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HEAR MY LATEST PODCAST ON “GOOD LAW/BAD LAW” WITH AARON J. FREIWALD!

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Here’s the link:

http://www.law-podcast.com/

PWS

02-11-19

Related posts:

  1. TAL @ CNN – TOP “KAKISTOCRAT” JEFF SESSIONS ENTHUSIASTICALLY IMPLEMENTS TRUMP’S IMMORAL, OFTEN LAWLESS, AND PROBABLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA – This Should Disabuse Everyone, Including Federal Article III Courts, Of The (Fictional) “Independence” Or “Professional Responsibility” Of The USDOJ!
  2. AMERICA’S SHAME: 🤡 “CLOWN COURTS” PLUNGE TO NEW DEPTHS UNDER TRUMP & DOJ: Unpaid Judges, Court Clerks Who Can’t Afford The Rent, Illegal Rulings & Idiotic Policies By Biased & Ignorant DOJ Politicos, Unachievable Expectations, Unnecessary Postponements Caused By Trump & DOJ, & On Top Of It All A Few Unqualified Judges Who Discriminate, Cut Corners, & Intentionally Deny Due Process, All Combine To “Tank” Already Low Morale To Incomprehensible Lows!
  3. SCOTT BIXBY @ THE DAILY BEAST: Trump Puts U.S. Immigration Courts Into Freefall – Judges & Experts Doubt It Can Be Fixed Without Major Due Process Enhancements — “Fixing the backlog without sacrificing undocumented immigrants’ right to due process—a prospect with which Trump has already publicly flirted—could require a wholesale reconfiguration of the immigration court system, Marks said, starting with removing it from the purview of the Department of Justice.”
  4. FORMER ACTING ICE DIRECTOR JOHN SANDWEG TELLS CNN TRUMP’S MINDLESS PROPOSAL TO ELIMINATE U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES AND ABOLISH ASYLUM LAW IS “THE SINGLE DUMBEST IDEA I’VE EVER HEARD” – And, That’s Saying Something Given Some Of Trump’s Other Insane Threats, Lies, and Hoaxes!

THE HILL: Nolan’s Take On Intelligence Report

Family Pictures
Nolan writes:
On January 29, 2019, Coats presented the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The assessment is based on the collective insights of the intelligence community.
Although Coats arguably contradicted President Donald Trump in some areas, such as the state of North Korea’s nuclear program, he supported Trump’s claim that the flood of migrants from Central America is causing a security crisis. The assessment includes migration from Central America as one of the threats to national security.
This is not the first time the intelligence community has identified migration from Central America as a security threat. The same finding was included in the Worldwide Threat Assessment that former DNI James R. Clapper’s presented to congress in 2016, which was during the Obama Administration.
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PWS
02-09-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. 16 STATES SUE TRUMP ON BOGUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY — Nolan Says Trump Ultimately Likely To Prevail — “Slate 3” Appear To Agree!
  3. THE HILL: NOLAN ON THE CURRENT BORDER CRISIS
  4. CRUEL, YET REALLY STUPID: TRUMP’S “REMAIN IN MEXICO POLICY” DENIES DUE PROCESS WHILE CREATING COURT CHAOS — Enfeebled Judges Fume As “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” Bloats Backlogs! — Article IIIs Complicit! — “The policy’s name is migrant protection, but they send you to the most dangerous city in Mexico.”

PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/31/never-mind-wall-theres-more-important-question-we-need-answer/

Waldman writes:

As immigration policy hangs over the ongoing conflict over whether the government is going to remain open, there’s something missing from this discussion, something so fundamental that it’s quite remarkable that we all seem to have forgotten to even ask about it. The president is demanding his border wall, Democrats are fighting against him, and occasionally we bring up issues like the fate of the Dreamers and those here under Temporary Protected Status.

But what nobody asks is this: What kind of immigration system do we actually want?

Not what might happen in the next negotiation or what each side would be willing to give up, but what does each side see as the ultimate goal they’re working toward? If they could look forward ten or twenty years and say “This is where we should get to,” what would that look like?

It’s a vital question, because whatever we’re doing at the moment should be guided by our long-term goals. Once we understand what those goals are, we can think more clearly about where we should go after we get this whole shutdown ridiculousness behind us. And we all ought to be able to agree that there is some future we’re trying to arrive at, a point at which we have a system that works to our satisfaction and immigration isn’t something we’re constantly at each other’s throats about.

That may not be possible, but I’ll start with what liberals would like to see. There are certainly disagreements not just on the left generally but among immigration advocates as well, but there is a basic vision one can identify.

The first thing they want, of course, is to take the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are in the country now and give them a path to citizenship. That’s something even some Republicans agree with, and if you put requirements like learning English and paying back taxes on it, support becomes nearly universal.

Second, liberals would like to see an expansion of the legal immigration system, which is a consistent source of frustration and a driver of illegal immigration. When it can take decades to get approved to move to the United States, of course many people are going to opt for the illegal route, even if it can be dangerous and uncertain. If the legal immigration works, people will go through it and not around it.

And if you have a well-functioning legal system, you can make illegal immigration less attractive, with things like an E-Verify process that makes it harder to find work if you’re undocumented. There may always be some kind of black market for workers, but if you’re simultaneously offering people a legal path — both toward permanent residency and with temporary work visas for people who are looking only to make some money and then return to their home countries — it will be much smaller problem.

So in the liberal vision, we might end up with about the same number of immigrants coming into the country as we have now, it’s just that the overwhelming majority would be coming legally. We’d have security at the border, but we wouldn’t need ICE breaking down doors and tearing parents from their children’s arms. We’d have a robust system to evaluate asylum claims so we wouldn’t have to be throwing people in cages. We certainly wouldn’t pretend that one day there will be no more demand in the labor market for immigrant workers.

There are many Republicans who could be okay with that future, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. But the conservative vision is complicated. For years, we heard Republican politicians say, “I’m for legal immigration. I’m against illegal immigration.” They may not usually have been advocating significant increases in legal immigration, but it’s important to remember that the current venomous hostility toward immigrants was not always the standard Republican position. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both far friendlier toward immigrants than Donald Trump is.

Conservatives might disagree with this characterization, but as I see it, their ultimate goal is a system in which coming into the country illegally is utterly impossible, but levels of legal immigration don’t change much. In other words, we still have immigration, but the flow slows to a trickle. And the Trump administration is making attempts to drastically reduce legal immigration. With the president’s enthusiastic support, domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is driving a nationalist agenda that seeks to drastically reduce the inflow of immigrants to the country and even looks for every possible means to deport both legal and undocumented immigrants, even if they’ve been living here for years or decades.

That’s a somewhat extreme position even within the Republican Party, but it does reflect a discomfort with immigration that is common on the right. It’s the cultural problem, the fact that many people just don’t like having contact with people who don’t look like them or don’t speak the same language they do or eat the same foods they do. Trump very skillfully played to that discomfort by essentially telling voters he could wind back the clock to the time when they were young, before all this disconcerting change happened. His targets were the people who say “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” and when he said he would make America great again, “great again” meant “like things were when you were young.”

That’s a demand that can never be satisfied, even if it’s only a portion of the Republican electorate that really dreams of an America where there are almost no new immigrants and most of those who are already here just disappear. Unfortunately, that portion currently not only controls the White House but exercises a veto over any attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, because the rest of the GOP is so terrified of them.

Which is why it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.

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

Right on, Paul!  You “nailed” it!  Pretty much what I’ve been saying on “Courtside” all along!

However, the unlikelihood of achieving “comprehensive immigration reform” in the “Age of Trump” shouldn’t prevent the parties from working together in a bipartisan manner on “smaller fixes” such as that relating to child marriage suggested by Nolan Rappaport, posted earlier this week. See https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3Hu

Progress is progress, even by “small steps.”

PWS

02-01-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  4. WASHINGTON POST: GONZO’S IMMIGRATION COURT “REFORMS” WILL CREATE “KANGAROO COURTS!” —Recent “moves to evaluate judges based on the speed with which they handle dockets that typically exceed 2,000 cases, rather than on fair adjudication, is a recipe for assembly-line injustice.”

SCOTT BIXBY @ THE DAILY BEAST: Trump Puts U.S. Immigration Courts Into Freefall – Judges & Experts Doubt It Can Be Fixed Without Major Due Process Enhancements — “Fixing the backlog without sacrificing undocumented immigrants’ right to due process—a prospect with which Trump has already publicly flirted—could require a wholesale reconfiguration of the immigration court system, Marks said, starting with removing it from the purview of the Department of Justice.”

https://apple.news/A8VLzlyN7QImERHmUEChNnA

Scott Bixby reports for The Daily Beast:

President Donald Trump’s record-long shutdown may be over, (for now), but immigration judges and attorneys worry that its disastrous effects on the immigration court system will last for years.

The 35-day government shutdown, ignited over Trump’s demands for congressional funding of his long-promised border wall, exacerbated the very immigration crisis the president claims the barrier would solve, halting nearly all immigration court cases and putting three in four immigration judges on furlough. Hearings on asylum cases, deportation, and appeals against orders of removal were delayed indefinitely, pending a “reset” upon the government’s re-opening that shuffled tens of thousands of cases to the back of the line.

The only way to solve the pileup, one prominent immigration judge told The Daily Beast, is a trade: Dump Trump’s demand for a 2,000-mile wall, and instead double the number of immigration judges to deal with cases.

“If we’ve got a million cases backlogged, we need a thousand judges,” said Judge Dana Leigh Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco and president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges. The current roster of roughly 400 judges, she said, “is less than half of what we need.”

“We’re having a tsunami of retirements because working conditions have become so unbearable,” said Marks. “It is incredibly stressful, because we know that the consequences of our cases are literally life and death.”

The Department of Justice, which oversees the immigration court system, already had a crisis on its hands before the shutdown, Marks said, with a backlog of at least 800,000 cases in a system with too few judges and too little funding.

The swell of asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, combined with the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the United States, had created a years-long backlog of pending immigration court cases. The number of pending immigration court cases grew by 84 percent since the end of 2013, according to the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, and jumped by 26 percent just since the end of 2016.

“They allowed the courts to get to the anemic state that we were in prior to the shutdown,” said Marks, who has served as an immigration judge for 33 years. With the cancellation of tens of thousands of immigration cases that will now be shuffled to the back of a years-long line, “the shutdown’s effects will last for years.”

That backlog—which doesn’t even include an estimated 300,000 closed “low-priority” cases that the Justice Department ordered reopened in May—is currently being pushed through a mere 60 immigration courts across the United States. The roughly 400 immigration judges who keep that system moving have been given the Sisyphean task of clearing their dockets, a mission that even the most industrious judges think may be unfeasible.

“Most of us are extremely pessimistic about the current state of our dockets,” said Marks, noting that immigration judges are optimally supposed to go through four three-hour hearings per day. “They’re booked in an unrealistically heavy-packed manner that will not mean that we can finish all of the cases that are set on a given day.”

In a bid to speed through the backlog, the Department of Justice announced in April that it would impose quotas on judges, requiring the completion of 700 immigration cases per year to earn a “satisfactory performance” rating, as well as less than 15 percent of their cases remanded to a higher court—meaning that judges have to both increase the speed of their proceedings while decreasing errors that could lead to an appeal.

“The purpose of implementing these metrics is to encourage efficient and effective case management while preserving immigration judge discretion and due process,” wrote then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions when the policy was announced.

That new policy, Marks said, would only increase the pressure on the judge to serve two competing masters: the Department of Justice quotas and due process.

“The quintessential skill of a judge is knowing how to schedule your dockets, and yet we’re being told for political reasons, for the optics, how to do so,” said Marks, who warned that forcing judges to speed along complex proceedings encourages future appeals based on questions of judicial motivation.

“These are not simple and straightforward” cases, said Marks, who once famously likened deportation proceedings to “doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.”

“An immigration judge is shifting through four or five different times that the story has been told to see whether it’s consistent or inconsistent… Political optics is at tension, if not in conflict, with a judge’s role to ensure that each case in front of us provides the individual with due process.”

Add in a shutdown, immigration attorneys told The Daily Beast, and an overburdened system risks collapsing into chaos.

“Each day that there’s a government shutdown, you’re setting yourself up to add months” before a hearing, said Michael Wildes, an immigration attorney who represented Melania Trump and her parents in their immigration proceedings. “There will be enormous delays. For undetained individuals with court dates… they will back up even more egregiously than they have.”

Unclogging the dockets may be impossible, said Jason Dzubow, a Washington D.C.-based immigration attorney specializing in asylum law, leaving clients with good cases waiting for years to have their day in court.

“It’s just gonna be way too complicated to give people any kind of priority—which then, of course, causes a huge chain reaction, because it’s already a big mess,” Dzubow said. “What are they going to tell their families?”

Fixing the backlog without sacrificing undocumented immigrants’ right to due process—a prospect with which Trump has already publicly flirted—could require a wholesale reconfiguration of the immigration court system, Marks said, starting with removing it from the purview of the Department of Justice.

“People feel like there’s a thumb on the scales… because of the historically close relationship between the prosecutors‚ the Department of Homeland Security and the judges,” said Marks. “Judges have become, in a way, the sacrificial lamb in this process, because so much pressure has been applied to us. If we don’t follow, it renders us subject to personal discipline or training for evaluations that we are performing poorly, which can affect our very ability to retain our jobs.”

Such a dynamic, Marks said, has “a tremendous chilling effect.”

“A political branch is not the proper administrator for a neutral legal system.”

But in the meantime, both judges and attorneys working in the clotted immigration system feel that the $5.7 billion Trump has demanded for his border wall would be put to better use in hiring more immigration judges.

“There is an enormous divide between the amount of traffic and judges,” said Wildes. “In many ways, immigration has been looked upon as a stepchild in our legal system, where people recognize that it’s only a civil matter rather than a criminal matter. It actually has greater import—particularly when someone is facing banishment from the country.”

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Yup! Should be no surprise to readers of “Courtside.” In my experience, EOIR never really recovered from the mindless 2013 shutdown. Anybody with any real knowledge or who cared about our Government, our Constitution, and real immigration enforcement could have seen this coming “from a million miles away.” But, we’re saddled with a Kakistocracy — a “Clown Administration” if you will. 🤡

PWS

01-30-19

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. THE ASYLUMIST WEIGHS IN ON EOIR’S “FACT SHEET:” “Sometimes, myths and facts get mixed up, especially in the Trump Administration, which has redacted human rights reports to show that countries are safe, buried other reports that don’t say what they like, and claimed that asylum lawyers are making up cases to get their clients across the border. It’s all in the grand tradition of the merchants of doubt, men and women who know better, but who obfuscate the truth–about tobacco, global warming, vaccines, whatever–to achieve a political goal (or make a buck). Why shouldn’t EOIR join in the fun?”
  3. AMERICA’S SHAME: 🤡 “CLOWN COURTS” PLUNGE TO NEW DEPTHS UNDER TRUMP & DOJ: Unpaid Judges, Court Clerks Who Can’t Afford The Rent, Illegal Rulings & Idiotic Policies By Biased & Ignorant DOJ Politicos, Unachievable Expectations, Unnecessary Postponements Caused By Trump & DOJ, & On Top Of It All A Few Unqualified Judges Who Discriminate, Cut Corners, & Intentionally Deny Due Process, All Combine To “Tank” Already Low Morale To Incomprehensible Lows!
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

🤡U.S. CLOWN COURT: Where Justice & Logic Are A Bad Joke, & Those We Should Be Welcoming Are Instead Shown The Door!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/my-immigrant-client-won-a-judges-compassion-ice-still-dumped-him-on-the-border/2019/01/24/7802a800-1e9c-11e9-8b59-0a28f2191131_story.html

Attorney Marty Rosenbluth writes in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section:

Attorney  ’s client made a passionate case to the judge about our unjust system

This month, I went to court with José. He came to the United States without papers from Mexico when he was 15, in 1999. Now he has a wife, three kids and a job in construction in Raleigh, N.C. It all came apart when police pulled him over and arrested him for driving without a license. He soon landed in the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. He fought his deportation case alone for several months before his family finally called my law firm.

We first told him we couldn’t take his case because he had no chance of winning, so ethically we couldn’t take his money. Most people in deportation proceedings have few if any options to stay in the United States through the immigration courts. I urged him to take voluntary departure, which enables people to leave the country without getting a deportation order on their records, so it is easier to come back legally in the future. But he told me he was certain that, if he could just tell the court his story, the judge would see that letting him stay was right and just and fair. I told him that our immigration system had many rules and laws, but little or no justice.

In truth, I think José knew he had no chance, and he knew he’d have to leave. But he didn’t want to leave quietly. We agreed that I would accompany him — I wouldn’t say “help,” because he could have realized his plan without me, and I didn’t charge a penny — but he would address the judge directly. One of the most important things I do as an attorney is to just be present. Since the immigration laws are so defective, and the judges often play by their own rules (routine bond requests are usually denied, and this Georgia court has one of the lowest approval rates for asylum cases in the country), and the detention/deportation centers are designed to break people’s spirits, often there is not much else that can be done. Based on what transpired, I’m glad I went.

[Civil servants said separating families was illegal. The administration ignored us.]

José’s whole family came to support him — his wife and his kids and a friend. When we sat down at the bench, I told the judge that José would be speaking for himself. In immigration courts, migrants usually just answer questions, so the judge asked me if I was requesting to withdraw. I said I wasn’t: I was staying at the table, but José was going to do all the talking. And the judge, to his credit, heard him out.

The judge explained the law and what José would have to prove in order to win. Before hiring us, José had submitted an application, on his own, for “cancellation of removal.” There are four elements: He had to prove that he had been living here for more than 10 years, that he was a person of good moral character and that he hadn’t broken any laws that would bar him under the statutes from applying. José could show all of these things. But the fourth criterion is the hardest. José would have to prove that if he were deported, it would cause an “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a spouse, parent or child who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Usually it means you have a child with cancer, or a spouse with a disability that makes them unable to work or support a family — something on that scale. If you can convince the court merely that your family would be made homeless or that your children would subsist on food stamps, that is not considered sufficient. That is just the usual hardship that deportees’ families experience.

Without missing a beat, José said to the judge, “I have the first three, your honor, but I do not have the fourth.” Turning around to look at his family, with obvious pride, he told the judge: “This is my family. These are my children. Everything I do, I do for them. But thankfully they are all healthy, which for the moment seems for some reason to be bad.” Truly, logic has no place in immigration court.

[I crossed the border seeking safety. Instead, they took my daughter away.]

The judge said that, based on this testimony, he would have to deny his application for cancellation of removal. Still, the judge offered José voluntary departure and explained, as I had, that it would make it easier for him to return.

I had met with José’s wife, Maria, too, and explained “VD,” which is a safer option than exiting the nation through the usual deportation machinery. People who are deported to Mexico from Stewart and many other detention centers are just dumped on the border, where gangs await them. (People deported to other countries are flown.) They are often robbed, kidnapped, raped or killed. Those who take VD, on the other hand, don’t get to leave jail, but they fly back on a regular commercial flight.

The problem with voluntary departure, though, is the cost: You have to buy your own fare, and it is very expensive, currently around $1,250. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will accept only a “Y” class ticket, or a full-cost coach fare, which can often cost more than first class. José thanked the judge and declined. “The tickets cost a lot of money, and my family will need the money after I leave.”

[My family immigrated here legally. I used to think that made us special.]

Maria interjected, crying. “Take the voluntary,” she said. “Take the voluntary!” My client began crying, too, followed by his kids.

I decided to take a chance. I asked the judge if José could talk to his wife over the barrier. Any direct communication and especially physical contact is strictly forbidden in this courtroom. To my surprise, he agreed. So Maria came forward, and she and José started hugging and kissing and crying. The bailiff moved to intervene, but I just shook my head and mouthed the word “Please.”

The couple talked for a few minutes, and then José sat back down and offered that he would take voluntary departure. But he’d gotten to hug his 6-, 8- and 12-year-old children across the barrier. Imagine that. Humanity in what passes for a court. This is not usually how immigration cases go. The judge gave José 30 days to buy his ticket before he would lose the “privilege” of taking VD.

In the end, José sat there smiling. And proud. He was still smiling as his family left the courtroom. And smiling when he gave me a hug. He’d known all along he wouldn’t win, but he wanted to be able to call out the injustice. And the judge, who has low rates of approval for just about anything, heard him out. (Only 31 of 347 judges denied asylum claims at a higher rate, according to the Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse.) It wasn’t a victory, exactly. José wouldn’t be staying with his family. But speaking a truth, to a hostile power, is still a kind of achievement.

[Trump’s attack on asylum is based entirely on false claims]

But it was a discordant one for such a ruthless corner of the law. And eventually the logic of our immigration system superseded his brave act.

This past week, according to a friend of his who called me to share the news, ICE came to his cell early one morning and said it would fly him to Mexico City; he wouldn’t even have to pay for his ticket. Then, that afternoon, officials came and handcuffed him, brought him to a room to wait with other detainees for several hours and deposited him on a bus. Not to the airport, as they had promised. They drove him to the border and dumped him out in Matamoros. I am looking into his legal options, because apparently no act of courage goes unpunished.

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

Thanks Marty, for giving us insight into the “parody of justice” that goes on daily in our Immigration Courts at the direction of a Department of “Justice” that long ago lost both its way and purpose and must be wrested from control of a major dysfunctional court system that it is so ethically and functionally unable to administer in anything approaching a fair and efficient manner.

I give the Immigration Judge credit for taking time to listen and allowing Jose to speak in court. In the toxic age of Trump, Sessions, Whitaker, and likely also Barr, Immigration Judges are pressured to prejudge cases and cut corners by denying claims without listening to the evidence to keep up with artificial “deportation quotas” imposed by Sessions and to keep up “productivity” which has replaced “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process” as the mantra of today’s “Clown Courts.”

On the other hand, there are alternatives available. The BIA precedents on what constitutes “exceptional and extremely hardship” are intentionally vague and subject to interpretation. How do I know? They were issued while I was serving as BIA Chair (one over my dissent).

They were supposed to be part of a group of cases, sometimes knows as the “basket of pain,” defining the term in a number of different contexts. But, after Ashcroft’s “Saturday Night Massacre” at the BIA “took out” those judges, including me, who sometimes ruled in favor of respondent’s positions, the project was abandoned. My remaining colleagues were afraid that ruling on anything so controversial, and particularly granting anything to a respondent, could be “career threatening,” probably with good reason. So, Immigration Judges were left to their own devices. Many of the BIA panels on the other hand, took a pretty hard line, all, of course, in unpublished decisions.

Coming to the Arlington Immigration Court from the BIA, I actually underwent some “culture shock.” In an early cancellation case, I was thinking that the respondents, although great folks who were doing good things for America and their citizen family, probably wouldn’t “make the cut” under the standards that my last BIA panel had been applying. But, when the Assistant Chief Counsel got up to make a closing, after I had given respondents’ counsel a rather “hard time,” I was surprised to hear an impassioned, well-reasoned, and well-supported plea joining counsel’s request for a finding of “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” and granting the case. “It’s Recinas, not Andazola,” as we came to say in Arlington, after the names of the BIA precedents that appeared to reach conflicting conclusions.

Some Immigration Judges would have found that deprivation of the support of the “primary breadwinner” is “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” and granted Jose cancellation of removal. And, some ICE Assistant Chief Counsel would have waived appeal. Just shows what a “crapshoot” justice has become in the Immigration Courts.

BS (“Before Sessions”) at the Arlington Immigration Court, the Assistant Chief Counsel would probably have offered “prosecutorial discretion” or “PD” to Jose. And, I would have encouraged Marty to take that offer and “live to fight another day.” I would have given Jose and his family my “bad things will happen if you screw up again in any way speech,'” “administratively closed” the case, and taken it off my docket. The court and both counsel would have saved time and Jose and his family could have gone on living their lives and contributing to America pending good behavior and an eventual legalization program by Congress.

Not a perfect solution to be sure. But, a fundamentally just one that allowed me, ICE, and the private bar to move on and deal with other higher priority cases that really needed my judicial attention.

Trump, Sessions, Nielsen and their White Nationalist Gang have stripped the Immigration Courts of whatever little sense of justice and judicial control remained. They intentionally have turned a struggling system into a totally dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust and unconstitutional one.

We can only hope that at some point the Article III Courts will have seen enough and will put this totally bankrupt system into “receivership;” or that some future Congress and a more competent and honest Administration will create an independent Immigration Court focused, as it should be, on fairness and Due Process. Until then, justice and logic will continue to be a bad joke in the “U.S. Clown Courts.” 🤡

PWS

01-28-19

Related posts:

  1. ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER @ WASHPOST: UNDER TRUMP, MORE JUDGES, MORE DETENTION, MORE RANDOM CRUELTY, FEWER ACTUAL REMOVALS!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

http://time.com/longform/migrants/

Haley Sweetland Edwards writes in Time Magazine:

But they were willing to do whatever it took. Going back to Guatemala was simply not an option, they said. Monterroso explained that in October, their family was forced to flee after a gang threatened to murder the children if they didn’t pay an exorbitant bribe, five months’ worth of profits from their tiny juice stall. The family hid for a day and a half in their house and then sneaked away before dawn. “There is nobody that can protect us there,” Monterroso said. “We have seen in the other cases, they kill the people and kill their children.” Her voice caught. “The first thing is to have security for them,” she said of her kids, “that nothing bad happens to them.”

All told, more than 159,000 migrants filed for asylum in the U.S. in fiscal year 2018, a 274% increase over 2008. Meanwhile, the total number of apprehensions along the southern border has decreased substantially—nearly 70% since fiscal year 2000. President Donald Trump has labeled the southern border a national crisis. He refused to sign any bill funding the federal government that did not include money for construction of a wall along the frontier, triggering the longest shutdown in American history, and when Democrats refused to budge, he threatened to formally invoke emergency powers. The President says the barrier, which was the centerpiece of his election campaign, is needed to thwart a dangerous “invasion” of undocumented foreigners.

But the situation on the southern border, however the political battle in Washington plays out, will continue to frustrate this U.S. President, and likely his successors too, and not just because of continuing caravans making their way to the desert southwest. Months of reporting by TIME correspondents around the world reveal a stubborn reality: we are living today in a global society increasingly roiled by challenges that can be neither defined nor contained by physical barriers. That goes for climate change, terrorism, pandemics, nascent technologies and cyber-attacks. It also applies to one of the most significant global developments of the past quarter-century: the unprecedented explosion of global migration.

. . . .

They abandoned their homes for different reasons: tens of millions went in search of better jobs or better education or medical care, and tens of millions more had no choice. More than 5.6 million fled the war in Syria, and a million more were Rohingya, chased from their villages in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands fled their neighborhoods in Central America and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by poverty and violence. Others were displaced by catastrophic weather linked to climate change.

Taken one at a time, each is an individual, a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, hope and despair. But collectively, they represent something greater than the sum of their parts. The forces that pushed them from their homes have combined with a series of global factors that pulled them abroad: the long peace that followed the Cold War in the developed world, the accompanying expansion of international travel, liberalized policies for refugees and the relative wealth of developed countries, especially in Europe and the U.S., the No. 1 destination for migrants. The force is tidal and has not been reversed by walls, by separating children from their parents or by deploying troops. Were the world’s total population of international migrants in 2018 gathered from the places where they have sought new lives and placed under one flag, they would be its fifth largest country.

The mass movement of people has changed the world both for better and for worse. Migrants tend to be productive. Though worldwide they make up about 3% of the population, in 2015 they generated about 9% of global GDP, according to the U.N. Much of that money is wired home—$480 billion in 2017, also according to the U.N.—where the cash has immense impact. Some will pay for the passage of the next migrant, and the smartphone he or she will keep close at hand. The technology not only makes the journey more efficient and safer—smugglers identify their clients by photos on instant-messaging—but, upon arrival, allows those who left to keep in constant contact with those who remain behind, across oceans and time zones.

Yet attention of late is mostly focused on the impact on host countries. There, national leaders have grappled with a powerful irony: the ways in which they react to new migrants—tactically, politically, culturally—shape them as much as the migrants themselves do. In some countries, migrants have been welcomed by crowds at train stations. In others, images of migrants moving in miles-long caravans through Central America or spilling out of boats on Mediterranean shores were wielded to persuade native-born citizens to lock down borders, narrow social safety nets and jettison long-standing humanitarian commitments to those in need.

. . . .

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

. . . .

But protocols and treaties can, at best, hope to respond to the human emotions and hard realities that drive migration. No wall, sheriff or headscarf law would have prevented Monterroso and Calderón, or Yaquelin and Albertina Contreras, or Sami Baladi and Mirey Darwich from leaving their homes. Migrants will continue to flee bombs, look for better-paying jobs and accept extraordinary risks as the price of providing a better life for their children.

The question now is whether the world can come to define the enormous population of international migrants as an opportunity. No matter when that happens, Eman Albadawi, a teacher from Syria who arrived in Anröchte, Germany, in 2015, will continue to make a habit of reading German-language children’s books to her three Syrian-born kids at night. Their German is better than hers, and they make fun of her pronunciation, but she doesn’t mind. She is proud of them. At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise, she tells them, “We must be brave, but we must also be successful and strong.” —With reporting by Aryn Baker/Anröchte, Germany; Melissa Chan, Julia Lull, Gina Martinez, Thea Traff/New York; Ioan Grillo/Tijuana; Abby Vesoulis/Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Vivienne Walt/Paris •

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

I strongly encourage everyone to read Haley’s outstanding article at the link.  It is one of the best and most easily understandable explanations of a complex phenomenon that I have seen recently. As I always say, “lots of moving parts.” But Haley and her colleagues have distilled the fundamental truths concealed by this complexity. Congrats and appreciation to Haley and everyone who worked on this masterpiece!

Haley debunks and eviscerates the restrictionist, racist “fear and loathing” baloney that Trump and his White Nationalist gang peddle. The simple truth always has been and continues to be that America needs more immigration.

The only real question is whether we are going to be smart and funnel it into expanded legal and humanitarian channels or dumb like Trump and push the inevitable migration into an extra-legal system. The latter best serves neither our country nor the humans pushed into an underground existence where they can be exploited and are artificially prevented from achieving their full potential for themselves and for us. Right now, we have a mix skewed toward forcing far, far too many good folks to use the extra-legal system.

We’ll only be able to improve the situation by pushing the mix toward the legal and the humanitarian, rather than the extra-legal. That’s why it’s virtually impossible to have a rational immigration debate with folks like Trump who start with the racist-inspired fiction that migrants are a “threat” who can be deterred, punished, and diminished.

Contrary to Trump and the White Nationalists, the real immigration problems facing America are 1) how can we best integrate the millions of law-abiding and productive undocumented individuals already residing here into our society, and 2) how can we most fairly and efficiently insure that in the future individuals like them can be properly screened and come to our country through expanded humanitarian and legal channels. Until we resolve these, American will continue to founder with immigration and fail to maximize its many benefits. That’s bad for us, for migrants, and for the future of our nation.

As a reminder, in the context of Congressional negotiations on border security, I recently put together a list of “practical fixes” to the immigration system which would address border security, humanitarian relief, and improved compliance with Constitutional Due process without major legislative changes — mostly “tweaks” and other common sense amendments that would make outsized improvements and certainly would be an improvement on squandering $5.7 billion and getting nothing but a largely symbolic “instant white elephant” border wall in return.  So, here it is again in all its hypothetical glory:  “THE SMARTS ACT OF 2019:

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3E3

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

  • Federal Employees
    • Restart the Government
    • Retroactive pay raise

 

  • Enhanced Border Security
    • Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”
    • Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers
    • Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff
    • Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors
    • Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs
    • Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS
    • Anything else that both parties agree upon

 

  • Humanitarian Assistance
    • Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers
    • Prohibit family separation
    • Funding for alternatives to detention
    • Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues
    • Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

 

  • Asylum Process
    • Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

 

  • Immigration Court Improvements
    • Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants
    • Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs
    • Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications
    • Vacate Matter of Castro-Tum and reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases
    • Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”
    • Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances
    • Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts
    • Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings
    • Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal
    • Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days
    • Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members
    • Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction
    • Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year
    • Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”
    • Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied
    • Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

 

  • International Cooperation
    • Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.
    • Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

 

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

No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

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

PWS

01-27-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

AMERICA’S SHAME: 🤡 “CLOWN COURTS” PLUNGE TO NEW DEPTHS UNDER TRUMP & DOJ: Unpaid Judges, Court Clerks Who Can’t Afford The Rent, Illegal Rulings & Idiotic Policies By Biased & Ignorant DOJ Politicos, Unachievable Expectations, Unnecessary Postponements Caused By Trump & DOJ, & On Top Of It All A Few Unqualified Judges Who Discriminate, Cut Corners, & Intentionally Deny Due Process, All Combine To “Tank” Already Low Morale To Incomprehensible Lows!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-claims-immigration-judge-paychecks-as-court-morale-hits-a-historic-low/

Kate Smith reports for CBS News:

The nation’s roughly 400 immigration judges are getting hit hard by the government shutdown:

  • They’re about to miss their second paycheck.
  • About three-quarters have been furloughed and unable to work, which means their case backlog is growing.
  • The result: Morale is at a “historic low,” said Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a Los Angeles-based immigration herself, in an interview with CBS News.

The immigration court docket is split into two categories: Hearings for immigrants who have been detained represent about 5 to 10 percent of the docket. These cases have been uninterrupted during the shutdown and have been overseen by approximately 100 judges who aren’t getting paid.

“I’ve been using the words ‘unprecedented’ and ‘surreal,’ and yet it keeps becoming more unprecedented and more surreal,” said Tabaddor. “It’s so unfortunate that we’ve reached this level of dysfunction.”

Adding to the low morale is a the massive backlog of cases, which has risen by nearly 50 percent since President Trump took office. As of November 30 the backlog stood at just over 800,000 cases, but if the shutdown continues through February it could break one million.

Worse still for the judges is a new quota system announced in October by the Department of Justice. It said that all judges would be required to complete 700 immigration cases in the following year; if they fall behind, their job security could be on the line.

“It’s so disconnected from reality,” said Tabaddor. “Those cases just can’t be completed in the timeframe that the administration is demanding. Frankly, it’s laughable.”

Given that many judges haven’t been able to work for more than a month, will the quota be waived? DOJ hasn’t given any guidance, said Tabaddor.

“It’s not like if you miss a day of work, they work just goes away,” Tabaddor said. “Everyone knows that they minute the shutdown is over, what awaits them is 10 times worse than what they left behind.”

“Judges jobs are on the line if they don’t meet these arbitrary number,” Tabaddor said. “People are very concerned.”

A call and email to the Department of Justice were not returned, but the agency’s website said that press inquiries may not be returned because of the government shutdown.

Currently, most non-detained judges have four to five thousand hearings scheduled through 2021 and in some cases 2022, Tabaddor said, noting that “every single day on their calendar is booked.” Immigrants who had hearings originally scheduled during the shutdown will most likely be forced to wait years before they’re able to get in front of a judge.

Forcing judges to rush through their quotas could have a devastating impact on immigration hearings, said Kate Voigt, the associate director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. When forced to choose between their own job security and a through understanding of an individual’s case, many judges have gone with the former, pushing through cases without giving immigrants their due process, Voigt said.

The Department of Justice has “increased pressures on judges to churn out cases at lightning speeds, at the expense of due process and case-by-case determinations,” Voigt said in an email to CBS News.

In Charlotte, North Carolina some judges have refused to hear testimony from female asylum seekers from Central America, citing an now-overturned policy statement from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions that removed domestic and gang violence from admissible asylum criteria, said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration attorney who serves clients in North Carolina and South Carolina, in an interview with CBS News. In one asylum hearing McKinney had last year prior to the government shutdown, Judge Barry Pettino refused to let his client testify, instead denying her asylum case outright because it dealt with gender-based violence, according to McKinney.

“My client didn’t think she was going to win her case, but she certainly didn’t think we were going to be in and out in 45 minutes,” McKinney said. “If the asylum seeker never gets to take the stand under oath, never gets to tell their story, that’s a fundamental due process problem right there.”

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

In the words of the distinguished Judge Tabaddor, “surreal!” Why is it “OK” to have a court operating in the “Twilight Zone” making life or death decisions? How would you like YOUR life or YOUR loved one’s life to be determined by this dysfunctional mess?

Simply shameful! Also completely unnecessary. Trump and the DOJ are totally unqualified to run any court, let alone one with life or death authority. Congress is paralyzed. If the Article IIIs don’t step in, take this over, and require the restoration of at least rudimentary Due Process, there might not be any removals in the future!

How will they “reopen” this mess even when the “Trump shutdown” ends? Why won’t most of the overworked, underpaid, under appreciated, stressed out Court Clerks who keep this (unautomated, paper heavy) “Rube Goldberg Contraption” afloat, and who live paycheck to paycheck, have found new jobs where they are fairly paid and appreciated? Why won’t all the retirement-eligible judges head for the exits where life is better, the paychecks keep coming, and you can actively fight the Trump idiocy?

PWS

01-23-19

 

PWS

01-23-19

Related posts:

  1. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

🤡CLOWN-OCRACY: Trump & GOP Shut Down Our Government — With America Failing, Gov. Workers In Soup Lines, & The Possibility Of Starting A Worldwide Recession, They Have No “Exit Strategy!”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-to-weigh-trumps-proposal-to-end-shutdown-with-passage-unlikely-11548095329

Rebecca Ballhaus and Kristina Peterson report for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—The Senate this week is expected to vote on a border-security proposal put forward by President Trump that is unlikely to garner enough support to cross procedural hurdles, leaving no clear path forward as the partial government shutdown stretches into its fifth week.

The White House and Republican congressional leaders don’t appear to have crafted any contingency strategy if the president’s proposal fails a Senate vote.

“No idea,” one White House official said, asked about backup plans to end the shutdown. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump, in a Saturday address from the White House, called for $5.7 billion to pay for steel barriers on the U.S. border with Mexico, as well as funding for other border-security enhancements, in exchange for three years’ protection from deportation for some undocumented immigrants.

Trump Offers DACA Protections in Exchange for Wall Funding

In an address to the nation, President Trump laid out a proposal in which he offered a three-year protection to some undocumented immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in wall funding. Photo: Associated Press

Democrats rejected the proposal, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it a “nonstarter” and saying that it lacked a permanent solution for young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Those people are now protected by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

“Nothing has changed with the latest Republican offer; President Trump and Senate Republicans are still saying: ‘support my plan or the government stays shut.’ That isn’t a compromise or a negotiation—it’s simply more hostage-taking,” Justin Goodman, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), said Monday in a statement.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article in the WSJ at the above link.

Every day must be a “Field Day” for KGB Officer turned Russian President Vladimir Putin. After all, nobody is shutting down his government, and his puppet Trump and his GOP “fellow travelers” are leading the assault on the U.S. Government, once his greatest enemy now reduced to the status of a third world “clown republic.” (For those of you who haven’t done asylum cases, rampant executive corruption, favoritism, and attacks by autocrats on their own governments and own citizens for various nefarious reasons are fairly common in the banana republics and third world dictatorships from which refugees flee.)

Who would have thought that one of the richest countries in the world would force its government workers to stand in food lines and seek dog walking jobs to survive? And the best thing for Vladi: a clueless minority of 4 in 10 “Americans” still support his scheme to turn the U.S. into a Russian “client state” (the 21st Century version of the “Soviet Satellite.”) Somewhere out there in the after world, Stalin, Khrushchev, and other departed Soviet leaders must be scratching their collective heads and asking “What did we do wrong? Was it really that simple? Where was Trump when we needed him?”

Don’t be fooled by any of the BS about this being a “joint failure” with the Dems. Trump said he’d shut down our country for his stupid “Wall.” With the help of McConnell and an enabling GOP he’s destroying America — just like he said he would. And, just as Putin wishes him to do!

For wittingly or unwittingly doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin and aiding America’s enemies by destroying American Government and diminishing America domestically and internationally, Trump, McConnell, and their band of GOP enablers get today’s Courtside “Five Clown Award.”

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

01-22-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  3. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  4. Michael Paarlberg @ THE GUARDIAN: HOW WACKO & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IS TRUMP/SESSIONS “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT? — Who Screws Their Friends & Productive Residents While Empowering Multinational Gangs? — “[MS-13] can’t really be described accurately as a single gang but is rather a network of gangs with little centralized authority and a franchised name, whose street value only increases with each press conference by Trump and Sessions. . . . There aren’t many beneficiaries of Trump’s immigration policy, but there’s at least one: MS-13 couldn’t have asked for a better president than Trump.”

GEORGE WILL @ WASHPOST: AMERICA’S “CLOWN PRINCE” 🤡

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-a-misery-it-must-be-to-be-donald-trump/2019/01/18/d0e05eea-1a82-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html

George Will writes:

Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which is even worse.

If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that is, the United States is nothing but an economy — then the state of the union is good. Except that after two years of unified government under the party that formerly claimed to care about fiscal facts and rectitude, the nation faces a $1 trillion deficit during brisk growth and full employment. Unless the president has forever banished business cycles — if he has, his modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it — the next recession will begin with gargantuan deficits, which will be instructive.

The president has kept his promise not to address the unsustainable trajectory of the entitlement state (about the coming unpleasant reckoning, he said: “Yeah, but I won’t be here”), and his party’s congressional caucuses have elevated subservience to him into a political philosophy. The Republican-controlled Senate — the world’s most overrated deliberative body — will not deliberate about, much less pass, legislation the president does not favor. The evident theory is that it would be lèse-majesté for the Senate to express independent judgments.

And that senatorial dignity is too brittle to survive the disapproval of a president not famous for familiarity with actual policies. Congressional Republicans have their ears to the ground — never mind Winston Churchill’s observation that it is difficult to look up to anyone in that position.

The president’s most consequential exercise of power has been the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opening the way for China to fill the void of U.S. involvement. His protectionism — government telling Americans what they can consume, in what quantities and at what prices — completes his extinguishing of the limited-government pretenses of the GOP, which needs an entirely new vocabulary. Pending that, the party is resorting to crybaby conservatism: We are being victimized by “elites,” markets, Wall Street, foreigners, etc.

After 30 years of U.S. diplomatic futility regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the artist of the deal spent a few hours in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, then tweeted: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” What price will the president pay — easing sanctions? ending joint military exercises with South Korea? — in attempts to make his tweet seem less dotty?

Opinion | Trump owns the Republican Party, and there’s no going back

President Trump has irreversibly changed the Republican Party. The upheaval might seem unusual, but political transformations crop up throughout U.S. history. (Adriana Usero, Danielle Kunitz, Robert Gebelhoff/The Washington Post)

By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper, always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front of them.

Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.

Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive as his indifference to expanding their numbers.

Either the electorate, bored with a menu of faintly variant servings of boorishness, or the 22nd Amendment will end this, our shabbiest but not our first shabby presidency. As Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Dean Howells stepped outside together one morning, a downpour began and Howells asked, “Do you think it will stop?” Twain replied, “It always has.”

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Stripped of its detracting “jabs at the opposition” and the “obligatory swat” at the essential safety net that actually keeps America functioning, even in tough political times like these, Will largely has Trump “pegged.” As others and I have said, the Trump Administration is “Kakistocracy in action.”

But, what took you so long, George, to “get religion?” For years, the GOP has been pushing a “soulless,” intentionally divisive, program of “beggar thy neighbor” and promoting the “worst in America.”

It’s not like equally sad and unfit GOP politicos such as Steve King, Tom Trancedo, Roy Moore, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach, Corey Stewart, and Stephen Miller just “hatched” during the Trump regime. Trump is the logical outcome of a “valueless conservatism” that has embraced some of the vilest individuals and ideas in modern American political history in a (somewhat successful) minority attempt to seize power from the majority of Americans and to govern against the overall public interest.

No surprise that a party bankrupt of both constructive conservative ideas and morality should end up installing a sad an unqualified character like Trump as its “Supreme Leader.” Trumpism is deeply rooted in modern American conservatism, not the “compassionate” kind of Bush I (which unfortunately was “DOA” within the party) but the vile brand that glosses over its racial and class overtones and its erroneous conception that the rich have every right to loot America and leave the crumbs to everyone else.

Yes, I think that America needs and deserves a credible “conservative movement” to engage in an honest governing dialogue with the Democrats. What might that conservative movement look like:

  • Constructive concern about runaway deficits and borrowing from the PRC;
  • Recognition of the threat that Russia and the PRC are to America’s future;
  • Commitment to secular governing principles (perhaps embodying, but not improperly favoring, some religious values) and support of  the rights of all covered by our Constitution regardless of status;
  • Encouraging and enabling all qualified Americans to vote;
  • Congress retaking the authority to declare war and pass budgets and restricting Executive overreach (by both parties) in these areas;
  • Prudence in entering into future “foreign military adventures;”
  • A robust, effective, and efficient national defense that is held accountable for expenditures, strategies, and results;
  • Maintenance, funding, improvements, and accountability mechanisms for adequate safety net programs including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare;
  • An end to unnecessary tax breaks for the rich that strip the U.S. Treasury of necessary revenues without advancing any national agenda;
  • An end to “Government shutdown” forever and a pledge to respect the contributions of “America’s Crown Jewel:” our nonpartisan, professional, honest Civil Service;
  • Return of some authority to states, not as a device for “bogus” budget savings and to screw the poor and minorities, but to recognize and take advantage of areas where states are committed to actually funding and carrying out programs that produce better (not just cheaper) results than the Feds can;
  • Much more robust legal immigration and refugee acceptance programs;
  • A sharp reduction in wasteful funding for Federal detention of all kinds (including immigration detention) and the mandated use of alternatives that will work and benefit society;
  • Encouraging educational and economic development initiatives by the private sector in economically depressed areas (such as the Midwest and Appalachia) ;
  • Encouraging a robust trade agenda that provides mutual benefits to both the U.S. and our trading partners.

That would involve not only ditching Trump, but also abandoning the racially charged, fiscally wasteful, White Nationalist agendas that drive both him and his base and committing to governing in the public interest — in and of itself a key conservative principle.

We need an end to the “Clown Kakistocracy.”  And, that will require some honest conservative support by a “new conservative” movement. I doubt that it can be headed by Trump sycophant, xenophobic enabler, and far right religious bigot Veep Mike Pence. Perhaps, however, folks like George have a constructive role to play in fashioning, inspiring, and leading it!

PWS

01-21-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  3. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

COLBERT I. KING @ WASHPOST: NATION IN REGRESSION: Trump & His White Nationalist Flunkies Are An Insult To All That Rev. Martin Luther King & His Supporters, Of All Races & Religions Stood For! — From the promise of guaranteed rights to a return to the insecurity of injustice. A pluralistic America is being cynically drawn along racial lines by a president who is as far from the civility of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama as the charter of the Confederacy was from the Constitution.” — But, The New Due Process Army Continues MLK’s Legacy!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/martin-luther-king-jr-would-be-outraged/2019/01/18/e4a7b4c6-1a75-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html

Colby King writes:

. . . .

The greatest contrast between the time King led the struggle for America’s legal and social transformation and now is a White House occupied by Donald Trump.

There is a long list of ways in which backtracking on civil and human rights has occurred since the election of a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. It ranges from discriminatory travel bans against Muslims to turning a federal blind eye to intentionally racially discriminatory state voter-suppression schemes, to opposing protections for transgender people, to inhumanely separating children from families seeking to enter the country.

Sadly, that’s not all that stands out.

Once the federal locus of the nation’s quest for racial reconciliation, today’s White House is a source of racial divisiveness and a beacon to the prejudice-warped fringes of American society. It’s no surprise that the FBI found hate crimes in America rose 17 percent in 2017, the third consecutive year that such crimes increased. In King’s day, racially loaded, hateful rhetoric could be heard across the length and breadth of the Deep South. Now, mean, disgusting and inflammatory words come out of the mouth of the president of the United States.

From the promise of guaranteed rights to a return to the insecurity of injustice. A pluralistic America is being cynically drawn along racial lines by a president who is as far from the civility of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama as the charter of the Confederacy was from the Constitution.

King, and the movement he led, would be outraged. The rest of us should be, too.

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Read the full op-ed at the above link.

Very powerful! King speaks truth, reason, and humanity — in the spirit of Dr. King. Contrast that with the vile slurs, bogus race-baiting narratives, and non-policies spewing from the mouth of our racist (and incompetent) Liar/Grifter-in-Chief!

Two of my favorite MLK quotes (from the Letter from the Birmingham Jail — with acknowledgment to the Legal Aid and Justice Center from their poster hanging in my “office”)):

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Thanks to those many courageous and dedicated individuals tirelessly serving America in the New Due Process Army by resisting Trump’s illegal and anti-American policies! You, indeed, are the 21st Century continuation of Dr. King’s legacy to our country and the world! Dr. King would be proud of you! Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-21-19

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: HIS HIGHLY DISINGENUOUS “TRIBUTE” TO DR. KING WHILE ACTIVELY UNDERMINING MLK’S VISION OF RACIAL EQUALITY IN AMERICA OUTRAGES CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATES! — Hollow Words From An Empty Man!
  3. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”
  4. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!

ADMINISTRATION’S WHITE NATIONALIST SCOFFLAW AGENDA THWARTED AGAIN – Federal Judge Exposes Lies & Cynicism In Trump Officials’ Attempt To Suppress Hispanic Response To Census!

David Leonhardt in the NY Times:

White nationalism lost in federal court yesterday.

Judge Jesse Furman blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to add a question to the 2020 census asking about citizenship status. Furman “found that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross violated federal law by misleading the public — and his own department — about the reasons for adding the question,” Dara Lind of Vox writes.

Ross claimed, laughably, that the citizenship question would help the Trump administration enforce voting rights. In truth, it was designed to intimidate Latinos — both legal and illegal — into not responding to the census. The resulting undercount would then reduce the political representation of immigrant-heavy regions and cause them to receive less federal funding.

The citizenship question, Paul Waldman writes in The Washington Post, is part of “a broader effort on the part of Republicans to put a thumb on the electoral scale in every way they possibly can, whether it’s extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression efforts targeted at minorities, or the use of the census to make Republican victories just that much more likely.”

Yesterday’s ruling isn’t the final word. The Trump administration will likely appeal, and the appeal will likely reach the Supreme Court, where Republican-appointed justices hold a five-to-four majority.

But there is some reason to hope the justices will avoid an obviously partisan decision. Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the two newest conservative justices, have previously taken a dim view of federal officials who exceed limits on their power, The Daily Beast’s Jay Michaelson explains. “While it’s always possible that the Court’s conservatives will vote ideology over principle … their particular judicial philosophies do not bode well for the Trump administration’s brazen defiance of administrative law,” Michaelson writes.

A side note: Given the combination of his census exploits, his lies about those exploits and his shady stock trades, Ross may now deserve consideration if my colleague Gail Collins revisits her analysis of the worst Trump Cabinet member. His case is helped by the fact that some of his even more corrupt colleagues have recently departed the administration.

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Seems to me that the Government attorneys representing liars like Ross and his dishonest positions in court are violating ethical rules. Why would a case like this be on the way to the Supremes, rather than Ross being on his way to jail for conspiring to violate civl rights? And, as Leonhardt points out, some of his departed Cabinet colleagues were even more corrupt and dishonest.

PWS

01-16-19

Related posts:

  1. THE “MAINSTREAM MEDIA” HAS FALLEN FOR BILLY BARR’S LATEST “CON JOB” HOOK, LINE & SINKER — But YOU Shouldn’t — Bess Levin @! Vanity Fair Decodes Billy’s Real Message to His Don: “Let [me] turn the judicial branch into your own personal score-settling operation in peace!“  — Plus, My Bonus “Friday Essay” — “Don’t Believe A Word Billy Barr Says!”
  2. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  3. 🤡CLOWN CAPITOL:  J.R. PRESIDES OVER GOP CLOWN SHOW HE HELPED CREATE — Empowering The Koch Bros, Suppressing Minority Votes, Enabling GOP Gerrymandering, Ignoring Invidious Racial & Religious Motives, Turning A Blind Eye To Lies & Pretexts, It All Contributed To The Arrogant Display Of GOP Dishonesty & Impunity Now On Public Display In The Senate! — Plus Bonus Friday Mini-Essay: “Profiles in Fecklessness”
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: KAKISTOCRACY IN ACTION — America Suffers As Trump Bumbles Along With His White Nationalist, Pro-Kremlin Agenda!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/bye-bye-donald-trump-throws-a-fit-after-pelosi-tells-him-no

Bess writes:

Today is the 19th day of the government shutdown. If it drags on much longer, the U.S. is at risk of losing its triple-A rating, which could increase borrowing costs and put a chill on the economy. At present, 800,000 federal employees are either furloughed or being forced to work without pay, including T.S.A. agents and the Secret Service. Farmers are struggling to get the subsidies they were promised to offset the damage done by the president‘s trade war. Financial-fraud investigations have “ground to a halt.” Human shit and garbage have piled up in national parks. Speaking of shit, food inspections by the F.D.A. have been curtailed, including inspections of food considered “high risk,” raising the possibility of E. Coli and salmonella outbreaks. At the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 1,523 of 3,531 employees “are considered non-essential,” while D.H.S.’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office is reportedly two-thirds empty.

Understanding that Democrats are unlikely to ever agree to fund a border wall—barring getting something major in exchange, like a DACA deal—did the president decide to cut a deal to get things up and running again? Not exactly! Chuck Schumer told reporters on Wednesday that when Democrats didn’t fork over the hostage money during a meeting at the White House, Trump slammed the table and stormed out of the room, like a tween who’s been told she can’t leave the house in a crop top. Shortly after, Trump confirmed:

For those old enough to remember back to mid-December, Nancy Pelosi’s position has not changed—the only thing that has changed is that the president, who told Pelosi and Schumer on December 11 “I’m not going to blame you for [the shutdown],” is now trying to blame the completely unnecessary closure of the government on Democrats. His lies have shifted as well— after claiming that the unpaid federal employees are “mostly” Democrats, ergo he has no sympathy for them, on Wednesday he insisted the workers facing evictionand permanent loss of wages want the wall as much as he does. “You take a look at social media,” the ex-Miss Universe owner explained, “[And] so many of those people are saying, ‘It’s very hard for me, it’s very hard for my family, but, Mr. President, you’re doing the right thing.’”

Elsewhere in delusions, the G.O.P. continues to believe that Trump will get Democrats to bend to his demands by employing the same negotiating skills and business acumen that led him to acquire the Plaza Hotel for $60 million more than it was thought to be worth, purchase the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle for, again, some $60 million more than high estimates said it should go for, overpay for football players as a team owner in the doomed United States Football League, and put multiple Trump companies into bankruptcy, most memorable among them the “the debt-bloated Trump Taj Mahal.” Instead, this is the level of savvy we’re dealing with:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that Trump had brought candy to the meeting in an effort to smooth things over.

Who could have predicted Chuck and Nancy wouldn’t immediately write a check for $5.6 billion after being plied with Baby Ruth bars, M&M’s and Butterfingers? That kind of thing totally worked when he was negotiating a licensing deal for Trump Steaks! People were lining the streets to give him money!

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

White House decides letting 38 million people starve during shutdown would’ve been a bad look

To be fair, you could see them going either way on this one:

Trump administration officials said Tuesday that the Agriculture Department will be able to pay out food-stamp benefits for the entire month of February—tamping down fears that the partial government shutdown could have resulted in rationing or halting of benefits. . . . Just a few days ago, White House officials had said funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program were likely to run out in February if Congress didn’t act, an outcome that would have led to a sharp cut in benefits for millions of low-income Americans who rely on the program to help them pay for groceries each month. Democrats had seized on the White House’s threat as both sides tried to increase their political leverage as the shutdown, now in its [19th day], entered its third week.

This is obviously good news for the people who depend on the SNAP program, assuming they avoid the food that the F.D.A. won’t be able to inspect thanks to the furlough.

Treasury set to ease sanctions on Putin pal’s companies

Aw, we could never stay mad at you (for reasons Robert Mueller’s forthcoming report may or may not reveal):

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will brief lawmakers in the House of Representatives on Thursday about his department’s plan to terminate sanctions on three companies linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. . . . The meeting follows Treasury’s December 19 notification to Congress that it would end sanctions on Rusal, EN+, and EuroSibEnergy in 30 days. Mnuchin said at the time that the decision was made after the companies “committed to significantly diminish Deripaska’s ownership and sever his control.”

Deripaska, a metals tycoon and close friend and ally of Putin, remains sanctioned, meaning no American may conduct business dealings with him directly or indirectly. He has come under scrutiny in the United States for his ties to the Kremlin as well as to Paul Manafort.

In September, we learned that the Treasury had effectively fallen ass-backwards into sanctioning Deripaska and Rusal last April after Mnuchin got flustered and announced sanctions that the administration never intended to implement.

At least some people are benefitting from Trump’s lies

I.e. the people who put money on just how many falsehoods will spew from his mouth at any given moment:

A gambling site is paying out thousands of dollars to people who correctly bet that President Donald Trump would tell more than 3.5 lies in his Oval Office address on Tuesday. Bookmaker.eu asked people to wager on the president’s truthfulness, offering odds of -145 for more than 3.5 lies and +115 for less than 3.5 lies. That means if a person bet $145 dollars that Trump would lie at least four times, they would win $100.

And some people won big. Odds consultant John Lester told BuzzFeed News the site will lose $276,424, with 92 percent of its bettors correctly wagering that Trump would lie a lot.

Lester said that Bookmaker had, of course, expected that Trump would lie but underestimated just how many “alternative truths” would spring from his mouth given the time constraints of the speech.

Bob Mercer will have to find a new way to dodge gun laws

Last April, we learned that when he wasn’t facilitating Brexit or getting Donald Trump elected, former hedge-fund manager Bob Mercer was spending a week each year in Yuma County, Colorado, in order to qualify as a volunteer sheriff, a status that allowed him to carry a concealed weapon in any state or locality. But according to a new report from Bloomberg, the Long Island billionaire will have to figure out an alternative workaround should he wish to continue packing heat in a covert fashion:

The New York hedge-fund magnate and conservative donor had his status as a volunteer deputy sheriff revoked by Yuma County, Colorado, Sheriff Chad Day on Monday, his last day in office. Day lost his re-election bid last year after Bloomberg News reported on Mercer’s role and his purchase of a new pickup truck for the sheriff’s official use.

The arrangement provoked controversy in the prairie county that borders Kansas and Nebraska. Day submitted papers last week ending the appointments of Mercer, 72, and at least a dozen other volunteer posse members, effective January 7, according to documents signed by Day and filed with the county clerk.

This isn’t the first county to force Mercer to turn in his badge: last year, the mayor of Lake Arthur, New Mexico, announced that he was shutting down the volunteer reserve-officer program and requiring existing reserve officers to turn in their credentials. Hopefully this turn of events simply means that Mercer won’t be able to, for instance, walk into Grand Central Oyster Bar with a gun in his pocket, and not that he’ll put those extra six days in his calendar toward helping get another papaya-colored fascist of his choice elected.

Jeff Bezos has a new lady friend

The Amazon founder is reportedly dating Lauren Sanchez, after announcing on Twitter than he and his wife are divorcing after 25 years of marriage. (Bezos and Sanchez did not respond to requests for comment.) Unsurprisingly, various wealth-trackers have already crunched the numbers—in this case, divided by two—and informed us that MacKenzie Bezos stands to become the richest woman in the world, assuming she and Jeff split their $137.2 billion fortune evenly (which, to be fair, is a fairly big assumption!).

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Read the complete “Levin Report” at the link.  (Or, better yet, sign up to have it delivered directly to your mailbox — I don’t believe that you have to be a Vanity Fair subscriber.)

Placing the government in the hands of a racist incompetent like Trump and his sycophantic stooge Cabinet Members is a prescription for national disaster. But, that doesn’t seem to bother the “Party of Putin.” The GOP seems to have sold us out long ago.

PWS

01-10-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  3. MORE PHONY BALONEY FROM LIAR-IN-CHIEF!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY HAS CONSEQUENCES: CLIMATE MIGRATION IS ONE OF THEM! — Trump’s Stupidity & Cruelty On Immigration Climate Science, & Disease Control Promises Horrible Global Human Disaster For Future Generations — Empowering & Enabling A Moron Is Always A Very Bad Idea!  — No Idiotic Wall Or “Drill Baby Drill” Insanity Is Going To Prevent This Human Catastrophe We Are Inflicting On Those Who Follow!

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS PACKAGE INCLUDING BORDER SECURITY & DREAMER SOLUTION IS KEY TO ENDING SHUTDOWN

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/423320-pelosi-could-get-tinkle-all-over-her-if-she-blocks-funding-for-trumps

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Strict enforcement of employer sanctions could create chaos within California’s employer class, the kind of personal and financial turmoil that elected representatives are expected to fix — and which puts them in bad odour if they don’t.

Instead of putting Trump in a position where he has to resort to such drastic action, Pelosi could offer him border wall funding in exchange for immigration reform legislation, such as a legalization program for DACA participants.

Previous negotiations with Trump on DACA legislation seemed promising when he offered a legalization program for 1.8 million DACA participants in his Framework on Immigration Reform & Border Security, but the Democrats would not agree to the concessions he was demanding.

The deal killer was a demand to end chain migration, but there is a way to compromise on that demand. Instead of a creating a regular legalization program for the DACA participants, create a place for them in the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program.

This little-known humanitarian program makes lawful permanent resident status available to undocumented alien children who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by a parent and should not be returned to their own countries.

Trump’s other demand was to end the Diversity Visa Program (DVP), but the Democrats have shown a willingness to end this program. Senator Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) Gang of Eight bill would have repealed the DVPif it had been enacted.

. . . .

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I think that Nolan is on the right track for a compromise solution to end the shutdown:  robust border security plus Dreamer relief seems like a logical package. But, as with everything in Washington, the Devil is in the details.  And, Trump is always a “Wild Card” (in more ways than one).

If anyone can figure out a way to broker an agreement with Trump and Leader McConnell, it would be Speaker Pelosi. Whether you are a fan or not, she clearly will go down as one of the most effective and skilled legislators of her generation. Interestingly, Colby Itkowitz of the WashPost’s “The Fix” observed that Trump seems to have an unusual (and perhaps healthy) respect for Pelosi.  https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/423320-pelosi-could-get-tinkle-all-over-her-if-she-blocks-funding-for-trumps

PWS

01-04-19

Related posts:

  1. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  4. 16 STATES SUE TRUMP ON BOGUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY — Nolan Says Trump Ultimately Likely To Prevail — “Slate 3” Appear To Agree!

SYSTEMIC FAILURE: Tanking Immigration Court & Asylum Adjudications Mock Due Process! — Disgraceful Lack Of Professional Integrity & Simple Human Decency Have Become Hallmarks!

https://www.courthousenews.com/uncle-max-made-it-past-the-border-patrol/

Robert Kahn, Editor of Courthouse News writes:

My Uncle Max made it past the Border Patrol and became a doctor in the United States — a chest specialist. He wasn’t really my uncle. He was a med student who fled the Nazis in 1936 — before the United States started turning away Jewish refugees — and ended up living in Chicago with my grandparents.

I don’t know how Uncle Max found his way to my Oma and Opa, and I suppose I’ll never know. All of them are dead. I heard the story from Uncle Max in 1973, after I graduated from college and had a nagging cough.

I had no money for a doctor. I was working for the Post Office in Portland, Oregon, and playing baritone sax in a funk band.

“Call your Uncle Max,” my Mom told me from Chicago.

“Who’s Uncle Max?” I said.

Uncle Max examined me, suggested I cut down on the weed, and told me his story.

He was a medical student in Germany — fairly advanced, as he already had the tools of his trade. He lived with his parents. They were Jewish.

One day, some Nazi gentlemen knocked on their door, or barged in, ransacked the place, and found Max’s little black bag. In it they found a syringe and some hypodermic needles.

“Aha! A morphinist!” one said. They left, but said they’d be back.

Uncle Max’s parents — I do not know their names — told him he had to leave the country immediately. And he did — the next day, I believe.

This was two years before Kristallnacht — Nov. 9-10, 1938 — when the war on the Jews had become official policy. Four years after Kristallnacht, with the big war on, FDR turned away boatloads full of Jews fleeing the Third Reich. FDR called them a threat to national security.

Max’s entire family was murdered by the Nazis. In Auschwitz, I believe. But what does it matter where they died? We know who killed them, and why, and to some extent, how it could have been prevented.

How Max hooked up with my Oma and Opa, as I’ve said, I do not know. I suppose through some Jewish relief organization.

Uncle Max, a refugee, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, though he did not have to, as he was 35 years old. He married in 1950 and he and his wife raised three children, two girls and a boy.

Now, here is an interesting thing. This is not the first time I’ve written this column. The first time was 30 years ago, give or take. I was city editor of The Brownsville Herald, in Texas, and the Reagan administration was rounding up and imprisoning tens of thousands of refugees from government death squads in Central America — women, children and babies — for the despicable crime of trying to escape from war.

The Herald hired me because I’d written a few news articles about the work I’d done as a paralegal in U.S. immigration prisons, helping attorneys represent victims of rape, torture and war. I’d also covered the privatization of our immigration prisons, in which our federal government hired private, money-seeking Republican campaign contributors — I mean, corporations — and gave them the power to strip-search children, mothers and babies.

The privatization of immigration prisons gives private corporations — above all, Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which changed its name to CoreCivic in 2016, because the CCA logo had become so thoroughly soaked in the blood of children; and GEO Group, CoreCivic’s main competitor; and dozens of well-intentioned but benighted church-affiliated groups that imprison refugee children to save the federal government the bother and expense — as I was saying, all these private prisons give the U.S. government a way to sidestep responsibility for the war crimes it is committing, and has been committing for decades — surely since 1985, when my 3-year-old client was strip-searched in CCA’s Laredo prison because her Salvadoran mother made the outrageous demand to speak to a pro bono attorney.

This is all true.

Do you like it?

I can’t see how you could.

What is going on today, under the Trump administration, is far worse.

I know what you’re thinking: What could be worse than strip-searching children?

Killing them.

I am tired, my friends. I worked for virtually nothing in U.S. immigration prisons to try to save Central Americans’ lives under the Reagan administration. I’m not going back to the prisons. But hundreds of other human rights workers are doing it.

They are doing — dare I say it? — God’s work, and doing it under obnoxious and intrusive government surveillance. Most of them are doing it for free, or for far less than minimum wage.

I would like to list the names of a few of them here — pro bono legal organizations, human rights groups — who are doing what our government should be doing, and failed to do, in the 1940s and 1980s, and is failing to do today. But times being what they are, I fear this might do them more harm than good.

We should support them. Most of them are tax-exempt nonprofits.

(Courthouse News editor Robert Kahn’s book, “Other People’s Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons in the Reagan Decade,” (1996) was the first history of U.S. immigration prisons.)

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https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-ol-2-enter-the-fray-here-are-just-a-few-of-the-ways-our-1546013604-htmlstory

Scott Martelle writes in the LA Times:

Two court actions a continent apart are driving home — yet again — the point that the U.S. asylum system neither lives up to basic standards of human decency and due process nor, it seems, to the promises of the Constitution.

In New York on Thursday, a federal district court judge slammed the government for failing to even offer a bond hearing to a man it had detained for 34 months after he arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked for asylum because of threats he’d received in his native Ivory Coast over his political affiliations.

Is that sufficient grounds for granting asylum? Good question, and we have both laws and a court system to guide the answer. Was it necessary for the government to detain Adou Kouadio, 43, while his application worked its way through the system?

No one knows because the government has not been forced to answer two basic questions: Does Kouadio pose a flight risk? And does he pose a danger to public safety? Both those fundamental questions determining whether an asylum-seeker or other migrant will remain incarcerated get addressed in a bond hearing.

Which the government has not granted. For 34 months.

U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Thursday ordered a bond hearing be held within 14 days, a ruling legal experts said was both a rebuke to federal detention policies and a recognition that fundamental rights of due process extend to migrants.

“Petitioner has a clean record, never having been arrested or convicted,” Hellerstein wrote. “There is little risk of flight, since he seeks asylum within the United States, and little risk of danger to the community, judging from his lack of a prior criminal history. Yet, Petitioner has suffered 34 months of detention without an opportunity for a bond hearing while waiting for a final decision on his petition for asylum.”

The judge noted that the government had an interest in weighing due process rights against the national interest but that it had failed to make the case that Kouadio posed a particular threat.

“This nation prides itself on its humanity and openness with which it treats those who seek refuge at its gates,” Hellerstein wrote. “By contrast, the autocracies of the world have been marked by harsh regimes of exclusion and detention. Our notions of due process nourish the former spirit and brace us against the latter. The statutory framework governing those who seek refuge, and its provisions for detention, cannot be extended to deny all right to bail.”

Meanwhile, here on the West Coast, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Riverside to protect another right of migrants. The suit accuses the federal government and some of the organizations it relies on for detaining people facing deportation — private prison operator Geo Group and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department — of making it nearly impossible for migrants to consult lawyers, which they have a right to do.

Geo Group operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department operates the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange and the James A. Musick Facility near Irvine; all three facilities house migrants at ICE’s behest.

According to the complaint (which you really ought to read), three men seeking asylum have been unable to use telephones to find or consult with attorneys under bizarre systems in which the phones hang up automatically at the sound of an automated response, detained migrants are forced to make their calls within hearing of others (undermining fundamental attorney-client privilege), and detainees often don’t gain access to phones until after normal business hours.

Also, mail is slow to get delivered and sometimes arrives opened and damaged, further hindering the detainees’ ability to present their cases, the lawsuit charges.

These are no minor things. Hanging in the balance is the ability not only to get proper legal advice, but also to collect the sorts of documents often required to support an asylum claim. Detainees have missed court deadlines because of slow mails and inability to gather their documents from far-flung sources.

And I should note this isn’t a Trump thing. ICE officials, and their contracted detention overseers, have been acting in such manners for years. One of the plaintiffs, Jason Nsinano of Namibia, was initially detained under the Obama administration, as was Kouadio, the man for whom the New York judge ordered a bond hearing.

Though that hearing might not do much good. Shortly after his detention, ICE determined that Nsinano posed neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety and set bond at $10,000 — an amount that Nsinano doesn’t have.

So Nsinano has been incarcerated for more than three years not because he has been charged with a crime, nor because he poses a flight risk or danger to society, but because he sought asylum and didn’t have the foresight to bring $10,000 with him.

That’s outrageous.

 

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Yup! Our treatment of asylum seekers and other migrants is outrageous! What’s even more outrageous are the legislators and Administration politicos who perpetuate this broken and corrupt system when fixing it should be legal and moral imperatives. And it would be a heck of a lot cheaper than the failed, corrupt, “killer” strategies being pursued now. We could get lots of much needed Due Process for less than $5 billion!

PWS

12-30-18

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  4. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!

GOV WINS A “BIGGIE:” 6th Cir. Defers To BIA’s Interpretation Of “Pereira Notice” in Matter of Bermudez-Cota — Hernandez-Perez v. Whitaker!

Hernandez-Perez-6th-18a0269p-06

Hernandez-Perez v. Whitaker, 6th Cir., 12-18-18, Published

PANEL: GUY, WHITE, and STRANCH, Circuit Judges

OPINION BY: JUDGE JANE B. STRANCH

KEY QUOTE:

On the other hand, importing Pereira’s holding on the stop-time rule into the jurisdictional context would have unusually broad implications. According to the Government, “almost 100 percent” of NTAs issued during the three years preceding Pereira did not include the time and date of the proceeding. Id. at 2111.

Pereira’s emphatically “narrow” framing, id. at 2110, 2113, counsels in favor of distinguishing between the two contexts. Pereira confronted a specific question: “If the Government serves a noncitizen with a document that is labeled ‘notice to appear,’ but the document fails to specify either the time or place of the removal proceedings, does it trigger the stop-time rule?” Id. at 2110. Hernandez-Perez’s case does not present the same narrow question; no one disputes that he satisfies the ten-year requirement regardless of when the stop- time rule was triggered. We find persuasive the Board’s reasoning that, “[h]ad the Court intended to issue a holding as expansive as the one advanced . . ., presumably it would not have specifically referred to the question before it as being ‘narrow.’” Bermudez-Cota, 27 I. & N. Dec. at 443.

No. 18-3137 Hernandez-Perez v. Whitaker Page 10

Other components of Pereira counsel against applying its NTA rule in the context of jurisdiction. Like the BIA, we find it significant that, in Pereira, “the Court did not purport to invalidate the alien’s underlying removal proceedings or suggest that proceedings should be terminated.” Id.; see also Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U.S. 134, 141 (2012) (requiring courts to examine their own jurisdiction even if the parties “have disclaimed or have not presented” theissue). If Pereira’s holding applied to jurisdiction, there also would not have been jurisdiction in in Pereira itself. But the Court took up, decided, and remanded Pereira without even hinting at the possibility of a jurisdictional flaw.

We agree with the Board that Pereira is an imperfect fit in the jurisdictional context and it does not mandate a different conclusion than the one already reached by this court and all our sister circuits. See Herrera-Orozco, 603 F. App’x at 473–74 (collecting cases). We therefore conclude that jurisdiction vests with the immigration court where, as here, the mandatory information about the time of the hearing, see 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a), is provided in a Notice of Hearing issued after the NTA.

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Points of interest;

  • The 6th Circuit is the first circuit to rule on Bermudez-Cota;
  • The court noted that approximately 100% of the cases commenced by ICE over the past three years did not contain the specific notice of date. time and place of hearing set forth in the statute;
  • Even assuming that Bermudez is upheld, the way in which cases have been processed by DHS and EOIR has made tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of individuals eligible for “Cancellation of Removal;”
  • What does this say about the management competency of both agencies?
  • Contrary to the drift of the BIA and the 6th Circuit, initial proper notice of time, place, and date of hearing is critically important;
    • Whereas “Notices to Appear” are sometimes served in person, the subsequent “Notice of Hearing” by EOIR never is — this significantly increases the chances for improper “in absentia” hearings based on faulty notice from EOIR;
    • Most notices in Immigration Court are served manually by regular U.S. Mail, an incredibly error-fraught process given the state of disorder in the Immigration Courts (which has been mindlessly ramped up under Sessions’s gross mismanagement);
    • Thus, failing to provide accurate initial notice actually greatly increases the chances of improper in absentia orders and actual removals if an individual is picked up and can’t figure out how to file a “Motion to Reopen and Rescind” the in absentia order;
    • Would you be able to do that?” Would most Article III judges (particularly if operating in a different language, from ICE Detention, with no lawyer)?
  • Although “winning” on the “big issue,” the DHS actually lost this case; it was remanded because the BIA screwed up in denying the respondent’s Motion to Reopen;
  • As one of my former colleagues pointed out to me recently, if the BIA is wrong in Bermudez-Cota, it could potentially invalidate not only almost every removal order and pending removal proceeding, but most affirmative grants of relief by Immigration Judges;
    • So, maybe this is a case where the practical consequences will shape the legal interpretation;
    • But, then, there’s always the issue of retroactivity — could an invalidation of Bermudez be applied “prospectively only” to new and pending proceedings or in some other manner that did not disrupt “settled expectations;”
  • Historical Trivia:  I wrote Matter of L-O-G-, 21 I. & N. Dec. 413, 413 (B.I.A. 1996) (en banc) which was extensively discussed by the 6th Circuit.

PWS

12-18-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. 11TH CIR: BIA GETS IT WRONG IN DENYING JOURNALIST’S MTR — CONCURRING OPINION HINTS THAT MAJORITY OF “SESSIONS LEGACY BACKLOG” MIGHT HAVE BEEN ILLEGALLY INSTITUTED!
  2. HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: DHS’S ARROGANT “IN YOUR FACE” APPROACH TO “PEREIRA NOTICE” CASES APPEARS TO BE BACKFIRING WITH ARTICLE IIIs — US District Judge in Nevada Latest To Find That “Pereira Defective NTAs” Gave Immigration Judge No Jurisdiction Over Removal Case!
  3. HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: 6th Cir. Correctly Rejected BIA’s Disingenuous Approach To Res Judicata In Jasso! — Time To End The “Chevron Farce” In Immigration Cases!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations!