump, Miller, Sessions, Barr, and Wolf, as enabled by the Supremes and other Article III Judges who have “swallowed their whistles,” is mistaken.

As cogently pointed out by Judge Thacker, this was a “no brainer remand” under any application of the proper standards. Indeed, the panel majority spent more time and effort, and killed more trees, looking for ways to “paper over” the BIA’s indefensible and unprofessional performance than it would have taken them to correct it! This panel majority appeared much more interested in “rehabilitating the BIA” and “codifying injustice” (probably as an aid to rubber stamping more assembly line injustice in the future) than it was in achieving justice for the young man whose life was at stake.

Indeed, Judge Quattlebaum and Judge Rushing are so arrogantly “tone deaf” and impervious to human suffering that they employ a “snarky sports analogy” in essentially imposing a potential death sentence on a young Salvadoran refugee without any serious pretense of due process or effective and intellectually honest judicial review. Is this how Quattlebaum and Rushing would like to be “judged” if they or their loved ones (or someone they considered “human”) were on trial for their lives? No way! So why is it “due process” for this young man?

Obviously, these are two judges who are confident in a privileged life “above the fray” that puts them beyond moral and legal accountability for the unjust human misery and suffering that they cause. It’s all a “sports joke” to them. But, not so funny to those whose lives are at stake in what once was supposed to be a serious legal process but now has devolved into a deadly and totally dysfunctional “Clown Show.”

It’s also a national disgrace and a serious indictment of our entire justice system that this type of clearly “dangerous and defective judging” goes on in our life-tenured judiciary. America deserves better from our Article III Judiciary!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-04-20

🇺🇸🗽⚖️RACE & CULTURE: HISPANIC AMERICANS ARE BOTH UNDER-APPRECIATED FOR THEIR MANY ESSENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICA & INTENTIONALLY UNDER-REPRESENTED IN THE AMERICAN “POWER STRUCTURE” — Trump, His White Nationalist Brigade, “Moscow Mitch,” & The Roberts’ Court Majority Aim To Keep It That Way!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/latinos-trump-election.html

By Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Mónica Ramirez in The NY Times:

Ms. Méndez Berry is a journalist, cultural critic and editor. Ms. Ramírez is the founder of the Latinx House, and the author of the “Dear Sisters” letter that helped inspire the Time’s Up movement.

The story about Latinos in America is an old one. And it isn’t true. Created generations ago by whites to demonize Mexicans and then Puerto Ricans, the racist caricature of Latinos as a menacing foreign monolith persists, even as two-thirds of us were born here and we come from more than 20 different countries.

While we are everywhere in this country, from big cities to small towns, Latinos are largely missing from American media and culture, which makes us vulnerable. President Donald Trump knows this and exploits these fictions for political gain.

Mr. Trump has accomplices. White gatekeepers in media, art and entertainment have long excluded or misrepresented Latinos, particularly Indigenous and Black Latinos, building the cultural scaffolding for the current administration. To defang these old falsehoods, we have to go after their enablers, transform media and cultural power structures and amplify and defend Latino storytellers. We must flex our power as a community.

Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas gave voice to this in a recent column for Variety: “There is a dangerous nexus between the racist political rhetoric and the negative images of Latinos as criminals and invaders that Americans see on their screens.” Mr. Castro added, “Hollywood needs to reckon with its systemic injustice and exclusion of our communities.”

Indeed, all media and culture industries must be held accountable, along with the advertisers, investors and funders who bankroll their behavior.

. . . .

We are the second largest ethnic group in this country. Many of us were here before the ancestors of most people who call themselves Americans. Others came as casualties of U.S. colonial experiments, covert operations and trade deals.

No matter how we got here or when, this country should be grateful for the Latino community: during this pandemic, farmworkers, 80 percent of whom are Latino, have put food on the table for us all and scores of other Latino workers have propped this country up, often at great cost to themselves.

The United States must reckon with the fact that Latinos are essential to its survival and to its splendor, and have been for generations. We Latinos need to know it too.

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

Read the full article at the link.

Another place where Hispanics are spectacularly under-represented is among the ranks of U.S. Immigration Judges. It’s largely a bastion of White male, White female power, with a smattering of African Americans and Asian Americans thrown in. Very few judges of Hispanic ancestry.

Worse yet, a number of Immigration Judges appointed or promoted by this regime have notorious records of anti-immigrant, anti-asylum bias. Much of this bias has been directed specifically against Latino asylum seekers from Central America, particularly women refugees fleeing well-documented systematic persecution because of gender.

Indeed, anyone who actually took the time to educate themselves about conditions in Central America would recognize Jeff “Gonzo Apocalyoto” Sessions’s largely fictionalized “put down” of clear persecution of a Latino female refugee from El Salvador in Matter of A-B-, 27 I & N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018) for what it really is: an essay promoting anti-immigrant racism, false narratives, and misogyny disguised as jurisprudence. For the true story of Ms. A-B- and her suffering see: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/01/25/the-human-agony-of-asylum-spend-4-min-with-ms-a-b-human-womens-rights-expert-professor-karen-musalo-beaten-raped-threatened-with-death-by-her-husband-hounded-throughout-h/

The Trump regime’s overtly racist attack on Hispanic migrants, particularly women, children, and asylum seekers, obviously has a larger target: Hispanic Americans as a group, the legitimacy of their political power as citizens, and their very humanity. As I say over and over, it’s what “Dred Scottification,” and its acceptance and disgusting furtherance by a majority of our highest Court, is all about!

Hispanics are going to have to fight for their fair share of power at the ballot box, no easy task given the GOP’s all-out assault on minority voting rights and the Supremes’ majority’s disgraceful failure to defend the voting rights of Americans of color.

But, it would be in everyone’s interest if we stopped playing the “race game” in America and actually made equal justice and full participation by all in society, regardless of race, the touchstone of a better future for America. Only then, will we rid ourselves of the unnecessary burdens of the past and reach our full potential as a nation of peace, prosperity, productivity, creativity, and humanity!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-03-20

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⚖️🗽🇺🇸FORMER DEPUTY AG DON AYER, JUDGE MIMI TSANKOV AMONG “HEADLINERS” AT TIMELY UPCOMING NY CITY BAR ASSN. EVENT: “Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption” — Register Now, Right Here!

Honorable Mimi Tsankov
U.S. Immigration Judge
Eastern Region Vice President
National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

Elizabeth Gibson, New Due Process Army Superstar & Editor Publisher Of The Renowned Weekly “Gibson Report” reports:

Hi Everyone,

I want to flag an upcoming NYCBA webinar series on Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption. Full disclosure, I’m on the taskforce organizing the event, but I highly recommend it. The speaker list is top-notch.

For immigration practitioners in particular, Session 4 will feature IJ Tsankov, representing NAIJ, and the session will discuss “deteriorations of voting rights, asylum rights and incarceration policies, the militarization of policing and the disparate treatment of minorities by police and prosecutors, and the use of libel litigation to inflict costs on individuals and media outlets who challenge or criticize officeholders.”

It’s free for NYCBA members, $15 for other lawyers, and free for the general public (including law students and fellows). Please circulate widely.

Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption
Session 1: Threats to the Rule of Law in America: A Survey

Tuesday, September 15 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Session 2: Checks, Balances and Oversight — the Distribution of Governmental Power and Information

Tuesday, September 22 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Session 3: Interference with Judicial Independence and Local Law Enforcement

Thursday, October 8 | 11:00 a.m. -2:00 p.m.
Session 4: Threats to Individual and Societal Rights

Wednesday, October 21 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Session 5: Rebuilding the Rule of Law in America: What Can and Should the Legal Profession, Individual Lawyers and Citizens Do?

Wednesday, November 18 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Eric Friedman
efriedman@nycbar.org

Eli Cohen
ecohen@nycbar.org

New York City Bar Association Announces Five-Part Forum on the Rule of Law

Fall Series to Feature Former Officials, Judges, Scholars and More

New York, August 10, 2020 – The New York City Bar Association has announced a five-part Forum on the Rule of Law, to take place this fall beginning on September 15. (Full schedule and speaker list below.)

The “Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption” will feature panels of respected experts from across the political spectrum – including former government officials, judges and scholars – who will identify current challenges and threats to the rule of law in America, discuss why they matter and propose remedies. Participants will include Nicole Austin-Hillery, Donald Ayer, Mitchell Bernard, Preet Bharara, Robert Cusumano, Hon. Mary McGowan Davis, John Feerick, Charles Fried, Daniel Goldman, Harold Hongju Koh, Errol Louis, Margaret Colgate Love, David McCraw, Barbara McQuade, Dennis Parker, Myrna Perez, Hon. Jed Rakoff; Anthony Romero, Cass Sunstein, Hon. Mimi Tsankov, Joyce Vance, and Cecilia Wang. City Bar President Sheila S. Boston will introduce the series, and Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University, author of On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom, will kick off the opening session with a survey of the “Threats to the Rule of Law in America.”

All sessions will be carried live on Zoom and will be open to the public free of charge ($15 for non-member lawyers):

Session 1: Threats to the Rule of Law in America: A Survey

(Sept 15, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.)

Session 2: Checks, Balances and Oversight — the Distribution of Governmental Power and Information

(Sept 22, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.)

Session 3: Interference with Judicial Independence and Local Law Enforcement

(October 8, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.)

Session 4: Threats to Individual and Societal Rights

(Oct 21, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.)

Session 5: Rebuilding the Rule of Law in America: What Can and Should the Legal Profession, Individual Lawyers and Citizens Do?

(Nov 18, 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.)

“The rule of law is the foundation of our democracy,” said City Bar President Sheila S. Boston. “It’s at the core of our Constitution that sets forth the powers of our government and the rights of our people, and the supremacy of the law in our nation ensures that no one can claim to be above it. The rule of law is what provides for transparency and equity in our society, enables us to confront challenges, foreign or domestic, and protects our security and welfare so that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness exists for us all.”

The forum is produced by the City Bar’s Task Force on the Rule of Law, which, along with other relevant City Bar Committees, has issued a series of reports and statements relating to inappropriate actions by the Attorney General in a broad range of areas, Presidential dismissal of Inspectors General and interference in criminal and military trials, inappropriate action by the Secretary of State to undermine the International Criminal Court, the need for legislative reform of Presidential emergency powers, a proposal to replace Guantanamo’s military commissions with an Article III court and the improper use of federal security forces to clear peaceful demonstrators in Washington, D.C. and displace local law enforcement in Portland.

“While we hope these individual reports have been useful to our members and the public, they illustrate a broader theme – threats to the Rule of Law itself – that we believe has not received sufficient in-depth attention in either the public or the legal profession,” said Stephen L. Kass, Chair of the Task Force. “Our goal is to create an ongoing and thought-provoking discussion among the legal profession, the academic community and the public about what can and should be done to assure that America remains a nation governed by law even in a time of crisis – or especially in a time of crisis – and to identify the actions necessary for our justice system to promote the impartial, equitable and effective enforcement of those laws.”

In addition to the work of the Task Force on the Rule of Law, the City Bar has been speaking out on rule-of-law issues for decades through its committees on Federal Courts, Government Ethics, Immigration and Nationality Law, and its Task Force on National Security and Rule of Law (the predecessor of the Task Force on the Rule of Law).

Full Schedule:

Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption

Session 1: Threats to the Rule of Law in America: A Survey

Tuesday, September 15 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

This session will broadly survey recent developments that implicate, and may signal rejection of, traditional Constitutional roles and customary norms of behavior within the national government and each of its branches. Session 1 will also take an inventory of recent challenges to laws and norms involving the impartial administration of justice by law enforcement, prosecutors, the courts and the Executive, as well as threats to individual and societal rights generally and to marginalized communities in particular. Individual speakers will focus on constitutional checks and balances, politicization of the administration of justice, dramatic changes in how governmental agencies ascertain facts and make decisions, and trends in derogation of individual and societal rights, including voting rights and the promise of impartial justice for all.

Introduction: Sheila S. Boston, President, New York City Bar Association

Keynote Speaker: Timothy Snyder, Professor of History, Yale University; author, Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom

Dennis Parker, Director, National Center for Law and Economic Justice

Cass Sunstein, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Joyce Vance, Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law; former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama

Session 2: Checks, Balances and Oversight – the Distribution of Governmental Power and Information

Tuesday, September 22 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

This session will focus in depth on the rule of law challenges arising out of disruption of traditional “checks and balances” among the branches of the government, the ideas of “independence” and “oversight” among the agencies of government, and the ability of the Congress or Inspectors General and “whistleblowers” to perform their functions in the face of Executive secrecy, limits on Congressional subpoena power, governmental job insecurity and public statements critical of the bureaucratic levers of government.

Keynote Speaker: Donald Ayer, Partner at Jones Day; former U.S. Deputy Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush; former Principal Deputy Solicitor General under Solicitor General Charles Fried.

Moderator: Errol Louis, CNN Political Analyst; Host of NY1’s “Inside City Hall”

Mitchell Bernard, Executive Director, National Resources Defense Council

Preet Bharara, former U .S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York

Daniel Goldman, Counsel to the House Intelligence Committee

Barbara McQuade, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School; former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan

Session 3: Interference with Judicial Independence and Local Law Enforcement
Thursday, October 8 | 11:00 a.m. -2:00 p.m.)

This session will explore the effects of Executive disruption of several distinct justice systems – civil and criminal courts, the immigration court system and local law enforcement. Speakers will explore the implications of Executive interference with investigations and trials, castigation of individual judges and jurors, the deployment of military and/or federal forces in connection with local law enforcement and the issuance of pardons without traditional due diligence for civilian and military crimes.

Keynote Speaker: Charles Fried, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School; former U.S. Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan

Margaret Colgate Love, Executive Director, Collateral Consequences Resource Center; former U.S. Pardon Attorney

Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law and former Dean, Yale Law School; former Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State

Hon. Jed Rakoff, Senior U.S. District Court Judge, Southern District of New York

Session 4: Threats to Individual and Societal Rights

Wednesday, October 21 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

This session will survey recent trends that question the role of law and courts in the pursuit of a just and democratic society. Is adherence to the rule of law deteriorating and, if so, is that because of limitations on the ability (or inclination) of citizens and courts to prevent violations of individual rights or, more broadly, the rules governing a functioning democracy? Speakers will discuss the most salient of the deteriorations of voting rights, asylum rights and incarceration policies, the militarization of policing and the disparate treatment of minorities by police and prosecutors, and the use of libel litigation to inflict costs on individuals and media outlets who challenge or criticize officeholders.

Keynote Speaker: Anthony Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

Nicole Austin-Hillary, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch U.S. Program

David McCraw, Senior Vice-President and Deputy General Counsel, New York Times

Myrna Perez, Director, Voting Rights and Elections Program, Brennan Center for Justice

Hon. Mimi Tsankov, Vice President, Eastern Region, National Association of Immigration Judges

Cecilia Wang, Deputy Legal Director and Director of the Center for Democracy, American Civil Liberties Union

Session 5: Rebuilding the Rule of Law in America: What Can and Should the Legal Profession, Individual Lawyers and Citizens Do?

Wednesday, November 18 | 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

This session will explore the role of individual lawyers, professional organizations and citizens in protecting the rule of law as a guiding principle in American public life and in restoring the norms and standards by which we may remain a society governed by transparent rules equitably applied. Speakers will discuss the history of efforts by the organized bar to support and sustain impartial justice, the scope of pro bono work by the private bar and the private sector, the ethical standards guiding government officials and the education of the public about the necessity of acting to protect a fair and equitable rule of law. Speakers will draw on their own experience to offer lessons for members of the bar on building on one’s own background and training to promote the rule of law domestically and abroad.

Keynote Speaker: John Feerick, Fordham Law Dean Emeritus and Norris Professor of Law, Fordham Law School

Robert Cusumano, founder and CEO, Legal Horizons Foundation; former Corporate General Counsel

Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law and former Dean, Yale Law School; former Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State

Hon. Mary McGowan Davis, Former New York Supreme Court Justice; Member, UN Committees of Independent Experts in International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law

Interested media please email efriedman@nycbar.org for access to this event.

About the Association

The mission of the New York City Bar Association, which was founded in 1870 and has 25,000 members, is to equip and mobilize a diverse legal profession to practice with excellence, promote reform of the law, and uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world. www.nycbar.org

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☠️⚠️‼️DISCLAIMER: Of course, the following are just my views, not the views of anyone on the All-Star cast of speakers at this upcoming event, the NYCBA, or anyone else of any importance whatsoever!

Don is my former partner at Jones Day and a long time colleague going back to our days together at a “Better DOJ.” Mimi and I have been friends and colleagues for years in the NAIJ, the FBA, and on the Immigration Court.

Elizabeth is my former student at Georgetown Law, a former intern at the Arlington Immigration Court, a former Judicial Law Clerk at the NY Immigration Court, and a “charter member” and leader of the “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”). She’s still early in her career, but already establishing herself as one of the “best legal minds” in the business — in immigration, human rights, Constitutional Law, or any any other field. Elizabeth and others like her are indeed “the future of American law and the nation!”

In nearly five decades as a lawyer in the public, private, and academic sectors, I have never seen such a concerted attack on the rule of law and the institutional underpinnings of American democracy as that being carried our by the Trump regime.

Perhaps most shocking and disappointing to me has been the ineffective “pushback” and often outright complicity or encouragement offered to “the scofflaw destroyers” by our supposedly independent Article III Judiciary.

Let’s cut to the chase! The only real role of the Federal Judiciary is to protect our nation from tyranny and overreach from the the other two branches of Government. That’s it in a nutshell! If they can’t do that, they really have no purpose that couldn’t be fulfilled by the State and Local Courts.

In this role, the Article IIIs have failed — miserably! With a “disappearing Congress,” the Article IIIs, starting with the lousy performance of the Supremes, overall have been unwilling effectively to stand up to Trump’s corrupt, overtly racist, divisive, and illegal White Nationalist agenda. An agenda that is destroying our society and mocking the Constitutional guarantees of “equal justice for all.”

I call the regime’s strategy “Dred Scottification” or “dehumanization of the other before the law.” It targets people of color, particularly immigrants and asylum seekers.

Outrageously, rather than emphatically rejecting this clearly unconstitutional “throwback to Jim Crow,” a Supremes’ majority has embraced and furthered it: from the “Muslim Bam;” to illegally letting legitimate asylum applicants rot, be abused, and die in Mexico; to allowing a deadly irrational, racist attack on the health and public benefits of the legal immigrant community; to turning their back on refugees who are are potentially being sentenced to death without any recognizable legal process; to allowing GOP politicos to blatantly suppress Black and Hispanic voting rights for corrupt political gain, the “tone-deaf” and spineless Supremes’ majority has misused its life tenure to clearly install itself on the wrong side of history — with racists and human rights abusers of the past!

We see it playing out every day; it will continue to get worse if we don’t get “regime change.” We need a functional Congress, without Mitch McConnell’s poisonous intransigence, and better Federal Judges, at all levels. Judges who actually believe in equal justice for all under our Constitution and have the guts and intellectual integrity to stand up for it — whether the issue is voting rights, criminal justice, rights of asylum seekers, immigrants’ rights, effective Congressional oversight of the Executive, or putting an end to the “due process parody” going on daily in the “weaponized and politicized” Immigration “Courts” (that are not “courts” at all by any commonly understood meaning of the word).

For example, as American justice implodes, AG Billy Barr and several GOP Supremes have decided that the “real enemy” is “nationwide injunctions” by US District Court Judges. This is nothing short of “legal absurdism” being spouted by folks who are supposed to be functioning as “responsible public officials!”

As those who live in the “real world” of the law, peopled by actual human beings, nationwide injunctions are one of the few effective tools that defenders of our Constitution (many serving pro bono) have to stop life-threatening illegal attacks by the regime on individual rights, particularly in the field of immigration and human rights. Otherwise, the regime’s “violate the law at will and fill the courts with frivolous litigation strategy,” adopted by the DOJ and furthered by the Supremes, would simply bury and overwhelm the defenders of individual rights and the rule of law.

Without nationwide injunctions against illegal Executive actions, by the time the regime’s legal transgressions worked their way to the Supremes, most of the bodies would be dead and buried. ⚰️⚰️Indeed, we see the results of this illegal abrogation of U.S. asylum law and international protections, sans legislation or legitimate rationale, which daily returns legitimate refugees, many women and children, to harm, torture, or death, without any process whatsoever, let alone the “due process” required by the Constitution. ☠️🤮⚰️🏴‍☠️

You might ask yourself what purpose is served by a Supremes’ majority that has encouraged and facilitated this type of deadly “outlaw behavior” that will stain our nation’s soul and reputation forever in the eyes of history? It’s not “rocket science” — really just Con Law 101, common sense, and human decency, which seem to have fled the scene at our highest Court.

The complete breakdown of professional and ethical standards within the Executive, particularly the DOJ, that used to govern positions taken, arguments made, and evidence submitted to Federal Courts also is shocking to those of us who once served in the DOJ. Likewise, the overall failure of the Federal Courts to enforce even minimal standards of professionalism and the duty of “candor to a tribunal” for Government lawyers is surprising and disheartening.

Yes, Federal Judges sometimes “pan” or “wring their hands” about the bogus positions, disingenuous reasoning, and contemptuous actions of agencies and Government lawyers. But, they seldom, if ever, take meaningful corrective action. For Pete’s sake, both “Wolfman” and “Cooch Cooch” have been held by a Federal Judge to have been illegally appointed to their acting positions! Yet every day, these “illegals” continue to mete out injustice, and racist-driven policies on largely defenseless migrants . What kind of judiciary allows this kind of “in your face nonsense” to continue unabated?

This judicial fecklessness hasn’t been lost on folks like Billy Barr, Chad “Wolfman” Wolf, Stephen Miller, “Cooch Cooch,” Mark Morgan, Noel Francisco, and other Trump sycophants who continue to flood the Federal Courts with false narratives, bogus positions, and what many would characterize as “unadulterated BS” without meaningful consequences, other than to stretch the “battle lines” of the pro bono opposition to the breaking point. Indeed, as many fearless immigration and human rights litigators will confirm, it has become the burden of the private, usually pro bono or “low bono,” bar to “fact check” and disprove the false narratives and incomplete or misleading accounts submitted by the DOJ to the Federal Courts.

How does this “misplacing of the burden” further the interests of justice and encourage representation of the most vulnerable in our society? Clearly, it doesn’t, which is the entire point of the DOJ’s destructive and unprofessional “strategy!” Certainly, these are unmistakable signs of widespread systemic breakdown in our Federal justice system.

I urge everyone to attend and learn more about why the rule of law is “on the ropes” in today’s America, what efforts are being made to save and preserve it, and to ponder the consequences of what another four years of a corrupt, scofflaw, White Nationalist regime and complicit Federal Judges could mean for everyone in America and perhaps the world!

Due Process Forever! If you don’t stand up for it, you’ll find yourself living in the “world’s highest-GNP failed state,” governed by a hereditary kakistocracy enabled by feckless “judges” more interested in their life tenure than in YOUR rights under the law!🤮☠️🏴‍☠️👎

Star Chamber Justice

“Due Process of Law”

As Reenvisioned By Trump & Billy Barr

This is what “Dred Scottification” or the “end of the rule of law” as promoted by Trump, Miller, Barr and their cronies, and enabled by a tone-deaf and “insulated from the human suffering they cause” Supremes’ majority looks like:

“Floaters” — “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

PWS

09-03-20

🏴‍☠️🤡BIA’S LATEST ANTI-ASYLUM PRECEDENT CONTINUES ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS — MATTER OF R-C-R-

Matter of R-C-R-, 28 I&N Dec. 74 (BIA 2020)

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1311336/download

BIA HEADNOTE:

(1) After an Immigration Judge has set a firm deadline for filing an application for relief, the respondent’s opportunity to file the application may be deemed waived, prior to a scheduled hearing, if the deadline passes without submission of the application and no good cause for noncompliance has been shown.

(2) The respondent failed to meet his burden of establishing that he was deprived of a full and fair hearing where he has not shown that conducting the hearing by video conference interfered with his communication with the Immigration Judge or otherwise prejudiced him as a result of technical problems with the video equipment.

PANEL: MULLANE, KELLY, and GORMAN, Appellate Immigration Judges

OPINION BY: GORMAN, Appellate Immigration Judge

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30 days to file an application for asylum for an unrepresented, detained, non-English speaking applicant appearing by televideo, huh? “Full and fair hearing?” Only in the “Never Never Land” of EOIR in the 5th Circuit,

I can guarantee that this bogus “30-day-filing standard” will be used to railroad lots of hapless and clueless asylum applicants out without due process.

The good news: Outside the “Judicial Wasteland” of the Fifth Circuit, at least some reviewing Circuits likely will “blow the whistle” on this disingenuous nonsense and abdication of Constitutional duties and send the cases back to the meat packing plant (a/k/a EOIR) for redos, thus adding to the “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and astronomical backlog.

There is actually a reason why fundamental fairness and competent court management are required by Due Process! In the long run, following the Constitution and the statute, as well as having “judges” with actual expertise, independence, courage, and some “practical common sense,” as opposed to EOIR’s endless “haste makes waste” enforcement gimmicks and one-sided, bias-driven judging, makes for a more efficient justice system for everyone. But, that will require a “full housecleaning” at EOIR.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-01-20

“POPPYCOCK!” — Conservative U.S. District Judge Richard Leon “Zeroes In” On Racist, Disingenuous, BS Presented In Court By Trump Regime To Justify “Crimes Against Humanity” Committed Against Asylum Seekers By USG! — Contrasts With Disingenuous Enabling Of Racist Immigration Agenda By Supremes’ Majority! — As Reported By “Legal Clairvoyant” 🔮 Jacqueline Thomsen @ NLJ!

“POPPYCOCK!” — U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s Characterization Of Trump Regime’s Defense Of Asylum Seeker Abuse By DHS & Barr’s Unethical & Frivolous Arguments!

Jacqueline Thomsen
Courts Reporter
National Law Journal & Legal Clairvoyant

https://link.law.com/click/21370303.6876//5162eb9334b9b0a8048a6907C27093cdb

Due Process “Legal Eagle” Jacqueline Thompsen reports for the National Law Journal’:

. . . .

The federal immigration law requires that officers who conduct the interviews—in which migrants must show they face at least a 10% chance of persecution due to certain factors in order to be eligible for asylum—receive significant training on handling the applications

In responding to the administration’s claims that the border patrol agents received similar training as asylum officers, Leon wrote, “Poppycock! The training requirements cited in the government’s declaration do not come close to being ‘comparable’ to the training requirements of full asylum officers.”

“To make matters worse, the January MOA precludes any individual CBP agent from conducting credible fear interviews for longer than 180 days, meaning that CBP agents cannot gain the experience necessary to appropriately apply the complex asylum laws and regulations,” the judge added. “These procedures plainly violate Congress’s requirements.”

The Trump administration has administered a widespread crackdown on asylum proceedings, adopting a slew of policies that make it more difficult for migrants fleeing persecution in other countries to obtain protections in the United States.

The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by attorneys with Tahirih Justice Center and the Constitutional Accountability Center, on behalf of four mothers and their seven children from Honduras, Ecuador and Mexico seeking asylum in the U.S. All of the migrants failed to pass the credible fear assessment conducted by CBP agents, which were upheld by immigration judges.

Leon also found in Monday’s ruling that it “would certainly seem unlikely” that CBP agent interviews of migrants could be considered to be “nonadversarial proceedings with a neutral decision-maker,” as required under federal regulations and guidelines. He noted that border patrol agents are considered law enforcement, and said federal authorities’ statements on measures they have taken to minimize the possibility of the interviews becoming adversarial “hardly seems sufficient.”

Leon wrote the training requirements for those conducting the credible fear assessments “are essential for a functioning asylum process, which is why Congress required them,” describing the legal framework surrounding U.S. immigration, asylum, and other similar processes as “complex, to say the least.”

“After all, an asylum officer who is not adequately trained in the applicable legal requirements is less likely to ask the right questions of an asylum seeker, or for that matter, to gather the facts necessary to make an accurate determination of whether an asylum seeker has a credible fear of persecution,” he continued. “Indeed, the record here contains several examples of the effects of inadequate training: one CBP agent failed to follow up with questions about an asylum-seeking plaintiff’s sexual abuse, and another failed to inquire into another asylum-seeking plaintiffs husband’s murder investigation.”

Leon also found the immigrants in the case would face irreparable harm, if he did not issue a preliminary injunction to block their removal from the U.S.

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Why isn’t it an ethical and professional problem for “Billy the Bigot’s” DOJ to make nonsense arguments to a Federal Judge in support of unlawful actions? Private members of the bar arguing “poppycock” in a civil case could well find themselves referred for disciplinary action. Why are Cabinet Officials and their attorneys exempt from normal professional and ethical considerations?

You can read Judge Leon’s clearly written and cogently reasoned 22-page decision in A.B.-B. v. Morgan here: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.216698/gov.uscourts.dcd.216698.32.0.pdf.

If only more judges at all levels could write with such clarity and in plain English!

The rejection at the “credible fear” stage of the bona fide asylum claims described by Judge Leon is beyond appalling! These are essentially totally and intentionally unqualified and biased U.S. Government employees committing “crimes against humanity” and getting away with it! These aren’t “legal errors.” It’s systemic malfeasance, otherwise known as “malicious incompetence” with a heavy dose of racism and misogyny thrown in for a good measure!

If substantiated during the immigration hearing process that should have taken place, all these applicants should have been “slam dunk” grants of asylum, withholding of removal, and/or relief under the Convention Against Torture in a properly functioning justice system. Instead, but for the efforts of pro bono counsel, they would have been illegally returned to harm, torture, and/or death with no legitimate process at all!

No wonder “Billy the Bigot’s” Immigration Courts are out of control and the borders are a deadly mess when individuals who with proper screening and access to competent counsel should have been quickly legally admitted to the U.S. under protection laws are instead being “rejected” by biased and unqualified Border Patrol Agents impersonating Asylum Officers!

Here’s my favorite quote (among many) from Judge Leon’s decision:

Of course, the Government has a strong interest in the “prompt execution of removal orders.” Nken,556 U.S. at 436. However, the Government and public can have little interest in executing removal orders that are based on statutory violations, League of Women Voters of U.S. v. I,{ewby,838 F.3d l,12 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (“There is generally no public interest in the perpetuation of unlawful agency action.”), especially where those statutory violations may compromise the accuracy of such removal orders. R.I.L.-R. v Johnson, 80 F. Supp. 3d 164, 191 (D.D.C. 2015); Grace, 344 F. Supp. 3d at 14144 Indeed, the public has an interest “in preventing aliens from being wrongfully removed, particularly to countries where they are likely to face substantial harm.” Nken,556 U.S. at 436. As such, the balance of interests here weighs in favor of preliminary injunctive relief.

The last point, “the public has an interest ‘in preventing aliens from being wrongfully removed, particularly to countries where they are likely to face substantial harm,’” Nken,556 U.S. at 436, has basically been ignored by the Supremes’ majority recently in sending refugees to their death or into harm’s way without any semblance of due process, based on various lies, distortions, and racist schemes by the Trump regime intentionally mischaracterizing “national security” and “national emergency.” As Judge Leon would say: “Poppycock!”

Perversely, the Trump regime and the Supremes’ have made execution of illegal removal orders, resulting from racist White Nationalist schemes, a “national priority.” Truly, this is a system broken from the top down in need of immediate repair and injections of intellectually honesty, moral courage, and ethics — something that seems “out of vogue” in all three branches of our failing democracy these days

I recently had a conversation with Jacqueline in which she basically predicted this decision based on her study of the arguments and trends among U.S. District Judges, regardless of philosophy or appointing party, in DC. Nice going Jacqueline! Congrats on your clairvoyance!

Those with NLJ access (anyone can get “three free” per month by registering) can read the complete article at the link.

Judge Leon’s linear, straightforward, and “no BS” treatment of the regime’s absurdist, unethical, and scofflaw legal “defense” of essentially “crimes against humanity” contrasts sharply with the disingenuous and essentially “brain dead” treatment of similar BS by the “JR Five” on the Supremes. There, the patently unconstitutional and illegal (not to mention immoral) agenda of neo-Nazi racist Stephen Miller and the unethical maneuvers of SG Noel Francisco are often wrongfully rewarded. By contrast, the the Supremes’ majority routinely trashes the legal and constitutional rights of vulnerable people of color, particularly asylum seekers, migrants, and voters beneath an avalanche of bogus “Dred Scottification” jurisprudence.

Additionally, Judge Leon is “onto something” that has been swept under the carpet by the Supremes and the Circuit Courts when he questions “whether CBP agents could ever lawfully be given authority to conduct asylum interviews and adjudicate asylum claims, see Compl. ‘]Tfl 108-09, it would certainly seem unlikely under these circumstances. After all, law enforcement officers typically “function as adversaries” whose role is “to investigate criminal activity, to locate and arrest those who violate our laws, and to facilitate the charging and bringing of such persons to trial.” New Jersey v T.L.O.,469 U.S. 325,349 (1985) (Powell, J., concurring).”

Similarly, many of us have argued that Immigration “Judges” who work for uber-enforcer and Trump shill “Billy the Bigot” and have been “repurposed” and “weaponized” into DHS enforcement support staff can not possibly be the “fair and impartial” quasi-judicial adjudicators required by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment!

Better Justices and better Federal Judges for a better America, particularly for people of color and other minorities. It’s actually quite simple and straightforward. It starts with throwing Trump and the GOP out of every political office this Fall.

Then, we need some real Justices and Federal Judges who will stand against systemic racism and enforce equal justice in America! Not, rocket science! Just knowledge of the Constitution, awareness of human rights and immigrants’ rights, a focus on racial justice, courage to speak truth to power, and a demonstrated commitment to human dignity and human decency. One could easily wonder why those haven’t been the minimal requirements for Federal judicial service in the past.

Past is past, particularly for life-tenured judges. But, America can’t afford any more disastrous judicial appointments, at any level, who lack the guts and human decency to stand up to scofflaw, neo-fascist racists like Trump, Miller, and their cronies.

The top to bottom overall failure of the American judiciary to put an end to unconstitutional and unfair racism and “Dred Scottification” of “the other” in our society is aiding and abetting the dark, lawless forces aligned with the regime destabilizing our country and ripping it apart! No more!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-31-20

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️SOURCE OF RACIAL TENSION & ENDEMIC INEQUALITY 🤮: U.S. COURTS: Nan Aron Of Alliance For Justice Speaks Out On Why We Need Progressive Judges!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-biden-supreme-court/2020/08/28/0f0a8158-e937-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html

By Seung Min Kim in the WashPost:

. . . .

But Democrats all but ignored the Supreme Court in their four-day convention earlier this month, even after the party spent Trump’s first term reckoning with the consequences of Republicans confirming two justices, including a reliably conservative justice who replaced the court’s swing vote.

The contrast worries liberal activists who see it as further evidence that the Democratic Party isn’t paying enough attention to an area where conservatives have made big inroads in recent years: control of the courts.

“The fact that Democrats spent so little to no time discussing the federal bench failed to take into account that their critically important goals for the future will be challenged in the courts,” said Nan Aron, the president of the liberal judicial advocacy group Alliance for Justice.

She added: “It’s a major misstep, given the fact that these 200 judges will make it very difficult, if not impossible in many cases, for the Democrats to accomplish their worthy goals going forward.”

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link,

Thanks, Nan, for speaking out! I’ve always been astounded by the Dems’ failure to recognize the importance of getting demonstrated advocates for due process, fundamental fairness, human rights, equal justice under law, and best practices on the Federal Bench.

Heck, look at the Dems beyond disastrous and just plain incompetent approach to the Immigration Bench in the Obama Administration — an administrative court controlled entirely by the Attorney General. Can’t blame Mitch and the GOP for:

- Ridiculously convoluted and entirely unnecessary 2-year hiring process (under former Director Anthony C. Moscato, the Clinton Administration could sometimes do it in a fraction of that time with better, or at least no worse, results);
- Eschewing progressive judicial candidates, including well-qualified underrepresented groups, with scholarly credentials and practical expertise in immigration, asylum, human rights, and due process in favor of an endless stream of largely “insider only, don’t rock the boat” picks;
- Leaving numerous positions unfilled at the end of the Administration for White Nationalist xenophobe Jeff Sessions to fill;
- Ignoring obvious, achievable management reforms like e-filing!

The Trump Administration is teeming with malicious incompetents, particularly in the Immigration-related agencies. Notwithstanding that, they immediately figured out how to expedite Immigration Judge hiring and to load the bench with some of the worst, most unqualified, and biased so-called “judges” in modern American legal history!

In other words, Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr shamelessly and rapidly weaponized the Immigration Courts and made them subservient shills and zealots for DHS enforcement and Stephen Miller’s White Supremacist agenda. And feckless Article III Courts, now also stuffed with Trump judges, have, with a few notable exceptions, looked the other way as the slaughter of Constitutional due process and vulnerable humans (including kids) unfolds. You couldn’t write a worse script for the rule of law and future of humanity!

Democrats pretended that the Immigration Courts existed merely to “go along to get along with the policy flavor of the day.” They did not reinforce due process, fundamental fairness, or view the Immigration Bench as a source of expertise, creativity, progressive legal thinking, or creative legal problem solving. The backlogs grew, morale slid (although admittedly not at the breakneck pace under the Trump regime), and the bodies of those who should have been saved but weren’t started to pile up. Simple reforms — try e-filing, for example — were left unaccomplished!

It wasn’t “malicious incompetence” — just good old fashioned “administrative incompetence.” But the latter paved the way for the former to “go on steroids” during the Trump regime. This isn’t just political malpractice and academic debate! Real people have lost their lives, families, or futures because of the Dems’ diddling approach to justice — including America’s largest and perhaps most significant court system over which they had total control!

It’s actually pretty simple: Better judges (from the Supremes to the Immigration Courts) for a better America! And, time for the immigration/human rights community to wake up, join the NDPA, and demand that the Dems do better next time around!

Due Process Forever! Repeating past mistakes, never!

PWS

08-30-20

🇺🇸GEORGE PACKER @ THE ATLANTIC ON WHY JOE BIDEN SHOULD GO TO KENOSHA TO LISTEN & DELIVER A NEEDED MESSAGE OF PEACE, HOPE, & UNITY!

https://apple.news/AY0ybevmoTUe6tKe-0t8z3Q

Packer writes:

. . . .

Nothing will harm a campaign like the wishful thinking, fearful hesitation, or sheer complacency that fails to address what voters can plainly see. Kenosha gives Biden a chance to help himself and the country. Ordinarily it’s the incumbent president’s job to show up at the scene of a national tragedy and give a unifying speech. But Trump is temperamentally incapable of doing so and, in fact, has a political interest in America’s open wounds and burning cities.

Biden, then, should go immediately to Wisconsin, the crucial state that Hillary Clinton infamously ignored. He should meet the Blake family and give them his support and comfort. He should also meet Kenoshans like the small-business owners quoted in the Times piece, who doubt that Democrats care about the wreckage of their dreams. Then, on the burned-out streets, without a script, from the heart, Biden should speak to the city and the country. He should speak for justice and for safety, for reform and against riots, for the crying need to bring the country together. If he says these things half as well as Julia Jackson did, we might not have to live with four more years of Trump.

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

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

Seems like a sound plan. Joe probably should take Kamala with him to Kenosha. Get the input of the residents and public officials living with this horrible situation every day and see what common ground they might suggest for both repairing the damage that has been done (to the extent it can be repaired — obviously, there is no restoring Mr. Blake to his pre-shooting condition) and moving forward as a united community and as a country. Assuming, as I do, that the vast majority of Americans favor both justice for all and peaceful, prosperous communities, what are some specifics about how we might get there by working together and across racial and party lines.

Threats and more force won’t solve the problem. We know that. But just that knowledge isn’t enough to solve the problem.

I think it also would be a good idea for Joe and Kamala to seek the views of individuals like LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steph & Ayesha Curry, George Hill, Kenny Smith, Colin Kaepernick (who was born in Milwaukee and spent the first four yers of his life in Fond du Lac, WI)and others in the African-American community. How would they solve the problem of racial injustice while building community harmony. How could they use their influence to help. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Sen. Doug Jones (to name just a few) might also have some good ideas to contribute.

Donald Trump is not, and never will be, a thoughtful, unifying problem solver. It’s just not in his makeup or “skill set.” He has no coherent plan for anything.

By contrast, Joe Biden has shown himself to be thoughtful, willing to admit and move by past mistakes, and able to build on his experience and past views to address the present. Now, he needs to put it all together in “real time” and show America what a competent, caring, and listening Government could do for the common good. Without necessarily “becoming Elizabeth Warren,” he and Kamala “need a plan for that.” And listening to the “real people of Kenosha” seems like the place to start.

PWS

08-28-20

🤯🤯🤯👽💩🤖👾THE TWILIGHT ZONE “PRESIDENCY” — “There are times I get online, see the latest news, and wonder how we are living in a world where Kafka writes for the Twilight Zone starring the Marx Brothers!” — Dan Rather

Click here for the “Trump Regime/GOP Theme Song:”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b5aW08ivHU

Amen!

This is what American “Government” is these days. An absurdist parody where the architect of death, disorder, hate, inequality, international ridicule, unemployment, and White Supremacist violence blames a former Vice President for the absolute mess the incumbent has made of our nation! And, guess what — a crowd of sycophants actually has the audacity to cheer and (apparently) believe this evil, absurdist fantasy and to claim that their selfish, tone-deaf, dishonest minority views represent the “real America!”

In other words, Trump is essentially “running against his own record” while taking no responsibility for the mess he has made. In a pure Kafka/Twilight Zone moment, his GOP toadies let him get away with it. Worse yet, they contemptuously and arrogantly think the rest of us are stupid or clueless enough to believe this fantastic nonsense!

But, maybe there is some historical reason for this contempt. Trump’s mess is also to some extent the fault of the majority of us who “failed to make the sale” and get out the vote in 2016. We won a clear majority of the votes, but were’t smart, motivated, or diligent enough to turn our majority into political power. Some would call that the height of ineptitude and failure of resolve! That, in turn, has unleashed great, unnecessary, pain, suffering, death, and despair on America and the world.

Even allowing for the unreliability of polls, Trump apparently has never had the support of the majority of Americans, let alone voters. Yet, he “governs” as if the minority he represents are the only Americans! And, the rest of us have let him get away with it!

Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that ended “The American Experiment” and replaced it with “The American Kakistocracy?” We have a chance this Fall to get it right and to put America back on track to fairness, decency, humanity, equality, and a better life for all Americans — to take America to another level and to resume a positive position of world leadership. To address racial and economic inequality and to improve and value the lives of all Americans (including, of course, Trump supporters). The chance might not come again.

So, don’t blow it! Put Joe Biden in office, a decent, experienced, highly competent, thoughtful, caring, forward looking human being with a positive vision for all Americans and a commitment to a better world. Give Joe and his able and inspirational partner Kamala Harris a Democratic-led Senate that will help them govern for the common welfare, rather than for the benefit of one family and a few of their cronies at their top!

This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Due Process Forever! Kafka, The Twilight Zone, and the Marx Brothers, Never!

PWS

08-28-20

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼🏆👏🏽GOOD GOVERNMENT: BELEAGUERED FEDS WOULD FIND WELCOME RESPITE IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION! — This Election Could Be “Last Call” For One Of The Cornerstones Of Our Democracy — A Competent, Honest, Career Civil Service!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-federal-workers-unions/2020/08/26/62595932-e71c-11ea-a414-8422fa3e4116_story.html

Joe Davidson reports for WashPost:

If Joe Biden is elected president, he promises to overturn President Trump’s aggression against federal employee unions, support regular pay raises for federal employees and protect their workplace rights.

Biden, the Democratic nominee, has pledged to upend Trump’s actions concerning federal labor organizations on Inauguration Day in January. Trump’s assaults were codified in three executive orders he issued in 2018. They systematically undermined the ability of unions to represent not only their members, but all employees in agency collective-bargaining units.

Saying Trump “has loosed a direct attack on our members’ union rights and dignity on the job,” the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) questionnaire to Biden outlines policies the largest federal union wants reversed.

“This includes purging lawful representational activity from government worksites and equipment, weaponizing the bargaining process to propose, and in some cases impose, one-sided contracts, attacking our statutory right to collect voluntary dues, crippling our ability to mediate disputes on duty time, and more,” says the questionnaire’s introduction. “Taken together, these attacks constitute more than just a threat to our members’ livelihoods, they threaten the survival of the merit-based civil service system on which our government is built.”

AFGE endorsed Biden last month. In two internal polls, AFGE said its members supported Biden over Trump by more than 30 points.

The first question asked Biden to commit to overturning the executive orders and other directives that weaken employee due process and collective bargaining rights “on your first day in office.” Biden agreed and said “the federal government should serve as a role model for employers to treat their workers fairly.”

“On my first day in office,” he added, “I will restore federal employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, restore their right to official time, and direct agencies to bargain with federal employee unions.” Official time allows union leaders to represent employees, including those who are not union members, in grievance procedures and matters involving issues such as workplace safety and productivity, while being paid by the government.

[If he gets a presidential Day 1, Biden has a nearly endless list of ways to spend it]

In addition to Biden’s answers, the Democratic Party Platform promises to “strengthen labor rights for the more than 20 million public-sector employees” at all levels by supporting legislation that would “provide a federal guarantee for public-sector employees to bargain for better pay and benefits and the working conditions they deserve.”

While Trump has been relentless in his federal union offensive, all was not copacetic when Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice president. Government workers vehemently opposed three federal pay freezes imposed under Obama, with congressional approval, during an era of budget tightening.

But the Obama-Biden administration did not seek to fundamentally undermine unions as Trump has done or diminish federal workers. Obama’s stated effort to “make government cool again” contrasts sharply with Trump’s “drain the swamp” attitude toward government. Trump did not respond to AFGE’s questionnaire.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Just another instance where Biden is going to have to separate himself from some misguided, occasionally weak-kneed and shortsighted, Obama-era policies and establish himself as his own man, with a decidedly more practical, aware, and progressive approach. And, as a long-time public servant himself (albeit an elected one) — whose career has in many ways been built and furthered by the skills, expertise, and contributions of civil servants in all branches of Government — I believe he is up to the task. Indeed, he might well be the best-qualified candidate in my lifetime to save and enhance our now reeling and crumbling civil service — one of the “crown jewels” of American democracy now under unrelenting assault from a thoroughly corrupt Trump and his GOP nihilist “wrecking crew.”

For example, look at how the cowardly and totally unethical “Billy the Bigot” Barr tried to “punish” Judge Ashley Tabaddor and the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) (disclosure: I am a proud retired member) for speaking “truth to power.” As the only ones authorized to speak out on behalf of Immigration Judges (regardless of membership in the NAIJ), Judge Tabaddor and other NAIJ officials exposed the massive corruption, gross mismanagement, improper politicization, and medically dangerous working conditions at EOIR! As a result, Billy tried to silence her and the NAIJ by filing a frivolous action to “decertify” the NAIJ based on bogus reasons, many rejected by the FLRA in the past. This abuse of Government resources and process by Billy has since been dismissed after hearing by a FLRA official, as previously reported in “Courtside.”

As a civil servant for more than 35 years, serving in Administrations of both parties, at levels from “worker bee” to “Senior Exec,” and a veteran of 21 years on both levels of the Immigration Bench (when it actually more resembled a “real court” than the ridiculous parody engineered by Gonzo Apocalypto and Billy the Bigot), I know what I’m speaking about.

Incidentally, I was one of the “founding brothers and sisters” of the BIA employees’ union in the 1970s, and then went on to battle that same union before the FLRA during my tenure as BIA Chair in the late 1990s. So, like many issues in immigration during my career, I understand both sides.

But, I never questioned the BIA union’s authority to speak for the staff. In most ways, it was a good “focal point” for getting important issues out in the open and resolving them, even if the process was occasionally contentious and frustrating. And, I’d have to admit to getting some good ideas on management improvements from union officials. So good, in fact, that I actually hired some of them to become staff managers at the BIA.

Over my career, I was involved in thousands of asylum and refugee cases, many of them successful. Many were fleeing countries with great progressive “paper constitutions” and sometimes even very “facially reasonable” statutory law. A number of these countries had even signed the U.N. Refugee Convention. What often made these countries “persecutors” as opposed to “protectors” was in the “execution” rather than the “black letter law.”

Two characteristics that many of these persecutors had in common were: 1) an authoritarian executive who controlled a corrupt civil service usually “on the take,” staffed with family members, tribe members, or “party regulars,” and personally loyal to the leader rather than the constitution and statutes; and 2) “courts” that were either instruments of the leader and his tribe or party or too feckless to stand up against executive tyranny.

Under Trump and his corrupt GOP cronies, the US is well on its way to this type of “banana republic” public service in all three branches. And, don’t thank that a healthy economy or a robust stock market are “proof” against tyranny. Today’s China, as well as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, are prime examples of how “economic success and power” do not necessarily equate with good government, equality, or lack of repression.

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

PWS

08-26|-20

🇺🇸😎⚖️🗽👍REFUGEE, ASYLUM, IMMIGRATION, & BORDER REFORM – Plenty Of Good Ideas — Shortage Of Political Will To Fix Broken System!

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The following three papers have been prepared as part of a process, organized jointly by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School, to identify ways to strengthen the US immigration and refugee protection systems through administrative action. Additional papers in this collection will be forthcoming, as well as a distinct set of policy recommendations from the directors of CMS and the Zolberg Institute.

Rebuilding the US Refugee Resettlement Program

By Susan Martin (Georgetown University)

This paper offers an historic review of the US refugee resettlement program. It spans the colonial era, to the establishment of the first distinct US admissions policies for persons fleeing persecution in 1917, to the creation of the formal US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in 1980, and to the Trump administrations’ denigration of and attempts to eviscerate the program. It proposes ways that a new administration can rebuild this crucially important program and put it on more secure footing. In particular, it recommends that a new administration:

Reframe the discourse on refugee resettlement to emphasize its central importance to the nation’s identity and the way it serves the national interest.

Rebuild the capacity of the federal government to administer the program and the badly depleted community-based resettlement infrastructure that is central to the program’s success.

Hold emergency consultations with Congress to increase refugee admissions in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, and consult soon after the inauguration with international, state and local, and non-governmental partners to plan FY 2022 resettlement goals, including a robust admissions ceiling and budget.

Reform and reinvigorate federal consultations with states and localities to ensure their receptivity, capacity and support for refugees, and eliminate the current veto power of states and municipalities over resettlement in their jurisdictions.

Explore legislative fixes to the refugee admissions process and attempt to depoliticize the process by setting a “normal flow level” that does not require an annual Presidential determination.

Join the Global Compact on Refugees, which seeks to expand the availability of durable solutions for refugees, and encourage other nations to follow the US example of resettling larger numbers of refugees.

READ MORE

Border Enforcement Developments Since 1993 and How to Change CBP

By Daniel E. Martínez (The University of Arizona), Josiah Heyman (The University of Texas at El Paso), and Jeremy Slack (The University of Texas at El Paso)

Enforcement along the US-Mexico border has intensified significantly since the early 1990s. Social scientists have documented several consequences of border militarization, including increased border-crosser deaths, the killing of more than 110 people by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents over the past decade, and expanded ethno-racial profiling in southwestern communities by immigration authorities. Less attention has been paid to the pervasive and routine mistreatment migrants experience on a daily basis in CBP custody.

This paper traces major developments in border enforcement to three notable initiatives: the “prevention-through-deterrence” strategy, the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Consequence Delivery System, initiated in 2011. Despite the massive buildup in enforcement, CBP has operated with little transparency and accountability to the detriment of migrants. The paper provides an overview of the findings of nongovernmental organizations and social scientists regarding migrant mistreatment while in CBP custody. It then highlights important shifts in migration patterns over the past decade, as well as changes in border enforcement efforts during the Trump administration. It discusses how these transformations affect migrants’ everyday encounters with CBP officials.

The paper concludes by providing specific recommendations for improving CBP conduct. Its core theme is the need to emphasize and inculcate lessons of appropriate police behavior, civil rights, and civil liberties in training and recruiting agents and in setting responsibilities of supervisors and administrators. It offers recommendations regarding important but underrecognized issues, including ending the use of CBP agents/officers as Asylum Officers, as well as better-known issues such as militarization and the border wall.

READ MORE

Strengthening the US Immigration System through Legal Orientation, Screening and Representation: Recommendations for a New Administration

By Donald Kerwin (Center for Migration Studies)

This paper highlights the importance of legal orientation, screening, and representation to the US immigration system. It proposes that a new administration facilitate legal representation in order to establish a fairer and more efficient removal adjudication system and to place more immigrants on a path to permanent residence and citizenship. As is well-documented, legal assistance can:

Improve the ability of immigrants to identify and articulate their claims in removal proceedings and produce better-informed case outcomes.

Increase the efficiency and contribute to the integrity of the removal adjudication system.

Lead to better-prepared applications for immigration benefits, and thus a more just and efficient legal immigration system.

Place more non-citizens on a path to permanent residence and naturalization by identifying their potential eligibility for immigration benefits or relief, and, in some cases, their existing US citizenship.

Legal representation and expertise can also contribute to resolving some of the substantial problems that afflict the US immigration system, such as lengthy court and asylum backlogs. In addition, it can identify and help to correct legal and factual errors by immigration adjudicators, and abuses by enforcement officers and private contractors.

The paper’s first section describes federal legal orientation and assistance programs for non-citizens in removal proceedings. The second section discusses the need for large-scale legal screening and representation of US undocumented residents, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries. Its third section examines the proliferation of universal representation programs—supported by states, localities, and private funders—for non-citizens in removal proceedings before an immigration judge, and in summary removal processes administered by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The paper concludes with a series of administrative measures that a new administration could take in its first year to strengthen and expand legal representation. It also outlines longer-term policy recommendations that would require legislation.

READ MORE

The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) is a New York-based educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers. For more information, please visit www.cmsny.org.

Copyright © 2020 Center for Migration Studies, New York, All rights reserved.

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

It’s possible that Biden could win and still end up hamstrung by a Senate controlled by “Moscow Mitch” and his “American Nihilist Party.” That’s why all elections are critically important this November!

Gotta work with what you‘ve got. So, in a “second worst case scenario” Biden might have to go the Administrative route. Three major problems:

He’ll have to do much better on the administrative agenda than Obama – that means jettisoning some of his past and getting and empowering more progressive advisors, folks like Kerwin, Susan Martin, Martinez, Hyman, Slack, Michelle Mendez, Karen Musalo, Marielena Hincapie, Heidi Altman, Debbie Anker, Hon. Ilyce Shugall, Michele Pistone, Denise Gilman, Kristina Campbell, Lindsay Harris, David Baluarte, Phil Schrag, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andy Schoenholtz, Eleanor Acer, Alice Farmer, Hon. Bob Weisel, Hon. Lory Rosenberg, Hon. Carol King, Lenni Benson, Michelle Brane, Hon. Amiena Khan, Cori Alonso-Yoder, Dree Collopy, Blaine Bookey, Tess Hellgren, Hon. Paul Gussendorf, Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, Tanishka Cruz, Lauren Wyatt, Laura Lynch, Claudia Valenzuela, Aaron Richlin-Melnick, Katie Tobin, Lindsay Jenkins, Hon. Ashley Tabaddor, Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow, Kevin Johnson, Kit Johnson, Dan Kowalski, Margaret Stock, Ben Winograd, Hon. Rebecca Jamil, Claudia Cubas, Wendy Young, Laura Tuell, Jayesh Rathod, Shoba Wadhia, Hon. Jeffrey Chase, Elizabeth “The Report” Gibson, and a host of others too numerous to list. No shortage of real talent out there to replace the regime’s “maliciously incompetent kakistocracy.”
Without an independent Article I Immigration Court and a drastic “upgrade” in the human rights, immigration, and equal justice credentials of newly appointed Article III Judges, administrative reforms are likely to be less than optimally effective.
“The Lesson of Trump” – Anything the “good guys” can do administratively can be undone by the “bad guys” overnight. And, building can be long and difficult; demolition quick and easy.

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

PWS

08-26-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻THE GOP HAS A PLAN FOR YOU: “plunder, theft and extraction!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/opinion/trump-convention-platform.html

Jamelle Bouie in The NY Times:

. . . .

It is not news that the Republican Party has a stagnant governing agenda cobbled together from the long-discredited dogmas and shibboleths of the conservative movement. “The current iteration of the G.O.P. is indifferent to the substance of government,” Steve Benen, a political writer and producer for The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, writes in “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics”:

It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized or implemented.

What is news is the extent to which the Republican Party has embraced the trappings of its leader, which is to say, the trappings of a right-wing cable news network: a nonstop parade of conspiracy, demagogy and grievance, in service to a cult of personality, all for the sake of a politics of plunder, theft and extraction.

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

Read the rest of Jamelle’s op-ed at the link.

Pretty good explanation of The Party of Trump (formerly known as “The Party of Lincoln”).

My question is why the so-called “mainstream media” (excluding Jamelle and a few others) handles with “kid gloves” folks like Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Melania, who go on national TV and present knowingly bogus, totally disingenuous, fabricated portraits of Trump as a benign presence in U.S. politics. In a vain, continuing search for “normalization” of overt 21st century Jim Crow nationalist fascism, the “mainstreams” appear ready to credit speaking in complete, largely grammatical, sentences in the English language and not screaming racist tropes or absurdist internet conspiracy theories as all that is necessary to be considered “credible” and a “moderating force” in today’s “Trumpized” GOP!

The disingenuous treatment by the “mainstreams” of dishonest attempts to “soften” Trump’s true “Mini-Mussolini” persona as election-season gimmick is a gross dis-service to the public welfare and the abdication of the duty of courageous independent journalism to provide critical coverage — not just regurgitate RNC propaganda!

Why are “the mainstreams” rolling over for the RNC?

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

PWS

08-26-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻9th BLASTS BILLY THE BIGOT’S BIA’S BLATANTLY BIASED ANTI-ASYLUM ASSAULT — AGAIN — 2 More Losses For Billy’s Illegal “Any Reason To Deny” Program!

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immgration Community:

Immigration Law

Q

Daniel M. Kowalski

25 Aug 2020

Somalia

credibility

CA9 on Credibility: Iman v. Barr

Iman v. Barr

“In light of the totality of the circumstances and in the context of the administrative record presented to us, the evidence in this case compels the conclusion that Iman’s testimony was credible. Exercising jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1), we therefore grant the petition and remand to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats of to Doug Jalaie!]

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

CA9 on Asylum, Motions to Reopen: Aliyev v. Barr

Aliyev v. Barr

“We hold that the BIA abused its discretion by determining that a noncitizen who seeks to reopen an earlier application for relief and attaches that application to the motion has failed to attach the “appropriate application for relief” as required by § 1003.2(c)(1). … We therefore grant the petition and remand.”

[Hats off to Corrine Nikolenko and Michael W. Schoenleber!]

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

None of this is “rocket science.” It’s immigration basics. While these 9th Cir. panels “flag” the steady stream of elementary errors, they continue to beg the real question: Why do they allow it to continue?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-25-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: SPOTLIGHT ON AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS HATE GROUP: THE RNC!

Paul,

This past weekend, the Republican National Committee caved to white supremacist and other hate groups by adopting a resolution titled Refuting the Legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center to Identify Hate Groups.

The focus of the resolution is that “the SPLC is a radical organization” that harms conservative organizations and voices through our hate group designations.

This attack on our work is an attempt to excuse the Trump administration’s pattern and practice of working with individuals and organizations that malign entire groups of people — immigrants, Muslims and the LGBTQ community — while promoting policies that undermine their very existence. It comes from the same vein as Trump’s claim that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Simply put, it’s an audacious attempt by Trump and the GOP to paper over the bigotry and racism that has been allowed to infect their policies.

This resolution comes at a moment when Trump will argue at the Republican National Convention that he will combat hate and bigotry, despite welcoming the support of QAnon. It also comes days after the indictment of Stephen Bannon, reminding us that Bannon was once the White House chief strategist and senior counselor and CEO of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And it comes just after our special investigation shined a light on One America News Network’s Jack Posobiec, a reporter at Trump’s favorite network who is aligned with white supremacy and has used his platform to further hate speech and propaganda.

Trump should sever these ties to hate groups and extremists instead of doubling down through this RNC resolution.

The Trump administration has filled its ranks and consulted with alumni and allies from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigrant hate group that has ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists. They include Julie Kirchner, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions and, most notably, Stephen Miller.

The Trump administration has worked with hate groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) to roll back LGBTQ rights. FRC was designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group for decades of demonizing LGBTQ people and spreading harmful pseudoscience about them. Over the years, the organization has published books, reports and brochures that have linked being LGBTQ to pedophilia, claimed that LGBTQ people are dangerous to children and claimed that LGBTQ people are promiscuous and violent.

Anti-Muslim groups have also been welcomed into the administration, including the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Fred Fleitz, a longtime staffer, was appointed the executive secretary and chief of staff of the National Security Council. For decades, CSP has peddled absurd accusations that shadowy Muslim Brotherhood operatives have infiltrated all levels of government.

These extremists are seeking a license to continue spreading their bigotry and will do anything to undermine those — like the SPLC, which tracks and monitors hate groups — who expose their extremist views and oppose their attacks on communities. With this resolution, Trump and members of the GOP have shown the extent to which they will carry their water.

This past weekend, the RNC also released a resolution titled Resolution to Conserve History and Combat Prejudice – Christopher Columbus. It’s a remarkably transparent statement that hate and bigotry stem from Black Lives Matter protesters. The RNC and Trump did not denounce organizations that promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, neo-Nazis, anti-LGBTQ sentiment or racism. It only criticized the SPLC for challenging those groups.

Outraged? Here are two ways to take action today:

1. Sign up for our next Power Hour Virtual Phone Bank on August 27. We’ll be calling likely unregistered voters of color in Georgia to share information on how they can register to vote.

2. Listen and subscribe to our new podcast, Sounds Like Hate. Episode 2 is about the connections between extremists and the Trump administration.

Onward,

Margaret Huang
SPLC President & CEO

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Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104

Copyright 2020

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Pretty much says it all about today’s GOP and the Trump Administration.

· No platform

· No values

· No truth

· No humanity

· No decency

· No America

· No inclusion

· The party of “Dred Scottification,” Jim Crow, and White Supremacy

Sure “Sounds Like Hate” to me!

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

PWS

08-25-20

Due Process Forever!

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☠️⚠️‼️DISCLAIMER: Of course, the following are just my views, not the views of anyone on the All-Star cast of speakers at this upcoming event, the NYCBA, or anyone else of any importance whatsoever!

This is what “Dred Scottification” or the “end of the rule of law” as promoted by Trump, Miller, Barr and their cronies, and enabled by a tone-deaf and “insulated from the human suffering they cause” Supremes’ majority looks like:

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Due Process Forever!

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“POPPYCOCK!” — U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s Characterization Of Trump Regime’s Defense Of Asylum Seeker Abuse By DHS & Barr’s Unethical & Frivolous Arguments!

Due Process Forever!

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Due Process Forever! Repeating past mistakes, never!

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This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Due Process Forever! Kafka, The Twilight Zone, and the Marx Brothers, Never!

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

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

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

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Due Process Forever!

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

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